Reviews

 If you remember how Watergate unfolded, this fictionalized character study will read much easier than if you know it only as a political chronology. 

Perhaps the title should be Beautiful and Brainy. Beautiful is a readable account of the life of “the most beautiful woman of the first half of the Twentieth Century”, a film star of 1930s and 1940s, and the namesake of Austria’s annual invention award.

This very enjoyable and engaging non-fiction book is a detailed biography of one of the great female rulers, Catherine the Great of Russia.  She was born Sophia, a minor German princess, and was just 14 years old when she was summoned by the Russian court.

“Thus it was that the dawn of sensibility was mistaken for the onset of senility.”

Mighty Macs is an inspiring true story about the love of basketball, with nuns, and tiny Immaculata College of girls.  Can the new girl’s basketball team save their school?  Great story and movie.  The actors are Carla Gugino and David Boreanaz.

Brooklyn, Burning is the story of a homeless teen named Kid who falls in love with another kid named Scout over the course of one glorious Brooklyn summer.  Unfortunately, Kid spent the previous summer head over heels for Felix, and after learning the painful lesson

The Secret  Scripture follows elderly mental patient Roseanne McNulty as she recounts the events that shaped her life during the Irish Civil War. At the start of the war, Roseanne is a beautiful young woman, full of curiosity and vivacity, who struggles with the inexorable forces of war, religion, gender imbalance and social upheaval.

This modern day fiction novel primarily takes place in the heart of the Amazon jungle.  After her colleague turns up dead, a second pharmaceutical company scientist is sent to Brazil to check on the progress of a fertility drug and to get more details on the death of her friend.

Sportswriter Joe Posnanski drove Buck O’Neil around America promoting the Negro Baseball Leagues at ball fields in rural towns and major league stadiums during the last year of O’Neil’s life.

Ayurveda unlocks the secrets of the centuries old Indian Ayrvedic therapy and its offshoots - Uanni, Siddha and Tibetan traditional medicine, the principal health systems of the Indian subcontinent.  It briefly describes many exotic Indian therapies and exotic Panchakarma treatments, but also p