Reviews

It was said in our Missouri backyard by Mark Twain that Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. Rick Steves is knows to us from his PBS programs as the travel authority on Europe. His recent book Travel As a Political Act is taking a different look on sightseeing.

We watch many movies each year and most of them are forgotten in few weeks.  But a few of them we remember for a long time. The Fog of War is one of these movies.  This two-hour documentary is a cut from a twenty-four hour interview with former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

Culinary Biographies is a biographical encyclopedia of gastronomy of about one hundred people, who had a major influence on the history of food. They are chefs and cookbook writers , nutritionists and doctors, farmers and restaurateurs. Many of the people listed in this book are known to us for their much greater achievements in other fields.

 Iranian cinema is known for its fine arts movies and the director Majid Majidi is the star. The Willow Tree is a sad, poetic and sentimental movie.  It tells the story of a middle-aged man, Youssef, a professor who lectures on Rumi, who has been blind since childhood.

This fascinating, fast-paced book falls in the genre of historical fiction. It tells the real-life story of Haggadah (from the Hebrew root “HGD” = “to tell”), a Jewish book read over the Passover Seder table to relate the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt.

This small book of dark and deadly facts from the world of plants is intertwined with literary works involving poisonous botanicals. Not a work of scholarly research, it is light reading for gardeners and crime readers alike.

A Swedish mystery of crime and revenge. The Beast opens the book, waiting for his prey…schoolgirls, age 10 or so. He knows them. He has studied them. They’ve seen him before. They know they shouldn’t look at him or talk to him. They are wary, but curious.

My friends, like me, tend toward the sedentary.  I do, however, know a few folks who are athletes or who actively engage in physical activity.

This well-crafted mystery is the first in the Ian Rutledge series. Set in England following the devastation of World War I, Rutledge is a returning veteran trying to pick up the pieces of his sanity and his career with Scotland Yard. A prominent citizen of a Warwickshire village has been found brutally murdered in a field near his home.

Fifteen years ago in early May, several climbers lost their lives near the summit of Mt.