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Genre: Non-Fiction

A Quick Pull That’s Well Worth the Effort

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From the opening moments of Daniel Brown’s The Boys in the Boat, we learn that there’s more to “the boat” than the finely crafted racing shell. What really matters is the characters and relationships of the men that propelled it… and something more: the spiritual bond that forms under certain conditions when friendship, trial, and beauty intertwine. This is what Joe Rantz, elderly and in failing health, wanted Brown to capture. Boy, does he do it to the gunwales.  Plunging us into the world of collegiate rowing in the ’30s,…

Compelling History: Bomb Book Review

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Bomb by Steve Sheinkin In Bomb: The Race to Build —And Steal—The World’s Most Dangerous Weapon, Steve Sheinkin introduces young readers to the many plots and subplots involved in the creation of the world’s first nuclear bomb. Extensively researched, Bomb employs primary sources from declassified FBI files to simultaneously tell of Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, Soviet espionage, and Allied efforts to sabotage Nazi Germany’s ability to develop the bomb first. Sheinkin weaves together the stories of some of the 20th century’s most famous and notorious figures—the ingenious, courageous,…