The descriptions come from various book reviews. They are posted here in no specific order.
I am numbering the books. You get to pick four books. List them by number in first, second, third, fourth choice. In other words. The first book is your first choice. I am going to award points to develop a tally.
I am also open to any suggestions you might have.
Deadline: Dec. 3 (noon)
1. Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe by Thomas CahillAfter the long period of cultural decline known as the Dark Ages, Europe experienced a rebirth of scholarship, art, literature, philosophy, and science and began to develop a vision of Western society that remains at the heart of Western civilization today.
By placing the image of the Virgin Mary at the center of their churches and their lives, medieval people exalted womanhood to a level unknown in any previous society. For the first time, men began to treat women with dignity and women took up professions that had always been closed to them.
The communion bread, believed to be the body of Jesus, encouraged the formulation of new questions in philosophy: Could reality be so fluid that one substance could be transformed into another? Could ordinary bread become a holy reality? Could mud become gold, as the alchemists believed? These new questions pushed the minds of medieval thinkers toward what would become modern science.
Artists began to ask themselves similar questions. How can we depict human anatomy so that it looks real to the viewer? How can we depict motion in a composition that never moves? How can two dimensions appear to be three? Medieval artists (and writers, too) invented the Western tradition of realism.
On visits to the great cities of Europe—monumental Rome; the intellectually explosive Paris of Peter Abelard and Thomas Aquinas; the hotbed of scientific study that was Oxford; and the incomparable Florence of Dante and Giotto—Cahill brilliantly captures the spirit of experimentation, the colorful pageantry, and the passionate pursuit of knowledge that built the foundations for the modern world
2.
At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson turns his attention from science to society in his authoritative history of domesticity. While walking through his own home, a former Church of England rectory built in the 19th century, Bryson reconstructs the fascinating history of the household, room by room. With waggish humor and a knack for unearthing the extraordinary stories behind the seemingly commonplace, he examines how everyday items--things like ice, cookbooks, glass windows, and salt and pepper--transformed the way people lived, and how houses evolved around these new commodities. "Houses are really quite odd things," Bryson writes, and, luckily for us, he is a writer who thrives on oddities. He gracefully draws connections between an eclectic array of events that have affected home life, covering everything from the relationship between cholera outbreaks and modern landscaping, to toxic makeup, highly flammable hoopskirts, and other unexpected hazards of fashion. Fans of Bryson's travel writing will find plenty to love here; his keen eye for detail and delightfully wry wit emerge in the most unlikely places, making At Home an engrossing journey through history, without ever leaving the house.
Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife By Mary Roach3.Mary Roach chooses a broad subject that pretty much everyone's interested in, then investigates the hell out of it in her unique, lighthearted style. No one dissects a topic as entertainingly as she does — I'd have killed to have her for a science teacher. And make no mistake, this may seem like light and jovial stuff, but it's not. It's as precise, thorough and informative as the stiffest, most pompous books on whatever subject her insatiably inquisitive mind is exploring. She just does it without pretense and with a lot of fun. She'll talk to the experts and ask the questions anyone with common sense would like to ask, especially the ones we'd be embarrassed to bring up, and then reports it all with a clear mind, a ruthless eye for self-editing, and a mordant, dry wit. The subject of this particular book of hers — the weird and wacky world of ghosts, mediums, near-death-experiences, reincarnation and the afterlife — is, as with her other books, one that suits her talents (pun alert) spookily well.
4.
The Blessing Stone by Barbara Wood Three million years ago, a meteorite plunged to earth in a cataclysmic collision, out of which emerged a beautiful blue stone. One hundred thousand years ago, a girl named "Tall One" discovers the crystal on the African plain and finds her destiny after looking into the mysterious stone. Thus begins the story of The Blessing Stone, an account of the ways in which the stone changes the lives and reveals the destinies of those it comes into contact with. The history of the world unfolds as the stone is passed from generation to generation, and across 5 continents from the Jordan River Valley to ancient Israel, from Imperial Rome to Medieval England, from fifteenth-century Germany to the eighteenth-century Caribbean and finally to the pioneers of the American West. Wood's 19th novel is comprised of eight individual books linked by a common thread—The Blessing Stone. Each story is set in a different country and period of time featuring Wood's trademark attention to historical detail. This backdrop provides a compelling canvas on which are painted the lives of the book's characters as they search for truth, courage, solace and even revenge, aided they believe, by the mystical powers of a cosmic blessing stone.
5.
My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor. It's a small book and not overly technical, and might be a wonderful link in this chain of thought. Taylor, first and foremost a scientist, describes scientifically and humanistically the event, her subsequent recovery, and the insight she developed regarding our spiritual selves. This is not an 'I almost died and found Jesus' sort of book, rather it is a scientific 'explanation' of how and where our spiritual energies manifest.
6.
An Inconvenient truth by Al Gore: Gore considers global warming to be an inconvenient truth and a pending planetary emergency. In his political career he was an advocate of measures to deal with this and other environmental crises, and in his post-political career he has accelerated these warnings. An Inconvenient Truth, an immediate New York Times bestseller, and the film that was released at around the same time, are his attempt to take this message to the masses.
7.
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks: is an intricate, ambitious novel that traces the journey of a rare illuminated Hebrew manuscript from convivencia Spain to the ruins of Sarajevo, from the Silver Age of Venice to the sunburned rock faces of northern Australia.
Inspired by the true story of a mysterious codex known as the Sarajevo Haggadah, People of the Book is a sweeping adventure through five centuries of history. From its creation in Muslim-ruled, medieval Spain, the illuminated manuscript makes a series of perilous journeys: through Inquisition-era Venice, fin-de-siecle Vienna, and the Nazi sacking of Sarajevo.
8.
Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks: This gripping historical novel is based on the true story of Eyam, the “Plague Village,” tucked in the rugged mountain spine of England. In 1666, when an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to the isolated settlement of shepherds and lead miners, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna’s eyes the reader follows the story of the plague year, as her fellow villagers make an extraordinary choice: convinced by a visionary young minister they elect to quarantine themselves within the village boundaries to arrest the spread of the disease. As the death toll rises and people turn from prayers and herbal cures to sorcery and murderous witch-hunting, Anna must confront the deaths of family, the disintegration of her community, and the lure of illicit love.
9.
The Case of the 1996 Failed Everest ExpeditionsIn 1996 dozens of teams of climbers made their way to the top of the world seeking the greatest trophy in the world of mountaineering: Climbing Mt. Everest. But when a snowstorm swept down on the two teams as they made their way down from the mountain, tragedy struck. Eight members of the two expeditions died from exposure, including the team leaders.
10.
A Sand County Almanac is a 1949 non-fiction book by American ecologist, forester, and environmentalist Aldo Leopold. Describing the land around the author's home in Sauk County, Wisconsin, the collection of essays advocate Leopold's idea of a "land ethic", or a responsible relationship existing between people and the land they inhabit. Edited and published by his son, Luna, a year after Leopold's death from a heart attack, the book is considered a landmark in the American conservation movement. The book has informed and changed the environmental movement and stimulated a widespread interest in ecology as a science.
