Books I Have Already Reviewed 04

Continuing a review of books I have already reviewed with a brief statement of what I found interesting in them. (04)

The Country of the Pointed Firs. Sarah Orne Jewett. 1896. Novel. Portrait of a Maine coastal town that is in decline. Stop in and visit. But you will need to listen patiently because the people take their time to tell their stories. Reproduces the rhythms of speech.

Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, TS Eliot, Graham and Gandhi. Howard Gardner. 1993. Creativity belongs to all the disciplines, not just the arts.

Criticism: The Major Texts. Ed. Walter Jackson Bate. 1952. The words of great literary critics, from Plato to Edmund Wilson.

Crossing the Threshold of Hope. Pope John Paul II. 1994. The Pope tries to answer persistent questions about Catholicism in plain language. He is partly successful.

The DaVinci Code. Dan Brown. 2003. Novel. I guess I can't say people NEVER read this one. The race to find the Holy Grail, only it's not a cup. It's evidence that Christ married Mary Magdalene. If true, it could bring down the male-dominated Catholic Church.

Day One: Before Hiroshima and After. Peter Wyden. 1984. Illustrates that science is not a straight-forward process. The American scientists were in a race with Hitler, but Hitler wanted rockets and the German atom bomb project was well behind. Much irony and confusion in the process of successful science.

Decline and Fall. Evelyn Waugh. 1928. Novel. The author has fun presenting English public schools and prisons: "For anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison."

Deephaven. Sarah Orne Jewett. Novel. 1877. Two young girls have a memorable summer visiting a declining coastal fishing village in Maine. They become great friends with the people. Memorable reproduction of the people's rhythms of speech.

The Devil in Massachusetts. Marion L. Starkey. 1949. Young girls set off the witch hunt. Their fabricated reports of being harassed by those they accused of witchcraft were at first accepted as evidence. Hysteria followed.