First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies

 Title: “First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First

              Ladies”

Author:  Kate Anderson Brower

Genre: Nonfiction

Summary: Brower offers new insights into this privileged group of remarkable women, including Jacqueline Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, Patricia Nixon, Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama. The stories she shares range from the heartwarming to the shocking and tragic, exploring everything from the first ladies’ political crusades to their rivalries with Washington figures; from their friendships with other first ladies to their public and private relationships with their husbands. She also offers a detailed and insightful new portrait of one of the most-watched first ladies of all time, Hillary Clinton, asking what her tumultuous years in the White House may tell us about her own historic presidential run . . . and what life could be like with the nation’s first First Husband.

Rating: Very good.

Why I Like It:  It was very easy and interesting to listen to.  I learned a lot.

Other:  Listened to it on audio.

Reviewer: Nancy Bucher

“Paw Paw: In Search of America’s Forgotten Fruit”

 Title: “Paw Paw:  In Search of America’s Forgotten Fruit”

Author:  Andrew Moore

Genre: Nonfiction

Summary: In Pawpaw―a 2016 James Beard Foundation Award nominee in the Writing & Literature category―author Andrew Moore explores the past, present, and future of this unique fruit, traveling from the Ozarks to Monticello; canoeing the lower Mississippi in search of wild fruit; drinking pawpaw beer in Durham, North Carolina; tracking down lost cultivars in Appalachian hollers; and helping out during harvest season in a Maryland orchard. Along the way, he gathers pawpaw lore and knowledge not only from the plant breeders and horticulturists working to bring pawpaws into the mainstream (including Neal Peterson, known in pawpaw circles as the fruit’s own “Johnny Pawpawseed”), but also regular folks who remember eating them in the woods as kids, but haven’t had one in over fifty years. 

Rating:  Very interesting.  I read it from cover to cover.

Why I Like It:  Covers history, cultural practices, recipes, etc.

Reviewer: Nancy Bucher

History of Agriculture in Ohio to 1880

 Title:  History of Agriculture in Ohio to 1880

Author:  Robert Leslie Jones
Genre: Nonfiction

Summary:  Introductory chapters provide an overview of the agricultural suitability of the Ohio land-its topography, climate, soil, native flora and fauna.  Following a brief history of the settlement of the state and its early farms, the bulk of the book is organized topically by farm product.  Final chapters discuss the introduction of farm machinery and the rise of agricultural organizations, fairs, and similar ventures.

Rating: Very good.

Why I Like It:  I know very little about the early history of Ohio and I found it very interesting, and I learned a lot.

Reviewer: Nancy Bucher

Ohio Farm

Title: Ohio Farm
Author:  Wheeler McMillen
Genre: Nonfiction

Summary:  Originally published in 1974, this memoir fondly and vividly recalls life on the McMillen family farm in western Ohio, describing in rich detail the daily and seasonal activities that marked the cyclical progression of farm life.  1900-1930

Uncomplicated when compared with the task of managing today's highly mechanized agricultural complexes, life on the early twentieth-century small farm entailed hard work and afforded simple pleasures that brought satisfaction and enjoyment to the farm and family. Farming on that scale and in the same manner has now become almost completely infeasible, yet in those times a good farmer could prosper and become independent. Wheeler McMillen’s father, Lewis, did both.

Relying frequently on his father’s account books and concise diaries, for this is primarily his father’s story, McMillen recounts the immense labor that farming demanded before the advent of the tractor and the combine harvester. He evokes the special excitements of having company for Sunday dinner, attending the annual oyster supper at the Grange Hall, and gathering on the Fourth of July with the interminable wait for darkness to fall. McMillen also portrays the quiet peace and ineffable joy of private moments, such as resting the horses during spring plowing to watch bronzed grackles search for food in the freshly turned furrows.

Rating:  Very good.

Why I Like It:  It was easy to read and interesting.   I could relate to the Bucher and Dunipace farming experiences during this time.

Reviewer: Nancy Bucher

The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West

 

Title: “The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American

Ideal West ”
Author: David McCullough
Genre: Historical Nonfiction
Summary: As part of the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the new United States of America, Britain ceded the land that comprised the immense Northwest Territory, a wilderness empire northwest of the Ohio River containing the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A Massachusetts minister named Manasseh Cutler was instrumental in opening this vast territory to veterans of the Revolutionary War and their families for settlement. Included in the Northwest Ordinance were three remarkable conditions: freedom of religion, free universal education, and most importantly, the prohibition of slavery. In 1788 the first band of pioneers set out from New England for the Northwest Territory under the leadership of Revolutionary War veteran General Rufus Putnam. They settled in what is now Marietta on the banks of the Ohio River.
     McCullough tells the story through five major characters: Cutler and Putnam; Cutler’s son Ephraim; and two other men, one a carpenter turned architect, and the other a physician who became a prominent pioneer in American science. They and their families created a town in a primeval wilderness, while coping with such frontier realities as floods, fires, wolves and bears, no roads or bridges, no guarantees of any sort, all the while negotiating a contentious and sometimes hostile relationship with the native people. Like so many of McCullough’s subjects, they let no obstacle deter or defeat them.

Rating: Very good.

Why I Like It: Since I know a little of Ohio’s history, it was easy to read and relate to the characters and events.
Reviewer: Nancy Bucher

Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Classic Children's Tales

 

Title: Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Classic Children's Tales

Author: Marta McDowell

Genre: gardening, nonfiction, biography memoir,  nature, British literature, history, books about books, animals, Patsy, audio

Summary: (Goodreads) A New York Times Bestseller
There aren’t many books more beloved than The Tale of Peter Rabbit and even fewer authors as iconic as Beatrix Potter. Her characters—Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle Duck, and all the rest—exist in a charmed world filled with flowers and gardens. In Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life , bestselling author Marta McDowell explores the origins of Beatrix Potter’s love of gardening and plants and shows how this passion came to be reflected in her work.

The book begins with a gardener’s biography, highlighting the key moments and places throughout her life that helped define her. Next, follow Beatrix Potter through a year in her garden, with a season-by-season overview of what is blooming that truly brings her gardens alive. The book culminates in a traveler’s guide, with information on how and where to visit Potter’s gardens today.

Rating: Excellent!

Why I Like It: So well done & interesting,

Other: I did audio & also got the book out of the library so I could follow along with the beautiful pictures. Both were excellent & so easy to follow!

Reviewer: Patsy

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

 

Title:  Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

Author:  Patrick Radden Keefe
Genre: Nonfiction

Summary:  The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions: Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to the arts and sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing OxyContin, a blockbuster painkiller that was a catalyst for the opioid crisis.

Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, exhaustively documented and ferociously compelling.

Rating: Very good.
Why I Like It:  Very well written and I learned a lot about the subject.
Other:  listened to it on audio
Reviewer: Nancy