HAF Book Club: March poll

[Sandra Craft]

And Man Created God: A History of the World at the Time of Jesus, by Selina O'Grady
To explore the power that religious belief has had over societies through the ages, Selina O'Grady takes the reader on a dazzling journey across the empires of the ancient world and introduces us to rulers, merchants, messiahs, priests, and holy men. Throughout, she seeks to answer why, amongst the countless religious options available, the empires at the time of Jesus "chose" the religions they did.

Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
Inspired by James Baldwin's 1963 classic The Fire Next Time, Ta-Nehisi Coates's new book, Between the World and Me, is a searing meditation on what it means to be black in America today...[a] powerful and passionate book...  [written as a letter from father to son]

Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier, by Scott Zesch
On New Year's Day in 1870, ten-year-old Adolph Korn was kidnapped by an Apache raiding party. Traded to Comaches, he thrived in the rough, nomadic existence, quickly becoming one of the tribe's fiercest warriors. Forcibly returned to his parents after three years, Korn never adjusted to life in white society. He spent his last years in a cave, all but forgotten by his family.

Crazy From the Heat, by David Lee Roth
David Lee Roth recounts with trademark showmanship and canny self-awareness the antics of the feverishly bacchanalian entertainment world. In the same gleefully honest and delightfully discursive voice his many fans have come to relish, Roth gives readers a backstage pass to his long strange trip from obscurity to rock stardom, his ups and downs with the Van Halens, and much more that will raise the eyebrows of even the most jaded music industry afficionado.

Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin, by Robert M. Hazen
Life on Earth arose nearly 4 billion years ago, bursting forth from air, water, and rock. Though the process obeyed all the rules of chemistry and physics, the details of that original event pose as deep a mystery as any facing science. How did non-living chemicals become alive? While the question is (deceivingly) simple, the answers are unquestionably complex. Science inevitably plays a key role in any discussion of life's origins, dealing less with the question of why life appeared on Earth than with where, when, and how it emerged on the blasted, barren face of our primitive planet.

The Invention of Nature, by Andrea Wulf
The acclaimed author of Founding Gardeners reveals the forgotten life of Alexander von Humboldt, the visionary German naturalist whose ideas changed the way we see the natural world—and in the process created modern environmentalism.

Reality Check, by Donald R. Prothero
How science deniers threaten our future. The shabby tactics of science deniers sparks this astute exposition of what we lose when science is sidelined.  Delves into the realm of climate change, biodiversity loss, and over population.

[Dragonia]

Good list....I think the book "Between the World and Me" could have a very interesting discussion afterwards....

[Davin]

I would like to nominate this book for voting on sometime in the future:

The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
by Lindsey Fitzharris

The gripping story of how Joseph Lister's antiseptic method changed medicine forever

In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of nineteenth-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters―no place for the squeamish―and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. These medical pioneers knew that the aftermath of surgery was often more dangerous than their patients' afflictions, and they were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. At a time when surgery couldn't have been more hazardous, an unlikely figure stepped forward: a young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister, who would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.

[Sandra Craft]

^^^  Added.

[Sandra Craft]

Dang, another non-tie.  Sorry, P.B.  Everybody go get your copies of Reality Check for March.

[Davin]

I'm still in the middle of another book, I'll start this one after that.