The Black Calhouns: From Civil War to Civil Rights with One African American Family
Gail Lumet Buckley, 2016
Grove/Atlantic
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780802124548
Summary
In The Black Calhouns, Gail Lumet Buckley—daughter of actress Lena Horne—delves deep into her family history, detailing the experiences of an extraordinary African-American family from Civil War to Civil Rights.
Beginning with her great-great grandfather Moses Calhoun, a house slave who used the rare advantage of his education to become a successful businessman in post-war Atlanta, Buckley follows her family’s two branches: one that stayed in the South, and the other that settled in Brooklyn.
Through the lens of her relatives’ momentous lives, Buckley examines major events throughout American history. From Atlanta during Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow, to New York City during the Harlem Renaissance, and then from World War II to the Civil Rights Movement, this ambitious, brilliant family witnessed and participated in the most crucial events of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Combining personal and national history, The Black Calhouns is a unique and vibrant portrait of six generations during dynamic times of struggle and triumph. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 21, 1937
• Where—Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Radcliff College (now Columbia University)
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Gail Lumet Buckley is an American writer and the author of three books—The Hornes: An American Family (1986); Blacks in Uniform: From Bunker Hill to Desert Storm (2001); and The Black Calhouns: From Civil War to Civil Rights with One African American Family (2016).
Buckley was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Louis Jones, a publisher, and Lena Horne, the famed singer and Hollywood's first black movie star. As Horne's career took off, she left Gail and Gail's younger brother "Little Teddy" behind in Pittsburgh to pursue work in New York. The marriage ultimately failed, and Teddy remained in Pittsburgh at his father's insistence; Gail, however, went with her mother. The two traveled between New York and California, eventually settling in California where Gail attended an all white school. She was classmates with Natalie Wood and the children of various Hollywood luminaries.
When her mother remarried Lennie Hayton, a white composer and conductor, the family moved back to New York where interracial marriage was legal. Gail was thrust into a glittering society of Hollywood celebrities, luxury ocean liners, posh European hotels, and exclusive watering holes. She received a superior education from a private Quaker school in upstate New York and headed off to Harvard.
Yet despite this privileged existence, Gail and her parents were not immune to racism. As she wrote in The Hornes: "We actually left home because of race and politics.” And the Quaker school she attended was chosen because few other private American boarding schools accepted black students.
After graduating from Harvard in 1959, Gail worked as a journalist, including stints at Marie-Claire in Paris and Life magazine. It was at Life that she met her first husband, Sidney Lumet, a well known TV and movie director. They married in 1963, had two children, and split their time between New York and London in support of Sydney's career. The marriage ended in 1978. Five years later, Gail married her second husband, Kevin Buckley, and began to devote herself to writing.
In addition to her three books, Gail has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, New York Daily News, Washington Post, Vogue, Playboy, and People. (Adapted from encyclopedia.com and the publisher. Retrieved 2/14/2016.)
Book Reviews
The story of Buckley's ancestors is fascinating for many reasons. Her candid portraits of their experiences offer a window onto shameful episodes in American history that are more recent and relevant than many realize. The stories also represent at least a proxy for the untold stories of so many others whose lives have been conveniently forgotten, excised from national consciousness...Buckley's moving chronicle, like Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me, should be read in schools across the country.
Christian Science Monitor
(Starred review.) In this thoroughly engaging family chronicle, Buckley reveals an expansive tapestry of African-American history since the Civil War. The story begins with her great-great-grandfather Moses Calhoun, a freed slave turned businessman.... Buckley’s awesomely informative shout-out to the Calhouns is a treat to read.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Buckley...writes here about her family history.... Although the author sometimes loses focus by including each major event in post-Civil War black history,...the book comes alive when she discusses the life of her famous mother and her own childhood.... [It] covers much of the same ground as Buckley's previous book, The Hornes. —Kate Stewart, U.S. Senate Lib., Washington, D.C.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [An] assiduously researched and gracefully written family history...entrancingly well-told.... Buckley’s superbly realized American family portrait is enthralling and resounding.
Booklist
[A] middle-class black family's journey of hard work, education, and aspiration in a deeply racist United States.... The author later weaves her own story of 1960s political awakening into this thoroughly jam-packed narrative of history and nostalgia....ambitious, relentless, and occasionally messy.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi, 2016
Random House
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812988406
Summary
A profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir by a young neurosurgeon faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis who attempts to answer the question—What makes a life worth living?
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live.
And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated.
When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.
What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.
Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all:
I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything. Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: "I can’t go on. I’ll go on."
When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 1, 1977
• Raised—Westchester, New York; Kingman, Arizona, USA
• Died—March 9, 2015
• Where—San Francisco Bay Area, California
• Education—2 B.As, M.A., Stanford University; M.P., Cambridge University; M.D. Yale University
• Awards—Lewis H. Nahum Prize (research on Tourette's)
Paul Kalanithi was an American neurosurgeon and writer. His book When Breath Becomes Air is a memoir about his life and illness, battling stage IV metastatic lung cancer. It was posthumously published by Random House in January 2016.
Kalanithi was born to Cardiologist Paul Kalanithi and his wife, Sue, on April 1, 1977 and lived in Westchester, New York. Kalanithi had two brothers.The family moved to Kingman, Arizona when Kalanithi was 10 where he graduated as the valedictorian of Kingman High School.
He attended Stanford University and graduated with a bachelor of arts and an master's degree in English literature as well as a bachelor of science in human biology. After Stanford, he earned a master’s in the history and philosophy of science and medicine from the University of Cambridge. He went on to the Yale School of Medicine. He graduated from Yale Medicine in 2007 cum laude, winning the Lewis H. Nahum Prize for his research on Tourette’s syndrome.
In May 2013, Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV metastatic lung cancer. He died 22 months later, having completed his neurosurgery residency at the Stanford Medical School and having become a first-time father only eight months before. At the time of his death, he was an instructor in the Department of Neurosurgery and a fellow at the Stanford Neurosciences Institute. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/10/2016.)
Book Reviews
I guarantee that finishing this book and then forgetting about it is simply not an option.... Part of this book’s tremendous impact comes from the obvious fact that its author was such a brilliant polymath. And part comes from the way he conveys what happened to him—passionately working and striving, deferring gratification, waiting to live, learning to die—so well. None of it is maudlin. Nothing is exaggerated. As he wrote to a friend: "It’s just tragic enough and just imaginable enough." And just important enough to be unmissable.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Possesses the gravity and wisdom of an ancient Greek tragedy.... [Kalanithi] delivers his chronicle in austere, beautiful prose. The book brims with insightful reflections on mortality that are especially poignant coming from a trained physician familiar with what lies ahead.
Boston Globe
Devastating and spectacular.... [Kalanithi] is so likeable, so relatable, and so humble, that you become immersed in his world and forget where it’s all heading.
USA Today
It’s [Kalanithi’s] unsentimental approach that makes When Breath Becomes Air so original—and so devastating.... Its only fault is that the book, like his life, ends much too early.
Entertainment Weekly
Inspiring.... Kalanithi strives to define his dual role as physician and patient, and he weighs in on such topics as what makes life meaningful and how one determines what is most important when little time is left.... This deeply moving memoir reveals how much can be achieved through service and gratitude when a life is courageously and resiliently lived.
Publishers Weekly
[A] moving and penetrating memoir.... This eloquent, heartfelt meditation on the choices that make live worth living, even as death looms, will prompt readers to contemplate their own values and mortality.
Booklist
(Starred review.) A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer. Writing isn't brain surgery, but it's rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former.... A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for When Breath Becomes Air...then take off on your own:
1. How would you describe Dr. Paul Kalanithi? What kind of a person was he?
2. One of the most profound questions addressed in this book is what makes life worth living in the face of death. We all face death, but Paul Kalanithi knew his was imminent. What answers, or at least consolations, does he find?
3. Kalanithi quotes Samuel Beckett's seven words: I can't go on. I'll go on." Talk about what that means, not just for Paul Kalanithi but for all of us. In the face of dying, especially prolonged, how does one "go on" or, in popular parlance, "keep on keeping on"?
4. One of the ironies of Kalanithi's life is that he postponed learning how to live in order to learn how to be a doctor. But once he knew he had lung cancer, he had to learn how to die. What are the ways in which he learned to live...and learned to face his death? Would you be as brave and thoughtful as Katanithi was?
5. Describe Kalanithi's love-hate relationship with medicine. He saw it as a job that kept his cardiologist father away from home. But how else did he see it?
6. What kind of a doctor was Kalanithi? Why was he, even at a young age, able to understand the needs of his patients more than so many other young doctors?
7. Kalanithi said that he acted in caring for his patients as "death's ambassador." "Those burdens, he wrote, "are what makes medicine holy and wholly impossible." What does he mean?
8. Once Kalanithi and his wife learned that he had terminal cancer, why did they decide to have a child? Even Kalanithi wonders if having a child wouldn't make it harder to die. What would you do?
9. How would you (or will you) go about dying? How do you think of death—as something distant, something frightening or horrible, as part of the normal spectrum of life, as a closing of this chapter of your life and the opening of another? What comes to mind when you think of your own demise?
10. Do you find When Breath Becomes Air enlightening, insightful, spiritual, maudlin? Would you describe it as an important book or merely interesting?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Boys in the Trees: A Memoir
Carly Simon, 2015
Flatiron Books
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250095893
Summary
Simon's memoir reveals her remarkable life, beginning with her storied childhood as the third daughter of Richard L. Simon, the co-founder of publishing giant Simon & Schuster, her musical debut as half of The Simon Sisters performing folk songs with her sister Lucy in Greenwich Village, to a meteoric solo career that would result in 13 top 40 hits, including the #1 song "You're So Vain."
She was the first artist in history to win a Grammy Award, an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, for her song "Let the River Run" from the movie Working Girl.
The memoir recalls a childhood enriched by music and culture, but also one shrouded in secrets that would eventually tear her family apart.
Simon brilliantly captures moments of creative inspiration, the sparks of songs, and the stories behind writing "Anticipation" and "We Have No Secrets" among many others. Romantic entanglements with some of the most famous men of the day fueled her confessional lyrics, as well as the unraveling of her storybook marriage to James Taylor. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 25, 1945
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Sarah Lawrence College
• Awards—(in music...see below)
• Currently—lives on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts
Carly Elisabeth Simon is an American singer-songwriter, musician and children's author. She first rose to fame in the 1970s with a string of hit records; her 13 Top 40 U.S. hits include "Anticipation" (No. 13), "You Belong To Me" (No. 6), "Coming Around Again" (No. 18), and her four Gold certified singles "Jesse" (No. 11), "Mockingbird" (No. 5), a duet with James Taylor, "You're So Vain" (No. 1), and "Nobody Does It Better" (No. 2) from the 1977 James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me.
After a brief stint with her sister Lucy Simon as duo group the Simon Sisters, she found great success as a solo artist with her 1971 self-titled debut album Carly Simon, which won her the Grammy Award for Best New Artist, and spawned her first Top 10 single "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be."
She achieved international fame with her third album No Secrets which sat firmly at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for 5 weeks, and spawned the worldwide hit "You're So Vain", for which she received three Grammy nominations, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Over the course of her career, Simon has amassed 24 Billboard Hot 100 charting singles, 28 Billboard Adult Contemporary charting singles, and has won two Grammy Awards. AllMusic called Simon, "One of the quintessential singer/songwriters of the '70s". Simon has a contralto vocal range.
For her 1988 hit "Let the River Run", from the film Working Girl, Simon became the first artist in history to win a Grammy Award, an Academy Award, and a Golden Globe Award for a song composed and written, as well as performed, entirely by a single artist. She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1994, inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for "You're So Vain" in 2004, and awarded the ASCAP Founders Award in 2012. In 1995 and 1998, respectively, Simon received the Boston Music Awards Lifetime Achievement and a Berklee College of Music Honorary Doctor of Music Degree.
Simon is the former wife of another notable singer-songwriter, James Taylor. Simon and Taylor have two children together, Sarah "Sally" Maria Taylor and Benjamin "Ben" Simon Taylor, who are also musicians. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/8/2016.)
Book Reviews
Boys in the Trees, Ms. Simon’s overripe memoir, means to correct the impression of extravagant good fortune....This book’s style recalls that of her songs: a little precious, a little redundant, a little too much. She recalls "my parents' dinner parties, one after another, like gold, shimmering beads strung on a necklace." She overplays the drama. ("He was my captor and I was his slave.") And in the too-much-information department, well: "James was my muse, my Orpheus, my sleeping darling...." But the barrier thrown up by this language isn’t insurmountable. And Ms. Simon has a tumultuous story to tell.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
[A] brilliant memoir.... Simon’s tone throughout is surprisingly heavy for someone who often appeared like a carefree, music biz boom-time girl. It can get overblown over matters of the heart, too: her tumultuous relationship with ex-husband James Taylor is likened in florid detail to the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. But for the most part, the book reveals her experiences clinically and compellingly, subtly showing us how canny and clever she is.
Guardian (UK)
[T]he book’s overriding theme is one of longing. Boys in the Trees recounts Simon’s singing career only in fits and starts, as if it were more a hobby than a vocation. It ends with the painful dissolution of her marriage to Taylor—who, despite his largely clean-cut public image, features in a few grim, drug-addled moments—more than 30 years ago.
Boston Globe
A lyrical look back at her childhood, her career, and oh, the men in her life...anecdote-filled...dishy without being salacious. There’s plenty here for fans to feast upon" - USA Today
"Boys in the Trees meets its lofty expectations. As one of pop music’s more literate songwriters — she was the first solo woman to win a Best Song Oscar for Let the River Run from Working Girl — Simon writes beautifully and affectingly. Her publisher father, for whom she clamored for attention and validation, would be proud.
Miami Herald
Intelligent and captivating...Don't miss it.
People Magazine
Carly Simon could have gotten away with just the name-dropping. In her life, she's crossed paths with an astonishing range of famous people, from Cat Stevens and Jimi Hendrix to Benny Goodman and Albert Einstein. So it's a pleasant surprise that in her compelling new autobiography, Boys in the Trees, she lays out her naked emotions and insecurities, and that she proves to be a supple writer with a gift for descriptions.
Rolling Stone
One of the best celebrity memoirs of the year ... elegantly written and revealing.
Hollywood Reporter
Simon's memoir unfolds in long, florid, intensely observed scenes...that are at once charged with erotic tension and attuned to subtle undercurrents of feeling. Her writing is impressionistic, slightly boy-crazy, wonderfully evocative, and suffused with the warm voice and bittersweet sensibility of her songs.
Publishers Weekly
The best parts of the book are when the author describes how her songs came into being, while the few tedious ones are moments when names are dropped right and left.... Memoirs by rock icons of the 1960s and '70s are flying fast and furious these days. This is one of the best, lively and memorable.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Boys in the Trees...and then take it from there:
1. Describe Carly Simon. For someone as bright, talented, and accomplished as she is, she has wrestled for much of her life with self-esteem. How might you explain that? Why was she unable to accept that she might have been, as one boyfriend described her, "the cleverest, wisest, most perfect girl"?
2. Talk about Simon's privileged childhood and her overbearing father. Then, of course, there's Simon's mother Andrea and her young lover. How did Simon's early life affect her?
3. In what way might Simon's wealthy background have hurt her professionally, at least early on. What does that say about the era in which she first began singing?
4. Who are the "boys in the trees"? What does the title mean?
5. The memoir indulges in a fair amount of name dropping, particularly regarding men. Did you find it annoying, or were you complete taken with her tales of the famous men in her life. Who most intrigued you?
6. Would you describe the writing as highly eroticized?
7. Talk about her marriage with James Taylor. What was the early marriage like, what drew the couple together, and what soured their relationship? Simon herself says this: From the beginning, James and I were linked together as strongly as we were not just because of love, and music, but because we were both troubled people trying our best to pass as normal."
8. So who is "You're so Vain" about? At least who does Simon say the song is—or isn't—about?
9. Discuss Simon's songwriting, how her songs came into being. What did her creative process entail: flashes of insight, serendipity, hard work, borrowings from others...? A number of reviewers have described these sections as the best of the book. Do you agree or not?
10. What about Simon's memoir surprised you, made you laugh, angered you...or struck you in any other fashion?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Audacity of Self: Dare to Put You First
Raquel A. Stuart, Ph.D., 2016
Balboa Press
112 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781504349048
Summary
The Audacity of Self: Dare to Put You First is a delightful must-read. This book pens a powerful account of emotional pain from not being genuine with self and others.
It takes you on a journey from insecurity and having a victim mentality to strength, love of self, and moving from victim to victor. This journey is not an easy one; then again, nothing worth having ever is.
This book is interactive in the sense that it will challenge you from beginning to end. It is a reminder to give yourself permission to live authentically through your words and actions.
The author encourages you to believe in yourself and declare that you are worthy to live an awesome and amazing life. It is up to you to create the space and dare to put you first.
Author Bio
• Birth—October 27, 1972
• Where—St. Michael, Barbados
• Education—Ph.D., Capella University
• Currently—lives in the state of New Jersey, USA
First...in her own words:
I was born on a small island in the West Indies where I lived with my mom for the first six years of my life. I vaguely remember my dad being around, but as far as I can remember, he didn’t live with us. He lived with his mother and brother and I visited them. I did not know it then, but my mom had been a victim of domestic violence; she had suffered at the hands of my father. They were teenagers when they had me, my mom, 18, and my dad, 19.
At the age of six, I immigrated with my mom to America, where we came to live with my grandmother and uncle in Brownsville, a community in Brooklyn, New York City. I lived in NYC for the majority of my life and attended school and college in NYC.
Dr. Raquel A. Stuart is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor with a Ph.D. in Human Services with a specialization in Counseling. She has subject matter expertise in high engagement presentations and workshops dealing with sexuality, body image, relationships, and self-esteem. She has served as a Psychology Professor for numerous years at various universities.
Dr. Stuart is the host of a weekly talk show, Bare It All. She is the Founder and CEO of Sistas Speak, LLC, a transformational movement which teaches women and girls to live beyond their reasons and justifications and to understand that if they want something different they have to do something different. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow the author on Facebook.
Book Reviews
The Audacity of Self: Dare to Put You First is a delightful must read. This book is raw, and Dr. Stuart pens a powerful account of her struggles that inspires her readers to push forward in the face of adversity. She displays pure strength and authenticity in this awe inspiring chronicle despite hurt, pain, and shame to shed her victim mentality in a fight to transform and reclaim her life.
Dr. Leslie E. Brown, Author of The Thorns Within
Raquel writes authentically from the heart. She is real and shares her journey of what she has gone through to where she is now in her life, which is living her life with purpose, power, courage, freedom from the past, with a sprinkle of fun and humor. I feel this book is a MUST read for everyone. We only have 1 life and it's now to live it, why not let Raquel share her journey in supporting our journey in living life Audaciously.
Regina Rossi Lamothe, LCSW
Discussion Questions
1. When we walk around with a negative attitude, where does that attitude get us?
2. How do you know you are walking in your purpose?
3. When you are having a conversation with yourself, what does it sound like?
4. How do you know if the relationships you have are stretching you beyond your comfort zone?
5. What are you seeking from your life?
6. What does self-love look like for you?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
Finding Tipperary Mary
Phyllis Whitsell, 2015
Mirror Books
244 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781910335338
Summary
Finding Tipperary Mary, is the astonishing first person account of Phyllis Whitsell’s search for the mother who left her in a Catholic orphanage in Birmingham.
While struggling to fit in with her adoptive family, growing up, becoming a nurse and starting a family of her own, Phyllis longed to discover the missing pieces of her early life.
Her search to learn more about her mother—and the reasons for abandoning her, led to a remarkable journey where the two women’s lives crossed each other unknowingly. When they both eventually sat down in the same room together, the circumstances were extraordinary, moving and ultimately life-changing.
The book touches on topical issues such as adoption, alcoholism, abuse, dementia and forgiveness. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May, 18 1956
• Where—Coventry, England, UK
• Education—R.N., City Hospital, Birmingham
• Currently—lives in Birmingham, England
Phyllis Whitsell British author. She is also a registered nurse who has worked in most hospital departments from A&E to midwifery as well as community nursing. Phyllis now cares for dementia patients in her home town of Birmingham.
She has three grown up children and enjoys travelling, particularly to Greece where she does most of her writing. Finding Tipperary Mary is her first book, painting a personal view of growing up in an orphanage in the 1950s, then as an adopted child and student nurse in Birmingham in the '60s and '70s. (From the author.)
Book Reviews
What an extraordinary story....very moving indeed!
Vanessa Feltz - BBC Radio 2, Jeremy Vine Show
Discussion Questions
1. Did the challenges Phyllis and / or Bridget faced strike a chord with your own childhood?
2. How did the actions of Bridget make you feel?
3. What observations about English society are made in the book?
4. What is different from your own culture? What do you find most surprising, intriguing or difficult to understand?
5. What is the central idea discussed in the book? What issues or ideas does the author explore? Are they personal, sociological, global, political, economic, spiritual, medical, or scientific
6. Talk about specific memorable passages that struck you as significant—or interesting, profound, amusing, illuminating, disturbing, sad...?
7. What have you learned after reading this book? Has it broadened your perspective about a difficult issue—personal or societal? Has it introduced you to a culture in another country?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)