Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America
Jill Leovy, 2015
Random House
384pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385529983
Summary
A masterly work of literary journalism about a senseless murder, a relentless detective, and the great plague of homicide in America
On a warm spring evening in South Los Angeles, a young man is shot and killed on a sidewalk minutes away from his home, one of the thousands of black Americans murdered that year. His assailant runs down the street, jumps into an SUV, and vanishes, hoping to join the scores of killers in American cities who are never arrested for their crimes.
But as soon as the case is assigned to Detective John Skaggs, the odds shift.
Here is the kaleidoscopic story of the quintessential, but mostly ignored, American murder—a “ghettoside” killing, one young black man slaying another—and a brilliant and driven cadre of detectives whose creed is to pursue justice for forgotten victims at all costs.
Ghettoside is a fast-paced narrative of a devastating crime, an intimate portrait of detectives and a community bonded in tragedy, and a surprising new lens into the great subject of why murder happens in our cities—and how the epidemic of killings might yet be stopped. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Jill Leovy, an award-winning crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, lives in Los Angeles with her family. In 2007 Leovy started the Homicide Report, a blog that records every homicide in Los Angeles County. She found that three people a day, on average, are killed in LA, most dying anonymously. These deaths are not headline grabbing drive-by shootings, school shootings, or other "notable" killings; rather they're homicides deemed unnewsworthy by police and media. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Jill Leovy's powerful new book…is old-school narrative journalism…a serious and kaleidoscopic achievement…Nestled inside the story of one gang-related killing is a well-made and timely argument…that transcends a single death. Ms. Leovy suggests, six decades after the start of the civil rights movement, that the "impunity for the murder of black men" remains America's great and largely ignored race problem…Like an orchestra, Ghettoside needs time to warm up…Yet once it gets rolling, it is tidal in its force…Ms. Leovy's greatest gift as a journalist [is] her ability to remain hard-headed while displaying an almost Tolstoyan level of human sympathy. Nearly every person in her story—killers and victims, hookers and soccer moms, good cops and bad—exists within a rich social context…[Leovy's] a crisp writer with a crisp mind and the ability to boil entire skies of information into hard journalistic rain.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
This is a world that most journalists never cover, and most of America never sees…. In Ghettoside, [Leovy] tackles this "plague of murders," as she calls it, with a book-length narrative that enables her to write about it with all the context and complexity it deserves…. Leovy's relentless reporting has produced a book packed with valuable, hard-won insights—and it serves as a crucial, 366-page reminder that "black lives matter," showing how the "system's failure to catch killers effectively made black lives cheap.
Jennifer Gonnerman - New York Times Book Review
Masterful....gritty reporting that matches the police work behind it.
Los Angeles Times
Moving and engrossing.
San Francisco Chronicle
(Starred review.) [A]bsorbing....a powerful argument about race and our criminal justice system.... Leovy spins a good yarn.... Readers may come for Leovy’s detective story; they will stay for her lucid social critique.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) The author digs deeply into the story of one particular murder, exploring the long history of racism, discrimination, and poverty.... Like the best narrative nonfiction, the book burrows into both heart and brain.... [A] worthwhile read. —Kate Sheehan, C.H. Booth Lib., Newtown, CT
Library Journal
[T]he author journeys where most fear to tread: ...a vacuum left by a legal system that fails to serve everyone equally. Leovy posits that the gang violence in LA is the result of the local police simply not doing their jobs.... [S]obering and informative.
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.)
It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War
Lynsey Addario, 2015
Penguin Publishing Group
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594205378
Summary
War photographer Lynsey Addario’s memoir It’s What I Do is the story of how the relentless pursuit of truth, in virtually every major theater of war in the twenty-first century, has shaped her life.
What she does, with clarity, beauty, and candor, is to document, often in their most extreme moments, the complex lives of others. It’s her work, but it’s much more than that: it’s her singular calling.
Lynsey Addario was just finding her way as a young photographer when September 11 changed the world. One of the few photojournalists with experience in Afghanistan, she gets the call to return and cover the American invasion. She makes a decision she would often find herself making—not to stay home, not to lead a quiet or predictable life, but to set out across the world, face the chaos of crisis, and make a name for herself.
Addario finds a way to travel with a purpose. She photographs the Afghan people before and after the Taliban reign, the civilian casualties and misunderstood insurgents of the Iraq War, as well as the burned villages and countless dead in Darfur. She exposes a culture of violence against women in the Congo and tells the riveting story of her headline-making kidnapping by pro-Qaddafi forces in the Libyan civil war.
Addario takes bravery for granted but she is not fearless. She uses her fear and it creates empathy; it is that feeling, that empathy, that is essential to her work. We see this clearly on display as she interviews rape victims in the Congo, or photographs a fallen soldier with whom she had been embedded in Iraq, or documents the tragic lives of starving Somali children. Lynsey takes us there and we begin to understand how getting to the hard truth trumps fear.
As a woman photojournalist determined to be taken as seriously as her male peers, Addario fights her way into a boys’ club of a profession. Rather than choose between her personal life and her career, Addario learns to strike a necessary balance. In the man who will become her husband, she finds at last a real love to complement her work, not take away from it, and as a new mother, she gains an all the more intensely personal understanding of the fragility of life.
Watching uprisings unfold and people fight to the death for their freedom, Addario understands she is documenting not only news but also the fate of society. It’s What I Do is more than just a snapshot of life on the front lines; it is witness to the human cost of war. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 13, 1973
• Where—Norwalk, Connecticut, USA
• Education—University of Wisconsin, Madison
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in London, England, UK
Lynsey Addario is an American photojournalist living in the UK. Her work often focuses on conflicts and human rights issues, especially the role of women in traditional societies. Her book, It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War, was published in 2015.
Life and career
Addario graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1995 and began photographing professionally in 1996. She started with the Buenos Aires Herald in Argentina and then began freelancing for the Associated Press, with Cuba as a focus.
Starting in 2000, she began photographing life in Afghanistan under Taliban control and has since covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Darfur, the Congo, and Haiti. She has covered stories throughout the Middle East and Africa, visiting Darfur or neighboring Chad at least once a month from August 2004.
She has photographed for the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Time, Newsweek, and National Geographic.
In Pakistan on May 9, 2009, Addario was involved in an automobile accident while returning to Islamabad from an assignment at a refugee camp. Her collar bone was broken, another journalist was injured, and the driver was killed.
Addario was one of four New York Times journalists who went missing in Libya from March 16–21, 2011. On March 18, the Times reported that Libya had agreed to free all four: Addario, as well as Anthony Shadid, Stephen Farrell, and Tyler Hicks; they were released three days later. Addario reports that she was threatened with death and mistreated:
Physically, we were blindfolded and bound. In the beginning, our hands and feet were bound very tightly behind our backs, and my feet were tied with shoelaces. I was blindfolded most of the first three days, with the exception of the first six hours. I was punched in the face a few times and groped repeatedly.
She called her treatment "incredibly intense and violent. It was abusive throughout, both psychologically and physically."
Later that year, in November, 2011, the New York Times wrote a letter of complaint on behalf of Addario to the Israeli government, after allegations that Israeli soldiers at the Erez Crossing had strip-searched and mocked her and forced her to go through an X-ray scanner three times despite knowing that she was pregnant. Addario reported that she had "never, ever been treated with such blatant cruelty." The Israeli Defense ministry subsequently issued an apology to both Addario and the New York Times.
Family
Addario is married to Paul de Bendern, a journalist with Reuters. They married in 2009 and have a son, born in 2011.*
Awards
Addario is the recipient of multiple awards, including the MacArthur Fellowship in 2009. Her work in Waziristan, Sept. 7, 2008, was part of work receiving the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for International Reporting. She won the Getty Images Grant for Editorial photography in 2008 for her work in Darfur. She received the Infinity Award in 2002 by the International Center of Photography. (Author bio from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/20/2015 .)
* Read Addario's "What Can a Pregnant Journalist Cover? Everything," in the January 28, 2015 New York Times Magazine online.
Book Reviews
[An] unflinching memoir. [Addario’s] book, woven through with images from her travels, offers insight into international events and the challenges faced by the journalists who capture them.
Washington Post
Beautifully written and vividly illustrated with her images—which are stunningly cinematic, often strange, always evocative—the book helps us understand not only what would lead a young woman to pursue such a dangerous and difficult profession, but why she is so good at it. Lens to her eye, Addario is an artist of empathy, a witness not to grand ideas about human sacrifice and suffering, but to human beings, simply being.
Boston Globe
[A] richly illustrated memoir. [Addario] conveys well her unstated mission to stir the emotions of people like herself, born into relative security and prosperity, nudging them out of their comfort zones with visual evidence of horrors they might do something about. It is a diary of an empathetic young woman who makes understanding the wider world around her a professional calling.
Los Angeles Times
Addario’s narrative about growing up as one of four daughters born to hairdressers in Los Angeles and working her way up to being one of the world’s most accomplished photojournalists, male or female, is riveting. [She] thoughtfully shows how exhilarating and demanding it is to cover the most difficult assignments in the world. Addario is a shining example of someone who has been able to "have it all," but she has worked hard and absolutely suffered to get where she is. My hope is that she continues to live the life less traveled with her family, as I will be waiting for her next book with great anticipation.
San Francisco Chronicle
[Addario’s] ability to capture…vulnerability in her subjects, often in extreme circumstances, has propelled Addario to the top of her competitive field.
Associated Press
A rare gift: an intimate look into the personal and professional life of a war correspondent… a powerful read… This memoir packs a punch because of Addario’s personal risks. But some of the power in this book comes from the humanity she holds on to despite the horrors she witnesses. [It’s What I Do] should be read, processed and mulled over in its entirety….in [Addario’s] words and photos, readers will see that war isn’t simply a matter of black and white, of who’s right and who’s wrong. There are as many shades of gray as there are sides to every story.
Dallas Morning News
The opening scene of Lynsey Addario’s memoir sucker punches you like a cold hard fist. She illuminates the daily frustrations of working within the confines of what the host culture expects from a member of her sex and her constant fight for respect from her male journalist peers and American soldiers. Always she leads with her chin, whether she’s on the ground in hostile territory or discussing politics.
Entertainment Weekly
Addario astutely addresses the difficulties of being a woman in a “brutally competitive,” overwhelmingly male profession. She also articulates the passion that compels her and others to continue this difficult and dangerous work.... Addario’s memoir brilliantly succeeds...as an illuminating homage to photojournalism’s role in documenting suffering and injustice.
Publishers Weekly
Addario [is] a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting who came to everyone's attention when she was kidnapped by pro-Qaddafi forces during Libya's civil war. Here, she details the work she's done—photographing the Afghan people before and after the Taliban ascendancy...even as she tells her personal story.
Library Journal
Addario has written a page-turner of a memoir describing her war coverage and why and how she fell into—and stayed in—such a dangerous job. This "extraordinary profession"—though exhilarating and frightening, it "feels more like a commitment, a responsibility, a calling"—is what she does, and the many photographs scattered throughout this riveting book prove that she does it magnificently.
Booklist
(Starred review.) A remarkable journalistic achievement...crystalizes the last 10 years of global war and strife while candidly portraying the intimate life of a female photojournalist. Over the last decade, Addario has been periodically beaten, robbed, kidnapped, shot at and sexually assaulted from one end of the Middle East and North Africa to the other.... [I]nspiring as it is horrific.
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.)
A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power
Paul Fischer, 2015
Flatiron
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250054265
Summary
Before becoming the world’s most notorious dictator, Kim Jong-Il ran North Korea’s Ministry for Propaganda and its film studios.
Conceiving every movie made, he acted as producer and screenwriter. Despite this control, he was underwhelmed by the available talent and took drastic steps, ordering the kidnapping of Choi Eun-Hee (Madam Choi)—South Korea’s most famous actress—and her ex-husband Shin Sang-Ok, the country’s most famous filmmaker.
Madam Choi vanished first. When Shin went to Hong Kong to investigate, he was attacked and woke up wrapped in plastic sheeting aboard a ship bound for North Korea. Madam Choi lived in isolated luxury, allowed only to attend the Dear Leader’s dinner parties. Shin, meanwhile, tried to escape, was sent to prison camp, and "re-educated." After four years he cracked, pledging loyalty.
Reunited with Choi at the first party he attends, it is announced that the couple will remarry and act as the Dear Leader’s film advisors. Together they made seven films, in the process gaining Kim Jong-Il’s trust. While pretending to research a film in Vienna, they flee to the U.S. embassy and are swept to safety.
A nonfiction thriller packed with tension, passion, and politics, author Paul Fischer's A Kim Jong-Il Production offers a rare glimpse into a secretive world, illuminating a fascinating chapter of North Korea’s history that helps explain how it became the hermetically sealed, intensely stage-managed country it remains today. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—France
• Raised—Saudi Arabia
• Education—Institut d’Etudes Politiques; University of Southern California; New York Film
Academy
• Currently—lives in London, England, and Toronto, Canada
Paul Fischer is a film producer who studied social sciences at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris and film at the University of Southern California and the New York Film Academy. Paul’s first feature film, the documentary Radioman, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Doc NYC film festival and was released to critical and commercial acclaim. A Kim Jong-Il Production is his first book. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[The abduction of Shin and Choic] seems, from afar, to be this book’s main subject, but Mr. Fischer can’t tell it without providing a lot of other information. Fair enough. Kim Jong-il requires a lot of explaining. In fact, Kim’s part of the book is mostly more interesting than the filmmakers
Janet Maslin - New York Times
[T]here’s no shortage of detail.... Fischer is a fluent writer, clearly knowledgeable about film, and he has a dramatic story to tell. But we end up with a huge number of printed words concerning a case whose outlines remain familiar to many people. Although it’s fair to call the book a nonfiction thriller, I suspect many readers will put it down multiple times before managing to finish it.
Bradley K. Martin - Washington Post
An entertaining new book…details how [Shin and Choi] finally seized their chance to seek asylum…A stupefying, novelistic read.
Boston Globe
Gripping… A Kim Jong-Il Production tells the absurd, harrowing, and true story of Choi and Shin’s ordeal, which reveals the importance of film as propaganda to the North Korean regime.
Esquire.com
North Korea is a nightmarish movie theater without an exit in this gripping true-life thriller.... Fischer’s entertaining narrative paints an arresting portrait of a North Korean "theater state," forced to enact the demented script of a sociopathic tyrant.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) By examining the lives of...two extraordinary people, Fischer sheds light on politics, society, and culture in secretive North Korea. This enjoyable read is highly recommended for North Korea watchers as well as movie aficionados. —Joshua Wallace, Ranger Coll., TX
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Fischer matches keen cinematic analysis with an unusually cogent and vivid brief history of the two postwar Koreas. The most compelling facets of this book of astonishments are Fischer's insights into the relationships between Choi, Sun, and their diabolical captor... Gripping and revelatory, Fischer's true-life thriller provides a portal into the mad tyranny of North Korea.
Booklist
(Starred review.) Exhaustively researched, highly engossing chronicle of the outrageous abduction of a pair of well-known South Korean filmmakers by the nefarious network of North Korea's Kim Jong-Il. Filmmaker Fischer carefully presents a well-documented story of the kidnapping ... A meticulously detailed feat of rare footage inside the DPRK's propaganda machinery.
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.)
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari, 2015
HarperCollins
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062316097
Summary
One hundred thousand years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens.
How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations, and human rights; to trust money, books, and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables, and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?
In Sapiens, Professor Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical—and sometimes devastating—breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural, and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, paleontology, and economics, and incorporating full-color illustrations throughout the text, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities.
Have we become happier as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behavior from the legacy of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come?
Bold, wide-ranging, and provocative, Sapiens integrates history and science to challenge everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our heritage...and our future. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 24, 1976
• Where—Israel
• Education—Ph.D., Oxford University
• Awards—Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality (twice);
Moncado Award for Military History
• Currently—lives near Jerusalem, Israel
Yuval Noah Harari is the author of the international bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. He lectures at the Department of History, Faculty of Humanities in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Harari originally specialized in medieval history and military history, completing his doctorate at the University of Oxford (Jesus College) in 2002 and publishing numerous books and articles, including Special Operations in the Age of Chivalry, 1100-1550; The Ultimate Experience: Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture, 1450-2000; "The Concept of 'Decisive Battles' in World History"; and "Armchairs, Coffee and Authority: Eye-witnesses and Flesh-witnesses Speak about War, 1100-2000."
He now specializes in World History and macro-historical processes. His research focuses on macro-historical questions such as:
—What is the relation between history and biology?
—What is the essential difference between Homo sapiens and other animals?
—Is there justice in history?
—Does history have a direction?
—Did people become happier as history unfolded?
His most recent book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind surveys the entire length of human history, from the evolution of Homo sapiens in the Stone Age up to the political and technological revolutions of the 21st century. It has generated much interest both in the academic community and among the general public and has turned Harari into an instant celebrity. YouTube Video clips of Harari’s Hebrew lectures on the history of the world have been viewed by tens of thousands of Israelis. He is also offers a free online course in English entitled A Brief History of Humankind. More than 100,000 people throughout the world have already taken this course.
Harari twice won the Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality, in 2009 and 2012. In 2011 he won the Society for Military History’s Moncado Award for outstanding articles in military history. In 2012 he was elected to the Young Israeli Academy of Sciences.
He lives with his husband in moshav Mesilat Zion near Jerusalem. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/11/2015.)
Book Reviews
The sort of book that sweeps the cobwebs out of your brain…. Harari…is an intellectual acrobat whose logical leaps will have you gasping with admiration.
John Carey - Sunday Times (UK)
Harari’s account of how we conquered the Earth astonishes with its scope and imagination…. One of those rare books that lives up to the publisher’s blurb...brilliantly clear, witty and erudite
Ben Shepard - Observer (UK)
An absorbing, provocative history of civilization…packed with heretical thinking and surprising facts. This riveting, myth-busting book cannot be summarised…you will simply have to read it.
John Gray - Financial Times (UK)
Full of…high-perspective, shocking and wondrous stories, as well as strange theories and startling insights.
Bryan Appleyard - Sunday Times (UK)
Not only is Harari eloquent and humane, he is often wonderfully, mordantly funny
Independent (UK)
Engaging and informative…. Extremely interesting.
Guardian (UK)
Harari can write…really, really write, with wit, clarity, elegance, and a wonderful eye for metaphor.
Times (Ireland)
Writing with wit and verve, Harari…attempts to explain how Homo sapiens came to be the dominant species on Earth as well as the sole representative of the human genus.… Provocative and entertaining.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) This title is one of the exceptional works of nonfiction that is both highly intellectual and compulsively readable… a fascinating, hearty read.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) It’s not often that a book offers readers the possibility to reconsider, well, everything. But that’s what Harari does in this sweeping look at the history of humans.… Readers of every stripe should put this at the top of their reading lists. Thinking has never been so enjoyable.
Booklist
(Starred review.) An encyclopedic approach from a well-versed scholar who is concise but eloquent, both skeptical and opinionated, and open enough to entertain competing points of view.…The great debates of history aired out with satisfying vigor.
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.)
Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail
Ben Montgomery, 2014
Chicago Review Press
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781613747186
Summary
Winner of the 2014 National Outdoor Book Awards for History/Biography
Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail.
And in September 1955, having survived a rattlesnake strike, two hurricanes, and a run-in with gangsters from Harlem, she stood atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin. There she sang the first verse of "America, the Beautiful" and proclaimed, "I said I’ll do it, and I’ve done it."
Grandma Gatewood, as the reporters called her, became the first woman to hike the entire Appalachian Trail alone, as well as the first person—man or woman—to walk it twice and three times. Gatewood became a hiking celebrity and appeared on TV and in the pages of Sports Illustrated.
The public attention she brought to the little-known footpath was unprecedented. Her vocal criticism of the lousy, difficult stretches led to bolstered maintenance, and very likely saved the trail from extinction.
Author Ben Montgomery was given unprecedented access to Gatewood’s own diaries, trail journals, and correspondence, and interviewed surviving family members and those she met along her hike, all to answer the question so many asked: Why did she do it?
The story of Grandma Gatewood will inspire readers of all ages by illustrating the full power of human spirit and determination. Even those who know of Gatewood don’t know the full story—a story of triumph from pain, rebellion from brutality, hope from suffering. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1978
• Where—Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA
• Education—Arkansas Tech University
• Awards—Dart Award and Casey Medal (more below)
• Currently—lives in Tampa, Florida
Ben Montgomery is a reporter for the Tampa Bay Times and author of Grandma Gatewood's Walk. Ben grew up in Oklahoma and wanted to be a farmer before he got into journalism at Arkansas Tech University, where he played defensive back for the football team, the Wonder Boys.
He worked for the Courier in Russellville, Ark., the Standard-Times in San Angelo, Texas, the Times Herald-Record in New York's Hudson River Valley and the Tampa Tribune before joining the Tampa Bay Times, Florida's biggest and best newspaper, in 2006.
He is also founder of the popular narrative journalism site, gangrey.com, and co-founder of the Auburn Chautauqua, a writers’ collective.
His stories have appeared in national magazines, such as Parade and Seventeen Magazine, and he has contributed to NPR’s Radiolab. He also contributed to the 2008-09 edition of Best Newspaper Writing.
Montgomery has taught narrative journalism at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and at universities and workshops across the country, including the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, the National Writers Workshop and the University of North Texas’ Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference.
He lives with his wife and three children in Tampa, Florida.
Awards
In 2010, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in local reporting and won the Dart Award and Casey Medal for a series called "For Their Own Good," about abuse at Florida's oldest reform school.
His work has been honored by the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors, the Society for Features Journalism, the Florida Society of News Editors, the New York Newspaper Publisher’s Association and the Association of Food Journalists. One of his stories was republished in Cornbread Nation 6: Best of Southern Food Writing. (Adapted from the author's Facebook page.)
Book Reviews
Before Cheryl Strayed, there was Grandma Gatewood. Ben Montgomery lets us walk with her—tattered sneakers, swollen ankles, and not an ounce of self-pity—and with each step experience our conflicted relationship with nature, the meanness and generosity of humanity, and the imperative to keep moving. This book makes me long for my backpacking days, and grateful for writers who keep history and spirit alive.
Jacqui Banaszynski - Missouri School of Journalism
In a perfect world, Grandma Gatewood’s Walk will hit the shelves with high praise and great acclaim. Readers deserve to have gems like this presented with fanfare.
Paste Magazine
[A] portrait of a determined woman, whose trek inspired other hikers and brought attention to the neglect of the Appalachian Trail. She became a hiking celebrity.... Maps of the trail and photos from Gatewood’s early life enhance this inspiring story. —Vanessa Bush
Booklist
A journalist's biography of the unassuming but gutsy 67-year-old Ohio grandmother.... Gatewood's exploits...not only brought national attention to the state of hikers' trails across a nation obsessed with cars and newly crisscrossed with highways; it also made Americans more aware of the joys of walking and of nature itself. A quiet delight of a book.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
(The following questions were written by Kathleen Loudon, Reference Librarian for the Haverford Township Free Library in Havertown, Pennsylvania. Thank you, Kathleen!)
1. Author Ben Montgomery portrayed “Grandma” Emma Gatewood as a strong, resilient women throughout her many journeys in this book. How did these character traits serve her well during her many hikes?
2. What challenges did she face in her marriage to P.C. Gatewood? Do you feel that she showed strength and resiliency in her personal life? Can you give some examples?
3. What were some of the main obstacles that Emma faced during her first successful through-hike of the Appalachian Trail? Do you feel she was prepared for all of the challenges that were presented to her on this hike? Looking back, what could she have done differently?
4. Do you think Emma Gatewood anticipated all of the publicity that arose from being the first woman to hike the full length of the Appalachian Trail? How did she respond to this publicity and the many reporters that asked her for interviews? How did she benefit from meeting other people on the trail? What did she learn for herself? What did people learn from her?
5. Many reporters called Emma Gatewood the “Queen of the Appalachian Trail” and asked Emma questions along her journey; however some may feel that she never really conveyed a solid purpose for the walk. Why do you think Emma decided to walk the Appalachian Trail? Do you think she conducted her walks for fame, personal reasons, exercise, or something other? What passages in the book support your ideas?
6. In 1955, after she had been gone for nearly a month on her walk on the Appalachian Trail, Emma Gatewood’s “children hadn't heard from her, had no idea where she was or what she was doing, but not one of them was worried” (p. 45). Why do you think this was the case? Do you think that times have changed and her unexplained absence would be overlooked in today’s times?
7. This story depicts not only Emma Gatewood’s journey on the trail, but also the journey of America’s progression into modern times. What were some of the advancements discussed in this book at the time of her journey? What other types of advancements has our country incurred after Emma Gatewood’s time? What types of innovations that exist in our present time could have assisted her on her hikes?
8. In your opinion, did Emma adequately prepare for her first successful through hike of the Appalachian Trail in 1955? Were you surprised to find that she had a failed attempt of hiking the trail the prior year? What would you want to bring if you were to take a journey such as this one? Do you believe that you would have succeeded on such a venture?
9. What were some significant results, events, or movements that occurred in our country as a result of Emma Gatewood’s walks and the publicity that she brought to the Appalachian Trail?
10. What will you take away from this book in reading the stories about Grandma Emma Gatewood’s life, her inspirational hikes, and all of her achievements?
(Questions courtesy of Kathleen Loudon, Reference Librarian, Haverford Township Free Library, Havertown, PA.)