Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape
Jenna Miscavige Hill (with Lisa Pulitzer), 2013
HarperCollins
404 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062248473
Summary
Jenna Miscavige Hill was raised to obey. As the niece of the Church of Scientology's leader David Miscavige, she grew up at the center of this highly controversial and powerful organization. But at twenty-one, Jenna made a daring break, risking everything she had ever known and loved to leave Scientology once and for all. Now she speaks out about her life, the Church, and her dramatic escape, going deep inside a religion that, for decades, has been the subject of fierce debate and speculation worldwide.
Piercing the veil of secrecy that has long shrouded the world of Scientology, this insider reveals unprecedented firsthand knowledge of the religion, its obscure rituals, and its mysterious leader—David Miscavige. From her prolonged separation from her parents as a small child to being indoctrinated to serve the greater good of the Church, from her lack of personal freedoms to the organization's emphasis on celebrity recruitment, Jenna goes behind the scenes of Scientology's oppressive and alienating culture, detailing an environment rooted in control in which the most devoted followers often face the harshest punishments when they fall out of line. Addressing some of the Church's most notorious practices in startling detail, she also describes a childhood of isolation and neglect—a childhood that, painful as it was, prepared her for a tough life in the Church's most devoted order, the Sea Org.
Despite this hardship, it is only when her family approaches dissolution and her world begins to unravel that she is finally able to see the patterns of stifling conformity and psychological control that have ruled her life. Faced with a heartbreaking choice, she mounts a courageous escape, but not before being put through the ultimate test of family, faith, and love. At once captivating and disturbing, Beyond Belief is an eye-opening exploration of the limits of religion and the lengths to which one woman went to break free. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Jenna Miscavige Hill (born 1984) is a former Scientologist who, after leaving the Church of Scientology in 2005, has become an outspoken critic of the organization. She is the daughter of Ron Miscavige, Jr. and the niece of current church leader David Miscavige.
Hill, with Kendra Wiseman and Astra Woodcraft (both also raised in Scientology), founded the website exscientologykids.com. She has been interviewed about her experiences within Scientology by a number of media outlets, including ABC's Nightline in April 2008, and on Piers Morgan Tonight in February 2013 discussing details of the church.
In 2000, when Hill was 16, her father and mother left Scientology. Hill states that due to the Scientology-ordered practice of disconnection with relatives and friends who don't support Scientology or are hostile to it, letters from her parents were intercepted and she was not allowed to answer a telephone for a year.
She described her experience from ages five to 12 as thus: "We were also required to write down all transgressions...similar to a sin in the Catholic religion. After writing them all down, we would receive a meter check on the electropsychometer to make sure we weren't hiding anything, and you would have to keep writing until you came up clean." (From Wikipedia.)
Lisa Pulitzer is a former correspondent for the New York Times and coauthor of more than a dozen nonfiction titles, including New York Times bestsellers Stolen Innocence, Imperfect Justice, and Mob Daughter. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
An ex-member of Scientology's inner elite bolts—understandably, [if one is to] trust this undistinguished but still valuable memoir. If Charles Dickens had been a sci-fi author, he might have dreamed up something like Scientology and its weird workhouses.... [M]y life was Scientology," [Hill] writes. That life included absolute obedience to dictates that seem crafted to strip away any autonomy from the individual, if any individuality at all.... Hill scarcely saw her mother unless on "special Scientology/Sea Org occasions.... Hill's emotional turmoil is wrenchingly authentic, but [it] does not save the book.... Despite the uneven prose, readers with an interest in the psychology of religion, among other subjects, will find this rare insider's account to be of value—less so than Lawrence Wright's Going Clear (2013), but of value all the same
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. In the meantime, consider the following approaches:
1. What surprised you most about this book? Has the book altered, in any way, your prior understanding of Scientology...or has it confirmed your existing views?
2. Talk about the reasons Jenna's parents left Scientology—and the outfall from their decision.
3. How do you define Scientology? Is it a legitimate religion? Is it a movement? Is the desire to punish transgressions or to control thinking different to or similar from other religions?
4. Is Scientology dangerous?
(Talking points by LitLovers. Feel free to use them, online of off, with attribution. If you have more detailed questions please let us know. We'll add them...and give you credit. Thanks.)
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn, 2009
Knopf Doubleday
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307387097
Summary
From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.
With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope.
They show how a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad. That Cambodian girl eventually escaped from her brothel and, with assistance from an aid group, built a thriving retail business that supports her family. The Ethiopian woman had her injuries repaired and in time became a surgeon. A Zimbabwean mother of five, counseled to return to school, earned her doctorate and became an expert on AIDS.
Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. Throughout much of the world, the greatest unexploited economic resource is the female half of the population. Countries such as China have prospered precisely because they emancipated women and brought them into the formal economy. Unleashing that process globally is not only the right thing to do; it’s also the best strategy for fighting poverty.
Deeply felt, pragmatic, and inspirational, Half the Sky is essential reading for every global citizen. (From the publisher.)
Author Bios
Nicholas Kristof
• Birth—April 27, 1959
• Raised—Yamhill, Oregon, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard; J.D., Oxford University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in suburban New York City
Nicholas Donabet Kristof is an American journalist, author, op-ed columnist, and a winner of two Pulitzer Prizes. He has written an op-ed column for the New York Times since 2001.
Life and career
Kristof was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up on a sheep and cherry farm in Yamhill, Oregon. He is the son of Jane Kristof (nee McWilliams) and Ladis "Kris" Kristof (born Wladyslaw Krzysztofowicz), both long-time professors at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon.
Nicholas Kristof graduated from Yamhill Carlton High School, where he was student body president and school newspaper editor, and later became a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard College. At Harvard, he studied government and worked on The Harvard Crimson newspaper; "Alums recall Kristof as one of the brightest undergraduates on campus," according to a profile in the Crimson.
After Harvard, he studied law at Magdalen College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar. He earned his law degree with first-class honors and won an academic prize. Afterward, he studied Arabic in Egypt for the 1983–84 academic year. He has a number of honorary degrees.
New York Times
Kristof joined the New York Times in 1984, initially covering economics and later serving as a Times correspondent in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo. He also covered presidential politics and is the author of the chapter on President George W. Bush in the reference book The Presidents. He rose to be the associate managing editor, responsible for Sunday editions.
In 2001 Kristof became a Times op-ed writer. His twice-weekly columns often focus on global health, poverty, and gender issues in the developing world. In particular, since 2004 he has written dozens of columns about Darfur and visited the area 11 times.
According to his New York Times bio, Kristoff has traveled to more than 150 countries—and not without incident. During his travels, he contracted malaria, was threatened by mobs, and survived an airplane crash. Jeffrey Toobin of CNN and The New Yorker, a Harvard classmate, once said...
I’m not surprised to see him emerge as the moral conscience of our generation of journalists. I am surprised to see him as the Indiana Jones of our generation of journalists.
Kristoff also pioneered the use of multimedia for the Times: he was both the first blogger on the paper's website and the first to make a video for the website. He also tweets, has Facebook and Google Plus pages and a YouTube channel. According to Twitter lists, he has more followers (almost 1.5 million) than any other print journalist in the world.
Kristof resides outside New York City with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, and their three children. He enjoys running, backpacking, and having his Chinese and Japanese corrected by his children.
Impact
Because of his emphasis on human rights abuses and social injustices—namely, human trafficking and the Darfur conflict—the Washington Post said that Kristoff has "shaped the field of opinion journalism."
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa has called Kristof an "honorary African" for shining a spotlight on neglected conflicts.
Bill Clinton said of Kristof in 2009:
There is no one in journalism, anywhere in the United States at least, who has done anything like the work he has done to figure out how poor people are actually living around the world, and what their potential is.... So every American citizen who cares about this should be profoundly grateful that someone in our press establishment cares enough about this to haul himself all around the world to figure out what's going on....I am personally in his debt, as are we all.
In 2013 Joyce Barnathan, president of the International Center for Journalists, called Kristof "the conscience of international journalism."
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation names Kristof as one of its inspirations. A January 1997 page-one article by Kristof, about child mortality in the developing world, helped forcus the couple's philanthropy on global health. A framed copy of that article hangs in the gallery of the Gates Foundation.
Books
Kristof has co-authored four books with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn:
- China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power (1994) and Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia (2000). The two books examine the cultural, social, and political situation of East Asia largely through interviews and personal experiences.
- Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (2009), a best-seller, the book was the basis of an award-winning PBS documentary, which featured WuDunn. The book was also made into a Facebook game with more than 1.1 million players.
- A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity (2014) explores how altruism affects all of us and presents various ways that we can make a difference. It, too, became a widely watched PBS documentary in 2015, and featured Jennifer Garner, Eva Longoria, Alfre Woodard, Blake Lively, in early 2015.
Perhaps the best known of Kristof and WuDunn's books is their 2009 Half the Sky, which hit the top of the bestseller charts. The idea for the book was sparked by the Tiananmen Square protests. After reporting on the 500 deaths from that event, the authors learned that some 39,000 girls died every year—far more than had died at Tiananmen—from being denied access to the same food and medical treatment offered to boys. Yet there was no mention or coverage of this stastic anywhere.
Stunned, Kristof and WuDunn decided to dig deeper into overall issues of gender, everywhere—sex trafficking, modern slavery, domestic violence, and rape as both weapon of war and form of "legal justice." The resulting book, Half the Sky, shines in a light onto the dark recesses of female oppression and abuse around the world. The book has since been called a classic, a call to arms, and even comparable in significance to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Carolyn Seen of the Washington Post called it one of the most important books she had ever reviewed, as did Counter Punch's Charles Larson.
Awards and recognition
1989 - George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting (on human rights and environmental issues).
1990 - Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting (with Sheryl WuDunn)
2006 - Media Web's Journalist of the Year
2007 - Fred Cuny Award for Prevention of Deaadly Conflict
2007 - U.S. News & World Report: one of "America's Best Leaders."
2008 - Anne Frank Award
2009 - Dayton Literary Peace Prize Lifetime Award (with WuDunn)
2009 - World of Children Lifetime Achievement Award (with WuDunn)
2011 - Harvard Kennedy School / Washington Post: one of seven "Top American Leaders."
2013 - Advancing Global Health Award from Seattle Biomed
2013 - Goldsmith Award for Career Excellence in Journalism by Harvard University
2013 - International Freedom Conductor by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. (The prevous "Conductor" was the Dalai Lama.)
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/17/2016.)
Sheryl WuDunn
• Birth—November 16, 1959
• Raised—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Cornell University; M.B.A., Harvard University; M.P.A., Princeton Univeristy
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in suburban New York City
Sheryl WuDunn is a business executive, best-selling author, journalist, and international women’s rights advocate.
A third generation Chinese American, Sheryl WuDunn grew up in New York City on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. In 1981 she graduated from Cornell University with a B.A. in European History. In 1987, she earned her M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and, in 1994, an M.P.A. from Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs. She married reporter Nicholas Kristof in 1988.
In 1989 she joined the New York Times, becoming the first Asian-American hired by the paper. She served as a foreign correspondent in the Beijing and Tokyo bureaus where she and Kristof covered the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. They received the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting—a first for Pulitzer: the first married couple to win for journalism, and the first Asian-American to win a Pulitzer, ever. In addition to her reporting on Tiananmen, WuDunn covered international business, including global energy, global markets, foreign industry and technology.
WuDunn was also one of the few people to move between the editorial and the business sides of the New York Times. In 2000 she was appointed executive director of the Times Circulation NexGen project. She held several other business positions before leaving for the investment bank Goldman Sachs where she became a vice president of asset management.
Since 2009, she has been managing director at the boutique investment firm Mid-Market Solutions.
WuDunn continues her work in media as a commentator on television and radio regarding China and global affairs. She has appeared on Bloomberg TV, NPR, The Colbert Report, and Charlie Rose. She has also lectured at the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Council on Foreign Relations.
WuDunn resides outside New York City with her husband, Nicholas Kristof, and their three children.
Books
WuDunn has co-authored four books with her husband, Nicholas Kristof:
- China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power (1994) and Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia (2000). The two book examine the cultural, social, and political situation of East Asia largely through interviews and personal experiences.
- Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (2009), a best-seller, the book was the basis of an award-winning PBS documentary, which featured WuDunn. The book was also made into a Facebook game with more than 1.1 million players.
- A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity (2014) explores how altruism affects all of us and presents various ways that we can make a difference. It, too, became a widely watched PBS documentary in 2015, and featured Jennifer Garner, Eva Longoria, Alfre Woodard, Blake Lively, in early 2015.
Awards and recognition
1990 - Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting (with Kristof).
1990 - George Polk Award and an Overseas Press Club award for reporting in China.
2009 - Dayton Literary Peace Prize Lifetime Achievement Award (with Kristof).
2009 - World of Children Lifetime Achievement Award (with Kristof).
2011 - Newsweek: listed as one of "150 Women who Shake the World."
2012 - Fast Company magazine: listed in its "League of Extraordinary Women."
2013 - PBS The Makers documentary: listed as one of the "Women Who Make America."
2013 - Harvard Business School film: featured as one its most prominent female alumni.
2015 - Business Insider: listed as one of the 31 most prominent alumni of the Harvard Business School.
Boards
WuDunn served for more than a decade on the Cornell University board of trustees, including as a member of the board's finance committee and investment committee. Initially appointed to the Cornell board by the university president, she was later reappointed by the New York governor and served under two governors.
She also served for many years on the advisory council of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and in 2013 was elected by alumni to the Princeton University board of trustees. She currently serves on the board of advisers for Fuel Freedom Foundation. WuDunn is also on the advisory boards of a number of start-up companies in a variety of fields, including healthcare and mobile security. (Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/17/2016)
Book Reviews
[T]his gripping call to conscience…tackles atrocities and indignities from sex trafficking to maternal mortality, from obstetric fistulas to acid attacks, and absorbing the fusillade of horrors can feel like an assault of its own. But the poignant portraits of survivors humanize the issues, divulging facts that moral outrage might otherwise eclipse.Irshad Manji - New York Times Book Review
Half the Sky is a call to arms, a call for help, a call for contributions, but also a call for volunteers. It asks us to open our eyes to this enormous humanitarian issue. It does so with exquisitely crafted prose and sensationally interesting material. It provides us with a list of individual hospitals, schools and small charities so that we can contribute to, or at least inform ourselves about, this largely unknown world. I really do think this is one of the most important books I have ever reviewed. I may be wrong, but I don't think so.
Carolyn See - Washington Post
Urgent.... Passionate... Compelling.... Half the Sky is a grab-the-reader-by-the-lapels wake-up call.
Bill Williams - Boston Globe
Superb.... As Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring once catalyzed us to save our birds and better steward our earth, Half the Sky stands to become a classic, spurring us to spare impoverished women these terrors, and elevate them to turn around the future of their nations.
Susan Ager - Cleveland Plain Dealer
While we rightly roared at racial apartheid, we act as though gender apartheid is a natural, immutable fact. With absolutely the right Molotov cocktail of on-the-ground reporting and hard social science, Kristof and WuDunn blow up this taboo. . . . A thrilling manifesto for advancing freedom for hundreds of millions of human beings.
Johann Hari - Slate.com
The most important book of the year.... Half the Sky is the kind of book that could change the course of history.
William Petrocelli - Huffington Post
New York Times columnist Kristof and his wife, WuDunn, a former Times reporter, make a brilliantly argued case for investing in the health and autonomy of women worldwide. “More girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century,” they write, detailing the rampant “gendercide” in the developing world, particularly in India and Pakistan. Far from merely making moral appeals, the authors posit that it is impossible for countries to climb out of poverty if only a fraction of women (9% in Pakistan, for example) participate in the labor force.
Publishers Weekly
Kristof and WuDunn...expose the brutal horrors endured by millions of women throughout Asia and Africa, putting names and faces to these individuals and their suffering. They argue that the key to change is social entrepreneurs who can empower at the grassroots level through such means as education and microloans. —Risa Getman, Hendrick Hudson Free Lib., Montrose, NY
Library Journal
Critics, universally inspired by Half the Sky, used their reviews as an opportunity to take up its message. They praised not only Kristof and WuDunn's clear moral stance and explanation of the issues but also the way they combined individual women's stories and practical advice to give the book an optimistic tone. Reviewers pointed out some flaws, particularly the authors' focus on individual action...while neglecting to criticize the policies of Western governments.
Bookmarks
A Pulitzer Prize-winning husband-and-wife reporter team track the growing movement to empower women in the developing world. Kristof and WuDunn (Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia, 2000, etc.) traveled through Africa and Southeast Asia meeting with victims of sex trafficking, forced prostitution and various forms of gender-based neglect and violence, as well as interviewing those who are making a difference in the lives of impoverished and abused women. While they provide historical background and cite grim statistics to back their claims of oppression, the impact of their report comes from the personal stories of remarkable women.... The authors are especially effective at getting women to speak openly about their lives, and ....the authors' willingness to say what is politically incorrect: When microloans aremade to men, the money is likely to go toward instant gratification-alcohol, drugs and prostitutes-while women are more apt to spend it on family health and educating children.... Intelligent, revealing and important.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. "It appears that more girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the battles of the twentieth century” (p. xvii). Why is the dire state of women in impoverished cultures, as set out by the authors in the introduction, also a great opportunity for them?
2. “The modern global slave trade is larger in absolute terms than the Atlantic slave trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries” (p. 11). Given the scale of the problem, what do Kristof and WuDunn suggest as reasonable efforts towards ending human trafficking?
3. What do the stories about Srey Momm and Srey Neth indicate about the complexities of the trafficking problem in places like Thailand and Cambodia? Why do Kristof and WuDunn say “it’s most productive to focus efforts on prevention and putting brothels out of business” (p. 45)?
4. What difficulties do “the new abolitionists,” like Sunitha Krishnan and Abbas Be, face in trying to shut down the brothel trade? How does Sunitha’s story highlight the kind of bravery required to save women from enslavement in brothels?
5. The judge in the rape and kidnapping case of Woineshet, in Ethiopia, disapproved of the fact that this young girl was insisting on prosecuting her rapist: “He wants to marry you. Why are you refusing?” (p. 65). How is this story emblematic of the much larger problem of “tradition” in countries like Ethiopia?
6. Kristof and WuDunn argue that “universities should make it a requirement that all graduates spend at least some time in the developing world” (p. 88), and that “time spent in Congo and Cambodia might not be as pleasant as in Paris, but it will be life-changing” (p. 89). Do you agree that young Americans should be required to widen their knowledge by direct experience? How might such a requirement change the lives of young Americans, and their view of poverty and privilege?
7. How does the story of Prudence Lemokouno illustrate the dangers of pregnancy and delivery in the developing world (pp. 109–13)? Does it seem an obvious and desirable principle that reproductive health should be considered an international human rights issue, as argued by Dr. Allan Rosenfield (p. 122)? What does the example of Sri Lanka prove about the possibilities of reducing women’s mortality rates in childbirth?
8. Muslim nations are among those in which women are most severely disadvantaged; so the authors directly address the question of whether Islam is misogynistic (p. 150). What do they conclude? What are the best ways to address the frustrations of women like Ellaha, who feel trapped in conservative Muslim cultures where women are at the mercy of their male relatives (pp. 156–57)? Is religion part of the reason for the oppression of women? Is it part of the solution?
9. The authors present a great deal of information about the troubles surrounding the education of girls. Discuss the thorny problems raised in chapter ten, “Investing in Education” (pp. 167–78), and the ways that Ann Cotton has succeeded in addressing many of them with her Camfed project in Zimbabwe (pp. 179–83).
10. Chapter Eleven, “Microcredit: The Financial Revolution,” focuses on the positive changes that are possible when you lend women money to start businesses, or when women have control of the family purse. Is it surprising to learn that when men control family spending, more is spent on beer and prostitutes, and when women are in control more is spent on food and education (pp. 192–93)? Does India’s law, assuring that one third of village leaders will be women, suggest that putting more women in positions of political power will make the world a better place for children?
11. Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce worked tirelessly to expose the truths about the cruel and gruesome conditions endured by the slaves in the British slave trade (pp. 235–36). Their work is a model for the political effectiveness of bringing atrocities to the forefront of the public mind and conscience. What realities were brought to light for you, as you read this book? What details or stories would you consider most provocative, disturbing, or inspiring for middle-class readers?
12. With the stories they recount in this book, Kristof and WuDunn hope to convince readers to help bring about changes that are desperately needed in the developing world. How effective would you predict Half the Sky will be in its effort to create new activists, donors, and volunteers for the international women’s movement (p. 237)?
13. Kristof and WuDunn make three specific recommendations for immediate action: “A $10 billion effort over five years to educate girls,” focusing on Africa but also encouraging Afghanistan and Pakistan to do better; a drive to iodize salt in poor countries, to improve I.Q. points lost to iodine deficiency in utero; and a twelve-year, $1.6 billion campaign to eradicate obstetric fistula and to reduce maternal mortality (pp. 246–47). What do you think about this vision? What has reading the book done to your sense of what needs to be done and what kinds of action might be most effective? Has reading the book inspired you to develop an action strategy or a personal plan to join the movement to address some of these issues? What kinds of actions personally do you think would be the most effective?
14. Jonathan Haidt has written in The Happiness Hypothesis that “a connection to something larger” can greatly affect our feelings of happiness. As Kristof and WuDunn suggest, “we are neurologically constructed so that we gain huge personal dividends from altruism” (p. 250). Do you feel this to be true? Do you feel, upon finishing this book, that you can have a direct impact on helping to turn women in impoverished parts of the world “into full-fledged human beings” (p. 251)?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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Grand Ambition: An Extraordinary Yacht, the People Who Built It, and the Millionaire Who Can't Really Afford It.
G. Bruce Knecht, 2013
Simon & Schuster
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781416576006
Summary
Doug Von Allmen, a self-made man who grew up in a landlocked state dreaming of the ocean, was poised to build a 187-foot yacht that would cost $40 million.
Lady Linda would not be among the very largest of the burgeoning fleet of oceangoing palaces, but Von Allmen vowed that it would be the best one ever made in the United States. Nothing would be ordinary. The interior walls would be made from rare species of burl wood, the floors paved with onyx and exotic types of marble, the furniture custom made, and the art specially commissioned.
But the 2008 economic crisis changed everything. Von Allmen’s lifestyle suddenly became unaffordable. Then it got worse: desperate to reverse his losses, he fell for an audacious Ponzi scheme. Would Von Allmen be able to complete Lady Linda? Would the shipyard and its one thousand employees survive the financial meltdown?
The divide between the very rich and everyone else had never been greater, yet the livelihoods of the workers, some of them illegal immigrants, and the yacht owners were inextricably intertwined. In a sweeping, high-stakes narrative, the critically acclaimed author of The Proving Ground and Hooked weaves Von Allmen’s story together with those of the men and women who are building his yacht.
As the pursuit of opulence collides with the reality of economic decline, everyone involved in the massive project is forced to rethink the meaning of the American Dream. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Morristown, New Jersey, USA
• Education—B.A., Colgate University; M.B.A., Harvard
University; Reuters Fellowship, Oxford University
• Awards—Human Rights Press Award; University of
Misouri Journalism School Award
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
A former senior writer and foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, G. Bruce Knecht is the author of three works of nonfiction—The Proving Ground: The Inside Story of the 1998 Sydney to Hobart Race (2001); Hooked: Pirates, Poaching and the Perfect Fish (2006), and Grand Ambition: An Extraordinary Yacht, the People Who Built It, and the Millionaire Who Can't Really Afford It (2013).
After joining the Journal in 1993, he wrote about the banking industry and pursued investigative projects until 1995 when he began covering publishing—books, magazines, newspapers, and the press. In 1998, the Journal nominated his articles, about how advertisers and retailers secretly influenced the editorial content of major magazines, for two Pulitzer Prizes. The same stories won an award from the University of Missouri Journalism School.
In 1998, Bruce moved to Hong Kong to become the Journal’s Asia Correspondent. His article about children of American servicemen who were still living in Vietnam won a Human Rights Press Award.
He was a London-based free-lance writer from 1991 to 1994, focusing on business and economic topics, particularly those involving the collapse of the Soviet Union. His articles have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, tNew York Times Magazine, Barron’s, Conde Nast Traveler, SAIL, Smithsonian, The Independent (UK), National Review, and Men’s Journal.
Born in Morristown, New Jersey, Bruce received a bachelor’s degree from Colgate University and has served on the board of directors of its alumni corporation. He earned an M.B.A. from Harvard University and was a Reuters Fellow at Oxford University.
An avid sailor, Bruce raced across the Atlantic Ocean in 2005 aboard Mari-Cha IV, which broke the 100-year-old transatlantic race record. He is a member of Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club and the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Illuminative and utterly engaging.
Wall Street Journal
Bruce Knecht is my kind of reporter—a master storyteller with a great eye for the tales of our time. Grand Ambition is centered around the building of a huge yacht, but it is ultimately about our bipolar society—the rarefied lifestyles of the very, very rich and the day-to-day realities of blue-collar laborers who have never worked indoors or been paid more than $20 an hour.
Tom Brokaw
If this lively book doesn't "lift your boat," nothing will!
Steve Forbes
A meticulous account of the building of one of the largest American-made yachts since the Gilded Age. Royal families have long enjoyed large pleasure vessels.... In modern times, yachts have been the playthings of Russian oligarchs, Greek shipping magnates and Arabian sheiks. In the United States, the leisure vessels became a hallmark for a new kind of nobility, including J.P. Morgan, in the gilded 1890s and remain so for today's self-made entrepreneurs. This readable account tells the story of a former milkman's son, Doug Von Allmen, now a successful private equity investor in his late 60s, and his experience building a mammoth $40 million, 187-foot yacht.... Revealing and well-written.
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.
Between Man and Beast: An Unlikely Explorer, the Evolution Debates, and the African Adventure that Took the Victorian World by Storm
Monte Reel, 2013
Knopf Doubleday
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385534222
Summary
The unbelievably riveting adventure of an unlikely young explorer who emerged from the jungles of Africa with evidence of a mysterious, still mythical beast—the gorilla—only to stumble straight into the center of the biggest debate of the day: Darwin's theory of evolution
In 1856 Paul Du Chaillu marched into the equatorial wilderness of West Africa determined to bag an animal that, according to legend, was nothing short of a monster. When he emerged three years later, the summation of his efforts only hinted at what he'd experienced in one of the most dangerous regions on earth.
Armed with an astonishing collection of zoological specimens, Du Chaillu leapt from the physical challenges of the jungle straight into the center of the biggest issues of the time—the evolution debate, racial discourse, the growth of Christian fundamentalism—and helped push each to unprecedented intensities. He experienced instant celebrity, but with that fame came whispers—about his past, his credibility, and his very identity—which would haunt the young man.
Grand in scope, immediate in detail, and propulsively readable, Between Man and Beast brilliantly combines Du Chaillu's personal journey with the epic tale of a world hovering on the sharp edge of transformation. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Monte Reel is a former South America correspondent for the Washington Post, and he also reported for the newspaper in Washington and Iraq. His first book, The Last of the Tribe (2010), chronicles the story of the last surviving member of an indigenous tribe in the Amazon rainforest. After spending seven years in Argentina, he recently moved to the Chicago area, where he lives with his wife and two daughters. He is originally from Mattoon, Illinois. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(Required reading.) You’d half expect a Bela Lugosi mad scientist or a Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan to pop up in this Victorian-era drama, which travels from the London of Darwin and Dickens to unexplored Africa to Civil War-ravaged America.
New York Post
Entertaining and provocative story of the life and adventures of explorer Paul Du Chaillu.... [Reel] does a superb job of telling the engrossing story of Du Chaillu and tying it into the events and thoughts of the time, from the intense debate over racial differences in light of the theory of evolution to the habit of Abraham Lincoln’s political enemies of referring to him as a 'gorilla'...scrupulous in adhering to the facts... At the same time, it has the narrative flow and evocative language of a fine historical novel.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
An admirable book for those who like epic tales of exploration.... Fascinating.... highlights once again the big issues that seem endlessly interesting to new generations of Americans, 'the evolution debate, racial discourse, the growth of Christian fundamentalism' in careful historical context and with a fine hand for thoughtful exposition."
Buffalo News
Before there was Jane Goodall, or even Tarzan and King Kong, the gorilla was a creature of mystery....Reel retraces his life and work with the spirit of curiosity and adventure that drove du Chaillu in the first place. What results is a celebration of accomplishments too far-reaching to be understood in their time."
Daily Beast
Paul Du Chaillu was one of the Victorian era’s most famous explorers. He was the person who brought the gorilla to the attention of Europeans. In response to his fame, he was attacked mercilessly by competitors who claimed he was a fraud.... Reel (The Last of the Tribe) provides a robust intellectual history by embedding Du Chaillu’s story within the debate over evolution, the relationship among the human races, the rise of Christian fundamentalism.... In Reel’s hands, Du Chaillu’s adventures in Africa, including his discovery of Pygmies and his part in a smallpox epidemic, were no less harrowing than his interactions with many of the world’s leading scientists and explorers.
Publishers Weekly
In 1856, explorer and amateur naturalist Paul du Chaillu undertook a treacherous expedition through West Africa, after which he brought back to England the first known specimens of the African gorilla ever seen there. Reel...examines the colorful life and times of du Chaillu...how du Chaillu's hugely popular expedition chronicle...ignited a storm of interest and controversy in the scientific circles of Victorian England. While Reel clearly admires his subject, he is also willing to address and evaluate du Chaillu's errors and exaggerations.... Today's readers may find du Chaillu's penchant for killing gorillas repugnant, although he followed the standard scientific practice of the time. —Ingrid Levin, Salve Regina Univ. Lib., Newport, RI
Library Journal
Those unfamiliar with [Paul Du Chaillu] would do well to pick up a copy of Beatween Man and Beast, Monte Reel's new book about Du Chaillu's life and adventures in pursuit of this fierce creature... Although Du Chaillu's checkered life story is the bedrock of this book, Reel builds upon it fascinating sketches of England's leading intellectuals, explorers and freelance eccentrics of the day, detailing not only their personal achievements but their professional jealousies as well.
BookPage
Former Washington Post reporter Reel (The Last of the Tribe: The Epic Quest to Save a Lone Man in the Amazon, 2010) offers a fascinating sidelight on the perennial debate of man's origins. In the decade before the publication of Darwin's On the Origins of Species, evolution was already a hotly debated topic.... Reel weaves together the fierce contentions about the theory of evolution among leading Victorian scientists and the story of young African explorer Paul Du Chaillu.... In 1861, after writing a book about his exploits...his book was published and he became an overnight celebrity, for a time overshadowing Darwin in the popular imagination. Ultimately, Du Chaillu was accused of embellishing his account. A lively footnote to the debate between science and religion and the exploration of the African jungle in the Victorian era.
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.
The Watchmaker's Daughter: A Memoir
Sonia Taitz, 2012
McWitty Press
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780975561881
Summary
The Watchmaker's Daughter tells the story of a child of two refugees: a watchmaker who saved lives within Dachau prison, and his wife, a gifted concert pianist about to make her debut when the Nazis seized power.
In this memoir, Sonia Taitz is born into a world in which the Holocaust is discussed constantly by her insular concentration camp-surviving parents. This legacy, combined with Sonia's passion and intelligence, leads the author to forge an adventurous life in which she seeks to heal both her parents and herself through travel, achievement, and a daring love affair. Ironically, it is her marriage to a non-Jew that brings her parents the peace and fulfillment they would never have imagined possible.
Sonia manages to combine her own independence with a tender dutifulness, honoring her parents' legacy while forging a new family of her own. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1950s
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Barnard College/Columbia University;
J.D., Yale University; M.Phil, Oxford University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Sonia Taitz is a graduate of Barnard College/Columbia University (Phi Beta Kappa; summa cum laude), Yale Law School, and Oxford University, where she was granted an M.Phil in English literature.
She has written extensively for the New York Times and New York Observer, where she held a column, and is also a columnist for Psychology Today and Huffington Post.
Her first book, Mothering Heights, was highlighted in O Magazine and featured in a PBS special on love; In The King's Arms, a novel published in 2011, was praised by the New York Times Book Review, ForeWord Reviews (which placed the author in the ranks of “the best poets, playwrights, and novelists), and Jewish Book World, the publication of the Jewish Book Council. In the King's Arms as also nominated for the Sami Rohr Prize.
Sonia Taitz’s new memoir, The Watchmaker's Daughter, depicts her life as the American child of European concentration camp survivors, and her efforts—through education, travel, and a controversial romance—to bridge past and future. The Watchmaker's Daughter has been praised by People magazine, Jerusalem Report, Vanity Fair, and Readers’ Digest, which placed it on the “Can’t Miss” list. The book has been nominated by the ALA for the Sophie Brody Medal, and listed by ForeWord Magazine as one of the year’s “Best Memoirs.” (From the author.)
Book Reviews
A heartbreaking memoir of healing power and redeeming devotion, Sonia Taitz's The Watchmaker's Daughter has the dovish beauty and levitating spirit of a psalm. The suffering and endurance of Taitz' parents—Holocaust "death camp graduates" who met at the Lithuanian Jewish Survivor's Ball in a New York hotel (imagine Steven Spielberg photographing that dance floor tableau)—form the shadow-hung backdrop of a childhood in a high-octance, postwar America where history seems weightless and tragedy a foreign import—a Hollywood paradise of perky blondes, Pepsodent smiles, and innocent high-school hijinks where our author and heroine longs to fit in. Although the wonder years that Taitz scrupulously, tenderly, beautifully, often comically renders aren't that far removed from us, they and the Washington Heights she grew up in, the shop where her father repaired watches like a physician tending to the sick tick of life itself, the grand movie houses where the image of Doris Day sunshined the giant screen, have acquired the ache and poignance of a lost, Kodachrome age. A past is here reborn and tenderly restored with the love and absorption of a daughter with a final duty to perform, a last act of fidelity.
James Wolcott: New Yorker and Vanity Fair cultural critic, author of Lucking Out
Not your typical coming-of-age story....American Sonia Taitz, born to survivors of the Holocaust, lives under its long shadow in The Watchmaker's Daughter.
Elissa Schappell - Vanity Fair
Funny and heartwrenching.
People
Taitz writes beautifully about religious roots, generational culture clashes, and a family's abiding love.
Reader's Digest
Even now, as the last Holocaust survivors pass away, wrenching reverberations run through Taitz's poignant, poetic memoir
Booklist
An invigorating memoir about coming of age as the daughter of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants and Holocaust survivors. Taitz's (In the King's Arms, 2011, etc.) childhood was punctuated by stories of her parents' and grandmother's loss as well as their faith during their time in the ghetto and Dachau.... Though the author focuses mostly on her [own] experiences, it is Simon and Gita's perseverance that truly shines—the former a respected watchmaker who began life anew more than once, the latter a concert-level pianist whose dreams were thwarted by war and who rescued her own mother from the Nazis' infamous selections. Taitz portrays her parents with tenderness while acknowledging their imperfections. An affecting, brisk read, especially noteworthy for its essential optimism and accomplished turns of phrase.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Sonia Taitz describes being born into a “binocular” world (her parents emerged from a war-torn European past, but she is born into modern, hopeful America). How does this contrast affect her?
2. Do all parents live in different worlds than that of their children—simply because they grow up in different generations? How is your reality different than that of your parents or your children?
3. In our modern lives, children often travel away from their parents. But Sonia’s father asks her to stay home for college. Are separations more difficult for parents who are immigrants?
4. To what extent does the author keep her “Vow” to her father as she leaves law school to travel to England and Oxford University?
5. The author says her parents were not victims, but heroes. How does this idea of “heroism” propel her into the adventures of the book—achievement, travel, romance?
6. How much do we owe our parents in terms of preserving their culture and traditions? How much do our children owe us?
7. This memoir features star-crossed lovers. Should the choice of a marriage partner be affected by one’s family culture, or is this a dated (or even discriminatory) view?
8. Sonia’s father is very ambitious about his precocious child. The women’s movement also propels the author to “succeed” in worldly terms. What lessons does the author learn from her mother as time goes by?
9. The final line of the book is: “I was not just the watchmaker’s daughter. I was hers.” What is the author saying with these words?
10. Did the book leave you sad, happy, or a bit of both—and why?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)
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