The God Box: Sharing My Mother's Gift of Faith, Love and Letting Go
Mary Lou Quinlan, 2012
Greenleaf Book Group
112 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781608323609
Summary
When Mary Lou Quinlan’s beloved mother, Mary Finlayson, dies, her family is bereft—until Mary Lou searches for her mother’s “God Box,” her private cache of notes to God on behalf of family, friends and strangers. To Mary Lou’s amazement, she finds not one but ten boxes stuffed with hundreds of tiny petitions that spanned the last twenty years of her mother’s life.
Note by note, Mary Lou unearths a treasure of her mother’s wishes and worries and insight. Mary asked God for everything from the right flooring for her daughter’s home to a cure for her own blood cancer. Her requests, penned on scraps of paper, were presented without expectation—the ultimate expression of letting go.
Follow Mary Lou’s emotional journey as she uncovers her mother’s innermost thoughts—nostalgic, surprising and even a bit shocking. As she recalls life with the woman who was her best friend, Mary Lou also discovers her own more empathetic, engaged self—the woman her mother had believed in all along.
Poignantly written and beautifully designed, The God Box is a gift for every mother, every daughter, every person who, regardless of beliefs, trusts in the permanence of love and the power of family. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., St. Joseph's University; M.B.A., Fordham
University
• Currently—lives in New York City and Bucks County, Pennsylvania
Mary Lou Quinlan has written inspirational features for Real Simple, O, the Oprah Magazine, and MORE, and other magazines and, is the author of the books Just Ask a Woman, Time Off for Good Behavior, and What She’s Not Telling You. She is the nation’s leading expert on female consumer behavior. As the founder and CEO of marketing consultancy Just Ask a Woman and Mary Lou Quinlan & Co., she has interviewed thousands of women about their lives. Mary Lou has keynoted hundreds of conferences around the country; has appeared on television programs such as The CBS Early Show, Good Morning America, and the Today Show; and has been profiled in The New York Times, the Wall St. Journal, and USA Today as well as many other media outlets.
Mary Lou is Jesuit-educated with an MBA from Fordham University. She also holds an honorary doctorate in Communications from her alma mater, Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia where she earned a BA in English.
She and her husband, Joe Quinlan, live in New York City and Bucks County, Pennsylvania along with their dog, Rocky. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
This work has yet to garner mainstream press reviews; we'll add them as they appear. For now, see Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.
Discussion Questions
1. If you had to sum The God Box up in one word, what is this story about? What will you remember most? How would you describe this story to a friend?
2. Mary Lou’s book tells the story of her relationship with her mother. They were so close that some have called it a love story. How did this make you feel about your own relationship with your mother? As a mother to your own children? What was it about Mary that made her unusual?
3. The book’s early stories are set in the 1950s and 1960s in a neighborhood in Philadelphia that was largely Catholic. What about those times relate to you now—your neighborhood, your friends, your faith? What has changed? What, if anything, would you wish were the same? Can families be like that today?
4. How would you describe Mary Lou’s family? Do you feel that it was real? Too perfect? Even though they had problems of health and loss, did you wish for more conflict? How did they resolve what came their way?
5. Mary Lou describes her mother as someone who was very empathetic and caring. How does someone resolve being so giving without wearing themselves out or being taken advantage of?
6. Where did Mary get her deep faith? Do you think that there was ever a time she didn’t believe or let go? Why did she write repeated notes for the same thing?
7. Mary had a career, as did Mary Lou. How would you describe the difference between their approaches to work and why? Who are you more like?
8. The men in the book—particularly Ray, Jack and Joe—are supportive but in different ways. Discuss how they are different from each other and how they are different from the men in your own lives? How do you resolve the deep love Ray had for Mary with his policy of ignoring or downplaying illness. What role did Ray’s attitude toward wellness have in Mary’s tendency to put her illness in the God Box—or Mary Lou and Jack’s perfect attendance?
9. When Mary placed messages in the God Box, what do you think she was thinking? Why did she keep the boxes over the years, rather than throw away the resolved messages? Do you think she wanted the boxes to be found? Why did she stash them on a shelf out of sight? Why was Mary Lou the one who found them?
10. Talk about why you think Mary Lou kept her fertility issues to herself? What might have been Mary’s reaction if her daughter had shared her challenges? Is there anything that you keep to yourself like that? If so, can you discuss it now?
11. When Ray lost Mary, he tried to go forward in a positive way, though often long-term couples struggle after a spouse dies. What was Ray’s way of thinking, why do you think it worked for him, and would that work for you?
12. Why did working on a house renovation during their grief create new energy for Mary Lou, Ray and Joe. Do you think they should have taken more time to grieve? Is there anything therapeutic in what is often a stressful process? What have you found to be therapeutic during stressful times in your own life?
13. “Always together, even in heaven” was a mantra for Mary and Ray. Do you think that spoke to their closeness on earth or was it a way for them to anticipate separation by death but seeing themselves still somehow connected?
14. Why did Mary Lou wait so long to start her own God Box? Do you think if her dad were still living she would have still been waiting to start? Why didn’t she tap into it sooner, especially when she saw how consistent her mother was about it? And what about Jack? Why didn’t he use the God Box?
15. Would you consider keeping a God Box for yourself? How would you start? What would you write inside if you started one tonight? Would you share yours or stash it away as Mary did? Would you do it together with your children?
16. Do you host a book club meeting that includes more than 25 members? If so, invite Mary Lou Quinlan to attend your reading group discussion. She can schedule a virtual visit via phone or Skype for either a Q&A session or to do a personal reading from her book, The God Box: Sharing My Mother's Gift of Faith, Love and Letting Go. Just email her at
(Questions from the author's website.)
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918
Adam Hochschild, 2011
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780547750316
Summary
World War I stands as one of history’s most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation. In a riveting, suspenseful narrative with haunting echoes for our own time, Adam Hochschild brings it to life as never before.
Hochschild focuses on the long-ignored moral drama of the war’s critics, alongside its generals and heroes. Thrown in jail for their opposition to the war were Britain’s leading investigative journalist, a future winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and an editor who, behind bars, published a newspaper for his fellow inmates on toilet paper.
These critics were sometimes intimately connected to their enemy hawks: one of Britain’s most prominent women pacifist campaigners had a brother who was commander in chief on the Western Front. Two well-known sisters split so bitterly over the war that they ended up publishing newspapers that attacked each other.
Today, hundreds of military cemeteries spread across the fields of northern France and Belgium contain the bodies of millions of men who died in the “war to end all wars.” Can we ever avoid repeating history? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 5, 1942
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—A.B., Harvard College
• Awards—J. Anthony Lukas Prize; Mark Lynton History Award;
Lionel Gelber Prize (Canada); Duff Cooper Prize (Britain)
• Currently—lives in San Francisco, California
Adam Hochschild was born in New York City in 1942. As a college student, he spent a summer working on an anti-government newspaper in South Africa and subsequently worked briefly as a civil rights worker in Mississippi in 1964. Both were politically pivotal experiences about which he would later write in his book Finding the Trapdoor. He later was part of the movement against the Vietnam War, and, after several years as a daily newspaper reporter, worked as a writer and editor for the leftwing Ramparts magazine. In the mid-1970s, he was one of the co-founders of Mother Jones.
His first book, Half the Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son, was published in 1986. It was followed by The Mirror at Midnight: A South African Journey (1990) and The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin (1994). Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels won the 1998 PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award for the Art of the Essay.
Hochschild's books have been translated into five languages and have won prizes from the Overseas Press Club of America, the World Affairs Council, the Eugene V. Debs Foundation, and the Society of American Travel Writers. Three of his books—including King Leopold's Ghost—have been named Notable Books of the Year by the New York Times Book Review and Library Journal. King Leopold's Ghost was also awarded the 1998 California Book Awards gold medal for nonfiction.
Hochschild has also written for The New Yorker, Harper's magazine, New York Review of Books, New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, Nation, and many other magazines and newspapers. A former commentator on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," he teaches writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1997-98 he was a Fulbright Lecturer in India.
He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Arlie, the sociologist and author. They have two sons. (From the publisher and Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
In his previous works, on subjects as diverse as the Belgian Congo and the victims of Stalinism, Hochschild has distinguished himself as a historian “from below,” as it were, or from the viewpoint of the victims. He stays loyal to this method in “To End All Wars,” concentrating on the appalling losses suffered by the rank and file and the extraordinary courage of those who decided that the war was not a just one.... We read these stirring yet wrenching accounts, of soldiers setting off to battle accompanied by cheers, and shudder because we know what they do not. We know what is coming, in other words.... This is a book to make one feel deeply and painfully, and also to think hard.
Christopher Hitchens - New York Times Book Review
Hochschild writes sharp portraits of the many men and women, some of them warriors and some of them doves, who come under his microscope, and he is fair to them all. His depiction of life in the trenches is so vivid that some readers may have difficulty stomaching it, as is also true of his account of the awful battles at the Somme and Passchendaele; his ultimate judgment of “the war’s madness” is fully earned by the evidence he presents. “To End All Wars” is exemplary in all respects.
Jonathan Yardley - Washington Post
(Starred review.) WWI remains the quintessential war-unequaled in concentrated slaughter, patriotic fervor during the fighting, and bitter disillusion afterward, writes Hochschild. Many opposed it and historians mention this in passing, but Hochschild, winner of an L.A. Times Book Award for Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves, has written an original, engrossing account that gives the war's opponents (largely English) prominent place. These mostly admirable activists include some veteran social reformers like the formidable Pankhursts, who led violent prosuffrage demonstrations from 1898 until 1914, and two members of which enthusiastically supported the war while one, Sylvia, opposed it, causing a permanent, bitter split. Sylvia worked with, and was probably the lover of, Keir Hardie, a Scotsman who rose from poverty to found the British Labor party. Except for Bertrand Russell, famous opponents are scarce because most supported the war. Hochschild vividly evokes the jingoism of even such leading men of letters as Kipling, Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, and John Galsworthy. By contrast, Hochschild paints equally vivid, painful portraits of now obscure civilians and soldiers who waged a bitter, often heroic, and, Hochschild admits, unsuccessful antiwar struggle.
Publishers Weekly
Mary is a serious lawyer, married with two kids, whose husband is a perennial mama's boy incapable of grocery shopping on his own. Mixed in with the trials and tribulations of the protagonists are humorous vignettes from the lives of some of their other friends and acquaintances—many of whom
Library Journal
The lives of the author’s many characters dovetail elegantly in this moving, accessible book.... An ambitious narrative that presents a teeming worldview through intimate, human portraits.
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 get a discussion started for To End All Wars:
1. What is the irony inherent in the book's title. Why did Woodrow Wilson affix that epithet to World War I? What did he mean by it?
2. Why did many of the upper classes oppose the war, considering it unjust? Hochschild memorializes what he considers their courage. Do you consider them courageous...or disloyal or cowardly?
3. The Earl of Lansdowne's opposition to the war stemmed from differing concerns than those held by individuals like Fenner Brockway, Alice Wheeldon, and John S. Clarke. In what way was their underlying opposition different?
4. Talk about the class system in Britain and other countries of Europe? How did the onset of war delineate and exacerbate class divisiveness?
5. How does Hochschild portray the British generals who prosecuted the war? What was their attitude toward casualty numbers?
6. In what ways was the First World War different from all previous wars? Why was its destructive power so terrible—so "astonishingly lethal" in Hochschild's words?
7. What does Hochschild mean when he says that the war "forever shattered the self-assured, sunlit Europe." How was the world changed by the war—culturally, philosophically, as well as geopolitically?
8. How does Hochschild link the first with the second World War?
9. Hochschild indicates that American intervention actually helped to prolong the war and lead to a more vindictive armistice. Do you agree with his assessment?
10. Hochschild tells much of the history of the war through the side of the British and, especially, those who opposed the war. In doing so, he calls into question the meaning of "loyalty" and the conflicts that arise in defining which loyalty takes precedence. Where does one's true loyalty lie—with country, military duty, or family...or as Hochsfield puts it:
Was loyalty to one’s country in wartime the ultimate civic duty, or were there ideals that had a higher claim?”
Where do you think loyalty lies? Where would your loyalty be?
11. How does Hochschild portray Bertrand Russell? Do you agree with his portrait of Russell? What does Russell mean when he claims in 1914 that he was "tortured by patriotism"?
12. Talk about the role of propaganda in the war effort. How do our attempts to build support for a war today compare with the techniques used during World War I?
13. Lord Lansdowne published a paper in which he pointed out that the war led to "the prostitution of science for the purposes of pure destruction." Was he right? Historically, science has always been put to use in wartime in order to gain defensive as well as offensive advantage? What then is the proper use of science?
14. What have you learned about World War I from reading Hochschild's book? Have your views of war, the conduct of war, patriotism, or heroism been confirmed...or altered in any way?
15. Does this work have relevance to the 21st century? Are there lessons we can gain from reading Hochschild's account of a war that took place a century ago?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Hedy's Folly The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World
Richard Rhodes, 2011
Knopf Doubleday
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385534383
Summary
What do Hedy Lamarr, avant-garde composer George Antheil, and your cell phone have in common? The answer is spread-spectrum radio: a revolutionary invention based on the rapid switching of communications signals among a spread of different frequencies.
Without this technology, we would not have the digital comforts that we take for granted today. Only a writer of Richard Rhodes’s caliber could do justice to this remarkable story. Unhappily married to a Nazi arms dealer, Lamarr fled to America at the start of World War II; she brought with her not only her theatrical talent but also a gift for technical innovation. An introduction to Antheil at a Hollywood dinner table culminated in a U.S. patent for a jam- proof radio guidance system for torpedoes—the unlikely duo’s gift to the U.S. war effort.
What other book brings together 1920s Paris, player pianos, Nazi weaponry, and digital wireless into one satisfying whole? In its juxtaposition of Hollywood glamour with the reality of a brutal war, Hedy’s Folly is a riveting book about unlikely amateur inventors collaborating to change the world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 4, 1937
• Where—Kansas City, Kansas, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize; National Book Award;
National Book Critics Circle Award
• Currently—lives in California
Richard Lee Rhodes is an American journalist, historian, and author of both fiction and non-fiction (which he prefers to call "verity"), including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), The Twilight of the Bombs (2010), and Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of the Most Beautiful Woman in the World (2011). He has been awarded grants from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation among others. He is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He also frequently gives lectures and talks on a broad range of subjects to various audiences, including testifying before the U.S. Senate on nuclear energy.
Rhodes was born in Kansas City, Kansas. Following his mother's suicide when he was only a year old, Rhodes, along with his older (by a year and a half) brother Stanley, was raised in and around Kansas City, Missouri, by his father, a railroad boilermaker with a third-grade education. When Rhodes was ten their father remarried a woman who starved, exploited, and abused the children. Stan, age 13, standing 5’ 4” and weighing an emaciated 98 pounds, saved both boys by walking into a police station and reporting to the authorities the conditions under which they lived. (For these details and others see Rhodes’ memoir A Hole in the World.) The boys were sent to the Andrew Drumm Institute, an institution for boys founded in 1928 in Independence, Missouri. The admission of the brothers was something of an anomaly as the institution was designed for orphaned or indigent boys and they fit neither category. The Drumm Institute is still in operation today, and now accepts both boys and girls. Rhodes became a member of the board of trustees in 1991.
Richard and Stanley lived at Drumm for the remainder of their adolescence. Both graduated from high school. Rhodes was admitted to Yale University and received a Scholarship, which awarded him full tuition, room, board, and other expenses for four years. Rhodes graduated with honors in 1959.
He went on to publish 21 books and numerous articles for national magazines; his best-known work, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, was published in 1986 and earned Rhodes the Pulitzer Prize and numerous other awards. Many of his personal documents and research materials are part of the Kansas Collection at the Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.
He is the father of two children, is a grandfather, and currently resides in California with his wife, Dr. Ginger Rhodes.
Nuclear history series
Rhodes came to national prominence with his 1986 book, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, a narrative of the history of the people and events during World War II from the discoveries leading to the science of nuclear fission in the 1930s, through the Manhattan Project and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Among its many honors, the 900-page book won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction (in 1988), a National Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award, and has sold many hundreds of thousands of copies in English alone, as well as having been translated into a dozen or so other languages.
Praised by both historians and former Los Alamos weapon scientists alike, the book is considered a general authority on early nuclear weapons history, as well as the development of modern physics in general, during the first half of the 20th century. According to a citation on the first page of the book, Nobel Laureate Isidor Rabi, one of the prime participants in the dawn of the atomic age, said about the book,
An epic worthy of Milton. Nowhere else have I seen the whole story put down with such elegance and gusto and in such revealing detail and simple language which carries the reader through wonderful and profound scientific discoveries and their application.
In 1992, Rhodes followed it up by compiling, editing, and writing the introduction to an annotated version of The Los Alamos Primer, by Manhattan Project scientist Robert Serber. The Primer was a set of lectures given to new arrivals at the secret Los Alamos laboratory during wartime in order to get them up to speed about the prominent questions needing to be solved in bomb design, and had been largely declassified in 1965, but was not widely available.
In 1993, Rhodes published Nuclear Renewal: Commonsense about Energy detailing the history of the nuclear power industry in the United States, and future promises of nuclear power.
Rhodes published a sequel to The Making of the Atomic Bomb in 1995, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, which told the story of the atomic espionage during World War II (Klaus Fuchs, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, among others), the debates over whether the hydrogen bomb ought to be produced, and the eventual creation of the bomb and its consequences for the arms race.
In 2007, Rhodes published Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race, a chronicle of the arms buildups during the Cold War, especially focusing on Mikhail Gorbachev and the Reagan administration.
The Twilight of the Bombs, the fourth and final volume in his series on nuclear history, was published in 2010. The book documents, among other topics, the post-Cold War nuclear history of the world, nuclear proliferation, and nuclear terrorism.
Other works
John James Audubon, published in 2004, is a biography of the French-born American artist, John James Audubon (1785–1851). Audubon is known for his life-sized watercolor illustrations of birds and wildlife, including Birds of America, a multivolume work published through subscriptions in the mid-19th century, first in England and then in the United States. Rhodes also edited a collection of Audubon's letters and writings, The Audubon Reader.
Rhodes' 1997 book Deadly Feasts is a work of verity concerning transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE), prions, and the career of Daniel Carleton Gajdusek. It reviews the history of TSE epidemics, beginning with the infection of large numbers of the Fore people of the New Guinea Eastern Highlands during a period when they consumed their dead in mortuary feasts, and explores the link between new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (nvCJD) in humans and the consumption of beef contaminated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly referred to as "mad cow disease."
Though less well known as a writer of fiction, Rhodes is also the author of four novels. Three of the four are currently out of print, but The Ungodly: A Novel of the Donner Party, his first, was reissued in a new edition in 2007 by Stanford University Press. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Rhodes’s talent is making the scientifically complex accessible to the proverbial lay reader with clarity and without dumbing down the essentials of his topics...along the way he expertly weaves social and cultural commentary into his narrative.... Behind the uniqueness of this story lie deeper themes that Rhodes touches upon: the gender biases against beautiful and intelligent women, the delicate interpersonal politics of scientific collaboration and...the neverending, implacable conflict between art and Mammon in American culture.
John Adams - New York Times Book Review
With admirable and tenacious skill, Richard Rhodes' new book on Hollywood screen legend Hedy Lamarr unveils the inquisitive brain behind the beauty.... [It] reads at turns like a romance novel, patent law primer, noir narrative and exercise in forensic psychology.... Rhodes...ends up shedding valuable insight on the Hollywood mythmaking of the era.
Adam Tschorn - Los Angeles Times
A focused glimpse into one actress’ remarkable life, and the rare mix of war, patriotism and intellect that fomented her unlikely invention.
Alexandria Witze - Dallas Morning News
If the subtitle of this book—The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World—doesn’t make you want to read, nothing we say is likely to change your mind. But we will add this much: Rhodes, who has written about everything from atomic power to sex to John James Audubon, is apparently incapable of writing a bad book and most of what he does is absolutely superior, including this tale that has Nazi weapons, Hollywood stars, 20th century classical music, and the earliest versions of digital wireless.
Daily Beast
Actresses often long to turn director, but how many of them yearn to turn inventor? Given the success that the screen siren Hedy Lamarr achieved in that realm—revealed in Richard Rhodes’s fascinating biography, Hedy’s Folly—it’s a pity more of them don’t consider it.... Rhodes’s beguiling book shows Hedy Lamarr to have been a secret weapon in more ways than one.
Newsweek
[M]ost people were reluctant to believe that the most beautiful woman in the word had an invetor's brain; but one man who came to believe in her was George Antheil.... Richard Rhodes...is the perfect historian to describe the abilities of Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil as scientists and inventors. In Hedy's Folly, Rhodes is also very good on culture-rich Vienna...[and] the Hollywood of the '30s and '40s.
Larry McMurtry - Harpers
[Rhodes] once again interweaves moving biographical portraits with dramatic depictions of scientific discovery.... [He] proves adept at elucidating the science behind this invention and the subsequent development of spread-spectrum systems (which today enable the use of cell phones and Wi-Fi), but his particular genius lies in placing the invention within a tumultuous historical moment.... With crisp, unadorned prose and plentiful quotes from primary sources, [he] paints a compelling history.... [Hedy's Folly] proves a riveting narrative, propelled by the ambition and idiosyncrasies of the inventors at its core.
Nick Bascom - Science News
In symphonic control of a great wealth of fresh and stimulating material, and profoundly attuned to the complex ramifications of Lamarr’s and Antheil’s struggles and achievements (Lamarr finally received recognition as an electronic pioneer late in life), Rhodes incisively, wittily, and dramatically brings to light a singular convergence of two beyond-category artists who overtly and covertly changed the world. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
Take a silver-screen sex goddess (Hedy Lamarr), an avant-garde composer (George Antheil).... What results is a patent for spread-spectrum radio, which has impacted the development of everything from torpedoes to cell phones and GPS technologies.... Hedy Lamarr is experiencing something of a renaissance, and Rhodes's book adds another layer to the life of a beautiful woman who was so much more than the sum of her parts. It will appeal to a wide array of readers, from film, technology, and patent scholars to those looking for an unusual romp through World War II–era Hollywood. —Teri Shiel
Library Journal
[A] surprising story of a pivotal invention produced during World War II by a pair of most unlikely inventors—an avant-garde composer and the world's most glamorous movie star.... Antheil died before earning any recognition for this achievement, but Lamarr, late in her life, did receive awards. The author quotes liberally—perhaps overly so—from the memoirs of his principals. A faded blossom of a story, artfully restored to bright bloom.
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 get a discussion started for Hedy's Folly:
1. Author Richard Rhodes has evoked a powerful sense of time and place for Vienna and Paris during the 1920s and '30s. What struck you most about either of those two societies? What, for instance, was Vienna like during Hedwig Kiesler's growing-up years, especially for someone of her talent and ambition? How did her childhood shape Hedy, the woman she would become?
2. What was young George Antheil attempting to express with his style of musical composition? Why did he want to distance his work from the lush Romanticism of the previous generation? Why did he refer to his pieces as "Mechanisms"? How would you have reacted had you been at a performance of his avant-garde creations? In what way could you say that Antheil's purusits prefigured his development of weapons guidance technology?
3. Discuss the increasing brutality of Germany as it headed into the Nazi era. What was the nature of Fritz Mandl's (Hedy's husband) involvement with the rising fascists?
4. What was behind Lamarr's decision to leave her husband and to run off with only a suitcase of clothes and handful of jewels?
5. Rhodes claims that Hedy was no intellectual but rather a "tinkerer." How do you explain her ability to absorb and later recall the complex, detailed information on weapons systems that she picked up while listening around the edges of conversations at parties she hosted? How did her abilities and Antheil's unusual musical interests hook up to create their torpedo guidance system?
6. Rhodes writes that "Hedy invented to challenge and amuse herself and bring order to a world she thought chaotic." Was that truly her motivation? Is it true for most inventors?
7. If you have a technical bent, describe the nature of the spread-spectrum guidance system which Lamarr and Antheil invented during World War II. Can you explain how it helped point the way toward remote controls, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and the cordless phones we take for granted today?
8. Why did the U.S. Navy dismiss Lamarr and Antheil's findings? One reviewer writes that he himself was first taken aback at the thought of Lamarr patenting a weapons system, saying it was like "being told that Ali MacGraw developed the science behind napalm." Was there (is there still) a sort of prejudice at work—or simply a set of realistic expectations as to where scientific capabilities reside? Might there be other reasons why the duo's invention was ignored for so many years?
9. A number of reviewers have remarked that, as biographies go, Rhodes's work offers little indepth character analysis of either Hedy Lamarr or George Antheil—and that the author is not really terribly interested in his two subjects. Do you agree or disagree?
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Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperberg's
John Elder Robison, 2007
Random House
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307396181
Summary
Ever since he was young, John Robison longed to connect with other people, but by the time he was a teenager, his odd habits—an inclination to blurt out non sequiturs, avoid eye contact, dismantle radios, and dig five-foot holes (and stick his younger brother, Augusten Burroughs, in them)—had earned him the label “social deviant.”
It was not until he was forty that he was diagnosed with a form of autism called Asperger’s syndrome. That understanding transformed the way he saw himself—and the world.
A born storyteller, Robison has written a moving, darkly funny memoir about a life that has taken him from developing exploding guitars for KISS to building a family of his own. It’s a strange, sly, indelible account—sometimes alien yet always deeply human. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1957
• Where—Athens, Georgia, USA
• Currently—lives in Amherst, Massachusetts
John Elder Robison is the author of the 2007 memoir Look Me in the Eye, detailing his life living with Asperger syndrome. He is the elder brother of memoirist Augusten Burroughs, who also wrote about his childhood in the memoir Running with Scissors.
Robison was born in Athens, Georgia while his parents were attending the University of Georgia. He is the son of poet Margaret Robison and late John G. Robison, former head of the philosophy department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. After John Elder's birth, the family lived in Philadelphia, Seattle, and Pittsburgh, where his brother Augusten Burroughs (born Christopher) was born. In 1966 he and his family settled in Amherst, Massachusetts where he spent most of his childhood.
Robison dropped out of Amherst High School in the tenth grade, to join the Amherst-based rock band, Fat. Robison would later receive an honorary diploma from The Monarch School in Houston in May 2008. “It is unconscionable to me as an educator,” said Dr. Marty Webb, founder and head of The Monarch School, “that someone of John's intelligence, competence and life achievement is walking around without a high school diploma.” Monarch, dedicated to providing an innovative, therapeutic education for individuals with neurological differences, has collaborated with Robison on the development of teacher guides for his best seller, Look Me in the Eye as well as the sequel, Be Different.
Several years later his ability to design electronic circuits allowed him to work for Britro sound company. He later became a sound adviser for Pink Floyd and KISS, for whom he created their signature illuminated, fire-breathing, and rocket launching guitars. He subsequently designed electronic games at toy maker Milton Bradley. Robison then worked for Simplex Time Recorder, Isoreg Corporation and Candela Laser of Wayland, Massachusetts.
He later managed J E Robison Service Co from his backyard. He became successful from the venture, the business being one of the largest independent Land Rover, Rolls-Royce and Bentley specialty shops in the country, and becoming one of only 20 four-star service agents for Robert Bosch GmbH of Germany.
Asperger Syndrome
Like many people his age, Robison was unaware that he had Asperger syndrome, first learning of his condition when he was 40 years old. As of 2009, Robison serves as a volunteer spokesman for the Graduate Autism Program at the College of Our Lady of the Elms in Chicopee, Massachusetts.
He has also worked with Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone of Harvard Medical School and Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center on the use of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation as an experimental autism treatment.
Robison has written about that work on his blog and elsewhere. He has been interviewed by Diane Rehm on NPR, Leonard Lopate of WNYC, and Erin Moriarty of CBS Sunday Morning. He has appeared on CBS News, The Today Show, and other news programs.
Recent life
In June 2009, Robison served as a public reviewer for the National Institute of Mental Health when they reviewed applications for autism research that are to be funded as part of the economic stimulus package of 2009.
In early 2011, Robison's guide for people with Autism and Asperger Syndrome, Be Different, was published. It includes what things to say in social situations, how to fit in, and some of his experiences that were not expressed in Look Me in the Eye.
Robison currently lives in Amherst, Massachusetts and is still continuing his activism across the country. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
There's an endearing quality to Robison and his story that transcends the "Scissors" connection … Look Me in the Eye is often drolly funny and seldom angry or self-pitying. Even when describing his fear that he'd grow up to be a sociopathic killer, Robison brings a light touch to what could be construed as dark subject matter…Robison is also a natural storyteller and engaging conversationalist.
Boston Globe
Robison’s lack of finesse with language is not only forgivable, but an asset to his story.... His rigid sentences are arguably more telling of his condition than if he had created the most graceful prose this side of Proust.
Chicago Sun-Times
(Critics Choice) Deeply felt and often darkly funny, Look Me in the Eye is a delight.
People
It's a fantastic life story (highlights include building guitars for KISS) told with grace, humor, and a bracing lack of sentimentality.
Entertainment Weekly
(Starred review.) Robison's thoughtful and thoroughly memorable account of living with Asperger's syndrome is assured of media attention (and sales) due in part to his brother Augusten Burroughs's brief but fascinating description of Robison in Running with Scissors. But Robison's story is much more fully detailed in this moving memoir, beginning with his painful childhood, his abusive alcoholic father and his mentally disturbed mother. Robison describes how from nursery school on he could not communicate effectively with others, something his brain is not wired to do, since kids with Asperger's don't recognize common social cues and body language or facial expressions. Failing in junior high, Robison was encouraged by some audiovisual teachers to fix their broken equipment, and he discovered a more comfortable world of machines and circuits, of muted colors, soft light, and mechanical perfection. This led to jobs (and many hilarious events) in worlds where strange behavior is seen as normal: developing intricate rocket-shooting guitars for the rock band Kiss and computerized toys for the Milton Bradley company. Finally, at age 40, while Robison was running a successful business repairing high-end cars, a therapist correctly diagnosed him as having Asperger's. In the end, Robison succeeds in his goal of helping those who are struggling to grow up or live with Asperger's to see how it is not a disease but a way of being that needs no cure except understanding and encouragement from others.
Publishers Weekly
First-time writer Robison diagnosed himself with Asperger's syndrome after receiving Tony Attwood's groundbreaking work on the subject from a therapist friend ten years ago. In his well-written and fascinating memoir, the fifty-something brother of Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors) addresses the difficultly of growing up in a household with an abusive and alcoholic father, the social problems he encountered at school, and his great affinity for mechanics. It made no difference that he lacked a high school diploma-Robison's natural skills landed him work as an automobile restorer, Milton Bradley engineer, and stagehand responsible for the pyrotechnic guitars used by rock band KISS in the late 1970s. Despite these successes, the author suffered social difficulties while developing his ability to connect with and understand machines, a thread that is explored in great detail. If there is a drawback here, it is that readers do not get a strong sense of how his self-diagnosis impacted his life. But even among the growing number of books written by those diagnosed later in life, this entry is easily recommended for public and academic libraries with autism collections. —Corey Seeman.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Robison's memoir is must reading for its unblinking (as only an Aspergian can) glimpse into the life of a person who had to wait decades for the medical community to catch up with him. —Donna Chavez
Booklist
Affecting, on occasion surprisingly comic memoir about growing up with Asperger’s syndrome....The view from inside this little-understood disorder offers both cold comfort and real hope, which makes it an exceptionally useful contribution to the literature.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Recent studies indicate that autism affects 1 of every 150 people, or 1 of every 50 families. Do you know people who exhibit any of the traits Robison describes in his book? What do you notice about the way they interact with the world?
2. As a child growing up without a diagnosis, Robison was sometimes called names or labeled “deviant.” Knowing why he was different than others might have helped smooth his way. Today, more children are being diagnosed with Asperger’s than ever before. Discuss the advantages of early diagnosis. Might there also be disadvantages? How does a label affect how we treat someone? How does it affect the way we see ourselves?
3. “Different” kids like Robison are often teased or bullied at school. Does Robison’s story give you any ideas for preventing or stopping that behavior?
4. How would you describe Robison’s childhood? How did his parents contribute to the feelings of loneliness he suffered? How did the birth of his brother change his life?
5. Describe logical empathy. Does it differ from the kind of empathy that most people who don’t have Asperger’s syndrome feel? In Chapter 3, on page 32, Robison writes, “I cannot help thinking, based on the evidence, that many people who exhibit dramatic reactions to bad news involving strangers are hypocrites.” Do you think that’s true?
6. Robison describes the way his Asperger’s sometimes causes him to display inappropriate expressions. For example, he might smile when many people would frown. Have you known people whose facial expressions struck you as odd or overly blank? How did it make you feel, and how did you interpret their behavior?
7. In Chapter 6, “The Nightmare Years,” Robison writes about the new names he chooses for his parents with Dr. Finch’s help. What do they reveal about the family dynamic?
8. Robison describes his struggles in school, which culminated in his being invited to drop out. How might the school system have accommodated him?
9. As a teenager, Robison listened to older people ridicule his dreams of joining a band, yet he did it anyway and became very successful. What might have caused Robison to follow his heart despite contrary advice from friends and family? Did he know something they didn’t, or was it just luck that he succeeded?
10. Why does Robison pull what he calls “pranks”? Did any of them make you uncomfortable? In general, do you think pranks are a legitimate way for children or teenagers to express excess energy or frustration?
11. In Chapter 16, “One with the Machine,” Robison says, “Sometimes I think I can relate better to a good machine than any kind of person.” Discuss the reasons he gives for his affinity. Why might a person find comfort in machinery but not in people?
12. In the same chapter, Robison describes being “the brain of the lighting system” at a rock concert, which requires intense focus and concentration. “You must develop a sixth sense for your system, to feel how it’s doing, to be really great,” he writes. When you engage in an activity you love or at which you excel, are there times when you feel the almost magical sense of focus Robison describes? How is that state of mind different from ordinary consciousness?
13. Despite career advice from music industry insiders, Robison doesn’t want to move to a city. Compare the life he experiences when he’s on tour with KISS to his life back in Shutesbury. Why might the idea of living in a city be intimidating to someone with Asperger’s?
14. Robison describes life on the road with bands in the 1970s. Do you think the experience of traveling with a band would be the same today? Would the experience of traveling with a band be similar to that of traveling with another performing group like a theater company or circus?
15. bison writes that he can’t smile on command. How often do you smile “on command” whether you want to or not? How would not being able to automatically produce the expected facial expression make your work life more difficult? Your personal life?
16. As he explains in Chapter 20, “Logic vs. Small Talk,” Robison is also unable to perform the little verbal niceties that often pass for conversation. Questions like “How’s your wife?” or “Have you lost weight?” don’t occur to him when speaking with friends or acquaintances. Do you remember how you first learned to make small talk? Have you ever struggled with it? Are there any conventions of small talk that strike you as peculiar?
17. Robison describes himself as being very direct, and indeed that is a trait of people with Asperger’s. He says that’s both good and bad because some people appreciate directness while others are offended. What are some situations where directness would be of benefit, and where might it be a disadvantage? Why?
18. After his time with KISS and other rock ’n’ roll bands, Robison moved into the corporate world.What did he like about his job with Milton Bradley? What didn’t he like? How did he feel about his position in management? What made him decide to leave a financially comfortable life as an executive for the uncertainty of starting his own business?
19. Robison has described a number of ways in which he differs from other people. In Chapter 22, “Becoming Normal,” he writes about his transition from “Aspergian misfit” to “seeming almost normal.” How did his differences help him in operating his car business? How might they have hampered him?
20. What kind of father is Robison? How is he different from his own parents? Did anything in Chapter 23, “I Get a Bear Cub,” strike you as funny? How is “Cubby” like his father? How is he different?
21. In Chapter 24, “A Diagnosis at Forty,” Robison meets an insightful therapist who helps him realize that he has Asperger’s syndrome. What effect does this discovery have on Robison?
22. t times Robison calls his little brother Varmint and his wife Unit Two. Discuss Robison’s habit of renaming people. Why do you think he sometimes avoids people’s given names?
23. Discuss Robison’s relationship with his wife, Martha. What special challenges might exist in a marriage to someone with Asperger’s? What benefits?
24. In Chapter 26, “Units One Through Three,” Robison writes about choosing Martha over her two sisters, and about the impossibility of being certain that one has made the best possible choice in life. Do you think there is such a thing as a “best sister”? In the book, Martha answers with “depends what you want her for.” How would you answer that question?
25. When choosing a mate, we confront many pieces of folk wisdom, one of which is: Marry someone who’s similar to you; your shared interests will keep you together. An equally popular piece of advice is: Marry someone who’s different from you. Variety is the spice of life and opposites attract. Do you think a person with Asperger’s would do well to find a spouse who has Asperger’s too? Or would that person fare better with a spouse who doesn’t have Asperger’s? What might be the advantages and disadvantages of each?
26. What do you think of Robison’s writing style? Do you notice any quirks in the way he expresses himself that might have to do with Asperger’s syndrome
27. If you met someone tomorrow who acted a bit strange or eccentric, how might the insights from this story affect how you responded to that person?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror
Nonie Darwish, 2006
Penguin Group USA
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781595230447
Summary
When Nonie Darwish was a girl of eight, her father died while leading covert attacks on Israel. A high-ranking Egyptian military officer stationed with his family in Gaza, he was considered a "shahid," a martyr for jihad.
Yet at an early age, Darwish developed a skeptical eye about her own Muslim culture and upbringing. Why the love of violence and hatred of Jews and Christians? Why the tolerance of glaring social injustices? Why blame America and Israel for everything?
Today Darwish thrives as an American citizen, a Christian, a conservative Republican, and an advocate for Israel. To many, she is now an infidel. But she is risking her comfort and her safety to reveal the many politically incorrect truths about Muslim culture that she knows firsthand. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1949
• Where—Cairo, Egypt
• Education—B. A., American University, Cairo
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California, USA
Nonie Darwish is an Egyptian-American human rights activist, the founder of Arabs For Israel, and Director of Former Muslims United. She is the author of two books: Now They Call Me Infidel; Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel and the War on Terror and Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law. Darwish's speech topics cover human rights, with emphasis on women's rights and minority rights in the Middle East.
Early years
Born in Egypt, in 1949, Darwish's family moved to Gaza in the 1950s when her father, Colonel Mustafa Hafez, was sent by Egypt's then-president Nasser to serve as commander of the Egyptian Army Intelligence in Gaza, which was under supervision of Egypt. In July 1956 when Nonie was eight years old, her father was killed by a mail bomb in an operation by the Israeli Defense Forces. The assassination was a response to Fedayeen's attacks, making Darwish's father a shahid.
During his speech announcing the nationalization of the Suez Canal, Nasser vowed that all of Egypt would take revenge for Hafez's death. Darwish claims that Nasser asked her and her siblings, "Which one of you will avenge your father's death by killing Jews?"
Darwish explains:
I always blamed Israel for my father's death, because that's what I was taught. I never looked at why Israel killed my father. They killed my father because the fedayeen were killing Israelis. They killed my father because when I was growing up, we had to recite poetry pledging jihad against Israel. We would have tears in our eyes, pledging that we wanted to die. I speak to people who think there was no terrorism against Israel before the '67 war. How can they deny it? My father died in it.
After the death of her father, her family moved back to Cairo, where she attended Catholic high school and then the American University in Cairo, earning a BA in Sociology/Anthropology. She then worked as an editor and translator for the Middle East News Agency, until emigrating to the United States in 1978 with her husband, ultimately receiving United States citizenship.
After arriving in the US, she became a Christian and began attending a non-denominational evangelical church. About a year after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Darwish began writing columns critical of Islamic extremism and the silence of moderate Muslims.
Asked what can be done to encourage more moderate Muslims to speak out, Darwish answers:
After 9/11 very few Americans of Arab and Muslim origin spoke out... Muslim groups in the U.S. try to silence us and intimidate American campuses who invite us to speak. I often tell Muslim students that Arab Americans who are speaking out against terrorism are not the problem, it’s the terrorists who are giving Islam a bad name. And what the West must do is ask the politically incorrect questions and we Americans of Arab and Muslim origin owe them honest answers.
Darwish is the current Director of Former Muslims United. In a letter sent from that organization to Muslim leaders, Darwish said:
We send this letter to you to be received by September 25, 2009. On that date 220 years ago in 1789, the U.S. Congress passed the Bill of Rights. This is a fitting date to put our pledge to the world...As founders of Former Muslims United, we now pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to achieve for former Muslims their unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We claim these rights as the foundation for our right to freedom from Shariah. We urge you to join us.
She often says, "Just because I am pro-Israel does not mean I am anti-Arab, its just that my culture is in desperate need for reformation which must come from within”.
She has spoken on numerous college campuses including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Brown, Tufts, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Oxford, Cornell, UCLA, NYU, Virginia Tech, UC Berkeley and several others. She has also spoken in the United States Congress, the House of Lords and the European Parliament.
Views on Islam
Darwish believes Islam is an authoritarian ideology that is attempting to impose on the world the norms of seventh-century culture of the Arabian Peninsula. She writes that Islam is a "sinister force" that must be resisted and contained. She remarks that it is hard to "comprehend that an entire religion and its culture believes God orders the killing of unbelievers." She claims that Islam and Sharia of forming a retrograde ideology that adds greatly to the world's stock of misery.
She claims the Qur'an is a text that is "violent, incendiary, and disrespectful" and says that barbarities such as brutalization of women, the persecution of homosexuals, honor killings, the beheading of apostates and the stoning of adulterers come directly out of the Qur'an.
Darwish is also a strong supporter of Israel, and has founded the group "Arabs for Israel", composed of ethnic Arabs and Muslims who respect and support the State of Israel, welcome a peaceful and diverse Middle East, reject suicide terrorism as a form of Jihad, and promote constructive self-criticism and reform in the Arab/Muslim world. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
(There are few mainstream press reviews online for this work. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)
Now They Call Me Infidel is a book of great humanity, intelligence, and courage. If ever there is to be peace between Arabs and Israelis, it will have to be along the lines depicted by Nonie Darwish.
David Pryce-Jones - National Review
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 get a discussion started for Now They Call Me Infidel:
1. How was Nonie's childhood and adolescence different from that of other Muslim children? How did her privileged upbringing, as the daughter of a "shahid," shape her future views on Islamic culture and faith?
2. In what way did her father's death cause Nonie to question Islamic society, rather than accept the way things were? You would have expected her to insist on revenge for his death; why didn't she?
3. What was Nonie taught about Israel and the Jews when growing up?
4. Discuss the build-up of Jihad through the 1960s and 70s? To what does Darwish attribute the growth and spread of Islamic radicalism.
5. How was Egypt different from other countries in the Middle East? Why was it different?
6. Discuss Darwish's views of Islam and the Qur'an. How does Darwish describe the practices of Islam, especially Sharia? What is her response to young American-born Muslim women who whom she sees wearing the hajib and calling for Sharia?
7. Why, according to Darwish, do many of the Muslim-American families not attend their local mosques?
8. Why does Darwish see the moderate image of Islam as a tolerant faith—a position proffered by academic institutions like Columbia University—as misguided, even dangerous? Do you agree with her? Does the Western world need a more realistic view of Islam? Should it take a harsher stance against Islam's more radical elements, both within the US and outside its borders?
9. When the planes flew into the World Trade Center on 9/11, Darwish called her family and friends back in Egypt. Talk about their response to the attacks.
10. What roll does the dependence on petroleum play, according to Darwish, in America's ostrich-like attitude toward Saudi Arabia? Do you agree with her?
11. Have your views of Islam been altered by reading Now They Call Me Infidel? What have you learned? What in the book struck or even suprised you most? Do you agree with Darwish in her assessment of the dangers of Jihad? Or does she overstate her case?
12. Have you read other works about Islam that seem to support or perhaps contradict Darwish's book?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)