Summer Reading: 2007

“Terkel focuses hope as the universal detritus of experience. He worries that Americans are losing hope and consequently losing a collective call to social activism for which hope, he feels, is requisite. Since the book progresses historically, its collective voice grows younger as the book advances toward the present.”

A true Minnesota icon, Cedric Adams' name was known by almost everyone in the Upper Midwest in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Cedric's folksy humor and infectious laugh, as well as his provincial style, endeared him to his audiences. Known as 'the hardest working journalist in the world,' at one point he did 54 radio shows, eight television broadcasts, and 15 newspaper columns a week! Upon his death at age 58 in 1961, one fan of Cedric's said it was like losing his "daily companion of 30 years."

Miri would love to join her father and older sister as a miner in Mount Eskel's quarry, as mining is a respected occupation that drives the local economy. But when the local girls are rounded up to compete for the hand of the kingdom's prince, Miri, the prize student in the Princess Academy, gets her chance to shine. She leads her classmates in the fight against being treated as social inferiors in the academy, at the same time educating herself in ways that will better the village. A wonderful, unexpected story.

Beginning with Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zeitz takes us on a roller-coaster ride through the 1920s, when the New Woman not only hiked her hemlines by also earned her own keep. Through the lives of such flapper pioneers as Clara Bow, Coco Chanel, fashion artist Gordon Conway, and others, he tells the story of the women who launched the first truly modern decade.”

A superb dual portrait of the 32nd President and his First Lady, whose extraordinary partnership steered the nation through the perilous WW II years. In 1940 and 1944, FDR was elected to unprecedented third and fourth terms and nudged the country away from isolationism into war. Meanwhile, Eleanor was his "conscience," prodding him not to forget about labor, civil rights, and Jewish refugees. Fascinating reading.”