I grew up in a small coal-mining town in southwestern Pennsylvania. I learned as the years went by the importance of our local bars to the communities they served. The larger ones housed a restaurant serving comfort food and providing a forum for entire families to socialize or burn off some of the stress of a day’s work.      These businesses provided jobs. They sponsored sports teams. They often housed banquet rooms where celebrations were held. They acted as information highways where the latest news was shared with a pre-internet, news-hungry populace ..read more

Real Bad Things by Kelly J. Ford My rating: 4 of 5 stars First, I’d like to thank Netgalley, Thomas & Mercer, and Kelly J. Ford for a DRC of Real Bad Things. After twenty-five years, a body is found near the dam on the Arkansas River near Maud, AR., a divided town of the well-to-do – Maud Proper, and Maud Bottom, for the struggling unfortunates like Jane, who have always found life a struggle. For Jane Mooney, the probability that the body is Warren Ingram, her stepfather whose murder she confessed to at the age of seventeen, it brings back a terrible period in her life. When she hears t ..read more

The Truth about Lies: The Illusion of Honesty and the Evolution of Deceit by Aja Raden My rating: 3 of 5 stars Imagine you’re sitting in a bar nursing an afternoon cocktail and a person takes the stool next to you. It’s a lady with raven-colored hair and an enigmatic smile. She begins telling you in colorful, bar-type language about many of the ways people have been deceived, lied to, and otherwise led to believe in a variety of dodges and gimmicks that never end in their favor. In The Truth about Lies: The Illusion of Honesty and the Evolution of Deceit by Aja Raden I felt exactly like that ..read more

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout My rating: 4 of 5 stars Olive Kitteridge is a woman who can't get out of her own way. The former teacher not only has trouble understanding the motivations and feelings of others, she often has no insight into her own. Her rigidity in dealing with strangers, friends and family very often undermines any attempt she makes at negotiating a pleasant detente with society. Told through a series of mostly connected stories, most featuring Olive, but some only including her tangentially, we watch Olive's struggles with the world at large. Strout's stories are insi ..read more

Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America by Eliza Griswold My rating: 5 of 5 stars Amity and Prosperity by Eliza Griswold is an excellent, balanced exposition of the history of the fossil fuel industries in southwestern Pennsylvania and the recent effects that one of those industries , the natural gas fracking industry, had on a couple of families in the area. Stacey Haney and her two children, Harley and Paige, live on a small farm in Amity, PA, next door to Beth and John Voyle, and their daughter, Ashley. Both families enjoy hard work, the outdoors, and working with a ..read more

An Extravagant Death by Charles Finch My rating: 3 of 5 stars An Extravagant Death by Charles Finch In his 14th Charles Lenox mystery, Charles Finch has written an entertaining, if uneven, entry in this long-term Victorian series. Charles Lenox has just spent two months investigating a series of robberies that led him to trouble within Scotland Yard, identifying three of four Detective Chief Inspectors involved in corruption, shocking Parliament and the people of London. To minimize damage to the ministers who recommended these detectives initially, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli believes ..read more

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson My rating: 5 of 5 stars The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson Histories take various forms. Some concentrate on broad ranges of people and events. Others focus on singular events and a small number of historical figures. Erik Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile captures a middle position, and does it very well. Larson examined the World War II period of May 10, 1940 to May 09, 1941 and focused the narrative on Winston Churchill and the German bombing of England during that period. Larson d ..read more

Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan My rating: 3 of 5 stars Chronicles provides a look at the inside Dylan, but you have to work for it. Dylan moves around without being very specific on dates through most of the book. He does refer to historical moments to provide some context, but few. He loved Woody Guthrie. He liked staying with folks who would give him a free place to stay. His descriptions of the people he knew were esoteric and often confounding. Here he talks about Bono of U2 "One night, Bono, the singer from U2, was over for dinner with some other friends. Spending time with Bono wa ..read more

The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman My rating: 5 of 5 stars I'm not usually a reader of books with magic, sorcery, or religious mysticism so the fact that I chose this book and enjoyed it so completely is a real departure for me. Alice Hoffman is a consummate writer, blending character, plot, setting, and emotion into a deeply moving reading experience. A Jewish mother's love for her daughter at the onset of World War II in Germany impels Hanni Kohn to seek out a Rabbi's help to protect her young daughter, Lea. When she's turned away by the Rabbi's wife, the Rabbi's daughter, Ettie, perf ..read more

Playing Through the Whistle: Steel, Football, and an American Town by S.L. Price My rating: 5 of 5 stars I grew up in western Pennsylvania during a time when the coal mines and steel mills of Jones & Laughlin Corporation provided employment for my dad and most of my friends’ dads too. In fact, other than a stint with Uncle Sam, my dad spent his entire working career with J&L. We lived in “The Patch”, a community of duplex houses in alternating green and red shingles built by the company for its laborers. We shopped at the company store where my mother worked for a time until meetin ..read more