Customer Comments

Whatever your views on immigration reform, you need to read this unforgettable true story. Urrea illuminates all sides of this issue. He is unbiased and a truly wonderful writer. I will be reading everything he has written.

I haven’t read a science fiction book since Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles (about 30 years ago). My reading is usually limited to award-winning non-fiction and fiction books. My husband’s niece suggested this book to me when I asked her all-time favorite. I will be sending her a thank you for leading me outside of my reading comfort zone. I couldn’t Wool (Omnibus) down. My husband and I read this post-apocalyptic story at the same time and finished the 539 pages in just a few days. We had fun questioning meaning, trying to figure out what had happened and where it was happening. I had no idea that this was a self-published book until I was finished and my husband told me. I have a writing background and found the story-telling and character development was great. This book is visual and I hope someone will work with the Author Hugh Howey to make a movie of this riveting story.

This book was a Pulitzer prize finalist in 2005. I have to find out and read the book that won, because this book is the best book I have read since The Warmth of Other Suns. It is a true story about a group of Mexican immigrants lost in the Arizona desert. I hope this book will be made into a movie. Urrea is outstanding in his descriptions and detail. This book is heart-wrenching.

My favorite book of the past 5 years. Wilkerson's well-researched story tells the story of the six million black Americans who migrated from the south to states north and west. Though she interviews more than 1,000 migration participants, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author focuses her epic story on three characters. Their search for freedom does not come easily. Wilderson's detailed writing pulls you into the book and keeps you memorized. Her work is both scholarly and approachable. You won't forget the stories of sorrow and strength. I kept thinking as I read through the 600- some pages that these stories didn't happen that long ago in American History. I am telling everyone I know to read this book.

One of the best books I've read in the past decade! In this Pulitzer-Prize winner, Isabel Wilkerson tells the story of the African-American migration from the south to cities north and west in search of a better life. She interviews more than 1,000 people and uses her research to share this part of our American history from 1915-1970. She focuses her narrative on three people which makes this scholarly work approachable and fascinating. Impressive research,great writing and interesting characters.

As a film lover and mother of a young adult and two teens, I loved this book. As his son's grades decline, David Gilmour allows him to drop out of high school. The agreement is that father and son will watch three movies a week of dad's choosing. As a parent, I don't know that I would or could handle things that way, but it's an interesting experiement. There is movie trivia and discussion, but mostly this book is about the never-ending letting go that parenting requires. In some ways, I could see my own son in David's son. Bright, artsy kids don't always thrive in a typical high school setting. I wouldn't call this book a parenting manual, though Gilmour shares some thoughtful thinking "outside the box". I enjoyed both the film and parenting aspects of this memoir. Mostly I loved seeing this dad's creative wisdom as he strengthens his bond with his son.

Staff writer for The New Yorker, Bill Buford sees himself as a ?comfortable cook? and he volunteers to become Mario Batali?s ?slave?. This adventure leads to other apprenticeships with some of Italy?s masters. It is each master?s passion and Buford?s vivid descriptions of these characters that make this book such a feast for the senses. Buford travels to Italy to learn pasta making from some pizzeria owners in Porretta and he becomes obsessed with his quest to discover when cooks started adding eggs to pasta dough. He searches cookbooks back to the 1,500s in pursuit of the first ?eggy recipe.? He shares part of his pasta lesson as he makes ?angelically yummy munchkin food? (tortellini): ?You next tip the top part of the triangle forward, as though it were bowing in an expression of gratitude, and then (the crucial step) pull the other two corners forward, as though securing the bowing had in a headlock. You then press it all together to form a ring. When you turn the pasta over, you?ll be astonished by what you created; a belly button. (What can I say? It?s wildly erotic.)? My favorite part of the book is when Buford becomes an apprentice in Dario Cecchini?s butcher shop in Panzano in Chianti. The butcher has his own way with words, ?A butcher never sleeps. A butcher works in meat during the day and plays in flesh at night. A true butcher is a disciple of carnality.? The lively discussions about wine, oil and cows encourage a renewed appreciation of food. There are so many wonderful passages and I?ll leave you with one more: ?Enrico?s olive oil, I can testify, is very good, but there are a lot of good olive oils, made by other nutty earth artists with no interest in money, obsessed with smell, looking over their shoulders to make sure they?re the first on their mountain to pick their greenly pungent unripe olives, squeezing the tiniest amount of intense juice from their oldest trees. The viscous, gold-green liquid that dribbles out from their stone-like fruit is unlike any other oil I have tasted, and the madders chauvinistically boast that none of it leaves Italy.?

Though the subject matter was tough to read, the writing made this a beautiful story. I found myself using Post-it notes to mark passages that were so well-written, I want to share them with others. I've read so many critical reviews, people didn't like how the author felt or dealt with the death of her husband. But grief is individual, as is love. I am happy to now move on to a lighter read, but I'm thankful to have read Joan Didon's book.