Martine’s Must-Reads for December 2022

Curl up with a good book this holiday season! Enjoy the final selection of Martine’s Must-Reads:

 

1. What Child is This?: Inspired by Conan Doyle’s ‘The Blue Carbuncle’, Sherlock Holmes solves two brand new Christmas mysteries in Victorian London (A Sherlock Holmes Adventure) (Book 5) By Bonnie Macbird

It’s Christmas time in London, and Sherlock Holmes takes on two cases. The angelic three-year-old child of a wealthy couple is the target of a vicious kidnapper, and a country aristocrat worries that his handsome, favorite son has mysteriously vanished from his London pied à terre. Holmes and Watson, aided by the colourful Heffie O’Malley, slip slide in the ice to ensure a merry Christmas is had by nearly everybody . . . 

Says Martine: This is the best time of the year to read this book. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!!

2. Two Old Broads: Stuff You Need to Know That You Didn’t Know You Needed to Know By Dr. M.E. Hecht and Whoopi Goldberg

Whoopi joins Dr. Hecht in a lively conversation about growing older with no apologies. Dr. Hecht, who passed away a few short months prior to publication, shares her 93 years of wisdom with Whoopi and their fellow “broads.” Together, these two kindred spirits will help you:

• stay active physically and mentally
• make finalizing your will more rewarding than it sounds
• navigate tricky subjects, such as whether you need a home aide
• win friends and influence people or take a nap, depending on the day
• discover joy in relationships even when your excretions outweigh your secretions
• get up financially, physically, and emotionally after a fall
• keep a sense of humor about getting older (of course!)

Imminently practical and?rooted firmly in the adage that getting older is not for sissies, Two Old Broads is the aging book for the ages. You’ve survived the past; why not embrace the present and prepare for the future so you thrive and find more time to laugh along the way?

 

3. Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul By Michael Fanone

An urgent warning about the growing threat to our democracy from a twenty-year police veteran and former Trump supporter who nearly lost his life during the insurrection of January 6th.

When Michael Fanone self-deployed to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, he had no idea his life was about to change. When he got to the front of the line, he urged his fellow officers to hold it against the growing crowd of insurrectionists—until he found himself pulled into the mob, tased until he had a heart attack, and viciously beaten with a Blue Lives Matter flag as shouts to kill him rang out.

Now, Fanone is ready to tell the full story of that fateful day, along with exploring our country’s most critical issues as someone who has had firsthand experience with many of them. A self-described redneck who voted for Trump in 2016, Fanone’s closest friend was an informant—a Black, transgender, HIV-positive woman who has helped him mature and rethink his methods as a police officer. With his unique insight as an undercover detective and intense desire to do the right thing no matter the cost, Fanone provides a nuanced look into everything from policing to race to politics in a way that is accessible across all party lines.

Determined to make sure no one forgets what happened at the Capitol on January 6th, Fanone has written a timely call to action for anyone who wants to preserve our democracy for future generations.

 

4. Prelude to Genocide: Arusha, Rwanda, and the Failure of Diplomacy (Stud in Conflict, Justice, & Soc Change) By David Rawson

As the initial US observer, David Rawson participated in the 1993 Rwandan peace talks at Arusha, Tanzania. Later, he served as US ambassador to Rwanda during the last months of the doomed effort to make them hold. Despite the intervention of concerned states in establishing a peace process and the presence of an international mission, UNAMIR, the promise of the Arusha Peace Accords could not be realized. Instead, the downing of Rwandan president Habyarimana’s plane in April 1994 rekindled the civil war and opened the door to genocide.

In Prelude to Genocide, Rawson draws on declassified documents and his own experiences to seek out what went wrong. How did the course of political negotiations in Arusha and party wrangling in Kigali, Rwanda, bring to naught a concentrated international effort to establish peace? And what lessons are there for other international humanitarian interventions? The result is a commanding blend of diplomatic history and analysis that is a milestone read on the Rwandan crisis and on what happens when conflict resolution and diplomacy fall short.

Published in partnership with the ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series

 

5. His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Samuel and Toluse Olorunnipa 

The events of that day are now tragically familiar: on May 25, 2020, George Floyd became the latest Black person to die at the hands of the police, murdered outside of a Minneapolis convenience store by white officer Derek Chauvin. The video recording of his death set off the largest protest movement in the history of the United States, awakening millions to the pervasiveness of racial injustice. But long before his face was painted onto countless murals and his name became synonymous with civil rights, Floyd was a father, partner, athlete, and friend who constantly strove for a better life.
 
His Name Is George Floyd tells the story of a beloved figure from Houston’s housing projects as he faced the stifling systemic pressures that come with being a Black man in America. Placing his narrative within the context of the country’s enduring legacy of institutional racism, this deeply reported account examines Floyd’s family roots in slavery and sharecropping, the segregation of his schools, the overpolicing of his community amid a wave of mass incarceration, and the callous disregard toward his struggle with addiction—putting today’s inequality into uniquely human terms. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews with Floyd’s closest friends and family, his elementary school teachers and varsity coaches, civil rights icons, and those in the highest seats of political power, Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa offer a poignant and moving exploration of George Floyd’s America, revealing how a man who simply wanted to breathe ended up touching the world.