5-stars Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China I've been trying to learn more about the Communist takeover of China as part of my 2019 reading theme on Rebellion. "Wild Swans" is a memoir about three generations of women in a Chinese family in the mid-20th century. The story begins with Jung Chang's grandmother who was a concubine
4-stars Infidel Buckle up, my friends. Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Infidel" is a staggeringly controversial memoir that forcefully condemns "multicultural" appeasement of Islamic immigrants in Western countries because of their unequal treatment of women and subordination of individual liberty. A fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and Harvard's Kennedy School, a member of the
5-stars Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life Finnegan's "Barbarian Days" is a cool, easy read. The author himself narrates the audiobook and his unhurried, honest style makes it seem like you're shooting the breeze with him while sitting on a board waiting for the next set to roll in. In his autobiography, Finnegan lovingly describes
memoir Legionnaire: Five Years in the French Foreign Legion Merde! The French Foreign Legion is tough. I had seen a passing reference to the Legion in another book - something along the lines of "a legionnaire will drop dead before he stops marching." These guys were supposed to be the hardest of the hard-core. There doesn't seem
4-stars Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis J.D. Vance got the timing just right on this one. The entire liberal establishment is scrambling to figure out how Trump won the election and "Hillbilly Elegy" offers a coherent, empathetic, and deeply personal narrative about who some of these Trump voters are and what their lives
