On Her Own Ground: the life and times of Madame C.J. Walker, by A’Lelia Bundles (the great-great-granddaughter of Walker), is the inspiring story of Sarah Breedlove, born in Louisiana in 1867, and who became the first female millionaire in the United States by starting a beauty business featuring hair products for black women.  Orphaned at age […]

The awe-inspiring courage of Robert Smalls isn’t as well known as it should be. Born into slavery in 1839 to a slave named Lydia Polite in Beaufort, South Carolina, he was most likely the son of his owner, Henry Mckee. As a teen, he worked as a laborer in Charleston, first in a hotel, then […]

So, I was watching Darkest Hour, a sepia-toned and fanciful version of Churchill’s World War II years, chock-full of duty, pluck and chins up.  I wanted to know more about him besides the cigar smoking and champagne swilling. I needed facts, and hey, I don’t get my facts from movies, I get’em from books. There is […]

Since this one-horse town cannot give me the snow days I so richly deserve, I guess I’ll only be able to experience the stinging cold and ferocious blizzards I crave through books. That’s why I’ve selected the freeziest thrillers out there, and unless I move to Duluth, it’s the closest I’ll come to winter misery and the joy […]

End-of-the-year booklists are here again, with their unattainable “3,000 Best Crime Novels of 2018,” designed, I feel sure, to make me feel under-read and inadequate. I am only one woman, and I cannot keep up with these professional bookworms. Also, these lists trigger my book-related FOMO, which leads to the inevitable realization that I am going […]