While perusing my books recently, I recognized this book by V.S. Pritchett, who is a British writer and literary critic and a well-known travel writer. I’d recently written several of my own stories on Latin America, “The Ying & Yang of Travel: Traveling Solo,” and “Tschiffley’s Epic Equestrian Ride,” so I decided to get this author’s take. After all, according to the “WorldCat List,” which is the largest data- base on books for libraries around the world, Pritchett had logged 422 works in 1,896 publications in 5 languages in almost 43,000 library holdings. And he was knighted of Sir Victor […]
Continue readingCategory Archives: Book Reviews: Non-fiction
“Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age”, by Sanjay Gupta MD, Reviewed by Mark D. Walker
Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age by Sanjay Gupta, MD Reviewed by Mark D. Walker My youngest daughter handed me this book and said, “Dad, we don’t have time to read this, but this is important. Could you read it and report back to us?” So I did. And I believe that all adults should take responsibility for our health, especially our mental health, so this looked like a timely book to review and reflect on with my family. The author caught my attention with a study that indicated that 47 million Americans have some evidence […]
Continue readingHow I Learned English by Tom Miller, Reviewed by Mark D. Walker
I purchased this book as a Christmas present for my Guatemalan wife because, she like millions of other Latinos, has struggled to master the quirks and challenges of English. Ligia took English in school in Guatemala. But I’ve always insisted we speak Spanish in order to maintain my fluency and she patiently corrected my grammar, which she continues to do. After our first year of marriage, I took her to my hometown of Evergreen, Colorado in the dead (cold) of winter, where she tried to communicate with my mother by writing notes. But my mother insisted that we get a […]
Continue readingStorming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security” by Todd Miller
Reviewed by Mark D. Walker This book caught my attention, as the author connects climate change and the hostility toward refugees, which is a key theme I focus on in a documentary on immigration in Central America. Although much debate on the existence of climate change that I’m exposed to takes place among relatively well-to-do urban dwellers, the author points out that 48 of the “least developed countries” are five times more likely to die in a climate-related disaster than the rest of world. Floods are now impacting 21 million people worldwide annually and by 2030, a “double exposure […]
Continue readingThe Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill Reviewed by Mark D. Walker
My middle daughter gifted me this book, which remained next to my bed for over five months due to its imposing size and more than 500 pages. But I decided to check it out as part of my “Black Lives Matter” awareness program. What was slavery about and how had it impacted the U. S. for so long? In this case, Aminata Diallo would be taken from her village in West Africa and placed on a slave ship in Sierra Leone – where I’d worked for three years. The ship was bound for South Carolina and from there she’d […]
Continue readingAuthor Interview in SIETAR Newsletter (Soc. Intercultural Education, Training & Research) on Moritz Thomsen
CRAIG STORTI BOOKMARKS: LIVING POOR AND THE SADDEST PLEASURE 14 Dec 2020 8:26 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator) TWO BY MORITZ THOMSEN: Living Poor and The Saddest Pleasure Reviewed by Craig Storti There’s a movement afoot (led in part by Mark Walker, see the interview below) to elevate Moritz Thomsen to the status of a Very Important Writer, someone whose books stay in print for generations and get assigned in college literature classes, someone whose name every well-read person should know. And we here at BookMarks are happy to do our part. We briefly mentioned Thomsen in one of our previous columns (where we reviewed […]
Continue readingAfrica Memoir by Mark G. Wentling, Review by Mark D. Walker
I’ve read and reviewed several of the author’s books over the years. We were both Peace Corps Volunteers in Central America and worked in West Africa, although Wentling went on to work and travel in 54 African countries over the years. My favorite book from his “African Trilogy” is “Africa’s Embrace,” which is fiction, but reflects his experience working as a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa in the 1970s. The well-developed characters force the reader deep into the heart of Africa. Wentling worked with USAID and the State Department, so his book, “Dead Cow Road,” is an authentic and […]
Continue readingOn the Road: The Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac
After writing several “counter culture” articles on my experiences in the early 1970s, the first entitled, “Crested Butte 1970: Reflections of a Town in Transition,” I decided it was time to re-read perhaps the most influential beat generation book, “On the Road.” This book is now ranked number two on Amazon’s “Beat Generation Criticism” list, after “Dharma Bums” by the same author. The New York Times hailed the book as “the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac named years ago as “beat.” In 1998, the Modern Library ranked On […]
Continue readingHomeland Elegies a Novel, by Ayad Akhtar
I initially heard Ayad Akhtar when he was interviewed by PBS and then came across the words of Bill Moyers about one of the author’s many plays on what was to be Moyers’ last; his plays are “not only history, but prophecy. A Biblical-like account of who’s running America, and how.” Moyers added: “Our times at last have found their voice, and it belongs to a Pakistani American: Ayad Akhtar.” This novel about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, told from the perspective of a Muslim writer, is a must read. The book reflects […]
Continue readingNeighbors: Oral History From Madera, California, Volume 2, by Lawrence F. Lihosit
As one of the proofers of Volume 2, I was pleased to help Lorenzo with his latest of sixteen, soon to be seventeen books. I used his, “Peace Corps Experience: Write & Publish Your Memoir” to write my own, “Different Latitudes: My Life in the Peace Corps and Beyond.” He obviously knows the Central California area and history well, especially Madera, where he now lives. I totally agree with the publisher of “Madera Tribune,” “The best of its kind in print. Like Volume 1, the author offers real-life stories by citizens of Madera, California. It seems like they speak […]
Continue reading