[issybird]

Let's select the book we'll read and discuss in May 2018!

All are welcome to vote, but please don't vote unless you plan to participate in the discussion, whatever the selection.

This is a poll. Vote for as many books as you'd like. Questions? FAQs | Guidelines Or just ask!

Choices:

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore
Amazon US $9.99 | Amazon UK £0.99 | Amazon CA $17.53 | Amazon AU $10.99 | Kobo US $14.39 | Kobo CA $19.19 |Kobo UK £0.99 | Kobo AU $10.99 | OverDrive | Hoopla (ebook and audiobook)

Spoiler:

From Goodreads, where it has a rating of 4.24 stars:

The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.

Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these "shining girls" are the luckiest alive — until they begin to fall mysteriously ill.

But the factories that once offered golden opportunities are now ignoring all claims of the gruesome side effects, and the women's cries of corruption. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America's early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers' rights that will echo for centuries to come.

Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the "wonder" substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. Their courage and tenacity led to life-changing regulations, research into nuclear bombing, and ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives...

Willoughbyland by Matthew Parker
Amazon UK £2.99 | Amazon US $13.99 | Amazon CA $14.99 | Amazon AU $14.99 | Kobo UK | Kobo US | Kobo CA | Overdrive

Spoiler:

Summary from Amazon:

At the beginning of the 1650s, England was in ruins – wrecked, impoverished, grief-stricken by plague and civil war. Yet shimmering on the horizon was an intoxicating possibility, a vision of paradise: Willoughbyland.

Ambitious and free-thinking adventurers poured in, attracted by the toleration, the optimism, the rich soil and the promise of the gold of El Dorado. It was England's most hopeful colony.

But the Restoration saw the end of political freedom, and brought in its place spies, war, rebellion and treachery. The advent of racial slavery poisoned everything. What started out as a heaven was soon to become one of the cruellest places on earth.

The history of Willoughbyland is a microcosm of empire, its heady attractions and fatal dangers.

The Prestige by Christopher Priest
Kobo: $US7.99, $C9.99, $A9.99 and GBP5.99

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

In 1878, two young stage magicians clash in the dark during the course of a fraudulent séance. From this moment on, their lives become webs of deceit and revelation as they vie to outwit and expose one another.

Their rivalry will take them to the peaks of their careers, but with terrible consequences. In the course of pursuing each other's ruin, they will deploy all the deception their magicians' craft can command--the highest misdirection and the darkest science.

Blood will be spilled, but it will not be enough. In the end, their legacy will pass on for generations...to descendants who must, for their sanity's sake, untangle the puzzle left to them.

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
Goodreads US$16.99 Amazon UK £6.99

Spoiler:

The doomed to repeat part falls into the much-anticipated apocalypse-- if our modern world goes down the tubes, it'll be the people with access to salt and other food preservation methods who will likely survive.

Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2000 Years by Tom Standage
Amazon US $9.99 | Amazon UK £8.63 | Amazon Canada $9.99 | Amazon Australia $7.12 |Kobo | Overdrive | Scribd | Audio: Overdrive | Hoopla | Scribd

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

Papyrus rolls and Twitter have much in common, as each was their generation's signature means of “instant” communication. Indeed, as Tom Standage reveals in his scintillating new book, social media is anything but a new phenomenon.

From the papyrus letters that Roman statesmen used to exchange news across the Empire to the advent of hand-printed tracts of the Reformation to the pamphlets that spread propaganda during the American and French revolutions, Standage chronicles the increasingly sophisticated ways people shared information with each other, spontaneously and organically, down the centuries. With the rise of newspapers in the nineteenth century, then radio and television, “mass media” consolidated control of information in the hands of a few moguls. However, the Internet has brought information sharing full circle, and the spreading of news along social networks has reemerged in powerful new ways.

A fresh, provocative exploration of social media over two millennia, Writing on the Wall reminds us how modern behavior echoes that of prior centuries-the Catholic Church, for example, faced similar dilemmas in deciding whether or how to respond to Martin Luther's attacks in the early sixteenth century to those that large institutions confront today in responding to public criticism on the Internet. Invoking the likes of Thomas Paine and Vinton Cerf, co-inventor of the Internet, Standage explores themes that have long been debated: the tension between freedom of expression and censorship; whether social media trivializes, coarsens or enhances public discourse; and its role in spurring innovation, enabling self-promotion, and fomenting revolution. As engaging as it is visionary, Writing on the Wall draws on history to cast new light on today's social media and encourages debate and discussion about how we'll communicate in the future.

The Appointment by Herta Müller
Amazon $9.99 / Kobo $9.99

Spoiler:

From the description:

"I've been summoned. Thursday, ten sharp." Thus begins one day in the life of a young clothing-factory worker during Ceaucescu's totalitarian regime. She has been questioned before; this time, she believes, will be worse. Her crime? Sewing notes into the linings of men's suits bound for Italy. "Marry me," the notes say, with her name and address. Anything to get out of the country.

As she rides the tram to her interrogation, her thoughts stray to her friend Lilli, shot trying to flee to Hungary, to her grandparents, deported after her first husband informed on them, to Major Albu, her interrogator, who begins each session with a wet kiss on her fingers, and to Paul, her lover, her one source of trust, despite his constant drunkenness. In her distraction, she misses her stop to find herself on an unfamiliar street. And what she discovers there makes her fear of the appointment pale by comparison.

Herta Müller pitilessly renders the humiliating terrors of a crushing regime. Bone-spare and intense, The Appointment confirms her standing as one of Europe's greatest writers.

The Soul of a New Machine Tracy Kidder
AmazonUS: $9.99 | AmazonUK: £3.99 | AmazonAU: $12.99 | KoboCA: $12.99 | AudibleUS

Spoiler:

Goodreads:

The computer revolution brought with it new methods of getting work done—just look at today's news for reports of hard-driven, highly-motivated young software and online commerce developers who sacrifice evenings and weekends to meet impossible deadlines. Tracy Kidder got a preview of this world in the late 1970s when he observed the engineers of Data General design and build a new 32-bit minicomputer in just one year. His thoughtful, prescient book, The Soul of a New Machine, tells stories of 35-year-old "veteran" engineers hiring recent college graduates and encouraging them to work harder and faster on complex and difficult projects, exploiting the youngsters' ignorance of normal scheduling processes while engendering a new kind of work ethic.

These days, we are used to the "total commitment" philosophy of managing technical creation, but Kidder was surprised and even a little alarmed at the obsessions and compulsions he found. From in-house political struggles to workers being permitted to tease management to marathon 24-hour work sessions, The Soul of a New Machine explores concepts that already seem familiar, even old-hat, less than 20 years later. Kidder plainly admires his subjects; while he admits to hopeless confusion about their work, he finds their dedication heroic. The reader wonders, though, what will become of it all, now and in the future. —Rob Lightner

Amazon description:

Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Kidder memorably records the drama, comedy, and excitement of one company's efforts to bring a new microcomputer to market.
Computers have changed since 1981, when The Soul of a New Machine first examined the culture of the computer revolution. What has not changed is the feverish pace of the high-tech industry, the go-for-broke approach to business that has caused so many computer companies to win big (or go belly up), and the cult of pursuing mind-bending technological innovations.
The Soul of a New Machine is an essential chapter in the history of the machine that revolutionized the world in the twentieth century.

Concrete Planet: The Strange and Fascinating Story of the World's Most Common Man-Made Material by Robert Courland
Amazon US - $12.99 | Amazon UK - £10.44 | Amazon CA - $9.99 | Amazon AU - $10.97 | Kobo US - $12.99 | Kobo UK £8.99 | Kobo CA - $10.69 | Kobo AU $15.06

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

Concrete: We use it for our buildings, bridges, dams, and roads. We walk on it, drive on it, and many of us live and work within its walls. But very few of us know what it is. We take for granted this ubiquitous substance, which both literally and figuratively comprises much of modern civilization’s constructed environment; yet the story of its creation and development features a cast of fascinating characters and remarkable historical episodes. This book delves into this history, opening readers’ eyes at every turn. [...]

A relevant quote from the introduction explains what to expect: "This is not a technical book [...] it is the human story of concrete, with emphasis on the people who discovered—and rediscovered—this building material, and who also pioneered novel ways of using it."

Most of us will have read fantasy stories where the ancients held great secrets, with concrete that has been true: for centuries it appeared the secret of making strong concrete had died with the Romans. We do now know how they did it, but the author laments that - unlike the Romans - we continue to make buildings, and even memorials, that may not long outlast the generation that built them.

All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Goodreads | Hoopla Digital | Overdrive: | Kobo US | Kobo UK | Kobo CA | Kobo AU | Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon AU | Amazon CA

Spoiler:

It was made into the movie Edge of Tomorrow.

[quote]There’s one thing worse than dying. It’s coming back to do it again and again… When the alien Gitai invade, Keiji Kiriya is just one of many raw recruits shoved into a suit of battle armor and sent out to kill. Keiji dies on the battlefield, only to find himself reborn each morning to fight and die again and again. On the 158th iteration though, he sees something different, something out of place: the female soldier known