Research 7

GRHS
Past Book Club Selections for the 2002 - 2003 School Year

All of the following books, which the Book Club has read in the past, are available if you wish to borrow them from your school library:

Baghdad Without
a Map
by Tony Horwitz This timely travel memoir is written by a reporter who covered the Middle East in the late 1980s and later returned to Baghdad following the invasion of Kuwait in the early 1990s. With a keen sense of humor and eye for detail, Horowtiz presents the turbulent Middle East from the vantage point of the "man in the street," whom we meet in traditional Yemeni villages, sophisticated Cairo, regimented Libya, disintegrating Sudan, a luxury hotel in the United Arab Emirates, and a seedy Baghdad nightclub. Among other adventures, he attends the funeral of the Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran, plays soccer with the Sudanese Dinka refugees and listens to an endless refrain of "You are the perfume of Iraq, oh Saddam" in Baghdad.
Horwitz has the touch, the ability to astutely capture the ludicrous essence of an experience while filling in all the pertinent socio-historic details. The New York Times Book Review calls this wild and comic tale of Middle East misadventure "a very funny and frequently insightful look at the world's most combustible region.”

Catch Me if You Can
by Frank W. Abagnale The sub-title to the book is “The Amazing True Story of the Youngest and Most Daring Con Man in the History of Fun and Profit.” Author and reformed con man, Frank Abagnale charmingly relays the stories behind many of the unbelievable schemes that he managed to successfully pull off during his former life of crime. These include writing $2.5 million in bad checks, posing as a physician, a lawyer, and a CEO, teaching in colleges without any credentials, convincing people that he was an FBI agent, and even donning a pilot's uniform and co-piloting a Pan Am jet, all before he was even 21 years old!
Wanted by police in 26 countries and all 50 states, Abagnale was eventually caught and served time in prison. He received an offer he couldn't refuse: parole for the price of his knowledge. First published 20 years ago, this extraordinarily informative (and strangely exhilarating) memoir is a hilarious, stranger-than-fiction tale of international escapades and deceit. Today, Abagnale is recognized as the nation's leading authority on financial foul play and runs his own anti-fraud corporation. The book was recently updated with insights into criminal advances in the technological age and is currently a feature film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks.

Jubilee
by Margaret Walker his is essentially the life story of Vyry, the daughter of a slave and her "master." Respected African-American poet and scholar, Walker, heard this story as a child from her grandmother, Vyry's daughter, and vowed to write it so all the world could know it. She spent 30 years researching this story and the result is a factual book that reads like a good friend talking.
Vyry is intelligent, strong, honest, brave, enduring: heroic qualities common to many "ordinary" African-American women but still painfully scarce in literature. See and feel the details of Vyry's daily life: the foods she grew and ate, the colors and textures of the quilts she made, the grotesque realities of slavery, the joys and sorrows of love. In the moments of Vyry's life - her tiny girlhood, the death of her mother, the sale of her "other-mother," her first love, the births and lives of her children, the war and resettlement, Ku Klux Klan violence, and, finally, a home of her own - we see a big picture of this part of American history from an urgently caring and essential perspective.

The Bell Witch:
An American Haunting
by Brent Monahan This extraordinary book recounts the only documented case in U.S. history when a spirit actually caused a man's death. Known throughout Tennessee as "Old Kate," the Bell Witch took up residence with John Bell's family in 1818. It was a cruel and noisy spirit, given to rapping and gnawing sounds before it found its voices. With these voices and its supernatural acts, the Bell Witch tormented the Bell family.
Local schoolteacher, Richard Powell, supposedly witnessed the strange events and recorded them for his daughter in 1841. His astonishing manuscript later fell into the hands of novelist Brent Monahan, who wrote this novel. Members of the Bell family have previously provided information on this fascinating case, but this book recounts the tale with novelistic vigor and verve. It is truly chilling.

Above descriptions from www.amazon.com and/or www.bn.com

GRHS Library
HOME PAGE

E-mail Mrs. Savio with any questions or comments.

	Baghdad Without a Map by Tony Horwitz	This timely travel memoir is written by a reporter who covered the Middle East in the late 1980s and later returned to Baghdad following the invasion of Kuwait in the early 1990s. With a keen sense of humor and eye for detail, Horowtiz presents the turbulent Middle East from the vantage point of the "man in the street," whom we meet in traditional Yemeni villages, sophisticated Cairo, regimented Libya, disintegrating Sudan, a luxury hotel in the United Arab Emirates, and a seedy Baghdad nightclub. Among other adventures, he attends the funeral of the Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran, plays soccer with the Sudanese Dinka refugees and listens to an endless refrain of "You are the perfume of Iraq, oh Saddam" in Baghdad. Horwitz has the touch, the ability to astutely capture the ludicrous essence of an experience while filling in all the pertinent socio-historic details. The New York Times Book Review calls this wild and comic tale of Middle East misadventure "a very funny and frequently insightful look at the world's most combustible region.”
	Catch Me if You Can by Frank W. Abagnale	The sub-title to the book is “The Amazing True Story of the Youngest and Most Daring Con Man in the History of Fun and Profit.” Author and reformed con man, Frank Abagnale charmingly relays the stories behind many of the unbelievable schemes that he managed to successfully pull off during his former life of crime. These include writing $2.5 million in bad checks, posing as a physician, a lawyer, and a CEO, teaching in colleges without any credentials, convincing people that he was an FBI agent, and even donning a pilot's uniform and co-piloting a Pan Am jet, all before he was even 21 years old! Wanted by police in 26 countries and all 50 states, Abagnale was eventually caught and served time in prison. He received an offer he couldn't refuse: parole for the price of his knowledge. First published 20 years ago, this extraordinarily informative (and strangely exhilarating) memoir is a hilarious, stranger-than-fiction tale of international escapades and deceit. Today, Abagnale is recognized as the nation's leading authority on financial foul play and runs his own anti-fraud corporation. The book was recently updated with insights into criminal advances in the technological age and is currently a feature film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks.
	Jubilee by Margaret Walker	his is essentially the life story of Vyry, the daughter of a slave and her "master." Respected African-American poet and scholar, Walker, heard this story as a child from her grandmother, Vyry's daughter, and vowed to write it so all the world could know it. She spent 30 years researching this story and the result is a factual book that reads like a good friend talking. Vyry is intelligent, strong, honest, brave, enduring: heroic qualities common to many "ordinary" African-American women but still painfully scarce in literature. See and feel the details of Vyry's daily life: the foods she grew and ate, the colors and textures of the quilts she made, the grotesque realities of slavery, the joys and sorrows of love. In the moments of Vyry's life - her tiny girlhood, the death of her mother, the sale of her "other-mother," her first love, the births and lives of her children, the war and resettlement, Ku Klux Klan violence, and, finally, a home of her own - we see a big picture of this part of American history from an urgently caring and essential perspective.
	The Bell Witch: An American Haunting by Brent Monahan	This extraordinary book recounts the only documented case in U.S. history when a spirit actually caused a man's death. Known throughout Tennessee as "Old Kate," the Bell Witch took up residence with John Bell's family in 1818. It was a cruel and noisy spirit, given to rapping and gnawing sounds before it found its voices. With these voices and its supernatural acts, the Bell Witch tormented the Bell family. Local schoolteacher, Richard Powell, supposedly witnessed the strange events and recorded them for his daughter in 1841. His astonishing manuscript later fell into the hands of novelist Brent Monahan, who wrote this novel. Members of the Bell family have previously provided information on this fascinating case, but this book recounts the tale with novelistic vigor and verve. It is truly chilling.