The popular “Books Sandwiched In” series, sponsored by the Friends of the Tulsa City-County Libraries, keeps the pages turning as each week local bookworms share their insights on a favorite novel.
Each Monday, March 6-April 10, 12:10-12:50 p.m., enjoy hearing enlightening book reviews of today’s most compelling and relevant novels in Central Library’s Aaronson Auditorium, Fifth Street and Denver Avenue. You may bring your lunch to enjoy during the reviews or purchase food from Starbucks on Central Library’s main floor.
March 6 – The Hamilton Affair by Elizabeth Cobbs
Set against the dramatic backdrop of the American Revolution, and featuring a cast of legendary characters, The Hamilton Affair tells the sweeping, tumultuous, true story of Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler, from passionate and tender beginnings to his fateful duel on the banks of the Hudson River. Hamilton was an orphan who became one of the American Revolution’s most dashing – and improbable – heroes. Elizabeth was the wealthy, beautiful, adventurous daughter of the respectable Schuyler clan – and a pioneering advocate for women. Together, the unlikely couple braved the dangers of war, the perils of seduction, the anguish of infidelity, and the scourge of partisanship that menaced their family and the country itself. With brilliantly drawn characters and an epic scope, The Hamilton Affair tells a story of love forged in revolution and tested by the bitter strife of young America.
REVIEWER: Dr. Sloan Davis, assistant professor of English, Tulsa Community College
March 13 - Patriotic Betrayal: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Secret Campaign to Enroll American Students in the Crusade Against Communism by Karen M. Paget
In 1967, CIA director Richard Helms had, as he would later recall, “one of my darkest days” when President Lyndon Johnson told him that the muckraking magazine Ramparts was about to expose one of the Agency’s best-kept secrets: a covert project to enroll American students in the crusade against communism. Ramparts, however, had only a small part of the story. Patriotic Betrayal tells the rest of the tale, which reads like a John le Carré novel, filled with self-serving rationalizations, layers of duplicity and bureaucratic double-talk. Karen M. Paget, herself a former member of the NSA, mined hundreds of archival sources and declassified documents, and interviewed more than 150 people, to uncover precisely how the CIA turned the National Student Association into an intelligence asset during the Cold War, with students used – sometimes wittingly but usually unwittingly – as undercover agents inside America and abroad.
REVIEWER - Eldon Eisenach, retired political science professor and Friends board member
March 20 - The Architect’s Apprentice by Elif Shafak
In her latest novel, Turkey’s preeminent female writer spins an epic tale spanning nearly a century in the life of the Ottoman Empire. In 1540, 12-year-old Jahan arrives in Istanbul. As an animal tamer in the sultan’s menagerie, he looks after the exceptionally smart elephant Chota and befriends (and falls for) the sultan’s beautiful daughter, Princess Mihrimah. A palace education leads Jahan to Mimar Sinan, the empire’s chief architect, who takes Jahan under his wing as they construct some of the most magnificent buildings in history. Yet even as they build Sinan’s triumphant masterpieces, dangerous undercurrents begin to emerge, with jealousy erupting among Sinan’s four apprentices. A memorable story of artistic freedom, creativity, and the clash between science and fundamentalism, Shafak’s intricate novel brims with vibrant characters, intriguing adventure, and the lavish backdrop of the Ottoman court.
REVIEWER – Dr. Kalpana Misra, Dean, Kendall College of Arts and Sciences, University of Tulsa
March 27 – How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellenberg
The math we learn in school can seem like a dull set of rules, laid down by the ancients and not to be questioned. In How Not to Be Wrong, Jordan Ellenberg shows us how terribly limiting this view is: Math isn’t confined to abstract incidents that never occur in real life, but rather touches everything we do.
Math allows us to see the hidden structures underneath the messy and chaotic surface of our world. The book chases mathematical threads from the everyday to the cosmic, encountering baseball, Reaganomics, daring lottery schemes, Voltaire, Italian Renaissance painting, artificial languages, the development of non-Euclidean geometry, what Facebook can and can’t figure out about you, and the existence of God. Ellenberg pulls from history as well as from the latest theoretical developments to provide those not trained in math with the tools to show you how to understand the world in a deeper, more meaningful way.
REVIEWER: Vane Lucas, president, Mathnasium Learning Centers
April 3 – Kind of Kin by Rilla Askew
In Kind of Kin, by award-winning Oklahoma author Rilla Askew, when a church-going, community-loved, family man is caught hiding a barn-full of illegal immigrant workers, he is arrested and sent to prison. This shocking development sends ripples through the town – dividing neighbors, causing riffs amongst his family and spurring controversy across the state. Using new laws in Oklahoma and Alabama as inspiration, Kind of Kin is a story of self-serving lawmakers and complicated lawbreakers, Christian principle and political scapegoating. Askew’s funny and poignant novel explores what happens when upstanding people are pushed too far – and how an ad-hoc family, and ultimately, an entire town, will unite to protect its own.
REVIEWER – Rev. Mary Anne Harris, minister, writer and photographer
April 10 - Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg never asked for fame – she has only tried to make the world a little better and a little freer. But nearly a half-century into her career, something funny happened to the octogenarian: she won the internet. Across America, people who weren’t even born when Ginsburg first made her name as a feminist pioneer are tattooing themselves with her face, setting her famously searing dissents to music and making viral videos in tribute. Notorious RBG draws on intimate access to Ginsburg’s family members, close friends, colleagues, and clerks, as well an interview with the Justice herself. A hybrid of reported narrative, annotated dissents, rare archival photos and documents, and illustrations, the book tells a never-before-told story of an unusual and transformative woman who transcends generational divides. Ginsburg stands as a testament to how far we can come with a little chutzpah.
REVIEWER – Catherine Gatchell, retired attorney and Friends board member
For more information on Books Sandwiched In, call the AskUs Hotline, 918-549-7323, or visit the library’s website, www.tulsalibrary.org.
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