Epoch Booklist: Recommended Reading for Nov. 15–21

Epoch Booklist: Recommended Reading for Nov. 15–21
Dustin Bass
Jeff Minick
Barbara Danza
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This week, we feature a CEO’s practical guide on restoring order to one’s life and a fascinating chronicle of two immigrant brothers’ contributions to America’s film industry.

Nonfiction

By Conor Gallagher

Here’s an unusual approach for managing work, marriage, and children in our frantic age. CEO Conor Gallagher applies business principles learned from years of reading and experience to family dynamics and organization. To six general areas, like vision, systems, and metrics, he brings the successful tools of workplace management, including dozens of charts and suggestions to make life more productive and enjoyable. His expertise also derives from lessons learned as the father of 16 children.

Tan Books, 2024, 256 pages

Mystery

By S.J. Rozan

Lydia Chin and Bill Smith are private investigators in New York City, partners professionally and, recently, personally. Smith is a Southerner, who migrated to New York. Chin is a city native, who grew up in New York’s Chinatown. It is the 15th novel of the two—this one narrated by Smith. He is recruited by a former flame, now chief of staff to New York City’s first female mayor, to find the mayor’s runaway 15-year-old son. With Chin’s help, he conducts his search, uncovering a web of corruption.

Pegasus Crime, 2023,‎ 288 pages

Film History

By Michael Benson and Craig Singer

Nicholas and Joseph Schenck came to the United States as children in the late 19th century, escaping Czarist Russian antisemitism. They went from being pharmacists to film pioneers, becoming the two most powerful men in Hollywood. “Moguls” tells their story and that of the film industry in the first half of the 20th century. It presents a wild and wonderful story about the movie industry’s origins, its scandals, eccentricities, and glamour, highlighting the colorful characters populating it.

Citadel, 2024, 304 pages

Military History

Edited by Robert Cowley

Cowley accomplished a great task by assembling some of the most piercing and thoughtful perspectives on the varying moments and outcomes of  World War I. It was, in many ways, the turning point for what the world is today and has been for the past century. This book presents 30 essays from the likes of military historians Sir Michael Howard, John Keegan, Ronald H. Spector, and Cowley himself. Covering the European trenches to the entrance of the Americans to the fall of the Ottomans, it is a worthy read.

Random House, 2004, 528 pages

Classics

By Anne Bradstreet

With Thanksgiving almost here, now is a good time to read this 17th-century Puritan and America’s first poet. She wrote verse about her husband, children, her home, her faith, and even an elegy to Queen Elizabeth I. This slim collection includes the well-known poems “The Author to Her Book” and “The Flesh and the Spirit.” Other poems speak to her tragedies, such as her house catching fire and the death of a 3-year-old grandchild. It is verse that reaches across time and touches our hearts.

Dover Publications, 2011, 80 pages

For Kids

By Wende Devlin and Harry Devlin

Maggie and her grandmother live on a cranberry bog in New England. Grandmother has prepared her famous cranberry bread for the Thanksgiving feast and has carefully hidden the recipe. They each invite “someone poor or lonely” to dinner each year, but this year’s guests bring unexpected excitement. This charming story adds delight to holiday reading.

Purple House Inc, 2012, 32 pages
What arts and culture topics would you like us to cover? Please email ideas or feedback to [email protected]
Dustin Bass is an author and co-host of The Sons of History podcast. He also writes two weekly series for The Epoch Times: Profiles in History and This Week in History.