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REBEL

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In a stark memoir related in shocking detail to Canadian journalist and human rights activist Armstrong, Mohammed recounts growing up under Saudi Arabia’s repressive male guardianship system in which “legally, a woman is a nullity.” Raised in an elite Sunni family, she was taught the severely puritanical Wahhabi version of Islam, “a strict, harsh, unforgiving and repressive doctrine driven by coercion and fear.” When she was 7, her mother warned her she must always be quiet, submissive, and pious; from … Read the rest

RUN, ROSE, RUN

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“Underneath that sweet, doll-faced exterior, there was something fierce and furious about AnnieLee Keyes. Some dark pain powered those pipes; Ruthanna was sure of it.” Like Bill Clinton before her, Parton has hooked up with Patterson to channel the details of her profession into a thriller framework—and in this case, to provide an album of songs purportedly written by the three main characters to be released at the same time. When we meet AnnieLee, she is on the run, hitchhiking … Read the rest

GOD$ PONZI

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Gregory Portnoy and Joseph Leege, who have been best friends since childhood, attend MIT in the late 1980s. There, they work together on a highly profitable video game, one of the first split-screen games ever to be played over a modem. With a small group of computer mastermind friends, they start doing work for businesses focusing on internet security and efficiency as well as trading stocks on the internet. But as the best friends rise to the strata of up-and-coming … Read the rest

BURNING QUESTIONS

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Atwood’s third collection of essays, reviews, speeches, and book introductions covers work from 2004 to 2021, during which time she cemented her place as a literary legend. Her 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, became an established classic, a hit TV series, and, as the Trump years neared and then arrived, troublingly prescient. In multiple essays, Atwood discusses that novel’s inspiration, creation, and influence—and how she came to write its 2019 sequel, The Testaments. In the context of that … Read the rest

BEER

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The first evidence of beer dates from about 11,000 B.C.E., with pottery in a cave in Israel containing residue of a drink made from fermented grains. In his latest book, Arthur, a professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida, uses the development of beer to recount the story of civilization. Beer appears in nearly all ancient cultures, and the author enthusiastically ranges across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Recent research shows that beer production was as much … Read the rest

GEODYSSEUS

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The CIA doesn’t know what to make of the old wreckage of a domed container, possibly a cargo pod. Someone unearthed it near the Nevada Test Site, making communist-hating America fear the Russians have been up to no good. Answers may lie with a metal disk found inside the container and with four sets of coordinates marking areas surrounding the wreckage. Dr. Frank Sartori of the Atomic Energy Commission scours Western desert landscapes for each location. What he discovers sparks … Read the rest