In his book A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828) Washington Irving gave birth to the myth that people during Columbus’ time thought the Earth was flat and Columbus set out to prove them wrong. (Inventing the Flat Earth by Jeffrey Russell) In the 1490s people argues about the size of the Earth, not its shape, in fact in 1492, when Columbus set sail, the first globes were produces.

This is one of those rare books which are intelligent, informative and entreating. Mr. Sidransky is an excellent author and I’m looking forward to reading more of his work.

Herman Melville (1 August, 1819 – 28 September, 1891) was an American writer and poet, and writer of short stories. Melville is best known for his whaling novel Moby-Dick , published in 1851.

Midwife Elspeth Howell returns to her home after spending a few months away working. Elspeth can’t wait to get back; she has gifts for each of her five children and her husband.

What Elspeth finds, however, is a bloodbath. Her husband and children are murdered and one son, 12 year old Caleb, is missing. But Caleb is hiding and is so startled that he shoots his mother.

Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming is the second novel featuring Secret Service agent James Bond 007. The book was first published in 1954 and takes place during the cold war.

Jour­nal­ist McKenna Wright is writ­ing a fluff piece when she thinks she saw an old friend who dis­ap­peared ten years ago with­out a trace. Using her con­nec­tions as a for­mer pros­e­cu­tor and her investigator’s instincts, McKenna pur­sues the mat­ter in a search across New York City and finds long buried, dark secrets of those she loves the most.

Tomomi “But­ter­fly” Ishikawa com­mit­ted sui­cide but left her best friend, Ben­jamin Con­sta­ble, a trail of clues which lead him from Paris to New York and back – the cities she called “home”. Ben is search­ing for jour­nals and notes left specif­i­cally for him.

Adirondack Mendel’s Aufruf: Welcome to Chelm’s Pond by Sandor Schuman is a fictional book, taking place in upstate New York which reprises some of the old Jewish tales of the fools of Chelm.

Article first published as Book Review: Pain, Parties, Work by Elizabeth Winder on Blogcritics. About: Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953 by Elizabeth Winder is a non-fiction book about time mentioned in the title. The book paints a portrait of Ms. Plath during a stressful, eventful and personal emotional summer of her life. The pub­lisher is giv­ing away one copy of this book –to enter fill out the Raf­fle­copt­ter form at the end of the post. 288 pages Publisher: Harper Language: English ISBN-10: 0062085492 My rating for Pain, Parties, Work – 4 Buy this book in paper or electronic format Thoughts: Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953 by Elizabeth Winder (@elizawinder) is the kind of book which seems to be gaining popularity, a short non-fiction book about a specified time-frame of a person. These books seem to replace the all encompassing biographies. At this day and age where a somewhat descent, encompassing biography on almost every important, not-so-important and, let’s face(book) it, not-important-at-all people is at one’s fingertips 24/7 these type of short biographical portraits are flourishing. I can certainly understand why, when I ran a restrictive search for “Sylvia Plath biography” on…

The start of the buildup of the Gulf War (1990) is where the book takes off to relevancy not only when published, but today also since we are still facing some of those issues, as well as many others. General Schwarzkopf was assigned to Central Command not long before Iraq invaded Kuwait, in this book the General states that he prepared his troops for war in the Middle East since, to his estimation, a war in Europe is unlikely. As Bush 41 made it clear that Iraqi aggression will not go unnoticed, General Schwarzkopf realized that he might be at the center of fight.