Paul Adams
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CIRCE by Madeline Miller | Conversation Starters
Madeline Miller, author of the international bestseller The Song of Achilles, comes another powerful tale Circe. Inspired by Homer's Odyssey, Madeline Miller tells the tale of the mythological witch born in the house of Helios. Circe may be the daughter of the god of the sun, but she is rejected by her kin. She did not have the look nor the voice characteristic of her
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Borley Rectory in Essex, built in 1862, should have been an ordinary Victorian clergyman's house. However, just a year after its construction, unexplained footsteps were heard within the house, and from 1900 until it burned down in 1939 numerous paranormal phenomena, including phantom coaches and shattering windows, were observed. In 1929 the house was investigated by the Daily Mail and paranormal researcher Harry Price, and it was he who called it...
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Summary of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations are a series of reflections written by the famed Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180) as a personal diary. The aim of Aurelius' text was self-improvement through Stoicism, a philosophical movement that the emperor embraced and sought to internalize...
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Summary of Daniel James Brown's The Boys in the Boat is a non-fiction account of the remarkable life story of Joe Rantz. Rantz was a determined young man who overcame personal tragedy and hardship to win a gold medal at the 1936 Olympics as a member of the US rowing team.
When Joe was four, his mother, Nellie, died of throat cancer. His father, Harry, went to Canada. He sent Joe to Pennsylvania to live with his Aunt Alma while his older brother, Fred,...
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Inspired after binge-watching Downton Abbey, a British television show about the relationship between a titled family and their servants, journalist Kate Andersen Brower decided to take a close look at the upstairs-downstairs dynamic of America's grandest home, the White House, in her book, The Residence…
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Summary of Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire examines the intricate evolutionary relationship between plant cultivation and human desire. Author Michael Pollan explores this relationship by recounting the history of four plants that have been cultivated to meet four distinct human longings…
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Summary of Giulia Enders's Gut is a thorough introduction to the most recent scientific discoveries and theories about what happens in the human body's digestive system, from ingestion to digestion. Starting with the basic structure of the system, Enders explains the function of each digestive system part from the lingual tonsils to the glycocalyx and how each relies on the others….
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Summary of James Patterson's Private Vegas deals with serial rapists, car bombings, murderous gold-diggers, a frame-up against his friend, an evil twin, and the disintegration of his love life in the fast-paced days that make up Private Vegas.
On a sunny afternoon in Los Angeles, Lori Kimball races home from her boring job, trying to break her personal best time. In a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, a Sumarian diplomat, Gozan Remari, and his...
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Private investigator, Bill Hodges, races to find another deranged killer in Finders Keepers, the second book in a projected trilogy by Stephen King. The first, Mr. Mercedes, won the 2015 Edgar Award for best mystery novel. Finder Keepers, while a strong, stand alone book, continues the themes of the first book by examining of the nature of obsession while also offering a close look at the relationship between literature and the real world.
In 1978,...
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Summary of Holly Madison's Down the Rabbit Hole is the memoir of former Hugh Hefner girlfriend and former star of The Girls Next Door, Holly Madison. By 2002, Holly was Hugh Hefner's girlfriend at the Playboy Mansion, but she felt that she had sold her soul for a piece of fame. She was miserable, even borderline suicidal, as she played the role of girlfriend to a demanding tycoon old enough to be her grandfather. Life inside the mansion turned out...
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Summary of Ann Coulter's Adios, America is a book centered around immigration in the United States, including the impact immigration has had on US history, government policies, and society in general.
Modern policies regarding immigration tends to lean in favor of the immigrant. This possibly comes from the fact that Hispanic immigrants often vote heavily in favor of Democrats, therefore Democrats have established policy that makes it easier for illegal...
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Summary of Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow is a primer on the strategies that people use to make decisions and evaluate risks, a psychological subdiscipline known as behavioral economics. The author explores the influential psychological theories that he developed in conjunction with his colleague Amos Tversky in the 1970s and beyond; his own work on subjects like regret, memories, and happiness; and the work of other researchers who have...
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Summary of Adam Fisher's Valley of Genius is an account of how a region of California became the central hub for technological innovation in the latter half of the twentieth century. Journalist and author Adam Fisher walks readers through the creation of several technology industries, using interviews from engineers, programmers, inventors, and investors to explain the cultures behind each digital revolution...
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Jean Louise Finch tries to go home again and finds tiny Maycomb, Alabama grappling with the emerging civil rights movement in the mid-1950s. Set nearly twenty years after the events in To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee's classic American novel, Go Set a Watchman looks at the earlier book's beloved characters in a different and, sometimes shocking, light. Go Set a Watchman, however, was written first, and became the groundwork from which To Kill a...
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In December of 1991, Steve Eisman was working for Oppenheimer and Co. as an analyst and became known for his knack for ignoring consensus, an analysis of a stock's future sales and earnings.
In the early 1990s, the Salomon Brothers trading floor began a whole new bond market by packaging mortgages into bonds. In this way, they began to tap the unused equity many people had in their homes, driving the interest rates of mortgages so low that even those...
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Summary of Paula Hawkins's The Girl on the Train is a psychological thriller that tells the story of three women and how their lives intersect.
Rachel Watson is an alcoholic. Rachel often drinks to excess and experiences blackouts. She was fired from her job because of her drinking. Afraid to tell Cathy, her roommate, the truth, Rachel continues to take the train from Ashbury to Euston each workday morning and back again, as if she were still employed....
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Summary of George W. Bush's 41 offers an inside look at his father, George H.W. Bush, and the family that produced the forty-first and forty-third presidents of the United States.
On his ninetieth birthday, George H.W. made a parachute jump despite serious health issues. He said it was his second greatest birthday wish, after happiness for his family. Though his family worried, he had always been excited by a new adventure. When he landed safely,...
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Summary of Erik Larson's Dead Wake is a non-fiction account of the German Unterseeboot, or U-boat, sinking of Lusitania, a British merchant vessel belonging to Cunard Line, on May 7, 1915 and its aftermath.
On the night of May 6, 1915, Captain William Thomas reassured the passengers in the first-class lounge as the ship approached the 'area of war' off the southern coast of Ireland.
The Great War, later known as World War I, had been raging in France...