Each month my goal is to read a minimum of five books on a variety of topics from different genres. Here are the books I read in August 2024. If you click on the title, you’ll go to the longer post on MORE TO COME. Enjoy.

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Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice (2015) by Bill Browder is the story of an unlikely hero who took on the oligarchs and political leaders of post-Soviet Russia. Once the largest foreign investor in Russia, Browder was expelled from the country in 2005 as a threat to national security after exposing corruption in business and government. His Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, wasn’t so lucky after he uncovered $230 million in stolen taxes. Magnitsky ended up in jail where he was tortured and killed. His death changed the direction of Browder’s life, a transformation told in this thriller-like account.

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G.E. Kidder Smith Builds: The Travel of Architectural Photography (2022) by Angelo Maggi (Foreword by Michelangelo Sabatino) is a beautifully illustrated and long overdue assessment of the work of George Everard Kidder Smith (1913–1997), a “multidimensional figure within the wide-ranging field of North American architectural professionals in the second half of the twentieth century.” Trained as an architect, Kidder Smith chose not to practice within the “conventional strictures of an architecture office.” Instead, he designed, researched, wrote, and photographed a remarkably diverse collection of books focused on architecture and the built environment. This abundantly illustrated overview of Kidder Smith’s work is a book of wonder, joy, and some sadness. Kidder Smith’s photos and books capture a transformational era in world history. G.E. Kidder Smith Builds is, simply, a book to savor.

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A Thousand Mornings (2012) by Mary Oliver is a slim book of poetry that covers a lifetime of daily experience. Oliver, who writes in a style that has been described as a “pathway of invitation,” returns to the land around her Provincetown, Massachusetts home—the marshland and coastline—to observe and be amazed by the everyday. As her publisher notes, Oliver is open to the teachings contained in the smallest of moments and explores with startling clarity, humor, and kindness the mysteries of our daily experience.

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Why The Museum Matters (2022) by Daniel H. Weiss makes the case that art museums have been vital in the growth and understanding of our culture and continue to have a critical role in our communities today. A short history begins in the ancient worlds of Greece and Rome, touches on how churches were often the museums of the Middle Ages, considers the European “Grand Tour” as a precursor to both collecting and curating practices, and looks at the way Enlightenment ideals of “shaping ideas, advancing learning, fostering community, and providing spaces of beauty and permanence” were key to the development of the modern art museum. He understands that the future of art museums is far from secure, but this is generally an optimistic look at a future “where the museum will serve a greater public while continuing to be a steward of culture and a place of discovery, discourse, inspiration, and pleasure.”

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The CIA: An Imperial History (2024) by Hugh Wilford sheds important and eye-opening light on an agency shrouded in secrecy and cloaked in conspiracy theories. With memorable characters, eloquent prose, and a well-researched story, Wilford’s new work will appeal to both scholar and the general public. This is a thoughtful look at a little-understood aspect of the CIA’s history—its ties to European empires and America’s own imperial instincts. At a time when we are debating the importance and very future of democracy, this book is timely, informative, at-times deeply troubling, and an altogether vital work about the often unintended and disastrous effects of unaccountable power.

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What’s on the nightstand for September (subject to change at the whims of the reader)

• The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk
• Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World by Sara C. Bronin
• The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie
• The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss
• The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton

Keep reading!

More to come…

DJB

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NOTE: Click to see the books I read in July of 2024 and to see the books I read in 2023. Also check out Ten tips for reading five books a month.

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Photo of library shelves from Unsplash.