Previously Read Books
May 2025
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
The book story starts in Chicken Hill, a small town in Pennsylvania, where Black, Jewish, and European immigrants, rich and poor, old and young, collide - defending, fighting, entertaining, feeding, and sheltering one another.
This cacophonous melody of characters with all of their schemes and dreams reveal how home is where you make it - and how all of these “outsiders” are anything but.
With spunky detail, McBride masterfully makes you feel like you’re part of the neighborhood, that these are your neighbors, your friends, and enemies, drawing you in, so that you, too, know the secrets they keep, the grudges they hold, and kindness they offer.
Chock full of the social, racial, and ethnic politics of a small town.
March 2025
The Small and the Mighty by Sharon McMahon
In The Small and the Mighty, Sharon McMahon proves that the most remarkable Americans are often ordinary people who didn’t make it into the textbooks. Not the presidents, but the telephone operators. Not the aristocrats, but the schoolteachers. Through meticulous research, she discovers history’s unsung characters and brings their rich, riveting stories to light for the first time.
You’ll meet a woman astride a white horse riding down Pennsylvania Ave, a young boy detained at a Japanese incarceration camp, a formerly enslaved woman on a mission to reunite with her daughter, a poet on a train, and a teacher who learns to work with her enemies. More than one thing is bombed, and multiple people surprisingly become rich. Some rich with money, and some wealthy with things that matter more.
This is a book about what really made America – and Americans – great. McMahon’s cast of improbable champions will become familiar friends, lighting the path we journey in our quest to make the world more just, peaceful, good, and free.