Hell’s Half-Acre: The Untold Story of the Benders, a Serial Killer Family on the American FrontierSusan JonusasNon-fiction, hardback A deep look into the mysterious Bender family, whose claim to fame involved murdering at least 11 people and burying them in their Kansas homestead orchard. Many sensational reports have been written about the “bloody Benders” and…
Tag: history
What I read: January 2023
A History of the Wife Marilyn YalomNon-fiction, paperback A look at what it meant to be a wife from ancient times to modern day. I had an inkling of how this was going to go because I started it just as I finished The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World….
Quickie Reviews: A Little of Everything
Less than two months into the year and I’ve already read so many interesting things! Here’s the highlights. The Bone Clocks This is our February book club read, and boy was it a doozy. We’ve read one of David Mitchell’s other books, Cloud Atlas, and I’m pumped to discuss it in a few days. Mitchell’s…
Review: The Tin Ticket
Teenagers Agnes and Janet stole clothing; Bridget stole milk; Ludlow pawned her employer’s spoons. In the early 1800s in Britain the sentence was not jail time, but transport. These women — and thousands of others like them — were convicted by courts eager to populate Van Diemen’s Land (later Tasmania). Packed into ships like cattle,…
Review: Lives in Ruins
Most people know a little bit about archeology, or have heard about Machu Picchu, Pompeii, and the pyramids. But what do we know about the people who discovered these places, or any of the thousands of other archeological places of interest around the globe? What makes them obsessed with digging through the dirt an inch…