In "Who is Hillary Clinton? Two Decades of Answers From the Left," Katha Pollitt has compiled over 38 articles on Clinton published in The Nation from 1993 to 2015. Reading these articles, and seeing the rapidly shifting approach to gender issues during those years, is very much like watching people in old photographs move in a 19th century flip book. Each photo has a static story, but when you flip hundreds rapidly, the story evolves.
It seems impossible from our vantage point in 2016 to believe that in 1993, the media fixated on whether Clinton should be a stay at home wife and mother, whether she was "overbearing," and whether she was a master (read evil) manipulator. Ironically, while Clinton no longer has to justify her career in politics, she is still insultingly labeled as a master manipulator--except that in 2016 her accusers scream that she is manipulating world leaders, or history or party heads, and in 1993, they screamed she was manipulating her husband.
Pollitt has created an important book that will be a useful reference book for decades to come. Ironically, in the short time between its completion and publication, America's perception of gender issues changed further. While Clinton's detractors still may attack her as a female who doesn't know her "place," thinking men and women have become increasingly gender-blind when it comes to her leadership abilities. The fact that she could become the U.S.'s first female president is an added bonus.
(In return for an honest review, I received a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley.)
Paperback: 388 pages
Publisher: I.B.Tauris (February 12, 2016)
Language: English
"Echo," the sixth Kate Redman novel, catapults author Celina Grace into the same realm as Margaret Maron, and Deborah Crombie. In Echo, the slight bumps and snags of Grace's earlier portrayals of Redman are gone. Redman's voice is now clearly heard. She is a tough police officer with a strong moral compass, a struggling, conflicted daughter, and a single woman trying to combine career and relationships.
Marc Shapiro sets out in this biography of Donald Trump not to just regurgitate the well known, but, instead, to present "the moments in his life, good and bad, large and small, that combined to make Donald Trump something special in a whole lot of different worlds and, currently have made him a legitimate candidate for one of the biggest jobs on the planet…President of the United States." Even so, there is not much in this biography that has not already been written about in prior Trump biographies or autobiographies. We know, for example, about Spy Magazine's 1988 article on Trump where it described Trump “as a short fingered vulgarian. A bombastic, self-aggrandizing un-self-aware bully with a curious relationship with the truth.” We also know about Trump's multiple marriages and affairs, his business successes and failures, as well as his numerous threats of lawsuits and his famous line: "If you hit me, I will hit you back 100 times harder.” 
Lindsay Jayne Ashford, takes us back to 1928, when thirty-eight year old Agatha Christie traveled under a pseudonym to Mesopotamia aboard the Orient Express. For the first time in her life, Christie "was traveling abroad on her own. Everything she would do in the next two months would be entirely of her own choosing. She would find out if she could do it. If she could stand being alone," and if she could finally banish the ghost of her ex-husband who had betrayed her in every possible way.
Writing a book of quotes takes courage because the line between inspired and hackneyed is very thin. For the most part, Cheryl Strayed's "Brave Enough" manages not to cross that line. Her quotes are intended to comfort the bereaved and broken-hearted, keep the ambitious focused, and help the lost find their way home. But why write a book about quotes? According to Strayed, quotes "tell us we’re not alone. Their existence is proof that others have questioned, grappled with, and come to know the same truths we question and grapple with, too." They are powerful because "Quotes, at their core, almost always shout 'Yes!'"
"Victoria Crossing" is a well researched, beautifully written, work of historical fiction that transports us to New York City in the decade before the Civil War. Teeming with immigrants crammed into decaying tenements, New York at that time was a place where penniless hard workers could become prosperous. 
You are five years old and your parents and sister love you and spoil you. You love going to school and playing with your friends. Your mother cooks your favorite foods and your father creates toys for you and your friends.
Eunsun Kim is not even thirty years old, but:
I have read many books written by North Korean refugees or journalists visiting North Korea under cover or journalists captured and held by North Korea. Each book had something unique to offer, and each was an important book. "My Holiday in North Korea," however, may be the most unique of the unique because Wendy Simmons brings such a love of people and joyousness to this story about her short visit to North Korea. Throughout the book, we are treated to the best and worst of North Korea: the empty, "new," Women's Maternity Hospital filled with antiquated technology; the barely edible food that was luxurious under the standard of living that most North Koreans endure; the wedding where the bride did not welcome a western tourist; the lack of stores and traffic in Pyongyang; the multiple, "spontaneous" encounters with students in classrooms, factory workers and others- all staged and pre-choreographed; and the two minders and driver who were with Ms. Simmons every waking minute.
Yeonmi Park is a human rights activist who escaped, at the age of 13, from North Korea to China in order to survive. A victim of the Kim Dynasty's famine, Park was trafficked in China, along with her mother. Her memoir, "In Order to Live," pulls no punches. She was born at a time when the North Korean government was losing its subsidies from Russia as communism collapsed. While her family lived well for a time due to her parents black market trading, eventually that ended when her father was thrown in a labor camp. His health was completely broken there, and he was unable to care for his family when he managed to get out early.
Every "Dead-End Job" mystery by Elaine Viets is fabulous. In each novel, protagonist, former corporate executive, Helen Hawthorn, works at a different job. The jobs, in a hair salon, bridal shop, dog grooming business and other businesses, are described as dead-end only because Helen becomes involved in murder investigations in each job. What Viets gets right every time is the warmth and honesty many of Helen's co-workers (except for the killers) bring to the job and to their friendships with Helen. In "Board Stiff," Viets brings to life the waitress who has graduated from the school of hard knocks, and the board-rental business owner who is under attack. Viets also brings back at least one tough and likeable character from prior books.
This book was personal for Elaine Viets. That became clear shortly after I started reading it. Having read most of her other books, the grittiness, the despair, and the pain of the protagonist in "Brain Storm" seemed out of place in a Viets novel. Yet, these elements also make it one of her best books to-date.