Gary Marvin Davison, Books Read During Summer 2024

Kamala Harris, The Truths We Hold:  An American Journey (New York:  Penguin/Random House, 2019).

Second reading, the first having been in 2020 (Harris was my original preferred candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary that year).

 

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Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Garden City, New York:  Dover Publications, 1994;  originally published by C. L., Webster & Co., 1885).

 

Reread (have read this one many times over the years) twice in preparation to read the Everett riff on Huckleberry from the perspective of the slave, Jim.

 

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Percival Everett, James (New York, Doubleday, 2019)

 

Reread twice in the interest of comparing fairly Everett’s work with Huckleberry in terms of literary merit.

 

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Liz Sonneborn, Amazing Native American History (New York:  John Wiley & Sons, 1999).

 

George Ochoa, Amazing Hispanic American History (New York:  Jossey Bass/John Wiley & Sons, 1998).

 

Sue Heinemann, Amazing Women in American History (New York:  John Wiley & Sons, 1998).

I often reread these works for concise historical accounts, on their own merits and as reminders of key events and people covered in more scholarly works.

 

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Anton Treuer, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask (St. Paul, Minnesota:  Minnesota Historical Society Press York: 1999).

 

This is the latest book from prolific Bemidji State University of Minnesota scholar Treuer, many of whose other works I have read.

 

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David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon:  The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (New York:  Vintage/Random House, 2017)

 

Gripping account of land-grab murders of Osage people near Tulsa, Oklahoma, selectively and belatedly investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the early years of J. Edgar Hoover’s tenure at the agency.  

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Martin Amis, The Zone of Interest (New York:  Vintage/Random House, 2022)

 

A fictionalized account of Rudolf Hesse’s leadership and personal life at Auschwitz, with two other key characters in the presences of a coopted Jewish captive and a functionary who endeavored to sabotage Nazi efforts at Auschwitz and elsewhere.

 

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William Shakespeare, Hamlet (New York;  Fall River Press, 2012; originally published in 1603)

 

William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (New York;  Fall River Press, 2012; originally published in 1600)

 

I reread these classics in anticipation of attending performances at this summer’s Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona.