Just as I Am
Author: Cicely Tyson
Publisher: Harper Collins
Famous American actress Cicely Tyson launched her memoir recently as Just as I Am. For more than 60 years, Cicely Tyson was revered for her acting in American theatre and film. Also a lecturer and activist, Cicely Tyson’s story is one of authenticity, known and understood by any reader to pick up her book. It’s a memoir of a full life, a timely and timeless story of the perseverance and triumph of Black women. Cicely is reflective and open, transferring her charisma to the page as readers follow her through great moments of her life, published just two days before her death at 96 years old.
Excerpt from the memoir
“Just as I Am is my truth. It is me, plain and unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set aside. In these pages, I am indeed Cicely, the actress who has been blessed to grace the stage and screen for six decades. Yet I am also the church girl who once rarely spoke a word. I am the teenager who sought solace in the verses of the old hymn for which this book is named. I am a daughter and a mother, a sister and a friend. I am an observer of human nature and the dreamer of audacious dreams. I am a woman who has hurt as immeasurably as I have loved, a child of God divinely guided by his hand. And here in my ninth decade, I am a woman who, at long last, has something meaningful to say”.
It’s hard to think of a better description of this book; reading it feels as if you’re sitting in Tyson’s regal presence, hearing her tell stories about her life as a Black woman in America; an Emmy- and Tony Award-winning actor; a daughter, a mother, a wife. By its end, and long before that, you’re in awe — someone truly remarkable has unveiled herself to you.
The Sum of Us:
What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together
Author: Heather McGhee
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Heather McGhee is an American political commentator and strategist with an economic specialty who noticed racism as a common root problem to economic crises. Her book details her personal journey to uncover what she calls the “Solidarity Dividend”: Gains that occur when people come together to accomplish what we can’t do on our own. Heather McGhee uses stories from across America to demonstrate how white supremacy’s collateral damage includes white people themselves and outlines her own message for a new future.
Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy--and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a common root problem: racism. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of colour. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out?
McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm--the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she meets white people who confide in her about losing their homes, their dreams, and their shot at better jobs to the toxic mix of American racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country--from parks and pools to functioning schools--have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world’s advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare.
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing and the Future of the Human Race
Author: Walter Isaacson
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Best selling author Walter Isaacson has established himself as the biographer of creativity, innovation, and genius. Einstein was the genius of the revolution in physics, and Steve Jobs was the genius of the revolution in digital technology. We are now on the cusp of a third revolution in science, a revolution in biochemistry that is capable of curing diseases, fending off viruses, and improving the human species itself.
The genius at the center of his newest book, The Code Breaker is a biography of American biochemist Jennifer Doudna (pronounced DOWD-nuh), who is considered one of the prime inventors of CRISPR, a system that can edit DNA.
The structure of DNA was the 20th century discovery that would have the most effect on the 21st. But at first its impact was somewhat underwhelming. Beginning in 2006, Jennifer Doudna helped change that. Her studies focused not on DNA, a field dominated by men, but on what seemed more of a backwater in biochemistry: figuring out the shapes and structure of RNA, a closely related molecule that enables the genetic instructions coded in DNA to express themselves by directing the creation of protein for new cells.
The Code Breaker tells Jennifer Doudna’s story, a thrilling scientific tale that involves the most profound wonders of nature, from the origins of life to the future of our species and carries the urgency of meeting the crisis we face today. As Isaacson writes, “the development of CRISPR and the race to fight coronaviruses will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution: a life-science revolution. Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study the code of life”.
The Rose Code
Author: Kate Quinn
Publisher: Harper Collins
The New York Times and USA Today best selling author of The Huntress and The Alice Network returns with another heart-stopping World War II story of three female code breakers at Bletchley Park and the spy they must root out after the war is over.
In 1940, World War II engulfed Europe, and the three women from England volunteered to train as code breakers while Britain prepared to join the fight against Germany. Osla, Mab and Beth each have their own undeniable assets to code breaking. Seven years later, the three women are sworn enemies, torn apart by the pressures of secrecy and reunited over a mysterious letter.
This is the story of Osla, Mab and Beth, three women who end up at Bletchley Park during World War II — three women brought together by mere chance, when Osla and Mab were assigned a living space at Beth’s parents’ house during the war. They are three incredibly different women; Osla is a debutante, dating Prince Phillip (don’t worry, it’s before Lillibet); Mab is a self-made woman with a secret history; and Beth is a quiet brilliant mind who thrives as a cryptologist. There’s intrigue and tragedy and war and spies — but there’s also romance and friendship and something wholly human about the story Kate Quinn tells.
The book opens with a mysterious note from a mental institution, and we get to go along with Osla and Mab as they try to figure just exactly what is going on. In the process, we live through the full war with these three women, the highs and lows they experienced and the important work they did to save…all of us.
It is hard, and it is ambitious, and it is uplifting, and it is brilliantly written, and it is tremendous. And it is one of the best works of World War II fiction.