Capitol Book & Podcast Club – January 2020
We’ve caught up with the times and have added in Podcast suggestions to our Capitol Book & Podcast Club – enjoy!
Anna Torres, CHM Accounting Specialist is listening to…
In a rugged corner of West Texas, billionaire wildcatters and roughnecks are fueling an oil boom so big it’s reshaping our climate, our economy, and our geopolitics.
This modern-day gold rush has sent both big oil companies and scrappy start-ups scrambling to secure a piece of the action. Texas Monthly’s Christian Wallace follows characters along every rung of the oil field ladder, from the executive cutting billion-dollar deals to the itinerant pipeline worker risking life and limb, and from the traveling exotic dancer following the trail of money to those who worry that our planet is on a path to destruction. Meet the people cashing in and those just trying to get by as the world around them is turned upside down.
Boomtown is a 10-part podcast series, with new episodes publishing every Tuesday starting December 10, 2019.
Nadia Cisneros, CHM Billing Director is listening to…
The Sword and Scale true-crime podcast is an immersive audio experience covering the dark side of humanity and human nature. Our stories delve into the worst of the worst and include murder, rape, dismemberment and cannibalism. No crime is too brutal and no victim is too pure. The worst monsters are real.
Nadia is also reading…
Taking on prominent thinkers who argue that music is nothing more than an evolutionary accident, Levitin poses that music is fundamental to our species, perhaps even more so than language. Drawing on the latest research and on musical examples ranging from Mozart to Duke Ellington to Van Halen, he reveals:
• How composers produce some of the most pleasurable effects of listening to music by exploiting the way our brains make sense of the world
• Why we are so emotionally attached to the music we listened to as teenagers, whether it was Fleetwood Mac, U2, or Dr. Dre
• That practice, rather than talent, is the driving force behind musical expertise
• How those insidious little jingles (called earworms) get stuck in our head
Kara Cox, CHM Executive Director of Operations is reading…
Confronting Nazi evil is the subject of the latest installment in the mega-bestselling Killing series
As the true horrors of the Third Reich began to be exposed immediately after World War II, the Nazi war criminals who committed genocide went on the run. A few were swiftly caught, including the notorious SS leader, Heinrich Himmler. Others, however, evaded capture through a sophisticated Nazi organization designed to hide them. Among those war criminals were Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death” who performed hideous medical experiments at Auschwitz; Martin Bormann, Hitler’s brutal personal secretary; Klaus Barbie, the cruel “Butcher of Lyon”; and perhaps the most awful Nazi of all: Adolf Eichmann.
Killing the SS is the epic saga of the espionage and daring waged by self-styled “Nazi hunters.” This determined and disparate group included a French husband and wife team, an American lawyer who served in the army on D-Day, a German prosecutor who had signed an oath to the Nazi Party, Israeli Mossad agents, and a death camp survivor. Over decades, these men and women scoured the world, tracking down the SS fugitives and bringing them to justice, which often meant death.
Written in the fast-paced style of the Killing series, Killing the SS will educate and stun the reader.
The final chapter is truly shocking.
DeDe Payne, CHM Billing Coordinator is reading…
A revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties
In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming.
And it’s that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope―the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman―through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.
Machado’s dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.
Erin DeMoss, CHM Events & Advertising Coordinator is reading…
A year-long journey to more mindful living―day-by-day.
There’s an easier path to living a more peaceful and present life. This mindfulness journal provides effective ways to make practicing mindfulness part of your everyday routine so you can reduce negativity and grow your sense of calm.
This mindfulness journal is broken out into themed weeks, each with 7 unique prompts that allow you to deepen your practice. Discover how to live in the moment as you reflect on being conscious of your body, connecting with nature, or even cleaning your home. A year of more tranquility is at hand―why not begin today?
This year-long mindfulness journal includes:
- Weekly themes―Focus on a different aspect of mindfulness each week―centering your body, exploring your mind, taking care of yourself, and appreciating the good things.
- Daily writing―Stay engaged all year long with a mindfulness journal that has 364 prompts, ranging from examining the way you breathe to photographing the world around you.
- Mindfulness made easy―This mindfulness journal is filled with quick and simple exercises that help you live moment to moment.
Take the path to inner peace one day at a time with this engaging mindfulness journal.
Maggie Martinez, CHM Billing Coordinator is reading…
The spellbinding story of Chris McCandless, who gave away his savings, hitchhiked to Alaska, walked into the wilderness alone, and starved to death in 1992, fascinated not just New York Times bestselling author Jon Krakauer, but also the rest of the nation. Krakauer’s book, Into the Wild, became an international bestseller, translated into thirty-one languages, and Sean Penn’s inspirational film by the same name further skyrocketed Chris McCandless to global fame. But the real story of Chris’s life and his journey has not yet been told – until now. The missing pieces are finally revealed in The Wild Truth, written by Carine McCandless, Chris’s beloved and trusted sister. Featured in both the book and film, Carine has wrestled for more than twenty years with the legacy of her brother’s journey to self-discovery, and now tells her own story while filling in the blanks of his. Carine was Chris’s best friend, the person with whom he had the closest bond, and who witnessed firsthand the dysfunctional and violent family dynamic that made Chris willing to embrace the harsh wilderness of Alaska. Growing up in the same troubled household, Carine speaks candidly about the deeper reality of life in the McCandless family. In the many years since the tragedy of Chris’s death, Carine has searched for some kind of redemption. In this touching and deeply personal memoir, she reveals how she has learned that real redemption can only come from speaking the truth.
Lisa Welter, RN, CHH SA Administrator is listening to…
For the past two years, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ronan Farrow has been following a trail of clues from his investigation of Harvey Weinstein to other blockbuster stories about the systems that protect powerful men accused of terrible crimes in Hollywood, Washington, and beyond. But he didn’t bring that information to light on his own. A compelling cast of sources—from brave whistleblowers to shadowy undercover operatives—decided the fate of these investigations, sometimes risking everything in the process. The Catch and Kill Podcast brings you their stories, in their own words, for the first time.