Miracle in the Andes, by Nando Parrado

Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, by Nando Parrado (with Vince Rause).  Three Rivers Press, 2006.  291 pp.  978-1-4000-9769-2.

... in which Nando and 15 other survivors struggle to survive a plane crash in the remote Andes.

This is the true story of the 1972 Andes plane crash.  Nando Parrado was a young man traveling with his rugby team from Uruguay to Chile in 1972.  Also on the charter flight were Nando's mother and younger sister, and several other friends and relatives of teammates, for a total of 44 passengers.  When the flight encountered bad weather high in the Andes, the plane crashed into the side of the mountain.  Many passengers died immediately, and the remaining survivors had to survive for several months on the bitterly cold, desolate mountainside (Parrado himself spent the first few days after the crash in a coma).  When it became clear that a rescue party was not coming for them, Nando had to lead a small group of people through the Andes on a desperate search for help.

Dying to do Letterman, by Steve Mazan

Dying to do Letterman: turning someday into today, by Steve Mazan.  HCI, 2011.  244 pp.  978-0-7573-1627-2.

... in which Steve Mazan, stand-up comedian, learns that he may only have five years to live and sets off to achieve his life-long dream of performing a comedy routine on the Late Show with David Letterman.

This review is of a digital copy provided to me by the publisher via NetGalley.

Steve Mazan's biggest dream as a child was to become a stand-up comedian.  After serving in the Navy for several years and attending college, he was able to begin to pursue a career in comedy in San Francisco.  Just after his career started to take off, and months after meeting the girl of his dreams, Mazan received a cancer diagnosis that left him with anywhere from five to fifteen years left to live.  His biggest dream had always been to someday bring his jokes to the Late Show, as David Letterman had always been one of Mazan's biggest heroes.  With a dedicated team of colleagues, friends and family, Mazan begins his push to achieve his dream.

Stolen Innocence by Elissa Wall and Lisa Pulitzer

My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs


Stolen Innocence is Elissa Wall's memoir about growing up as a member of the Fundamentalist LDS (FLDS) religion. This is the Mormonism spin-off religion that occupies Colorado City, Yearning for Zion Ranch and lots of other compounds around rural Utah, Arizona and Texas. Wall grew up in a polygamous household, completely isolated from anything but FLDS culture. Her family initially lived in Salt Lake City and attended a FLDS school run by Warren Jeffs before moving to Southern Utah. Wall was forced by Jeffs and the rest of her community to marry her much-hated first cousin, Allen Steed, when she was 14 years old.

The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

In which A.J. Jacobs documents his attempt to live by the literal rules of the bible for one year.


I am really down on religion books, so this one sat on my to-read pile for nearly a year. I finally read it based on a recommendation and I am so glad I did! It was a really nice book. I got a lot of comments and looks while reading it, and noticed that most reactions from both sides of the religion aisle (pro- and anti-, I suppose) were scornful regarding this book. Turns out, the book does an amazing job of being neutral and unbiased. Before I started reading it I assumed it would be 300 pages of mocking the weird things the bible says but this didn't turn out to be true at all.

On Hitler's Mountain, by Irmgard A. Hunt

On Hitler’s Mountain: Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood, by Irmgard A. Hunt.  Harper Perennial, 2005.  278 pp.  978-0-06-053218-5.

… in which the author describes her life in Berchtesgaden, Germany, during the years of Hitler’s regime.

When it comes to memoirs relating to WWII history, the selection seems to be largely dominated by Holocaust survivors or by writing from the Pacific side of the war.  For me, at least, it was easy to forget about the general population of Germany, since most of the attention goes to the Nazis or to the people who suffered under them.  Irmgard Hunt, the author of this memoir, was born in 1934, the year after Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany.  She was born in Berchtesgaden, a town in southeastern Germany that is infamous as being Hitler's home and his base of operations.  Irmgard was born to parents who had both suffered greatly in the difficult years following WWI.  Because of their difficulties in their youth, Irmgard's parents were both easily persuaded to vote for Hitler in 1933, and to support him in the following years.  Because of her proximity to Hitler's home, Irmgard was always aware of Hitler's presence; once, when she was a small child, she even sat on his knee when he spotted her at a parade.  As Germany eventually found itself at war with the Allies, Irmgard's happy early childhood changed.  Her father was called away to war, and was killed in France.  Irmgard goes on to describe what it was like being an everyday German during the war, during the years of rationing and air raids and increasing Nazi brutality directed at Irmgard's family and friends.

Running the Books, by Avi Steinberg

Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian, by Avi Steinberg. Doubleday, 2010. 399 pp. 978-0-385-52909-9.

... in which a disenfranchised, Orthodox Jew, recent Harvard grad finds himself the librarian at a Boston prison.

Avi Steinberg hails from a traditional Orthodox Judaism community. As an adolescent, he aspired to be a rabbi and committed himself to studying the Torah with an intensity that alarmed even his traditional parents. After graduating from high school, he defected from his community by choosing to attend Harvard rather than rabbi school. After graduating from Harvard, Steinberg found that all he had now was a senior thesis on the cultural importance of Bugs Bunny and a reputation at home for being a lapsed Jew. While his childhood friends go on to become doctors and lawyers and rabbis, Steinberg finds himself drifting and, on a whim, ends up answering a Craigslist ad for a post as a librarian at a Boston prison.

In this memoir, Steinberg depicts his life as a librarian for drug addicts, gang members and thugs, pimps, prostitutes, thieves, and various other prison-types. Through his role as prison librarian, he is both a jailer and an ally to the convicts who pass through his doors. He becomes a friend to a female drug addict who abandoned her son when he was an infant, and then ends up watching her son from afar as he is brought into the prison as an adult. He befriends and helps a convicted pimp write his memoirs, and then fights his conscience when he discovers that the pimp was trafficking unwilling, underage girls. He teaches creative writing classes, and tries to convince the male convicts that movie adaptations of Shakespeare's works are just as interesting as documentaries depicting lions tearing zebras into bloody bits.

This could easily have turned into one of those memoirs that is drowning in its own sappiness. Happily, it's not one of those memoirs. Although it has sort of a silly start where the author takes himself a bit too seriously, it eventually settles down into a very readable and touching story, without most of the cheesiness found in memoirs. It has its happy-life-lesson moments, certainly, but it also has plenty of reality check moments and moments where Steinberg is either stupid or an ass. His honesty is really what makes the book... in cases where he could save face by holding back or completely omitting a story, he instead chooses to tell the story with complete disclosure. As a Harvard graduate who'd led a fairly squeaky-clean life, it would have been easy for him to fall into the trap of unconsciously making himself seem superior to the criminals around them. Instead, Steinberg does a nice job of balancing his role as a mentor and also as a naive young adult getting his first taste of the underbelly of Boston.

Recommended reading for people with an interest in books and libraries, crime and criminal justice, psychology, memoirs, or just someone in search of a good read.

5/5 stars