Biography-Memoir – Page 16 – Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

Review: Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President

By Scott J. Pearson | March 28, 2019May 28, 2019 by Scott J. Pearson

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard My rating: 4 of 5 stars This nineteenth-century, post-Civil-War story, like almost all stories, intertwines the lives of several people. Key characters include U.S. President James Garfield, Alexander Graham Bell, Garfield’s assassin, Garfield’s chief doctor/surgeon, Bell’s wife and son, Garfield’s wife, and Vice President Chester Arthur. An assassin – clearly mentally ill, probably with bipolar disorder –…

Review: Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

By Scott J. Pearson | March 23, 2019September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin My rating: 5 of 5 stars This in-depth look into the lives of Lincoln and his closest advisors meets the hype. It tells the life histories of President Lincoln, his attorney general Bates, his treasury secretary Chase, and his secretary of state Seward. All four had a chance of being nominated as the Republican candidate in Chicago, but Lincoln secured the nod.…

Biography-Memoir History

Review: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

By Scott J. Pearson | February 28, 2019May 28, 2019 by Scott J. Pearson

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass My rating: 0 of 5 stars Obviously, this work belongs to history rather than to a shelf of recent releases. Nonetheless, it is clearly written, interesting, and provides much insight into the mind of nineteenth-century Americans in the North, in the South, and in slavery. I found Douglass’s writing abundantly lucid and to the point. It’s interesting how American in many ways represented two societies…

Biography-Memoir History

Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton

By Scott J. Pearson | December 11, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

by Tilar J. MazzeoCopyright (c) 2018 Like many, I fell in love with the protagonist of Broadway’s biggest hit in recent years Hamilton. The true protagonist of that story is not Alexander Hamilton but his wife Eliza Hamilton. Her life as one of our country’s founding mothers brings accolades that stack up well alongside her husband’s. She bore seven children. Mindful of her husband’s past and her children’s present, she helped found the country’s first…

Biography-Memoir Family Religion-Philosophy

Let Her Fly: A Father’s Journey

By Scott J. Pearson | December 9, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

by Ziauddin Yousafzai (father of Malala)Copyright (c) 2018 Malala, Ziauddin’s daughter, is an awardee of the Nobel Peace Prize for advocating for girls’ education. She paid for this cause by being shot in the face by the Taliban. Her father, living in the midst of a highly patriarchal culture, sought to lead his family in an egalitarian manner while running a school for girls in Pakistan. Malala’s story has been well-told in her best-selling book…

Biography-Memoir History Religion-Philosophy

The Life of Thomas More

By Scott J. Pearson | November 27, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

by Peter Ackroyd Copyright (c) 1998 Thomas More is one of the few beatified English lay-persons in history. He was beheaded for resisting the coming Protestant Reformation. What comes around, goes around, however; More, in the years before King Henry’s divorce of Catherine of Aragon, oversaw the exercise of the death penalty to several Protestant heretics. He stood, as Ackroyd tells it, for the old way of medieval Christendom. He was unwilling to accommodate the…

Biography-Memoir Science

Einstein: His Life and Universe

By Scott J. Pearson | November 22, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

by Walter IsaacsonCopyright (c) 2007. This book, based upon recent public releases of Einstein’s private letters, provides a more intimate portrait of Einstein than has been possible before recent years. Einstein’s prowess as an intellectual and a scholar is well-known. His closest relationships – with his sons, both of his wives, and his daughters – has not been well-known. What do we discover from this in-depth look at the man who helped set the course…

Biography-Memoir Kids

The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers

By Scott J. Pearson | November 3, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

by Maxwell KingAudiobook Fred Rogers, a.k.a. Mr Rogers, grew up the son of a rich businessman, majored in music at college, got into television in the early years of NBC, studied at seminary to become a Presbyterian minister, started children’s television at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Toronto, and extended children’s television into education with PBS. He is fondly remembered as being extraordinarily patient with children just by being himself. A generation of children –…

Biography-Memoir Religion-Philosophy

The Confession of St. Patrick

By Scott J. Pearson | October 28, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

Translated by Charles H. WrightFifth century C.E. Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was a British heathen-turned-missionary who spent his life “civilizing” or “Christianizing” the Irish. Though affiliated with the Roman church, Patrick was remarkably free of scholastic learning. As such, he represents a distinct wing of the church’s intellectual tradition. While the Western church was becoming other-worldly (and overbearing), Patrick and his Irish converts emphasized the worldly usefulness of faith. This confession was…

Biography-Memoir Humanities Religion-Philosophy

Martin Luther: The Man who Rediscovered God and Changed the World

By Scott J. Pearson | October 25, 2018 by Scott J. Pearson

by Eric MetaxasCopyright (c) 2017.AudiobookMartin Luther’s life is controversial any way you cut it. Fundamentalists (with whom Metaxas is sympathetic) like to claim Luther as one of their own because of his insistence on Scriptural primacy. (They like to call it Scriptural authority, but such concepts were not present within Luther’s writings.) Liberals like to claim him because he broke free from institutional chains to usher in the freedom which founded to modern world. Unfortunately,…