Nina Burleigh

This is a slow burner. The biggest potential surprise in the book: is this a true icon? is answered on the first page and, it is only in the final chapter and the epilogue that one gets the point.

This is a pre-cursor to the Trump years. It is all about people with too much invested in the truth of the icon for fact to get in the way. With a religious icon, this does not simply include the purchaser and the vendor but, all the religious zealots for whom a solid item confirming the god's existence becomes more important than the faith based belief previously extolled.… (más)

I admit it. Until I read this book, I thought this girl was guilty. After reading this a an a full supporter of Amanda Knox. For one reason, Italy was set against her and she was arraigned again (and found guilty again) even though her appeal overturned the first ruling. This is about being in the wrong place at the wrong time--namely Italy during a murder case. It is well written, thoroughly researched, and sets the tone of what Amanda Knox is really like--an awkward college girl with social mishaps. She reminds me of myself. At times I felt the author was showing off some of the depths she dug to give us the but I thought it was a good perspective of the facts. Amanda was unjustly accused and found guilty of a crime she obviously didn't commit.

I just don't know how she was found guilty again this case again. I am not sure how she was sentenced AGAIN. I eventually someday she will be free before her max sentence.… (más)

ah... 2 Stars......maybe 3 Stars (if you like lots of information & politics)

This reads like a long and boring (as in TMI) novel. The crux is an upper-crust, privileged, gal meets JFK while at Prep-School & on Vassar weekends. They meet up again after she's just gotten married at the opening of a U.N. Convention in San Francisco....and they continue to meet socially & politically on & off through the years. Her husband turns out to be a strong willed, opinionated sod high within the u.s. government (CIA), whom she divorces.....and so on & so forth.

She continues her life in the upper crust social & political circles, where she becomes particularly close friends w/ the President, JFK......

So let's see, one evening she goes for her evening walk, is found murdered on the tow path, and the police see some hapless black man who had been fishing and try to railroad him!

I didn't need to read all the intimate details of her family life, I just wanted to know the juicy bits and I got very fed up trying to skim the pages in order to get to the actual story that the title suggests.

Booooooooooooooring!
… (más)

Let's get this out of the way first: they still don't have any idea what prompted James Smithson to leave money in his will to found the Smithsonian Institution in America, a country he'd never visited. So don't come to this expecting any answers on that front. But it's still a decent introduction to the 18th century scientific community in Europe, and the story of the actual founding of the Smithsonian (once people stopped bickering over what to do with the money) is quite good. It stops after that, though - no word on the opening of additional museums or the Zoo. Smithson is the primary subject here. Not one I'll read again, and I probably would have passed had I known just how illuminating it wasn't going to be, but I still liked the little nuggets of information I did glean about one of the most amazing museum systems in the world. So there's that.… (más)