BookMark / Weekly Book Reviews

Bombshell examines the stories and motives of female terrorists. Our reviewer, Paige Deckert, is a PhD candidate at Penn State University Park. She’s also a research assistant at the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at Penn State.

WPSU’s own Emily Reddy usually hosts BookMark. Today she reviews a book that could be just the thing to help you with your New Year’s resolutions: Learn Something New Every Day: 365 Facts to Fulfill Your Life, by Kee Malesky.

Some Stones Shine, by Joseph C. Tarone, follows four brothers who find work in a coal patch after the death of their father. Our reviewer, R. Thomas Berner, is a 9th generation Pennsylvanian from the coal region where the book is set. He’s also a retired journalism professor who taught at Penn State for 28 years.

Major Erik Orient has been a Marine for 22 years. He works for Penn State’s Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps. Major Orient reviews After Action: A Cobra Pilot’s Journey, by Dan Sheehan. Sheehan is a fellow Marine who came back from Iraq carrying the lingering impacts of war.

Where We Once Gathered: Lost Synagogues of Europe by Andrea Strongwater contains descriptions and colorful illustrations of synagogues destroyed on or around Kristallnacht. The book is reviewed by Linda Short, a Jewish history lecturer at Penn State University Park.

Dead End in Norvelt won the prestigious John Newbery Medal for children’s literature in 2012. Our reviewer, Steven Herb, chaired this year’s committee to select the companion prize, the Randolph Caldecott Medal for Illustration. He’s also a child of the 60s, which is when today’s book is set.

Waterproof, a historical fiction by Judith Redline Coopey, paints the story of a woman who survived the Johnstown flood of 1889. Our reviewer, Denise Holliday Damico, is a professor of history at St. Francis University near Johnstown. Damico specializes in water history and has assigned class projects on the flood.

In October of 1962, the United States was held rapt by the Cuban Missile Crisis. This book tells the story of Navy members who held a little-known, but important job. They took aerial reconnaissance photos over Cuba.