• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

  • Home
  • Books Read
    • Books Read
    • Books by Author
  • Cooking
  • Quilting

Nonfiction

Northland: A 4,000-Mile Journey Along America’s Forgotten Border

August 4, 2018 Filed Under: Books Read

Northland: A 4,000-Mile Journey Along America’s Forgotten Border

Northland: A 4,000-Mile Journey Along America's Forgotten Border by Porter Fox
on July 3, 2018
Pages: 272
Format: hardback
Genres: Environment, Natural History, Nature, Nonfiction, Travel
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

A quest to rediscover America’s other border―the fascinating but little-known northern one.

America’s northern border is the world’s longest international boundary, yet it remains obscure even to Americans. The northern border was America’s primary border for centuries—much of the early history of the United States took place there—and to the tens of millions who live and work near the line, the region even has its own name: the northland.

Travel writer Porter Fox spent three years exploring 4,000 miles of the border between Maine and Washington, traveling by canoe, freighter, car, and foot. In Northland, he blends a deeply reported and beautifully written story of the region’s history with a riveting account of his travels. Setting out from the easternmost point in the mainland United States, Fox follows explorer Samuel de Champlain’s adventures across the Northeast; recounts the rise and fall of the timber, iron, and rail industries; crosses the Great Lakes on a freighter; tracks America’s fur traders through the Boundary Waters; and traces the forty-ninth parallel from Minnesota to the Pacific Ocean.

Fox, who grew up the son of a boat-builder in Maine’s northland, packs his narrative with colorful characters (Captain Meriwether Lewis, railroad tycoon James J. Hill, Chief Red Cloud of the Lakota Sioux) and extraordinary landscapes (Glacier National Park, the Northwest Angle, Washington’s North Cascades). He weaves in his encounters with residents, border guards, Indian activists, and militia leaders to give a dynamic portrait of the northland today, wracked by climate change, water wars, oil booms, and border security.

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South

June 15, 2018 Filed Under: Books Read

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South by Radley Balko, Tucker Carrington
Published by Public Affairs on February 27, 2018
Format: audiobook
Genres: Criminal Justice, Nonfiction, Politics & Social Sciences
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

This is an account of two tragedies.At the heart of the first is Dr. Steven Hayne, a doctor the State of Mississippi employed as its de facto medical examiner for two decades. Beginning in the late 1980s, he performed anywhere from 1,200 to 1,800 autopsies a year, five times more than is recommended, performed at night in the basement of a local funeral home. Autopsy reports claimed organs had been observed and weighed when, in reality, they had been surgically removed from the body years before. Hayne, the only game in town, also often brought in local dentist and self-styled "bite-mark specialist" Dr. Michael West, who would discover marks on victim's bodies, at times invisible to the naked eye, and then match those marks-"indeed and without doubt"-to law enforcement's lead suspect.This leads to the second tragic tale: that of Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, two black men each convicted in separate cases of the brutal rape and murder of young girls. Dr. Hayne's autopsy and Dr. West's bite-mark matching formed the bases for their convictions. Combined, the two men served over thirty years in Parchman Farm, Mississippi's notorious penitentiary, before being exonerated in 2008. Brooks' and Brewer's wrongful convictions lie at the intersection of both the most pressing problem facing this country's criminal justice system-structural injustice built on the historic foundation of race and class-as well as with the much more contemporary but equally egregious problem of invalid forensic science. The old problem is inextricably bound up with and exacerbates the new.In The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist, Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington write a true story of Southern gothic horror-of two innocent men wrongly convicted of vicious crimes and the legally condoned failures that allowed it to happen. Balko and Carrington will shine a light on the institutional and professional failures that allowed this tragic, astonishing story to happen, identify where it may have happened elsewhere, and show how to prevent it from happening again.

West Cork

June 10, 2018 Filed Under: Books Read

West Cork

West Cork by Sam Bungey
Published by Audible Studios on February 07, 2018
Format: podcast
Genres: True Crime
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

This much we do know: Sophie Toscan du Plantier was murdered days before Christmas in 1996, her broken body discovered at the edge of her property near the town of Schull in West Cork, Ireland. The rest remains a mystery.

Gripping, yet ever elusive, join the real-life hunt for answers in the year’s first not-to-be-missed, true-crime series. Investigative journalist, Sam Bungey, and documentarian, Jennifer Forde, guide listeners through the brutal, unsolved murder and the tangled web of its investigation while introducing an intricate cast of characters, a provocative prime suspect, and a recovering community whose story begs to be heard.

« Previous Page
Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

March 2026
S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293031  
« Jan    
Deer Park
Current weather
-º
Sunrise-
Sunset-
Humidity-
Wind direction-
Pressure-
Cloudiness-
Deer Park weather

2024 Reading Challenge

2024 Reading Challenge
The Pfaeffle Journal (Diane) has read 12 books toward her goal of 35 books.
hide
12 of 35 (34%)
view books

Pocket

  • Speaker Johnson Works to Unite Fractious Republicans Behind Him

  • Brandon Sanderson Is Your God

  • How Christian Is Christian Nationalism?

Other Books Read

Genealogy of a Murder: Four Generations, Three Families, One Fateful Night

Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism

Long Shadows

Footer

Currently Reading

Publishing Soon

The Missing Half The Missing Half by Ashley Flowers
Close Your Eyes and Count to 10 Close Your Eyes and Count to 10 by Lisa Unger
Goodreads

Copyright © 2026 · WordPress · Log in