Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye.
The File: A Personal History by Timothy Garton Ash
Why I have it: via What’s Nonfiction?
Summary: When Ash graduated from Oxford in 1978, he went to live in Berlin, ostensibly to research and write about Nazism. But once there, he gradually immersed himself in a study of the repressive political culture of East Germany. As if to return the favor, that culture – in the form of the dreaded Stasi – secretly began studying him. After the fall of the Wall, Ash accessed his Stasi files.
I’m thinking: Yes.
Tunnel 29: Love, Espionage and Betrayal by Helena Merriman
Why I have it: also via What’s Nonfiction?
Summary: In 1962, Joachim Rudolph, a student, dug a tunnel under the Berlin Wall. Waiting on the other side in East Berlin – dozens of men, women and children; all willing to risk everything to escape.
I’m thinking: Yes.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
Why I have it: Not sure.
Summary: Lia Lee was born in 1982 to a family of recent Hmong immigrants, and soon developed symptoms of epilepsy. By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, over-medication, and culture clash.
I’m thinking: Yes.