Present at the Future: From Evolution to Nanotechnology, Candid and Controversial Conversations on Science and Nature

Present at the Future is an imperfect commute book.  Ira Flatow, whose work I've enjoyed since I was a kid watching Newton's Apple, seems to have aimed a bit too low and a bit too trendy with this mid-2000s book.  The chapters, discussing topics ranging from the Dover, PA lawsuit on the teaching of intelligent design (disclosure - I know Steve Harvey, the attorney who argued science's side) to alternative energy sources to outer space, just aren't deep enough to be fully engaging.  On top of that, I read it with a decade of perspective, and therefore a bit of knowledge about how some of these issues turned out.

Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court

I'm familiar with the Tudors and Stuarts, and with George III and the 19th and 20th Century English monarchs.  The first two Geroges have been placeholders in my mind.  They came to the throne by political accident, German Protestant cousins of the childless Queen Anne, plucked from obscurity to lead a major power.  Lucy Worsley describes court life under George I and II, when the monarchy was transitioning to an almost purely ceremonial position and when appearance mattered.  Chronicling the public (and nearly nonexistent private) lives of ladies-in-waiting, artists, writers, and a pet "wild boy" as well as those of the Kings and Queen Caroline, Courtiers provides an introduction to an era.

Leave the Grave Green

One reason why my mom loves Deborah Crombie's mysteries (and pushed me to read them) is how she blends police department politics into her novels.  That's at play in Leave the Grave Green, where the Assistant Commissioner calls in Duncan Kincaid to take on the case of Connor Swann's drowning.   Connor's in-laws are a famous conductor and opera singer, both knighted in their own rights, and twenty years earlier their son had drowned in the same flooded stream.  As Duncan explores the family matters (and becomes attracted to the victim's widow), Gemma explores the world of opera.  Along the way they find several viable suspects and motives (the widow is always a suspect, and the victim's gambling connected him to a particularly unsavory local character).  Crombie created an unexpected conclusion, though, which surprised me and in which the separate worlds in which Connor Swann lived collide.

To Marry an English Lord

Although I read it at home, To Marry an English Lord is the perfect commute book.  Interesting enough to distract me from work but arranged in short, discreet sections so that I'd never reach my stop at *the good point*, it's the perfect book to pick up when you only have a few minutes.

The authors start by tracing the patterns of American wealth.  Old Money, as we all know, is quiet, and until the mid-19th Century, American society was less sparkling than its European counterpart.  As brasher, flashier families acquired wealth, the old (and not so old) families closed ranks.  Meanwhile, in England, old families had old homes which needed an infusion of cash and the outgoing daughters of robber barons outshone their sheltered English counterparts.  Add in the Prince of Wales's predilection for vibrant female company and you have the recipe for two generations of American girls marrying titled men.  To Marry an English Lord doesn't stop at the wedding, though.   It shows the dreariness of married life in a cold, run-down manor house and the need to produce an heir (it also touches on the acceptance of extramarital affairs once that heir had been produced).  What most struck me was how recent some of these marriages were.  English Lords started marrying American heiresses in the mid-19th Century, but the last marriages were shortly before WWI.  Some of the women profiled lived well into the 1960s and even the 1970s, relics in the modern world.