Catherine Manegold's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Catherine Manegold recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Catherine Manegold's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1

A Civil Action

A Civil Action is a non-fiction book by Jonathan Harr about a water contamination case in Woburn, Massachusetts, in the 1980s.

After finding that her child is diagnosed with leukemia, Anne Anderson notices a high prevalence of leukemia, a relatively rare disease, in her city. Eventually she gathers other families and seeks a lawyer, Jan Schlichtmann, to consider their options.

Schlichtmann originally decides not to take the case due to both the lack of evidence and a clear defendant. Later picking up the case, Schlichtmann finds evidence suggesting trichloroethylene...
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Recommended by Catherine Manegold, and 1 others.

Catherine ManegoldThis book incorporates less history. Instead, it is just a whiz-bang narrative about a lawyer who takes up the cause of a small New England town that is host to a mysterious rash of cancer deaths. The narrative revolves around Jan Schlichtmann, a Boston lawyer who uncovers an environmental crisis and traces culpability up the chain to several multinational corporations responsible for the mess.... (Source)

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2
HOW DID AMERICA BEGIN?

This simple question launches acclaimed author Nathaniel Philbrick on an extraordinary journey to understand the truth behind our most sacred national myth: the voyage of the Mayflower and the settlement of Plymouth Colony. As Philbrick reveals in this electrifying new book, the story of the Pilgrims does not end with the First Thanksgiving; instead, it is a fifty-five-year epic that is at once tragic and heroic, and still carries meaning for us today.
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Recommended by Catherine Manegold, and 1 others.

Catherine ManegoldThis is a straight history but – and this is key – the emphasis is on the story. In this book Nathaniel Philbrick takes an event every American schoolchild knows about – the sailing of the Mayflower to North America in 1620 – and turns the comfortable mythology about that moment on its head. (Source)

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3
The Orchid Thief is Susan Orlean’s tale of an amazing obsession. Determined to clone an endangered flower—the rare ghost orchid Polyrrhiza lindenii—a deeply eccentric and oddly attractive man named John Laroche leads Orlean on an unforgettable tour of America’s strange flower-selling subculture, through Florida’s swamps and beyond, along with the Seminoles who help him and the forces of justice who fight him. In the end, Orlean—and the reader—will have more respect for underdog determination and a powerful new definition of passion.
 
In this new edition, coming...
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Recommended by Catherine Manegold, and 1 others.

Catherine ManegoldYes, this is such a fun book, all about obsession, history and botany. To a limited extent it also engages with the author’s internal experience as she acknowledges the envy she feels for people graced with this level of attachment to the world. To do this, she looks back in history – tracing the earliest orchid hunters to their roots, if you will – and then drifts among contemporary collectors... (Source)

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4
Written by one of America's most innovative and articulate feminists, this book illustrates how childhood experience, gender and sexuality, private aspirations, and public personae all assume undeniable roles in the causes and effects of war. less
Recommended by Catherine Manegold, and 1 others.

Catherine ManegoldThis book is much more philosophical, meditative, personal. Gary Kinder never really injects himself into the narrative in Ship of Gold and, frankly, I appreciate that. For too many authors it is just the easy way out. But Susan Griffin succeeds here and writes with purpose, humility and conviction, making exceptionally sophisticated links between subjects as diverse as the psychology of war,... (Source)

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5
Bestselling author Gary Kinder tells, for the first time, an extraordinary tale of history, maritime drama, heroic rescue, scientific ingenuity, and individual courage. This is the riveting true account of death, danger, and discovery on the high seas in the dramatic search for America's greatest lost treasure, the S.S. Central America. less
Recommended by Catherine Manegold, and 1 others.

Catherine ManegoldThis is an incredible saga about the sinking – in deep water – of a ship filled with gold at the end of the California gold rush, a sea tale that is then twined with the contemporary story of a young engineer’s efforts to recover the sunken treasure by developing the world’s first robotic submersible, capable of working with precision at great ocean depths – obviously a technical achievement we... (Source)

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