Paul Adams
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Summary of Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread is the poignant story of four generations of the Whitshank family living in Baltimore. They are an ordinary family like any other, but they are also special in their own quirky ways. The members of the family love and care for each other, but they also harbor jealousies, rivalries, and carry secrets.
Red Whitshank runs the family business, Whitshank Construction. His wife, Abby, is a social worker, and...
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Summary of Joseph J. Ellis's The Quartet is an historical account of the debates and events leading up to, during, and immediately following the creation of the Constitution of the United States of America. The quartet is four politicians that played an integral role in the creation, shaping, and implementation of the Constitution and early federal government in the US. These include George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay.
Each...
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Summary of Richard Branson's Losing My Virginity is a memoir focusing on the founding and development of the entrepreneur's multibillion dollar corporation, the Virgin Group. Switching seamlessly between descriptions of inventive business deals and extreme outdoor adventures, Branson tells the story of his unique work life...
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Summary of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Leadership is a comparative consideration of four of the most beloved and effective American presidents: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson. The narrative revisits foundational events in each president's life in order to trace the origins and crucial ingredients of leadership...
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Summary of Dan Harris's 10% Happier chronicles author and television news reporter Dan Harris' life as he discovers mindfulness, meditation, and Buddhist theories for happiness and wellness.
A war reporter in the trenches for the American Broadcasting Company News (ABC News), Harris began to struggle with depression while at home between assignments. To battle the symptoms of depression, he began using drugs. Harris had a panic attack while on the...
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Summary of Dorothea Benton Frank's All The Single Ladies is a novel by Dorothea Benton Frank that centers on three women brought together by the death of a friend, Kathryn Harper.
Lisa St. Clair is in dire straits. She lost all of her money in a failed yoga studio business and has been reduced to living in a home vacated by her parents' elderly friends. She is also estranged from her grown daughter, Marianne, who has chosen to live in Colorado to...
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Summary of James Clear's Atomic Habits is a self-help book designed to drive behavior change over the long term. Built on the notion that small changes can spark powerful transformations, this practical volume explains what motivates human behavior with the goal of showing people how to improve their lives…
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Summary of Bill O'Reilly & David Fisher's Legends and Lies, each chapter is a standalone account of the life of an individual who was in some way notorious or iconic and lived their life during what is known as the Wild West, a period of the American frontier that spans from 1783 to 1920.
Daniel Boone was a survivalist outdoorsman. In 1778, Boone was charged with treason for negotiating a truce between British forces and a Native American tribe Boone...
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Summary of Danielle Steel's Prodigal Son is the story of a man who loses everything that he considers important in his life only to discover how much more there is to happiness. His process of self-discovery includes reconciling with his long estranged twin brother, divorcing his wife, and then discovering a shocking secret that changes everything. The story has twists, turns, and revelations and the main character evolves along with the story.
Peter...
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Summary of Wednesday Martin's Primates of Park Avenue, a close-up look at the rarefied enclave of New York City's Upper East Side, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the world. As Martin chronicles her stressful, and sometimes hilarious, efforts to fit into a world where preschoolers have play dates on private planes, she discovers the neighborhood's real heart when tragedy strikes her family.
When Martin and her husband started their family they...
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Summary of Paul Tough's How Children Succeed is a journalistic review of the most recent research connecting success in adulthood with character development in childhood, and the programs that use character to motivate and teach low-performing children to become high achievers. Most school curricula and measures of future success for children are historically rooted in cognitive indicators like math ability, language skills, and critical thinking....
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Summary of Crystal Paine's Say Goodbye to Survival Mode is a self-help book that targets women who are struggling to stay on top of life's daily tasks. The book offers tips as to how readers can tackle and improve various aspects of their lives. Through personal stories from the author, other experts and bloggers, and the author's blog readers, these lessons come to life to demonstrate empathy with the reader while showing how these tips can help...
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Summary of Walter Isaacson's Benjamin Franklin is an account of Benjamin Franklin's different lives, as a statesman, satirist, and scientist. The book traces Franklin's journey from his modest beginnings as a printer in Philadelphia to the pivotal role he played in the American Revolution...
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Summary of Héctor Tobar's Deep Down Dark is a narrative nonfiction book by journalist and novelist Héctor Tobar. The book tells the story of thirty-three miners trapped in a caved-in mine in northern Chile starting on August 5, 2010. They stayed underground for sixty-nine days. The miners' personal stories of their months trapped in the mine are complemented by tales of what the miners' families and the public experienced on the surface during the...
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Summary of Amity Shlaes's The Forgotten Man is a historical reevaluation of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and the American economic recovery from the Great Depression during the 1930s. Shlaes offers a popular history of the New Deal through a series of characters including FDR and the young, idealistic academics who made up his brain trust, as well as prominent businessman and 1940 Republican presidential nominee Wendell Willkie, who lost...