Christiane Amanpour
@CNN Chief International Anchor. Host of @CNNi and @PBS's nightly global affairs program. https://t.co/9ji6uiYxVF & https://t.co/KDWFVYuJzw
Book Recommendations:
Recommended by Christiane Amanpour
âWatch @GloriaSteinem read the dedication of her memoir, to Dr. John Sharpe of London, who â before it was legal in England â referred Steinem for an abortion. âIâve done the best I could with my life,â she writes. âThis book is for you.â https://t.co/QAfJIRIRBsâ (from X)
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ⢠Gloria Steinemâwriter, activist, organizer, and inspiring leaderâtells a story she has never told before, a candid account of her life as a traveler, a listener, and a catalyst for change. ONE OF O: THE OPRAH MAGAZINEâS TEN FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR | NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Harperâs Bazaar â˘Â St. Louis Post-Dispatch â˘Â Publishers Weekly When people ask me why I still have hope and energy after all these years, I always say: Because I travel. Taking to the roadâby which I mean letting the road take youâchanged who I thought I was. The road is messy in the way that real life is messy. It leads us out of denial and into reality, out of theory and into practice, out of caution and into action, out of statistics and into storiesâin short, out of our heads and into our hearts. Gloria Steinem had an itinerant childhood. When she was a young girl, her father would pack the family in the car every fall and drive across country searching for adventure and trying to make a living. The seeds were planted: Gloria realized that growing up didnât have to mean settling down. And so began a lifetime of travel, of activism and leadership, of listening to people whose voices and ideas would inspire change and revolution. My Life on the Road is the moving, funny, and profound story of Gloriaâs growth and also the growth of a revolutionary movement for equalityâand the story of how surprising encounters on the road shaped both. From her first experience of social activism among women in India to her work as a journalist in the 1960s; from the whirlwind of political campaigns to the founding of Ms. magazine; from the historic 1977 National Womenâs Conference to her travels through Indian Countryâa lifetime spent on the road allowed Gloria to listen and connect deeply with people, to understand that context is everything, and to become part of a movement that would change the world. In prose that is revealing and rich, Gloria reminds us that living in an open, observant, and âon the roadâ state of mind can make a difference in how we learn, what we do, and how we understand each other. Praise for My Life on the Road âThis legendary feminist makes a compelling case for traveling as listening: a way of letting strangersâ stories flow, as she puts it, âout of our heads and into our hearts.âââPeople âLike Steinem herself, [My Life on the Road] is thoughtful and astonishingly humble. It is also filled with a sense of the momentous while offering deeply personal insights into what shaped her.ââO: The Oprah Magazine âA lyrical meditation on restlessness and the quest for equity . . . Part of the appeal of My Life is how Steinem, with evocative, melodic prose, conveys the air of discovery and wonder she felt during so many of her journeys. . . . The lessons imparted in Life on the Road offer more than a reminiscence. They are a beacon of hope for the future.ââUSA Today âA warmly companionable look back at nearly five decades as itinerant feminist organizer and standard-bearer. If youâve ever wondered what it might be like to sit down with Ms. Steinem for a casual dinner, this disarmingly intimate book gives a pretty good idea, mixing hard-won pragmatic lessons with more inspirational insights.ââThe New York Times âSteinem rocks. My Life on the Road abounds with fresh insights and is as populist as can be.ââThe Boston Globe
Recommended by Christiane Amanpour
âIn his new book, @RepRaskin writes about the grief and trauma of losing his son Tommy, who died by suicide on 31 December 2020. âWeâve dedicated large parts of our life to his memory and to his spirit and to the values he embodied,â Raskin tells me. âHe was a great empath.â https://t.co/KdGxHRj1FOâ (from X)
A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. In this searing memoir, Congressman Jamie Raskin tells the story of the forty-five days at the start of 2021 that permanently changed his lifeâand his familyâsâas he confronted the painful loss of his son to suicide, lived through the violent insurrection in our nationâs Capitol, and led the impeachment effort to hold President Trump accountable for inciting the political violence. On December 31, 2020, Tommy Raskin, the only son of Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, tragically took his own life after a long struggle with depression. Seven days later on January 6, Congressman Raskin returned to Congress to help certify the 2020 Presidential election results, when violent insurrectionists led by right wing extremist groups stormed the U.S. Capitol hoping to hand four more years of power to President Donald Trump. As our reeling nation mourned the deaths of numerous people and lamented the injuries of more than 140 police officers hurt in the attack, Congressman Raskin, a Constitutional law professor, was called upon to put aside his overwhelming griefâboth personal and professionalâand lead the impeachment effort against President Trump for inciting the violence. Together this nine-member team of House impeachment managers riveted a nation still in anguish, putting on an unprecedented Senate trial that produced the most bipartisan Presidential impeachment vote in American history. Now for the first time, Congressman Raskin discusses this unimaginable convergence of personal and public trauma, detailing how the painful loss of his son and the power of Tommyâs convictions fueled the Congressmanâs work in the aftermath of modern democracyâs darkest day. Going inside Congress on January 6, he recounts the horror of that day, a day that he and other Democrats had spent months preparing for under the correct assumption that they would encounter an attempted electoral coupânot against a President but for one. And yet, on January 6, he faced the one thing he had failed to anticipate: mass political violence designed to block Bidenâs election. With an inside account of leading the team prosecuting President Trump in the Senate, Congressman Raskin shares never before told stories of just how close we came to losing our democracy that fateful day and lays out the methodical prosecution that convinced Democrats and Republicans alike of Trumpâs responsibility for inciting insurrectionary violence against our government. Through it all, he reckons with the loss of his brilliant, remarkable son, a Harvard Law student whose values and memory continually inspired the Congressman to confront the dark impulses unleashed by Donald Trump. At turns, a moving story of a father coping with his pain and a revealing examination of holding President Trump accountable for the violence he fomented, this book is a vital reminder of the ongoing struggle for the soul of American democracy and the perseverance that our Constitution demands from us all.
Recommended by Christiane Amanpour
âThe implications of CRISPR are profound and herald a whole new era of medicine, as our own @WalterIsaacson lays out in his amazing new book âThe Code Breaker.â âIt can be used for good and for bad, and we have to be careful,â Walter says, so âhow are we going to regulate it?â https://t.co/AsG15tl9UMâ (from X)
A Best Book of 2021 by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Time, and The Washington Post The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a âcompellingâ (The Washington Post) account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies. When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled The Double Helix on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didnât become scientists, she decided she would. Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the bookâs author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his codiscovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions. The development of CRISPR and the race to create vaccines for coronavirus will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. The past half-century has been a digital age, based on the microchip, computer, and internet. Now we are entering a life-science revolution. Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study genetic code. Should we use our new evolution-hacking powers to make us less susceptible to viruses? What a wonderful boon that would be! And what about preventing depression? HmmmâŚShould we allow parents, if they can afford it, to enhance the height or muscles or IQ of their kids? After helping to discover CRISPR, Doudna became a leader in wrestling with these moral issues and, with her collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize in 2020. Her story is an âenthralling detective storyâ (Oprah Daily) that involves the most profound wonders of nature, from the origins of life to the future of our species.
Recommended by Christiane Amanpour
âMy old colleague from Bosnia war reporting days Martin Bell is a great storyteller. Later as an MP he painstakingly took the moral high ground. Check out his latest book, âWar and Peacekeeping: Personal Reflections on Conflict and Lasting Peace.â https://t.co/LeWq5DIqjzâ (from X)
Following a sixty-year journey from war to peace, from soldier to UNICEF ambassador, Martin Bell reflects on war and peacekeeping, and where they stand today There are no winners in war, only losers. We have so far avoided a third world war, but across the globe regional conflicts flare up in a seemingly unstoppable cycle. Who can stand between the armed camps? Over six decades, Martin Bell has stood in eighteen war zones â as a soldier, a reporter and a UNICEF ambassador. Now he looks back on our efforts to keep the peace since the end of the Second World War and the birth of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the new State of Israel. From the failures of Bosnia, Rwanda and South Sudan to nationalismâs resurgence and the distribution of alternative facts across a darkening political landscape, Bell calls for us to learn from past mistakes â before itâs too late.
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