Here are 72 books that Snapshots fans have personally recommended if you like
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My passion is writing about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, rather than famous people or people with some unusual skill, like being a math genius or something. This passion led me to Anna Merz’s story and my growing appreciation of the power of the animal/human connection and how much communication can take place without language.
Okay, I confess this is the same story as the recommendation above, The Elephants Come Home, but this is written by the actual guy, Lawrence Anthony, who undertook this effort.
Also, instead of a picture book, it is a 380-page tale told by the person who lived it. If you love The Elephants Come Home, you’ll want to read Elephant Whisperer as well.
I found myself exclaiming again and again over the stories that Anthony tells of life on the sanctuary.
When South African conservationist Lawrence Anthony was asked to accept a herd of "rogue" wild elephants on his Thula Thula game reserve in Zululand, his common sense told him to refuse. But he was the herd's last chance of survival: they would be killed if he wouldn't take them. In order to save their lives, Anthony took them in. In the years that followed he became a part of their family. And as he battled to create a bond with the elephants, he came to realize that they had a great deal to teach him about life, loyalty, and freedom.…
I firmly believe we each have a unique story to tell, to record in order to help others and to record a history. I love the ordinary person who lives an extraordinary life. So many people don’t realize how wonderful they are. It is also cathartic to write your story, in doing so you forgive others as you forgive yourself for decisions poorly made.
Stanley Tucci makes this book personal. He connects to any reader that loves the world of cooking and entertaining friends at his table and who loves to travel, too. He takes the reader into his personal life, not just memories of his good times, but his errors, too. He’s honest. He’s intriguing, letting you know who he truly is. He loves his life, all of it, and he passes that love onto you.
A Guardian book of the year A Times book of the year A Daily Mail book of the year
From award-winning actor and food obsessive Stanley Tucci comes an intimate and charming memoir of life in and out of the kitchen. For Stanley and foodie fans, this is the perfect, irresistible gift.
'It's impossible to read this without becoming ravenous!' -- Nigella Lawson
'It is as infectious as it is delicious, as funny as it is insightful. The only reason to put this book down, is to go cook and eat from it' -- Heston…
I firmly believe we each have a unique story to tell, to record in order to help others and to record a history. I love the ordinary person who lives an extraordinary life. So many people don’t realize how wonderful they are. It is also cathartic to write your story, in doing so you forgive others as you forgive yourself for decisions poorly made.
This all-American woman loved an Iranian student 25 years her junior. Her story takes you on an adventure, sparing no details of the emotional roller coaster ride, even learning his language. They created a bridge between East and West. She immersed herself to see life and Iranian customs through his eyes, willing herself to understand, hoping to influence him with American ways. Reading her story you will witness an extraordinary marriage and wonder if you could ever possibly do the same.
Afshin, a captivating Iranian graduate student, rents a room in Miriam Valmont’s home. Landlady and tenant share an immediate and fast-growing attraction, despite the fact that Miriam is twice Afshin’s age. When Afshin proposes a temporary Islamic marriage, Miriam readily agrees, driven by desire and curiosity. What shocks her, though, is the role Afshin invites her to play at the end of the marriage so that he, as a Muslim, can continue to express affection. The Bird and the Fish is the story of two people with radically different lives who find a way to honor a passionate love.
I firmly believe we each have a unique story to tell, to record in order to help others and to record a history. I love the ordinary person who lives an extraordinary life. So many people don’t realize how wonderful they are. It is also cathartic to write your story, in doing so you forgive others as you forgive yourself for decisions poorly made.
This fascinating memoir, written in journal style of all the highly unusual, paranormal incidents that have happened to the author from the time he was a youngster. It is a chronicle of the many supernatural events experienced by one ordinary man, a former deputy sheriff. Time after time, a divine power intervenes to heal and save him, leaving him a stunned witness to his own salvation. This unusual story reaffirms my faith in the unseen and the 6th sense not everyone has.
Tina Proffitt is a former educator in love with writing romance novels, who believes there’s nothing more romantic than reincarnating with those she loves. After her first one-on-one past life reading with Dr. Doris E. Cohen, she was hooked and has never looked back. (Pun intended) She wants to share her passion for living a life free from fear and full of love. She writes reincarnation romance novels in the genres of mystery, science fiction, contemporary, and YA.
While James Van Praagh’s book titled Unfinished Business: What the Dead Can Teach Us About Life is not strictly dealing with reincarnation, but rather, what those who have passed over want us to know, it is founded on the same principle—that life and death are not about punishment and reward but compassion and love. Told on a case-by-case basis, the book aims a spotlight on just how important our earthly relationships are. And those souls, who have moved out of their bodies, are determined to have their messages heard, whether to right wrongs, settle debts, or, as in most cases, to ask for simple forgiveness from those they wronged on earth.
“He helps a lot of people. He really is a healer. I think he’s basically on this earth right now at this time and place to heal. He is the real thing. I can’t tell you how many times he’s been right with me.” — Shirley MacLaine
“It has such a hopeful message. Even though he’s telling stories of the dead, it’s really about living your life better and inspiring people to not have unfinished business.” — Jennifer Love Hewitt
James Van Praagh, world-famous medium, co-executive producer of the primetime series Ghost Whisperer, and author of the New York Times…
I used to think one had to choose a career and work at it, giving up the parts of himself that didn’t fit neatly into that category. I was wrong. As a man in my late thirties, I am an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, but I’m also a writer. It’s books like the ones I’ve recommended here that convinced me that one does not need to turn off the parts of himself that are creative in order to be a doctor or even a grown-up. In fact, cultivating those same parts can be additive to this whole experience of being an adult.
Intern is the realest account I’ve ever read of what it’s truly like to start working after leaving the nest of medical school. Jauhar’s writing is crisp and human, while the content gives the reader a true glimpse into the life of a new doctor. This book taught me that it was okay to experience impostor syndrome, to feel overwhelmed, and to express yourself creatively even as a doctor. This author has gone on to write regularly in The New York Times and has become one of medicine’s most treasured physician-writers.
"In Jauhar's wise memoir of his two-year ordeal of doubt and sleep deprivation at a New York hospital, he takes readers to the heart of every young physician's hardest test: to become a doctor yet remain a human being." ― Time
Intern is Dr. Sandeep Jauhar's story of his days and nights in residency at a busy hospital in New York City, a trial that led him to question his every assumption about medical care today.
Residency―and especially its first year, the internship―is legendary for its brutality, and Jauhar's experience was even more harrowing than most. He switched from physics…
My first books were little Golden Books. I loved reading those stories of the sleepy little puppy and the engine that could. I moved on from there to all kinds of books and I remain a very happy reader. I have channeled my love for reading to a love of writing. My writing career started with a focus on journalism and writing for magazines, newspapers, and radio. About 18 years ago I began writing romance novels. I read all kinds of different genre but I thoroughly enjoy following the expanding relationships that make up the core element of all romances. That’s the thing about romance novels. There’s something for everyone.
If you like small town settings with big old houses and hints of a ghost, intrigue, and simmering romance, you’ll love Storms of the Heart.
The story’s female main character, Emerson Lane, finds herself right in the middle of a raging thunderstorm at night on her way to her Uncle Wayne’s house in Twin Creeks, where she lived when her parents died in a car crash. She’s on a mission to reconnect with her uncle after leaving abruptly years ago to live in New York City. Trouble is waiting for her in the name of Sheriff Max Lomax, who she left behind.
Max has his own problems, but he is secretly but begrudgingly thrilled to see her, but questions whether this time she’ll stay. I liked the interesting characters in this story and the pleasant descriptions of Emerson’s hometown. The writing was so nice it felt like I could just…
I’ve spent years studying individual people involved in the American Revolution, especially the British soldiers and their wives. These were the people who did the day-to-day work, and their stories deserve to be told. I troll archival collections to find original documents that allow me to piece together the lives of the thousands of individuals who made up the regiments and battalions, focusing not on what they had in common, but on how they were different from each other, part of a military society but each with their own lives and experiences. They made the history happen.
Books on the war’s campaigns usually aggregate large numbers of people into bland terms like “regiments” and “refugees,” singling out only a few key players as individuals.
This book takes a refreshingly different approach, examining one of the war’s major operations from the level of participants of all sorts, from senior government officials down to the soldiers, civilians, and spies caught up in the fighting. The campaign itself has heretofore been almost entirely overlooked, or seen only in terms of a few of the battles that were part of it.
The result is a vivid account of the many components of a major campaign, and the legions of individuals involved.
After two years of defeats and reverses, 1778 had been a year of success for George Washington and the Continental Army. France had entered the war as the ally of the United States, the British had evacuated Philadelphia, and the redcoats had been fought to a standstill at the Battle of Monmouth. While the combined French-American effort to capture Newport was unsuccessful, it lead to intelligence from British-held New York that indicated a massive troop movement was imminent. British officers were selling their horses and laying in supplies for their men. Scores of empty naval transports were arriving in the…
I'm a New Yorker with a background in the performing arts. Though a lifelong reader and bookstore loiterer, my early writing career was focused on the stage as well as the pursuit of a career in screenwriting. This led to many years writing and producing theatre as well as working in film and TV both as a writer and in production. The books I've chosen, I feel influenced the American language in the last century, an influence reflected in the tone of the novels and films from that period described by scholars as “Between the Wars.” It's a period that fascinates me for it exists now only in books and movies and is therein preserved.
John O’Hara’s name should be spoken in the same breath as Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, and Hemingway. Maybe it isn’t, because he never had that one homerun book that stood out in the canon, like a Gatsbyor a Grapes of Wrath. Though I think Butterfield 8 and Appointment in Samarastand up to either of the above, I have chosen this collection of short stories. He wrote more short stories for the New Yorker than anyone ever did and is credited with inventing that particular style that the periodical became known for. Each of these stories – all short and fast as an uppercut – shows the flawed humanity striving in the city from the 30s to the 60s – from ad men to secretaries, to bums and soda jerks. With his trademark crackling dialogue, this collection of gritty Americana will leave you feeling like you are standing in an…
'Superb... These thirty-two stories inhabit the Technicolor vernaculars of taxi drivers, barbers, paper pushers and society matrons... O'Hara was American fiction's greatest eavesdropper, recording the everyday speech and tone of all strata of mid-century society' Wall Street Journal
John O'Hara remains the great chronicler of American society, and nowhere are his powers more evident than in his portraits of New York's so-called Golden Age. Unsparingly observed, brilliantly cutting and always on the tragic edge of epiphany, the stories collected here are among O'Hara's finest work, and show why he still stands as the most-published short story writer in the history…
I have spent my professional career attempting to reform the justice system and create safer communities. For nearly two decades, I served as the executive director of the Center for Court Innovation (now the Center for Justice Innovation). Now, I co-edit a policy journal called Vital City that attempts to spark new thinking about how to achieve public safety. Over the years, I have worked with numerous city, state, and federal officials. I have seen that most of the people working within government are trying their best in difficult circumstances. I have also seen that it is enormously difficult to change government systems and solve complicated social problems.
Like many New Yorkers, I am fascinated by the history of the city.
The Cost of Good Intentionsdetails the run-up to a crucial turning point for the city: the fiscal crisis of 1975.
Written by a high-ranking city official after the fact, the book is an insightful analysis of how local government, particularly under Mayor John Lindsay, attempted to respond to a range of significant challenges, including the civil right movement, rising crime, and changing economic conditions.
Despite the best of intentions, the administration’s reach ended up exceeding its grasp, laying the groundwork not only for the fiscal crisis and for an era of declining public trust in government.
This book is about public policy making in New York during the zenith of the great liberal experiment, from 1960, Mayor Robert Wagner's third term, through John V. Lindsay, Abraham Beame, and, finally, to Edward Koch and the inevitable return of fiscal conservatism.
The bigger they come the harder they fall. When New York City fell and its intricate, often exotic, budget gimmickry came unstuck, they foundations of every other large city in America shook. If we are not to relive this history it is important to learn the lessons taught so cogently and entertainingly in this book.
