Here are 100 books that The Makioka Sisters fans have personally recommended if you like
The Makioka Sisters.
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I have always been fascinated by family histories, and am the self-selected historian in my family. I wrote my mother’s memoir, I Turned a Key and the Birds Began to Sing, put together a newsletter for aunts, uncles, and cousins near and far, and became a ghostwriter to help other people mine their personal and family stories. I’ve worked with company CEOs, survivors of the Holocaust; World War II U.S. veterans, and Hollywood celebrities. In the midst of writing books for other people I turned my sights on my husband who was born in Osaka, Japan and asked his permission to write his family’s story.
Winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction, this book gives the reader an in-depth analysis of the effects of World War II on the political, economic, and social life of the Japanese people. It depicts the ways in which Japan moved into the twentieth century and gave up many of its feudalistic habits – some for the better and some for the worse.
Drawing on a vast range of Japanese sources and illustrated with dozens of astonishing documentary photographs, Embracing Defeat is the fullest and most important history of the more than six years of American occupation, which affected every level of Japanese society, often in ways neither side could anticipate. Dower, whom Stephen E. Ambrose has called "America's foremost historian of the Second World War in the Pacific," gives us the rich and turbulent interplay between West and East, the victor and the vanquished, in a way never before attempted, from top-level manipulations concerning the fate of Emperor Hirohito to the hopes…
History and video games have defined much of my life, so it’s no surprise I’m writing about both. I was born in Sweden and first encountered the Wild West through the Lucky Luke comic books (huge in Europe!), and they instilled in me a fascination with American history. I emigrated to the U.S. with my family at age 8 and misspent most of my adolescence playing video games. In college, I returned to my childhood passion for studying the past and earned a BA, MA, and PhD in American history. Since 2013, I’ve been a professor at the University of Tennessee. Red Dead’s History is my second book.
When folks think of the late 1800s West, they think of many things–cowboys, railroads, ranches, gunslingers, and more–but they rarely think about big cities. Bill Cronon’s stunning book forever changes that.
He demonstrates that pretty much no corner of the West could escape the shadow of Chicago–the looming metropolis that ordered so much of Western life. Cows, cowboys, and ranchers all bowed to the Chicago meatpackers. Just about every Western railroad stopped in the city. And farmers across the West planted their fields based on the prices at the Chicago Board of Trade.
Cronon masterfully shows that country and city weren’t polar opposites but two sides of the same coin.
In this groundbreaking work, William Cronon gives us an environmental perspective on the history of nineteenth-century America. By exploring the ecological and economic changes that made Chicago America's most dynamic city and the Great West its hinterland, Mr. Cronon opens a new window onto our national past. This is the story of city and country becoming ever more tightly bound in a system so powerful that it reshaped the American landscape and transformed American culture. The world that emerged is our own.
I’ve been a journalist for years, and to write my first book, I ended up doing a ton of original research and reporting about photography, fashion, the art world, and the magazine industry in midcentury New York. But certain passages in the twins’ interviews reminded me strongly of many books I’d read growing up, that address the challenges young women face as they confront choices in life. And their story, with its wild and colorful characters, begged to be structured like a novel. It also took place when American society was changing dramatically for women, as it is today. So, I kept books like these in mind while writing.
I find midcentury fashion memoirs inspiring because they’re filled with stories of strong, self-realized women who really managed to have it all. This one by Bettina Ballard, French editor for American Vogue in prewar Paris, goes one better because it also offers heartbreaking commentary on the war.
Alongside observations about great designers like Chanel and Dior, Ballard writes stirringly of the tragic, gruesome fates that befell many in her world and the courageous way some resisted the Germans to save their art form, couture. Vogue tries to bring her back to New York, but she swiftly returns to Europe as a Red Cross volunteer—albeit one who sneaks non-regulation eveningwear into her trunk. When she finally goes home to marry (for the second time), she mentions it in an aside.
Bettina Ballard, Paris-based correspondent and later Fashion Editor for US Vogue, was at the centre of the fashion world from the 1930s to the ’50s and an intimate of Coco Chanel, Cristóbal Balenciaga and Elsa Schiaparelli. With journalistic flair, she captures the spirit of pre-war Paris, the working methods of the fashion greats and the transformation of the post-war fashion industry with the arrival of Dior.
Ava Winston likes her life of routine in Lexington, Kentucky. Then a tornado blows it away. Ava is safe in the basement, but when she emerges, only one corner of her home stands. Rather than crumbling under the loss, she feels a load lifted. Maybe something beyond the familiar is…
I currently spend my time researching (and worrying about) nuclear war and how to stop it from ever happening. I live about 25 miles away from where the UK’s nuclear weapons are based, so I have a very personal interest in making sure that nuclear war never becomes a reality! As a lecturer at the University of Glasgow I’m also embarking on a four-year research fellowship with over £1 million in funding where I will be leading a team of experts to research how to improve nuclear arms control and disarmament. So keep in touch if you want to reduce the risk of nuclear war and ban the bomb!
I really enjoyed Christopher Nolan’s Academy Award-winning Oppenheimer movie, and this book is the perfect book to read after watching it. Hiroshima was the first widespread account of what Oppenheimer’s creation – the atomic bomb – did to the people of Hiroshima.
Written in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear bombing, Hiroshima tells the story of six men and women who survived amidst the destruction that killed over 100,000 other people. By focusing on these six survivors, Hersey makes the almost unimaginable scale of destruction achingly real and relatable. At one point, he describes "the wounded as silent as the dead around them," and this line sends shivers down my spine.
Few writers can conduct such detailed investigative reporting and tell the story in such a human way that still resonates today, nearly 80 years after it was first published.
“One of the great classics of the war" (The New Republic) that tells what happened in Hiroshima through the memories of survivors—from a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.
On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atom bomb ever dropped on a city. This book, John Hersey's journalistic masterpiece, tells what happened on that day. Told through the memories of survivors, this timeless, powerful and compassionate document has become a classic "that stirs the conscience of humanity" (The New York Times).
Almost four decades after the original publication of this celebrated book, John Hersey went back to Hiroshima in search…
I vividly remember visiting our local museum as a little girl and being fascinated by the carefully displayed artifacts of the past, especially the ordinary things people had touched and used on a daily basis: a wooden bowl, a stone tool, an old bottle, its logo embossed on a blue glass surface. It made me want to travel through time, to touch the past, to be inside the hearts and minds of the people who came before me. I wanted to learn about their lives, their joys and suffering, and especially to learn from their mistakes. Each of the books I’ve suggested offers an opportunity to step into the shoes of another and time travel with them.
Eng’s novel serves up everything I love about time travel through historical fiction – it’s transportive and compelling and opens a window into a time and culture I knew little about.
Toggling back and forth in time from contemporary Malaysia to its Japanese occupation during World War 2 and into the immediate post-war period, the writing is stunningly lyrical, the central characters are beautifully drawn, and the author evokes a sense of time and place that is shrouded in both tragedy and mystery.
Even better, the book explores some of my favorite themes: memory, love and the secrets we keep in order to survive.
Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice "until the monsoon comes." Then she can design a garden for herself.…
I have picked these books because I have a passion for good reading material. All the books I have chosen have become reading classics in their own way. They are well written and have plots that go well beyond normal literature in a sense that they unveil the 'human condition' into the realm of the protagonist being up against all odds, where in the end, truth reveals all!
I read this fine book when it first came out with all its allusions to free sex and promiscuity. The theme is an elegant allegory about an American married couple who trade civilization for the wilderness of the Sahara.
I like how both were first seduced by the desert's eternal beauty, and in the end, both surrender psychologically and physically to the desert's deep dark undercurrents backdropped by an uncompromising, deeply different culture.
'The Sheltering Sky is a book about people on the edge of an alien space; somewhere where, curiously, they are never alone' Michael Hoffman.
Port and Kit Moresbury, a sophisticated American couple, are finding it more than a little difficult to live with each other. Endeavouring to escape this predicament, they set off for North Africa intending to travel through Algeria - uncertain of exactly where they are heading, but determined to leave the modern world behind. The results of this casually taken decision are both tragic and compelling.
Emmitt’s plans collapse when his wife, Mirai, suddenly backs out of purchasing their dream home. Disappointed, he’s surprised to discover her subtle pursuit of a life and career in Tokyo.
In his search for a meaningful life in Japan, and after quitting his job, he finds himself helping his mother-in-law…
Rabbit Hole is about Teddy’s obsession with her sister Angie’s cold-case disappearance. When Angie was alive, she was angry and difficult, but Teddy still misses her. While writing the book, I thought a lot about my relationships with my own sisters and how unique that particular bond is. I love books that capture the at-times-uncomfortable closeness of sisterhood and grapple with its power.
Austen writes sisters like no one else, and the dynamic between tempestuous Marianne and practical Elinor is the template for so many novels that have followed.
Austen keeps the two sisters from becoming caricatures by making them more alike than different, and the love that anchors their relationship is at the heart of the novel.
I first read this as a freshman in college, and I still think about it every time I’m writing sisters. A classic.
'The wit of Jane Austen has for partner the perfection of her taste' Virginia Woolf
Jane Austen's subtle and witty novel of secrets and suppression, lies and seduction, brilliantly portrays a world where rigid social convention clashes with the impulses of the heart. It tells the story of two very different sisters who find themselves thrown into an unkind world when their father dies. Marianne, wild and impulsive, falls dangerously in love, while Elinor suffers her own private heartbreak but conceals her true feelings, even from those closest to her.
I’ve been a journalist for years, and to write my first book, I ended up doing a ton of original research and reporting about photography, fashion, the art world, and the magazine industry in midcentury New York. But certain passages in the twins’ interviews reminded me strongly of many books I’d read growing up, that address the challenges young women face as they confront choices in life. And their story, with its wild and colorful characters, begged to be structured like a novel. It also took place when American society was changing dramatically for women, as it is today. So, I kept books like these in mind while writing.
I read this 1963 novel in college, adored it, and have re-read it many times since.
The book opens in 1933, as a group of eight women are graduating from Vassar during the Great Depression, and one announces her engagement. From there, the book functions almost like a work of journalism, following their lives until they gather again for the bride’s funeral in 1940, just as America is on the verge of war. In between, their stories demonstrate the different possibilities for women during a time of enormous social change (the period parallels the Makioka Sisters).
McCarthy’s writing has great range: while describing some figures, she’s biting and acerbic; with others, she’s empathetic, and they all seem very real, even today. I’m still looking for a love story like Polly’s.
* 'I consider it a masterpiece' HILARY MANTEL * 'A brilliant novel: honest, engaging and sharp as a tack' SARAH WATERS * 'One of my favourite books ever' INDIA KNIGHT
When first published in 1963, The Group was on a bestseller for almost two years. This groundbreaking novel, with its frank depiction of friendship, sex, and women's lives, was a revelation, and continues to inspire today.
Mary McCarthy's most celebrated novel portrays the lives and aspirations of eight Vassar graduates. 'The group' meet in New York following graduation to attend the wedding of one of their members - and reconvene…
Virtually my entire life has been spent within a few minutes or perhaps an hour from the shoreline and whether surfing, lifeguarding, beach combing, or traveling coasts around the planet, this narrow zone is one of constant change and energy that continues to inspire and intrigue me. My career as a professor has focused on coastal change and the challenges that shoreline processes pose to our coastally-focused civilization. Fifty-five years of teaching at the University of California Santa Cruz on the shoreline of Monterey Bay has led to 14 books and over 400 newspaper columns on Our Ocean Backyard focused on the coast and its changes, and there is always more to observe, study, and enjoy.
I enjoyed the way Elizabeth Rush ventured out into some diverse and remote places where sea level rise has had a profound impact on long-term residents.
She writes eloquently about people and their lives and homes and avoids the climate change politics and debates. This is not a future problem—it’s real, it’s now, and it’s everywhere, as her conversations so clearly and soberly illustrate.
FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NONFICTION
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL OUTDOOR BOOK AWARD
A CHICAGO TRIBUNE TOP TEN BOOK OF 2018
A GUARDIAN, NPR's SCIENCE FRIDAY, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, AND LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2018
Hailed as "deeply felt" (New York Times), "a revelation" (Pacific Standard), and "the book on climate change and sea levels that was missing" (Chicago Tribune), Rising is both a highly original work of lyric reportage and a haunting meditation on how to let go of the places we love.
With every passing day, and every record-breaking hurricane, it grows clearer that climate change…
Secrets, misunderstandings, and a plethora of family conflicts abound in this historical novel set along the Brazos River in antebellum Washington County, East Texas.
It is a compelling story of two neighboring plantation families and a few of the enslaved people who serve them. These two plantations are a microcosm…
I have always been fascinated by family histories, and am the self-selected historian in my family. I wrote my mother’s memoir, I Turned a Key and the Birds Began to Sing, put together a newsletter for aunts, uncles, and cousins near and far, and became a ghostwriter to help other people mine their personal and family stories. I’ve worked with company CEOs, survivors of the Holocaust; World War II U.S. veterans, and Hollywood celebrities. In the midst of writing books for other people I turned my sights on my husband who was born in Osaka, Japan and asked his permission to write his family’s story.
A historical novel based on the true story of a commoner who marries the Japanese Crown Prince. She is treated so cruelly that she eventually loses her voice. When her son intends to marry a commoner history repeats itself. The novel portrays Japan’s reverence for the Imperial Crown, which lies heavily on the head of those who wear it. Beautifully written, it is a surprising endeavor following on the heels of another of Schwartz’s novels – a murder mystery set in a small Connecticut town – Reservation Road.
In this national bestseller from the author of Reservation Road, a young woman, Haruko, becomes the first nonaristocratic woman to penetrate the Japanese monarchy.
When she marries the Crown Prince of Japan in 1959, Haruko is met with cruelty and suspicion by the Empress, and controlled at every turn as she tries to navigate this mysterious, hermetic world, suffering a nervous breakdown after finally giving birth to a son. Thirty years later, now Empress herself, she plays a crucial role in persuading another young woman to accept the marriage proposal of her son, with tragic consequences. Based on extensive research,…
