Fans pick 100 books like The Only Woman in the Room

In 2017, my family was invited to France to retrace my father’s footsteps after his plane was shot down over occupied France in May 1944. During that visit, I realized how many ordinary citizens aided in his evasion. I thought their stories deserved to be preserved. I spent the next five years researching and writing, The Duty of Memory. During four trips to France to visit the actual sites, I interviewed eyewitnesses and became friends with family members of those depicted and learned their stories. I also studied documents from the US National Archives and the French Military Archives, as well as personal documents provided by the families.

I have had a long, fruitful career as a business leader, entrepreneur, and inventor in the energy and chemicals industry with seven scientific patents. I'm the founder/CEO of Chem Systems, Inc., lectured at MIT about entrepreneurship and innovation, and recently wrote a book exploring industrial inventions tracing back to the Industrial Revolution. All inventors share the same qualities: they see opportunities, stay persistent, and maintain their faith in the value of their innovation. The books on this list celebrate those qualities and honor the innovators who embody them. The authors highlight the common threads binding past, present, and future together, showing how humanity's progress depends on innovation.

I love imperfect characters. They are more interesting, memorable, and three-dimensional than characters who have everything figured out. Imperfect characters are the most believable and readable because they are mirrors of ourselves. We live their stories more easily, and imperfect characters live the most awesome stories. Finding an imperfect female main character inhabiting a world full of conflict and then watching her strength emerge through a well-told story is one of my favorite reading experiences.

At the close of World War II, I was born into the peace and prosperity of mid-twentieth century America, but I longed to be transported to an earlier era and a simpler time. I grew up living in an apartment building in New York City, but my spiritual home was Central Park, which served as my wilderness. Clumps of bushes were my woods. Rock outcroppings were my mountains. Books like Heidi and Little House on the Prairie captured my imagination and warmed my heart. But when my beloved father died in my eleventh year, a shadow fell that changed the emotional landscape of my life. 

I have not served in the military nor been subject to a manhunt. However, I have been battling PTSD for almost 5 years. There are many, many misconceptions of PTSD in the media, and finding it portrayed accurately is a difficult task. My goal with Polaris was to first depict mental illness as realistically as possible, with all its ugly messiness. Secondly, the social commentary of a dystopian-sci-fi setting fascinated me. Polaris came about when I combined the two. In my own personal experience, most people do not understand the totality of PTSD and how it overtakes one’s life.  

Growing up in Los Angeles, I was fascinated from an early age by Mexican cinema, but my interest in Dolores del Río really blossomed when I wrote the novel Frida. Del Río was part of Frida Kahlo’s entourage, but unlike her friend, del Río was elegant and refined. Highly intelligent, she was dissatisfied with the vapidity of Hollywood and longed to make a real contribution to society. At Georgetown University, I taught courses on Latin American culture, and the Mexican Revolution, which influenced painting, literature, and cinema, was central to the classwork. Thus, I was very familiar with Del Río and her historical context long before I began writing. 

I focus on real-life stories of people usually in wartime conflicts and study the American Civil War and WWII. I am friends with several Holocaust survivors. But my focus is on defiance, rather than evading capture or captivity. Wars show the extremes of human behavior, both good and evil. I have a place in my heart for women and girls who were thrust into a man’s world at incredible disadvantage and through extraordinary character and ability overcame the harshest realities. A few were military fighters, some spies, but all in death-defying roles. Many died in action, and most never recognized for their valor. These are the unsung heroes that I love most.  

Books have the power to change your life, that is, if you can find a story that inspires you. As a multiple-time CEO and board director I noticed the lack of fiction books with smart, strong, and positive female leaders- that’s why I started writing the Ceiling Smasher series. My first novel, The Closer, is about the first female CEO of a sports company and the secret society of professional women, called the Ceiling Smashers, who help her succeed. The books on this list are based on true stories about extraordinary women who demonstrated courage, brainpower, and grit to achieve great things and blaze new trails- who wouldn’t be inspired by that?

Books have the power to change your life, that is, if you can find a story that inspires you. As a multiple-time CEO and board director I noticed the lack of fiction books with smart, strong, and positive female leaders- that’s why I started writing the Ceiling Smasher series. My first novel, The Closer, is about the first female CEO of a sports company and the secret society of professional women, called the Ceiling Smashers, who help her succeed. The books on this list are based on true stories about extraordinary women who demonstrated courage, brainpower, and grit to achieve great things and blaze new trails- who wouldn’t be inspired by that?

The central themes in my own writing have always encompassed those of identity, the nature of reality, and variations on immortality. The lives of ‘celebrities’ touch upon all those themes, albeit through a distorted kaleidoscope where their own lives and the public’s perceptions of their lives intersect and are amplified and a third ‘character’ – that of the composite person, is then brought into existence. I find it fascinating how we can all be myriad people dependent upon who we interact with, and this is heightened when layered over the notion of ‘celebrity’ and fame by association. The books I've chosen act as mirrors to celebrity, but also work as great storytelling.