These two books are on our reading list this month:
We All Scream: The Fall of the Gifford’s Ice Cream Empire
by Andrew Gifford
Stillhouse Press
Dark secrets in families and business make for great storytelling, but not when the plot is a true tale. Andrew Gifford, the last surviving heir to the famed Gifford’s Ice Cream and Candy Company business, recounts his torturous family saga of abuse, embezzlement and suicide in We All Scream. Gifford lets us in on his gut-wrenching past, from physical and emotional abuse to the scheming adults who try to overtake the empire only to let it fall into disrepair, a cloaked version of reality that many fans of the business never knew existed until now. (May 2017)
Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas
by Laura Sook Duncombe
Chicago Review Press
History is written by those who won, and in Pirate Women Laura Duncombe takes this theory to focus on men’s place in writing the history of those who ruled the seas. The book reads like a study on historian attitudes toward the role society places on women and questions those authors and their mindset versus the potential reality of the women’s stories. “They upset the balance of power in a patriarchal society …” Here Duncombe sheds light on these women’s motives, purpose and leadership. (April 2017)
