Matthew Doyles List 1
Explore Matthew Doyle's curated reading list featuring captivating books on nature and history, including Rats by Robert Sullivan, The Unredeemed Captive, and April 1865.
Book
The Unredeemed Captive
by John Demos
Nominated for the National Book Award and winner of the Francis Parkman Prize. The setting for this haunting and encyclopedically researched work of history is colonial Massachusetts, where English Puritans first endeavoured to "civilize" a "savage" native populace. There, in February 1704, a French and Indian war party descended on the village of Deerfield, abducting a Puritan minister and his children. Although John Williams was eventually released, his daughter horrified the family by staying with her captors and marrying a Mohawk husband. Out of this incident, The Bancroft Prize-winning historian John Devos has constructed a gripping narrative that opens a window into North America where English, French, and Native Americans faced one another across gilfs of culture and belief, and sometimes crossed over.
Book
Rats
by Robert Sullivan
Behold the rat, dirty and disgusting! Robert Sullivan turns the lowly rat into the star of the most perversely intriguing, remarkable, and unexpectedly elegant book of the season.
