Dave's Faves

"In 2008, a Gallup poll showed that 44 percent of Americans believed God had created man in his present form within the last 10,000 years. In a Pew Forum poll in the same year, 42 percent believed that all life on earth has existed in its present form since the beginning of time" (Quoted from the dust  jacket of the hardcover).

 This book is no anti religious polemic, but a measured and highly readable defence of something that should not need defending: evolution is a scientific fact as incontrovertible as any scientific fact, regardless of your religious beliefs.

'Half Broke Horses,' a kind of prequel to 'The Glass Castle,' tells the extraordinary story of Jeanette Walls' resourceful and adventurous maternal grandmother, Lily Casey Smith. Born in a West Texas dirt dugout in 1910, Lily is a no-nonsense, irrepressible pioneer woman whose life is a series of dramatic adventures. The last section, which introduces Walls' young parents, helps to explain her 'unconventional' upbringing. A compelling and entertaining story from a great storyteller.