Books like 'The Human Age'
Readers who enjoyed The Human Age by Diane Ackerman also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
Rated: 4.48 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsAndy Dufresne, a banker, was convicted of killing his wife and her lover and sent to Shawshank Prison. He maintains his innocence over the decades he spends at Shawshank during which time he forms a friendship with "Red", a fellow inmate.Source: stephenking...Categorized as:
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Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty, David Roberts
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsRosie may seem quiet during the day, but at night she's a brilliant inventor of gizmos and gadgets who dreams of becoming a great engineer. When her great-great-aunt Rose (Rosie the Riveter) comes for a visit and mentions her one unfinished goal--to fly--Rosie sets to work building a contraption to make her aunt's dream come true...Categorized as:
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Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman, Robert Chandler
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsLife and Fate is an epic tale of a country told through the fate of a single family, the Shaposhnikovs. As the battle of Stalingrad looms, Grossman's characters must work out their destinies in a world torn apart by ideological tyranny and war...Categorized as:
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The Man Who Loved Dogs by Leonardo Padura
Rated: 4.45 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsA gripping novel about the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940In The Man Who Loved Dogs, Leonardo Padura brings a noir sensibility to one of the most fascinating and complex political narratives of the past hundred years: the assassination of Leon Trotsky by Ramón Mercader...Categorized as:
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The Endless Forest by Sara Donati
Rated: 4.45 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsWith a master storyteller’s skill and a historian’s precision, Sara Donati has delighted readers and critics alike with her bestselling novels of the nineteenth-century New York frontier. Now she brings us The Endless Forest, set in the remote village of Paradise, where the Bonner family that readers first met in Into the Wilderness make their home... -
Unintended Consequences by John Ross, Timothy Mullin
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsUnintended Consequences is a novel by John Ross, first published in 1996 by Accurate Press. The story chronicles the history of the gun culture, gun rights, and gun control in the United States from the early 1900s through the late 1990s... -
Chess Story by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsChess Story, also known as The Royal Game, is the Austrian master Stefan Zweig's final achievement, completed in Brazilian exile and sent off to his American publisher only days before his suicide in 1942. It is the only story in which Zweig looks at Nazism, and he does so with characteristic emphasis on the psychological...Categorized as:
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Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsA big, powerful saga of men in combat, written over the course of thirty-five years by a highly decorated Vietnam veteran.Intense, powerful, and compelling, Matterhorn is an epic war novel in the tradition of Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and James Jones's The Thin Red Line...Categorized as:
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Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada, Geoff Wilkes
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsInspired by a true story, Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin is the gripping tale of an ordinary man's determination to defy the tyranny of Nazi rule. This Penguin Classics edition contains an afterword by Geoff Wilkes, as well as facsimiles of the original Gestapo file which inspired the novel. Berlin, 1940, and the city is filled with fear...Categorized as:
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Daughter of Ninmah by Lori Holmes
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsLove or loyalty? Destiny hangs upon a single choice…Living deep within the mysterious southern forests, the spiritual Ninkuraaja people are being hunted to the brink of extinction by bloodthirsty raiders known only as Woves.Nobody knows better than a Ninkuraa that a Wove deserves only death...Categorized as:
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Next in Line by Jeffrey Archer
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsLondon, 1988. Royal fever sweeps the nation as Britain falls in love with the ‘people’s princess’.Which means for Scotland Yard, the focus is on the elite Royalty Protection Command, and its commanding officer. Entrusted with protecting the most famous family on earth, they quite simply have to be the best. A weak link could spell disaster... -
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, Cindy Sheehan
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsAn immediate bestseller upon its original publication in 1939, Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo is a searing portrayal of war that has stunned and galvanized generations of readers...Categorized as:
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Lord Edward's Archer by Griff Hosker
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratings13th Century, Wales and England.To young Gruffyd, life has been unkind. Eking out a meagre living with his father, he has learned very quickly how to look after himself in the hostile borderlands. His father, an archer, has taught him well and at seventeen Gruffyd is a keen and able bowman...Categorized as:
historical-fiction politics europe british-isles united-kingdom england wales historical -
The First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsNotice: "In the First Circle" and "The First Circle": "In The First Circle" is 200pp longer; "The first circle" is a censored and abridged version.Set in Moscow during a three-day period in December 1949, 'The First Circle' is the story of the prisoner Gleb Nerzhin, a brilliant mathematician...Categorized as:
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The Company by Robert Littell
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe Barnes & Noble ReviewSince the publication of his 1973 debut thriller, The Defection of A. J. Lewinter, Robert Littell has evolved into one of the most credible, consistently interesting espionage novelists of the modern era...Categorized as:
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Sugar Street by Naguib Mahfouz, Naguib Mahfouz
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSugar Street is the third and concluding volume of the celebrated Cairo Trilogy, which brings the story of Al-Sayid Ahmad and his family up to the middle of the twentieth century.Aging and ill, the family patriarch surveys the world from his housewares's latticed balcony, as his long-suffering wife once did...Categorized as:
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Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick, Harvey Wheeler
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSomething has gone wrong. A group of American bombers armed with nuclear weapons is streaking past the fail-safe point, beyond recall, and no one knows why. Their destination—Moscow.In a bomb shelter beneath the White House, the calm young president turns to his Russian translator and says, "I think we are ready to talk to Premier Kruschchev...Categorized as:
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A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsFrom its first magnificent sentence, "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing," to the last, "I am haunted by waters," "A River Runs Through It" is an American classic...Categorized as:
historical-fiction outdoors 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies audiobook classics -
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 44 ratingsThis depicts the men of Alpha Company. They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy), and occasionally each other. In their relationships we see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear. They miss their families, their girlfriends and buddies; they miss the lives they left back home...Categorized as:
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The Doll by Cora Taylor
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 5 ratingsWhile Meg is recovering from rheumatic fever her grandmother gives her the old-fashioned family doll named Jessie, and when Meg falls asleep holding Jessie, she wakes up to discover that she has gone back in time and is now Morag, a girl traveling the Canadian prairies by covered wagon...Categorized as:
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In the Distance by Hernan Diaz
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsA young Swedish boy finds himself penniless and alone in California. He travels east in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great push to the west. Driven back over and over again on his journey through vast expanses, Håkan meets naturalists, criminals, religious fanatics, Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend...Categorized as:
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Phenomena: The Lost and Forgotten Children by Susan Tarr
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsTHIS IS AN EXTRA LARGE PRINT COPY PAPERBACK - SHOULD YOU REQUIRE NORMAL SIZE PLEASE SEARCH OTHER SIZE OPTION. As a child I knew Malcolm, who was then a young man, since Dad often invited him home for meals. He was one of the 'lost children' forgotten or abandoned by their families...Categorized as:
historical-fiction action-adventure book child-abuse children children-books colonization fiction -
A Book of Memories by Péter Nádas, Imre Goldstein
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis extraordinary magnum opus seems at first to be a confessional autobiographical novel in the grand manner, claiming and extending the legacy of Proust and Mann. But it is more: Peter Nadas has given us a superb contemporary psychological novel that comes to terms with the ghosts, corpses, and repressed nightmares of Europe's recent past...Categorized as:
historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book classics fiction historical -
Lies She Never Told Me by John Ellsworth
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsMichael Gresham is the lawyer you’d want to call if you were accused of a crime. Especially if you were guilty... Michael is a successful trial lawyer who’s been placed on medical leave. But he sorely misses the courtroom battles, where he excels. When Michael receives a call from the local jail he comes to life and knows he cannot resist getting involved. For it’s a case of Murder One... -
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BOX 88 by Charles Cumming
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAn organisation that doesn’t exist.A spy that can’t be caught.1989: The fall of the Berlin Wall is imminent and the Cold War will soon be over. But for BOX 88, a top secret spying agency known only to an inner circle of MI6 and CIA operatives, the espionage game is heating up.Lachlan Kite, recruited straight from an elite boarding school, is sent to France – the frontline of a new secret war...Categorized as:
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Fatelessness by Imre Kertész
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsAt the age of 14 Georg Koves is plucked from his home in a Jewish section of Budapest and without any particular malice, placed on a train to Auschwitz. He does not understand the reason for his fate. He doesn’t particularly think of himself as Jewish. And his fellow prisoners, who decry his lack of Yiddish, keep telling him, “You are no Jew...Categorized as:
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Aesop's Fables by Aesop, Ann McGovern
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsSixty-seven familiar and not so familiar fables from Aesop, including the tortoise and the hare, the frogs who wanted a king, the lion who fell in love, and the donkey who danced on the roof... -
The Plague by Albert Camus
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsA gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people...Categorized as:
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Lilli de Jong by Janet Benton
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA young woman finds the most powerful love of her life when she gives birth at an institution for unwed mothers in 1883 Philadelphia. She is told she must give up her daughter to avoid a life of poverty and shame. But she chooses to keep her... -
Memoir from Antproof Case by Mark Helprin
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAn old American who lives in Brazil is writing his memoirs. An English teacher at the naval academy, he is married to a woman young enough to be his daughter and has a little son whom he loves. He sits in a mountain garden in Niterói, overlooking the ocean...Categorized as:
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The Survivors by Kate Furnivall
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsDiscover a brilliant story of love, danger, courage and betrayal, from the internationally bestselling author of The Betrayal.Germany, 1945. The Allied Military Government has set up Displaced Persons camps throughout war-ravaged Germany, to house the millions of devastated people throughout Europe who have lost everything. Klara Janowska is one of these...Categorized as:
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The Spider's House by Paul Bowles, Francine Prose
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSet in Fez, Morocco, during that country's 1954 nationalist uprising, The Spider's House is perhaps Paul Bowles's most beautifully subtle novel, richly descriptive of its setting, and uncompromising in its characterizations...Categorized as:
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Fives and Twenty-Fives by Michael Pitre
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIt's the rule-always watch your fives and twenty-fives. When a convoy halts to investigate a possible roadside bomb, stay in the vehicle and scan five meters in every direction. A bomb inside five meters cuts through the armor, killing everyone in the truck. Once clear, get out and sweep twenty-five meters. A bomb inside twenty-five meters kills the dismounted scouts investigating the road ahead...Categorized as:
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Before the Killing by Marjory Kaptanoglu
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA time-travel tale of love and murder…In the summer of 1973, 19-year-old Cassie returns to her home town on the Massachusetts coast after her first year away at college. The next day, her boyfriend, Julian, is implicated in a brutal killing.Seven years later, a freak occurrence gives Cassie the ability to travel through time without altering it... -
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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, จักรแก้ว ตนุนาถ
Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsThe only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression...Categorized as:
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The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman
Rated: 4.01 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsFrom acclaimed author Ellen Marie Wiseman comes a vivid, daring novel about the devastating power of family secrets--beginning in the poignant, lurid world of a Depression-era traveling circus and coming full circle in the transformative 1950s. On a summer evening in 1931, Lilly Blackwood glimpses circus lights from the grimy window of her attic bedroom...Categorized as:
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The Girl in the Letter by Emily Gunnis
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsA heartbreaking letter. A girl locked away. A mystery to be solved.1956. When Ivy Jenkins falls pregnant she is sent in disgrace to St Margaret's, a dark, brooding house for unmarried mothers. Her baby is adopted against her will. Ivy will never leave.Present day. Samantha Harper is a journalist desperate for a break. When she stumbles on a letter from the past, the contents shock and move her...Categorized as:
historical-fiction survival 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book crime -
All Shall Mourn by Ellie Marney
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe third and final book in the None Shall Sleep Sequence.Simon Gutmunsson is on the loose... Since the disastrous events of the College Killer case, the FBI is coming to terms with the fact that while catching one sociopath, they've released another. Chillingly manipulative, frighteningly intelligent, and wholly insane, Simon Gutmunsson is the worst of the worst... -
No Good Deed by M.P. McDonald
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsASIN moved from less recent editionSeeing the future comes at a price. What price would you be willing to pay to save thousands of lives?Mark Taylor knows his actions scream guilty—but he was only trying to stop the horrible terrorist attack. Instead of a thank you, the government labels him an enemy combatant and throws him in the brig with no rights, no trial, and no way to prove his innocence...Categorized as:
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The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty by Sebastian Barry
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsHailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as "the finest book to come out of Europe this year," The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty is acclaimed Irish playwright Sebastian Barry's lyrical tale of a fugitive everyman. For Eneas McNulty, a happy, innocent childhood in County Sligo in the early 1900s gives way to an Ireland wracked by violence and conflict...Categorized as:
historical-fiction politics 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies epic family -
The Sheltering Sky / Let It Come Down / The Spider's House by Paul Bowles
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsPaul Bowles had already established himself as an important American composer when, at the age of 38, he published The Sheltering Sky and became widely recognized as one of the most powerful writers of the postwar period. By the time of his death in 1999 he had become a unique and legendary figure in modern literary culture... -
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 5 ratingsAn exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past.A house is a precious thing...It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet...Categorized as:
historical-fiction historical fiction lgbtq wlw journey psychological literary-fiction -
Rovers by Richard Lange
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsTwo immortal brothers crisscross the American Southwest to elude a murderous biker gang and protect a young woman in this “utter triumph and delight” from award-winning author Richard Lange (Jonathan Ames, author of A Man Named Doll ). Summer, 1976. Jesse and his brother, Edgar, are on the road in search of victims... -
The Lost Girls of Willowbrook by Ellen Marie Wiseman
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFact, fiction, and urban legend blend in this haunting story about a young woman mistakenly imprisoned at Willowbrook State School, the real-life institution later shuttered for its horrendous abuses.Sage Winters always knew her sister was a little different even though they were identical twins...Categorized as:
historical-fiction survival fiction mystery historical audiobook suspense mental-illness -
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Nettleblack by Nat Reeve
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsSubversive and playful, Nettleblack is a neo-Victorian queer farce that follows a runaway heir/ess and an organisation of crime-fighting misfits as they struggle with the misdeeds besieging a rural English town. The year is 1893... -
Devastation Road by Jason Hewitt
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA deeply compelling and poignant story about the tragic lessons of war and the endurance of memory.In the last months of World War II, a man wakes in a field in a country he does not know. Injured and with only flashes of memory coming back to him, he pulls himself to his feet and starts to walk, setting out on an extraordinary journey in search of his home, his past, and himself.His name is Owen... -
Železný polmesiac by Juraj Červenák
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsLeto 1663. Osmanská ríša siaha až po Dunaj. Mierové rokovania zlyhali a k pohraničnému Ostrihomu prichádza obrovské turecké vojsko pod velením samotného veľkovezíra. Plánuje sa znovu oboriť na Viedeň, ale v ceste mu stojí moderná, dokonale vyzbrojená hornouhorská pevnosť Újvár – Nové Zámky...Categorized as:
historical-fiction 21st-century action-adventure adult book fiction historical psychological -
The Lady or the Tiger? And, the Discourager of Hesitancy by Frank R. Stockton
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsStory summary: In ancient times, a king devised a system of justice where guilt or innocence was determined entirely by chance. The system worked this way: When a man committed a crime important enough to interest the king, notice was given that the fate of the accused person would be decided, on a given date, in the arena of the amphitheater... -
A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa
Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAs the country goes through various political upheavals from colony to socialist republic to civil war to peace and capitalism, the world outside seeps into Ludo's life through snippets on the radio, voices from next door, glimpses of someone peeing on a balcony, or a man fleeing his pursuers...Categorized as:
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Amid the Shadows by Michael C. Grumley
Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA six-year-old girl is born with an unimaginable gift. One person wants to extinguish it. Another wants to protect it. After her mother is violently murdered, young Sarah Baxter ends up in the care of a new and inexperienced social worker with problems of her own...Categorized as:
historical-fiction politics action-adventure adult assassinations audiobook book conspiracies
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