eBranch Blog

August 02, 2004

Summer Reading: What Houston Insiders are Reading, 2004

In her August 1, 2004 column, Chronicle columnist Shelby Hodge surveyed a number of "big readers and interesting folks" to find out what they're reading this summer. The Summer Reading book list includes both fiction and nonfiction selections.

Sarah Dunant. The Birth of Venus
Nancy Kinder, Republican fund-raiser
Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family's Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter's abilities. But their burgeoning relationship is interrupted when Alessandra's parents arrange her marriage to a wealthy, much older man.

George Crile. Charlie Wilson's War: the Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History
Mayor Bill White
From an award-winning 60 Minutes reporter comes the extraordinary story of the largest and most successful CIA operation in history?the arming of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.