Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum

Trudy Schlemmer is a professor of German history in Minnesota. She is taking oral histories of World War II survivors. Her mother, Anna, is German, also, but has never talked about her past. Trudy knows she was three when her mother married an American soldier after the war.

The story moves back and forth from the present, starting with the funeral of Anna's husband, to Anna's story in Germany during the war. It is a story of family secrets; of the horrors of the holocaust, and a sobering portrait of life in a country at war.

Trudy has always had a million questions about her mother's past; about who her father was; about the war, and her mother's part in it. But her mother refuses to answer any questions. This is a heartbreaking story of shame and guilt that forever impacts the relationship between a mother and daughter.


496 pages

Our Kids The American Dream in Crisis by Robert D. Putnam

This book was cited in this year's Kid's Count data issued by our Office of Social and Economic Data Analysis at MU.  Putnam explores how the 'American Dream' of opportunity has evolved from his generation, 1950s, to the experience of current young people age 18 through early twenties.  He focuses on the differences in parenting, families, schooling, and community.  The comparisons are stark, and highlight the stratification of neighborhoods into high income/low income with little interchange between them.  He describes consequences of that de facto segregation, using interviews with contemporary young people and their parents, contrasted with the experience of members of his generation. The basic insecurity, whether of shelter, family, inadequate schools, and drugs and crime in communities, of the lowest income families has meant that many children are growing up in very precarious situations.  And yet we expect these kids to conform to the ideals of the American dream, to understand how to navigate college or trade school and move into stable jobs.   Putnam offers some solutions, in the final chapter, but focuses most on local action, and not much on the more sweeping changes that would be needed to have any true impact. 368 pages