Books of interest

From time to time we come across books that we think others might want to read (or need to read.) One such book is The Zoo Keeper's Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman. A review on amazon.com reads, "On the heels of Alan Weisman's The World Without Us ,,,[is} Diane Ackerman's The Zookeeper’s Wife. Both books take you to Poland's forest primeval, the Bialowieza, and paint a richly textured portrait of a natural world that few of us would recognize. The similarities end there, however, as Ackerman explores how that sense of natural order imploded under the Nazi occupation of Poland. Jan and Antonina Zabiniski--keepers of the Warsaw Zoo who sheltered Jews from the Warsaw ghetto--serve as Ackerman's lens to this moment in time, and she weaves their experiences and reflections so seamlessly into the story that it would be easy to read the book as Antonina's own miraculous memoir. Jan and Antonina's passion for life in all its diversity illustrates ever more powerfully just how narrow the Nazi worldview was, and what tragedy it wreaked. The Zookeeper’s Wife is a powerful testament to their courage and--like Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise--brings this period of European history into intimate view." Having just read this book, a story on the web today (May 12) about Warsaw and incredible bravery and selflessness caught my interest. Irena Sendler, who saved thousands of Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, has died. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080512/wl_nm/poland_sendler_dc