Book: Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin (This is an amazing book about environmental contamination in Toms River, NJ. It includes many every day heroes and also shows that, sometimes, the environmental issue is not what you think...) Book: Kochia Chronicles by Khanjan Mehta (2013) (This a great book about the mistakes sometimes made by people trying to "save the world".)
Work/Life Balance
Book: Unfinished business: Men Women Work Family by Anne-Marie Slaughter (This book is the best I have read on the work/life balance. Her thesis is that there is both caring and competition in a family and those roles need to be clarified in any family.)
Society
Book: Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild This is the best book I have read that helped me understand and appreciate the Tea Party and those that voted for President Trump.
Book:Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe This is still my favorite book on slavery. Legend has it that Lincoln said to Harriet - "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war."
Book: The Jesus I Never Knew by Phillip Yancey This is an amazing book on the life of Jesus - the way he treated people and lived his life against society.
Book: Iron-Jawed Angels: The Suffrage Militancy of the National Woman's Party, by Linda G. Ford
Movie - Iron Jawed Angels (YouTube link) starring Hillary Swank as Alice Paul. Movie - Suffragette (YouTube link) about the suffrage movement in the UK. National monument in DC: Belmont Paul House
I had not heard of Alice Paul - the leader of the suffrage movement in the US - even though she was born in my hometown of Moorestown, NJ (now Mt. Laurel). Rarely do I meet a young person who has heard of her either. Below is more information about her and her work as well as other unsung heroes...
Article: Goeppert Mayer who won the Nobel Prize in 1963 even though she was rarely paid for her scientific work. When she won the the local San Diego newspaper featured the headline, "S.D. Mother Wins Nobel Prize.
Article: Lise Meitnerwas a famous scientist who helped discover fission. Many people think she should have received the Nobel Prize. Yearly later she did have an element named after her - MT 109.