Launching Liberty

Launching Liberty: The Epic Race to Build the Ships That Took America to War by Doug Most

This is a history of the Liberty Ships that were the work horse for the Allies in WW2. The ships were built in several locations in the US, and while they didn't exist at the beginning of the war, by the end they were being built at record speeds. Several different companies built these ships, but this books concentrates on the California shipyards of Henry Kaiser. Kaiser was the person who build Hoover damn. As part of his innovation in building the ships, he wanted his workers to have access to health care without having travel far, so he created what would become Kaiser-Permanente.

Bringing Up Beaver

Bringing Up Beaver: Two Orphaned Beaver Kits, Their Humans, and Our Journey Back to the Wild by John Aberth (Simon & Schuster, 2025)

This is the chronicle of a licensed animal rehab person who lives in rural Vermont. He takes in lots different animals, owls, hawks etc. This book covers a little over a year of his taking in a baby beaver, whos parents were killed when there lodge ws demolished. Many people see beavers as a nuisance and try to elimate them from their property. The amount of work that the author goes through to accomodate this baby beaver is amazing. What is especially challenging is that he is rehabbing this animal with the goal of ultimately being released back to the wild and not kept as a pet. He does a lot of evangelizing about how we treat wild life and what should change. A great story of a dedicated volunteer.