Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“Charles Mitchell strode up the steps of 55 Wall Street, determined to project his usual sense of confidence and certitude.” Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—And How it Shattered a Nation.

“‘We hold these truth to be sacred. . .’ Sacred? No. That doesn’t sound right.” Walter Isaacson, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written.

“Few Americans understand just how great the Great Lakes really are.” John U. Bacon, The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

“The fear that gripped the world in March 2020 is not something we will soon forget.” Steven Macedo & Frances Lee, In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us.

“A black man in a white hat stood sleeping against a brick wall.” Michael Rips, The Golden Flea: A Story of Obsession and Collecting.

“In the Roaring Twenties, the famous philanderers William Randolph Hearst and Babe Ruth might have thought it, but only Henry Ford said it out loud: Housewives of America should be patient with outbreaks of marital infidelity.” Gary M. Pomeranz, The Devil’s Tickets: A Night of Bridge, a Fatal Hand, and a New American Age.

“On the night the ships appeared, some fishermen were out on the ocean, working by torchlight.” Hampton Sides, The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook.

“The first time it happened I was in a stall in a public bathroom just off Wall Street in Manhattan.” Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World.

“‘Have you ever thought what you are going to do when you get out of High School?’ asked an editorial in Rahway High’s Scarlet and Black.” Jennifer Burns, Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative.

“There was a buzz of excitement when I arrived at my Harvard office at 78 Mt. Auburn Street on a June morning in 1972.” Doris Kearns Goodwin, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s.

“Fred Rogers had given some very specific instructions to David Newell, who handled public relations for the PBS children’s show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” Maxwell King, The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers.

“I like to probe the darkness at the edges of our nation’s history.” Nathaniel Philbrick, Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy.

“The glass doesn’t just break, it explodes into hundreds, thousands of pieces.” Andrew McCarthy, Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain.

“One of the great myths of our criminal system is that minor arrests and convictions are not especially terrible for the people who experience them.” Alexandra Natapoff, Punishment without Crime: How our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal.

“The Indian Nation turnpike is a four-lane highway cutting north to south through the bottom right corner of Oklahoma.” Rebecca Nagle, By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land.

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“Whenever I think of my mother, I picture a queen-sized bed with her lying on it, a practiced stillness filling the room.” Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom.

“I underwent, during that summer that I became fourteen, a prolonged religious crisis.” James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time.

“Darkness came on that town like a candle being snuffed.” Jess Walter, The Cold Millions.

“I’m eight years old.” Vivian Gornick, Fierce Attachments.

“The first time they drove by the house Eddie was so scared he ducked his head down.” Delores Hitchens, Fools’ Gold.

“There is a hidden world of design all around you if you look closely enough, but the cacophony of visual noise in our cities can make it hard to notice the key details.” Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt, The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design.

“Su Alteza Isabel II, Reina de España, carried ten relics on her person during her last few weeks of pregnancy.” Chantel Acevedo, The Living Infinite.

“The classical world was far closer to the makers of the American Revolution and the founders of the United States than it is to us today.” Thomas E. Ricks, First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped our Country (2020).

“This is the saddest story I have ever heard.” Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier.

“I am writing a book about war . . .” Svetlana Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II.

“My name, in those days, was Susan Trinder.” Sarah Waters, Fingersmith.

“The cocktails were typically strong, and tonight they felt like fortification.” Jeff Shesol, Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court.

“Ever since you were a boy, you’ve dreamt of being Kung Fu Guy.” Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown.

“Had she grown up in any other part of America, Jennifer Doudna might have felt like a regular kid.” Walter Isaacson, Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race.

“It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t know it.” Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence.