Hello CWBA members!  I am honored to take the lead for the CWBA Book Club. 
My goal is to select books that challenge our thinking and aid in our shared desire to grow as humans and attorneys.  Our non-fiction book selections written by female authors will be posted here. 

To facilitate our discussion, I may post questions about the selection and supplemental reference materials in the Book Club Forum on this blog. Another way to engage will be during our quarterly Zoom meeting hosted by the CWBA.  If you are uncomfortable participating online, feel free to reach out to me offline to chat more about the selection.  I hope you find value in the book club, and I look forward to your feedback. 

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Best,
Bethany R. Reece

Winner, Colorado Book Award & Reading the West Award. A Best Book of 2012 by Kirkus Reviews & American Library Association. Best Book about Justice by The Atlantic. Finalist, Barnes & Noble Discover Award & Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence.
 

Full Body Burden is a haunting work of narrative nonfiction about a young woman, Kristen Iversen, growing up in a small Colorado town close to Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant once designated “the most contaminated site in America.” It’s the story of a childhood and adolescence in the shadow of the Cold War, in a landscape at once startlingly beautiful and, unknown to those who lived there, tainted with invisible yet deadly particles of plutonium.
 

It’s also a book about the destructive power of secrets, both family and government. Her father’s hidden liquor bottles, the strange cancers in children in the neighborhood, the truth about what was made at Rocky Flats (cleaning supplies, her mother guessed)—best not to inquire too deeply into any of it.
 

But as Iversen grew older, she began to ask questions. She learned about the infamous 1969 “Mother’s Day Fire,” in which a few scraps of plutonium spontaneously ignited, and—despite the desperate efforts of firefighters—came perilously close to a “criticality,” the deadly blue flash that signals a nuclear chain reaction. Intense heat and radiation almost melted the roof, which nearly resulted in an explosion that would have had devastating consequences for the entire Denver metro area. Yet the only mention of the fire was on page 28 of the Rocky Mountain News, underneath a photo of the Pet of the Week. In her early thirties, Iversen even worked at Rocky Flats for a time, typing up memos in which accidents were always called “incidents.”
 

As this memoir unfolds, it reveals itself as a brilliant work of investigative journalism—a detailed and shocking account of the government’s sustained attempt to conceal the effects of the toxic and radioactive waste released by Rocky Flats, and of local residents’ vain attempts to seek justice in court. Here, too, are vivid portraits of former Rocky Flats workers—from the healthy, who regard their work at the plant with pride and patriotism, to the ill or dying, who battle for compensation for cancers they got on the job. Based on extensive interviews, FBI and EPA documents, and class action testimony, this taut, beautifully written book promises to have a very long half-life.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FROM THE CO-FOUNDER OF THE WHOLE30 • End resentment, burnout, and anxiety—and reclaim your time, energy, health, and relationships.

“Melissa Urban shows the way forward with clarity, vulnerability, and humor.”—Gretchen Rubin, author of Life in Five Senses

Melissa Urban has helped millions of people transform their relationship with food. Now, in this powerful and practical guide, she shows how boundaries—clear limits you set to protect your energy, time, and health—are the key to feelings of security, confidence, and freedom in every area of your life.

In her famously direct and compassionate style, Urban offers:

• 130+ scripts with language you can use to set boundaries with bosses and co-workers, romantic partners, parents and in-laws, co-parents, friends, family, neighbors, strangers—and yourself
• Actionable advice to help you communicate your needs with clarity and compassion
• Tips for successfully navigating boundary guilt, pushback, pressure, and oversteps
• Techniques to create healthy habits around food, drink, technology, and more

User-friendly and approachable, The Book of Boundaries will give you the tools you need to stop justifying, minimizing, and apologizing, leading you to more rewarding relationships and a life that feels bigger, healthier, and freer.

2020 ALA Alex Award Winner

2020 Stonewall — Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award Honor Book

In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears.

Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.