...well, I wasn't, but I just thought I'd mention a book I'm almost finished reading called Dancing Under the Red Star by Karl Tobien. I sort of stumbled onto this book while I was wandering around a Borders Book Store last week. It's an easy read about the only American woman (one of only two Americans) to survive the Soviet Gulag system under Stalin. In the 1930s, Henry Ford sent a few hundred families to live and work in Gorky (now the city of Nizhny Novgorod). This young woman, Margaret Werner, was in her late teens when she was declared an enemy of the state (this, after the authorities came and got her father) and was sent to labor camps in Siberia.
I think it would be a book that high schoolers could read (and would get a lot out of). I'm considering assigning it or, at least, reading it in class next year.
That's it for now... Gotta find some coffee!
