5 good reads for January

New York--It’s only five days into the new year, so there’s still plenty of time to get started on that New Year’s resolution: Read more books this year. 

National Jeweler’s editors clicked through the stacks of new releases as detailed by online book discussion site GoodReads to select four solid reads for business owners that are new this month. 

In fifth position is an editor’s choice, picked this month by Editor-in-Chief Michelle Graff. 

1) Rare: The High-Stakes Race to Satisfy Our Need for the Scarcest Metals on Earth
Keith Veronese
This book is a must-read for anyone in the jewelry industry; it details the chemistry of and geopolitical issues behind so-called conflict minerals such as tantalum, rhodium and niobium et al, the minerals, along with gold, that make up the “conflict minerals” provision of the Dodd-Frank Act. 

Though it doesn’t specifically mention jewelry, the book’s summary notes that these little-known metals are “key components of many consumer products like cell phones, hybrid car batteries, and flat-screen televisions” that are the center of the ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

2) Almost Famous Women: Stories
Megan Mayhew Bergman
Lord Byron’s illegitimate daughter Allegra, Oscar Wilde’s niece Dolly and the sister of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay are among the remarkable women explored in this book of intriguing ladies that were almost--but not quite--famous in their time.

3) It Was Me All Along
Andie Mitchell
Described as motivating, this memoir by Mitchell, who is a food blogger, details how she kicked her lifelong habit of binge-eating, developed during a traumatic childhood, to lose 135 pounds and develop a healthy relationship with and love for food.

4) Savage Park: A Meditation on Play, Space, and Risk for Americans Who Are Nervous, Distracted, and Afraid to Die
Amy Fusselman
Inspired by a trip to a children's park in Japan, Fusselman explores the American obsession with safety and posits that when a culture prohibits its children from taking risks it makes them less safe, not more so.

5) Editor’s pick: Brain On Fire
Susannah Cahalan
Described by the author as “a blend of memoir and reportage,” this book details a lost period in the life of New York Post reporter Susannah Cahalan. Suffering from severe mood swings and erratic behavior, an entire team of physicians and a battery of tests couldn’t diagnose Cahalan until one doctor was able