Geraldine Brook's Library

    At the beginning of the month I wrote about the library of Louise Penny. I will end it by focusing on the books in Geraldine Brook's barn. Apart from showing another collection of books in a private library, you will learn about some books you may want to acquire for your own.

   I recognized the name "Geraldine Brooks", most likely because of her journalism. An Aussie, she was a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and contributed articles to other magazines. She has also written many books and one of them, March, resulted in a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
   Her husband was Tony Horwitz, who won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting and passed away in 2019. He also wrote books and both of them published works of fiction, as well as non-fiction. In short, if you look up either author you will have enough reading material to take you deep into 2026. 

   Ms. Brook's books are found in a 1740s farmhouse on Martha's Vineyard. Many of Mr. Horwitz's were also there, but some were donated to libraries after his death. 

   The books are generally segregated in the categories of fiction and non-fiction. 

   

The books found between these windows are ones written by authors who have visited and stayed at the house on Martha's Vineyard. 

Sources:
  The pictures and the information are from this article: "Geraldine Brooks Takes Us On A Tour of Her Home Library: The bestselling author's collection isn't focused on fancy editions - it's full of small treasures from a literary life,' Jacob Brogan, Washington Post, Dec.20, 2025.

  The Wikipedia entries for both of them are entertaining in and of themselves. One of her books, Foreign Correspondence, is based on her attempts to track down old penpals across the world. She was born in Australia because her father " was an American big-band singer who was stranded in Adelaide on a tour of Australia when his manager absconded with the band's pay." 
  Mr. Horwitz was born in Washington. His father was the neurosurgeon who operated on the D.C. policeman, wounded during the assassination attempt on President Reagan. Mr. Horwitz collapsed while on a walk in 2019. 
  The London Public Library has several Brook's books, including the recent, Memorial Days. You will also find there, Spying on the South, the book that Horwitz was working on when he died. They also have his, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War. 
The Bonus: 
  If you still need more to read, see the Wikipedia entry for their son, Nathaniel Horwitz, or the entry for the company "Hunterbrook." He founded it with his college friend, Sam Koppleman. All of what follows looks very interesting, but I will leave it up to you to investigate it.
   Hunterbrook is a "media company and a hedge fund that asks a question that spits in the face of old-school journalism rules: What if an investigative journalism outfit could profit directly off of the malfeasance that it uncovers?"      
   "Koppelman and Horwitz’s company is called Hunterbrook — a portmanteau between Koppelman’s middle name Hunter (after Hunter S. Thompson) and Horwitz’s Brooks (after his mother, the author Geraldine Brooks). The idea is simple, if surprising to industry insiders: They have two companies — the media company does financial investigative journalism. The financial company invests based on that work, taking short positions on a company that the newsroom is about to skewer publicly or taking long positions on its competitors.
   Based on this elevator pitch, Hunterbrook the hedge fund raised $100 million in seed cash all within the past year to invest based on the work of Hunterbrook the newsroom." For more see: "This Hedge Fund Wants to Save Investigative Journalism — By Using It to Game the Market," by By Calder McHugh, Politico Magazine,05/25/2024.