| Volume 1 |
December 2005 |
Issue 5 |
New Books
| Coming Soon | Obituaries
| Awards
Book 'em looks at selected books that are on, or have
recently been, on the New Book display, as well as other news in the
world of books. A complete list of books (and other materials)
cataloged in the past month may be found at http://hiraml.hiram.edu/ftlist.
Book 'em is published monthly from August through May. Please
direct any comments to the editor, David Everett.
New Books
Fiction
If you are looking for something to read during the holiday
break, there is a lot of new fiction on the New Book display.
Among the highlights are:
No Country for Old Men (NY: Knopf,
2005 - call number F
M1272n), set in the contemporary border area
between Mexico and Texas, is Cormac McCarthy's first novel since the
Cities of the Plain some seven years ago.
Philip Caputo's latest novel, Acts
of Faith (NY: Knopf, 2005 - call
number F C1754a), is set in contemporary, war-torn Sudan.
The March: A Novel
(NY: Random House, 2005 - call number F
D6591m) is E. L. Doctorow's
fictionalized account of General William Sherman's "March to the
Sea."
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
(NY: Pantheon, 2004 - call
number F M1244i) is the sixth adventure of Alexander McCall Smith's No.
1 Ladies Detective Agency series. If you did not know, the
series is set in Botswana.
Among the other new fiction titles available, you might also want to
look at William Vollmann's National Book Award winning Europe
Central, plus new novels from Pulitzer Prize winning J. M.
Coetzee (Slow
Man) and by Louis Erdrich (The
Painted Drum).
Non-Fiction
Current issues top this month's list of new non-fiction
titles. In Understanding Iraq
(NY: HarperCollins, 2005 - call
number 956.7 Pol), William Polk looks at Iraq's history of invasion
and occupation by outside forces from the Mongols to the Turks and
Persians, the British Mandate after World War I, and now the United
States. With Us or Against Us: Studies
in Global Anti-Americanism (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005
- call
number 327.7300905 Wit) is a collection of essays, edited by Tony
Judt and Denis Lacorne, that look at anti-Americanism from different
perspectives around the world. On a very different current issue,
Jerry Avron (M.D. and associate professor of medicine at Harvard) takes
a look at pharmaceuticals, their testing and safety, and the
pharmaceutical industry in Powerful
Medicines: The Benefits, Risks, and Costs of Prescription Drugs
(NY: Knopf, 2004 - call
number 338.436151 Avo)
The Sciences are represented by two new titles. The
subtitle says it all in Sneaking a Look at
God's Cards: Unraveling the Mystery of Quantum Mechanics,
revised edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005 - call
number 539 Ghi) by Giancarlo Ghirardi. America's
Curious Botanist: A Tercentennial Reappraisal of John Bartram 1699-1777
(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2004 - call
number 580.92 Bar-A), edited by Nancy E. Hoffmann and John C. Van
Horne, is a collection of essays from a 1999 symposium that looks at
Bartram's life, writings, and role as scientist and explorer.
If you are interested in Regional Studies, check out The
Appalachians: America's First and Last Frontier (NY:
Random House, 2004 - call
number 974 App). Edited by Mari-Lynn Evans, Robert Santelli,
and Holly George-Warren, this is the book companion to the PBS series
produced by Mari-Lynn Evans. The book collects a number of essays
from various writers ranging from Evans herself to historian Gordon B.
McKinney to country music legend Johnny Cash. And, yes, we also
have the DVD
of the series, which features the last interview done by Cash.
If you are interested in the current state of American
public education, you might want to check out The
Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America
(NY: Crown, 2005 - call
number 379.2630973 Koz) in which Jonathan Kozol looks at issues
facing inner-city schools.
What would an issue of Book 'em be without Biographies?
This month we have Augustine: A New
Biography (NY: Ecco, 2005 - call
number281.4 Aug-O) by James J. O'Donnell (classics, Georgetown
University), which focuses on Augustine's post-Confessions years and his
years at Hippo. Oliver Todd tells the real life story of French
writer, war hero, government minister, and man of action Andre Malraux
in Malraux: A Life (NY:
Knopf, 2005 - call
number 843.91 Mal-T).
Finally, there are four more entries in the Food Culture
Around the World series. The tiles cover food culture in South
America, Russia
and Central Asia, the Caribbean,
and Sub-Saharan
Africa.
Juvenile
Replay (NY: Joanna Cotler
Books, 2005 - call
number JF C8612r) is the latest from Newbury Medal winner and Hiram
College graduate Sharon Creech. Creech looks at the hopes and
dreams of Leonardo, the quiet middle child in a boisterous family.
Barbara Robinson brings back the Herdman family (who first appeared in The
Best Christmas Pageant Ever) in a new book, The
Best Halloween Ever (NY: Joanna Cotler Books, 2004 - call
number JF R5606b).
In A Sweet Smell of Roses
(NY: Simon and Schuster, 2005 - call
number JF J630s) Angela Johnson (a Coretta Scott King Award winner
and resident of Kent, Ohio) offers a tribute to children who
participated in the Civil Rights Movement. The book is exquisitely
illustrated by Eric Velasquez.
Louise Borden's The Journey That Saved
Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margret and H. A. Rey
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005 - call
number J 813.52 Rey-B) tells the story of the Reys' flight on
bicycles from Paris as the German army approached the French capital in
1940. Among the few possessions they could carry were a number of
children's book manuscripts
.
Coming Soon (the following
books are on order or in process)
Life of Benjamin Franklin. The first two volumes in a projected
seven-volume set by J.A. Leo Lemay. The two volumes cover the
first 21 years of Franklin's life.
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday attempt to look behind the myth in Mao:
The Unknown Story.
The subtitle says it all in Joel A.Vilensky's Dew of Death: The
Story of Lewisite, America's World War I Weapon of Mass Destruction.
Serpent in the Bosom: The Rise and Fall of Slobodan Milosevic is
Lenard J. Cohen's take on the Serbian leader..
Lee Espstein's Advice and Consent: The Politics of Appointing
Federal Judges is particularly timely in light of President Bush's
recent nominations for the Supreme Court.
Obituaries
David Westheimer on November 8 at age 88. A novelist,
Westheimer was best known for My Sweet Charlie and Von Ryan's
Express,
which was made into a movie starring Frank Sinatra.
Vine Deloria on November 13 at age 72. Trained as a
seminarian and a lawyer, Deloria, a Native American, wrote books aimed
at breaking down white myths about Native Americans. His best
known books are probably Custer Died for Your Sins and God is
Red.
Stan Berenstain on November 26 at age 82. Berenstain, with
his wife Jan, wrote some 200 books featuring the Berenstain Bears
family. The first book, The Big Honey Hunt, was published
in 1962. The husband and wife team wrote an autobiography, Down
a Sunny Dirt Road: An Autobiography, in 2002.
Roger Shattuck on December 8 at age 82. Shattuck was a
leading expert on 20th-Century French literature, with several works on
Proust. His Marcel
Proust won the 1975 National Book Award for Arts and Letters.
Awards
The National Book Foundation awarded its 56th National Book Awards on
November 16 in New York. Winners were:
Fiction - William T. Vollmann, Europe
Central (NY: Viking, 2005) (check
the status of the library's copy)
Nonfiction - Joan Didion, The
Year of Magical Thinking (NY: Knopf, 2005)
Poetry - W. S. Merwin, Migration:
New and Selected Poems (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon
Press, 2005) (check
the status of the library's copy)
Young People's Literature - Jeanne Birdsall, The
Penderwicks (NY: Knopf, 2005)
For a complete list of the nominees and more information, see the
National Book Foundation's Web site at http://www.nationalbook.org.
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