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Volume 2 |
August 2006 |
Issue 1 |
New Books | Coming Soon | Obituaries | Awards | Other News
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 and is distributed to
"subscribers" by email notification. If you would like to
become a subscriber or just make a comment, email the editor, David
Everett at everettdd@hiram.edu.
Welcome (back) to Book
'em. We've had a busy summer and a lot of new books have passed
through the New Book display in the library during the past three
months - and this is just a selection. Don't forget - if you read something this summer you would
like to recommend, consider submitting a brief review to
Hiram Reads!
Fiction
Mary Gaitskill's Veronica
(New York: Pantheon, 2005 -
call number F G1296v) is the story of two women's friendship set
in Paris and New York in the 1980s. The novel was a National
Book Award Finalist and one of the New York Times Book Review's
Ten Best Books of the Year.
Leaving Home (New York:
Random House, 2005 -
call number F B7912l) by Booker Prize winner Anita Brookner (for
Hotel du Lac) is the story of growing up and leaving home -
at age twenty-six.
Non-Fiction
The workings of American government and the Constitution
are the subject of a number of books this month. Two books
look specifically at war powers. In
War Powers: How the Imperial Presidency Hijacked the Constitution
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005 -
call number 342.730412 Iro), Peter Irons (political science at
University of California - San Diego) looks at how every President
since FDR has take us into military involvement without a
declaration of war from Congress. In a similar vein, but with
a more historical approach, Frank Vandiver's
How America Goes to War (Westport, CT: Praeger,
2005 -
call number 355.033073 Van) looks at how the United States has
gone to war from the Whiskey Rebellion to the war on terror by
looking at the roles of Congress and the President and arguing that
as wars got bigger and the world more complicated, Presidents got
bolder in initiating military action.
The Constitution in Wartime: Beyond
Alarmism and Complacency (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2005 -
call number 342.730628 Con) is a collection of essays edited by
Mark Tushnet that look at balancing national security and
Constitutional rights and liberties in time of war. Louis
Fisher looks at one such specific example in
Military Tribunals and Presidential Power: American Revolution
to the War on Terrorism (Lawrence, KS: University of
Kansas Press, 2005 -
call number 343.730143 Fis) by tracing military tribunals
throughout U.S. history with chapters on early precedents, the Civil
War, World War II, and the current war on terrorism. In
The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story
from Truman to Kennedy (Lawrence, KS: University of
Kansas Press, 2005 -
call number 327.1273009 Bar), David M. Barrett (political
science at Villanova) uses recently declassified documents to look
at how Congress tried, sometimes very successfully to monitor the
spy agency's actions and plans during the first 15 years of the
CIA's existence.
The Middle East is the subject of several new books. In
Al-Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab
News Channel that is Challenging the West (New York:
Grove Press, 2005 -
call number 070.4309174 Mil) Hugh Miles, a journalist born in
Saudi Arabia and educated in Libya and at Eton, gives a behind the
scenes look at the fast-rising Arab TV network. American policy on the use
of torture in the war on terror is the topic of the
Torture Debate in America
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006 -
call number 323.49 Tor
2006) is a collection of essays, edited by Karen J. Greenberg,
grouped by broad topic, plus ten documents including the 1920
"Report upon the Illegal Practices of the United States Department
of Justice."
Peter Hahn (history, Ohio State) provides an introduction to U.S.
policy on the Middle East from the end of World War II and the
beginnings of the Cold War through 2004 in Crisis and
Crossfire: The United States and the Middle East Since 1945
(Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005 -
call number 327.7305609 Hah) Warren I. Cohen, who has
written a number of books on U.S. foreign policy, provides a broader
look at the history of U.S. foreign policy since the Cold War with
an emphasis on the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W.
Bush in America's Failing Empire: U.S.
Foreign Relations Since the Cold War (Malden, MA:
Blackwell Publishing, 2005 -
call number 327.7300904 Coh).
During the worst heat of the summer came two books with ice
in the title. Jennifer Nevin's The
Ice Master: The Doomed 1913 Voyage of the Karluk (New
York: Hyperion, 2000 -
call number 919.804 Niv) tells the story of the Arctic
expedition aboard the Karluk that left Victoria, British Columbia in
June 1913. Within six weeks the ship was trapped in the ice,
stuck until January 1914 when shifting ice tore a hole in the ship's
hull. Twenty-two men, one woman, and two children abandoned
ship and began a struggle for survival. Twelve lived to be
rescued nine months later.
In Frozen Earth: The Once and Future
Story of Ice Ages (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2004 -
call number 551.792 Mac) J. D. Macdougall (earth science at
Scripps Institution of Oceanography) provides a history of ice ages
and climatic changes on our planet and considers how the study of
the Pleistocene climate may help us understand our current situation
and what the future might hold.
When ice hits the summer heat, of course, you get water, but
not enough of it, according to Fred Pearce. In
When the Rivers Run Dry: Water, the
Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century (Boston:
Beacon Press, 2006 -
call number 333.91 Pea) Pearce, a science writer, looks at
rivers in some 30 countries in the context of predictions there will
soon be a scarcity of water around the world and argues for greater
efficiency and a new ethic in our use of water.
Planning and development are also under discussion in
Sprawl: A Compact History
(Chicago: University of Chicago, 2005 -
call number 307.76 Bru). A professor of art, architecture,
and urban planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Robert
Bruegmann provides a history of cities and their growth, arguing
that sprawl is the logical consequence of economic growth and a
democratic society and has good points often overlooked by urban
planners. And you gotta love the title and its pun!
Two Latin American countries, Haiti and Mexico,
are the settings for two new books. Arthur M. Fournier's
Zombie Curse: A Doctor's 25-year Journey
into the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic in Haiti
(Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2006 -
call number 362.1969792 Fou) is the story of a Miami physician
who met his first AIDS patient in 1979, when there was nothing
medicine could do, with many more to come. The common bond of
these patients is that they were all Haitian refugees. Since
then Fournier has mad some 100 trips to Haiti in his effort to
battle the disease. In Betrayed:
The Assassination of Digna Ochoa (New York: Carroll
and Graf, 2006 -
call number 323.092 Och-D) Linda Diebel, a Canadian journalist,
tells the story of the life and death of Mexican human rights lawyer
Digna Ochoa, who died violently in October 2001; a death the Mexican
government called a probable suicide, but which Diebel finds to be a
murder and, with it, a cover up.
Two books deal with the life and art of Katherine Anne Porter.
Mary Titus's The Ambivalent Art of
Katherine Anne Porter (Athens, GA: University of
Georgia, 2005 -
call number 813.5 Por-T) looks at Porter's ambivalence to
gender, creativity, and societal roles in the context of Porter's
traditional upbringing. A more traditional biography can be
found in Katherine Anne Porter: The Life
of an Artist (Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi,
2005 -
call number 813.5 Por-U) by University of Nevada, Las Vegas
professor Darlene Harbour Unrue.
Juvenile
Six Fools (New York:
HarperCollins, 2006 -
call
number J 398.208996 Tho) is National Book Award winner Joyce
Carol Thomas's adaptation for children of a tale collected by Zora
Neale Hurston during her travels in the Gulf States in the 1930s and
which was originally published in
Every Tongue Got to Confess.
Greg Tang's Math Potatoes:
Mind-Stretching Brain Food (New York: Scholastic
Press, 2005 -
call
number J 793.74 Tan 2005) is a second collection of riddles to
make math fun from the author of
Grapes of Math. Most of us will be happy that answers
with explanations on how to solve the riddles are in the back of the
book.
Click Clack Splish Splash: A Counting
Adventure (New York: Athenaeum Books for Young
Readers, 2006 -
call number JF C8816c 2006) is a 1 to 10 counting book from
Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewis, who also wrote
Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type.
Also by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewis is
Duck for President (New York: Simon and Schuster
Books for Young Readers, 2006 -
call number JF C8816d 2004), the tale of Duck challenging Farmer
Brown in an election to see who is in charge of the farm, which in
turn leads to Duck running for governor and then president, only to
end up back on the farm suggesting that the grass is not always
greener.
Gathering the Sun: An Alphabet in
Spanish and English (New York: HarperCollins, 1997 -
call number J 861.97291 Ada) by Alma Flor Ada is a
Spanish-language alphabet with short poems that are in Spanish with
English translations.
Si Le Das Una Galletita a Un Raton
(New York: HarperCollins, 1995 -
call number JF N9179i Spanish) is the Spanish-language edition
of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff (with
illustrations by Felicia Bond).
James A.
Garfield by Ira Rutkow is the latest volume in the American
Presidents Series.
Terrorist is the latest novel from John Updike.
The subtitle says it all in New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer's
Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq.
Vali Nasr looks at the split between Shiites and Sunnis in The
Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam will Shape the Future.
Going Dirty: The Art of Negative Campaigning by David Mark is
here just in time for the 2006 elections.
Steven Watts looks at the life of Henry Ford in The People's
Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century.
Richard P. Brickner on May 12 at age 72.
A novelist and memoirist, Brickner was best known for works that
explored the aftermath of the automobile accident that left him
paralyzed at age 20. The works included his memoir, My
Second Twenty Years: An Unexpected Life and his first novel,
The Broken Year.
Stanley Kunitz on May 14 at age 100. A poet, Kunitz was
poet laureate of the United States and won a Pulitzer Prize for
poetry. He also earned a National Book Award, the National
Medal of Arts, and the Bollinger Prize in poetry. Among the
collections of his poems are
The Testing Tree: Poems and
The Collected Poems.
Judith Moore on May 15 at age 66. Moore was best known
for her memoir, Fat Girl.
Gilbert Sorrentino on May 18 at age 77. Sorrentino was
a poet (with collections such as
The
Orangery), novelist (Mulligan Stew was his most
commercially successful work), critic, and professor.
Lyle Stuart on June 24 at age 83. A publisher, Stuart
was best known for his decision to publish such controversial books
at The Anarchist Cookbook, The Turner Diaries, and
Naked Came the Stranger, a sex novel supposedly written by a
housewife, but in reality written by 25 reports from Newsday to
prove the public would buy anything.
Philip Rieff on July 1 at age 83. A sociologist, Rieff
was best known for his work on Sigmund Freud, including Freud:
The Mind of the Moralist, The Triumph of the Therapeutic:
Uses of Faith After Freud, and a ten-volume set of Freud's
papers.
Ralph Ginzburg on July 6 at age 76. Ginzburg, a writer
and publisher (100
Years of Lynching and
An Unhurried View of Erotica were self-published), was perhaps
best known for being convicted and serving time for sending ads for
obscenity - his publication Eros - through the mail.
Dorothy Uhnak on July 8 at age 76. An ex-cop turned
novelist, Uhnak was best known for crime novels such as Law and
Order,
Victims,
The Witness, and the Christie Opara series, which began with
The Bait (Uhnak's first novel) and won an Edgar for best first
novel.
Mickey Spillane on July 17 at age 88. Spillane was best
known for his violent crime novels and his fictional detective, Mike
Hammer. His first novel, I, the Jury, was a commercial
success, as were many others such as Vengeance is Mine, My
Gun is Quick, The Big Kill, and Kiss Me, Deadly.
Mike Hammer became the protagonist in two TV series, one starring
Darren McGavin and the other starring Stacy Keach. In
addition, Spillane wrote two non-violent children's books, The
Day the Sea Rolled Back and The Ship That Never Was, both
of which were well-received, the former winning a prize from the
Junior Literary Guild.
Louise Bennett on July 26 at age 86. Bennett, a
Jamaican poet and folklorist, frequently performed on TV and radio
and recorded a number of folksongs. She is perhaps best known
for the books Jamaican Labrish and Dialect Verses.
The Association of Booksellers for Children has announced the
winners of the 2006 E. B. White Read Aloud Awards:
Picture Books
- If I Built a Car, written and illustrated by Chris van
Dusen
Award for
older readers - Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles
The Newton Marasco Foundation, along with the Salisbury University
(Maryland), has announced the winners of the 2006 Green Earth
Book Award, which promotes environmental awareness among youth.
The winners are:
Children's -
Near One Cattail, written by Anthony D. Fredericks and
illustrated by Jennifer Dirubbio
Young Adult -
Flush by Carl Hiassen
The International Board on Books for Young People has announced the
winners of the 2006 Hans Christian Andersen Awards:
Medal for
Writing -
Margaret Mahy (New Zealand)
Medal for
Illustration - Wolf Erlbruch (Germany)
Donald Hall, New Hampshire poet, has been
appointed the new poet laureate of the United States. Hall,
who began writing poetry at 14 (he is now 77), has published 15
books of poetry, the most recent being White Apples and the Taste
of Stone: Selected Poems 1946-2006.
Poll Names Toni Morrison's Beloved the Best American Fiction of
the Past 25 Years - A poll conducted by the New York Times
Book Review among several hundred writers, critics, editors, and
others sought to name the best American fiction of the past 25
years. The poll drew 125 responses with the top five works
being:
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Underworld by Don DeLillo
The
Rabbit Angstrom novels by John Updike
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Roth was the most recognized author with six works in the top
twenty-one.