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Volume 2 |
November 2006 |
Issue 4 |
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.
The new books are rolling out now and we have
a lot to cover, especially in the fiction category. So, let's
get started!
Fiction
The Eagle's Throne
(New York: Random House, 2006 -
call
number F F9526s), the new novel from Carlos Fuentes, is set in a
modern, globalized Mexico, trying to escape its historical culture
of corrupt politics as it moves toward dictatorship.
Fuentes was awarded the 1987 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, given to a
Spanish-language writer for lifetime achievement.
Award-winner Cormac McCarthy returns with
The Road (New York: Knopf, 2002006 -
call number F M1272r), a novel that tells the journey of a
father and son across a devastated America.
The Whistling Season
(Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2006 -
call number F D684w) is the latest from Ivan Doig (perhaps
better known for his short stories) and is set in early
twentieth-century Montana.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a
Yellow Sun (New York: Knopf, 2006 -
call number F Ad45h) is set in Biafra during its attempt to gain
independence from Nigeria in the 1960s and the violence that
followed. Adichie's work is often compared to that of Chinua
Achebe and she has also published Purple Hibiscus, also set
in Nigeria.
Thirteen Moons: A Novel
(New York: Random House, 2006 -
call number F F8696t) is the latest from Charles Frazier, author
of Cold Mountain. This novel, also set in the Cherokee
Mountains, is narrated Will Cooper who looks back at the events in
his nine-decades long life.
Blue Shoes and Happiness
(New York: Pantheon, 2006 -
call number F M1244b) is the latest installment in the No. 1
Ladies' Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith. The
series is set in Botswana.
Thomas McGuane's
Gallatin Canyon: Stories (New York: Knopf, 2006 -
call number F M1791g) is a collection of ten short stories set
in Montana, Michigan, Florida, and Massachusetts by an author known
for his novels set in the American West. It
is his first short story collection in twenty years.
High Lonesome: New and Selected Stories, 1966-2006 (New York: Ecco, 2006 - call number F Oa8h), by Joyce Carol Oates, includes ten new short stories, plus pieces taken from the past four decades.
Non-Fiction
Immigration policy is currently a hot
topic and Ohio has a long history of migrant workers on its
farms. Growing Season: The
Life of a Migrant Community (Kent, OH: Kent State
University Press, 2006 -
call number Q 305.9630977 Har) is a look at the Mexican migrant
community that works summers in the Hartville area with photographs
by Gary Harwood and commentary by David Hassler.
Two new books deal with Korea. Chae-Jin Lee's
A Troubled Peace: U.S. Policy and the
Two Koreas (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2006 -
call number 327.730519 Lee) is a history of U.S. foreign
relations from first contact to the current Bush administration with
an emphasis on the time period that has seen two Koreas.
Everlasting Flower: A History of Korea
(London: Reaktion Books, 2006 -
call number 951.9 Pra), by Keith Pratt, looks at the common
history of North and South Korea, while also exploring their
diverging histories since the end of World War II.
Three new books are here just in time to wrap up the 2006 election
with studies of political advertising and voting
technology. Ted Brader (political
science, University of Michigan) looks at how the emotional appeals
in political advertisements effect voter decisions in
Campaigning for Hearts and Minds: How
Emotional Appeals in Political Ads Work (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2006 -
call number 324.73 Bra). David Marks provides a history of
negative campaigning and how it has been employed in
Going Dirty: The Art of Negative
Campaigning (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006
-
call number 324.70973 Mar). In
The History and Politics of Voting Technology: In Quest of
Integrity and Public Confidence (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2006 -
call number 324.650973 Sal), Roy G. Saltman looks at the history
of how people in America have voted throughout the country's
history.
The environment is the topic of
High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden
Toxics, and Human Health (Washington, DC: Island
Press, 2006 -
call number 363.7287 Gro), by Elizabeth Grossman. Grossman
asks what happens to all of those digital devices - cell phones,
televisions, computers, etc. - when we are through using them?
They end up in the trash, some five to seven million tons of it a
year in the U.S. What is the effect of the toxics in them or,
for that matter, the toxic wastes from their production?
Grossman argues we must change how we design, manufacture, and
dispose of electronic products.
Memoirs are represented by Wole Soyinka's You
Must Set Forth at Dawn: A Memoir (New York: Random
House, 2006 -
call number 822.914 Soy 2006) in which the Nobel Prize winning
author continues his life story (begun in
Ake: The Years of Childhood) in his telling of his adult
years.
Herbert Krosney tells the story of the discovery and publication of
the lost gospel of Judas (published earlier this year as
The Gospel of Judas: From Codex Tchacos) in
The Lost Gospel: The Quest for the
Gospel of Judas Iscariot (Washington, DC: National
Geographic, 2006 -
call number 229.8 Kro).
Finally, four new books take up aspects of current world events.
Andrew Kohut (director, Pew Research Center) and Bruce Stokes (NPR
commentator) analyze the results of a Pew survey of some 91,000
people in 50 nations on why they hate America in
America Against the World
(New York: Times Books, 2006 -
call number 973.931 Koh). The short answer: we're
different and we're misunderstood. Lawrence Wright's
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road
to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006 -
call
number 973.931 Wri) is a history of post-World War II terrorism
with an emphasis on Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Riverbend
(the screen name of an anonymous female Iraqi) continues to give an
Iraqi point of view in Baghdad Burning
II: More Girl Blog from Iraq (New York: Feminist
Press at the City University of New York, 2006 -
call number
956.70443 Riv 2006), which reprints her blog entries beginning in
October 2004 when the previous volume ended. Jonathan B.
Tucker (BS in biology and PhD in political science and a chemical
and biological weapons specialist at the Center for Nonproliferation
Studies of the Monterey Institute of International Studies) provides
a history of chemical warfare from the first use of chlorine gas to
the current attempts by terrorist groups to acquire nerve agents,
banned by international treaty in 1997, in
War of Nerves: Chemical Warfare from World War I to al-Qaeda
(New York: Pantheon, 2006 -
call number 358.3409 Tuc).
Juvenile
This month we feature pop-up books.
Check them out - but treat them gently!
Robert Sabuda's Winter's Tale: An
Original Pop-Up Journey (New York: Little Simon/Simon
and Schuster, 2005 -
call number JF Sa139w) is a stunning use of pop-up technology in
recounting a trip through the snow.
Opposites (Cambridge, MA:
Candlewick Press, 2005 -
call number J 428.1 Cro), by Robert Crowther, uses pull tabs,
flaps, and wheels to show opposites such as in/out and up/down.
Mommy? (New York: Michael
Di Capua Books/Scholastic, 2006 -
call number JF Se558m), with art by Maurice Sendak, uses pop-ups
to tell the story of a little boy's search for his mommy in a house
full of monsters.
Kate Petty and Jennie Maizels use pop-ups to
show the geography of the earth in
Amazing Pop-Up Geography Book
(New York: Dutton Children's Books, 2000 -
call number J 910 Pet).
Aaron Sachs looks at the beginnings of the
environmental movement in The Humboldt Current:
Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of the American
Environmentalism.
The subtitle says it all in Tyrene White's China's Longest
Campaign: Birth Planning in the People's Republic, 1949-2005.
The reclusive Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird) is the
subject of Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles
J. Shields.
Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney's Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese
Student Soldiers looks at diaries just before and during World
War II.
William Bright
on October 15 at age 78. Bright, a linguist, was known for his
studies of indigenous languages of the U.S. and wrote books such as
American Indian Linguistics and Literature and Native
American Place Names of the United States, as well as co-editing
The World's Writing Systems.
Arnold Sundgaard on October 22 at age 96. A lyricist,
librettist, and playwright, Sundgaard also wrote children's books,
including The Lamb and the Butterfly (illustrated by Eric
Carle) and The Bear Who Loved Puccini.
Clifford Geertz on October 30 at age 80. A cultural
anthropologist, Geertz wrote such books as
Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author (which won a
national Book Critics Circle award) and a number of essays, some of
which are collected in
The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays.
Hilda van Stockum on November 1 at age 98. Born in the
Netherlands, she wrote a number of children's books, including A
Day on Skates: The Story of a Dutch Picnic (her first book,
which won honors from the Newbery Medal committee in 1935), The
Winged Watchman, and The Borrowed House. Many of
her books were set in her native Netherlands.
William Styron on November 1 at age 81. Styron, a
southern writer often viewed as Faulkner's successor, was one of
America's leading post-World War II writers. He is perhaps
best known for
The Confessions of Nat Turner, which won the 1968 Pulitzer
Prize, and
Sophie's Choice.
James Kynge
won the second annual Financial Times
and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award for
China Shakes the World:
A Titan's Rise
and Troubled Future
and the Cchallenge for America.
The
Whiting Writers' Award,
given to emerging authors, awarded ten winners in the categories.
The winners were:
Fiction: Charles D'Ambrosio,
Yiyun Li,
Micheline Aharonian Marcom,
Patrick O'Keefe,
and Nina
Marie Martinez
Poetry: Sherwin Bitsui,
Tyehimba Jess,
and Suji Kwock Kim
Playwrights: Bruce Norris
and Stephen Adly Guirgis
Winners of the second annual
Quill Book Awards
were announced on October 10. Winners are voted on by the
general reading public. Winners were announced in 19
categories. Among the winners were: Tyler Perry's
Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea's
Uninhibited Commentaries on Love and Life
for Book of the Year, If You Give a Pig a Party
by Laura Joffe Numeroff for Children's Illustrated Book, Christopher
Raolini's
Eldest for Young
Adult/Teen Book, Christopher Moore's A Dirty
Job: A Novel for
General Fiction Book, and Amazing Peace: A
Christmas Poem
by Maya Angelou for Poetry.
This past May, the New York Times Book Review
conducted a poll to determine the Best American Fiction for the Past
25 Years (see the
August edition of Book 'em for more information).
Now, the British newspaper The Observer has done the same for the
best British, Irish or Commonwealth novel from 1980 to 2005.
The winner was J. M. Coetzee's
Disgrace. Money, by Martin Amis,
took second place. There was a five-way tie for third place
between Anthony Burgess's
Earthly Powers, Ian McEwan's
Atonement, Penelope Fitzgerald's
Blue Flower, Kazuo Ishiguro's Unconsoled,
and Salman Rushdie's
Midnight's Children.