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Volume 2 |
January 2006 |
Issue 6 |
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 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.
We're back from the holiday break and because of that, the new books
list is a bit on the short side. That's especially true in the
fiction area. Just means there is more for next month!
Fiction
Richard Powers won the National Book Award for
The Echo Maker (New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006 -
call
number F P874e). Set in the Platte River area of Nebraska,
the novel wrestles with the question of how we know who we are.
Eat the Document (New
York: Scribner, 2006 -
call number Sp47e) by Dana Spiotta looks at the lives of Bobby
DeSoto and Mary Whittaker, both as radical 1970s protesters and as
1990s suburbanites under assumed identities.
Non-Fiction
The weather is the topic of several new
books. William B. Meyer looks at the role of weather and
climate throughout American history in
Americans and Their Weather (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000 -
call number 304.250973 Mey). In
Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of
Civilizations (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006 -
call number 551.60901 Lin), Eugene Linden, an environmental
journalist, looks at how weather and climate changes have done in
civilizations and argues that our weather is changing and we are not
prepared for the consequences of that change.
That climate change is the topic of two additional books.
Sea Level Rise: History and Consequences
(San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 2001 -
call number 551.458 Sea 2001), edited by Bruce C. Douglas,
Michael S. Kearney, and Stephen P. Leatherman, is a collection of
essays that look at the effects of rising sea levels since the last
deglaciation some 21,000 years ago. Michael J. Everhart's
Oceans of Kansas: A Natural History of
the Western Interior Sea (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 2005 -
call number 560.4570978 Eve) has a title that sounds a bit like
a scam (ocean-front property in Kansas, anyone?), but Everhart notes
that Kansas has been under sea level longer than above it and looks
at what the fossil evidence tells us about the sea and the creatures
who inhabited it.
The Middle East and the War on
Terror are the topics of a number of new books.
Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at
Guantanamo, Bagram, and Kandahar (New York: New
Press, 2006 -
call number 958.1047 Beg), is Mozaam Begg's first-hand account
of life if "Gitmo" for someone accused of being a terrorist.
Begg was seized at a friend's house in Pakistan in 2002 and released
in 2005 with no explanation or apology. In
Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of
Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2005 -
call number 303.625 Pap), Robert A. Pape (political science,
University of Chicago) argues that we are seeing an increase in
suicide bombers because terrorists have learned that it works at the
strategic level. Matthew Currier Burden provides blog entries
from soldiers on the front lines of the War on Terror in
Blog of War: Front-Line Dispatches from
Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 2006 -
call
number 956.70443 Bur). (Editor's note: This is the third month
in a row we have highlighted a book that is the re-printing of blog
entries -
Baghdad Burning and
Baghdad Burning II were the others. Does anyone else see
the irony in that? Wasn't the Internet supposed to
replace/kill books?). Finally, if you are having trouble
telling the religious splits among the Muslims in Iraq, check out
Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival: How
Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future (New
York: W. W. Norton, 2006 -
call
number 297.8209045 Nas), in which Nasr examines the 1,400 year
split between Shias and Sunnis in terms of both political and
theological differences.
American history comes to the forefront
in Death in the Haymarket: A Story of
Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided
Gilded Age America (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006 -
call number 977.311041 Gre) in which author James Green (labor
history at University of Massachusetts - Boston) looks at the bomb
explosion at a May 1886 labor rally that killed seven, as well as
the prelude and aftermath of the labor unrest in Chicago and looking
at the role of class and the increasing power of newspapers.
There is little in new biography this month, but Laura Tyson
Li provides the first biography of Mayling Soong, the western
educated (Wellesley College, 1917) the wife and widow of Chang
Kai-Shek, whose own influence with the American public lasted nearly
until her death in 2002 at age 105 in
Madame Chiang Kai-Shek: China's Eternal First Lady
(New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006 -
call
number 951.042 Chi-L).
For those interested in medical history and the current
vaccine controversy, check out Kurt Line's
Vaccine Controversy: The History, Use, and Safety of
Vaccinations (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005 -
call number 614.47 Lin), in which Line (an internal medicine
specialist who is pro-vaccination) looks at the powers, limitations,
and risks of immunizations and wonders about possible vaccines to
come.
Finally, art is represented with Neil
MacGregor's Seeing Salvation: Images of
Christ in Art (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2000 -
call number 704.94853 Mac), a heavily illustrated in color book
that looks at how artists have portrayed Christ for almost two
thousand years - given that there are no contemporary accounts of
how Christ looked physically.
Juvenile
Based on a true story, James Cross Giblin's
The Boy Who Saved Cleveland
(New York: Henry Holt, 2006 -
call number JF G355b) tells the story of ten-year old Seth Coan,
who saves Cleveland - when it was just several log cabins and a
cornfield.
Voices (Orlando, FL:
Harcourt, 2006 -
call number JF L5273v) is the second volume in Ursula K.
LeGuin's Annals of the Western Shores (Gifts
was the first volume).
Lavishly illustrated with color photographs to accompany a basic
text, March of the Penguins
(Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2006 -
call number J598.47 Mar) is "the official children's companion
to the major motion picture." Don't forget to check out the
film, too, from the library's video collection.
In The Miraculous Journey of Edward
Tulane (Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2006 -
call number JF D5471m 2006), Kat DiCamillo tells the story of
the travels of Edward Tulane, a china rabbit.
Prolific Newbery Honor-winning author Patricia McKissack repeats
stories she heard on her front porch as a child - and adds a few of
her own in Porch Lies: Tales of
Slicksters, Tricksters, and Other Wily Characters
(New York: Schwartz & Wade Books, 2006 -
call
number JF M217p 2006).
The Little Red Hen (New
York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2006 -
call number J 398.2452 Lit 2006) re-tells the classic story with
beautiful color illustrations from Caldecott Honor-winning Jerry
Pinkney.
Sandhya Rao's My Mother's Sari
(New York: NorthSouth Books, 2006 -
call number JF R1805m) tells the tale of a little girl's
connection to her mother's many saris. Includes step by step
instructions on how to wrap a sari.
The following titles are about to be published,
on-order, or are in process. Keep an eye out for them on the
New Book Shelf in the library.
The biographies are coming! The biographies are coming!
Jules Verne: The Definitive Biography, by William Butcher -
will it live up to its subtitle?
Kinglsey N. Bray looks at the Sioux war chief in Crazy Horse: A
Lakota Life.
American industrialist Andrew Mellon is the subject of David
Cannadine's Mellon: An American Life.
Jane Goodall: The Woman who Redefined Man is by Dale
Peterson.
The subtitle says it all in Monopoly: The World's Most Famous
Game and How it Got That Way by Philip E. Orbanes (think of the
book as the biography of the game).
Wilma Dykeman on December
22 at age 86. Dykeman, who wrote fiction and non-fiction
mostly about her native Appalachia, was best known for works such as
The French Broad (a portrait of the French Broad River),
The
Tall Woman (a novel), and
Neither Black nor White (a look at race relations in the South
written with her husband James Stokely).
Tillie Olsen on January 1 at age 94. Olsen, who wrote
short stories, books, and essays dealing with the struggles of women
and the working class, is probably best known for books such as
Tell Me a Riddle and
Silences.
A. I. Bezzerides on January 1 at age 98. Bezzerides,
who wrote about blue-collar workers, was best known for novels such
as Long Haul (which became the movie They Drive by Night),
Thieves' Market, and There is a Happy Land.
Robert Anton Wilson on January 11 at age 74. Wilson,
who wrote non-fiction, as well as fiction, is probably best known
for The Illuminatus! Trilogy, co-authored with Robert J.
Shea.
The January/February 2007 issue of
The Horn Book Magazine included the winners and honors for the
2006 Boston Globe Horn Book Awards, which is for children's and
young adult's books. The winners were originally announced at
a ceremony in October in Boston. The categories and winners
are:
Picture Books
Winner: Ehlert, Lois.
Leaf Man (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2005)
Honors: Winter, Jeanette.
Mama (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2006)
Hopkinson, Deborah. Sky Boys: How They Build the Empire
State Building (New York: Schwartz and Wade Books, 2006)
Nonfiction
Winner: McNulty, Faith.
If You Decide to Go to the Moon (New York: Scholastic,
2005)
Honors: Markle, Sandra.
A Mother's Journey (Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge,
2005)
Morrison, Taylor. Wildfire (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 2006)
Fiction and Poetry
Winner: DiCamillo, Kate.
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (Cambridge, MA:
Candlewick Press, 2006)
Honors: Larios, Julie.
Yellow Elephant: A Bright Bestiary (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2006)
Roy, Jennifer. Yellow Star (Tarrytown, NY: Marshall Cavendish,
2006)