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Volume 2 |
February 2007 |
Issue 7 |
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.
It may be a short month, but there is a long list of new books, including
a number of award winning juvenile books. So, let's get
started!
Fiction
The Whistling Season
(Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2006 -
call number F D684W) by veteran novelist Ivan Doig is another
Western novel set in 1959 Montana where the main character looks
back at his experience in a one-room schoolhouse in the early part
of the twentieth-century. The book recently won an Alex Award
as one of the best adult books that appeals to teens, as well.
Isabel Allende's Inex of My Soul
(New York: HarperCollins, 2006 -
call number F A1547i) is the fictionalized biography of Dona
Ines de Suarez, the first European woman in Chile.
Rescue Missions: Stories
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2006 -
call number F B9605r) is a posthumously published collection of
short stories from Frederick Busch, who was known for his short
stories.
Non-Fiction
This month starts off with two books on Ohio history.
George E. Condon, a former Plain Dealer reporter and columnist,
provides a history of Cleveland's west side in
West of the Cuyahoga (Kent, OH: Kent State
University Press, 2006 -
call number 977.132 Con 2006).
Caves and Culture: 10,000 Years of Ohio History
(Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006 -
call number 977.101 Cav), edited by Linda B. Spurlock, Olaf H.
Prufer, and Thomas R. Pigott, is a collection of essays that look at
Ohio's prehistory and very early history through the study of caves
and rock shelters across the state.
Folklore and legend is represented by
Campus Legends: A Handbook (Westport, CT:
Greenwood, 2005 -
call number 378.002 Tuc) in which Elizabeth Tucker collects and
provides commentaries on campus legends from across the United
States, while also attempting to categorize and place them in
context of scholarly analysis of legends in general.
Unfortunately, Tucker missed Hiram's own Ethel.
United States involvement in Asia is the topic of two new
books. In Triumph Forsaken: The
Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2006 -
call number 959.7043 Moy), Mark Moyar (history, U. S. Marine
Corps University) recounts the early history of the war, suggesting
that Vietnam was indeed vital to U. S. interests and that the war
was winnable, but was undermined by faulty assumptions and
incomplete intelligence and finally done in by a lack of will on the
part of the United States. All of this sounds very familiar
but in a different context - is there a lesson in there somewhere?
Marion Creekmore's A Moment of Crisis:
Jimmy Carter, the Power of a Peacemaker, and North Korea's Nuclear
Ambitions (New York: PublicAffairs, 2006 -
call number 327.7305193 Cre) recounts Jimmy Carter's
intervention in the 1994 North Korean nuclear crisis and his trip to
North Korea, despite the doubts of most of the Clinton
administration. Carter's deal with Kim Il Sung broke the
diplomatic stalemate and led to an agreement that put North Korea's
nuclear program on hold for 8 years. Creekmore went on the
trip with Carter and the former President wrote the introduction to
the book.
Medical ethics and the War on Terror come together in
Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical
Complicity, and the War on Terror (New York: Random
House, 2006 -
call number 174.2 Mil), in which Steven H. Miles (University of
Minnesota Medical School) examines the role of medical personnel
(both in terms of silence and in terms of providing information) at
Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and elsewhere in the current war on terror.
Nikki R. Keddie provides a
history of women in Middle Eastern
society and culture from pre-Islamic times to the present with the
emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries in
Women in the Middle East: Past and Present
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007 -
call number 305.40956 Ked).
Biography, as always, is well represented this month.
William Butcher's Jules Verne: The
Definitive Biography (New York: Thunder's Mouth
Press, 2006 -
call number 843.8 Ver-B) is a look at the man behind such great
stories as Journey to the Center of the Earth, Around the
World in 80 Days, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
The reclusive author of To Kill a Mockingbird is the subject
of Charles J. Shields's Mockingbird: A
Portrait of Harper Lee (New York: Henry Holt, 2006 -
call number 813.54 Lee-S). The life of the man who wrote
Peter Pan is the subject of Lisa Chaney's
Hide and Seek with Angels: A Life of J.
M. Barrie (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005 -
call number 822.912 Bar-C). Charlotte Gray's
Reluctant Genius: Alexander Graham Bell
and the Passion for Invention (New York: Arcade
Publishing, 2006 -
call number 621.385092 Bel-G) is a biography of the man
remembered for inventing the telephone, but who invented so much
more, including an attempt at an electrical probe to locate the
assassin's bullet when President Garfield was shot.
Wangari Aathai, Kenyan political activist, feminist,
environmentalist, government official, and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize
winner, tells her own story in Unbowed:
A Memoir (New York: Knopf, 2006 -
call number 333.72092 Maa).
Not quite a biography, but also not quite literary criticism,
Fighting Windmills: Encounters with Don
Quixote (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006 -
call number 863.32 Dur), by Manual Duran and Fay R. Rogg, is a
look at the life of Cervantes and the impact of Don Quixote
on generations of writers.
Economics and the ending of poverty is the topic in two
recent books. In The
End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time
(New York: Penguin, 2005 -
call number 339.4609172 Sac), Jeffrey Sachs, economist and
director of the Earth Institute, provides nine steps to end world
poverty by the year 2025. Similarly, Stephen C. Smith
(economics, George Washington University) looks at the traps (poor
nutrition, illiteracy, lack of health care, etc.) that keep people
in poverty and provides eight keys to escaping those traps,
suggesting that one does not have to be rich or powerful to help
people escape poverty, in Ending Global
Poverty: A Guide to What Works (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005 -
call number 339.46 Smi).
Two new books look at China. Roderick Macfarquhar and
Michael Schoenhals provide a history of the Cultural Revolution and
its aftermath in Mao's Last Revolution
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006 -
call number 951.056 Mac). Tyrene White's
China's Longest Campaign: Birth Planning
in the People's Republic, 1949-2005 (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2006 -
call number 363.960951 Whi) is exactly what the subtitle says,
with an emphasis on the one-child campaign and the people's reaction
to it.
In Breeding Bin Ladens: America, Islam,
and the Future of Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2006 -
call number 305.697094 Sho) Zachary Shore argues that the
combination of America's image throughout the world and the failure
of European countries to integrate their Muslim populations, leaves
many Muslims living in the West ambivalent at best and easy prey to
terrorist rhetoric at worst.
Television is represented by
Gay TV and Straight America
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006 -
call
number 791.45653 Bec) in which Ron Becker (communications, Miami
University) looks at the use of homosexual characters and themes on
primetime TV, particularly in the 1990s, and straight America's
reactions. If you are interested in this topic, you might also
want to check out the videos
Off the Straight and Narrow and
Further Off the Straight and Narrow.
Maureen Ogle covers the history of beer brewing in the United States
from the wave of German immigrants in the mid-19th century that
fueled the industry's growth through Prohibition to today's scene
with conglomerates and micro-breweries in her book
Ambitious Brew: The Story of American
Beer (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2006 -
call number 663.420973 Ogl).
Finally, Arthur Lopecky provides two journals of his life at the
New Buffalo Commune near Taos, New Mexico during the 1970s.
The early 1970s are covered in New
Buffalo: Journals from a Taos Commune (Albuquerque,
NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2004 -
call number 307.7740978 Kop), while
Leaving New Buffalo Commune (Albuquerque, NM:
University of New Mexico Press, 2006 -
call number 307.7740978 Kop 2006) continues the story through
1979 when Lopecky left the commune.
Juvenile
David Wiesner wrote and
illustrated Flotsam (New
York: Clarion Books, 2006 -
call
number JF W6378f) the Caldecott winner that tells the story of
the photographs from an underwater camera that washes up on the
beach and is found by a young boy who develops the film - the
illustrations that make up the book.
Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her
People to Freedom (New York: Hyperion Books for
Children, 2006 -
call number J 973.7115 Tub-W) by Carole Boston Weatherford is a
spiritual and poetic account of Tubman's escape from slavery and her
involvement in the Underground Railroad. Kadir Nelson's
illustrations earned her the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award,
plus designation as a Caldecott Honor book.
Alexander McCall Smith, best known for his mystery series, The
No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, turns to a younger audience in
Akimbo and the Elephants
(New York: Bloomsbury, 2005 -
call number JF M1244a), a story of Akimbo, who loves animals.
In this story, Akimbo devises a simple, but ultimately successful,
plan to capture poachers. First published in Britain in the
early 1990s, Smith also wrote a second Akimbo book, Akimbo and
the Lions.
Part of the Kingfisher Knowledge series,
Hurricanes, Tsunamis, and Other Natural Disasters
(Boston: Kingfisher, 2006 -
call number J 363.34 Lan) by Andrew Langley provides a basic
overview of natural disasters, including color photographs, for
children in grades 4 through 8.
Gene Luen Yang won the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in
literature written for young adults with
American Born Chinese (New York: First Second,
2006 -
call number JF Y163a), a graphic novel that ties together in the
final chapter three separate storylines.
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.
Brian M. Reed's Hart Crane: After His Life should be here
just in time for the Bissell Symposium on Crane.
Physics of Basketball by John J. Fontanella.
Barbra Mann Wall's Unlikely Entrepreneurs: Catholic Sisters and
the Hospital Marketplace, 1865-1925.
The American Cookbook: A History by Carol Fisher.
Robert L. Beisner's Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War.
Mary Stolz on December 15 at age 86.
Stole was one of the first to write in the yound-adult genre and is
best known for young-adult novels such as
Belling the Tiger (a Newbery Honor book),
Cezanne Pinto: A Memoir, and
Storm in the Night among the more than 60 books she
published.
Ryszard Kapuscinski on January 23 at age 74.
Kapuscinski, a Polish journalist who wrote non-fiction, is best
known for books such as
The
Soccer War (about Latin American conflicts) and
Imperium (about his travels through Russia after the
collapse of the Soviet Union)
Daniel Stern on January 24 at age 79. Stern, known
mostly for his short stories, published several collections, as well
as novels such as The Suicide Academy.
Sidney Shelton on January 30 at age 89. Shelton was
known for his steamy best-sellers such as The Other Side of
Midnight and A Stranger in the Mirror. He also
wrote for TV and film and produced the TV show I Dream of Jeannie
and created and produced Hart to Hart.
Molly Ivins on January 31 at age 62. Ivins, a liberal
newspaper columnist, was known for her humorist takes on politics,
politicians, and her home state of Texas. Her columns were
collected in books such as
Bushwhacked,
Nothin' But Good Times Ahead, and
You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You.
The American Library Association
announced a number of award winners, primarily for children and
young adult books, on January 22 as part of its annual mid-winter
meeting, held this year in Seattle. Among the winners of
prestigious awards were:
Newbery Medal (outstanding contribution to
children's literature)
Winner: Susan Patron for
The Higher Power of Lucky (New York: Atheneum, 2006)
Caldecott Medal (most distinguished American
picture book for children)
Winner: David Wiesner for
Flotsam
(New York: Clarion Books, 2006)
Michael L. Printz Award (excellence in
literature written for young adults)
Winner: Gene Luen Yang
for
American Born Chinese (New York: First Second, 2006)
Coretta Scott King Award (recognizes African
American authors and illustrators of outstanding books for children
and young adults that demonstrate sensitivity to "the true worth and
value of all human beings."
Winner (author): Sharon
Draper for Copper Sun (New York: Atheneum, 2006)
Winner (illustrator):
Kadir Nelson for the illustrations in
Moses:
When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom (Hyperion
Books for Children, 2006).
For all list of all the award winners, as well as the honor books,
see the American Library Associations Web site at
http://www.ala.org/ala/pio/presscentera/piopresskits/alamidwintermeeting2007/YMA07.htm.