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Volume 3 |
December 2007 |
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 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.
Not a lot of fiction for those looking for light reading during the
holiday break. There are, however, lots of biographies and a
wide variety of non-fiction. So, check it out!
Fiction
Exit Ghost (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 2007 -
call number F
R7426) is the latest and (and maybe final?) book by Pulitzer
Prize-winner Philip Roth to feature the character Nathan Zuckerman.
For more Roth titles featuring Zuckerman in the library,
click here.
Annie Dillard, as well known for her non-fiction as for her novels,
is back with The Maytrees (New
York: HarperCollins, 2007 -
call number F
D581m), a story of Toby and Lou Maytree.
Non-Fiction
The six biographies this month don't fit in a particular
subject area, but three deal with famous authors. In
The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of
Washington Irving (New York: Basic Books, 2007 -
call number 817.24 Bur), Andrew Burstein provides a biography of
the author of
The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow, who was also a biographer (George
Washington and
Christopher Columbus, among others), an ambassador, and a
politician. James Fenimore
Cooper: The Early Years (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2007 -
call number 813.24 Fra), by Wayne Franklin, is the first
book-length biography in a long-time of the man who invented whole
genres of literature (the Western, the sea tale) and who was able to
turn novel writing, then considered a sideline, into a paying
career. This is the first of a projected two volume biography
of Cooper and covers his life from boyhood to 1826 when he and his
family left for an extended stay in Europe. Arnold Ramperad
(humanities, Stanford), in Ralph Ellison: A
Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007 -
call number 813.54 Ell-R 2007), provides what may be the
definitive bio of Ellison, author of
Invisible Man, along with a look at Ellison's writings and
their historical importance.
In Anton Rubinstein: A Life in Music
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007 -
call number 780.92 Rub-T), Philip S. Taylor provides an in-depth
biography of the Russian composer, pianist, conductor, and the found
of the first Russian conservatory.
Branch Rickey, while best known for his role in breaking baseball's
color line, had a long history in major league baseball and even
invented the farm system and is the subject of Leo Lowenfish's
Branch Rickey: Baseball's Ferocious Gentleman
(Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2007 -
call number 796.357092 Ric-L)
Biographies segue nicely into memoirs and there are two of
those this month. Plain Dealer and Pulitzer Prize winner
Connie Schulz looks at life on the campaign trail as the wife of the
candidate, Sherrod Brown, now Ohio's junior Senator in
. . .and His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man
(New York: Random House, 2007 -
call
number 324.9771044 Sch). In My
Lobotomy: A Memoir (New York: Crown, 2007 -
call number
617.481 Dul) Howard Dully goes in search of why he became on of
the youngest people to be given a transorbital lobotomy and how it
affected his life.
Food is on everyone's mind this time of year. In
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food
Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2007 -
call number 641.0973 Kin), Barbara Kingsolver (author
of novels such as The Bean Tree and The Poisonwood Bible, as well as
non-fiction) recounts, with help from her daughter and husband, the
family's experience of a year spent consuming food grown as close to
home as possible, often by themselves.
Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias (Lincoln,
NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2006 -
call
number 641.013 Eat), edited by Etta m. Madden and Martha L.
Finch, is a collection of essays dealing with food in utopian
communities from early New England Thanksgiving s to debates over
meatless diets in 19th-century Shaker communities to 1970s
counterculture groups to contemporary TV cooking shows.
Also well represented this month are books on history.
Robert Service (Russian history, Oxford) in
Comrades!: A History of World Communism (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2007 -
call
number 335.4 Ser) provides a history of communism from Marx to
the present, suggesting that while communism in its original from is
dying, the poverty and injustice that enabled it are alive and well.
Especially well represented is U.S. history.
Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought:
The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2007 -
call number
973.5 How), part of the Oxford History of the United States, is
a sweeping view of America during the first half of the
19th-century. Selling War to America"
From the Spanish American War to the Global War on Terror
(Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007 -
call number
355.0272 Sec), by Eugene Secunda and Terence P. Moran, looks at
the ways the U.S. government has tried to get public opinion on its
side for seven wars over a century. Chris J. Magoc presents
some 15 environmental issues in U.S. history from colonial New
England to Three Mile Island and the debates on national energy
policy in Environmental Issues in American
History: A Reference Guide with Primary Documents
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006 -
call number 333.70973 Mag). Each issue has an essay on the
background along with a number of primary source documents (often
excerpted, but with the original source given) and a basic
bibliography.
Energy is the subject of Energy
Autonomy: The Economic, Social and Technological Case for Renewable
Energy (Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2007 -
call
number 333.794 Sch 2007) in which author Hermann Scheer, a
member of the German Bundestag and General Chairman of the World
Council for Renewable Energy, builds a case for the transition to
renewable energy sources and the decentralization of energy
production.
Two new books deal with nursing and health care. In
When a Child Dies: How Pediatric Physicians
and Nurses Cope (Seattle: University of Washington Press,
2006 -
call number 618.920029 McK), Robert S. McKelvey uses narratives
based on three years of interviews to explain the subtitle.
I'm not sure you can solve the health care problem in just 171
pages, but Pamela Behan (sociology, University of Houston) compares
the U.S. to Canada and Australia in Solving
the Health Care Problem: How Other Nations Succeeded and Why the
United States has Not (Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press, 2006 -
call
number 362.1 Beh). If this topic interests you, you might
also want to take a look at the video
Salud!.
In Feeling Like a Kid: Childhood and
Children's Literature (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2006 -
call
number 809.89282 Gri), Jerry Griswold suggests that five themes
(snugness, scariness, smallness, lightness, and aliveness) recur
throughout children's literature citing examples from Aesop
to J.K. Rowling.
In Letters to a Young Teacher
(New York: Crown, 2007 -
call number 371.1 Koz), National Book Award-winning author and
educator Jonathan Kozol sends letters to Francesca, a young teacher
at an inner-city school in Boston. The letters are often based
on Kozol's own teaching experiences.
The Other Insect Societies
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006 -
call number
595.71782 Cos), by James T. Costa, is a reference work that
looks at insects in less complex social organizations such as
spiders, centipedes, and millipedes.
Search engines, how they work and how they display search
results, are the subject of Web Dragons:
Inside the Myths of Search Engine Technology (Boston:
Morgan Kaufmann, 2007 -
call number
025.04 Wit) by Ian H. Witten, Marco Gori, and Teresa Numerico.
Those of you already following the 2008 Presidential election, may
want to take a look at Ray Suarez's The
Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America (New York:
Rayo, 2006 -
call number 322.10973 Sua), in which the senior correspondent
for the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer looks at the intersection of
faith and politics in America.
Rebuilding Urban Places After Disaster:
Lessons from Hurricane Katrina (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2006 -
call number 307.3416097 Reb 2006), edited by Eugenie L. Birch
and Susan M. Wachter, is a collection of essays on what we have
learned from New Orleans and elsewhere.
Finally, we have two of the books Linda Rea mentioned in her
presentation during her installation as the new Bissell chair.
Bonnie Dilger's Guatemala: Blood in the
Cornfields (Baltimore, MD: PublishAmerica, 2005 -
call
number 972.81052 Dil) is a first-person account of life if
Guatemala from 1973 through 1994, one of that country's most
repressive and violent eras. In Three
Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations
. . .One School at a Time (New York: Viking, 2006 -
call
number 371.8220954 Mor), Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
tell the story of Mortenson's attempt to build a school in a remote
Pakistani village in response to the villagers' nursing him back to
health from near-death after a failed attempt to climb K2.
Mortenson has gone on to build some 55 schools, emphasizing
education for girls, in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Juvenile
One of the trends in juvenile literature has been to take
a traditional story and re-work it, often by giving it a different
setting. That trend continues with Patricia Storace's
Sugar Cane: A Caribbean Rapunzel
(New York: Jump at the Sun/Hyperion, 2007 -
call number J
398.209729 Sto), which retells the story of Rapunzel in a
Caribbean setting with illustrations by Raul Colon.
This month also brings two new books by Jerry Spinelli.
Love, Stargirl (New York: Knopf,
2007 - call
number JF Sp461l) is a sequel to Stargirl, who has moved
from Arizona to Pennsylvania. Eggs
(New York: Little, Brown, 2007 -
call number JF Sp465e) is the story of the friendship between
nine-year-old Davie and thirteen-year-old Primrose, each of whom has
his or her own problems to work out.
Newbery Medal winner Avi is back with The
Traitors' Gate (New York: Atheneum, 2007 -
call number
JF Av51t 2007), the story of fourteen-year-old John Huffman,
whose father has been sent to debtor's prison in Victorian England.
In Lawn Boy (New York: Wendy
Lamb Books, 2007 -
call number JF
P2854l), Gary Paulsen tells the tale of a 12-year-old boy who
expands his lawn mowing business and begins investing the profits on
the advice of a stockbroker who is one of his clients.
M.E. Kerr brings the story of a romance between a young Columbian
immigrant laborer and an upper-middle-class white girl in
Someone Like Summer (New York:
HarperTeen, 2007 -
call
number JF K464s 2007).
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 Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop is
Francisco Goldman's investigation into the assassination of Bishop
Juan Gerardi.
Jacqueline Bacon's Freedom's Journal: The First African-American
Newspaper.
The Origins of American Health Insurance: A History of Industrial
Sickness Funds by John E. Murray.
William B. Quandt's Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the
Arab-Israeli Conflict since 1967.
Mr. Jefferson's Hammer: William Henry Harrison and the Origins of
American Indian Policy by Robert M. Owens.
Paul
Roche on October 30 at age 91. Roche, one of the last of
the Bloomsbury group, was a poet and translator of classic Greek and
Latin works. Among his collected works of poetry were The
Rank Obstinacy of Things: A Selection of Poems and All Things
Considered, and Other Poems.
Gerald D. Feldman on October 31 at age 70. Feldman, a
historian, wrote on 20th-century Germany, often bringing together
economics and politics in books such as Allianz and the German
Insurance Business, 1933-1945, The Great Disorder: Politics,
Economics and Society in the German Inflation, 1914-1924, and
his first book
Army,
Industry and Labor in Germany, 1914-1918.
Ira Levin on November 12 at age 78. Levin, a playwright
and best-selling novelist, was best known for his books
Rosemary's Baby, The Stepford Wives, and The Boys from
Brazil, all of which also became major motion pictures.
Elizabeth Hardwick on December 2 at age 91. Hardwick,
the wife of poet Robert Lowell, was a novelist (Sleepless
Nights), critic (Sight-readings:
American Fictions), essayist (Bartleby
in Manhattan: And Other Essays) and a co-founder of the
New York Review of Books.
The 2007 National Book Awards winners were announced on
November 14. Winners were:
Fiction: Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
Nonfiction:
Legacy of
Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner
Poetry: Time and Materials by Robert Hass
Young People's Literature:
The
Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman
Alexie
For more information and a complete list of the finalists, see the
National Book Foundation Web site at
http://www.nationalbook.org/.
The New York Times has released its list of 100 Notable
Books of 2007, which ran in the December 2 issue of the New
York Time Book Review (click
here to see the list). The New York Times has also
announced its 10 Best Books of 2007, which will run in the December
9 issue of the New York Times Book Review (click
here to see the list).
The short list for the Costa Book Awards, formerly the Whitbread
Awards, has been announced. Winners of the award, for books by
writers based in England and Ireland, will be announced on January
3, 2008. For more information and to see the short list, go
to the Costa Book Awards web site at
http://www.costabookawards.com.