The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments by George Johnson

In his prologue to The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, George Johnson says that he is not identifying the ten most important discoveries of science. Rather, he is interested in creativity and simplicity. Still, the book features some very important theories formed from observations of very economic tests. It includes work by Galileo, Newton, and Lavoisier.

An interesting observation is that the best scientists often discover something other than what they seek. According to Johnson, this is what makes their work effective - their willingness to be open to new ideas. The malleable and relenting mind can accomplish more than the mind that is set. Disproving the existence of phlogiston, caloric, and luminiferous aether may have been just as important as the discovery of photons and electrons.

Johnson longs for a simpler time when an educated thinker could set up his or her own experiments without the support of universities and research institutes. These short stories present their heroes as independent thinkers, people who make personal sacrifices to find scientific truth. The implication is that there are not many of these scientists around.

There is a good library story about Ivan Pavlov found on page 128:

"Under the reign of Czar Alexander II, a penumbra of enlightenment was crossing the Russian steppes. Books and journals that would have been banned under his father, Nicholas I, were arriving at the library, where a crowd gathered at the doors waiting for them to open, pushing and shoving to get in. To beat the rush Pavlov would sometimes arrange for a worker to leave a window open."

The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments is a quick read for fans of science history.

Johnson, George. The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments. Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. ISBN 9781400041015

The Oxford Project, photographs by Peter Feldstein, text by Stephen G. Bloom

Before my daughter began attending the University of Iowa in Iowa City (in Iowa, of course), I had a vague notion of Iowa. I had driven though twice and noticed the pretty farmland. I thought of it as a comfortable, mostly untroubled place with good schools. Perhaps those schools have succeeded in teaching lots of people to write. I now keep reading books about how hard life in Iowa can be.

Add to the list* The Oxford Project with photographs by Peter Feldstein and text by Stephen G. Bloom. Feldstein began the project back in 1984 when he asked everyone in the town of Oxford to pose in front of his camera for a portrait. He promised to take only a few minutes of their time and that he would display some of the pictures in downtown Oxford. He also told them in his introductory letter that the project was partly funded by the Iowa Arts Council. That seemed reasonable, as he was an art professor at the University of Iowa, about a fifteen minute drive from the town. Also, though he was a recent resident and not really considered "one of them," he had spruced up several of the abandoned storefronts. He eventual photographed 670 of the 676 townspeople.

A little over twenty years later, he got the idea of repeating the process, adding journalist Stephen G. Bloom to interview the subjects about their lives. Though some of the residents had died and other had moved away, he succeeded in getting many to agree to a second photograph. The result of several additional years of work is this impressive and strange local history of Oxford, telling the community story through the lives of the individuals.

What readers will notice right off is that there is nothing homogeneous about people of Oxford. City and suburban dwellers may not realize what anyone from a small town could tell them: small towns are filled with free-thinking individuals. Oxford has its rich and poor, liberal and conservative, etc., but the differences and similarities have nothing to do with these shallow labels. Each person seems to have a unique approach to life that may or may not have contributed to his or her well-being.

There are some themes, of course, including disappointment, alcoholism, longing for a new start, mental anguish, pride, and importance of family. Some of the stories are heartbreaking, while other affirming. Bloom, however, warns readers not to believe everything the subjects say. They are human after all, wanting to please or shock or elicit sympathy. Also, remember that Bloom has only given us several sentences from each person. How they felt on the day of the photograph may color their profiles.

The Oxford Project would be a great title for a book discussion. Its drawbacks are that it is large and expensive. No library will have lots of copies. A book group would have to make a concerted effort to quickly circulate whatever copies were available its members. It does not take long to read. Give each person a couple of days and move it to the next member. With a couple of copies, it could work. Have the person with the best pie crust host the discussion.

Feldstein, Peter. The Oxford Project. Welcome Books, 2008. ISBN 9781599620480

* Other Iowa books: Dewey: The Small-Town Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron, Man Killed by Pheasant and Other Kinships by John T. Price, Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish, and The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson (which I never got around to reviewing).

The Unified List of Best Books for 2008 by Neil Hollands

Earlier in the year I listed biographies and memoirs from best books lists for 2008. I just found that Neil Hollands did something similar at Book Group Buzz, except that he did it for more categories and used more lists. I looked at seven lists. He looked at 80. We had the same two books come to the top of the biography list - The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Read and The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in an American Century by Steve Coll - both family biographies.

Neil's purpose in analyzing all of these lists was to find which books would be good for discussion groups. I had not thought of that. Take a look. He even offers a spreadsheet to download.

Mendelssohn Bicentennial Links

The composer Felix Mendelssohn was born on February 3, 1809, nine days before Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. The celebration of his two hundredth birthday has not been as widespread as that for the other two men, but some people remember, especially in the world of music.

NPR Music has a page full of Mendelssohn links. This includes an 8 minute interview with violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter (it can be downloaded as a podcast from iTunes) discussing the life and work of the Romantic German musician who is commonly remembered for his Scottish Symphony, Italian Symphony, and music to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, especially the "Wedding March." Though he only lived to be 38, he was a prolific composer, who reached opus number 121. NPR includes for listening selections from Mutter's Mendelssohn recordings.

For readers, a good introduction to the composer is The Life of Mendelssohn by Peter Mercer-Taylor (2000). Mendelssohn was a model nineteenth century musical gentleman. The son of a wealthy banker from Berlin, he received early training in violin and composition and had written several polished pieces by age ten. In his adolescence, he performed with his sister Fanny for audiences across Europe, wrote music criticism, and championed the forgotten works of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. In this admiring biography, Mercer-Taylor reveals that the composer's seemingly idyllic life was complicated by fears of anti-Semitism, the demands of royal patrons, and the ill-health that shortened his life. R. Larry Todd goes into greater depth in Mendelssohn: A Life in Music (2003). No major biographies are being published to celebrate his bicentennial.

Mendelssohn had good reason to be fearful of religious hatred. Ironically, he may have suffered more after his death than during, as Richard Wagner maligned him for being of Jewish (though his parents converted the family to Christianity), and the Nazi regime in Germany banned the playing of his music. His popularity has never fully recovered. He does have his champions. The Mendelssohn Project seeks to recover his lost works and increase the frequency that his music is performed. Its website profiles the composer, his sister Fanny, and their family, and includes information on how to help the Mendelssohn cause.

Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man's Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science by Curtis Ebbesmeyer

Thanks to Heather for bringing this review copy back from ALA in Denver.

The word "flotsametrics" is not in standard dictionaries, but readers of Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano's Flotsametrics and the Floating World will quickly understand what it means. For clarity's sake, Ebbesmeyer has a glossary in the back of his book. Coined by his coworker Jim Ingraham in 2001, "flotsametrics" is simply "the quantitative study of flotsam."

People have been fascinated by flotsam since the dawn of human settlements along coastal waters. Ebbesmeyer even suggests that the availability of flotsam helped tribal peoples site their villages. In Hawaii, for example, communities formed along beaches upon which timber from North America's northwest woods washed up after circling the Pacific on the Turtle Gyre. Wood was precious and the sea provided. In the nineteenth century, there was great interest in water-borne bottles containing messages. Edgar Allan Poe wrote about them and people worldwide began throwing bottles into the sea. More recently, great ships crossing the oceans have been accidentally dropping huge containers of manufactured goods. Rubber bath toys and athletic shoes are among the many items washing ashore up and down the continents.

In Flotsametrics and the Floating World, Ebbesmeyer recounts the history of flotsam. He also tells a very personal story of his own fascination with the oceans and his travels around the world. It is a tale that brings in lots of fellow scientists, as well as his mom and dad. On occasion, he sticks in calculations of currents with the variables of wind and shape of floating items, but he mostly tells stories that any non-scientist can understand and enjoy. He may even convince some to plan beach combing vacations and to subscribe to his Beachcombers' Alert.

Of course, not everything that washes up on beaches is nice to collect. There is a whole chapter about human remains, intact and in pieces, which are deposited by the tides. Ebbesmeyer also discusses oil spills, unexploded mines, and the depositing of scrap plastics, mercury, DDT, PCBs, and other unpleasant chemicals on sand and rocks.

Six U.S. libraries have already cataloged this entertaining book, according to WorldCat. I'm sure there will be many more.

Ebbesmeyer, Curtis and Scigliano, Eric. Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man's Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science. Smithsonian Books, April 2009. ISBN 9780061558412

White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson by Brenda Wineapple

I have become interested in dual biographies lately. I find that they have a similar appeal to novels that weave two story lines. Authors often alternate chapters, bringing one subject up to a milestone or turning point and then switching gears to tell about the other subject. I find that I read a bit more intently, wanting to bring the story lines together. These books naturally give the reader benchmarks with which to measure the qualities of the characters. Readers have to compare Person A and Person B. Such is the case in Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln by John Stauffer. It is now also true in White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson by Brenda Wineapple.

The alternating of chapters is a bit subtle in White Heat. It almost feels at times that the book is really a biography of Higginson with a bit of Dickinson thrown in, but the poetess from Amherst is always in the background when not on the stage. Between the chapters about the very public Higginson are the chapters about his long correspondence and infrequent visits to see Dickinson. If you are like me, you are less familiar with Higginson, who did very many things in his long life. As a young man he idolized the Transcendentalists, especially Emerson and Thoreau, with whom he wrote letters. He graduated from Harvard and tried being a minister, but he was too radically liberal for his congregations, who did not really want someone urging them to completely remake the world every Sunday. His main causes were abolition and women's rights. In his early career as a writer, he often turned to these topics in the articles that he wrote for Atlantic Monthly and other magazines and newspapers.

Dickinson wrote to Higginson out of the blue because she sensed that he was a compassionate man with a willing ear. According to Wineapple, Higginson truly was that, but he never completely understood Dickinson nor what she wanted. In the book, he does not actually visit her until page 179, about a decade after they started writing. He had at this point already led black Union troops in the Civil War and turned to writing more about literature and nature. He even tried his hand at poetry. Their meeting exhausted him, as Dickinson had so much to say. He did not return for years.

When Dickinson died, he was enlisted in the effort to publish her poetry in a manner that the public would accept. With limitless tact, he mostly stayed above the fight among Dickinson's sister, sister-in-law, and brother's mistress over which poems to include and who to credit with editing. He was regrettably responsible for putting titles on some of the poems and replacing original words and punctuation. Later editions of Dickinson's poetry have restored the works to their manuscript versions.

In White Heat, Wineapple takes readers to a time of Victorian sensibilities when Dickinson's poetry was quite shocking. She depicts Higginson as a man who is very forward thinking but still weighed down by the conventions of his time. This dual biography should be enjoyed by many public library readers.

Wineapple, Brenda. White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. ISBN 9781400044016

Program "How to Manage Your iPod" Big Hit at Thomas Ford

Last night seventeen people attended my presentation "How to Manage Your iPod," which we held in our community room at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library. I had asked attendees to bring their iPods and most did. One gentleman also brought his laptop and repeated for himself everything that I demonstrated about iTunes software. The discussion was lively and and, because of questions, we spent nearly two hours connecting iPods to laptops, downloading podcasts, making playlists, and discussing the merits and limitations of various iPod models.

Most of the people who came had Nanos. There were a couple of Shuffle owners and one man had a second generation Classic working on the original battery. One woman opened her iPod for the first time at the program. I believe that she had gotten it as an incentive from a bank. Several had gotten iPods as Christmas gifts. A few had iPod hand-me-downs from their children who had upgraded to newer or big models. A couple of the attendees may have been in their forties. Everyone else was fifty or older. Two or three were thinking of getting an iPod. The level of experience varied but tended toward little. Everyone was quite interested, and almost everyone contributed to the discussion. Half the group were people I did not recognize as regular library users.

I had several surprises:

• I expected audiobooks to be a primary interest with the group because we promote iPod books that we circulate from the reference desk. Music, however, was the primary interest of this group. Only a couple had borrowed our iPods for the audiobooks. Several did express interest in the audiobooks once they had heard of them.
• No one had listened to a podcast. Most had seen the folder on the iTunes software but did not know what it meant. The group was surprised to learn that podcasts are free to download.
• I had a slideshow to use as an introduction but I hardly used it, as questions and discussions started right away. We spent most of the time actively involved with iPods and iTunes.

Everyone reported that they learned something, whether it be why they should use the lock on their iPod or how to load an audiobook from CDs so that the files stay in order. Because we had queries from people who could not attend this evening, we will probably run the program again next fall or next year. I recommend the topic for other libraries to try as a community program. You might be surprised by the strong interest.

The Monster of Florence: A True Story by Douglas Preston and mario Spezi

For long I have wanted to go to Florence, but I have never considered camping outside the city in the Tuscan countryside. Of course, the hills and fields are beautiful, as anyone who has seen Merchant Ivory's Room with a View will remember. When the sun sets, however, it is a dark and dangerous place, with many people who hide in the woods. Between 1974 and 1985, it was the setting for seven brutal double murders by a serial killer dubbed "The Monster of Florence." On Saturday nights of a full moon, he attacked couples involved in sexual intercourse, shooting them and taking body parts, perhaps for ritual ceremonies. His weapon has never been found and he has never been caught.

In The Monster of Florence: A True Story, Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi recount how several men have been arrested and charged as the serial murderer, but all were eventually released - many because the Monster would strike again while they were awaiting trial. Italian investigators have followed many leads. As the years have passed, they have turned to unreliable sources in desperation. As Preston and Spezi show, Italian police officials have used the case for their political advancement with little regard for truth and justice.

I listened to The Monster of Florence read by Dennis Boutsikaris, who had many distinct voices for the characters. The book has two distinct halves. In the first, the authors describe the cases up to the point at which the murders stop. In the second, they tell about their efforts to write this book, which annoys Italian officials so much that they are on several occasions arrested (without any evidence) for obstructing criminal investigations. Spezi is even charged as either being the Monster or his accomplice. In view of the conflict, readers cannot expect dispassionate reporting in this book. The authors vividly depict some Italian investigators and prosecutors are corrupt and moronic.

The case of the Monster of Florence is equal to those of the Boston Strangler and Jack the Ripper in gory fascination. This book should enjoy a long shelf life.

Preston, Douglas and Spezi, Mario. The Monster of Florence: A True Story. Hachette Audio, 2008. ISBN 9781600242090

On My Reading Database and Four Years of ricklibrarian

It was four years ago today that I posted my first book review on ricklibrarian, a brief introduction and a paragraph about Hannah Coulter: A Novel by Wendell Berry, still one of my favorite books. Not sure whether I could sustain a blog, I put in a lot of early effort and posted for forty-something days in a row. I did keep it going, though not at that pace, and it is still here. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoy writing.

On this fourth anniversary, my thought are traveling back twenty years to another anniversary. In February 1989 I left my job as a reference librarian at the Suburban Library System's Reference Service to be a stay-at-home dad. Between taking photos of my daughter Laura and changing her diapers, mostly when she was napping, I found time to read. We soon got our first home computer so I could work from home as subcontractor to an information broker. Using an acoustic coupler and a phone, I dialed up Dialog, BRS, VuText, DataTimes, and Lexis databases for business information. I also used WordPerfect on the computer to start a reading list.

That reading list later became a database, and I now have the titles of everythingthat I have read for nearly twenty years. Yesterday, I entered all the titles from 2008 and 2009. They had been in the reading notebook that I got as a summer reading prize from the Downers Grove Public Library in 1995. Being caught up, I decided to sort the title and see what I might learn.

I first sorted by year and found that I did not really read much in 1989. From the date I began the list (not remembered) until the end of the year, I finished 19 books. Most were light fiction or baseball books, including Summer of '49 by David Halberstam and The Best Short Stories of Ring Lardner. I also read some funny books, including PreHistory of The Far Side by Gary Larson and The Minnesota Book of Days by Howard Mohr, the latter famous for saying "You bet!" and "Whatever" on the Prairie Home Companion. I also read with interest Microcomputers and the Reference Librarian by the late Patrick Dewey, an pioneering SLS librarian who helped many of us begin to use computers.

Next I sorted by author. I was surprised to find that I have read much more fiction than I would have claimed, most of it classics, mysteries, Southern writers, or Third World authors. In addition to Charles Dickens and George Eliot, there are mysteries by Margery Allingham, Charlotte MacLeod, Ellis Peters, and Alexander McCall Smith (often reading them right after Bonnie). The long list of P.G. Wodehouse titles shows that I have dipped into the silly world of Bertie and Jeeves quite often. In a more serious vein, I have tried many books by Doris Lessing, Muriel Spark, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Wendell Berry. I have also read five books by Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong'o, as well as several Latin American authors.

I found that I have read twice as many memoirs as biographies. I was a little disturbed to learn that I read The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked by David Benjamin twice, in 2002 and 2007. How could I have not remembered that book five years later? Maybe it is a data error. I recently thought it might be interesting to read Days of Grace: A Memoir by Arthur Ashe. Oops! I already did back in 1993. Maybe I will again.

My memory is not totally shot. In fact, reading over the lists, I have many visions of where I was when reading the books. I remember reading The Moviegoer by Walker Percy outside a tent in a camp in the Serengeti in Tanzania, The Coalwood Way by Homer Hickam outside a cabin in the Badlands in South Dakota, and Sibley's Birding Basics by David Allen Sibley in the LITA Forum hotel in Houston. I also remember friends and family recommending titles. Among many titles, Bonnie gave me The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. Joyce Saricks gave me The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. My blogging friends (listed to the right on this page) have recommended many others. Even that little girl in the picture above is now suggesting titles to me. These are lots of good memories.

The reading notebook, the database, and this blog all help me remember the titles of the many books that I have read. They also help me share. That's what this is all about.

Cool Flickr Widget

Get this widget at roytanck.com

The photos that you see today are from the Brookfield Zoo and the Garfield Park Conservatory. Aaron Schmidt also has one of these on his blog Walking Paper.

Egg & Nest by Rosamund Purcell, Lennea S. Hall, and Rene Corado

"Stunning" is the best word I can muster for the photographs of eggs, nests, and specimens in the big photo book Egg & Nest by Rosamund Purcell, Lennea S. Hall, and Rene Corado. I never realized how varied and colorful eggs could be and the diversity of nest architecture. Nor did I know how much can be gleaned from the study of these items by oologists (ō-ä-lə-jists) and nidologists (nī-dol-lə-jists).

Rosamund Purcell is the photographer. She was given access to the extensive collection of the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology in Camarilllo, California, a museum with an interesting story itself. The WFVZ was begun as a private collection and kept expanding as its founder Ed Harrison bought up collections of eggs and nests from amateur naturalists and institutions that wanted to distance themselves from the now regulated hobby of field collection.

My favorite photo might be the tinamou eggs on page 140. They look like green, blue, and purple polished stones. I also like the emu eggs on page 139, which look like glittery Easter eggs. In fact, I am smitten with most of the egg photos. The saddest photos may be all of the extinct birds.

You almost need to sit at a table to browse through the beautiful photographs in Egg & Nest as the book is a little heavy. Take time to gaze at the weaving of sticks and straw in the nests and the speckled patterns on the eggs. You may be inspired to look a little more carefully when you take your next walk in the woods.

Purcell, Rosamund. Egg & Nest. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008. ISBN 9780674031722

The Biography Podcast

The Biography Podcast debuted yesterday with a lively conversation between host Chris Gondek and the author of Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge, Lindy Woodhead. While the subject was certainly interesting, I was at first a bit surprised that the first offering was a discussion of a book published in Great Britain. Toward the end of the conversation, Gondek did explain that an American edition is coming in March, which I then verified on Baker & Taylor.

Harry Gordon Selfridge sounds like an interesting character. The founder of the famous London department store was actually an American, born in Ripon, Wisconson, and an employee of Marshall Fields in Chicago for twenty-five years. He is credited with the phrase "____ shopping days 'til Christmas." He is also credited with introducing women sales clerks to the British shopping public, who up to that point (around 1904) had been served only by men in London's finest stores. Later, when the suffragettes broke windows in their campaign for the vote, they spared Selfridges. After his wife died, he became enamored with the scandalous Dolly Sisters, vaudeville dancers who had a knack gambling.

Gondek says that the podcast, which will distribute twice a month, will focus on both the books and the art of writing biography. If the first episode is an indication, it should be an entertaining series that will turn more people to biography.

Biography Beat, February 2009

Here are a few short notes about the world of biographical books.

Chicago Tribune Live! Books & Media Features Graphic Memoirs

While the size of the weekly book section in the Chicago Tribune has shrunk, the remaining editors have done something interesting. In the Saturday, January 31, 2009 issue, they have featured memoirs, including some in graphic novel format intended for adults. On page one is a review of the graphic memoir My Brain is Hanging Upside Down by David Heatley, which includes six stories about his life. The first is called "Sex History" and is reportedly quite frank. It will be interesting to see how many libraries add this item. Three libraries in my consortium have it currently. Though the book review was featured two weeks ago, there are no reserves.

A second edgy graphic memoir is Capacity by Theo Ellsworth, which is described as being about the artists "innermost imagination." No library owns this title, according to WorldCat. It is not offered by Baker & Taylor. It may be purchased through Amazon. To get a sense of Ellsworth's art, see his Capacity Online website.

Many libraries are adding a third title reviewed by the Tribune. American Widow is a memoir by Alissa Torres, whose husband died in the World Trade Center in 2001. In panels drawn by Sungyoon Choi, Torres tells about the ordeal of being a single parent confronting life without her supportive husband. Thomas Ford's copy is in processing.


Mostly Memoirs in Book Ahead

In the Biography section of the February 2009 issue of Baker & Taylor's Booking Ahead, which highlights books coming out in April 2009, there are 10 memoirs and one biography. The Thoreau You Don't Know by Robert Sullivan, the sole biography strives to throw a new light on the nineteenth century essayist. According to Sullivan, Thoreau was not a recluse and enjoyed the company of people more than some biographers have led us to believe.

There is a definite television celebrity theme to the collection of memoirs debuting in April. Among the authors are Mary Tyler Moore, Marie Osmond, and Bob Barker. These seem like names from the distant past to me, but "Dancing with the Stars" and perpetual reruns keep their work before viewers. In a fourth television related memoir, tennis champ Monica Seles also tells about her "Dancing with the Stars" experiences (among other memories) in Getting a Grip: On My Body, My Mind, My Self.

Television actress Tori Spelling continues her story in Mommywood.

The movie actress Marlee Matlin also has a memoir, I'll Scream Later. I remember her story well from the 1980s when she starred in Children of a Lesser God with William Hurt. I was surprised to discover that this is her first memoir. I thought that she had one already. She has also written three teen novels.

In the past Baker & Taylor included notes about print runs and promotion budgets for the books expected to be popular. That seems to be missing in this issue. I wonder if the economy has caused layoffs at B&T.


Biography Groups at Shelfari

For those who do not know, Shelfari is social software for people who like to discuss the books that they 1) want to read, 2) are reading, or 3) have read. Through the Shelfari pages of one of my coworkers Julie, I learned that there is a group devoted to biography readers. The group is aptly called Biographies, Autobiographies & Memoirs. As of this moment, there are 551 members of the group and 40 discussions.

There is also a more specialized group, Presidential Biography. A slightly less specialized group is Mostly Biography, Classics & History.


The Biography Podcast Begins Valentines Day

I learned through the tweet of someone calling himself Otto Biography that a podcast devoted to biographies starts Valentines Day, Saturday, February 14, 2009. The website for The Biography Podcast is up. Twice a month Chris Gondek will be interviewing the authors of new biographies. You can listen from the site or subscribe to the feed.

Balsamic Dreams: A Short but Self-Important History of the Baby Boomer Generation by Joe Queenan

There used to be soap opera summaries in the newspaper with the tag "We watch so you don't have to." I am sure there were, though I can not find them now. In recent Chicago Tribunes, there are reviews of magazines, such as Marie Claire and Glamour, that are under the banner"Save Time, Let Us Do the Reading." In the same spirit, I am reviewing Balsamic Dreams: A Short but Self-Important History of the Baby Boomer Generation by Joe Queenan, a somewhat humorous-somewhat serious look at Americans born between the mid-1940s and the early 1960s.

You probably were not intending to read Balsamic Dreams, even if you were aware of it. This biography of a generation focusing mostly on its consumer habits, music, and television viewing is already over seven years old. Our library received its copy in September 2001. I suspect that it seemed rather pointless to read in the months following the September 11 terrorist attacks. Post-9/11 realities, however, have not made Balsamic Dreams dated. The same generation still holds much of the power in the U.S., and they still have many of the same problems.

I noticed the book because I read an advance notice that Closing Time, Queenan's memoir about growing up in Philadelphia, is coming out in April 2009. Not remembering Queenan, I decided to look at the older book and quickly became interested, being a Boomer. To his credit, he is an intelligent writer who appears to have a great memory for details. He also seems to have given many issues much thought. I began very sympathetic to his premise - that the Baby Boomer Generation has been a great disappointment. At the end, I was still in a general agreement, but his arguments were far too cynical and over-blown. He seemed just as unfair as he claims many Baby Boomers are. He might actually agree.

I do not regret finishing the book. Near the end, he uses the example of the baseball career of Cesar Cedeno as a typical Boomer story. I was so pleased to find that someone remembered Cedeno, who had three or four great years before settling in to an broken career with many disappointments. Just like a Boomer, I let myself invest too much time and emotion in following the life of an athlete.

What is particulary annoying is that Queenan portrays almost every figure from the mid-1960s to 2000 as a light-weight money-grubbing opportunist or a liberal ninny sympathetic to nutty causes. It gets rather tiring. I found much to disagree with. I still like folk music.

If you are looking for someone to deflate your ego and point out your errors, Queenan is your writer. There are still plenty of copies of his book languishing on library shelves.

Queenan, Joe. Balsamic Dreams: A Short but Self-Important History of the Baby Boomer Generation. Henry Holt and Co., 2001. ISBN 0805067205

Free-Range Chicken by Simon Rich on the iTouch

Several weeks ago I bought an iTouch with several things in mind, including reading books. I had read that I could put books onto the Apple device using free Stanza software. The software was easy to download from the iTunes store, and once loaded, it helped me find the websites from which to load books.

I was a little surprised to find some new books, including Free-Range Chicken by comic Simon Rich. The short book is a collection of jokes and humorous skits. I thought reading something light and quick might be the best way to learn how to read from the device. The strategy worked well, and I enjoyed a funny book. My favorite section was the first, Growing Up, which contained funny stories about Rich as a child, including "A Conversation Between the People Who Hid in My Closet Every Night When I Was Seven." I also greatly enjoyed "I Think My Teenaged Daughter Knows I Read Her Diary." It was broad and somewhat obvious humor but well delivered.

Now I will try something a bit more challenging. I have The Warden by Anthony Trollop, The Federalist Papers, The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, and Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray. I may read several of these on a trip that I am taking in March. I won't have my usual four to six heavy books.

How to Cancel an AOL Account for Seniors

In the Sunday, Chicago Tribune (February 8, 2009, Section 4, Page 7), Jon Yates wrote about a case in which America Online kept charging a woman for her monthly AOL service for two years after her debilitating stroke. The problem as described was that the woman's daughter could not get a person at AOL to help her. She was continually told that she had to login with her mother's user name and password, but this was information she did not know and her mother could not tell her.

The daughter took the issue to the Chicago Tribune Consumer Watch. With the newspaper's help, she got AOL to send her their power of attorney proof forms that had to be completed to get the account stopped by a third party. Apparently no customer service representative knew or was willing to offer these forms before.

So, if someone comes to you to ask for help getting a parent's AOL account stopped, tell them to call the AOL customer service center (1-800-827-6364), ask for power of attorney proof forms to cancel an account, insist that such forms exist, get the forms, complete them, and send them back. If this does not work immediately, ask for AOL spokesperson Molly McMahon.

The other suggestion from the article was that the daughter could have gotten help from her mother's credit card company.

AOL did grant the family a six month credit for the account that had not been used in two years.

Curse of the Golden Flower : A Film by Yimou Zhang

The Chinese empress is caught in love triangle. The emperor is suspected of slowly poisoning his wife. Their three sons must choose sides. This just begins to describe the plot of the Chinese film The Curse of the Golden Flower by director Yimou Zhang, a visually stunning epic with Shakespearean aspirations.

Film buffs may recognize Yimou Zhang as the director of Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles and Hero. The later film was also remarkably colorful. I especially remember a gorgeous scene with swirling autumn leaves. Hero made bold use of primary colors. In The Curse of the Golden Flower, the director takes us deep within the Forbidden City where the great halls, living quarters, and corridors are unbelievably opulent. The grandest images, however, occur outside in the great square, where millions of chrysanthemums are set to honor the death of the first empress. It is among the flowers where the great battle of rival armies occurs.

We showed The Curse of the Golden Flower for the film discussion group at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library who seemed quite entertained. One viewer noted that the beginning sequence of men of war returning to the palace while the women prepared resembled the start of Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing. Another reminded us of Akira Kurosawa's more direct references to King Lear in his epic film Ran. I was reminded of the battle scenes in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Curse of the Golden Flowers has not been as widely distributed as any of those films, so it is still a good choice for film discussions. many public libraries should add it to their collections.

Dream City: A Novel by Brendan Short

Dream City by Brendan Short was brought to my attention by the author's father. My library had purchased it back in the fall when it was mentioned in the Chicago Tribune, but I did not put it onto my reading list until the author's dad, who is justly proud of his son, asked me if I too had gone to the University of Texas, as had his son. I had. I also told him that I thought the book was at that moment on display with the new books. When I later checked, it was and it occurred to me to try it.

Mr. Short said that the book was sad, and it was, but it was also very imaginative and thoughtful. The author pulls off a really difficult feat - creating an antisocial character with various vices who is still strangely likable. Readers are introduced to Michael Halligan as a boy with his mother pasting sheets of the Sunday comics onto the wall in his bedroom. While with her at the Century of Progress World's Fair in Chicago in the 1930s, he encounters a man dressed as a super hero promoting Big Little Books, hardcover adventure series for boys. Thus begins a lifelong obsession that contributes to - full stop - I had better not tell what because that will give away the story.

Brendan Short takes the reader through many periods of Halligan's life from the 1930s to the 2000s, frequently jumping a decade or so to get pivital episodes. A subplot lets us also follow the life of an employee of the company that publishs the Big Little Books. All of the story is set in Chicago, its western suburbs, and southern Wisconsin. I particularly enjoyed reading about Lyons, La Grange, and Western Springs in earlier decades. I know exactly where Michael's apartment and his father's gas station were.

Mr. Short said that it took his son seven years to write the book. I think it was time well spent. I recommend this "hard to put down" book to libraries and readers.

Short, Brendon. Dream City: A Novel. MacAdam/Cage, 2008. ISBN 9781596923188.

The Singing Revolution, a film by James & Maureen Tusty

You say you want a revolution? You want to change the world? The Estonians did and succeeded. Their secret weapon was national song. The story is beautifully told in the documentary film The Singing Revolution.

Just how did the Estonians pull it off? As you can see from the film by James and Maureen Tusty, the challenge was daunting to say the least. Not only was their country filled with Soviet soldiers, there were new cities filled with Russians placed there to change the ethnic balance. The Soviet plan was to eventually eliminate all trace of Estonian culture. Many traditional practices and holidays had been outlawed. Ironically, the Soviets thought that they could use Laulupidu, the Estonian song festival held every five years, for their own propaganda. Little did they realize that the Estonians could subtlety undermine the Soviet plan. With thirty thousand singers on the stage and 300,000 people in the amphitheater, nearly 30 percent of the entire population of the country was gathered. And they would not be denied their own songs!

Narrated by the actress Linda Hunt, The Singing Revolution uses historical films, recent interviews, and scenes from music rehearsals and festivals to weave together a powerful story that could inspire nonviolent revolution across the world. One of the wonderful aspects of the Estonian Revolution is that young, old , men, women, and people from all walks of life came together for a common purpose. There were moments when the movement could easily have fallen apart, but determined unarmed people stood in front of Soviet troops and sang.

The Singing Revolution has at this point been shown at film festivals, art houses, and public libraries. Thomas Ford will be showing it on Friday, March 6. We are excited about this opportunity. It is not yet in general theater distribution, but it is available in DVDs for home or for educational use from the Singing Revolution website.

2009 happens to be the year for the 25th Song Festival at Laulupidu. Details are at the festival website.

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

Who needs to defend food? We all like food, don't we? Maybe not, according to Michael Pollan. Corporate America actually prefers manufactured products that pose as food, things like meals in a box, hot dogs, Chex Mix, Twinkies and multi-vitamin enhanced Lucky Charms. These sweet or salty items have lots of appeal, ship well, store well, and make a lot of money for industrialists and their investors. Anything that saves the cook's time and can be branded is more profitable than a green bean or a potato, which anyone could grow in their garden patch. According to Pollan, advertising, super market displays, and government policy have driven American consumers away from fresh produce - what he considers real food. We all suffer health consequences as a result. He explains in his book In Defense of Food, his follow-up to The Omnivore's Dilemma.

As a listener to In Defense of Food read by Scott Brick, I got a bit tired of the story of how industrial agriculture and research science led us to depend on a diet based on mostly corn, soy, wheat, and rice, all raised in highly-fertilized and pesticide-soaked fields. There were some interesting details in this long and sordid tale. However, I enjoyed the final section with his practical advice more. One good guideline is "Never eat something that your grandmother would not recognize as food." Another is "Eat mostly plants, more leaves than seeds." He offers a number of good, easy-to-understand guidelines that point readers to the farmers market instead of the supermarket and to the dinner table instead of a tray in front of the television. Slow food and local food get his endorsement, too.

Pollan's book would be a good selection for a book discussion group that enjoys tackling ethical issues and public policy. With the news that many people are turning to cheap, highly processed foods during our economic crisis, his ideas may not get as much consideration as they should. Still, In Defense of Food should be in most public libraries.

Pollan, Michael. In Defense of Food. Penguin Audio, 2008. ISBN 9780143142744

Photos of Refugees in Congo by the fashion Photographer Rankin

In the winter 2009 issue of Oxfam Exchange is a small collection of photographs of refugees in camps in the Democratic Republic of the Congo taken by the fashion photographer Rankin. The photos were exhibited on large panels outside the National Theatre in London during the fall.The purpose of the collection is to show these people as people, not as victims to be pitied. So, instead of seeing emaciated children sitting in filth, these images depict proud people who can smile. Oxfam's thinking is that some viewers may be more willing to help people who look they are themselves capable and trying to lead good lives.

Finding more of the images online is not as easy as I expected. Here are some links.

CNN ran a story "Fashion Photographer Focuses on War" with 13 photos, many of which were in the Oxfam publication.

BBC News has a slideshow People of the Mugunga Camp.

Oxfam's website has a slideshow Cheke Kidogo: Portraits of Congo's Survivers.

These slideshows have some duplication, but each has some unique photos.

For a slideshow of people viewing the exhibit, look at Rankin Exhibit Images from Zimbio.

Here is Oxfam's Press release about the exhibit.