Biographical and Autobiographical: Best Biographies and Memoirs of 2015

If best books lists are used as evidence, 2014 was a big year for biographical and autobiographical books. When I examined the lists from the eight review sources that I used last year, I found a surprisingly larger number of titles. In 2013, Amazon's editors named 16 biographical titles to their top 100 books. This year the number is 22. Booklist included 11 such titles in 2013 and 16 in 2014. If I kept counting, I suspect I would find similar results in most cases.

What I also noticed this year is the lack of agreement among the book reviewing editors. Most of the titles were chosen only once. Only one biography made seven of the lists: The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs. Another biography made five of the lists: Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David by Lawrence Wright. One memoir made five lists: Little Failure: A Memoir by Gary Shteyngart.

As you scan the lists below, you may wonder at some of the inclusions, such as Thirteen Days in September, which many readers would consider a history instead of a biography. I think it is both, representing the category of collective biography. Someone interested in any of the three figures named in the title would enjoy reading this book.

The result of the long and diverse lists is there are many excellent titles from which readers may choose. Kirkus offers 53 biographical titles! Enjoy and have a happy new reading year.


Amazon

Biographies

Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival by Peter Stark

Cosby: His Life and Times by Mark Whitaker

A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention by Matt Richtel

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson

Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott

Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U. S. Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald

Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art by Carl Hoffman

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs

A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre

Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island by Will Harlan

Updike by Adam Begley

War of the Whales: A True Story by Joshua Horwitz

Memoirs

Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay

Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West by Bryce Andrews

Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade by Walter Kirn

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir by Roz Chast

I'll Drink to That: A Life in Style, with a Twist by Betty Halbreich

Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned" by Lena Dunham

Sous Chef: 24 Hours on the Line by Michael Gibney

Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life by Tom Robbins

Yes, Please by Amy Poehler


Booklist

Biographies

The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig

Brando's Smile: His Life, Thought and Work by Susan L. Mizruchi

Charlie Chaplin: A Brief Life by Peter Ackroyd

The Crusades of Cesar Chavez by Miriam Pawel

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson

John Quincy Adams: American Visionary by Fred Kaplan

Lines of Descent: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Emergency of Identity by Kwame Anthony Appiah

Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces by Miles J. Unger

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U. S. Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald

A Royal Experiment: The Private Life of King George III by Janice Hadlow

Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space by Lynn Sherr

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs

Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David by Lawrence Wright

The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War by Tim Butcher

Victoria by A. N. Wilson

Memoirs

The Ogallala Road: A Memoir of Love and Reckoning by Julene Bair


Kirkus

Biographies

Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival by Peter Stark

Boy on Ice: The Life and Death of Derek Boogaard by John Branch

Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby by Sarah Churchill

A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention by Matt Richtel

The Double Life of Paul De Man by Evelyn Barish

Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local - And Helped Save an American Town by Beth Macy

Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War by Mark Harris

Hope: Entertainer of the Century by Richard Zoglin

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson

The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein

Isabella: The Warrior Queen by Kristin Downey

The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science by Armand Marie Leroi

Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion by Harold Holzer

A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton, from the Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man by Holly George-Warren

The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941-1942 by Nigel Hamilton

On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller by Richard Norton Smith

One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band by Alan Paul

Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin by David Ritz

Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art by Carl Hoffman

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs

The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man by Luke Harding

Soldier Girls: The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War by Helen Thorpe

A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre

Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 by Stephen Kotkin

The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America by Edward White

Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr

Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David by Lawrence Wright

The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War by Tim Butcher

Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution by Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz

War of the Whales: A True Story by Josshua Horwitz

William Wells Brown: An African-American Life by Ezra Greenspan

Memoirs

The Answer to the Riddle Is Me: A Memoir of Amnesia by David Stuart MacLean

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir by Roz Chast

A Cup of Water Under My Bed: A Memoir by Daisy Hernandez

Dear Leader: A Poet, Spy, Escapee - A Look Inside North Korea by Jang Jin-Sung

Getting Schooled: The Reeducation of an American Teacher by Garret Keizer

The Great Floodgates of Wonderworld by Justin Hocking

History Lessons: A Memoir of Madness, Memory, and the Brain by Clifton Crais

If Only You People Could Follow Directions: A Memoir by Jessica Hendry Nelson

Internal Medicine: A Doctor's Stories by Terrence Holt

Little Failure: A Memoir by Gary Shteyngart

Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness, and Becoming a Man by Thomas Page McBee

My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind by Scott Stossel

My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead

The Other Side by Lacy Johnson

Out of the Woods: A Memoir of Wayfinding by Lynn Darling

Pandora's DNA: Tracing the Breast Cancer Genes Through History, Science, and One Family Tree by Lizzie Stark

Perfectly Miserable: Guilt, God, and Real Estate in a Small Town by Sarah Payne Stuart

The Sea Inside by Philip Hoare

Take This Man: A Memoir by Brando Skyhorse

There Was and There Was Not: A Journey Through Hate and Possibility in Turkey, Armenia, and Beyond by Meline Toumani

Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn: A Father, a Daughter, the Meaning of Nothing, and the Beginning of Everything by Amanda Gefter

Unremarried Widow: A Memoir by Artis Henderson


Library Journal

Biographies

An American Cardinal: The Biography of Cardinal Timothy Dolan by Christina Boyle

Dr. Mutter's Marvels: A True Story of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War by Mark Harris

Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U. S. Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald

Memoirs

Bulletproof Vest: The Ballad of an Outlaw and His Daughter by Maria Venegas

Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War by Robert M. Gates

Eating Wildly: Foraging for Life, Love, and the Perfect Meal by Ava Chin

The End of Eve by Ariel Gore

Gone Feral: Tracking My Dad Through the Wild by Novella Carpenter

The Great Floodgates of Wonderworld by Justin Hocking

History Lessons: A Memoir of Madness, Memory, and the Brain by Clifton Crais

Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth About Everything by Barbara Ehrenreich

My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead

Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned" by Lena Dunham

The Other Side by Lacy Johnson

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures by Maureen Corrigan

Things I've Learned from Dying: A Book About Life by David R. Dow

Weightless: My Life as a Fat Man and How I Escaped by Gregg McBride


National Public Radio

Biographies

Another Man's War: The Story of a Burma Boy in Britain's Forgotten Army by Barnaby Phillips

Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph by Jan Swafford

Bolano: A Biography in Conversations by Monica Maristain

Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang

Hold Tight Gently: Michael Callen, Essex Hemphill, and the Battlefield of AIDS by Martin Duberman

Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker by Patricia Hruby Powell and Christian Robinson

A Long Way Home: A Memoir by Saroo Brierley

The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News - And Divided a Country by Gabriel Sherman

The Map Thief: The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps by Michael Blanding

Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love by James Booth

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs

Memoirs

Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay

Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade by Walter Kirn

The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mouth Athos by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain't That Funkin' Kinda Hard on You? A Memoir by George Clinton

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jaqueline Woodson

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir by Roz Chast

Delancey: A Man, a Woman, a Restaurant, a Marriage by Molly Wizenberg

Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War by Robert M. Gates

El Deafo by Cece Bell

Fresh from the Farm: A Year of Recipes and Stories by Susie Middleton

Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, The Code of Beauty by Vikram Chandra

The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames by Kai Bird

How I Discover Poetry by Marilyn Nelson

How the World Was: A California Childhood by Emmanuel Guibert

Little Failure: A Memoir by Gary Shteyngart

Loitering: New and Collected Essays by Charles D'Ambrosio

Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness, and Becoming a Man by Thomas Page McBee

The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death by Colson Whitehead

A Painter's Progress: A Portrait of Lucian Freud by David Dawson

Showa 1944-1953: A History of Japan by Shigeru Mizuki

The Splendid Things We Planned: A Family Portrait by Blake Bailey

Things I've Learned from Dying: A Book About Life by David R. Dow

Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film by Glenn Kurtz

Thrown by Kerry Howley

The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light by Carlos Santana


New York Times

Biographies

American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell by Deborah Solomon

Demon Camp: A Soldier's Exorcism by Jennifer Percy

Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero by James S. Romm

Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer by Bettina Stangneth

Elephant Company:The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II by Vicki Constantine Croke

Embattled Rebel: Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief by James M. McPherson

Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local - And Helped Save an American Town by Beth Macy

Gandhi Before India by Ramachandra Guha

Hotel Florida: Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War by Amanda Vaill

The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein

The Invisible Front: Love and Loss in an Era of Endless War by Yochi Dreazen

Limonov by Emmanuel Carrere

Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs

A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre

Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David by Lawrence Wright

The Trip to Echo Springs: On Writers and Drinking by Olivia Laing

True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas by Anand Giridharadas

Memoirs

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir by Roz Chast

Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War by Robert M. Gates

Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles M. Blow

Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, The Code of Beauty by Vikram Chandra

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Little Failure: A Memoir by Gary Shteyngart

The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones by Sandra Tsing Loh

Not I: Memoirs of a German Childhood by Joachim Fest

On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss

Thrown by Kerry Howley


Publishers Weekly

Biographies

Boy on Ice: The Life and Death of Derek Boogaard by John Branch

Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local - And Helped Save an American Town by Beth Macy

The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein

Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story by Rick Bragg

John Wayne: The Life and Legend by Scott Eyman

Limonov by Emmanuel Carrere

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs

Soldier Girls: The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War by Helen Thorpe

Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr

Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David by Lawrence Wright

True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas by Anand Giridharadas

Memoirs

A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren

Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles M. Blow

Little Failure: A Memoir by Gary Shteyngart

Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness, and Becoming a Man by Thomas Page McBee

On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss


Washington Post

Biographies

The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig

The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames by Kai Bird

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson

The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein

John Quincy Adams: American Visionary by Fred Kaplan

Limonov by Emmanuel Carrere

Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion by Harold Holzer

Little Demon in the City of Light: A True Story of Murder and Mesmerism in Belle Epoque Paris by Steven Levingston

The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It by John W. Dean

Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Space by Lynn Sherr

Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art by Carl Hoffman

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs

Soldier Girls: The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War by Helen Thorpe

A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre

Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr

Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David by Lawrence Wright

Unreasonable Men: Theodore Roosevelt and the Republican Rebels Who Created Progressive Politics by Michael Wolraich

Updike by Adam Begley

War of the Whales: A True Story by Josshua Horwitz


Memoirs

Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War by Robert M. Gates

Hard Choices by Hillary Rodham Clinton

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Little Failure: A Memoir by Gary Shteyngart

My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind by Scott Stossel

S Street Rising: Crack, Murder, and Redemption in D. C. by Ruben Castaneda

Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace by Leon Panetta

Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book by Peter Finn

Catching Up with Alexander McCall Smith Books

Over the holidays, some people borrowed our television series on DVD to have viewing marathons. Instead of devoting myself night and day to episodes of Dexter, Gilmore Girls, Lost, Mad Men, or Downton Abbey, I borrowed six books or audiobooks written by Scotland's Alexander McCall Smith in December and had my own little read-a-thon.

If you like light serialized fiction and are not familiar with McCall Smith, you should be. He is the prolific author of several series, including No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Sunday Philosophy Club, 44 Scotland Street, Corduroy Mansions, and Portuguese Irregular Verbs series. Each is different. The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and the Sunday Philosophy Club series can both be classified as cozy mysteries, but they are set in very different places, Botswana and Scotland. 44 Scotland Street and Corduroy Mansions are domestic comedies (similar to sit-coms) that focus on the residents of apartment buildings. The first is set in Edinburgh and the latter in London. Both were first published in daily installments in British newspapers, in much the way the novels of Charles Dickens were released in the 19th century. Portuguese Irregular Verbs is an academic farce featuring a very silly linguistics professor.

I read three No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books and now have only The Handsome Man's De Luxe Cafe to read to catch up with all the stories of Ma Precious Ramotswe. I listened to two 44 Scotland Street audiobooks and know everything that has happened with entertaining cast, including the painter Angus Lordie, the narcissist Bruce Anderson, and the beleaguered six-year-old Bertie Pollack. I also read A Conspiracy of Friends to finish what I think may stop as a trilogy. The last Corduroy Mansions title came out in 2011 and the author seems to have resolved its story lines. Life goes on, however, so McCall Smith could return to these characters in the future. The latest Portuguese Irregular Verbs title appeared about nine years after the original three. No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Sunday Philosophy Club, and 44 Scotland Street come out annually. There are now fifteen books featuring Ma Ramotswe.

I have enjoyed December but am now bringing my McCall Smith marathon to a close. There are so many other books to read.

Books That Mattered in 2014 and Year in Review

2014 was a good year for reading. Here are the books, music, and movies I liked best in the year. As in previous years, it is an eclectic collection of titles, so there are choices for many tastes in reading, listening, and viewing.


Recent Nonfiction

Touching the Wild: Living with the Mule Deer of Deadman Gulch by Joe Hutto

In a Rocket Made of Ice: Among the Children of Wat Opot by Gail Gutradt

Lives in Ruins: Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble by Marilyn Johnson

A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction by Joel Greenberg

The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era by Craig Nelson

Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II by Vicki Constantine Croke

Field Notes from a Hidden City: An Urban Nature Diary by Esther Woolfson

Splitting an Order by Ted Kooser

Eye to Eye: Photographs by Vivian Maier


Recent Fiction


The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: A Novel by Gabrielle Zevin

Bark: Stories by Lorrie Moore

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher


Great Older Books 

Songbird Journeys: Four Seasons in the Lives of Migratory Birds by Miyoko Chu


Children's Books  

Elizabeth, Queen of the Seas by Lynne Cox

Look Up! Bird-Watching in Your Own Back Yard by Annette LeBlanc Cate

On the Wing by David Elliot

Yoko Finds Her Way by Rosemary Wells

Gus and Me: The Story of My Granddad and My First Guitar by Keith Richards


Audiobooks 

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink

This Land That I Love: Irving Berlin, Woody Guthrie, and the Story of Two American Anthems by John Shaw

My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead

The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story by Lily Koppel


Films

Tim's Vermeer

The Waiting Room


Music 

Mark Dvorak at Friday at the Ford

Jim Green in Concert at the Library 

American Hornpipe by Dana and Susan Robinson

Why Do Ducks Have Webby Toes? by Mim Eichman and Doug Lofstrom


Library Matters 

The Public Library: A Photographic Essay by Robert Dawson

The Shape of the Reference Desk, A Panel Discussion

Libraries in the Ancient World by Lionel Casson

Public Library in the Marketplace: The Business of Digital Content

Filtering Out Internet Censorship: Advocacy, Professional Ethics, and the Law

Blue Horses: Poems by Mary Oliver

I woke
and crept
like a cat

on silent feet
about my own house ...

I have already read a book of poetry today. It is a small book, I admit, but it is tremendous. I checked it out from the library at the last moment last night to have another book for the two-day holiday. I woke just before 2:00 a.m., crept from bed and read a bit, then I woke again to read a little more at 4:30 a.m. I finished the collection at breakfast. The book is Blue Horses: Poems by Mary Oliver, from which the lines above came.

In Blue Horses, Oliver speaks her mind with humor and compassion. As I read the poems, I could imagine them all put together into a sort of one-woman show that would be appropriate for stage or perhaps on PBS's Great Performances. As she would read her poems, we would see stills and videos of the woods and wildlife about whom she frequently writes. We'd also see her at home, perhaps at her window looking out. It would be spellbinding to listen to her define our world and how to live in it.

The book title Blue Horses refer to her poem "Franz Marc's Blue Horses" in which she tells about the art and death of the young artist in World War I.

I do not know how to thank you, Franz Marc.
Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually. 
Maybe the desire to make something beautiful 
is the piece of God that is inside each of us.

As a bird lover, I appreciate Oliver's frequent avian references that include a heron, kingfisher, mockingbird, wren, vulture, song sparrow, bluebird, and a variety of hummingbirds. She observes frogs and wasps and expresses a wonder for rocks. Her poems resonate with people who would gladly spend much of their time in wild settings. I hope many of them find Blue Horses under their trees this Christmas.

Oliver, Mary. Blue Horses: Poems. Penguin Press, 2014. 79p. ISBN 9781594204791.

1954: The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Major League Baseball Forever

I have great interest in reading about 1954, my first year on the planet. It was an interesting time. President Dwight Eisenhower warned the nation about getting involved militarily in Vietnam after he authorized limited military aid to that country. Newsmen Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly produced a television exposé about Senator Joseph McCarthy. Jim Crow laws were still enforced in many states. Most importantly, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. the Board of Education that American public schools should integrate all races. Much was changing during the year of my birth.

It was also a time of change for major league baseball. The Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee in the previous year, the first franchise move since 1903, showing team owners how profitable moving a weary team to a new city could be. The St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore to become the Orioles in 1954, a prelude to the Dodgers and Giants moving to the West Coast four years later. What may have been even more important to the way the game is played and who plays it is that 1954 was the first season that nearly every team in the pennant race had black players. The team that did not have any was the New York Yankees who failed to repeat as American League champs. Sports writer Bill Madden recounts this season in 1954: The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Major League Baseball Forever.

In 1954, Madden tells a mostly chronological story featuring the teams that were seriously in the pennant race: Brooklyn Dodgers, Milwaukee Braves, and New York Giants in the National League and the Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, and New York Yankees in the American League. Other teams are rare mentioned except when they played the contending teams. In the account, the author focuses on important black players Willie Mays, Larry Doby, Minnie Minoso, Monte Irvin, and rookies Henry Aaron and Ernie Banks. Other players who figure importantly in the story include Al Rosen, Pee Wee Reese, Dusthy Rhodes, and Johnny Antonelli.

Madden's 1954 reminds me of end of the season assessment articles written by Roger Angell for the New Yorker that I have read in the past. The book has less currency and more historical perspective, of course. It will interest readers who are baseball fans and/or those studying racial desegregation in America.

Madden: Bill. 1954: The Year Willie Mays and the First Generation of Black Superstars Changed Major League Baseball Forever. Da Capo Press, 2014. 290p. ISBN 9780306823329.

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer

Is memory just a game?

The ability to remember has been prized by our civilization for ages. Ancient poets recited epic tales from memory. Priests and priestesses performed religious rites unaided. Guides led travelers without maps. Hunters and gatherers remembered when and where to find the food. In more recent times, stage actors remembered all the lines of plays, and classical musicians remembered all the notes to fixed compositions without sheet music. Today, champions on the game show Jeopardy are those who can recall facts faster than their competitors. 

According to journalist Joshua Foer in Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, our heavy reliance on written text and video recordings has cut into our ability to remember people, facts, events, and other information unaided. Not cluttering our brains with unessential memories has contributed to our technical and cultural advances and having static records gives us assurances of truth, but we may still be losing something.

Foer became fascinated by the subject of memory having reported on national memory games, competitions that bring together men and women who can quickly memorize the order of a pack of playing cards, strings of random numbers, grocery lists, poems to recite, and names with faces. Upon getting to know several of the champions, some of whom have written books on their techniques, Foer joined their racks and trained for the U. S. Memory Championship.

In Moonwalking with Einstein, Foer recounts his year of training, describes the experts with whom he studies, and reports on brain science. The book is an entertaining mixture of intellectual musings, sports reporting, and memoir with some memory tips thrown in. You, too, could become a memory champ.

Foer, Joshua. Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. Penguin Press, 2011. 307p. ISBN 9781594202292.

Splitting an Order by Ted Kooser

"I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half
maybe an ordinary cold roast beef on whole wheat bread
no pickles or onions, keeping his shaky hands steady
by placing his forearms firm on the edge of the table ... "

This is what I enjoy about the poetry of Ted Kooser. In the opening lines of the poem "Splitting an Order" in his new collection Splitting an Order, he describes something ordinary in an extraordinary way. He sees the ways hands move and what is in the sandwich. He shows how the sharing of a meal is a ritual. If you or I were in a restaurant across from an older couple sharing a sandwich, we would pay no attention to them, not seeing the clues to their lives in plain sight. Kooser is different.

"I would love to have lived out my years
in a cottage a few blocks from the sea
and to have spent my mornings painting
out in the cold, wet rocks, ... "

Kooser is a painter, as he tells us here in the autobiographical poem "A Person of a Limited Palette" and later in the grief-filled essay "Small Rooms in Time." He notices details and reproduces them precisely in verse. Paging through his collection is like walking through an art gallery with a variety of portraits and landscapes. You may linger in front of some of them today and others next time you visit.

Kooser's poems in Splitting an Order are the work of an older man. He features his contemporaries in some of the poems, often with a middle aged child, but he also writes about young couples and children, as he does in "Swinging from Parents."

I think my favorite in the collection is a poem about his father called "Closing the Windows."

"It was all so ordinary then
to see him at the foot of the bed,
closing a squeaky window, 
but more than sixty years have passed
and now I understand that it was
not so ordinary at all."

When I return to the library books of poetry after only reading four or five poems, I wonder if I like the idea of reading poetry more than actually reading of poetry. Ted Kooser refutes this notion. I liked the poems of Splitting an Order so well that I read the collection twice. They are worth getting to know. I might return to them again, as I do to galleries of art.

Kooser, Ted. Splitting an Order. Copper Canyon Press, 2014. 84p. ISBN 9781556594694.

True Stories into the Hands of Readers at RASSL

Thanks to Stephanie Miller for inviting me to the December meeting of the Reference Association of South Suburban Librarians (RASSL) held at the Calumet City Public Library last week. I enjoyed our discussion of readers' advisory. I you can see my slides for True Stories into the Hands of Readers online. I enjoyed being paired with Lynnanne Pearson from Skokie Public Library, who spoke about fiction readers' advisory.

Visiting RASSL was a homecoming for me, as I was present at its founding in 1981. I have fond memories of the leadership of Renata Ochsner of the Harvey Public Library and Jim Steenbergen of the Riverdale Public Library. Both were true believers in library sharing. In those pre-Internet days and even pre-shared library catalog days, we put together a guide to the staff and collections of neighboring suburban libraries, so we could more effective referrals to library users. It was a lot of work then and so easily done now.

Thanks also to Pat Coffey at the Calumet City Library who gave me a tour of the busy library. It is a library with a strong sense of mission.

The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar: Living with a Tawny Owl by Martin Windrow

Martin Windrow considered writing a book about his owl Mumble for over twenty years. Grief among other factors held him back. He needed a bit of distance and perspective before he could write openly about his subject, which he has in The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar: Living with a Tawny Owl.

Windrow is a bit of a rule breaker. When he wanted an owl to live with him, British conservation laws had already forbad capturing wild species for pets. He found someone who could give him a fledgling tawny owl born of captive parents and completed the necessary official application and assurance papers. Upon receiving his owl, he then took her into a London-area apartment building where pets were specifically prohibited, hiding her from the landlord for about three years before moving into the countryside.

In The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar, Windrow lovingly describes the relationship that he developed with Mumble, including all of his special accommodations to make her residence first in his apartment and then in his country home work. He also had to buy a lot of frozen mice. One of my favorite parts explains her moulting (British spelling), the long, slow annual replacement of feathers during which birds are vulnerable to predators - if they are in the wild. He also tells how wild owls were able to locate Mumble despite her initial urban setting.

Though Windrow sometimes compares Mumble to a domestic cat, The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar is not a gentle read. Readers should expect some gore and excrement. Still there is a good dose of compassion in this don't-try-this-in-your-own-home book. Readers might also like Corvus: A Life with Birds by Esther Woolfson and The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds by Julie Zickefoose.

Windrow, Martin. The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar: Living with a Tawny Owl. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. 302p. ISBN 9780374228460.

The Oldest Living Things in the World by Rachel Sussman

I do not recall how The Oldest Living Things in the World by Rachel Sussman landed on my reading list. Did I read its Chicago Tribune review last may? Did I spot it in a University of Chicago Press ad or catalog? I just recently borrowed it through interlibrary loan, expecting it to be academically scientific but was surprised to find it a sort of travel memoir with pictures.

The pictures are the primary reason for the writing and publishing of the book. They show, as the title specifies, the world's oldest living things. They are almost all plants, and being really old, most are not really very pretty. Many of the oldest trees and shrubs are rough, twisted, broken, and balding, unless the oldest part is actually underground. In contrast, the quaking aspen of the Pando colony who are 80,000 years old look fresh and new; the 106-acre root system is of a great age, but it sprouts new trees constantly. The DNA of every piece is identical, and it is considered a single organism.

Getting the pictures was the reason for all of Sussman's travels. With each picture or set of pictures about a specific old thing, the author tells us how she got to it and took the picture. In some ways, it is like a National Geographic article with its author describing his or her journey and encounters. Sussman is a bit more personally revealing about herself than a typical NG writer, but not enough to call the book a straight memoir. The writing may interest some readers more than the photographs.

I recommend reading The Oldest Living Things in the World at a desk or table. It is pretty heavy and hard to manage with a cat in your lap. At a desk, you will be able to write notes for your travels. Not all of the sites photographed are open to the public, but some of the ones that are would be great to see.

Not many libraries have The Oldest Living Things in the World. You may have to request it through your library's interlibrary loan.

Sussman, Rachel. The Oldest Living Things in the World. University of Chicago Press, 2014. 269p. ISBN 9780226057507.

The Loved One: an Anglo-American Tragedy by Evelyn Waugh

I am not sure whether I ever read fiction by Evelyn Waugh before reading The Loved One: an Anglo-American Tragedy, a short black comedy set in Hollywood and Beverly Hills, California. I may have read Brideshead Revisited before I started keeping a reading log in 1989. I know that I watched the Masterpiece Theater showing of Brideshead Revisited with Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews at least twice, and I saw another production a few years ago. It may be my imagination that I read the book, but I know the story well.

The Loved One is something completely different than Waugh's masterpiece, though it does have a tragic trio of two men and a woman. The woman, funeral makeup artist Aimee Thanatogenos, does not really want to become involved with the protagonist Dennis Barlow but then changes her mind, and it does not end well. Maybe the short book is slightly like Brideshead.

The supporting cast is much smaller, though there is a sort of British paternal figure in the character of Sir Ambrose Abercrombie, head of the cricket club, whose membership is British men working in Hollywood. Sir Ambrose demands good behavior of his countrymen, and he is especially disappointed by Barlow. Maybe The Loved One is more like Brideshead than I thought.

The similarities definitely end there. The Loved One is short and wickedly comic. Readers will not equate the failures of Dennis Barlow with the disappointments of Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte. Or will they?

Waugh, Evelyn. The Loved One: an Anglo-American Tragedy. Little Brown, 1948, 2012. 146p. ISBN 9780316216463.

On the High Line: Exploring America's Most Original Urban Park by Annik La Farge

When Bonnie and I visited Manhattan in May of 2013, the first place that my college roommate Robert took us was the High Line, an urban park created atop an abandoned elevated rail line on the west side of the island, running from Gansevoort Street north to 34th Street, over 20 blocks long. We climbed up the stairs at 20th Street to discover a wide walk surrounded by masses of flowers, shrubs, and trees. At some points along the popular walk, I noticed old steel rails and imagined they carried commuter trains, like the elevated lines of Chicago. But I misunderstood.

Annik La Farge tells the full story in On the High Line: Exploring America's Most Original Urban Park. The High Line opened in 1934 to get freight trains off the busy streets of the industrial west side. These trains delivered produce, raw materials, and manufactured goods from docks on the Hudson River to factories and warehouses, many with elevated rails running right into their buildings. The line was abandoned in 1980, and a debate about what to do with the property began. In the 1990s, naturalists noticed how abundantly wildflowers were growing all along the tracks and the effort to make a park began. Parts of it opened in 2003.

History is just a part of La Farge's book. Almost every page is filled with beautiful color photos of the park as it is today, and the author reports on ongoing projects on and around the High Line, which has proved to be a spark to urban renewal. Readers see that its great variety of spaces provide community gathering spots, places for quiet relaxation, great views of the Manhattan skyline, and a handy path for many New Yorkers going to work or out for the evening.

On the High Line is just what New York needs to combat the image of the city as gray and dreary place. It can go into either landscaping, travel, or history collections.

La Farge, Annik. On the High Line: Exploring America's Most Original Urban Park. Thames & Hudson, 2014. 226p. ISBN 9780500291412

One More Thing: Stories and More Stories by B. J. Novak

B. J. Novak is a contemporary comedian who has been seen on television and in the movies. With his recent book One More Thing: Stories and More Stories, he shows us that comedians are storytellers. They spin stories to make listeners laugh. Novak likes to make us laugh, but in tradition of George Carlin and Dick Gregory, he challenges us to consider subjects that make us uncomfortable.

Novak is bound to offend some readers. I winced several times as I listened to the audiobook as Novak and a cast of actors and actresses read his mostly comic stories. I started to write that he is of the Say Anything School, but I do not believe that is true. Novak sounds spontaneous, but his words are very well chosen.

A part of me thinks Novak's vulgarity is unnecessary in some stories, but another part believes that he depicts a segment of contemporary society as it is. With offensive words, he creates an atmosphere in which his stories seem to have more authority than if he used sanitized language. At least, I imagine it is that way for some readers.

Uncertain whether you want to read One More Thing? Try the first story "The Rematch" which is about the hare wanting the tortoise to give him another chance to race. It is a clever piece that points out that stories never really end, that there is always something next. Novak shows a bit of what he will dish out in heavier doses in later stories.

Novak, B. J. One More Thing: Stories and More Stories. Knopf, 2014. 276p. ISBN 9780385351836.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

Throughout most of Earth's history, the rate of species extinction has been very slow. For mammals, it has been calculated as one species disappears once every 700 years. This is such a slow process that no human could notice. In extraordinary times, many species die off rapidly. Our planet's fossil records suggest that this has happened five times in the distant past, most recently when an asteroid slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula sixty-six million years ago, killing off the dinosaurs. According to science journalist Elizabeth Kolbert, we are again in an extraordinary time, as many species are disappearing. She explains in The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History.

The idea of extinction is historically new, first proposed by French naturalist Georges Cuvier two hundred years ago to explain fossils that resembled no living animals. Up to that point, scientists and people in general had assumed that all life was current, abundant, and inexhaustible. (Some people still believe this despite the many cases of specific extinctions that have been proven.) Once the extinction idea was accepted, scientist identified five mass extinctions, but the explanations for these were not clear. Some appeared to have resulted from quick and catastrophic environmental events, such as monstrous volcanoes or asteroids. Our current extinction seems to be caused by environmental changes brought on by the actions of humans.

In each chapter of The Sixth Extinction, Kolbert recounts the disappearance of a species or genus or even a family of animals or plants. She describes her visits all over the planet with scientists in the field who are documenting the disappearance of frogs, mastodons, ammonites, giant auks and other flightless birds, Neanderthals, and coral reefs. Some of the missing were hunted to extinction. Non-native species or diseases introduced by humans did in others. Fossil-fuel-created global warming is the newest threat.

Comments about The Sixth Extinction from our church book club were mostly positive. Many agreed that the subject is ultimately depressing but the book is fair and very readable. It will surely be on many of the best books lists that should proliferate soon.

Kolbert, Elizabeth. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. Henry Holt and Company, 2014. 319p. ISBN 9780805092998.

Lives in Ruins: Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble by Marilyn Johnson

Having enjoyed The Dead Beat and This Book is Overdue, books about obituary writers and librarians, I am a Marilyn Johnson fan. She is making her mark investigating professions that attract people more interested in discovery of facts than in their salaries. Her third book is Lives in Ruins: Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble. Many have dreamed of careers in archaeology. Johnson's new book reveals the lives that they might have led.

Thanks to real archaeologists such as Howard Carter and Louis Leakey and fictional characters Amelia Peabody and Indiana Jones, many people think of archaeology as an exciting career. It can be, but the dramatic action rarely requires jumping from a horse onto a speeding train. Instead, the allure of archaeology comes from discovering revealing fragments of past cultures in the forms of pieces of pottery, buttons, old coins, building foundations, and human bones. In the field, archaeologists spend much of their time on the ground with a trowel and brushes, gently removing items from the soil, recording every possible fact about their locations.

If you had become an archaeologist, you might have traveled all over the world to collect artifacts, or you might have become involved in emergency investigations of real estate properties before building construction. In either case, you would have been sporadically employed, unless you were one of the lucky few to land academic positions. Many of the people Johnson profiles have had to hold second jobs or create their own foundations to investigate neglected historical sites. They are a fascinating group.

Armchair travelers will enjoy Lives in Ruins, as Johnson takes readers around the world, often to almost secret locations. They will also experience uncomfortable working conditions (not recommended for the claustrophobic) and attend professional conferences. It is as close as many of us will get to living the dream.

Johnson, Marilyn. Lives in Ruins: Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble. Harper, 2014. 274p. ISBN 9780062127181.