Family Albums from Little, Brown and Company: A Warning

Reality tampering alert! There are two new books from Little, Brown and Company that present very sanitized portraits of their subjects. Frank Sinatra: The Family Album by Charles Pignone and Elvis Presley: The Family Album by George Klein are books written by personal friends with the support of family estates wanting to influence public perceptions. In both books happy times prevail.

The Frank Sinatra book is especially guilty of omitting anything unpleasant. After looking through it, I was almost convinced that Old Blue Eyes had been happily married to one woman all his life. He is shown in many home photos with his first wife Nancy, including some in which their grown children appear. His daughter Tina also looks a lot like her mother, perhaps aiding the illusion. Wives Ava Gardner (1951), Mia Farrow (1966), and Barbara Marx (1976) do not appear and are not mentioned in this book. I guess they are not considered family by the Sinatra estate.

While there are many photos of Sinatra with his entertainment friends, there are few with men who might be mob connections. Photos of his bad behavior are also missing. I guess this is to be expected from a book that suggests that it is a leather bound family keepsake.

The book about Elvis Presley is equally cleaned up. I think there are only a couple of photos that date after 1970. Elvis still looks young at the end of the book. In fact, there is no suggestion that Elvis died. On the other hand, there are some pretty scary-looking characters in the wedding photo on page 131 - especially the bride.

I searched through the Little, Brown website and the databases of Baker & Taylor to see if any more Family Albums are coming. I did not see any. I can imagine more of them: Ronald Reagan, Kurt Cobain, Judy Garland, etc.

Libraries may still want these attractive books, as fans will like them and students can find lots of photos to copy for their reports. We do present all points of view in the public library. These books are living proof.

Pignone, Charles. Frank Sinatra: The Family Album. Little, Brown, 2007. ISBN 0316003492

Klein, George. Elvis Presley: The Family Album. Little, Brown, 2007. ISBN 0316003506

Old Heart: Poems by Stanley Plumly

While it may be hard to imagine the typical poetry reader, I suspect many enjoy finding a story within the poem. I do. Having a narrative somehow anchors the ideas espoused by the poet. For this reason, I like many of the pieces by Stanley Plumly in his National Book Award nominated collection Old Heart.

The stories may be sketchy, episodic, brief, but there is a person or object, a scene, and an action. In "When He Fell Backwards into His Coffin" on page 50, Plumly tells of a man who died in the bathtub. Many people want the story to be happy and imagine that the man was enjoying a nice bath while listening to opera. Plumly reveals that the man was actually just sitting on the edge fully dressed when he had his final moment of thought. The truly shocking part of the poem is the last thought. The man remembers his mother holding his head down in the water.

"Debt" on pages 34-35 is a bit of memoir. He remembers three creditors standing in the yard with his father on a cold, blustery day, discussing the resolution of a debt. One man is measuring the yard in a threatening way. Plumly links the image to thoughts about debt and poverty from the poets Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and T. S. Eliot. He leaves us a mystery: did the family lose the house?

Like Robert Hass in Time and Materials, which won the National Book Award for poetry last week, Plumly writes often about birds. The poems include "Spirit Birds,""Magpie," and "Missing the Jays." I wonder about the other nominated poets.

My favorite poem in the collection might be "The Woman Who Shoveled Snow" on page 60. The poet observes and wonders about an older, poorly dressed woman who picks up extra cash by shoveling snowy sidewalks, a job usually performed by kids. In her need, perhaps to support a habit, she does a thorough job.

Old Heart is an accessible modern collection of poem that many readers may enjoy. It should be in many public libraries.

Plumly, Stanley. Old Heart: Poems. Norton, 2007. ISBN 9780393065688

Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World by Anthony Doerr

How can I encourage you to read Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr? How about a paragraph showing his passion for the great old city?

"We came to Rome because we would always regret it if we didn't, because every timidity eventually turns into regret. But the enormity of what I don't know about this place never ceases to amaze me. In 1282, the Tuscan monk Ristoro d'Arezzo declared, "It is a dreadful thing for the inhabitants of a house not to know how it is made." Dreadful indeed. What I think he meant was that we ought to understand the earth we live on, its skies, its stones. We ought to understand why we live the lives we live. But I don't even understand the apartment building in which I live. How is linoleum made? Or window glass or porcelain? By what power does water rise to the third floor and pour out of this faucet?"

Coming to Rome was not easy for Doerr and his family, as the twins were only about six months old. It would have been much easier to stay comfortably in Boise, Idaho, but the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts was an offer that was too good to refuse. Can you imagine being paid and housed for a year in Rome so you could work on whatever you wished - your novel, your art, your research?

Doerr does not actually write much on his novel. The wonderful distractions of family and the ancient city are too much to ignore. He walks the streets of the city, looks in the museums and alleys, tastes the food, meets the neighbors. He and his wife visit surround villages. What he tells you makes you want to visit.

• You can lie on benches to look up at the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel.
• To see the Crucifixion of Saint Peter by Caravaggio you have to put coins in the vending box to turn on the spotlights.
• Giotto added ground lapis lazuli in the blue robes in his frescoes in Assisi.

The big event in Rome during Doerr's stay is the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Thousands of people young and old stream into the city during the pope's last days and sit in vigil. The lines to view the body are so long that many never reach their goal. Doerr wades into the crowd to feel the passion.

As interesting as the funeral reporting is, it is the descriptions of Rome and everyday dramas that make this book worth reading. It certainly substitutes well for the novel he has not written. Look for it at your library.

Doerr, Anthony. Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World. Scribner, 2007. ISBN 9781416540014

At the Ranch in West Texas

I have been in West Texas for a little over a week with my mom. On Monday, I got to go out to the ranch north of Big Lake. I took over one hundred photos of cattle. The photo to the left is just one. Many of them include my mom's calves. I will be posting the better shots on Flickr when I get back to Illinois.

In the next post you will find my review of Wildlife by Richard Ford. In the story, fires are burning outside Great Falls, Montana. There have been daily brush fires outside Big Lake every day since I have been here. The alarm calling for volunteers has gone of daily. We saw one of the fires as we drove in from San Angelo last week. Because there was lots of rain early in the year, there is lots of dry grass and brush now. The cow and calf in this picture are standing in a fire hazard. Do not worry. Should a fire start, they would move.

While in Big Lake, I have been visiting the Reagan County Library every few days to check my email and post. Thanks, RCL.

I have my laptop, so I have been working on my book, rewriting book reviews and working on the index. I am struggling a bit with consistency in the way I apply descriptors. I am sure Bonnie will be able to advise me when I get home. I am looking forward to getting home.

Wildlife by Richard Ford

I have planned to read Richard Ford for years, ever since I read about awards that he won for The Sportswriter. At a recent book sale benefiting the Iowa City Public Library, I found a nice paperback edition of his book Wildlife. The price and time were right, so Bonnie bought it for me, and I brought it with me to Texas.

It is a good traveling book, easy to carry, memorable to read. Ford hooked me in the first couple of pages. I did not read it in one evening sitting because I needed sleep, but I did pick it up in the morning and again whenever I could through a day and half. I had to hear Joe Brinson's story.

Wildlife is a first person narrative told by sixteen year old Joe whose family has moved to Great Falls, Montana. When his father, a golf instructor, is unjustly fired from the country club, he uncharacteristically decides to join a forest fire fighting team, leaving Joe and his mother alone for several days. His mother reacts badly, and Joe's life seems to unravel.

In his book, Ford suggests that we are all only a couple of stupid decisions away from disaster. The bad moves may not even be our own. Joe is not responsible for any of his bad fortune, and his words and actions are confused, as you would expect from a teen whose home and prospects are threatened. I really wanted his parents to straighten up.

Because Ford does not tell us what to think or really spell out why the characters do what they do, Wildlife would be a good discussion book. I also recommend it to teens.

Ford, Richard. Wildlife. AMP, 1990. ISBN 0871133482

Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005 by Robert Hass

I am again blogging from the Reagan County Library in Big Lake, Texas. I appreciate that this rural library now has a great computer lab.

Poetry is not easy to read. I have just finished Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005 by Robert Hass, which is nominated for the National Book Award for poetry. I have mixed feelings about this collection. There were some poems I understood and liked, but I was unable on the first attempt to find the meaning of others.

One of the reasons that many people do not like poetry is they do not understand it. That seems a rather narrow view to take, but I think not understanding is why people have many of their prejudices. They do not like certain forms of music, computers, electronic devices, other people, or foreign nations because they do not understand them. Understanding takes effort. With poetry, you can reread. You can read aloud. With a good try, you can eventually get it. Perhaps reading poetry can teach patience and be practice for other forms of tolerance. You do not want to have a closed mind.

In the next to last poem in the collection, "Exit, Pursued by a Sierra Meadow," Hass says that beauty is "unendurable." Humans do not really value what is not immediately useful. He is commenting on the beauty of park land and wildlife in this poem, but he could apply the thought to poetry as well.

Birds appear in many of the poems as the focus or as incidental details. I wonder whether they have a certain meaning to Hass or whether he just likes birds. The truth is probably a bit of both. In "On Visiting the DMZ at Panmunjom: A Haibun," the cattle egrets at the end of the poem seem to be the witnesses of human folly. Perhaps they will even inherit the earth after all the people have been killed by war.

While most of the poems are environmental, the poet does get political in "Ezra Pound's Proposition." Look out, World Bank and Halliburton! Robert Hass has figured you out. I do not know what the reference to Pound in the title means; he is not mentioned in the poem.

My favorite poem is "Art and Life," in which the poet looks at paintings in the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague. When he lunches in the museum cafeteria, he looks at the staff, wondering who has restored the paintings, bringing back their colors, peeling back time. I also enjoyed the little stories in "Domestic Interiors" especially the incident in which a village comes together when it loses its electricity.

Not many libraries have Time and Materials, but I think that they should consider it. It may never be popular but some one is going to enjoy it very much.

Hass, Robert. Time and Materials: Poems, 1997-2005. CCCO, 2007. ISBN 9780061349607.

Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio by Jeffrey Kluger

Before Jonas Salk introduced his vaccine for polio in the 1950s, it disabled and killed many American children every summer. Some years were much worse than others, requiring health officials to shut down swimming pools and movie theaters. My mother remembers a summer in San Antonio when she was not allowed to go anywhere that the virus might be found. Years later, I remember a friend who wore a leg brace because he had contracted polio as an infant. I also remember going to our school cafeteria in the early 1960s to orally take the vaccine on a sugar cube.

In Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio, science writer Jeffrey Kluger profiles reluctant hero Dr. Jonas Salk, who was born in New York at a time when infantile paralysis was an annual concern in the city. Mothers hid their children from the health department patrols, who combed neighborhoods looking for suspiciously ill youths. Salk's mother was especially diligent, making sure he always washed his hands and did not play with other children in the streets. She wanted him to become a rabbi, but he chose to become a doctor dedicated to disease research instead. Before work on polio, he helped develop influenza vaccine.

Though polio primarily attacked young people, it occasionally infected adults, including failed vice presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt. Kluger tells how the future president went to Warm Springs, Georgia seeking treatment in the hot water. His buying the old resort that he modified for polio victims led to the creation of the March of Dimes, which later funded Salk's work.

The story of the development of the vaccine is filled with disappointments and controversies. I enjoyed hearing Splendid Solution read by Michael Prichard, who I have heard on other nonfiction audio books. Baby boomers who grew up in the wake of the polio epidemic will enjoy reading about their roots. Medical professionals will also find the story inspiring.

Kluger, Jeffrey. Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio. G.P. Putnam's Sons, c2004. ISBN 0399152164.

Audiobook: Tantor Media, 2005. 11 compact discs. ISBN 1400101492

Library Technical Competencies: What Do We Have? What Do We Teach? What Do I Hire?

I am posting this from the Reagan County Public Library in Big Lake, Texas, where I will be for the next week.

Zone One Reference Librarians met a couple of weeks ago to discuss computers in libraries and staff technical training. In all our libraries we have computers for staff and clients to use. Most of us also have web sites, and many offer wireless Internet. Our staffs have developed many technical skills in the past ten to fifteen years. No one has totally non-technical staff members anymore.

Technology continues to change quickly, and libraries want to use these developments to better serve clients. This requires us to have well-trained staffs both in public service and working behind the scenes. How to get everyone on a staff up to par on the latest skills is a great challenge. In many cases, some one lags behind, resulting in varying public service. You know your library has a problem when some fairly common client requests are regularly written up and referred to the more savvy staff.

Sarah Houghton-Jan's points out a process to improve staff competencies in her technology report. What she leaves for the reader to discover is the specific competencies needed in her library.

During our conversation, I thought of one way to start the specific list competencies for my library. All staff members in public service can log every technical skill used for several days. These logs can also record when a skill is missing. Before I ask anyone to do this, I thought I should try it out myself.

For two days I kept a running log of technical tasks, including time in public and behind the scenes in support of our library mission. Here is what I listed.

· Turn on public PCs
· Turn off PC security to load software
· Load Firefox browser update
· Troubleshoot printing on the microfilm reader printer
· Read and write email
· Edit online calendar
· Set up projector and laptop for a meeting
· Add to the staff wiki
· Load paper into the copier
· Open an email attachment and save it
· Set up an Excel spreadsheet
· Send document to remote printer
· Add book titles to an online shopping basket
· Post on the staff blog
· Teach client how to create a PIN for the online catalog
· Troubleshoot monitor
· Resize photocopies for a client
· Cut and paste into Word document for our newsletter
· Search remote databases to answer reference questions
· Troubleshoot email with client
· Use Dreamweaver to update library web pages
· Load web pages onto the remote server
· Place holds for clients
· Explain "reply to all" to a client
· Search library catalog
· Load an iPod for a client


As I look at this, there are many skills that I did not have fifteen years ago. It was not hard to learn them, but I can remember times when I was baffled by something that ended up being easy. Luckily for me, my library has always sent staff to classes, workshops, and conferences. The knowledge gained at outside training has laid the foundation of my technical skills. In our meeting, we talked about our libraries sending more staff out for training more often, but we recognized this still is not enough. Besides, we need our staffs in our buildings most of the time.

One of the librarian at our zone meeting told about how her library's technical trainer, a person hired part time to do classes for the public on mostly Internet topics, gives some classes for staff as well. These are helpful but do not meet the need for current awareness of late breaking technical developments. On her own the trainer started sending occasional tech briefs to staff, alerting them to news. We all agreed that she is the kind of person we all need in our libraries.

This reminds me that my library's needs a new reference librarian. I have learned much from and been encouraged to try new things by the last two librarians in this position. Much of this transfer of knowledge happened in our daily unplanned conversations. For this position, we have a brand new job description that more than ever lays out skill sets that are required and activities that will be performed. Teaching other staff members is in the mix. What it does not say is "Will teach the old guy some new tricks." Maybe it should. Teaching the supervisor is important, too.

As important as the formal training and the daily conversations are, I realize further that I am also somewhat self-taught. I think all the best technical minds are. They play with the new technology fearlessly, learning what it will and will not do. They do not wait for their libraries to arrange training. Self initiative needs to be written into all of our job descriptions, too.

For more information on library technical competencies, look at Cultivating Tech-Saavy Library Staff, one of Sarah's presentations as reported by Chad at Library Voice.

They Say: Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race by James West Davidson

Born during the American Civil War, about the time of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, Ida B. Wells was witness to the initial promise and subsequent failure of Reconstruction. Her earliest memories were of her father as a local black activist in Holly Springs, Mississippi, and of her mother as a woman determined to see her children live a better life. When Wells was sixteen years old, they both died from yellow fever, leaving her to support her siblings. In They Say: Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race, historian James West Davidson tells how she transformed herself from a teacher with Victorian attitudes to a crusading journalist dedicated to exposing racial injustice.

As a reader, I enjoy how Davidson weave many colorful details into this small book. He tells us how Wells attended as many as three or four chruch services on Sundays when she first moves to Memphis. He describes the rotten wooden streets in the city and the towers of hay along the docks after regional harvests. He quotes Wells saying that she was "unladylike" at a baseball game and moved by the character of Koko in The Mikado. I see Wells as a person with charms and flaws, not a historical figure.

Central to the story is an incident in which three blacks are executed by a mob for an incident that may have been a set up. For reporting on it and questioning the validity of rape charges in many of the lynchings across the South, Wells has to flee death threats in Memphis. Then she becomes famous lecturing in the Northeastern U.S. and in England on the injustice of Southern lynchings.

Using Wells as the focus, Davidson tells a story of increasing racial violence across the country in the late nineteenth century. He stops the story at the point Wells becomes a full time advocate for racial justice. Many readers will enjoy this lively coming of age story.

Davidson, James West. They Say: Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race. Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN 9780195160208.

Mongolian Ping Pong

Bonnie brings home some wonderful movies. The latest is Mongolian Ping Pong, a comic look at three young boys in remote Mongolia who find a ping pong ball floating down a stream. Wondering what it is, they ask their parents, a grandmother, and even the local Buddhist monks and get some amusing answers. Even when a wandering merchant, selling odd items from his stripped down van, says that it is just a ping pong ball, they are unenlightened.

There are several things that I really liked about Mongolian Ping Pong. First is the goofiness of the three boys, whose actions make me imaging of Spanky and Our Gang in Mongolian with subtitles. Bilike, Ergoutan, and Dawa run wild with little supervision, cooking up schemes that rival those of old child-star comedies.

I liked the scenery. The vast Mongolian grassland is so green and mostly flat until you see the odd house or rocky outcrop. Anyone who has been to the Serengeti plain will long now to go to remote Mongolia. The background of approaching storms and herds of horses and slow twisting rivers makes me want to see it.

I also liked the camera work, especially how scenes often ended with all of the characters walking out of the frame. The movie watcher is left looking at the beautiful scenery.

There are many themes to contemplate in Mongolian Ping Pong, which seems to show the last days of a rural society being brought into modern society. There are the introduction of technology, the longing of the young to leave, and the care of the elderly. It is a fascinating film that many libraries should had to their collections.

The Contemporary Problem of Mass Rape by Allison Ruby Reid-Cunningham

Today I am reviewing something a bit different. The Contemporary Problem of Mass Rape is a self-published book by my niece Allison Ruby Reid-Cunningham, a doctoral student in social work at the University of California at Berkeley. I promise to write a fair review.

The topic about which Ruby writes is mostly ignored by the popular press and commercial publishing. Do a search of "mass rape" in Worldcat from OCLC and you find little. There is an article in Maclean's in 2006 and another in New Statesman in 2005. There are a few university press books. Otherwise, the topic is found only in reports from international organizations and articles from academic journals. Reading Ruby's book, I noticed that most of the references are to reports from groups like Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, and various bodies of the United Nations.

What is mass rape? In the context of Ruby's book, mass rape is sexual violence against women as a part of war. Throughout history, as the saying goes, "to the victor go the spoils." Victorious armies have always celebrated by looting their conquered cities and raping the women and girls. As horrible as this is, the topic of this book is even more shocking. Rape is used as a weapon of genocide.

Ruby's book includes discussions of recent or on-going wars in Bosnia- Hercegovina, Rwanda, and Darfur. In these wars, soldiers were (are) often under orders to rape women. In these wars, commanders at the highest level directed their forces to use all means to humiliate and eliminate the ethnic peoples against whom they fought. In these societies, the ethnicity of offspring is thought to come from the father and not the mother, so rape serves to wipe out conquered populations. To accomplish the work, rape camps were set up where women were systematically raped, kept until pregnancies were verified, and sent back to their own communities. Many babies were subsequently abandoned.

What is to be done about these atrocities? Ruby discusses war crimes trials. According to current conventions, mass rape is a war crime, but it is often not one of the charges that is pursued. The problem is under reported because in many cultures being raped is actually considered a crime of adultery. Women reporting their rapes in these societies condemn themselves to expulsion or death.

Being a student of social work, Ruby discusses the need for social workers in the wake of ethnic warfare and the care which they need to provide.

On her website, Ruby discusses her ongoing work, which includes interviewing women from the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. I hope she writes a narrative book for mass publication. Readers need to know about this subject. In the meantime, Ruby provides a link to buy her book from Lulu. The paperback is $10 and the download is only $1.25.

300 Books, 300 More to Choose

Today is a milestone in the writing of my readers' advisory guide for biography. I have chosen 300 books and written short descriptions of them. I want to choose 300 more and then put them into a useful order with finding aids and further recommendations. I also will add some helpful appendices.

Number 300 is Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams by Michael D'Antonio. I celebrated with a bit of left over Halloween chocolate. Delicious!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling

I have just finished my second reading of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling. I took two months, often reading a few pages or a chapter a day, sometimes skipping a couple of days. At this relaxed pace, the tale becomes an installment story. Of course, I understood much more the this time through.

I was particularly struck on the second reading how Voldemort really is just Tom Riddle, not all powerful. He is so obsessed with Harry that he loses his original vision of dominion. He makes mistakes in front of his Death Eaters, shocking them. He worries about wands and horcruxes. Moreover, you see he is not so different from Dumbledore in his origins. The late headmaster of Hogwarts could have let hate make him into a monster, too. Dumbledore's failing was not finding a better path for Riddle when he might have had influence. Maybe he would have failed, but he did not really try.

Before the seventh book was issued, I worried that it would be a long battle, constantly tense, losing all the charms of the earlier books. At the end of the sixth book, there was such a sense that the time of conflict had come. I need not have worried. I liked how Rowling was able to still include humorous lines and situations in the final book.

I also like how the characters continue to develop in the seventh book. In fact, we learn much about Harry, Dumbledore, Snape, Luna, and Neville. Rowling had many threads to tie in the final book and I think she succeeded, staying fair to all of her characters, even Riddle.

Now what do I do? The story is over. Well, I might reread book six again.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Arthur A. Levine Books, 2007. ISBN 9780545010221

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver

Here's food for thought. (I could not resist the pun.)

I have just finished listening to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver, read by the authors. I was not sure how interesting twelve compact discs about a family growing, buying, and eating local food would be, but I was hooked. Kingsolver is so talented a storyteller that she could probably entertain readers with a story about asparagus. In fact, she does tell a good story about the tall green vegetable, first food of spring.

In one essay in her book Small Wonder, Kingsolver discusses the great waste of shipping foods around the world when they could be grown locally. Admittedly, they would not always really be the same foods, but buying local would foster strong local farming communities. No one would go hungry, and third world farmers would not be enslaved by corporations to feed wealthy Americans. In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, she and her family take the topic much farther.

I enjoyed hearing three voices on the audiobook. Kingsolver delivers the main narrative, which hardly sounds like reading. Her husband Hopp is "Mr. Science," reading his fact-filled sidebars about politics, economy, and ethics. Her college-bound daughter Camille reads her essays on nutrition, describes meal plans, and provides a young point of view.

Kingsolver's younger daughter Lily is also a principle in the narrative. One of the best recurring themes is development of the budding entrepreneur's egg business.

The central story is that the family pledges to eat locally grown foods for one year. Each person gets an exception, such as coffee. To accomplish the feat, they garden and raise their own chickens and turkeys on their farm in North Carolina. They also frequent the local farmers' market, visit neighboring farms, and buy from grocers who stock regional foods. There are some sacrifices; they have no bananas with breakfast or any foods out of season. There are a few failures: they never find a good local source for grains and flour. Still, they succeed in the spirit of the venture, helping the local economy, reducing the burning of fossil fuel, eating well, not losing any weight.

In an interview on the last compact disc, Kingsolver says that she does not expect everyone to replicate her family's experiment. What she does hope is that concern readers will start to examine what they eat and question its origins. If they start buying more local products, the food industry will have to take notice and will adjust to meet the demand. Eventually, a more sustainable system will be established.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle would be a good book for discuss because our whole way of life is questioned. Libraries should expect this book to continue to be popular for a long time.

Kingsolver, Barbara with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Harper Audio, 2007. ISBN 0060853573

Women Empowered: Inspiring Change in the Emerging World by Phil Borges

Photographer Phil Borges has traveled to many developing nations to witness the efforts of CARE to assist women's rights and welfare. The result is his book Women Empowered, which includes photos of and captions about individual women who are prospering and in turn assisting their neighbors to fight poverty, disease, illiteracy, rape, genital mutilation, child trafficking, political repression, and environmental exploitation.

The beauty of this book is its direct appeal. Readers see and learn about strong women who have defied conventions to demand their rights in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Benin, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, and even Montana. Several of the women have used microloans to start village industries that have allowed them to feed their families, secure homes, and send their children to school. Others have chased off illegal loggers, stopped slave traders, and joined village governments for the first time. You see photos of these women and then of young women and girls who are in line to benefit.

With the effects and ethics of foreign aid often in question, this is an important book for students and citizens who contemplate their charitable giving. It is a good addition to any library.

Borges, Phil. Women Empowered: Inspiring Change in the Emerging World. Rizzoli, 2007. ISBN 9780847829279

This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley

Are you one of many readers who have dreamed of being a novelist? If you are, Walter Mosley has written This Year You Write Your Novel for you. Why has he done this? Did he do so to help you, or did he do so to take your money?

Evidence of helpfulness #1 - In this small book, which takes only a couple of hours to read, Mosley strips down the process of novel writing to its essentials, making his points clearly. The author says that to write a book you have to be disciplined and write every day, and he lays out a plan that can help you do that in a year. He says to get a first draft written before you worry about all of the books problems. Then he gives advice for rewriting. This may be just the encouragement that you need to rise to the call. He has given you a method.

Evidence of helpfulness #2 - This Year You Write Your Novel is small and attractive. It might work as a nice gift of encouragement to a friend. I would like to give the book to several people I know. Giving it might be that extra statement of faith that would spark a friend to do what he/she has promised/threatened.

Evidence of taking the money - The book is rather small for the price. It is sketchy. It does not refer to any other tools to help the writer. (He does mention using a thesaurus.) Like many self-help books, it is common sense spelled out.

I like to think that Mosley's intentions are honorable. Perhaps a bigger book with more details would be less read and not as influential. Still, I think more people would be better served by a cheap paperback version. This definitely does not need to be hardbound.

Mosley, Walter. This Year Your Write Your Novel. Little, Brown & Company, 2007. ISBN 9780316065412

The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie

The popularity of Agatha Christie mysteries continues thirty years after her death. Thanks to new editions of the books published by Black Dog & Leventhan, my library has restocked the mystery shelves with a couple dozen new Christie volumes. Among these is The Body in the Library.

I have opened the library many times and never found a body in front of the fireplace. At Thomas Ford, we do have a fireplace but no blood stains. Actually, there were no blood stains on Colonel Bantry's library floor either. Obviously, the heavily made-up young woman with the bleached hair in the cheap white gown was strangled somewhere else. Who was she and why was she in the library? Mrs. Bantry knows the local police will botch the investigation, so she calls her friend Miss Jane Marple.

As I read the book, I started remembering much of the plot, which I saw dramatized on Masterpiece Theatre recently, but I did not recall who the murderers were. This may be because as a viewer and a reader I spent almost the entire story contemplating the clues and testing scenarios. Then Miss Marple reveals the solution and the book ends rather quickly. In Body in the Library, there is no great scene were all the suspects are brought together. Two weeks from now, I may have forgotten the solution and could read it all over again.

I was struck on this reading how Miss Marple is not a sweet old lady. She is the least trusting of all the investigators, attune to the moods of the suspects. She also tells about catching her housemaids at lies. Christie hints that the sleuth has perhaps gone through many maids. I do not think I saw that in the dramatizations.

Libraries may want to inspect their Agatha Christie collections now as there are inexpensive editions available to fill the gaps and replace the tattered copies. Your readers will appreciate them.

Adventures of a Biographer by Catherine Drinker Bowen

A colleague at the library wished recently that publishers would stop the flood of new books so she could catch up with all the old books. I would not go so far, but I sympathize, as there are many old books that I will never read, and every time I go in the stacks to weed I find more.

I do what I can. So, here is a new review of a book from 1959.

I first became aware of the biographer Catherine Drinker Bowen in August when I was studying the ALA Notable Books lists. Bowen had seven books on the lists, second only to Sir Winston Churchill. When I looked through our library catalog to see if any were still available, I found that they all were somewhere in the Chicago suburbs. The title that caught my eye was her memoir Adventures of a Biographer, published in 1959, before ISBN numbers.

I could tell I had made a good choice from the first page of the first chapter. The year is 1937 and a Russian friend tries to talk Bowen out of going to Moscow to research pianist Anton Rubinstein. She had already written a book about Tchaikovsky without visiting his homeland, but she felt that it lacked authority. Now she is determined to wade into Stalin's Soviet Union to get the goods that she needed to write a great book. Of course, she finds many barriers to her research in the cold capital. She cannot go anywhere without her official translator, who seems at first bent on showing her all the city's factories and communist shrines instead of letting her study a musician who was a loyal subject of the last czar. Eventually she gets into Moscow Conservatory where she is only allowed in certain rooms. During an afternoon concert, when no one is looking, she sneaks into the upstairs archive where an old librarian welcomes her and shows her some of Rubinstein's manuscripts.

Not all of the chapters are as thrilling as the first, but Bowen usually finds people or institutions opposing her work. When she goes to Boston to study Oliver Wendall Holmes in the 1940s, when many people remember him, she is viewed as an outsider and shunned. In Washington, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter tries to discourage her from writing a "popular" book and denies her access to the Holmes papers under his care. He then hires an academic read these papers and write a scholarly book. Bowen is not able to cozy up to Holmes' old friends until she pulls out her family tree.

While writing about John Adams, Bowen attends a conference of history professors. Thinking that she will learn some new techniques for research, she finds herself frustrated by the academic attitude that requires the scholars to be almost without opinion about their subjects. Bowen believes biography should be written with a point of view. She admits to bias. She says most biographers learn to love or hate their subjects.

Of course, my favorite chapter is the ninth, "Salute to Librarians." Early in that chapter is a great paragraph.

"In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret's nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eyes bright with battle. But I did not know this. All unaware I used to make my way to those long-block municipal buildings, hope in my heart and in my hand a list of ten or fifteen books. Not books to read in the library but to take home, where I could copy at length, with time to think about what I was copying. I did not telephone beforehand and ask to have my books ready at the desk. I took my list and looked up the proper numbers in the card catalog, rechecked each one and carried the cards to the desk. The young woman would glance at the cards and then she would say, "Only two books at a time can be taken from the circulation department, miss." Black hatred would then well up in a heart that had been ready to love."

Bowen continues in this chapter to tell stories about her sometimes difficult but usually rewarding work with librarians. Some are just as reticent as the Bostonian friends of Justice Holmes. Others bend as many rules as they can to widen her access.

In the final chapters, Bowen tells about a dry period when she struggled to select a subject for her latest book. When she finally settled on Edward Coke, an adviser to Elizabeth I and James I of England, she found some English ancestors very suspicious of having an American writer in their midst. They claimed Coke was an English topic for an English scholar. For Bowen, the research was never easy.

Not many libraries have Adventures of a Biographer now, but it is a book worth seeking out. Try out your local interlibrary loan.

Bowen, Catherine Drinker. Adventures of a Biographer. Little, Brown, 1959.

Graduate School of Art, University of Iowa

On Saturday, Bonnie and I toured the Graduate School of Art at the University of Iowa with our daughter Laura. Laura told us that there was a really cool exhibit, but it had closed when we got there. So we just wandered around the building. There was still plenty to see.

We went up the industrial metal ramps to the second level, where we found a collection of paintings around the landing walls. Most had no attributions. Were they by students? What I liked best was a little green figure, a detail in a larger piece. I'd tell you what it is, but I do not know. Maybe it is an angel.

The art school library was fairly deserted while we walked around. It was mostly an unadorned, more functional than artful space, but I saw much to like from a service point of view. The reference collection and new titles were right up front. There were still many empty shelves for future acquisitions, and there were many interesting looking periodicals. Around the library were displays of red-colored uncovered structural steel.The large glass windows looked out on a goldfish pool under a limestone wall. If the windows were washed, it would be very nice. If I were a student, I'd like studying in the art library, away from the noise of dorms.

On the third level was a display of metal box sculpture. I liked the the burned-out oven. There were three other pieces, one of which I almost tripped over when I was looking at something else. There were more big windows, lots of faculty offices, and more naked structural steel.

It was a cool building. I have loaded 18 photos from around the graduate school in a set on Flickr.

Great Tales from English History: Joan of Arc, the Princes in the Tower, Bloody Mary, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Isaac Newton, and More by Robert Lacey

In his series Great Tales from English History, Robert Lacey retells some of the most known stories about the monarchs and subjects of England. While this could be pretty dull reading in a less talented author's hands, Lacey entertains with humorous details, thoughtful observations, and swift portrayals of the key historical figures. In doing so, he often dispels myths and humanizes the exalted figures about whom he writes.

I read the second book Great Tales from English History: Joan of Arc, the Princes in the Tower, Bloody Mary, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Isaac Newton, and More. In this volume, Lacey covers events and people between 1387 and 1687 in chapters that range from three to seven pages. You could read several a day and enjoy the book for a couple of weeks and then get one of the other volumes.

I most enjoyed reading about people whose names I knew but about whom I knew little.

• Famous for his role in the folk tale Puss in Boots, Dick Whittington really did rise to become mayor of London and a counsellor for King Henry IV, but there is no evidence that he ever owned a cat.
• Lady Jane Grey was a pawn in a political struggle and never deserved to lose her head at the block.
• William Tyndale, who translated the Bible into English and who lost his head for criticizing King Henry VIII's divorce, is the source of many famous phrases, including "salt of the earth," "the powers that be," and "eat, drink and be merry."
• Samuel Pepys traveled to Holland to get an exclusive interview with Charles II before he was restored to the crown.
• William Caxton, the first Englishman to own a printing press, is responsible for many of the inconsistent spellings in the English language.

Of course, Lacey tells stories about all the kings and queens of the three centuries. Richard II died because he went on a hunger strike in prison; he was not assassinated. Charles II really did hide in a tree to escape Puritan soldiers. Mary was hailed as a fair and just queen when she succeeded her brother Edward, but she spent her political capital rather quickly and everyone was happy to see her die.

The Great Tales from History series is fun to read and makes a nice introduction to English history. All public libraries should get Lacey's series.

Lacey, Robert. Great Tales from English History: Joan of Arc, the Princes in the Tower, Bloody Mary, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Isaac Newton, and More. Little, Brown & Company, 2004. ISBN 031610924X.

Other volumes:

Great tales from English history : the truth about King Arthur, Lady Godiva, Richard the Lionheart and more. ISBN: 031610910X

Great tales from English history : Captain Cook, Samuel Johnson, Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin, Edward the Abdicator, and more. ISBN: 0316114596