Bookforum, Dec/Jan 2009, Volume 15, Issue 4

When I was in Iowa City a couple of weekends ago to pick up my daughter Laura for Thanksgiving break, we visited Prairie Lights Bookstore. After looking at books and drinking hot chocolate, as we started to leave, I noticed a tall stack of the December/January 2009 issues of Bookforum. I think I might have heard of the publication before, but I am not sure - there are so many "Book Something" publications. Whatever, it looked interesting, so I bought a copy.

Nine days late, I can report that I have enjoyed Bookforum and its reviews, featuring a lot of books for readers who like something a bit more challenging and deeper than bestsellers. Of particular interest to me was a full page (large page) article reviewing Hitler's Private Library by Timothy W. Rybeck. The review writer Trevor Butterworth quotes Rybeck's depiction of of Hitler as an insecure man who defended his positions with books and used his vast knowledge of books to intimidate. Rybeck asserts, however, that while Hitler remembered much of what he read, he was unable to think critically and distinguish truth from lies. Hitler was an admirer of American automaker Henry Ford and required all his staff to read Ford's books.

Allen Barra wrote a two-page review of The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul by Patrick French. "Authorized" is the interesting word here, as French was given free access to all of Naipaul's papers and is very critical of the novelist. According to the agreement, Naipaul could have required changes to the text but did not. The reviewer tries to make sense of a man full of jealousies and contradictions who would so easily agree to such a portrayal.

In "Grave Doubts: Reckoning with Mass Mortality after the Civil War," T. J. Jackson Lears discusses two books about the extreme amount of violence and death during the American Civil War. He asserts that most accounts of the war gloss over the horror, hiding it behind stories of gallantry and honorable purpose. He thinks the rhetoric of the glory of war that arose as a coping defense has made us too willing to fight in subsequent wars.

In the short reviews, the book that look most interesting to me is Fifty Miles from Tomorrow: A Memoir of Alaska and the Real People by William L. Iggiagruk Hensley. Hensley tells about growing up in the far north and his career as an advocate for his native people.

Throughout the book review are ads for art books, which seems odd until you discover that the review is a sister publication of Artforum.

Bookforum will appeal to readers who enjoy The New York Review of Books. Larger public libraries and those with literary readers should consider adding a subscription.

Best American Science Writing 2008

In her book Canon: The Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, Natalie Angier tells how many people say they do not like science but are actually fascinated by many things scientific. When the elements of classrooms instruction and dry factual texts are removed, people enjoy learning about their world, their bodies, technology, and the unknown. Just do not call it "science" and people will respond. In this light, it seems it would have been better to call Best American Science Writing 2008 something like Best American Investigative Reporting Concerning Things Natural and Technological. No one really needs to know that in this book there are science stories. Their topics should interest many people, who want to know about the diseases that catch, the drugs they take, the water they drink, and the decisions that we as a society have to make. Best American Science Writing 2008 is really about ethics, politics, and the quality of life.

"Facing Life with a Lethal Gene" by Amy Harmon, the initial story, sets the tone for the entire collection. Harmon tells about a young woman who wants to know whether she carries the gene for Huntington's disease, an almost certain indication that she will develop the debilitating condition. Knowing that she has the gene makes her face many choices, including whether to marry, have children, and tell her family. Telling her family is particularly difficult because her news will inform her mother that the latter also has the disease, something the mother has said repeatedly that she does not want to know. Handling the news proves much harder than the young woman ever imagined.

Several articles discuss the treatment of childhood mental diseases with drugs. "Psychiatrists, Children, and Drug Industry's Role" from a trio of New York Times writers describes how many children were mistakenly diagnosed with bipolar disease and treated with drugs that many of the doctors were being paid to talk about at conferences. Two articles follow that go into more depth about the payoffs some doctors get when they cooperate with pharmaceutical firms.

Editor Sylvia Nasar says in her introduction that each volume of the series seems to feature a theme, and genetics and medical practice is the 2008 focus. Only toward the end of the book does the subject turn from the selling of kidneys, the use of narcotics for pain, and the genetics of cancer to environmental topics. In "Beneath Booming Cities, China's Future is Drying Up," Jim Hartley tells how China has a severe shortage of clean water that is never considered when forecasters discuss the country's economic future. John Seabrook's "Sowing for Apocalypse," an article about the importance of seed banks in a world that in which agricultural corporations are creating monocultures and many crop species are being lost, completes the book.

None of this is dry science. None of it requires the understanding much physics, chemistry, or math. Politics, human emotions, and greed are central in many of these stories. This book and its series should be in many public libraries.

Best American Science Stories 2008. Harper Perennial, 2008. ISBN 9780061340413

Caramel with the Thanksgiving Day Flowers

Caramel with the Thanksgiving Day Flowers
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

While we wait for company for our Thanksgiving Day meal, Caramel checks out the flowers that Bonnie bought. I am making a new potato recipe, while Bonnie has made an apple crisp that we have not tried before. The turkey is on the grill in a buttered paper bag. It should be good.

Warm Thanksgiving Day wishes to everyone. Enjoy a day with family and friends, and if you get a chance later, stretch out with a book.

The Planets by Dava Sobel

When we were in Washington, D.C. for the American Library Association Conference in 2007, we spent a good bit of our spare time along the Mall around the national museums. One of the displays that captured my attention was a set of signs along the street demonstrating the distances between the sun and its planets.While Mercury, Venus and Earth were within a few blocks of the initial sign, the other planets were farther and farther away. I do not think we actually made it out to Pluto, which was still being displayed by the Smithsonian as a planet, despite its recent expulsion from the club by the International Astronomical Union.

The Planets by Dava Sobel was written for someone just like me, a bit of a knowledge hound, always eager to learn new facts. Her discussion of the history of Pluto makes the downgrading seem quite reasonable. I had not remembered that Pluto was only discovered in 1930 and that with almost every refined study, its estimated size had gotten smaller. When I was a baby in the mid-1950s, Pluto was thought to be roughly the size of earth. Now that I am an adult, it is estimated that Pluto is less than 1 percent of the mass of earth. Things always seem smaller when you get older! It is now called a Trans-Neptunian Object.

Sobel tells us about all of the planets, starting with Mercury which is closest to the sun and often hidden in our daytime sky by the brightness of sunlight. Galileo tracked it as a spot across the surface of the sun to calculate its orbit. With a small orbit but slowly spinning on its axis, it has short years and exceeding long days.

I listened to Lorna Raver's unabridged reading of The Planets mostly while I was driving or cooking. I lost interest every now and then, but then something would pull me back. I think the history bits went much better than the mythology bits. I also enjoyed when Sobel brought in a little of her own story. Nerdy people like me will enjoy this audiobook.

Sobel, Dava. The Planets. Viking, 2005. ISBN 0670034460. Audiobook, 5 discs, 0739322869

That Book Woman by Heather Henson with Pictures by David Small

Last week in the Chicago Tribune book section, which has gotten smaller with the redesign, I noticed a children's book that I had not seen called That Book Woman. Always enjoying a good librarian story, I borrowed a copy of the nicely illustrated book have read it a couple of times.

Through the voice of a boy who helps his father on their dirt poor, rocky, and steep Appalachian farm, Heather Henson tells about the surprise of getting books delivered by a librarian on a horse. Aimed at five to eight year olds, this picture book depicts the true story of the Pack Horse Librarians who delivered books to remote corners of Kentucky during the Great Depression. A note at the end of the book tells that these dedicated librarians were men and women who would ride through nearly any weather to get books into the hands of readers. You have to like a story like that!

More libraries should get this sweet book.

Henson, Heather. That Book Woman. Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2008. ISBN 9781416908128

What Obama is Reading

Please excuse this bragging. EarlyWord has a note telling that the New York Times reports that President-elect Barack Obama is reading two books about Franklin Roosevelt, The Defining Moment by Jonathan Alter and FDR by Jean Edward Smith. I am happy to report that both of the books are included in my guide to biography readers' advisory, Real Lives Revealed, which should be out sometime in 2009.

It would be great for libraries if the next president continues to reveal his reading. We could make displays and print reading lists. Perhaps Oprah could get him to appear occasionally on her book programs.

It will be great to have a reader in the White House.

Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg

When I read The Complete Poems of Robert Frost, I read about ten pages a day over the course of two months. In a similar manner, I spent two months reading Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. It worked well. In both cases I enjoyed taking the books slowly, having time to digest what the poets said. Sometimes, I had to do a little research to discover the events to which they referred. In the end, I felt I learned much about their lives and times. I should be treating The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg the same, but I am not. With less than two weeks before a book discussion, I began the book and quickly found it overwhelming. With two days left, I am far from finishing the book and have turned to sampling. It is not nearly so satisfying as the slow treatment that I used before. Still, I have learned much.

Sandburg's poetry from the end of his life seems far different from his Chicago Poems that were published in 1916. The early works seem quickly written while the later works seem more refined. His concern for the lower classes and the worker is consistent, but the early work is more drama, while the later is philosophy. The world changed greatly from 1916 to 1967. Still, according to the essays I have read, it is the early work that is most often anthologized.

While reading Sandburg can be a bit of an historical exercise, especially when much of our factory work has been sent overseas, it still has moments of contemporary relevance. With the current economic crisis growing, "Buyers and Sellers" from his book Honey and Salt (1963) asks what white or blue collar workers could ask.

What is a man worth?
What can he do?
What is his value?
On the one hand those who buy labor,
On the other hand those who have nothing to sell but their labor.
And when the buyers of labor tell the sellers, "Nothing doing today, not a chance!" - then what?

For a new look at Sandburg, turn to YouTube. There is a slideshow about a meeting between Marilyn Monroe with Sandburg and an animation of a Sandburg still photo reading from "The People, Yes."

I'd like to start all over now and take the book slowly.

Sandburg, Carl. The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg. Harcourt, 1969. ISBN 0151009961

Henri Cartier-Bresson: A Biography by Pierre Assouline

Bonnie and I went to the Art Institute of Chicago this weekend to see a fantastic exhibit of European tapestries that the museum has been restoring for nearly two decades. While we were there, we went down to the photography galleries to see an exhibit of Henri Cartier-Bresson photographs. It was actually a little disappointing, as there were only a few photos there. One of those was of a bicyclist going past a spiral staircase, which made me think of Aaron Schmidt and his love of bicycles.

In the gift shop, we found stacks of books to go with all the exhibits, including Henri Cartier-Bresson: A Biography by Pierre Assouline, a book that is included in my forthcoming guide to biography Real Lives Revealed. Assouline recounts the Cartier-Bresson's development from a painter to a photographer who made very composed, artist images and then to a photojournalist who was dedicated to showing the world as it really was. During the middle part of the twentieth century, at a time when photography was not so easy to share as it is today, he was often a witness with a camera, showing newspaper and magazine readers what was happening in distant corners of the globe. The book has been out a few years, but is still a good acquisition if your library has readers interested in photography, art, or twentieth century events.

Assouline, Pierre. Henri Cartier-Bresson: A Biography. Thames & Hudson, 2005. 280p. ISBN 9780500512234.

Progress Report on Real Lives Revealed

I can relax a little bit now, as I have submitted all the content of Real Lives Revealed except the indexes, which I finish after I see galleys with page numbers. I created the subject index without the page numbers over the last five days. It was an interesting exercise that uncovered some inconsistencies that I corrected. For instance, I had called Jane Goodall a "primatologist" while calling Diane Fossey a "zoologist." I had used both "clergy" and "clergymen." I had used "England" where I should have used "Great Britain" and vise versa. I had applied "Civil Rights" where I really meant "Racial Discrimination." I corrected the chapters and resubmitted them. It is all much tighter now.

With the subject index in a spreadsheet done for now, my next project is merging the titles, the authors, and the "now try" titles into a massive author/title index.

In the meantime, I hope to blog a bit more, including some biography alerts.

Who Will Be the Next Generation of Biographers?

As I have continued to work on my book about biography readers' advisory, I have become increasingly aware that the community of professional biographers is quickly aging. Many of them are in their sixties, seventies, and even older. I can identify only a few authors with three or more books that can be considered biographical who are under fifty years old.

I surmised that biography was a profession for later in life, which it is for some authors. Perhaps reflecting on someone else's life is comforting as one foresees the end of one's own life only a few decades away. The evidence does not, however, bear this out.

Peter Ackroyd was 32 when he wrote his first biography.

Stephen Ambrose was 26.

A. Scott Berg was 29.

David Herbert Donald was 28.

Joseph J. Ellis was 30.

Antonia Fraser was 37.

Doris Kearnes Goodwin was 33.

J. Randy Taraborrelli was 29.

I could go on. Most had three biographies by the time they reached fifty.

I only see Douglas Brinkley, Ross King, and Ben Macintyre in the under fifty crowd with three or more books that could be considered as biographies.

So, who will write biographies in the future? There may be some openings. Know how to write?

Happy Days Are Here Again: The Book is Submitted

Today is a great day for many reasons. First, the nation is celebrating an historic election. Second, the Thomas Ford Memorial Library is open again with a new teen area and a better placement of the reference desk. Third, I have submitted my book Real Lives Revealed to Libraries Unlimited.

About the book submission. I really felt a sense of wonder when I composed the table of contents on Monday night. Even though it was still a collection of electronic files, the book suddenly seemed solid and complete.

None of the achievements is really complete. President-elect Barack Obama has many challenges ahead. My library still has a number of furniture, collection, and policy decisions to make after our remodeling. I have more work on the book.

I will be spending the next couple of weeks finishing appendices. There will certainly be some rewrites, and, at some point when I have a galley, I will have the task of completing the index. Still, it seems a great and momentous day.

Celebration

Yellow Leaves
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

Today
I drive through a shower of bright leaves
Falling
Swirling
Like a rain of confetti
A celebration

Brave Companions: Portraits in History by David McCullough

When you think about David McCullough, you think first about big, addictive biographies of American presidents. It was not always this way. Before the presidents, he wrote about big engineering feats, like the Brooklyn Bridge and the Panama Canal, and short pieces for journals, such as American Heritage, Audubon, and Smithsonian. Brave Companions: Portraits in History collects twenty years of magazine articles and essays, starting with short biographical pieces on naturalists Alexander von Humboldt and Louis Agassiz. Most of the pieces are biographical until near the end of the collection, where in essays McCullough tells about his love for Washington, D.C. and recommends that graduating seniors from Middlebury College travel the world to see historic places.

I read the collection a little at a time, enjoying a totally new subject every couple of days. My favorite pieces may have been the first two about the two naturalists about whom I really knew nothing but their names, or the piece about his day with photographer David Plowden taking pictures of small towns and cornfields, or the profile of scientist Miriam Rothschild, who studies anything and everything that interests her. The most moving piece may be "The Lonely War of a Good Angry Man" about Harry Monroe Caudill, who fought the coal companies over strip mining in Kentucky. The cast of characters that McCullough includes in this book is fascinating.

I suspect McCullough would be a great dinner guest, as he has been so many places and knows so many things. He's probably not available, so check out this book instead.

McCullough, David. Brave Companions: Portraits in History. Prentice Hall Press, 1992. ISBN 0131401041

The Whereabouts of ricklibrarian

The late hours of a Saturday night seem like a good time to briefly resurface. For the last several months, I have been focused on the writing of Real Lives Revealed for Libraries Unlimited, which will be a readers' advisory guide to biography. As a result, I have said very little here. It is not that I have not had anything to say, and I am sure that once the project is done, there will be a flood of postings, so stay tuned.

I attended a very interesting meeting of reference librarians at the Grande Prairie Public Library in Hazel Crest, Illinois a few weeks ago. Katherine Ingram of the Elmhurst Public Library and I demonstrated ENCORE, a catalog overlay for Innovative library catalogs. Actually, ENCORE might work for other vendor catalogs, too, but I do not remember. I was actually more interested in the general discussion afterwards in which reference librarians talked about putting more of their traditional reference materials into circulation, loaning their new magazines, and organizing collections without Dewey decimals. The librarians in the south suburbs of Chicago are trying hard to meet the needs of their clients.

At Thomas Ford we are rearranging to give our teens more area in a better space. To do that, we have heavily weeded our magazine and reference collections, moved some reference books to circulating, and moved the rest of the reference books into our tall shelving units instead of the low one that take prime library real estate. We are still committed to reference, and I think the books might actually get better use closer to the circulating books on shelves at eye level instead of below. We might move our desk, too. Stay tuned.

Another issue at my library is what to do about our microfilm. It is just sitting, again in valuable space. Also, our service representative has informed us that the supplies for our reader printer have been discontinued. He is urging us to buy a new unit, but I think it might just sit unused. We have enough supplies to last several years at current usage. He is right that we will have to do something sometime, but I think we can wait and see if new options appear.

I am surrounded by a lively group of librarians at Thomas Ford and it is fun going to work everyday right now, as we are changing our newsletter, our marketing, our programming, and our collections. I promise to comment more at a latter date.

In the meantime, I am learning more everyday about the fascinating genre of biography. I have written the second drafts of six of twelve chapters at this point. There are currently 605 book profiles that recommend three to seven other books in the guide. They began looking like the entries in Sarah Cords' Real Story, but she has expanded her book profiles for her upcoming guide to investigative narrative nonfiction, and I am trying to keep up. Anyone who enjoys reading should be able to find something new to read. I am eager to finish and see the book in print. So, very little blogging for awhile.

I will resurface soon.

P. S. I have a new Toyota Corolla which shows what gas mileage I am getting as I drive. I have been using it as biofeedback to control my speed and acceleration. I have improved from 29.5 mpg to 33.4 mpg. Watch out if you see me. I might be going slightly slower but I'm getting where I want to go.

Jamie's Great Display for Banned Books Week

Jamie's Great Display
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

Jamie Kallio at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library put this great Banned Books Week display up a week ago. What everyone commented on was her thinking to use the drawers to stand up books. We also noticed as the week went by that the books displayed in the drawers were being chosen more frequently than books on the rest of the display. Jamie has now changed the way we display forever.

The First World Series and the Baseball Fanatics of 1903 by Roger I. Abrams

Don't judge a book by its cover. I picked up The First World Series and the Baseball Fanatics of 1903 by Roger I. Abrams hoping to get a light, entertaining account of the fabled beginnings of the fall classic. I got much more than I expected.

It takes a bit of reading before actually getting to the profiles of the players and accounts of the eight games in Abrams book. The author's real focus is the world of the World Series, which in this case was specifically Boston and Pittsburgh and by extension all of America and any country from which an immigrant might have come. The "Fanatics" is not just tacked on to the end of the title. Abrams looks deeply into who attended the games and supported the sport. Before and between the game stories are sections about the rise of the Brahmin class in Boston and how it differed from Yankee culture, the Irish working class, the industrialization of Pittsburgh, migrations from southern and eastern Europe, the pogroms of Czarist Russia, and other assorted topics.

Highlighted in the story is the group of devoted fans led by Nuf Ced McGreevy, owner of the Third Base Saloon. McGreevy and his friends traveled from Boston to Pittsburgh to root for the Boston Americans. While in the steel city, they hired bands to march around downtown to boisterously proclaim their allegiance and to accompany the team from its hotel to the field before games. At the end of the book, in accounting for what became of the major personalities after the series, Abrams reveals that McGreevy donated his baseball memorabilia collection from his saloon to the Boston Public Library, and the saloon itself was turned into a library branch.

The First World Series and the Baseball Fanatics of 1903 will appeal more to readers who like history than average sports fans. For those willing to dip into the past, it is an interesting approach to learning about an era.

Abrams, Roger I. The First World Series and the Baseball Fanatics of 1903. Northeastern University Press, 2003. ISBN 1555535615

Born to Win: The Authorized Biography of Althea Gibson by Frances Clayton Gray and Yanick Rice Lamb

As I research and write my book on biography, I continue to find great stories that I did not know. Here is a draft of an entry for a book about tennis star Althea Gibson. Your library should get this book if it does not own it.

Gray, Frances Clayton, and Lamb, Yanick Rice.

Born to Win: The Authorized Biography of Althea Gibson. John Wiley & Sons, 2004. 244p. ISBN 0471471658.

At five feet eleven inches tall, tennis player Althea Gibson (1927-2003), a sharecropper's daughter, was a dominant presence on the tennis court. Between 1942 and 1949, she excelled in the all black American Tennis Association, but she was ineligible to play in the all white United States Lawn Tennis Association. In 1950, Gibson applied to play in the U.S. Open and would have been denied had revered champion Alice Marble not written a public letter calling for Gibson to get her chance. Authors Frances Clayton Gray and Yanick Rice Lamb report that Gibson lost her first USLTA match but came back to eventually win championships at the U.S. Open, French Open, and Wimbledon. The authors chronicle the life of an amazing athlete who also played basketball with the Harlem Globetrotters and became a professional golfer.

Subjects: African Americans; Gibson, Althea; Teen Reads; Tennis Players; Women.

Now try: Gibson won several doubles championships at Wimbledon. In one of those matches she was paired with a Jewish partner, Angela Buxton. Bruce Schoenfeld reports how the two shunned players became good friends in The Match: Althea Gibson and Angel Buxton: How Two Outsiders - One Black, the Other Jewish - Forged a Friendship and Made Sports History. Gibson’s presence in professional tennis paved the way for Arthur Ashe, who recounted his career in Days of Grace: A Memoir. After tennis, Gibson joined the ladies golf tour. David L. Hudson, Jr. recounts the history of the ladies tour and profiles some key players in his Women in Golf: The Players, the History, and the Future of the Sport.

Thoughts on Biography and Mortality and Baseball

I have been deeply involved with biographical books for months now. As I write up my assessments of these books, I include the lifespan of the subjects, usually in the (birth year-death year) form. It is a quick way of indicating the historical era of the subject and will be useful for my chronology in the appendix.

After months of looking at (1806-1861) and (1564-1616) and (1898-1937) and more, I have begun to measure my life against the subjects. It reminds me of watching baseball's home run hitters of today pass stars of the past on the all-time home run list. Manny Ramirez has passed Ted Williams and Willie McCovey and is bearing down on Jimmie Foxx and Mickey Mantle. It is the same with me and the cultural figures in the chapter that I am now writing.

Here is where I stand against a selection of cultural figures from the past:

• Eudora Welty - 92
• Michelangelo Buonarrati - 89
• Dr. Seuss - 87
• Washington Irving - 76
• William Faulkner - 65
• George Eliot - 61
• Anne Bradstreet - 60
• Nathaniel Hawthorne - 60
• Charles Dickens - 58
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning - 55
• Woody Guthrie - 55
• Rudolf Nureyev - 55
• Paul Gaughan - 54
  
• ricklibrarian - 54
• Mary Shelley - 53
• Frank Zappa - 53
  
• William Shakespeare - 52
• Frida Kahlo - 47
  
• Oscar Wilde - 46
  
• George Bellows - 43
• Johannes Vermeer - 43
• Margaret Wise Brown - 42
• Franz Kafka - 40
• Frederic Chopin - 39
  
• George Gerswhin - 39
• Felix Mendelssohn - 38
• Vincent Van Gogh - 37
  
• Percy B. Shelley - 29

I am quickly bearing down on Guthrie, Nureyev, and Browning. The Arts and Humanities Research Council should be alerted to send their reporters to cover the chase.

I noticed in the sports chapter that I just finished that I have already passed Babe Ruth and am in range of catching Vince Lombardi.

Seriously, sitting at 54, I view anyone who died before 80 as dying young. I think my own wishes are effecting my thinking.

Rosa Lee: A Mother and Her Family in Urban America by Leon Dash

As I write my book on readers' advisory, I try to include books that many libraries own and that are fairly current. In a way, I am working toward the conservation of some titles, hoping they won't get weeded too soon. Here is a draft review of a book that I want to keep in circulation.

Dash, Leon.
Rosa Lee: A Mother and Her Family in Urban America. Basic Books, 1996. 279p. ISBN 0465070922.

Rosa Lee Cunningham (1936-1995) had spent about fifty years in the housing projects of Washington, D.C., when journalist Leon Dash asked to shadow her. For four years, he watched her manage her home and followed her on errands: bailing children out of jail, attending funerals, and visiting drug treatment centers. At the end of this book, Cunningham dies of AIDS. Using his observations, Dash wrote about Cunningham and the lives of the desperately poor in a series of prize-winning articles for the Washington Post, which he expanded into this candid biography.

Subjects: African Americans; Civil Rights; Cunningham, Rosa Lee; Drug Addicts; Poor; Teen Reads; Washington, D.C.

Now try: In A Welfare Mother, Susan Sheehan writes about Carmen Santana, a Puerto Rican mother who income did not meet her expenses. This eye-opening book, which was expanded from an article in The New Yorker, refutes prevailing ideas about women "on the dole" wanting to be there. Alex Kotlowitz follows the life of two boys to show the difficulty of escaping the slums of Chicago in There Are No Children Here. Beverly Lowry tells how one woman escaped poverty in Her Dream of Dreams: The Rise and Triumph of Madam C. J. Walker (see this chapter).

Historical Biography on Audiobooks and in Large Print

I am putting the finishing touches on a first draft of a chapter on historical biography for my book on biography readers' advisory. One of the thing that I have been doing is checking the availability of audiobooks and large print for titles that I review. With the growing demand from an aging population and from people inclined to audio, it is helpful knowing what is available.

How you view the current situation depends on whether you view glasses as half empty or half full. Of the 71 historical biography titles in the chapter, 18 are available as unabridged audiobooks, either cassette tapes or compact discs. You may say, "See how the audiobook industry has grown! 25 percent of these popular books are in audio." If you have recently had clients expecting everything in audio, you may be disappointed.

Large print is definitely lagging. Only 9 of the 71 titles are available in large type. This might be understandable, as many of the historical biographies are lengthy. These books produced in large print might be mighty hefty. Elderly readers might not be able to hold them.

Six of the most well-known books are available in both audio and large print.

The report can be tempered with some good news for the certifiably visually handicapped. Worldcat shows another six or seven of these titles available as recording for the blind and dyslexic. I do not note these in my chapter because they are not available commercially of to the general public.

I hope the state of audiobook availability is better in fiction. Who knows?