The Ghosts of Biography Past, 1909

I have been thinking recently of launching a web-based newsletter to report on the world of biographical books and media, including advance notice of promising titles. I thought I might call it Biography Beat. I could make a PDF that people would either read online or download and print. My inspiration is Cites & Insights by Walt Crawford. Walt has a following who enjoy knowing when an issue of his newsletter is coming out. I had my eye on doing this January 1, 2009. Well, that is today, and it has not happened. I have been involved in several other projects instead, but I have been gathering biography content. Perhaps it is more timely if I just go ahead and blog what I have found.

A week or so ago, as I nestled under the covers as I woke one cold morning, I thought about the world of biography in 1909. I wondered what were the trends of that year. I imagined that there was not as great a variety of biographies as there are today. My thoughts on this had begun a few days earlier when I examined Brothers in Arms: The Kennedys, the Castros, and the Politics of Murder by Gus Russo and Stephen Molton, which is a investigative four-person biography. I cannot imagine such a book being written in 1909. I assume that one hundred years ago, preceding the 1918 publishing of Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey, most biographies were straight, laudatory accounts of prominent people. But, I did not really know for sure. How would I learn about 1909?

As I showered, I remembered that my library card for the College of DuPage Library gives me access to the Historical New York Times database. I surmised that the book review section, if it existed in 1909, might identify the popular biographies of the day. The trick would be to identify the best keywords to search. "Biography" might not be adequate as the word might be pretty widely used.

Luckily, I found that there was The New York Times Saturday Review of Books in 1909. If fact, it celebrated its thirteenth year in October of that year. Like today, it published reviews of new titles, many of which seemed to come from the abundance of New York publishing companies. There also seemed to be a regular column about Boston publishing news and many letters from readers. Revising my search, I found each week's table of contents. While there did not seem to be a chart of bestseller (maybe I missed it somehow), there was something even better for my purposes - a weekly list "Latest Publications," which identified the books that The New York Times had received from publishers each week. I knew I had hit pay dirt when I looked. The list was organized by topics, including "History and Biography."

What did I find?

1. 1909 was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. Publishers in that year were marketing the anniversary just as much as they are in 2009. In the first two months of the year, these books were received by the editors of the book review:

• Lincoln the Citizen by Henry W. Whitney
• Abraham Lincoln: Tributes from Hist Associates
• Abraham Lincoln: An Interpretation in Biography by Denton J. Snider
• Lincoln and the Sleeping Sentinel: A True Story by L. E. Chittendon
• Abraham Lincoln by Brand Whitlock
• The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and Its Explanation by David Miller DeWitt
• The Death of Lincoln by Clara E. Laughlin
• Lincoln's Love Story by Eleanor Atkinson
• How Abraham Lincoln Became President by J. McCan Davis
• Ancestory of Lincoln by J. Henry Lea and J. R. Hutchinson

2. There were biographies of people who would not be widely known 100 years later, many of them clergy. Most of the titles sound laudatory.

• The Life of James Robertson: Missionary Superintendent in the Northwest Territory by Charles W. Gordon
• Charles W. Eliot: President of Harvard University by Dr. Eugen Kuehnemann
• The Honorable Peter White: A Biographical Sketch of the Lake Superior Iron Country by Ralph D. Williams
• A Memorial of Alice Jackson by Robert E. Speer
• Recollections of Baron de Frenilly, Peer of France
• David Swing: Poet-Preacher by Joseph Fort Newton
• Comrade Kropotkin by Victor Robinson (Lives of Great Altrurians)
• Bartholomew de las Casas: His Life, His Apostolate, and His Writings by Francis Augustus MacNutt
• The Apostle of Alaska: The Story of William Duncan of Metlakahtia by John W. Arctander

3. Figures from European history and culture appeared as subjects of biographies in 1909, when wealthy American still took extended European tours.

• Maid of France: Being the Story of the Life and Death of Jeanne D'Arc by Andrew Lang
• Grieg and His Music by Henry T. Finck
• Sir Walter Raleigh by Frederick A. Ober
• Johannes Brahms: The Herzogenberg Correspondence
• The Love Affairs of Napoleon by J. Lewis May
• William Blake by Basil de Selincourt
• The Court of Louis XIII by K. A. Patmore

4. I did not see dual biographies to compare with Brothers in Arms.


Of course, this is not really an in-depth study of biography in 1909, but I do think it gives us a peek at that time. It occurs to me now that my library still has a 1909 edition of Book Review Digest. I wonder what I might find there?

To be Dickens-like, I will soon report on ghosts of biography present (2008 titles) and ghosts of biography future (2009 titles). Stay tuned.

A Supremely Bad Idea: Three Mad Birders and Their Quest to See It All by Luke Dempsey

When I first picked up A Supremely Bad Idea: Three Mad Birders and Their Quest to See It All by Luke Dempsey, I wondered whether it would be like The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession by Mark Obmascik. The latter book also has three birders traveling across the United States trying to see every bird that resides in or migrates through the country. But there is a big difference. In the new book, the birders are friends, not rivals. They even have a pact to not count a bird unless all three identify it, either by sight or sound. They join together for long weekends and vacations, hauling binoculars, scopes, and cameras, and listening to bird songs on an iPod.

Why these people are friends is the question I struggled with. Dempsey tells us how he met Don and Donna Graffiti, a couple who coax him to go out birding. Once they start traveling together, however, all their eccentricities are revealed and tempers flare, but just when the group looks like it might break up, someone spots a ringed kingfisher or an eastern meadowlark. Luke tolerates the horrible motels that Don books, and Donna and Don forgive his penchant for sudden tactless statements to the people they meet. Their common love for the birds holds them together.

I tired of the soap opera aspects of the book but read on for the descriptions of birds and details of how the trio spotted them. Going out into remote areas, such as lonely stretches of the Rio Grande in Texas, brought the friends into contact with some dangerous characters. They'll never know why the smuggler (drugs or people?) backed off after demanding their cameras.

Overall, A Supremely Bad Idea is an entertaining read that makes me long for some warmer weather and time in the wild.

Dempsey, Luke. A Supremely Bad Idea: Three Mad Birders and Their Quest to See It All. Bloomsbury, 2008. ISBN 9781596913554

The Man Who Loved China by Simon Winchester

Englishman Joseph Needham was a Cambridge-trained biochemist with supreme confidence that he could accomplish anything he set his mind to do. He was also a nonconformist, naively enchanted by communist rhetoric, who both loved his English wife and Chinese mistress passionately. During the darkest days of World War II, he jumped at the chance to serve as a diplomatic envoy to China, where he spent years visiting many remote regions, taking needed books and supplies to university scientists around the Asian country. After learning a few facts about China's forgotten early dominance in science, he resolved to write a definitive history about Chinese scientific and technical achievement. According to popular British author Simon Winchester in The Man Who Loved China, Needham spent the rest of his long life writing the many volumes of Science and Civilization in China.

Winchester credits Needham with changing the way that European people thought about China, which before the 1940s was viewed by many as just poor and backward. What Needham never resolved, however, is how China fell from being the most advanced nation on earth, with claims to many scientific firsts, to being poor and complacent. The mystery is still called the Needham Question in academic circles.

Needham was shunned by many in academics and diplomatic circles for his championing China even after the rise of the communist government Mao Zedong. He once met Mao, who asked him whether the Chinese should replace their bicycles with automobiles. Needham recommended sticking to the bikes. For years, he was denied visas to the United States as a undesirable, despite the acclaim in universities for his monumental history of China. Winchester recounts Needham's single-minded devotion that was eyed suspiciously by both western governments and Chinese authorities.

I enjoyed listening to The Man Who Loved China on an unabridged audiobook, read ably by Winchester himself. It is a great choice for readers of adventure and science biography.

Winchester, Simon. The Man Who Loved China. Recorded Books, 2008. ISBN 9781436107129

Laura's Sculpy Nativity

Laura's Sculpy Nativity
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

Merry Christmas!

Every year we get out all the family decorations, which includes some that we made ourselves. Laura made this little nativity set when she was in her Sculpy Period, back in elementary school. I always thought it was brilliant, as any dad would. It is colorful and nails the characters simply. I wish I were as clever.

I hope you, too, add to your warm memories this holiday season as you gather with family and/or friends.

Peace for everyone.

Rick

ricklibrarian Books That Matter 2008 and Other Awards

It is that time again - the end of the year. All the major reviewing publications are issuing their best books lists, and bloggers are keeping pace with their more personalized lists. Here is what I really liked in 2008. Happy Holiday Reading!


Recent Nonfiction

At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays by Anne Fadiman

Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field by Anne Whiston Spirn

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment by Anthony Lewis

Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln by John Stauffer

The Legend of Colton H. Bryant by Alexandra Fuller

The Man Whom Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus by Jashua Kendall

Mr. Adams's Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams's Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress by Joseph Wheelan

True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society by Farhad Manjoo

Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood at FDR's Polio Haven by Susan Richard Shreve

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman



Recent Fiction

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut

For the Relief of Unbearable Urges by Nathan Englander

A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson

The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories by Max Apple

My Fellow Americans by Keir Graff

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri



Great Old Books

The Abbess of Crewe: A Modern Morality Tale by Muriel Spark (from 1974)

Jordan County by Shelby Foote (from 1954)



Children's Books

Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai by Claire A. Nivola



Audiobook

Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat, read by Robin Miles

The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street by Charles Nicholl

The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family by Martha Raddatz



Book Review Blog

Blogging for a Good Book


Library Science

Serving Teen Through Readers' Advisory by Heather Booth



Movies

Chop Shop, directed by Ramin Bahrani

Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, directed by Yimou Zhang



Music

Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss



Performance

Jeeves Intervenes: A Play from First Folio



Presentations at Conferences

Andrew Carnegie with a Yak

A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson

When asked what I like best in novels, I say that I like getting to visit another place and time. A bit of gentle humor and sympathetic characters also help. Throw in some plot twists and I am very happy indeed. This all describes A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson.

Drayson's title will probably cause some confussion for years to come. I can imagine readers looking for bird guides getting it from the shelf and saying, "What's this? Where are the color photos?" Each chapter does start with a characture of a bird above the chapter number, but these pen and ink drawings are not really organized for bird spotting.

A Guide to the Birds of East Africa is, despite the title, a novel set in and around present day Nairobi, Kenya. In its first chapter, the characters meet on a bird walk near the car park outside the Nairobi Museum. Rose Mbikwa is a Scottish expatriate who leads the weekly bird walks. Mr. Malik, owner of Jolly Man Manufacturing, is a third generation Indian, whose grandfather immigrated to help build the Kenyan railroad. Mr. Malik is a quiet admirer of Rose and has bought tickets to the annual Hunt Club Ball, but he hasn't the courage to ask her to accompany him to the ball. While he stalls, a playboy from the Indian community, back after years abroad, decides that he will invite Rose. Over drinks at the Asadi Club, their mutual intentions are discovered and friends recommend a birding contest to win the right to ask Rose to the dance.

The week long bird contest with its surprising difficulties takes much of the book. In the process, Drayson reveals many of the joys and sorrows of the struggling African nation and depicts its multi-ethnic community. He also includes many quick bits about the amazingly rich bird life of East Africa. Readers with Zimmerman's Birds of Kenya and Northern Tanzania can look up each colorful bird as its spotted.

Readers looking for a good book while waiting for the next Alexander McCall Smith title will enjoy A Guide to the Birds of East Africa.

Drayson, Nicholas. A Guide to the Birds of East Africa. Houghton Mifflin, 2008. ISBN 9780547152585

Walking the Wrack Line: On Tidal Shifts and What Remains by Barbara Hurd

I enjoyed Barbara Hurd's collection of essays Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs, and Imagination so well that I read it twice. Her new collection Walking the Wrack Line: On Tidal Shifts and What Remains is just as good. Hurd takes readers with her to beaches around the world, not for idle recreation, but to see what washes up from the sea. The "wrack line" is the high water mark, the top of the tide, where driftwood, shells, jellyfish, kelp, and garbage are deposited. Hurd always finds something interesting there. What's more, she then always learns something interesting about herself.

Hurd is very quotable. I noted several passages to reread. In "Lime Sea Glass: Transformations," she tells about debris near a long time garbage dump in California. For many decades in the middle of the 20th century, people threw old furniture, refrigerators, and lots of glass and pottery off a cliff into the Pacific Ocean. The constant battering of the waves reduced the broken glass and pottery to pebbles of many colors that are still washing up on a nearby beach. Jewelry makers frequent the multicolor beach. To this, Hurd states the following:

We know now that what's discarded doesn't disappear and that what's in friction with the world - and what, including us, is not? - can be both shattered and smoothed.

In "Bottle and Feather: A Different Question," she finds a feather and contemplates the myth of Icarus flying too near the sun while thinking of her mother recovering from a heart attack. Because her mother can not visit the beach that she can see from her hospital bed in Florida, Hurd agrees to report what she finds. Like in a novel, she finds a bottle with a note inside. The paraffin that seals the bottle is unmovable, so the pair have to decide whether to break the beautiful emerald green bottle to read the note.

One more quote:

Never begin what you can't finish, my father once insisted. I was ten: we were standing over an outdoor rabbit pen I was trying to fashion out of chicken wire. Stumped by my inability to make the cage escape-proof, I nodded my head. But if he were alive now I'd want to ask him how can I ever tell what's finishable, what's not? How can I always know at the outsetthat this is something I can bring to completion or will have to give up on, discard in midform? Even as an adult, I'm drawn to so many things that I might never complete - writing a novel, playing a Bach partita, planting a garden of constant white blooms. And though I tend to keep my false starts and failed attempts private, I'm aware that to never begin such things would likely cause more angst than to leave them half undone.

Walking the Wrack Line is a difficult book to classify but easy to enjoy. I recommend it highly.

Hurd, Barbara. Walking the Wrack Line: On Tidal Shifts and What Remains. University of Georgia Press, 2008. ISBN 9780820331023

Troubles for Reference Librarians

I see that the Winter issue of Reference & Users Services Quarterly from RUSA arrived in my mail yesterday. Just this week I finished reading the Fall issue, which I thought had an unusually high number of articles with findings and ideas that I want to contemplate. Perhaps the most serious observation of them all, the one needing the attention of reference librarians everywhere, is found on page 72, on the fifth page of the article "Subject Searching Success: Transaction Logs, Patron Perceptions, and Implications for Library Instruction" by Karen Antell and Jie Huang*. Here is the part of the quote with the disturbing news:

For the twenty-nine unsuccessful topic searches, students were asked what they would do next if they were actually looking for this information. In twelve cases, students said they would simply stop looking or give up, assuming that no information on the topic was available. Other responses included "go to Google," "go to a database," "browse books on the shelf," "go to the law library," and "get advise from my professor." In three cases, the student was unsure what he or she would do next (see figure 5). Notably, not one student mentioned asking a library staff member for assistance.

I see two red flags here. The first is the idea that if a search does not find what is sought that there is nothing to find. At the risk of sounding old fashioned and crotchety, let me say that this sounds like the result of having had too much easy success in the past and settling for just enough. I think we as librarians should work to make our tools as easy to use as possible, with the goal of connecting clients and information/content that they seek, but we should convey that the tools are not perfect. I think some of our marketing that says "Hey, use this , it's easy!" backfires on us. Students and other clients believe us and then assume that if the easy search does not find anything, there is nothing to be found. How we can have positive and encouraging promotions that are still realistic is tricky. We need to think about this.

The second red flag is that none of the students thought of consulting a librarian. Here we may need to make it easy for them. Every catalog station in the library should have a "Librarians Can Help" notice prominently attached. Every search page and results page in the catalog should also offer librarian assistance. I do not know how we do this latter suggestion in a consortium shared catalog, but it seems needed to me if in a test no catalog user remembers that reference librarians could help.

We can not just sit tight after reading this paragraph. If clients can not remember that we are there, we must reintroduce ourselves. Be visible.

*I could not find this article on the RUSA website this morning. Perhaps the Fall 2008 issue needs reloading into the archive. Previous issues are available on the site.

The Georgian Star: How William and Caroline Herschel Revolutionized Our Understanding of the Cosmos by Michael D. Lemonick

If you know the names of astronomers William and Caroline Herschel, there is a good chance that you have a telescope which you bring out on clear nights to scan the stars. The brother and sister who were born in Hanover in eighteenth century Germany, the region from which the British monarchs of their time came, have been forgotten by recent general science textbooks. With The Georgian Star: How William and Caroline Herschel Revolutionized Our Understanding of the Cosmos, author Michael D. Lemonick aims to restore their fame.

The Herschels were quite famous in their time. William was a talented musician who migrated to Bath, England to play in orchestras that entertained the rich tourists who came to "take the healing waters." After several prosperous years and making prominent friends, he got the chance to look in a telescope and was hooked on the hobby of scanning the heavens for comets. Fairly soon he thought that he had found an unnamed comet, but it turned out that he instead discovered the planet Uranus, which he named Georgium Sidas in honor of George III, who then granted him a pension. He gave up music and moved to Windsor to be at hand when the king needed an astronomer to entertain his evening guests.

Caroline often helped her brother with his night scans as his scribe, recording his findings. She spelled him at the telescope as he tired and when he had other commitments. In the process, she became better than he at finding comets. In time, she too got a pension from the king and honors from the Royal Society and other science societies.

William and his brother Alexander built most of their telescopes, some of which they sold to rich patrons. They were almost killed in the collapse of one of their larger constructions. William and Caroline remapped the night sky, finding thousands of stars not yet plotted, as well as identifying the moons of Saturn. William coined the term "asteroid" and challenged the then prevailing belief that stars were spread uniformly across the universe.

William firmly believed that there were people on all the planets. He argued that God had no reason to make an uninhabited planet. He also believed that someday astronomers would find planets around all the stars. Only in the last two decades have they proven him right on the last count.

The Georgian Star is an entertaining quick read that may lead readers to other books in the Great Discoveries Series. More public libraries should have these books.

Lemonick, Michael D. The Georgian Star: How William and Caroline Herschel Revolutionized Our Understanding of the Cosmos. W. W. Norton, 2009. ISBN 9780393065749

How Not to Die: Surprising Lessons on Living Longer, Safer, and Healthier from America's Favorite Medical Examiner by Jan Garavaglia

I have not seen Dr. G: Medical Examiner because we do not get Discovery Health in our cable television package, but it sounds like an interesting program. Autopsies are always attention getting in drama series. Reenactments by a real medical examiner must be riveting. Jan Garavaglia describes some of what she does on the show in How Not to Die: Surprising Lessons on Living Longer, Safer, and Healthier from America's Favorite Medical Examiner. Mostly, however, she tells stories with a recurring theme - the dead who landed in her morgue often did not have to die prematurely. Sensible living and a little care could have saved many of them. Of course, many people will never live sensibly - especially men. She has an entire chapter devoted to how men die younger due to a combination of genes, hormones, and stupidity.

Every chapter starts with a mysterious death that Garavaglia needs to solve so the police will know if there is a crime and/or the family (if there is one) can understand why their loved one died. After the story, the medical examiner puts the story into a cultural context and tells why the death was preventable.

The message strikes home with me. As I grew up in a small West Texas town, there were frequent deaths from road and oil field accidents. I graduated small high school in a class of 56. Of those 56, five men had died by their mid-40s: one auto accident with speed and alcohol involved, two deaths from AIDS, one from a rare leukemia, and one from an epileptic seizure. Garavaglia would score at least three of those as preventable.

Garavagia's book is somewhat like the driver's ed films that show bloody automobile crashes, but it is more entertaining. It does have some shock value, as she describes handling the decaying tissues of people who lived miserable lives. Perhaps that is what is needed. I think maybe I'll get that medical exam I've been putting off.

Garavaglia, Jan. How Not to Die: Surprising Lessons on Living Longer, Safer, and Healthier from America's Favorite Medical Examiner. Crown Publishers, 2008.

Week in Review

Elephant Eyes
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

Several significant things happened this week.

1. I learned that my book is now officially in production. I will still have to proof from the galleys and complete the index. The release date is not yet set.

2. My friend Aaron Schmidt has a new job. He tells about the new position on his blog Walking Paper.

3. Thomas Ford had an in service day on Friday, at which we visited the La Grange Public Library's new building which is so much nicer than its old building. The elephant is a detail from its children's story hour room. I was impressed by the room for the teens and the attractive way back issues of magazines are displayed.

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

If you let it, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die can leave you very depressed. There are so many books that look good, and it reminds you that the clock is ticking. You only have so long left to read until you'll no longer be able to lift a book and turn a page. While the dust jacket suggests the pleasure of reading on vacation, the illustration across from the title page is of a skeleton. Tick, tick, tick.

Could I have a casket with a perpetual audiobook player?

Flipping through the pages, looking at the author photos and illustrations of original dust jackets, I see lots of books that I have read already. Crime and Punishment, The Great Gatsby, Gulliver's Travels, 1984, Babbitt, Catcher in the Rye, The Hours, White Teeth, ... I have even read the two final books in the list, Saturday by Ian McEwan and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. So I have a head start. But maybe I'd like to reread some of those.

If I read 20 books per year (allowing plenty of time to read something else), I'd need to live to be 104, which would be alright with me. If I only worked at these 1001 book, maybe I could finish in 8 to 10 years. But I do not want to give up reading and writing about nonfiction. Why is there no nonfiction in this book? Hmmm, someone want to write 1001 Nonfiction Books to Read While You're Still Living?

At Thomas Ford, we have been rearranging our public spaces and creating more displays. At some point we will have an area for coffee and conversation. I'd like to see a prominent shelf of popular readers' advisory books in that area. 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die would go well there.

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. Universe, 2006. ISBN 9780789313706

Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln by John Stauffer

I complain sometimes about how many biographies there about high-interest historical and cultural figures. Upon finding starred reviews of new books about John F. Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, Elvis Presley, Princess Diana, or Marilyn Monroe, I often sigh with exasperation as I think of the crowded shelves and the dollars that I could use to get books about somebody else. Sometimes I do pass initially on buying new books about these market-dominating lives, knowing that we already have plenty of books about them, hoping the reading public will not notice, but I then get title requests and have to buy the books anyway. You would think that I would learn.

Every season seems to bring out several more books about Abraham Lincoln, and with the bicentennial of his birth in 2009, the flow of books is even higher than normal. With our budget and obligation to build a balanced collection meeting the needs of a diversity of readers, I can not buy them all. So, again, I mutter my annoyance.

The irony is that I actually enjoy reading about Abraham Lincoln. His life can be (and is) interpreted so many ways. To one author he is a hero and to another a tyrant or perhaps only a victim of circumstance. There never seems to be an end to the possible ways of looking at Lincoln. In this light, I have found Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln by John Stauffer to be worth a bit of my book budget as well as my time.

In the title, Stauffer does indicate his subject - the comparison of Douglass and Lincoln. Douglass and Lincoln were both self-made and self-educated men, born in poverty, denied schooling, large men forced to work from early ages, who somehow became eloquent speakers and leading voices of conscience at a time when America was bent on the accumulation of wealth and land. The first chapter highlights their similarities, but then the book progresses to show how the two men developed and eventually crossed paths.

Stauffer meets his obligation as an author to portray the light and dark sides of the two leaders. At points I thought Douglass was being touted as the greater man and then I thought the portrayals reversed. In the end, Stauffer seems to judge them both favorably, noting that they succeeded together in ending slavery and failed together at really improving the lives of blacks in North or South. They were helpless in swaying the racist attitudes that kept blacks poor and disenfranchised for another 100 years after the Civil War.

Stauffer is a good story teller who weaves the lives together well. Among the many Lincoln books on the market, Giants is a good selection for libraries.

Stauffer, John. Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Twelve, 2008. ISBN9780446580090

Panic in Level 4: Cannibals, Killer Viruses, and Other Journeys to the Edge of Science by Richard Preston

Science journalist Richard Preston practices "on the spot" reporting. When told that a person does not have to get into the boiling soup pot to understand the soup, he disagrees. He believes that experiencing danger replaces speculation with insight. In one of his stories in Panic in Level 4: Cannibals, Killer Viruses, and Other Journeys to the Edge of Science, he tells how he risked his life to get close to a deadly virus. He took the precautions of wearing a pressurized space-age suit and working with training medical professionals, but he did look straight into the petri dishes filled with viruses capable of killing him quickly and violently. It is riveting reading.

The cover illustration, title, and description of Panic in Level 4 will probably scare away some readers. A glance at the cover leads one to think the book is totally gruesome. This is unfortunate, as there are six of Preston's New Yorker articles collected in this book, not all dealing with disturbing topics. He describes Russian mathematicians seeking to find the exact number Pi, the work to save American trees from Asian parasites, the competition to discover all the gene sequences in human DNA, and work to restore the Unicorn tapestries at the Cloisters in New York. He then ends the book with a story about Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes young men and boys to mutilate themselves.

I listened to Panic in Level 4 read by James Lurie, who is great at voices. I could hardly stop listening and finished the 8 hours in only 3 days.

Librarians recommending Panic in Level 4 might advise readers that stories 1 and 6 include some graphic descriptions of human bodies experiencing trauma. Preston's words are as effective as photographs in medical textbooks. Some readers may abandon these stories, which is unfortunate, as the stories are fascinating. This book should be in most public libraries.

Preston, Richard. Panic in Level 4. Books on Tape, 2008. ISBN 9781415949672

American Home Front 1941-1942 by Alistair Cooke

A few weeks ago, Bonnie and I saw The Unseen Alistair Cooke on PBS Masterpiece. The program highlighted recently discovered 8mm films that Cooke made while traveling around America by car and train in the 1930s and 1040s. In both black and white and later in color, he captured the look of the country before the great transformation brought about by World War II and post-war prosperity. It was great program describing the life of the longtime journalist and television host of Masterpiece Theater. It should be on DVD but does not yet seem to be.

Wanting to know more, I checked our library catalog to see what we had. I found several books, including The American Home Front 1941-1942, which Cooke wrote during the war but never published. In the foreward to the book, Harold Evans reports that the manuscript was rediscovered in 2004, just months before Cooke died.

Unlike Alexis de Tocqueville, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde, Alistair Cooke traveled around America quietly, not intentionally drawing attention to himself. Unlike these European observers, he was not really an outsider, having by the time of his 1941-1942 trip become an American citizen. Still he had an unusual perspective, having grown up in World War I Britain. People did, of course, recognize that he was not "from around these parts." Still, he had a talent for easing people from any station in life into conversation.

Cooke has always been praised for his ability to describe scenes vividly. He also seemed to have had the good fortune to be on the spot for many historic events. He began his trip around America in Washington, D.C., arriving there on December 6, 1941, positioning himself perfectly to witness the governmental response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the next day. Cooke even got into the Capitol to report on Franklin Roosevelt's speech to Congress.

War time shortages and restrictions began right away. Getting a car for his trip was not difficult but getting tires for it were. Cooke spent days searching before finding some old tires that he then had retread. As he drove around the country, he was often alone on the road, often going long distances without meeting any other cars. When he arrived in towns and cities, he found local people who told him how the war was impacting the community. Within months after the declaration of war, there were communities without labor to plant crops or run local businesses. Likewise, there were boom towns building factories for war manufacturing where people were sleeping in tents.

According to Harold Evans in the Foreword, Cooke felt after the war that there was no longer a reason to publish the book, which was not published during the war because of shortages and restrictions. We are lucky that it was available to be rediscovered, as it thoroughly depicts a time that is almost forgotten. It makes a great addition to the viewing of Ken Burns' The War. More public libraries should add this fascinating book.

Cooke, Alistair. The American Home Front 1941-1942. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006. ISBN 9780871139399

Chop Shop, a Film by Ramin Bahrani

The turnout was small on the evening after Thanksgiving, but our discussion was lively after our library's showing of Chop Shop, an independent film by director Ramin Bahrani. Even our local critic who usually pans every film (often to get a reaction) praised the film.

Chop Shop is set in the Willet's Point corner of Queens, across the expressway from Shea Stadium*, which provides a bright, prosperous contrast to the rusty, dilapidated auto-body shops in which most of the story takes place. Along the broken, flooded street, cars idle bumper to bumper, while drivers negotiate cheap repairs. Twelve-year-old Ale is one of a number of boys waving drivers into shops.
Chop Shop is a film that has a very strong documentary feel, though it is obviously fiction. It just starts and just ends. Viewers never learn how Ale and his sisters came to be orphans living in a rough neighborhood where every kindness is really a calculated act of self-interest. The setting seems like it could not possibly be a movie set. The actors seem like they must be playing themselves.

The film seems so simple, but it drew a strong, mostly sympathetic reaction. While the audience discussed the plight of children, crime, corruption, the economy, and other topics suggested by the film, they mostly wanted to fill in the human story. Some of our viewers were convinced that Ale would soon land in prison, while others thought he would survive and thrive. We spent half an hour in contemplation of what the director intended. Everyone was thankful that they did not live in Willet's Point.

I recommend Chop Shop for library collections and film discussions.

*Of course, Shea Stadium is itself a rundown ballpark, but it seems to glow from afar.

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?

WorldCat Is the Place to Identify Audiobooks

Client requests for audio versions of books has increased in libraries over the past five or ten years. In my library, when asked for an audiobook, I always check our consortium's catalog first; if my library or another member library in our system owns the wanted audiobook, it is simple to place a reserve. If no member owns an audio version of a book, the next question has often been whether such audiobook truly exists. In the past, I have often searched Amazon, a habit I developed when I noticed links to editions on title records. Now, I have changed my ways.

As I am adding titles to the book that I am writing about readers' advisory for biography, I am trying to identify when audiobooks are available. Of course, this is getting more complicated as the formats multiply. Sticking to cassettes and compact discs because they are more likely to be available through interlibrary loan, I am finding that WorldCat is the easiest and most reliable source of audiobook information.

As I completed a chapter about Scientific Biography, I ran a test against Worldcat, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble websites to see which identified the most unabridged audiobooks. Here are some of my findings:

Reluctant Mr. Darwin by David Quammen

• WorldCat - CDs from both BBC and Audio Partners
• Amazon - CDs from Audio Partner
• Barnes & Noble - CDs from BBC

The Map That Changed the World by Simon Winchester

• WorldCat - CDs from HarperCollins and Recorded Books, cassettes from HarperCollins
• Amazon - CDs from HarperCollins
• Barnes & Noble - CDs from HarperCollins, cassettes from HarperCollins

The Day Donny Herbert Work Up by Rich Blake

• WorldCat - CDs from Books on Tape
• Amazon - nothing
• Barnes & Noble - nothing

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

• WorldCat - CDs from Tantor Media
• Amazon - CDs from Tantor Media
• Barnes & Noble - CDs from Tantor Media

Crashing Through by Robert Kurson

• WorldCat - CDs and cassettes from Books on Tape
• Amazon - only abridged CD from Random House
• Barnes & Noble - only abridged CD from Random House

Longitude by Dava Sobel

• WorldCat - CDs from Books on Tape and Random House, cassettes from Books on Tape
• Amazon - unabridged cassettes from Macmillan
• Barnes & Noble - only abridged cassettes from Macmillan

This pattern continued through my test. Amazon and Barnes & Noble rarely identify all the editions that are cited on WorldCat. WorldCat also identifies some audiobooks that are not generally available, i.e. recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic which are restricted to clients with special needs.

So, WorldCat is the spot for the audiobook identifications. Knowing that editions exist, they can then either by purchased or perhaps borrowed form holding libraries.

Books: A Memoir by Larry McMurtry

I have always enjoyed reading about other cultures and foreign countries. The appeal is to learn about or experience a different time and place. That is not what I expected to find in a book titled Books: A Memoir, Larry McMurtry's latest work of nonfiction. How different could a bookseller's life be than a librarian's life? Very different, it turns out.

The book as physical object is much more important to the antiquarian bookseller. McMurtry is always concerned with editions, conditions, and inscriptions. Is there a dust jacket? Who has owned this book? What is it worth in dollars and cents? As a librarian, I just want an attractive copy that someone will borrow, not a first edition with proper markings.

As a public librarian, I need to acquire books that will appeal to various members of the community. While not every book is going to appeal to multitudes, I do want to see each go out several times with some regularity. As a bookseller, McMurtry only has to find one person to buy each book. Of course, that is not always easy. He describes numerous books that he kept in stock for decades before either selling it to a customer or throwing it into a big sale to another bookseller.

If McMurtry is correct, antiquarian booksellers sell more to other booksellers than to customers. They seem more like collectors than business people sometimes. Many seem to have a strong love of books that warps their profit instinct. Many of the colleagues that McMurtry describes have gone out of business.

I do recognize a common concern in McMurtry's statement on page 249:

The bane of large secondhand book dealers is that junk inevitably seeps in, and the iron rule is that good books do not pull bad books up: bad books pull good books down.

Amen. Our shelves look so much better after a good weeding, and the good books become easier to find.

I thought that Books: A Memoir started kind of slowly. It seems so strange at first to have such very short chapters with lots of empty pages between chapters. When he opens a shop, the narrative really seems to take off, as he has many odd stories to tell.

Recommended for readers who like quirky, opinionated books.

McMurtry, Larry. Books: A Memoir. Simon & Schuster, 2008. ISBN 9781416583349

How to Do Biography: A Primer by Nigel Hamilton

Nigel Hamilton has put out another book about the writing of biography. Last year he published Biography: A Brief History. This year he has issued a practical guide for the writing and selling of biography to publishers called How to Do Biography: A Primer. Some topics that first time writers might not expect in this book include how to get permissions to quote from documents and how to prepare to defend a book from challenges by offended parties.

Believing that biographers do need to have a sense of the history of the genre, Hamilton covers a little of the same ground that he covered in his previous book. "Real life depiction has always been controversial," says the author. A good biography focuses not on facts and incidents but on character reputations. If the subject or family and friends are living, an honest biography is certain to offend. Shakespeare knew this and stuck to historical plays when depicting monarchs, trying not to land in jail or to lose his head.

Hamilton offers good advice about writer focus:

Asking yourself who, ultimately, will be interested in, or willing to read, the life you're recounting should be your constant concern. When biographies fail to spark interest, become tedious or unsatisfying, it is usually because the biographer had lost his commitment to engage the reader and is taking the audience for granted, by getting too self-absorbed in the life he is depicting. Never forget or neglect the reader!

We should all remember that. Hamilton's book, which includes a chapter on the responsibilities of the memoir writer, should be popular in many public and college libraries.

Hamilton, Nigel. How to Do Biography: A Primer. Harvard University Press, 2008. ISBN 9780674027961.