Portuguese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith

If I had Silly Fun Awards to grant, I'd probably give the first to Monty Python's Flying Circus and then bestow one on Gary Larson for his The Far Side comics. Then I'd give one to author Alexander McCall Smith for Portuguese Irregular Verbs series. I just listened again to Portuguese Irregular Verbs, the first book in the series in which readers follow the ridiculous life of philologist Professor Doctor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld. He is occasionally called Maria.

The learned professor is famous for his 1,200 page text titled, of course, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, of which nearly 200 copies have been sold in a decade. At one point in the story, he discovers that only two copies have sold in the previous year, and he worries so much about whether a colleague bought a copy, he schemes to get in the fellow's apartment to check his bookshelves. Book sales aside, he is famous enough in the world of philology to receive constant requests that he speak at conferences. At each, like all of the other philologists, he repeats the same lecture. He is greatly excited when a new member of the brotherhood presents a new topic.

My favorite story is about the professor falling in love with his dentist who so skillfully and quickly relieves his toothache. Can you guess what he gives her as a thank you? If you can, you may also foresee the result of his courtship. In another chapter he recalls a trip to rural Ireland as assistant to a professor studying old Irish vulgarities. The moral of this story is be careful where you leave your transcriptions. 

Portuguese Irregular Verbs is wonderful in print or audio, as read skillfully by Paul Hecht. It is followed by The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances.

McCall Smith, Alexander. Portuguese Irregular Verbs. Anchor Books, 2005. 128p. ISBN 1400077087.

4 compact discs. Recorded Books, 2004. ISBN 1402590504

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

Narrated by Edoardo Ballerini, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt is pleasurable listening. I really enjoyed hearing Ballerini's pronounciations of the many Roman and Italian names that were a part of the story of the discovery and copying of On the Nature of Things, a poem by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius. The Epicurean poet would approve, as the seeking of pleasure is a central theme to his first century B. C. poem that posed that all matter was made of tiny atoms.

One of those great Italian names was Poggio Bracciolini, a personal secretary to an overthrown pope. Poggio (Greenblatt always calls him by the first name) used the freedom he had after losing his job to visit out of the way monasteries to see what forgotten classical texts he could find. As soon as he found a ninth century copy of On the Nature of Things, he recognized it as an important missing text. Because he could not borrow the book, he hired a scribe to make a copy, which he sent to a friend who contracted the making of copies in a better hand.

Greenblatt contends that Poggio's discovery was a key event of the Renaissance, for the ideas contained in the poem were spread to dissenters who eventually broke the power of the Roman Catholic Church to restrict scientific investigation and discussion. The idea of atomic particles was considered by church officials to be a direct attack on the miracle of the eucharist. Poggio escaped being punished because he worked during a brief period of liberal thought but many others were burned at the stake later when the church tried to suppress the poem.

The story told by Greenblatt is epic in size, including Greek, Roman, Medieval, and Renaissance history. The conclusions even include William Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, and Charles Darwin. The Swerve is a bestseller worth reading and keeping.

Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. Recorded Books, 2011. 8 compact discs. ISBN 9781461838227.

Steve Justman Plays Friday at the Ford

Steve Justman is a collector of songs, and like many collectors, he likes to show others what he's found. That's what you'd expect from a folksinger, a role Steve plays well. In his Friday at the Ford concert at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library, to the delight of the audience, he pulled 18 songs out of his big bag. Many were familiar without being from a predictable playlist of the past, each ripe for rediscovery. A few old songs from outside the mainstream of popular music were revelations. "High on a Mountain" by the Appalachian singer/songwriter Ola Bella Reed is the best example of something old that was totally new to most of the listeners.

Steve is also a historian of American song. For almost every song he provided a context, often noting singers and songwriters, but sometimes adding personal reflections. What became obvious is that he has crossed musical genres all his life. It seems natural that he was able to sing Dean Martin's "Memories Are Made of This" to his between two country classics. People sand along, as they did with Steve Goodman's "The City of New Orleans." My favorite of the night was "You Got Me Singing the Blues," sung more in the sty;e of Guy Mitchell than Marty Robbins.

I enjoyed talking about music with Steve while he packed his guitars and banjo away, being just hours away from a trip to Minnesota to play bass for June's Got the Cash, a June Carter and Johnny Cash tribute band. He's be back in the Chicago area soon, playing for senior centers, farmers' markets, and libraries. See his website for the schedule.

Karen Cries on the Bus a film by Gabriel Rojas Vera

We have all imagined, if only for a moment, the lives of strangers. Most of us guess a few stereotypical details and drop the matter quickly. Colombian film director Gabriel Rojas Vera, however, after seeing a woman quietly crying on a bus in Bogata, wrote and directed the film Karen Cries on the Bus, the story of a timid woman trying to break away from her marriage to find a more satisfying life. From the opening scene of Karen on a late night bus, viewers know something has gone wrong in her life.

Dressed nicely, if somewhat plainly, she seems out of place on the bus and in the poor neighborhood in which she drags her rolling suitcase. In the dark, she pleads for a room and overpays. In the morning, after she discovers the filth and insects, she begins her search for a job with which to support herself. The quest is, of course, difficult for a woman who has never worked outside the home, and her resolve is quickly tested by offers from her mother and husband to let her return to where they want her.

The director has said that he was quite astonished by the strong response to his film by women in his country. He thought he was telling an individual's story, but many women of Colombia and elsewhere identify with Karen's struggle against the demand that she return to the role her family had assigned her as a youth. Our film discussion group at the library was sympathetic and appreciated the artful storytelling. Karen Cries on the Bus is a good addition to foreign film collections.

Rojas Vera, Gabriel. Karen Cries on the Bus. Film Movement, 2011. ISBN 9781461843849.

Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time by Mark Adams

Mark Adams had not slept in a tent since childhood - and rarely then - when he decided to hike through the Andes Mountains of Peru to follow the path of the archeologist Hiram Bingham III, whose National Geographic articles one hundred years ago sparked international interest in Machu Picchu. With Australian guide John Leivers and a small Peruvian support team, he visited a network of holy Inca ruins connected by the surprisingly intact Inca Trail over high mountains and into deep valleys. He reports on his discoveries about the Incas, Bingham, and modern Peru in his highly descriptive travel memoir Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time.

"Discover" is an often misused word, according to Adams, especially when used with explorers. Machu Picchu had never actually been lost. Local villagers had always known it was there in an emerald valley sometimes described as a jewel box. To his credit, Bingham and National Geographic made the world aware and in awe of the Inca city, probably saving it from destruction.

I am surprised to see relatively few libraries have added Turn Right at Machu Picchu (according to Worldcat which can sometimes be a slow indicator). I enjoyed Adams report which recounts Peruvian history from the times of the Conquistadors to the present. I had not known about the lawsuit over antiquities between the nation of Peru and Yale University Museums or about the landowners who claim Peru never paid them for the nationalization of their property. Even more I enjoyed his account of hiking to great Andean vistas. I hope Adams plans more adventures and books.

Adams, Mark. Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time. Dutton, 2011. 333p. ISBN 9780525952244.

Room for Improvement: Notes on a Dozen Lifelong Sports by John Casey

I could count if I knew what to count, but I don't. What are the twelve sports to which John Casey refers in his new book Room for Improvement: Notes on a Dozen Lifelong Sports? I don't see a list on the cover or in the preface. There are 24 chapters whose titles are not "Number 1: Swimming," "Number 2: Hiking," and so forth. Is survival training a sport? Do we differentiate between canoeing and sculling? He mentions throwing a shot-put once - do I count it? Do I count hunting and fishing? Maybe teasing readers?

Casey is a novelist, so maybe he is trained not to be so obvious as to include lists in his autobiographical essays. As readers we are supposed to discover his story of sport a little at a time, cheering as he turns his law school era fatness into hard and lean fitness and then staying actively athletic for fifty years. Most of that time is spent outdoors, and many of his activities are extreme. Would you run-walk 50 miles on your 50th birthday? Casey recounts his efforts with enthusiasm and vivid detail. The most gripping story is about his three weeks spent with Outward Bound off the coast of Maine. It is all what-does-not-kill-you-makes-you-stronger stuff.

I enjoyed Room for Improvement but not enough to reread to count the sports. If you can count them, let me know.

Casey, John. Room for Improvement: Notes on a Dozen Lifelong Sports. Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. 229p. ISBN 9780307700025.

A Noble Radiance by Donna Leon

Readers' advisory expert Joyce Saricks has always said that readers do not have to start mystery series with the first book. I wanted an audiobook and found a handful of Commissario Brunetti Mysteries by Donna Leon on the shelf at the Downers Grove Public Library. I took the one with the oldest copyright home (after checking it out, of course).

Over several days while driving and gardening, I enjoyed listening to Samuel Gillies read A Nobel Radiance, a cold case mystery in which Venice's police detective Guido Brunetti seeks to discover who killed the young heir of a shipping fortune. Two years after his kidnapping, a body had been found in a field. Wondering why the criminals would leave a valuable signet ring beside the bones, Brunetti restarts the investigation.

A Nobel Radiance is a leisurely-paced procedural mystery in which readers spend almost as much time learning about Brunetti, his family, his colleagues, and the city of Venice. In the course of several weeks, the detective learns much about the victim and his family without discovering a suspect or a motive. Readers won't mind, however, for just following the life of Brunetti is entertaining. They will learn that Brunetti is persistent and finally recognizes without hard evidence the situation leading to the crime.

After finishing the book, I checked and found A Nobel Radiance is actually the seventh title in what is soon to be a 21 book series. That is good for me, as I'd like to read more.

Leon, Donna. A Noble Radiance. Penguin, 2003. ISBN 0142003190.

7 compact discs. Clipper Audio, 1999. ISBN 1402545118.

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

Being a big baseball fan, I also enjoy a good baseball novel every now and then, such as The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. It tells the story of Henry Skrimshander, a college shortstop who loses his confidence right at the point that he ties a national record for the most games without an error, a record held by his idol, former St. Louis Cardinal Aparicio Rodriguez. The Art of Fielding is the title of Aparicio's collection of quotes about the philosophy of playing shortstop, a book that Henry reads constantly.

Henry's breakdown comes at terrible time for the surging Westish College Harpooners and four others on the campus by the shores of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin. Subplots involving the president of the college, his daughter, the Harpooners' catcher, and Henry's gay roommate divert readers from the shortstop's struggles for chapters at a time.

Baseball is only one of the elements of the unpredictable story. Literary readers will enjoy the discussions of architecture, philosophy, women's rights, campus promiscuity, drug use, and environmentalism. The writings of Emerson, Thoreau, and Melville are quoted alongside the words of Aparicio Rodriguez. Like many others who have reviewed The Art of Fielding, I was greatly entertained.

Harbach, Chad. The Art of Fielding. Little, Brown, and CO., 2011. 512p. ISBN 9780316126694.

Hachette Audio, 2011. 14 compact discs. ISBN 9781611132106.

21: The Story of Roberto Clemente: A Graphic Novel by Wilfred Santiago

I wanted to like 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente: A Graphic Novel by Wilfred Santiago, but I wanted a fuller biography of the Hall of Fame baseball player. The art work effectively evokes the poverty of Puerto Rico and the grit of industrial Pittsburgh, and I think Santiago succeeds in dramatizing the big games, but 21 is just highlights from the great Pirate outfielder's life with lots of gaps. Turn a page, and years have passed without explanation. Knowing baseball history, I am able to fill in the gaps, but I can't imagine a young reader can.

21 is still an attractive introduction to learning about baseball of the 1950s to 1970s. I hope it encourages young readers to probe further. A more complete profile of the Pirate can be found in Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero by David Maraniss. Dismiss the "last hero" idea though as there have been many worthy players after Clemente.

Santiago, Wilfred. 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente: A Graphic Novel. Fantagraphic Books, 2011. ISBN 9781560978923.

The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story Of Rock and Roll's Best-Kept Secret by Kent Hartman

Do you know what "The Boxer" by Simon and Garfunkel, "California Dreaming" by the Mamas and the Papas, "Eve of Destruction" by Barry McGuire, "Help Me, Rhonda" by the Beach Boys, "Strangers in the Night" by Frank Sinatra, "Up, Up and Away" by the 5th Dimension, "Close to You" by the Carpenters, and most of the early recordings by the Tijuana Brass, Monkees, the Union Gap, and Grass Roots all have in common? The same drummer, Hal Blaine. "How could this be?" you might ask. While some of the acts above obviously needed back-up musicians, other were supposed to be self-sufficient bands playing their own music. Was Blaine in all of the music groups above? The answers to these questions are found in the new history The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story Of Rock and Roll's Best-Kept Secret by Kent Hartman.

The unofficially-named Wrecking Crew were a couple of dozen or so studio musicians whom record producers used to improve the singles that they were releasing in the late 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. While well paid by the standards of the era, most were never credited on album covers or in the press. Particularly with groups like the Beach Boys, Byrds, Doors, Association, Grass Roots, and Union Gap, the record company marketers and the groups themselves did not want it known that they had had help making their records sound good. Fans might have been disappointed to learn the boys in the magazines were not really playing on the records.

In The Wrecking Crew, Hartman tells a fairly chronological story about what went on in the recording studios around Los Angeles with a few side trips to London, New York, Chicago, and Nashville. Each chapter is named after a song, such "The Limbo Rock" or "Classical Gas," and recounts the unfolding of musical discovery against studio politics. Central characters include Blaine, Glen Campbell, Phil Spector, Jimmy Webb, and Carol Kaye, the sole woman in the Crew.

I could hardly put The Wrecking Crew down, but I am a Boomer who was enthralled with the music described. With so many names, it will be a tough read for someone from a younger generation. Still, there is a lot to learn for anyone and a nice list of songs in the appendix to help. I'm sure they are all on You-Tube.

Hartman, Kent. The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story Of Rock and Roll's Best-Kept Secret. Thomas Dunne Books, 2012. 292p. ISBN 9780312619749.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen

What role does expectation play in a reader's satisfaction with a book? I only read Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home by Rhoda Janzen because my book club chose it for April. I knew it was well received by book critics and popular with the reading public at large, but it had not made my to-read list. I'm not sure why as I have enjoyed memoirs of women who radically changed their circumstances, including The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball and Claiming Ground by Laura Bell. I think I anticipated not liking an everything-is-a-joke tone but was pleasantly surprised to find I enjoyed Janzen's humorous story telling and rich language.

Others in the book group expected more from Mennonite in a Little Black Dress and were disappointed. They found they could not understand why Janzen remained so long in an abusive relationship when she was so smart and had the means to withdraw. Several thought she was unkind in descriptions of others, including family. Some even distrusted her account. So many memoirs have been exposed as false lately that this is inevitable.

The story rang true to me, as I know people who never act to improve their situations, holding on to hopeless relationships until the others leave. As for being unkind, I would not wish to be assessed by Janzen, but i think she is as critical of herself, and I think there is merit in telling the story as she does. I hope friends and family will forgive her. Maybe they shake their heads and say Rhoda is just being Rhoda.

Through humor and self-exposure, Janzen tells a story that both entertains and philosophizes. Entering her world for several evenings is time well spent.

Janzen, Rhoda. Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home. Henry Holt, 2009. 241p. ISBN 9780805089257.

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson is one of the finalists that did not win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year. None of the finalist did, which is what has stirred a debate. What has not risen, at least in the libraries that I monitor, is an interest in the book. I found it on the shelf in my library and see numerous other copies just sitting in the libraries around the Chicago suburbs. That's too bad, for it is quite a good book.

Some of the Pulitzer board seems to have thought Train Dreams too small to win a big prize. I'd counter that their prize for poetry often goes to very thin books and that the language of narration in Train Dreams is superb - almost like poetry. Of course, the quality of narration is all in the eye of the individual reader. Train Dreams was also first published in The Paris Review in 2002, which may have turned some board members against it.

I like historical fiction and entered the world of the Idaho Panhandle in the early 20th century willingly. Men were still working in lumber camps, hauling trees with horses, and floating them down rivers. If they could not afford a train ticket, losing their money to gamblers or prostitutes, they walked days to get home after the camps break. Winters were severe and forest fires deadly. People were lost and never found. In this land, Robert Grainer faced a great family tragedy. Hardly anyone noticed him as he spent most of his time in the woods.

Whether Train Dreams should have won the Pulitzer Prize is not really worth debating. What I hope is that readers notice and enjoy this excellent novella.

Johnson, Denis. Train Dreams. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. 116p. ISBN 9780374281144.

Andy Young at Friday at the Ford

What is gypsy jazz? Chicago musician Andy Young answered that question for about sixty listeners at Thomas Ford Memorial Library's March 9 Friday at the Ford concert. Gypsy jazz or gypsy swing is music that rose in clubs in 1930s Paris. Director Woody Allen included some pieces in his recent film Midnight in Paris, one of which Young played on hammered dulcimer accompanied by guitarist Al Tauber. Hammered dulcimer is not an instrument usually associated with tunes that may make listeners think of old French films, but Young's interpretations delighted our appreciative audience, including some children awe-struck with the hammering.

We already knew Young for his Celtic music, some of which he performed on the dulcimer, tin whistle, and Irish flute. Andy and Al kept our feet tapping with an abundance of reels, some of which were nameless. It was good pre-St. Patrick's Day listening.

Since the concert, I have been listening to his latest CD L'Accroche-Pieds, which mixes Celtic tunes and gypsy jazz in a measure similar to the concert. The CD features a number of other musicians and even includes the sound of Irish step dancing. It is mostly cheerful music good for home or mobile listening. You can learn more about Andy Young at his website.

On Writing Book Reviews for Booklist

For the past two years, I have been writing book reviews for Booklist, the review journal for public libraries from the America Library Association. Every month or so, I get a package from Adult Books Editor Brad Hooper with one, two, or (once) even three review copies of forthcoming books. Most have been science and nature books aimed at general readers. Early on, I received a series of human-animal interaction books - a man and his pet grizzly kind of books. I also got collections of thoughtful essays on human stewardship (or lack of) of our environment. I enjoyed all of these books immensely.

Then, I started getting books about the seas and oceans. Perhaps there is a boom in this field of publishing. I was not expecting it, but I am starting to feel I could test for some college credit in marine biology. I am sure I can now talk very knowledgeably with my old biology major apartment mate Joe about microorganisms and fisheries. Here is a list the marine-related titles that I have read and reviewed to date:

• Demon Fish: Travels through the Hidden World of Sharks by Juliet Eilperin
• Kraken: The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid by Wendy Williams
• Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime: The Ocean's Oddest Creatures and Why They Matter by Ellen Prager
• Bayshore Summer by Peter Dunne
• Arctic Summer by Peter Dunne
• The Great White Bear: A Natural and Unnatural History of the Polar Bear by Kieran Mulvaney
• Fraser's Penguins: A Journey to the Future of Antarctica by Fen Montaigne
• Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms by Richard Fortey
• Overfishing: What Everyone Needs to Know by Ray Hilborn
• Ocean of Life by Callum Roberts
• Floating Gold: An Unnatural History of Ambergris by Christopher Kemp
• Horseshoe Crab: Biology of a Survivor by Anthony D. Fredericks
• In Pursuit of Giants: One Man's Global Search for the Last of the Great Fish by Matt Rigney

The books at the bottom part of the list are not yet available in stores, but I have gotten to read them already. That is half the fun of being a book reviewer.

I have also found my reviewing has helped at parties. I go to very few, but I actually found myself in a conversation at one about the books of biologist Richard Fortey and was able to say "I've read his forthcoming book." Maybe I will now get more invitations. Everyone wants to know a book reviewer.

Lulu in the Sky: A Daughter of Cambodia Finds Love, Healing, and Double Happiness by Loung Ung

It has been seven years since I read First They Killed My Father and Lucky Child, books in which Loung Ung vividly recounts life and death in the labor camps of the Khmer Rouge in 1970s Cambodia, her escape through Vietnam to Thailand and then to Vermont, and her struggle to assimilate in America. She continues her immigrant story in Lulu in the Sky: A Daughter of Cambodia Finds Love, Healing, and Double Happiness.

"Lulu" was the name Loung used with her school friends in Vermont. She hoped to seem less foreign and more like a regular American girl, which was made difficult by the strict rules enforced by her older brother and sister-in-law with whom she lived. Primary among their rules was "no dating." Her family expected that they would arrange a marriage for Loung to another Cambodian. Never openly defiant, while in college she secretly began a relationship with a tall and handsome American from Cleveland. The development of that relationship over time - a long time - is the central story line of Lulu in the Sky.

Parallel to the love story is Ung's account of her need to find purpose or a calling, which she does first through social work and then by becoming a spokesperson for the international effort to ban the use of land mines. This work allowed her to travel internationally, giving her an opportunity to visit her family still living in and around Phnom Penh. I especially enjoyed her visits with her Chinese grandmother, who would, of course, have been very familiar with the symbol for "double happiness."

Readers can start with Lulu in the Sky, as Ung provides enough detail for them to understand her journey. Those who recoil from stories of brutal oppression may only want to read this new love story, but I recommend most readers start with First They Killed My Father to get the full story of the Cambodian genocide.

Ung, Loung. Lulu in the Sky: A Daughter of Cambodia Finds Love, Healing, and Double Happiness. Harper Perennial, 2012. 330p. ISBN 9780062091918.

The Great Northern Express: A Writer's Journey Home by Howard Frank Mosher

I think I like the idea of The Great Northern Express: A Writer's Journey Home by Howard Frank Mosher better than I like the actual book. The problem may be my own expectations more than the author's writing. I am sure some other readers will like the book well enough, and I liked parts of it very much. I enjoyed how Mosher starts the book with a memory of listening to Yankee-Red Sox baseball games with his father and his father's best friend on a car radio in a spot on  mountain where they could get a signal. I appreciate how he told me of his cancer and then said that the disease would not be the focus of the story. I enjoyed all of the parts about his marriage, teaching school, and life in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. The story about moving a piano is particularly funny.

What disappointed me about The Great Northern Express were some of the chapters about his three-season driving trip around the U.S. to promote a novel at 100 bookstores. He does warn readers that he uses literary license and folds into the account incidents from previous book tours. So I knew that not everything he was going to say was literally true, but I was not expecting obviously fictional conversations with literary and personal ghosts. Perhaps fans of his fiction will like these fantasies, but I wanted to know more about his actually experiences. I would have liked to have read more about the bookstores and the real people he met.

As The Great Northern Express winds down, it gets really good again. At least, Mosher pleased me by writing about what I wanted him to write at the end.

The best part for me may be the quotes from his friend, the poet James Hayford. That's who I want to read now.

Mosher, Howard Frank. The Great Northern Express: A Writer's Journey Home. Crown Publisahers, 2012. 246p. ISBN 9780307450692.

City of Scoundrels: The Twelve Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago by Gary Krist

Chicagoans rang in the new year with optimism in 1919. The world war was over, and the influenza epidemic had subsided. The city's industrial infrastructure was expanded, and the mayor was determined the city would develop architect Daniel Burnham's visionary plan for the lakefront and central city. If everyone worked together, the future was bright. 1919, however, proved to be a difficult year, according to Gary Krist in his new history City of Scoundrels: The Twelve Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago.

Tragic might be a better term than difficult. No one seems to have realized that the end of the war lessened the call for industrial production, and with soldiers returning, the labor force was expanding. During the war, thousands of blacks from the South had come to fill the labor shortage. Racial tension was bound to increase as everyone competed for jobs. Manufactures hoped to keep or reduce wages, while unions demanded raises, as did transportation workers. Chicago already had a history of labor violence. The situation was explosive, literally, as whites began bombing the homes of blacks in the late winter and spring, just as the vote came for the election of mayor.

Mayor William Hale Thompson, the key scoundrel in the story, pursued a political path that increased divisions among the many parties. His story ran in all the daily newspapers, along with headlines about the murder of a child, a terrible airship accidents, the start of Prohibition, race riots, and a transit strike. Later, members of the Chicago White Sox conspired to lose the World Series. Krist weaves the many plots together, focusing much of the book on the hot days of July when the riots tore through the South Side.

As a reader, I am not really sure how Chicago was changed by these events. Corruption, violence, and prejudice were at high levels before and after that year. Perhaps pessimism grew, but Chicago was becoming modern long before 1919. Nonetheless, Krist tells a great story, and I enjoyed learning about the many players in the tragedy, not all of whom were scoundrels. City of Scoundrels is a quick read for anyone interested in American history.

Krist, Gary. City of Scoundrels: The Twelve Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago. Crown Publishers, 2012. ISBN 9780307454294.

Settled in the Wild: Notes from the Edge of Town by Susan Hand Shetterly

When Susan Hand Shetterly left the city with her family to move into a cabin in rural Maine in 1971, she had some experience with nature. She had always enjoyed a walk in the woods, but she had not yet heard the many sounds of stormy nights, seen predation, or stepped into sucking mud from which there seemed no escape. She recounts her own survival and the plight of wildlife in an increasingly suburbanized coastal community in Settled in the Wild: Notes from the Edge of Town.

Shetterly's notes are short, quick-to-the-point essays about the forces of nature. She tells us about the run of the alewives, the cracking of ice, the paving of an old country road, and the care of injured birds. I particularly enjoyed her tribute to a dead tree that served as home to many birds and insects. While not so spiritual as Annie Dillard, Shetterly still takes us with her into the marshes, woods, and shallow waves offshore to discover something worth preserving. 

Settled in the Wild is a book I'd like to send to friends.

Shetterly, Susan Hand. Settled in the Wild: Notes from the Edge of Town. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2010. 240 p. ISBN 9781565126183.

Dear Mr. Jefferson: Letters from a Nantucket Gardener by Laura Simon

Thomas Jefferson was an avid gardener. For 58 years, even when he was in Europe in service to his country, he kept gardening diaries. In his letters home, he always asked for detailed accounts about the gardens and the harvest of fruits and vegetables. He often commented on the varieties of plants that he found while traveling. He even smuggled seeds out of Italy.

It seems natural that author and gardener Laura Simon feels akin to Jefferson. Every winter she receives dozens of seed catalogs, and wanting to try new varieties in her large Nantucket garden, she orders from many of them. Then she turns her guest room into a greenhouse to start her seeds. Like Jefferson, she keeps annual gardening plans, ledgers and journals. Her actually writing letters to the long deceased Jefferson is not surprising.

In Dear Mr. Jefferson: Letters from a Nantucket Gardener, Simon recounts one gardening year in Nantucket. In the process, she also lovingly comments on all that she has learned from reading Jefferson and visiting Monticello. Published in 1998, it is still a delight to read. Add it to your list.

Simon, Laura. Dear Mr. Jefferson: Letters from a Nantucket Gardener. Crown Publishers, 1998. 224p. ISBN 0609600974.

Worm: The First Digital World War by Mark Bowden

I confess that I have paid little attention to the Malware Wars. It seems that attacks come at fairly regular intervals and the world never ends. I am not alone. As a society, we are pretty immune to news about viruses and worms, but we should be more concerned, according to Mark Bowden, author of Worm: The First Digital World War, which tells how an alliance of volunteers from around the world fought the Conflicker worm in 2008-2009.

Bowden begins his book with a bit of history. It seems there have been pranksters since the beginning of the Computer Age. Brilliant geeks have always found satisfaction in surprising their colleagues by pirating their monitors and sending clever messages buried in software. Then criminals discovered they could send viruses via email that could crash computers or steal personal information and account numbers from unsuspecting victims. Through the decades, the menace has grown. Now terrorists or nation-states can imbed code in millions of computers to make them slaves to their bidding. Personal computer owners might never know they are harboring and assisting malicious attacks on corporate and government websites.

The Conficker story is now out of the headlines but the battle continues. The worm still lives in millions of computers that have not loaded Windows updates properly. To date not much has really happened as the master of Conflicker seems to be biding his time. He has leased the botnet at least once to purveyors of email spam, but the potential for much greater harm, such as attacks on utilities or military command stations, still exists.

Worm is certainly an eye-opening book. I suggest readers with an interest in technology try the audiobook read by Christopher Lane.

Bowden, Mark. Worm: The First Digital World War. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2011. 245p. ISBN 9780802119834.

Also, Brilliance Audio, 2011. 6 compact discs. ISBN 9781455825233.