The Shooting Salvationist: J. Frank Norris and the Murder Trial That Captivated America by David R. Stokes

I learned about this book in Sarah Statz Cords article "Prior Misconduct: Historical True Crime Collection Development" in the September 2012 issue of Library Journal. 

There are two central characters in The Shooting Salvationist: J. Frank Norris and the Murder Trial That Captivated America by David R. Stokes. Of course, one is identified in the title, the Baptist minister J. Frank Norris, who was once thought to be the heir to the title of "leading fundamentalist in America" after the death of William Jennings Bryan in 1925. The other is the city of Fort Worth, Texas, a former cowtown that was becoming a first class metropolis when Norris led the First Baptist Church, the largest congregation in the nation at the time.

Initially, Ft. Worth was the more interesting of the characters. I enjoyed learning about the city's transformation and aspirations. I have been there and am impressed with its parks, zoo, museums, and central city. The author recounts how the city developed during the first three decades of the twentieth century in setting the scene for a crime that pitted Norris against the Ft.Worth establishment.

Norris felt quite confident in his many campaigns to shape Ft. Worth. He had not only a devoted congregation in the city but also reached conservative Christians in many states through his weekly newspaper, radio station, and high-profile evangelical crusades to cities across the country. He showed no fear in taking on strong enemies, but he risked losing everything when he fatally shot an unarmed opponent who had come to his church office to argue about Norris's threats to the mayor.

In the last part of the book, the author dramatically recounts the media circus and trial following the killing. Would Norris be sent to the electric chair? I won't tell.

Stokes, David R. The Shooting Salvationist: J. Frank Norris and the Murder Trial That Captivated America. Steerforth Press, 2011. 350p. ISBN 9781586421861.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

I knew the people in our book club would have plenty to say about Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. It is a much longer book than we normally read, but it was democratically chosen, and I think almost everyone finished the book. Of course, you would not have had to read the book at all to join in the conversation. Everyone was familiar with Jobs and Apple. We even had Apple devices in the room.

One of the discussion points was whether Isaacson's book was really a biography of Jobs or a history of Apple with a heavy emphasis on Jobs. A few wished that there had been much less about the technology and more about Jobs and his relationships. Others thought that Apple was the most important part of Jobs and the mix was right. One of the younger members who remembers her parents getting an Apple II remarked that the book was a history of her times. Not being one of the youngest, I could say that it is a sort of history of technology concurrent to my professional times. From my position as a librarian, I saw the introductions of many of the computers and devices mentioned.

I was fascinated by Silicon Valley culture undercurrent in the book. All of the key players at Apple, Microsoft, Google, Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems, Adobe, etc. all seemed to know each other and even dined out with spouses. (When dining with Jobs, you had to make allowances for his radical diet.) At the same time, they were fiercely competing with each other to win acclaim and sales for their products. The need for industry standards and software that bridged platforms required a certain civility that the competitors kept at most times. Civility still allows for much foul language.

Job's Pixar years seem to be a sort of sweet side story. They make me more inclined to like Jobs who is a very difficult person to like through much of the book. We all agreed that he was a poor parent and wonder how his children will develop as adults. No one wanted him as a boss.

At 571 pages of text, Steve Jobs is a book that requires some committment from a book club, but the effort may be rewarded.

Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. Simon & Schuster, 2011. 630p. ISBN 9781451648539.

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer

Should you be traveling and wish to encourage conversation with your fellow travelers, carry and read from Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer. I was reading it as I flew from West Texas back to Chicago a few weeks ago. Several people just nodded toward the book and said "Great book." The longest encounter I had was with a man who appeared to be one of the Southwest Airlines pilots. Seeing me reading near a gate in Midland International Airport, he asked me how I was liking the book and recommended that I also read Under the Banner of Heaven. As he walked away, I observed his being blond, tan, and athletic, just the kind of guy who could be a climber.

By this time, fifteen years after publication, I imagine a lot of people have already read Into Thin Air. I know librarians have been recommending it for years. I know that I have handed it to scores of readers. Yet I had not read it. The whole idea of enduring hardship and altitude sickness to put one's life at risk just to test one's determination seemed rather self-indulgent and irresponsible. It still does. But the book is exciting. Krakauer is a good storyteller.

Though you know the outcome at the beginning, he is able to introduce characters and reveal critical moments at a pace that never lets the reader lose interest. With his vivid descriptions, I feel I know what it is like at the top of Everest, and I am certain that I am not going there. I think I'll stay under 8000 feet,  thank you, except for a few airplane flights.

I was reading Into Thin Air to see if it fit in an article that I am writing about memoirs to keep for decades in library collections. I decided it is not enough about Krakauer to be a memoir, but it is definitely a book to keep.

Krakauer, Jon. Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster. Villard, 1997. 297p. ISBN 0679457526.

A Wedding in Haiti: The Story of a Friendship by Julia Alvarez

Cruel dictators, violent gangs, disasterous earthquakes, poverty, and disease are the prevailing topics in most discussions of Haiti. Novelist Julia Alvarez has witnessed all of this from her coffee farm in the neighboring Dominican Republic, but she has seen reason for hope in the Haitian people. She recounts two driving trips in a pickup truck into Haiti with her warm-hearted husband and some of her Haitian workers in A Wedding in Haiti: The Story of a Friendship.

Central to the story is Piti, a Haitian that Alvarez has seen grow from a boy into a man. When he was just a boy, she made the casual remark that someday she would attend his wedding. In August 2009, Piti called her on short notice to remind her of her pledge. She cancelled all her appointments and flew from her Vermont home back to the island of Hispanola to take a trip across the border. The first trip is a mostly entertaining look at rural Haiti. The second taken after the 2010 earthquake that destroyed much of Port-Au-Prince is a short report of the state of the Haitian people in and away from the epicenter of the capital city.

Throughout both, Alvarez saw resilience amid the despair and devotion to family. Readers who enjoy peeks into other cultures will like this quick-reading book.

Alvarez, Julia. A Wedding in Haiti: The Story of a Friendship. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2012. 287p. ISBN 9781616201302.

Just Kids by Patti Smith

I was initially not inclined to read Just Kids by artist, poet, and rock star Patti Smith. However, I read good reviews and having not read the book was beginning to seem like a gap in my personal reading journal. Having started the book to get a taste of the writing and plot, I was quickly enamored. Smith's memoir of her romance/friendship with and devotion to the artist Robert Mapplethorpe is remarkably charming for a book about sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

Smith starts with the story of her arrival in New York. With only a few dollars, she slept in a park or, when able, hid all night in a back room of the book store where she got her first job. Then she met Robert Mapplethorpe with whom she then lived during her evolution as artist and poet. It was Mapplethorpe who later urged her to sing. After a few years they moved into the Chelsea Hotel, where artists could sometimes pay with art, and they met many artists, writers, and musicians, names readers will recognize, like Andy Warhol and Janis Joplin. Just Kids works well as a history of the 1960s and 1970s New York art community.

Just Kids is not a good choice for sensitive readers, as the behavior of Smith, Mapplethorpe, and their friends was meant to be provocative. Nevertheless, many readers will enjoy a classic story of starving artists finding recognition, respect, and love.

Smith, Patti. Just Kids. Ecco, 2010. 278p. ISBN 9780066211312.

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir by Elizabeth McCracken

"… you need everyone you know after a disaster, because there is not one right response. It's what paralyzes people around the grief-stricken, of course, the idea that there are right things to say and wrong things and its better to say nothing than something clumsy."

As the mother of a still-born child, Elizabeth McCracken knows about awkwardness surrounding the grieving, and in her An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir, she identifies silence as the worst response to a friend's or stranger's tragedy.

The grieving need words of solace, acknowledgement, hugs and tears. She knows now why some cultures hire professional mourners. Silence condemns. Sympathy unrestrained eases pain.

Though a well-read adult (she is a novelist) who knows the world is full of hardship, McCracken was ill-prepared for her own tragedy. (Few of us are.) She did not know how to handle the innocent questions from acquaintances, such as grocers or neighbors, "How's the baby?" She could not lie or run away. The reminders of tragedy were as plentiful as the children and pregnant women seen every time she left her house.

In An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, McCracken tells her story skillfully,  gradually revealing the problems she faced, saving the most important scenes for the end. Unusual details, such as being in France at the time of her delivery and the difficulty of getting her British husband into the U.S., add to the appeal of her tale. Few readers will be untouched. We will all be better off for considering what McCracken says.

McCracken, Elizabeth. An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir. Little, Brown and Company, 2008. 184p. ISBN 9780316027670.

The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and the 82 Days That Inspired America by Thurston Clarke

I remember the 1968 presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy. I was only fourteen and quite naive, very sure that we were on the verge of a much better world. We were going to end poverty, discrimination, and war. It seems quite hard to imagine that dream now, but Thurston Clarke in The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and the 82 Days That Inspired America confirms that I was not the only person who felt so optomistic. Many people, especially young people and minorities, believed Bobby Kennedy could lead the country to joyous and just prosperity.

Of course, many people hated Kennedy, too. Labor unions disliked that as attorney general he had brought criminal charges against many of their Mafia-influenced leaders. Southern Democrats disliked his support of civil rights legislation. Even college students were not united in support; he had told them that he wanted to end the Vietnam War quickly, which they like, but he also proposed the end of student deferments in the meantime, which they did not.

In The Last Campaign, Clarke chronicles the three months of Kennedy's run for president, which also happened to be the last months of his life. Using media accounts and interviews, the author takes readers onto the buses, planes, and whistle stop trains and into campaign headquarters to hear the conversations between Kennedy and his campaign staff. In doing so, he paints a mostly positive picture of the younger brother of an assassinated president. But not all was well. Kennedy was very intense and sometimes sarcastic character. He was very sure someone would try to kill him but believed he would be cowardly to avoid the crowds.

Reading The Last Campaign is a trip back into an era when few states had binding primaries, nothing was certain before presidential conventions, and candidates were just starting to design their campaigns for maximum media attention. It will interest readers of history and politics.

Clarke, Thurston. The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and the 82 Days That Inspired America. Henry Holt, 2008. 321p. ISBN 9780805077926.

Imperfect: An Improbable Life by Jim Abbott and Tim Brown

Former major league pitcher Jim Abbott has inspired many fans just by being on the field. The odds against a player with only one hand making it through all of the levels of baseball to the top are incalculable. How could he both catch and throw? Through sheer willpower, he found a way to be able to rise from Little League to pro ball. He tells his story in Imperfect: An Improbable Life. 

Being a role model for physically challenged children and adults, however, was never Abbott's intent, but he decided it was his responcibility. The difficulty was that he grew weary of pity very early in his life. His plan was to refer to his missing hand as little as possible. Of course, his missing hand was what journalists noticed first and predictably asked about. He had to outlast the notariety and prove he was an effective pitcher to ever get a story that did not label him as the player with one hand. He also knew in his heart that he had to respond to every child who sent him a letter, sign as many autographs as possible, and meet families who made special trips hoping to meet him. He was a nice guy. Too nice according to his agent and sports psychologist.

Like Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy by Jane Leavy, Abbott's book alternates the story of a pitcher's best game with the story of his regrettably short career. Readers come to admire both men. Imperfect will be most liked by sports fans and people with physical challenges of their own.

Abbott, Jim and Tim Brown. Imperfect: An Improbable Life. Ballantine Books, 2012. 283p. ISBN 9780345523259.

I'm taking this week off. I hope to have more book and movie reviews sometime next week. See you later, alligator.

The Booklover's Guide to the Midwest: A Literary Tour by Greg Holden

While in Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City over Labor Day Weekend, Bonnie and I found The Booklover's Guide to the Midwest: A Literary Tour by Greg Holden, just our kind of book. While we do not take as many long weekend trips as we would like, we still enjoy dreaming of them. Holden's 2010 book was already on the sale table, so we bought it.

Definitions of the Midwest differ. When Joyce Saricks asked me, "What's it say about Kansas?", I had to tell her that the state was not included. Holden holds the Midwest to be Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota, all of which he has toured extensively. In his book, he suggests tours that run along major roads or rivers, but the town entries are not always in a logical order. Readers have to plot their own routes on maps that they will have to buy separately.

I found while reading that I needed to make two lists - places to go and books to read. While I have already stood outside houses of Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald, there are many places I still want to visit, including the Carl Sandburg birthplace in Galesburg, Illinois, and the Robert Ridgewood Memorial Arboretum and Bird Sanctuary in Olney, Illinois. In Iowa, I'd like to visit the Mark Twain Center in the Keokuk Public Library in Keokuk and the Japanese Garden on the grounds of the Muscatine Art Center in, of course, Muscatine.

Many of the authors and books highlighted by Holden are unfamiliar to me, especially many from the 19th and early 20th centuries. I think I might especially like to read Iowa Interiors by Ruth Suckow from this group. I was also reminded that I have never gotten around to You Know Me Al by Ring Lardner. Holden also recommends the novels of Jane Hamilton from Rochester, Minnesota.

Time to get out the road atlas.

Holden, Greg. The Booklover's Guide to the Midwest: A Literary Tour. Clerisy Press, 2010. 308p. ISBN 9781578603145.

The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant

In my studies of biography, including autobiography, I have often noticed praise for The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. The reluctant-to-write former general and president wrote this autobiography late in life to get his family out of debt. It had been on the edge of my mind to read it for years before I finally checked it out this summer. Even then, I renewed it twice before I read a word. Its size is intimidating. Noticing that it is split into two volumes, I resolved to read just volume one before the looming deadline to return it to the library.

Thankfully, I discovered that Grant was as good an author as promised. His style was unadorned by any grand statements or flowery language, unlike some nineteenth century texts. He had a good story of importance to American readers and told it well. He did go into a bit more detail than I wanted in describing some battles, but this is precisely what will interest some other readers. I most enjoyed reading about the every day lives of soldiers in both the U.S.-Mexican War and the Civil War.

Grant's account of the War with Mexico is particularly interesting because he served alongside many men who would later be leaders of the Confederate forces. He even went mountain climbing with them during the quiet spells during the campaign to take Mexico City. Most of them had been at West Point together. His account referenced events of the next war, as he assessed the leadership qualities of these comrades.

I enjoy reading about places, and Grant granted me a view of early Texas which I enjoyed, my being a student who enjoyed a year of Texas history in junior high school. I also found descriptions of pre-Civil War Missouri very interesting - I visited some of the places when I worked in Columbia.

Volume one of the memoirs reports his military life through the conquest of Vicksburg in 1863. Volume two tells his story through the end of the Civil War. He does not write about his presidency in his memoirs. I read from The Library of America volume Grant: Memoirs and Selected Letters, which also adds a Grant chronology and the text of notes that Grant wrote to the doctor who nursed him through his final illness.

Grant, Ulysses S. Grant: Memoirs and Selected Letters. Library of America, 1990. 1199p. ISBN 0940450585.

Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy

I remember 1964 baseball cards. The cards for National League's 1963 leaders in wins, strikeouts, and earned run average all showed Sandy Koufax at the top. He had had a great season and was in his prime. He would dominate opposing batters for three more years and then retire. He was baseball's highest paid player at $150,000 per year, but he said that his health was more important than money and walked away. He was only 31 years old and had nothing left to prove on the field.

Retiring early was only one of the unusual acts of Koufax's short career, according to Jane Leavy in her tribute Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy. By declining to start Game 1 of the 1965 World Series because it was Yom Kippur, he put his religious practice before his sports and solidified his reputation within the American Jewish community. He refused to make alcohol and tobacco ads, though he both drank and smoked. His dual strike for higher pay with Don Drysdale in spring training 1966 was the seed of the players' union movement, according to Leavy.

Perhaps the great game Koufax ever pitched was his September 9, 1965 perfect game against the Chicago Cubs. The fans at Dodger Stadium also witnessed a one-hitter pitched by the Cub Hendley. Leavy uses the game as a plot device, alternating innings of that game with chapters of Koufax's life. It is a common way to write a sports biography and in this case very effective. Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy is a biography that no baseball fan should miss. With the playoffs coming soon, this is a great time to pick it up.

Leavy, Jane. Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy. HarperCollins, 2002. 282p. ISBN 0060195339.

America's Other Audubon by Joy M. Kiser

When Joy M. Kiser began her new position as assistant librarian at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in 1995, volume one of Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio was on display in a case near the stairs. She had never heard of the Jones family of Circleville, Ohio. Through research she discovered that they were amateur ornithologists who in the nineteenth century recognized that there was not a good reference book about bird eggs and nests. Encourage by multi-talented daughter Genevieve, the entire family began to work on the collecting and illustrating of nests and eggs from their area. Genevieve soon fell ill and died, but the family increased efforts in her memory and produced an acclaimed work of which fewer than 100 copies were ever made. Kiser tells the story and reproduces the plates and commentary in America's Other Audubon.

Like James John Audubon decades earlier, the Jones family sought to sell their illustrations through subscriptions to collectors. Luckily for us, several of the major museums signed up, and Kiser was able to produce this beautiful book with the help of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. The work is a testament to the bounty of bird life of the time, when even the passenger pigeon thrived.

Readers of the beautiful and oversized America's Other Audubon may be inspired to take binoculars or maybe even watercolors to the woods. I am sure identifying birds by nests and eggs will still be far more difficult than by plumage or song, but maybe we will at least know now where to look.

Kiser, Joy M. America's Other Audubon. Princeton Architectural Press, 2012. 191p. ISBN 9781616890599.

Wish Lists for Reading

Yesterday, our consortium of libraries rolled out a new look for our shared library catalog, and it is a great improvement. Along with the sprucing up, SWAN added some new features. My favorite is My Wish Lists. Since I was reading book reviews when I learned of the upgrade coming online, I started a list that I call Histories and Biographies to Read. I filled it with books that will come out in the next couple of months. The list looks like this when printed:

What I like is that there is a handy link for each title to place a request. I could have gone ahead and requested the books yesterday, but several of them might suddenly arrived at the same time. I already have a stack of books and I am working on some projects, so I will save borrowing the books for later when the brand-new-books demand for them has faded. I might then request them and get them right away. I might even see copies on the shelf at my library and not have to use the request service. They should be just as good in six months or a year or even five as they are the day they are published.

I manage my audiobook downloads in a similar way. Media on Demand, which is my library's Overdrive download service, has a single wish list into which I add titles to download later. With six to ten titles in the wish list, there is a good chance one will be available when I desire another audiobook on my iPod. I can see from the wish list which titles are ready for checkout. Just a couple of clicks and it is mine (for two weeks).

How do you keep track of the books you want to read? I think more people are keeping lists and making requests now. I hardly ever see people browsing the stacks, and the reserve shelves behind the checkout desk are always full. I'd enjoy knowing what you are seeing.

The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere by Debra Marquart

"As I get older, I become infinitely interested in everything older than I am - old people, old letters, photographs, and papers, ship manifests, yellowed newspapers, crispy deeds, buried archives." Debra Marquart

One reason that we enjoy memoirs is that we identify with authors. In their experiences and thoughts, we see a bit of ourselves. I found this true with The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere by Debra Marquart. As I read of her spending an afternoon watching the nearby highway out her brother's window, counting the cars going in each direction, I recalled slow hot summer afternoons looking out my grandmother's front window with my sister. Would the next car be red or green? What a delight it was when we were right.

There is a good mix of similarities and differences in Marquart's life and mine to keep her story fascinating and unpredictable. Many of the circumstances were the same but her actions were far different from mine, but I can understand why she rebelled. I was not faced with the prospects of being expected to become a farmer's wife. I never had daily farm chores that kept me from friends. My life was much easier, and I was given my ticket for escape. Marquart traveled a hard road out.

Yet, in middle age, we are in similar places. Both of us are book people now living in communities of little interest to our families. We pass through time portals when we revisit our origins. We have reconciled with and care for our aging parents. Our dreams often take us back to houses we will never reenter.

Marquart is a fine storyteller with an eye for detail and sense of place. She'll string you along, and you'll gladly follow. By the way, turn your head 90 degrees to look at the book cover.

Marquart, Debra. The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere. 2006. 270p. ISBN 9781582433455.

Die Jahreszeiten (The Seasons) by Joseph Haydn

Each summer, Bonnie and I try to attend at least one of the evening concert at Grant Park in Chicago. This year we made a Saturday evening performance by the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus under the direction of Carlos Kalmar of the epic oratorio The Seasons by Joseph Haydn. It is epic in that a full performance takes two hours to perform. I do not remember previously hearing even parts, but with three strong soloists and a huge chorus, it was glorious.

If you have ever heard a Christmas performance of The Messiah by George Frideric Handel, imagine that kind of music but longer. (The Messiah is much longer, too, when played in full.) There are orchestral parts, recitatives with voice and harpsichord, arias, and big choral blockbusters. Everything was impression, except the lyrics sung in English. "Come, sweet maidens, let us wander o'er the glowing fields" is a representative line. Haydn himself complained about the lyrics that he was commissioned to set to music. He preferred his previous oratorio The Creation. (I want to hear it, too.) Most of the time, I could not actually understand the lyrics, so I was not distracted from the music.

The next week I borrowed Die Jahreszeiten (The Seasons) by Joseph Haydn performed by the London Symphony Chorus and London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Sir Colin Davis. The oratorio is sung in German! It is fabulous in German. I listened to the two CDs three times through in the next several weeks, mostly while driving or cooking. I hoped to memorize some of the melodies, but I failed. I can not hum any part now, but I did enjoy imagining myself like Inspector Morse driving around in a hot red sports car with the opera cranked up. (For the record, we have a modest green car.) 

Here is a sample from "Winter" so you can see if you might also enjoy Haydn's The Seasons.

The Day the Revolution Ended: 19 October 1781 by William H. Hallahan

After reading The Day the Revolution Ended: 19 October 1781 by William H. Hallahan, I am left with the impression that the American colonists were always a long shot to win their revolution. With strong leadership, the British military should have mopped up the remnants of the hastily formed rebellion on several occasions. The rebels were short of funds, clothing, and ammunition. Their ranks were reduced by disease and the annual needs of soldier farmers to get back to sow and harvest crops. Why did the British not finish them off?

Historian and novelist Hallahan tells in great detail how many British officers and soldiers profited from their occupation of cities and campaigns through the various states. Why rush the war? While in New York, many officers under General Clinton took over great houses in the city, living lavishly in some and renting out others as barracks for their own men, pocketing the rent. These same officers shipped furniture and books taken from these homes back to their estates in Britain. Some also skimmed from the payrolls of their own troops. During campaigns chasing rebel forces, they loaded wagons full of goods to sell or keep. After defecting the colonial cause, General Benedict Arnold was openly joyous about the profit he would make marching through the rich plantations of Virginia.

This corruption in the British military contributed to its eventual demise, as the officers and soldiers stole from loyalists as wantonly as from rebels. As the war progressed, the British found it more and more difficult to enlist more loyalists into their ranks. Of course, rebel violence against loyalists had reduced their numbers, too. Hallahan is also very critical of most colonial political leaders, especially the Continental Congress, which he claims usually did nothing other than debate issues, leaving the army underfunded. He especially rebukes Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson for doing little to prepare his state for invasion and Boston's Samuel Adams for opposing any measure to strengthen the national government. The only heroes in the narrative are Generals Washington, Lafayette, and Greene.

A better title for the book would have been The Year the Revolution Ended, as Hallahan chronicles how the American, British, and French forces all arrived at the Yorktown battlefield, a long process that seemed to develop in slow motion. It is a good story that Hallahan tells well from his point of view. We should be eternally grateful to the French, who were really there to oppose the British.

I like the Afterward which reports what happened to each of the principal characters after the war.

Hallahan, William H. The Day the Revolution Ended: 19 October 1781. John Wiley & Sons, 2004. 292p. ISBN 0471262404.

60 Ways to Use Your Library Card

September is National Library Card Month. Here are 60 reasons to get a library card.


               


 Visit your local library to see what it can do for you.

The Mighty Mars Rovers: The Incredible Adventures of Spirit and Opportunity by Elizabeth Rusch

Just a week ago, I wrote about The Mighty Ted. This week, it is the mighty Spirit and the mighty Opportunity, NASA's Mars surface rovers that far exceeded the expectations of scientists and engineers in 2004. Both went about taking pictures and soil samples and then relaying data back to Earth beyond their three month missions. In fact, Opportunity in still chugging away. Science writer Elizabeth Rusch tells their stories in The Mighty Mars Rovers: The Incredible Adventures of Spirit and Opportunity. 

The narrative begins on Earth with the dreams of science kid Steven Squyres, who got his first telescope at eight and tried to build a robot when he was nine. Of course, he grew up to be a NASA scientist whose proposal for Mars rovers was commissioned in the year 2000. Rusch tells how in less than four years Steve and a team of engineers, scientists, and contractors built the two rovers sent to opposite sides of the our sister planet. The story continues with the nail-biting landing and difficult explorations across the rock-strewn and sometimes sandy Martian surface.

Though aimed at late elementary or middle school readers, this book is perfect for an adult wanting to revisit the years of rover activity. It is a slim but substantial book. I spent about three hours reading and studying the many photos and maps of Mars. With the recent landing of Curiosity on Mars, this is a great time to put The Mighty Mars Rovers on display in libraries and bookstores.

Rusch, Elizabeth. The Mighty Mars Rovers: The Incredible Adventures of Spirit and Opportunity. Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2012. 79p. ISBN 9780547478814.

Why Spencer Perceval Had to Die: The Assassination of a British Prime Minister by Andro Linklater

It has been 200 years since an event of which I had never heard - an event that author Andro Linklater claims changed the course of history. On May 11, 1812, British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was shot and killed upon entering the lobby of Parliament on his way to a hearing in the House of Commons. With many witnesses, there was no doubt that John Bellingham, a businessman from Liverpool, was the assassin. Linklater recounts how paths of the prime minister and businessman crossed in Why Spencer Perceval Had to Die: The Assassination of a British Prime Minister.

The author thinks that it is curious that such a dramatic and important incident has been mostly forgotten. It seems that British authorities wanted it that way. Bellingham was tried and hung within a week of the crime. Little effort was made to investigate why the businessman wanted to kill the prime minister, and the story was soon out of the newspapers. Many people were actually pleased to have the very powerful Perceval dead, Linklater claims. The people of London poured into the streets to celebrate upon hearing the news of the assassination.

In a way, Linklater's research was cold case investigation. Readers learn from his book much about the people who benefited from the crime and its impact on the ongoing war with France, the new war with the former American colonies, and the British Navy's efforts to enforce the Abolition Act of 1807 which aimed to stop the international slave trade. British bankers and shipowners of Liverpool had a lot of money invested in the slave trade. Fans of both American and British history will enjoy Why Spencer Perceval Had to Die.

Linklater, Andro. Why Spencer Perceval Had to Die: The Assassination of a British Prime Minister. Walker & Company, 2012. 296p. ISBN 9780802779984.