NPR Sound Treks: Birds

My focus on all things birds continues today with a quick review of NPR Sound Treks: Birds, an audiobook adapted from radio instead of print. In this case, the public radio network has harvest some of its best pieces from programs such as Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. NPR listeners will recognize some of the reporters, such as Melissa Block, Steve Inskeep, and Renee Montagne, on this enjoyable one-hour, one compact disc program.

I was glad to find three tracks with licensed bird rehabilitator Julie Zickefoose, whom I regard highly after having read her Letters from Eden and The Bluebird Effect. My favorite story in the NPR collection is the final track in which she tells about raising four orphaned hummingbirds. I love the image of her being followed around her backyard by hungry little birds.

Several of the stories involve Chicago, where the lights of skyscrapers are a hazard to night flying birds and invasive species, such as starlings, have chased away natives. Zickefoose tells about rescuing a stunned yellow-throat warbler, and Davis Shaffer tells about Chicago's successful building of houses for purple martins along its Lake Front.

Alaska, Australia, and Guatemala are settings for other stories in this collection, that also features a story about British musician F. Schuyler Mathews who in the 19th century transcribed many songbird songs to sheet music. Bird lovers should definitely seek out NPR Sound Trek: Birds.

NPR Sound Treks: Birds. HighBridge Audio, 2010. ISBN 9781615730605.

songbirdsongs by John Luther Adams

While preparing for last week's integrated advisory discussion at ARRT, I discovered a wonderful compact disc called songbirdsongs by composer John Luther Adams. Included on the CD are 10 bird inspired pieces that Adams wrote between 1974 and 2006. A quick description of them is that they are experimental contemporary music. Of course, that does not sound like much fun. The pieces are more pleasing, rooted in both the sounds of nature and classical music.

The lead instruments on songbirdsongs are piccolos and flutes, which are supported by percussive and string instruments in small chamber groups. The first nine pieces grouped as "songbirdsongs" are performed by the Callithumpian Consort and the final piece is "Strange Birds Passing" performed by the New England Conservatory Contemporary Music Ensemble. My favorite pieces are "Wood Thrush" and "Joyful Noise."

What may chase some listeners away is there are no catchy tunes. On first hearing, the pieces may seem without any structure, just a fusion of random sounds. Those listening to the recording a second or third time, however, will likely recognize that there are themes and definite rhythms in these atmospheric pieces. 

Adams, John Luther. songbirdsongs. Mode Records, 2009. 45:24 running time.

Stick Out Your Tongue by Ma Jian

Upon finishing the fifth of five stories in Stick Out Your Tongue by Chinese dissident Ma Jian, I was not sure that I would write a review. The book felt important, but I did not know what to say. The stories are so strange and disturbing, and I was afraid I'd write something foolish. Maybe I still will. Then I read the Afterward by Ma Jian telling about the writing and banning of these stories in China. It took overnight, but I think I understand.

Ma Jian took a trip to Tibet in 1985 that shocked him. He had expected to find gentle people and enlightenment but instead found gray poverty and ignorance. The country had been under the control of Chinese Communists for over thirty years, and much that was beautiful had been suppressed or chased away. He wrote these stories that were accepted by Chinese literary magazines and then was luckily out of the country when they were published. They were only translated into English in 2006.

All of the stories have settings that feel ancient and timeless into which modernity invades. In "The Woman and the Blue Sky," the narrator mentions that he arrived in the province by army truck, but then he becomes a wanderer, walking through valley and villages, looking to witness a Tibetan sky funeral. In "The Smile of Lake Drolmula," a son back from two years of school in Beijing wanders hopelessly trying to find his nomadic family. In the fifth story, "The Initiation," the Buddhist monks must be those who remain in Tibet after the Chinese takeover, practicing a corrupt religion.

After both the first and second stories, and even in points mid-story, I considered closing Stick Out Your Tongue, but I persisted. I had heard praise for the stories, which were fascinatingly filled with strange cultural details, and saw that the time investment was short. I am glad I did get to the end, as the pieces make more sense together. I am left with a justifiable sense of horror. It is no wonder they are banned in China.

Ma Jian. Stick Out Your Tongue. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. 93p. ISBN 0374269882.

ARRT Whole Collection Reader's Advisor Program Wrap Up

Thanks to everyone at today's ARRT Whole Collection Reader's Advisory Program at the Deerfild (IL) Public Library for your warmth and great suggestions. Many of you had splendid ideas about how to advance the cause of connecting materials from all areas of the library (and beyond) and getting them into the hands of readers/listeners/viewers.

Thanks also to the participants who suggested books for my reading. I have a copy of Summer and Bird by Katherine Catmull is hand and have placed a hold for Beware the Tufted Duck by Lydia Adamson. I think that I will enjoy both. The prospects are promising.

For those who were not there, let me report that I shared a panel with Joyce Saricks (author of many books and general cheerleader for RA) and Nanette Donohue of the Champaign (IL) Public Library. Melissa Stoeger of Deerfield Public Library moderated. We had a lively discussion and then each presented a sample topic to show how library materials in many formats can be joined for readers' advisory promotion. Joyce took on Adventure, Nanette spoke about Urban Lit, and I featured items for bird lovers. It was privileged to share the spotlight.

ARRT will soon have copies of the presentations on its website.

The Birders Kit: A Display for Integrated Advisory Service

On Thursday, August 22, I will be part of an Adult Reading Round Table panel discussing integrated advisory service in public libraries at the Deerfield (IL) Public Library. The concept is that librarian know more than books and are ready to help clients with DVDs, music, magazines, or whatever else may give them pleasure.

To illustrate how a librarian could help a client with a specific interest get a variety of items in various forms, I have created a slideshow called The Birder's Kit. The aspect ratios for a couple images are a bit distorted, but you can see the slideshow via Google Drive.

The following is a long list of items related to birds from which I made the slideshow. The list has a bit more than the slideshow for some topics.

Field Guides

Peterson's Field Guide to Birds of North America by Roger Tory Peterson

The Sibley Guide to Birds by David Allen Sibley

National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America by Jon L. Dunn and Jonathan Alderfer

The Crossley ID Guide by Richard Crossley

Birds of Illinois by Sheryl DeVore, Steven D. Bailey, and Gregory Kennedy

Bird Feathers: A Guide to North American Species by S. David Scott and Casey McFarland

Travel Guides

Illinois Bird Watching: A Year Long Guide

Global Birding: Traveling the World in Search of Birds by Les Beletsky

Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes by Peter Matthiessen

Photography 

Atlas of Rare Birds by Dominic Couzens

Bird Watch: A Survey of the Planet Earth's Changing Ecosystems by Martin Walters 

Earth Flight: Breathtaking Photographs from a Bird's-eye View of the World by John Downer

Egg & Nest by Rosamund Purcell, Lennea S. Hall, and Rene Corado

Owls by Marianne Taylor

Poetry

Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds edited by Billy Collins

Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays by Mary Oliver

Biography

John James Audubon: The Making of an American by Richard Rhodes

Life List: A Woman's Quest for the World's Most Amazing Birds by Olivia Gentile

Roger Tory Peterson: A Biography by Douglas Carlson

Memoirs

The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds by Julie Zickefoose

Corvus: A Life with Birds by Esther Woolfson

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

Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Story of an Owl and His Girl by Stacey O'Brien

Children's Books

Even an Ostrich Needs a Nest: Where Birds Begin by Irene Kelly

Mythical Birds and Beasts from Many Lands by Margaret Mayo

Pale Male: Citizen Hawk of New York City by Janet Schulman

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr

Novels

Beware the Butcher Bird by Lydia Adamson

The Bird Catcher by Laura Jacobs

Bird's Eye View by J. F. Freedman

A Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson

High Island Blues by Ann Cleeves

Snapper by Brian Kimberling

Essays

Songs to Birds: Essays by Jake Page

Farther Away by Jonathan Franzen (Not all of the essays are about birds, but a birder wouldn't want to miss the ones that are.)

Magazines

Audubon

Bird Talk

Birds & Blooms

Wildbird

Audiobooks

The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession by Mark Obmascik

Moonbird: A Year on the Wind with the Great Survivor B95 by Phillip M. Hoose

NPR Sound Treks: Birds

Bird Guides on CD

Birding by Ear: Eastern Central (Peterson Field Guide)

Music CDs

Firebird Suite by Igor Stravinsky

Flute Concerto in D, RV 428 "The Goldfinch" by Antonio Vivaldi

Organ Concerto "Cuckoo and the Nightingale" by George Frideric Handel

Songbirdsongs by John Luther Adams

Movies on DVDs

The Big Year (Steve Martin, Jack Black, Owen Wilson)

Fly Away Home (Jeff Daniels, Anna Paquin)

Hoot (Luke Wilson)

The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock)

Documentaries on DVD

March of the Penguins

Winged Migration

Wings of Life

TV on DVD

Extraordinary Birds (PBS Nature)

John James Audubon Drawn from Nature

Life of Birds (BBC series by David Attenborough)

My Life as a Turkey (PBS Nature)

Secret Life of Birds (BBC)

Apps

Audubon Birds $9.99

Audubon Birds of Central Park (free)

iBird Yard $2.99

Peterson Birds $14.95

Peterson Backyard Birds (free)

Sibley eGuide to the Birds of North America LITE (free)

Podcasts

Birdnotes with Dwight Davis (free)

BirdTalk Radio by Wild Birds Unlimited (free)

Laura Erickson's For the Birds (free)

Ray Brown's Talkin' Birds (free)

This Birding Life/Bird Watchers Digest (free)

Websites

Cornell Lab of Ornithology 

IBC: The Internet Bird Collection

Illinois Audubon Society

Triple Play: items in three formats by the same authors

"Birds of Paradise" National Geographic (December 2012)

Winged Seduction: Birds of Paradise (National Geographic Channel DVD)

Birds of Paradise: Revealing the World's Most Extraordinary Birds by Tim Laman and Edwin Scholes

Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis by Rober M. Edsel

War has always left death and destruction in its wake, but advances in weapons technology and transportation made World War II particularly horrific. Whole cities were flattened and burned by the air forces of Allied and Axis countries. Civilians died in staggering numbers. Understandably, the fate of centuries of art was of little concern to many people who were trying to survive, but a few Allied leaders thought that saving art could foster goodwill, peace, and prosperity in the post-war world. The great paintings and sculptures symbolized shared cultural achievements and were the pride of their nations. With the support of President Roosevelt and General Eisenhower, a branch of the U.S. Army known as Monuments Men were ordered to do what they could to save masterworks of art and architecture. They faced a very great challenge when Allied forces began a campaign to liberate Italy. Robert M. Edsel tells the story in Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis.

If the words "Monuments Men" seems familiar to you, you have either heard of Edsel's previous book The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History or the upcoming movie of the same name starring Matt Damon and George Clooney, which is based on Edsel’s book. Saving Italy is a continuation of that story, focusing on efforts to protect the art of Naples, Venice, Rome, Pisa, and Florence. The complicating factor was that the Germans were allies of the Italians and could not steal art as blatantly there as in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, despite Mussolini’s disregard for art. At times there were partisan Italians, Allied agents, and two factions from the German military vying to gain control of displaced paintings, sculptures, pottery, jewelry, and rare books.

Saving Italy is filled with fascinating characters, including dueling American art experts Deane Keller and Fred Hartt, conflicted Nazi S.S. Commander General Karl Wolf, and the unflappable American spymaster Allen Dulles. The fate of paintings and sculptures by Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael, Leonardo, Botticelli, and many other masters was in their hands. I listened to Saving Italy read skillfully by Edoardo Ballerini and found it an exciting read from which I learned much about World War II in Italy.

Edsel, Robert M. Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis. Norton, 2013. 454p. ISBN 9780393082418.

Recorded Books, 2013. 10 compact discs. ISBN 9781470371296.

The DiMaggios: Three Brothers, Their Passion for Baseball, Their Pursuit of the American Dream by Tom Clavin

While I was reading The Inventor and the Tycoon by Edward Ball, I was also reading The DiMaggios: Three Brothers, Their Passion for Baseball, Their Pursuit of the American Dream by Tom Clavin. I mention this because both are to some extent San Francisco stories, especially in their early chapters, and both authors describe the city and its inhabitants, many of whom came from the East Coast or abroad. Though set half a century apart (with a little overlap), both stories feature people restarting their lives, trying through hard work to prosper.

Sicilian fisherman Giuseppe DiMaggio arrived in California in 1898 and then in 1902 brought his wife Rosalie and one child born in Sicily to Martinez, a town northeast of San Francisco. From there they started a large family and eventually moved into San Francisco, where to Giuseppe's initial horror, three of his sons became baseball players. Little did the father know that his sons' success at sports would bring the family a fortune and fame.

As the book jacket states, The DiMaggios is about the three sons Vince, Joe, and Dominic, their baseball careers, and their complicated relationships. It also includes a surprisingly full portrait of Red Sox outfielder Ted Williams, who like the brothers began his baseball career in the highly competitive Pacific Coast League. Williams becomes Joe's greatest baseball rival while becoming Dominic's close almost-brotherly friend. The fifth focus in the book is on young actress Marilyn Monroe and her short marriage to Joe.

Aimed primarily at sports readers, the book includes descriptions of important games, accounts of seasons, and statistics. That all fades away in the latter chapters as the brothers deal with their lives after baseball and the continuing dynamics of the DiMaggio family. Here the author has unpleasant myths to dispel about Joe, and he does satisfactorily. Still, many readers will form strong opinions about the conduct of the brothers and judge who was more loyal. The DiMaggios should be considered for book discussions that enjoy discussing complicated characters.

Clavin, Tom. The DiMaggios: Three Brothers, Their Passion for Baseball, Their Pursuit of the American Dream. Ecco, 2013. 320p. ISBN 9780062183774.

Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times by Jennifer Worth

Most of the British television series that Bonnie and I have watched over the last several decades seem to be based or inspired by books. That holds true with the recent import Call the Midwife, of which two seasons have aired on PBS. As often is the case, the original book, Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times (first published in Britain in 2002), has proved worth reading.

I wondered how faithful I would find the adaptation to television and am pleased to report it is most definitely in the spirit. Most of the nuns, nurses, and other characters are recognizable, except for Cynthia who seems almost totally opposite of her portrayal on television and for Jennifer's admirer Jimmy who is rowdier and more trouble in the book than the sweet young man on the screen. The book also includes a cook at the Nonnatus House who spars frequently with the caretaker Fred; she could have added nicely to the show.

Viewers turned readers will find more stories in the book than were worked into the television series and less emphasis on the profiling of the nuns and nurses, except for Sister Monica Joan, who merits several chapters. Of course, you learn much about the author, for it is her voice telling the story, but the focus is usually on the pregnant women who need the wives service.

I see most libraries are shelving Call the Midwife with pregnancy books at Dewey 618.2. I hope the book is not lost there after the TV series fades from public memory, for it is about much more than childbirth. It is a vivid portrait of the East End of London during the late 1950s and early 1960s and should not be missed by readers interested in that time and place. I think the book and the series can be viewed in either order. Neither should be missed.

Worth, Jennifer. Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times. Penguin Books, 2012. 340p. ISBN 9780143123255.

The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures by Edward Ball

At the heart of this complicated story was a simple question. When horses ran, did they always have at least one foot on the ground, or were there points at which horses were airborne? Former governor of California Leland Stanford was certain that he saw all of his racehorses' feet off the ground at points in their races. Fellow horse owners disagreed. Stanford was certain and wanted proof, so he turned to a photographer who was in his hire and demanded evidence. Edward Muybridge initially said that he could not produce such a photo, but Stanford persisted, and in 1872 at Standford's expense, Muybridge built an array of cameras with trip wires at the former governor's stables in Palo Alto. On glass plates covered with a special fast emulsion that he concocted Muybridge caught the desired images. More than a bet was settled. Putting the series of photos together in a projector that he invented, using tricks learned from magic lantern shows, Muybridge started the motion picture industry.

How Stanford and Muybridge came to California, how Stanford helped Muybridge beat a murder accusation, and what became of them afterwards is the subject of Edward Ball's fascinating dual biography The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures. I remembered the author from his excellent books Slaves in the Family and The Sweet Hell Inside. As he did in those books, Ball brings the world of the 19th century into sharp focus in his latest book.

Ball also shows how some men reinvent themselves in pursuit of dreams. Muybridge is an almost perfect example for a discussion of ever changing characters. He was born Edward James Muggeridge in England in 1830. By the time of his death in 1904, he had also been known as Edward Muygridge, Eduardo Santiago Muybridge, Helios, and finally Eadweard Muybridge. He had lived in London, New York, outside Milwaukee, Paris, Guatemala, and San Francisco, and had been a bookseller, banker, photographer, and inventor. Stanton had been a farmer, grocer, governor, and railroad tycoon, and is a prime example of a powerful man who never finds happiness. He is now most remembered for establishing Stanford University as a memorial to his son.

Readers will go many places and through much of the 19th century in The Inventor and the Tycoon. It is a trip worth taking.

Ball, Edward. The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures. Doubleday, 2013. 447p. ISBN 9780385525756.

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen

Louisa May Alcott's life continues to be rewritten, as scholars discover new facts about the author many years after her death in 1888. At the Houghton Library at Harvard University in the 1950s, a researcher looking at letters found that Alcott had written pulp stories under the name A. M. Barnard. More recently, medical experts have discounted the theory that mercury given to treat pneumonia contracted during while nursing Civil War soldiers caused Alcott's poor health over the last half of her life. After reading her journals and letters and seeing a painting in which the artist put a slight butterfly pattern across her face, they think she may have had lupus erythematosus. According to Harriett Reisen in Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women, scholars are also still seeking missing genre stories that Alcott wrote before her great success with novels for children.

What continued to impress me as I read through this biography of Alcott was how she was connected to many of the leading figures of the mid-19th century American literature. In early life, she knew Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, and abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown. It would not be possible for most young women growing up in poverty to have met all of these people. But the Alcott brand of poverty was a strange condition born of her father's attempts to live a pure life, untainted by owning property, trying to shape a new society from an old order that resisted his ideas. He had followers, but his Utopian experiments always failed, leaving his family hungry and sometimes homeless until friends and rich relatives offered help.

Reisen's lively biography of Alcott is a companion to the documentary shown on PBS's American Masters, for which Reisen wrote the script. It is an entertaining read for anyone who has read Alcott's books or who enjoys 19th century history and biography.

Reisen, Harriet. Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. Henry Holt and Company, 2009. 362p. ISBN 9780805082999.

11 compact discs. Tantor Audio. ISBN 9781400144457

The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People by Neil Shubin

Joni Mitchell was right when she sang "We are stardust ..." in her song "Woodstock." According to University of Chicago professor Neil Shubin in his recent book The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People, the human body is composed of elements that were forged by the stars. There had been a point when there was only hydrogen, helium, and lithium. The process took billions of years, and it may have been only five to ten million years ago that the right elements in the right quantities under the right conditions allowed our species, or at least its predecessors, to evolve on earth. No knowing about elsewhere. 

So what contributed to our appearance on earth? Our solar system had to absorb stellar matter, form spheres, and establish orbits, and the earth had to stabilize with a temperature in a receptive range for life. We need to thank Jupiter and its gravitational pull for keeping us viable. Warm water had to foster the growth of single cell organisms, some of which had to develop photosynthesis to build up available oxygen reserves for a great variety of spiny and spineless creatures to evolve and spread over the planet. There were many other contributing factors. Even the break up of the super continent was necessary to get the balance of elements right. 

Shubin has written popular science before. His Your Inner Fish was awarded best book of the year by the National Academy of the Sciences in 2009. The Universe Within expands on the themes he introduced in that book, starting with the Big Bang and ending with the age of DNA research. He tells a great story with many interesting characters, some of them human. Look for it in libraries with the earth sciences books. 

Shubin, Neil. The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People. Pantheon Books, 2013. 225p. ISBN 9780307378439.

Topsy: The Startling Story of the Crooked Tailed Elephant, PT. Barnum, and the American Wizard, Thomas Edison by Michael Daly

Topsy: The Startling Story of the Crooked Tailed Elephant, PT. Barnum, and the American Wizard, Thomas Edison by Michael Daly presented my biggest challenge to reviewing books for Booklist so far.

My difficulty with Topsy was the author's unrelenting depiction of 19th century American corruption and cruelty. The entertainment entrepreneurs who ran circuses and amusements cheated employees, customers, and retailers without remorse. Newspapers pandered to the grand and insincere pronouncements of the circus barons, and the public bought up the papers and rushed to the shows whenever they came to town. Rough criminals followed the circuses to towns, where they picked pockets and stole laundry from clothes lines while families attended shows. Police were paid off to look the other way. There is rarely an honest or kind person in Topsy.

Worst of all, almost everyone abused the animals. Most elephant trainers were ill-paid, alcoholic men who seemed to hate the animals; they seemed to enjoy beating animals that did not follow commands. The circus masters turned a blind eye. The elephants were often chained together and unprotected from heckling crowds. Drunks gave them drinks of beer and whisky. Gangs of boys offered apples laced with hot peppers. The abuse went on and on. I started dreading what I might find when I turned a page. 

When researchers for Edison and Westinghouse began animal tests of electrocutions, I knew where the author was leading.

I would not have finished the book if I had not had an obligation to Booklist and its readers. Regardless of how uncomfortable I felt reading, Topsy tells a story that needs to be told. Here is a book to counter the idea that our country was a much better place in the past.

Daly, Michael. Topsy: The Startling Story of the Crooked Tailed Elephant, PT. Barnum, and the American Wizard, Thomas Edison. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2013. ISBN 9780802119049.

Paul Fusco: RFK by Paul Fusco

I remember the day, June 8, 1968, sitting in front of a black and white television in Texas, watching a slow moving train carrying the body of Robert Kennedy from New York to Washington, DC, for internment near his brother at Arlington National Cemetery. The funeral train was many hours behind schedule, slowed in the interest of safety of the people lining the route. Already there had been an accident in which two had died, struck by a train that they did not see on another line.

I remember mostly helicopter views of the train as I watched the TV coverage. As Walter Cronkite and others spoke, cameras must have also shown people waiting along the tracks and more people waiting in Washington for the procession. All in black and white. I do not remember seeing what Look photographer Paul Fusco saw from his perch on the train - hundreds of thousands, maybe a million people standing by the tracks, on top of cars, on walls, out windows, and in fields. Many of his colorful photos are now published in Paul Fusco: RFK.

Turning the pages of Paul Fusco: RFK, you will see 1968 America. If you are old enough, you may see yourself, or someone much like you, among the people black and white, young and old, holding babies, offering flowers, taking photos with a variety of cameras. On page 111, in front of a red bicycle with a banana seat, is a slightly out-of-focus boy wearing black glasses and a shiny watch. That looks like me. To his left (our right) is another boy, who looks much like my friend Pete Midkiff. Did they ride the bike together?

Looking at the people, you can tell they came for different reasons, for they display a wide range of emotions. Some are waving cheerfully to whoever is waving from the train, which was loaded with Kennedy's family, friends, and supporters and many dignitaries (who were also displaying a wide range of emotions, according to the text). Some were obviously in mourning or shocked. As the daylight failed and the train entered the city, the images become blurred and confusing, which seems fitting for the day.

Paul Fusco: RFK is the third and most comprehensive of Fusco's books about that day, including 120 photos, as well as essays by Norman Mailer, Evan Thomas, and Vicki Goldberg. Fusco wrote an Afterword that helps explain his work. Allow two or three hours to look through this moving book.

Fusco, Paul. Paul Fusco: RFK. Aperture, n.d. 223p. ISBN 9781597110792.

Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was the fifteenth of seventeen children of Josiah Franklin. The last of the children was his sister Jane Franklin (1712-1794), of whom little has ever been written. Unlike her famous brother, she spent almost her entire life in Boston dealing with family matters and making soap. She was married at age 15 to Edward Mecom, who proved to be a poor provider and unstable character. He eventually landed in debtor's prison, losing the family home, forcing Jane to move with their children in with her parents. Many of their children and grandchildren also proved to be sickly or unstable, and the industrious Jane outlived most of them. We would know nothing about her today if it were not for her life-long correspondence with her brother Benjamin. Using their remaining letters, noted historian Jill Lepore has written about Jane in The Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin.

Readers might expect an eighteenth century woman of limited means, education, and travel not to be noteworthy. Not Jane. She borrowed books and newspapers and stayed informed about colonial affairs, always watching for news of her brother. He sent her numerous books that she read and sometimes critiqued in her letters back to him. Though not in position to meet and correspond with wealthy women, such as Abigail Adams and Martha Washington, she expressed some of their common concerns. She too thought that the Continental Congress and the writers of the Constitution should, as Adams said to her husband, "consider the ladies."

Because most of what we know of Jane Franklin comes from the Benjamin Franklin sources, Book of Ages is primarily about their relationship. Though he assisted her on numerous occasions, directing his business partners to transfer rental properties to her, readers may wish that he had done more to help. With communications and transportation so slow, the brother and sister were sometimes out of touch for years when she could have used him. Her survival through some really hard times is a testament to her tenacity.

Book of Ages may look like a really big book about a relatively unknown character, but readers will find that nearly half the volume is the appendix with its notes, genealogies, a calendar of letters, and a description of Jane's library collection. Much of this is worth reading after finishing the main text.

I was lucky enough to get a copy of an uncorrected proof of Book of Ages at the American Library Association's Carnegie Awards ceremony, where Lepore's was a finalist for her wonderful book The Mansion of Happiness. Book of Ages will be in libraries and bookstores in October.

Lepore, Jill. Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin. Knopf, October, 2013. 480p. ISBN 9780307958341.

Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier

The first thing that Ian Frazier tells us in Travels in Siberia is that Siberia is not and has never been a well-defined place. It was never an official state of any kind. It is an idea - a really big idea burdened with myths. It is believed by many to be a desolate, forbidding, unforgiving region, frozen in time forever - a place to which people are banished. All of this is true but that is not all that there is to say. Frazier in his numerous trip to and through the fabled region of Russia also found magic.

At the heart of his book is one long trip across Russia from St. Petersburg in the west to the Pacific port of Vladivostok in the east with two guides, Sergei and Volodya, in an unreliable van. Though Frazier had an advance for a magazine article, he was on a tight budget and the trio slept in tents much of the time. He had not allowed for expensive van repairs either. At one point when the tailpipe fell off, Sergei opportunely walked along the littered highway until he found a suitable replacement. After a few twists of wire, a serviceable repair was made and the trip continued. There were many other auto problems, which strained the mood of the companions.

Away from cities much of the time, the roads were rough broken pavement or gravel. To cross some rivers they loaded the van onto ferries. Through one marshy region without any passable road, they drove into a boxcar and rode in semi-darkness for over 24 hours. During six weeks, they met many people, visited historical sites, and fought many mosquitoes. A very well-traveled man, Frazier said he had never seen mosquitoes as plentiful as in Siberia.

In Travels in Siberia, Frazier also recounts several shorter visits, the last being three-week winter trip because all of the others had been hot summer trips. It was only on the last trip that he finally visited a prison camp and drove across frozen lakes and rivers.

Despite the hardships, Frazier, being a great fan of Russian history and literature, remains optimistic to the end of the book. Readers will find him good company, much in the way of Bill Bryson. They may also discover urges to read about the Decembrists, the many czars of Russia, Aleksandr Pushkin, and Siberian energy reserves. If the hardcover book looks daunting, try Frazier's audiobook. He is a great narrator and will keep you well entertained.

Frazier, Ian. Travels in Siberia. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. 529p. ISBN 9780374278724.

16 compact discs. Macmillan Audio, 2010. ISBN 9781427210531.

Between Heaven and Earth: Birds in Ancient Egypt edited by Rozenn Bailleul-LeSuer

I had the pleasure a couple of weeks ago of seeing an exhibit at the Oriental Institute Museum in Chicago for a second time. It is called Between Heaven and Earth: Birds in Ancient Egypt, and it displays artifacts from the Oriental Institute with a few select items borrowed from other Chicago museums and one coffin for an ibis from the Brooklyn Museum. Everything in the show which ends at the end of this month relates to the role of birds in Ancient Egypt culture. Among the items are bird mummies, statues, reproductions of wall paintings, vases and other pottery, furniture, and a 5000 year old ostrich egg.

I was so impressed at my first viewing of the special exhibit that I bought the catalog, Between Heaven and Earth: Birds in Ancient Egypt edited by Rozenn Bailleul-LeSuer. The first half of this attractive publication is a collection of short papers about the roles of birds along the Nile River. The last half shows and explains all the items in the exhibit.

One role of birds in Ancient Egypt was as food, as the river attracted great flocks of water fowl. After fish, birds were the second most popular source of protein in the Egyptian diet. In the collection is a wall painting of a royal person hunting birds with a throwstick, an actual 3500 year old throwstick, and another painting showing ducks and geese being herded and caged for sale. Eating was not, however, the Egyptians only concern. They were interested in nature, and everywhere they looked there were birds, especially every spring and fall during the great migrations between Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. Many of these birds whose species can still be identified were depicted in Egyptian art works.

But there is more. Egyptians believed their gods took the forms of birds and some birds, because they could fly, served as messengers between earth and heaven. Falcons, ibises, storks, vultures, and owls figure in myths and even lend their shapes to hieroglyphs. There are 54 recognized bird hieroglyphs and another 8 of bird parts, such as feathers and eggs.

There is so much more to say, but I should let you discover it through the catalog which is so beautifully illustrated. It is worth seeking out.

Between Heaven and Earth: Birds in Ancient Egypt. Oriental Institute Museum Publications 35, 2012. 232p. ISBN 9781885923929.

Still Looking: Essays on American Art by John Updike

With celebrity come privileges. I have to wonder how many publishers would be interested in a book like Still Looking: Essays on American Art if its author were not famous like John Updike. He was, however, having studied painting at the Ruskin School of Art before he became a famous writer. I am happy he had the background and the eminence because I enjoyed the book very much.

Like many books of essays by literary figures, Updike's collection of pieces spans several decades. Reporting on art exhibits that he visited, he described what he liked and did not, often including biographical profiles of artists and explaining their significance in art movements. From early in the book I enjoyed learning that he liked many of the same artists that I do. Feeling akin to Updike, I read essay after essay, even about artists I had not considered. I also enjoyed how beautifully the book is illustrated. Would writers with less influence have been able to get the publisher to acquire rights to so many works of art?

Still Looking includes an introduction to American art and 18 essays. Only the final piece, three pages on Andy Warhol, seems insubstantial. Most run 10 to 20 pages and include a dozen or more color images of major works discussed. My favorites were essays on American landscape painters, James McNeill Whistler, Childe Hassam, and Edward Hopper.

You do not have to like Updike novels to enjoy his essays. I have now reserved Just Looking, an earlier collection about European art.

Updike, John. Still Looking: Essays on American Art. Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. 222p ISBN 9781400044184.

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss by Edmund de Waal

This week all of my books feature art and artifacts: netsuke from Japan today, American painting and sculpture Wednesday, and Ancient Egyptian images of birds Friday.

I think I have a new sure-bet book to suggest to readers who ask me for something wonderful to read. Of course, they will probably not use the word "wonderful," but will somehow indicate that they are tired of settling for formulaic fiction or cookie-cutter memoirs. I will offer The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss by Edmund de Waal. Set in Tokyo, Odessa, Paris, and Vienna, this book recounts six generations of a Jewish family as its fortunes rose and fell with the tides of European history. Binding the threads of story together is the fate of a collection of netsuke, tiny Japanese carvings used to toggle small purses or bags. One of the netsuke is a small hare with yellow stones inlaid as eyes.

Even sure-bet books need a reader ready for them. I know I brought The Hare with Amber Eyes home once before, read two or three pages and decided it was too involved for my mood at that time. This time I borrowed the audiobook expertly read by Michael Maloney. I enjoyed having the epic story of the Ephrussi family, Russian grain merchants transformed into international bankers, wash over me as I drove, cooked, and worked in the garden.

In an interview, de Waal says that he tried to stay out of the story, but I am glad he failed. His descriptions of travels to see old family homes and to visit archives with family papers connects our time with the 19th and 20th centuries, and we get to feel what he felt when he made discoveries. I also enjoyed learning new words, such as netsuke, bibelot, and vitrine. The Hare with Amber Eyes is a richly-told story to enjoy if you are ready.

Libraries have many opportunities to promote de Waal's book. They can add The Hare with Amber Eyes to displays on Japanese art, art collecting, family history, Jewish history, Impressionist France, 20th century Austria, or World War II. They may want to pair it with the novels of Marcel Proust or the poetry of Rainer Marie Rilke, which figure in the telling of the Ephrussi family story.

De Waal, Edmund. The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010. 354p. ISBN 9780374105976.

The King of Infinite Space: Euclid and His Elements by David Berlinski

In high school, I never knew how ancient the proofs of geometry were. I worked with points, lines, and planes without feeling I was part of a continuum, enjoying how new the ideas of logic applied to shapes and spaces felt. Only years later did I read about Euclid and how for over 2000 years his axioms had been applied in mathematics, engineering, and philosophy.

According to David Berlinski in his book The King of Infinite Space: Euclid and His Elements, the writings of Euclid have held up very well, withstanding many who have tried to disprove his propositions. Only the parallel postulate from his book The Elements continues to trouble as no one has been able to definitively prove or disprove it. Euclidean geometry was the only geometry until the middle of the nineteenth century when non-Euclidean geometry rose to explain some phenomena not previously explained.

In picking up this small volume, I hoped to learn more about Euclid himself, but there is little to know. Like Shakespeare, it is his writing that has survived to inspire new generations of scholars, many of whom still swear by him. Though it has been many years since I studied geometry, I found I could follow most of the text of The King of Infinite Space and enjoyed puzzling about negative numbers, infinity, and our ability to test theories about real things on geometrical models. I had to use a dictionary to read several pages, but my vocabulary may expand from the effort.

Berlinski, David. The King of Infinite Space: Euclid and His Elements. Basic Books, 2013. 172p. ISBN 9780465014811.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

I have enjoyed improbably journey stories before. In the movie The Straight Story (1999), an elderly farmer from Iowa rides a small riding mower over 300 miles to Wisconsin to reconcile with his dying brother. In the BBC's mini-series The Missing Postman (1997), a retiring postman empties his last letter box and to protest against new letter-sorting equipment vows to deliver his last bag of letters by bicycle across Great Britain. Both of these stories mix humor and melancholy and feature aging men unhappy about the drift of their lives. I expected a similar situation in the novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. I was not disappointed.

I do not, however, want to suggest that The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is to be read for laughs. It is filled with delightful details, some of which are funny, but its hero Harold Fry is a complicated character with serious issues to address. His quest to walk across Britain to visit a dying friend will prove his making or breaking. Never predictable, the novel is continually entertaining and honest.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is Joyce's first novel after writing over 20 plays for BBC Radio. I hope she writes more. It was included in the long list for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction and has been read by many book clubs. It is widely available.

Joyce, Rachel. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Random House, 2012. 320p. ISBN 9780812993295.