Park Scientists: Gila Monsters, Geysers, and Grizzly Bears in America's Own Backyard by Mary Kay Carson and photographs by Tom Uhlman

America's National Parks were created to preserve wilderness and wildlife. To succeed in this mission, they have also become places of scientific inquiry, much of it being conducted by park scientists. Author Mary Kay Carson and photographer Tom Uhlman travelled to three of the country's national parks to meet "Scientists in the Field" and learn about their import work. They report in Park Scientists: Gila Monsters, Geysers, and Grizzly Bears in America's Own Backyard.

Their first reports focus on Yellowstone National Park, which stretches across a might volcanic caldera in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. Carson and Uhlman followed geologists who monitor the ever-changing eruptions of geysers on the western side of the park. Then they joined biologists who study the park's population of grizzly bears.

Saguaro National Park in Arizona was their second stop. Here they worked along side the scientists who study large lizards called Gila monsters before joining scientists and local students conducting a census of the park's saguaro, who may live up to 200 years.

Then they crossed the country to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which straddles Tennessee and North Carolina. After spending days with biologist Amy Luxbacher finding endangered salamanders in the park, they turned their attention to night-time research of Photinus carolinus, a rare type of firefly that blinks in sync with others of its kind, putting on amazing light shows.

Being a big kid who has been to two of the parks, I enjoyed learning more about the parks, the wildlife, and the people who work there. If I were a kid, I might be inspired to become a nature scientist. In any case, I would understand and learn to care about the conservation of the great places.

Carson, Mary Kay. Park Scientists: Gila Monsters, Geysers, and Grizzly Bears in America's Own Backyard. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. 76p. ISBN 9780547792682.

Kid Brady Stories and A Man of Means by P. G. Wodehouse

At the same time that a new author is taking up P. G. Wodehouse's characters (see Jeeves and the Wedding Bells), early Wodehouse works are being republished. In 2013, the Overlook Press put together Kid Brady Stories and A Man of Means, joining into one volume stories about two unlikely men, a street boy who becomes a champion boxer and a lowly bank clerk who becomes a multi-millionaire. These stories were all published in periodicals and later collected in books in 1907 and 1914. Together in a new volume, they humorously show us an Englishman's take on American initiative and social mobility.

The boy who becomes internationally known as boxer Kid Brady got his start as a errand boy at a gymnasium. When the proprietor asked what he could do, he answered "Anything," the properly optimistic American verbally-delivered resume. He made good on his promise in stories that must have drawn inspiration from dime-store novels of the time. Thankfully, Wodehouse supplied better than dime-store dialogue and description in his quickly-read stories.

Roland Bleke was a shy young man who seemed to get himself into situations by not being assertive. Readers first learn of him asking his employer to reduce his pay. If his slight savings declined, he hoped to discourage the young woman who had designs on marrying him. How he became wealthy without intention is quite comic. In the last story "The Hired Past," he hired a man-servant to help him escape another romantic entanglement, foreshadowing the later Bertie Wooster and Jeeves stories.

Wodehouse reflected the society of his time in racial and gender attitudes. Still, Kid Brady Stories and A Man of Means is good fun for Wodehouse fans and anyone interested the comic writings of early 20th century America.

Wodehouse, P. G. Kid Brady Stories and A Man of Means. Overlook Press, 2013. 206p. ISBN 9781468308334.

Levels of Life by Julian Barnes

In writing the novel Flaubert's Parrot, novelist Julian Barnes imagined grief felt by retired doctor Geoffrey Braithwait upon the death of his wife. According to Barnes, he never expected to be in the same position himself, assuming that his wife would survive him. But she died in 2008 very soon after her being diagnosed with cancer. In the third essay "The Loss of Depth" in Levels of Life, Barnes describes his grief, a reality much beyond anything he imagined for poor Braithwait.

The reviewer from the New York Times said that he wished that Barnes had only published the 56-page third essay, as it is so eloquent and powerful. It seemed to him the first two essays did not matter. I would disagree. I think their stories of amusing lightness followed by almost predictable tragedies set readers up well for the third essay. The two pieces (one true and the other fiction) give us memory in common with the author, and he draws from them in telling his own story of grief. We have shared an interest (if the two essay interest you) and are in a sense attune to the author. Their lightness makes the impact of the weighty third essay greater. 

Working in a library, observing the requests for Levels of Life, I saw a borrowing pattern much like that for The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. Having now read both, I see why. A book discussion on the pair might be very interesting.

Barnes, Julian. Levels of Life. Alfred A. Knopf, 2013. 128p. ISBN 9780385350778.

Books About Birds from the University of Texas Press

When I was in library school at the University of Texas, one of my classes toured the University of Texas Press. It had recently retooled, if I remember correctly, incorporating new automated technology. I remember huge metal plates for printing pages. It was the late 1970s, so I am sure much has changed since, but I was impressed. I did not at the time have the foresight to realize that many years later I would be reading many books published there.

Several years ago I read The Robin by Roland H. Wauer, which is in the Corrie Herring Hooks series of natural history books from the University of Texas Press. At the time, I noticed that there were other books to add to my to-read list. Now I am finally moving a few titles to my books-I've-read list.

The first I read this month was The Cardinal by June Osborne with photographs by Barbara Garland. Osborne describes the seasonal life of the easy-to-identify redbird, starting with January and progressing through the year. In the process, she tells how the species has flourished, much like the robin, as Americans altered the environment. Once the species was a southern bird but now it inhabits much of the U.S. and parts of Canada year round. This is after cardinals were threatened in the late 19th century by people trapping them for the caged bird trade. Luckily legislation in southern states and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 saved them.

While 19th century Americans people caged cardinals for their beauty, they caged the mostly drab northern mockingbird for its song. According to Robin W. Doughty in his The Mockingbird, the master mimic has benefited from human migration as much as the cardinal. The northern mockingbird was also once a southern bird but now is found across much of the United States and has been found in Canada. It is the only member of its genus in the United States; there are 7 to 9 other species (depending on how you define the species) in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. My Texas friends will enjoy this book as much of the described field work was in that state.

I have started reading Return of the Whooping Crane, which is also by Robin W. Doughty and published at the press. I had intended to describe it here, but it is a longer book and deserves much more attention. Look for a review in an upcoming post.

As I get more serious about birding, I may be turning to more titles from the University of Texas Press. Some are a couple decades old and apparently out of print, but they are provide good basic descriptions, insightful history, and colorful photos. They may still in many library collections.

Osborne, June. The Cardinal. University of Texas Press, 1992. 108p. ISBN 0292711476.

Doughty, Robin W. The Mockingbird. University of Texas Press, 1988. 80p. ISBN 0292750994.

I Work at a Public Library: A Collection of Crazy Stories - from the Stacks by Gina Sheridan

I see and hear some strange things working at a public library. So does Gina Sheridan, as she tells us in I Work at a Public Library: A Collection of Crazy Stories - from the Stacks. I was once asked for "actual true photos from future space colonies." Similarly, Sheridan has been asked for an actual autobiography by a dragon. I denied an odd request to load strange software on public computers from a man who would not reveal his name because he was fleeing his evil mother. Sheridan was approached by a self-revealing undercover cop who seems to have told her so she would not tell others. I could probably recall a few more strange stories, but I could never match Sheridan. She has far more stories to tell.

The trick with telling library stories is confidentiality. As librarians, we have an obligation to respect our clients' right to privacy. Adhered to strictly, we could tell no stories at all, but it seems that we need to tell some stories. We need others to help us understand what we have said and done so we can do better or to tell us we did okay. We sometimes need to prepare our colleagues for encounters they may have. We also need to describe the nature of our work for the benefit of the profession. What better way than through true stories - with identifying details removed.

Most of Sheridan's stories will never be pinned on specific library users, as she recounts little other than dialogue in many cases. The exception is the stories in the chapter "598.2 Rare Birds," which focuses on one unique woman, whom a few people at one of Sheridan's former libraries may identify. Sheridan told Cuckoo Carol that she would be in her book, and Carol did not object.

At first glance, I Work at a Public Library seems mere entertainment, but I think it could be used in classes and workshops for librarians learning how to cope with the hazards of public service. It would be interesting to hear students and veterans describe how they would have handled these strange situations.

It warms my heart to find Sheridan included an index. So few books have indexes these days.

If there is ever a Librarians' Old Folks Home, copies of I Work at a Public Library should be stocked in the check-it-out-yourself library to prompt the old librarians to tell their stories. I'm sure they saw and heard some pretty strange things at their libraries.

Sheridan, Gina. I Work at a Public Library: A Collection of Crazy Stories - from the Stacks. Adams Media, 2014. 157p. ISBN 9781440576249.

My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead

These were my questions before I listened to My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead, read by Kate Reading:

Would I find a book about a woman's relationship to a single book interesting?

How much of Middlemarch by George Eliot would I remember?

Despite reading several strong reviews and hearing another on National Public Radio, I wondered if My Life in Middlemarch could retain my interest through eight audio discs. The topic seemed rather narrow. I need not have worried. The subject matter as presented is broader than it first appears. I would estimate Mead's book is 45 percent about George Eliot, 35 percent about the characters and events in Middlemarch, and 20 percent about Mead herself. Of course, it is all tied together in such a way that any one paragraph or even sentence could be about all three. The story keeps turning and evolving so that specific topics are fresh. I never wavered in my desire to keep listening.

It has been a long time since I read Middlemarch - obviously before I started a spreadsheet of my reading in 1990 (unless I somehow neglected to enter the book). I also saw the 1994 BBC miniseries twenty years ago. I only remember Patrick Malahide in the role of the cold Reverend Edward Casaubon. Until I looked up the credits, I could not name any others from the cast, though I now see numerous actors that I recognize. Thinking that I remembered little, I wondered whether discussion about the characters would make any sense to me. Again, I need not have worried. Mead introduces the characters through descriptions that stimulate memory. (I don't know how it would be for someone who has no knowledge of Middlemarch.) I remembered much more than I would have thought.

The surprise for me was that the book is about George Eliot more than anything else. At least, that is what I take from My Life in Middlemarch. I think it serves as an entertaining introduction to the 19th century author's life, coming from a scholarly admirer, tempered but still passionate in admiration. I now want to read or listen again to the novels of Eliot. I only see Silas Marner on my spreadsheet. That does not seem right. Surely I have read more. It has been too long.

Mead, Rebecca. My Life in Middlemarch. Crown Publishers, 2014. 293p. ISBN 9780307984760.

Audiobook: Blackstone Audio, 2014. 8 compact discs. ISBN 9781482973532.

Something Out There: Stories by Nadine Gordimer

The late author Nadine Gordimer was thorn in the side of the apartheid government of South Africa for decades. It banned three of her novels about the daily lives of people on both sides of the color bar from publication. Known and respected internationally, however, she was difficult to silence. The world read Gordimer, and she was award a Nobel Prize for Literature.

During the apartheid years, Gordimer produced a constant stream of short stories. Among the best was "Something Out There," a 1980s tale of a Johannesburg suburb living with the knowledge that a wild animal is stalking its pets and raiding its gardens at night. Is it a big cat or some sort of ape? A boy takes a picture of something in a tree that may be the long-toothed creature. everyone is nervous, including a cell of rebels planning an operation against the government. At 86 pages, the tension-filled "Something Out There" could almost be called a novella and may take a couple of sittings to read.

In contrast, most of the other stories in her collection Something Out There: Stories are short and quickly read. Not all are set in South Africa, but most are. Collectively, they paint a stark picture of the cities, townships, and outback of the country that was boycotted by so many individuals and other countries during the 1970s and 1980s. The stories give readers born in the 1980s and later a look at the world before the fall of the Berlin Wall, breakup of the Soviet Union, and release from prison of Nelson Mandela.

Gordimer, Nadine. Something Out There: Stories. Viking, 1984. 203p. ISBN 0670656607.

My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business: A Memoir by Dick Van Dyke

About half way through listening to My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business by Dick Van Dyke, I wondered what would come next. I was pretty sure that I had seen Van Dyke in something after the original Dick Van Dyke Show and Mary Poppins, but I could not say what. I thought reading about years of his not being in the public eye might be interesting. To my surprise I learned that he has always been a busy showbiz man. I have no idea why the word "Out" is in the title of his book. He seemed to always have a new entertainment project.

Being a Boomer who watched a lot of television in the 1960s and very little after that, I naturally enjoyed the first part of the book the most. Van Dyke tells about growing up in Danville, Illinois, working odd jobs (he was a terrible shoe salesman), and heading to California to comically lip-sync popular songs in night clubs. Getting a radio show in Atlanta led to getting another in New Orleans where he was noticed and then hired by CBS who had no idea what to do with him. As I heard on the audiobook, it all works out splendidly after a few morning wake up shows and lots of car problems.

Van Dyke reads his own book, but it sounds more like he is just telling us what he's been up to. Early on he promises "no dirt" and keeps that promise by 21st century standards. He does, however, bring up topics that would have been edited out if he had written in the 1960s. He is lighthearted even when being frank. He is a good storyteller, and fans will enjoy hearing details of the productions of his famous shows and about his crossing paths with many of his colleagues in later life. My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business was a good companion to a lot of weekend gardening.

Van Dyke, Dick. My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business: A Memoir. Crown Archetype, 2011. 278p. ISBN 9780307592231.

audiobook: Books on Tape, 2011. 6 CDs. ISBN 9780307914323.

The Mayflower Compact by Jamie Kallio

On Wednesday, I reviewed Written in Bone by Sally M. Walker, a book for youth about the Jamestown and St. Mary's colonies. I had ancestors in both. Let's move north along the Atlantic Coast to Plymouth Colony today, where I had some other ancestors. Jamie Kallio, a librarian who used to work with us at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library and now works for the Orland Park Public Library has written The Mayflower Compact, a volume in the Foundations of Our Nation series for ABDO Publishing Company.

Jamie, who has long expressed a love of history, introduces the subject of American democracy in this book aimed at 3rd through 6th grade readers. She sets the stage by telling about the Pilgrims sailing across the Atlantic and how they arrived in America hundreds of miles away from their destination of the Virginia Colony. Recognizing that they were not keeping to the charter that they had been given by the Crown by remaining in what became New England, the Pilgrims and the Strangers wrote the Mayflower Compact in 1620, creating the first representative government in North America.

The title seems a bit narrower than the actual content of the book, as Jamie also tells us about life in the Plymouth Colony and adds an account of the war with the Wamponoag in 1674-1676. She notes that the Mayflower Compact was terminated by the incorporation of the Plymouth Colony into the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691. Jamie includes a timeline, a glossary, and questions for student research. The Mayflower Compact is a useful primer for elementary students or even for adults looking for the basic facts in an understandable context.

Jamie is continuing to write nonfiction for children. I look forward to seeing her just published books about Virginia and Alabama, as well as another about the immigration station on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay.

Kallio, Jamie. The Mayflower Compact. ABDO Publishing Company, 2013. 48p. ISBN 9781617837111.

Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland by Sally M. Walker

Laura in the Youth Services Department at Thomas Ford Memorial Library grew up in Maryland. When I mentioned that I took a trip to St. Mary's County in Maryland to do some family history research, she suggested that I read Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland by Sally M. Walker. A day or two later in the lunch room, Uma, head of the Youth Services Department, saw that I was reading a Sally M. Walker book. She said that Walker is a well-known author of nonfiction for youth and that our library usually buys her books. A lot of hands touched the book before it landed in my hands, for which I am grateful.

Reading Written in Bone is much like watching an episode of Nova on our local PBS station. Walker shows in pictures and explains through text the work and findings of forensic archaeologists uncovering burial sites in two of our country's original English colonies. Her reporting is on the spot down in the dirt. You can almost feel the Chesapeake heat and humidity as the archaeologists brush the soil from the bones of individuals who died in the 17th and early 18th centuries. Better yet, you get to witness how they examine evidence to learn how the early settlers lived and died.

Looking at our library's catalog of books, I see that Walker has written books at various grade levels. I am attracted to two titles similar to Written Bone. Frozen Secrets recounts Antarctic exploration, and Secrets of a Civil War Submarine uncovers another a bit of American history. I am glad to be a big kid set loose in the children's book collection.

Walker, Sally M. Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland. Carolrhoda Books, 2009. 144p. ISBN 9780822571353.

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery

I picked up an advanced reading copy of The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery by Sam Kean at the Public Library Association Conference in March. The fact that there was a pile of them for the taking in the exhibit hall indicates to me that the publisher was hoping librarians would help lift the book to a profitable plateau in public book awareness. I do not know how well the book has done at bookstores, but Amazon readers have rated it at about 4 1/2 stars. I see it now in 19 of 77 libraries in my local consortium (over half are loaned out) and over 400 libraries according to Worldcat. That is modest success.

I intended to read it before publication in May. Where was my brain? Rather, where was my mind? Better still, where in my brain is my mind? That's part of what The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons is about. Many of the chapters in the book recount how cases of brain trauma to various regions of the brain helped physicians (some just country doctors of their time) deduce the locations of specific brain functions and misfunctions. Some of the stories might make readers wince, as the author tells about doctors viewing and poking around exposed brains. Readers inclined to good science stories will, however, enjoy the frank descriptions.

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons lends to a bit of reader self-diagnosis, too. Several times I found myself stopping to think about why I turned my head ever so slightly to favor a dominant eye, why I laugh when I do, or whether the left or right side of my brain controls most of what I do. In an entertaining way, Kean gives us much to contemplate. As I finished, I felt enlightened, as well as thankful for not having had brain trauma.

Kean, Sam. The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery. Little, Brown, and Company, 2014. 400p. ISBN 9780316182348.

The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story by Lily Koppel

I find it fascinating to read about all the news I did not notice as a child. Of course, children are not really concerned with world affairs when they have play with their friends and going to school as their everyday business. Still, some news is so big that even the kids pay attention. When I was a kid NASA's space program was headline news. I became aware of it during the telecast of John Glenn's orbits around the earth. Then I followed all of the missions through the Apollo program, but I tuned out whenever the cameras focused on astronauts' families. So Lily Koppel's The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story tells me much I did not know.

Even if I had paid attention, The Astronaut Wives Club would still be a revelation, because NASA and the cooperating media of the time only presented the happier side of astronauts' family stories. Besides experience as a test pilot and passing many physical and psychological exams, a candidate needed to have a seeming happy wife and attractive children to become an astronaut. The wives were expected to be wholesome and elegant. Of course, not everyone was as happy and stable as they pretended.

Koppel starts her story with the formation of NASA and the introduction of the Mercury Seven astronauts and their wives in 1959. She continues the story through each space launch in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, noting the addition of the New Nine astronauts and wives in 1962 and Group 3 in 1963. Readers get to know the Mercury Seven wives and selected wives from other groups well. She continues her story to the present, telling what has become of the many wives, widows, and divorcees.

The Astronaut Wives is entertaining and informative and should interest Baby Boomers and anyone interested in either the space program or the stories of women's lives.

Koppel, Lily. The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story. Grand Central Publishing, 2013. 272p. ISBN 9781455503254.

Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben

I am a bit late. Here it is 2014 and I am just now reading Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben. Being late, ironically, is what the first half of McKibben's book on the state of our planet is about. For several decades political and environmental leaders have been talking about actions to take to halt or at least slow the effects of global warming. Then in 2008, unprecedented amounts of polar ice melted, decades ahead of direst predictions. According to McKibben, that was the nail in the coffin of the old planet that we knew before 1970.

What's wrong? Lots! The amount of carbon in the air will not be as low again as it was on the old stable Earth and will keep rising for the foreseeable future on the new Eaarth. Worse still, the planetary systems cycle that has begun will release large amounts of methane. Ocean levels will rise, tropical zones will expand, and food production will drop as the planet grows hotter. It will get even worse if we continue our current energy consumption. We will have to find new ways to live.

The second part of McKibben's book is about making the best of a bad situation. While this sounds dreary, it is not. While we would love to turn back the clock, we can not, he insists, but we can make a livable world if we are smart. The difficulty will be ending our current consumer society and adjusting to an economy of no growth in manufacturing and consumption. The way is heralded by slow and local economies. Our food, sustainable energy production, and work need to be local. We also have to become good neighbors.

Of course, McKibben's ideas are too many to explain in a paragraph. The upshot is that McKibben thinks that we can (and have to) form more equitable and stable communities to survive. As individuals, we can be happier, if we reform before time runs out.

McKibben's book would be a great choice for book discussion groups.

McKibben, Bill. Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. Times Books, 2010. 253p. ISBN 9780805090567.

Bark: Stories

"A maternal vertigo beset her, the room circled, and the cutting scars on her son's arms sometimes seemed to spell out Pete's name in the thin lines there, the loss of fathers etched primitively in the algebra of skin."

Author Lorrie Moore is noted for her eloquent writing. In the sentence above from the third page of the short story "Referential," she sums up what she has described in the first two pages of the story. A widow's son has become self-destructive and been institutionalized. In her mourning for all that is lost, she had denied herself what she still has.

Leaving the facility, the mother and her fading boyfriend are caught in a surprising springtime snowstorms. The wipers struggle to clear the glass. How can they see a way ahead.

In her recent collection Bark: Stories, Moore portrays many people finding reasons to be unhappy. Some of them are good reasons, most of which seem to radiate from making bad relationship choices. What these characters seem to lack are abilities to extract themselves. It is almost painful to read, but Moore draws us in, tapping out interest that precedes our willingness to help. But these are only characters in a book, so we can only observe. Maybe we can help those who are really around us.

Moore, Lorrie. Bark: Stories. Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. 192p. ISBN 9780307594136.

The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the African Wild by Lawrence Anthony

South African conservationist Lawrence Anthony is a model for the modern version of the rugged man. He is unconcerned about comfort, brave in the face of danger, smart when he needs to be, and dedicated to a better planet. He is one part pragmatist and another part dreamer. He is all of this as the owner and principal manager of the Thula Thula game reserve in Zululand. He is also a splendid writer, as he demonstrates in his memoir The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the African Wild. 

While the threads of story are many in The Elephant Whisperer, the central action revolves around Anthony's agreeing to accept a "rogue herd" of elephants into his preserve. These elephants had continually escaped from their previous preserve, causing much damage in surrounding villages and farms. Anthony knew that they would prove difficult to manage, but he also knew that they would be killed if he did not adopt them. He had always dreamed of reintroducing elephants to his part of Zululand, an area that had been without them for 100 years. On the first night in Anthony's care, they tipped over an ancient tree to break out of a high voltage enclosure, verifying that his task would be challenging.

Read by Simon Vance, The Elephant Whisperer is a very entertaining audiobook. Told at a lively pace, the book includes comedy, tragedy, romance, suspense and action, as well as many memorable characters, many of them pachyderms. It joins other splendid recent books about conservation work in Africa, including Life, Love, and Elephants by Dame Daphne Sheldrick and Cathedral of the Wild by Boyd Varty.

Anthony, Lawrence. The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the African Wild. Thomas Dunne Books, 2009. 368p. ISBN 9780312565787.

audiobook. Tantor Audio, 2012. 9 compact discs. ISBN 9781452610894.

Ten Billion by Stephen Emmott

We have an emergency and are doing little about it, according to computational scientist Stephen Emmott in his book Ten Billion. Everyone talks about global warming, but our troubles are much greater than climate change. As the world population grows, demand for food and water grows, but our resources are limited. Serious planning for the future needs to be done now, but Emmott believes little has been accomplished so far and there are few signs of any action in the near future. By the time enough people notice our situation, it may be too late to avoid catastrophe.

Take the subject of food production. The reason there are so many of us is that humans have succeeded in greatly increasing agricultural production three times in the history. We seem to assume that we can do it again, but Emmott says that it will not be so easy. Most of the land good for agriculture is already being used, and some of it is in bad shape because of soil depletion and erosion. The Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s is not a good model for the future as it required great amounts of water (a declining resource) and steady use of artificial fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, which have polluted water.

Next take water. Many aquifers are being rapidly depleted. People who believe we can invent our way out of every problem say there is plenty of ocean water to desalinate. The problem is that it takes a lot of energy to remove salt out of water to produce quantities needed by large communities or for agriculture. Desalination produces waste and pollution, and ways to delivery great quantities of water inland has not been planned.

With more people, there will be more demand for many consumer items, increasing the demand for water, energy, and metals for manufacturing. Every aspect of life on earth will be stressed. What can we do? Emmott thinks we either have to 1) technologize our way out of the situation (possible but unlikely) or 2) radically change our behaviors of consumption and procreation (again possible but unlikely). Seeing that there will soon be ten billion of us, he thinks that there are bad days ahead.

Ten Billion is a very scary book. As a rule, people do not like to read very scary books without zombies. In Emmott's book, we are the zombies. Passionate and eloquent throughout, the author tries to wake us from our sleep. Ten Billion is a slim volume with much to report and would be a great book discussion choice.

Emmott, Stephen. Ten Billion. Vintage Books, 2013. 216p. ISBN 9780345806475.

The Shape of the Reference Desk, a Panel Discussion

So much is changing at libraries, and the reference desk is part of the evolution to more client friendly service. Libraries are ripping out old desks to replace them with designer service stations to help staff help their clients. Thinking it was a good time to assess the change and spot some trends, 43 librarians attended our July 9 The Shape of the Reference Desk program, sponsored by the Adult Reference Librarians Network and held at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library.

Our three panelists - Blaise Dierks of the River Forest Public Library, Nancy Kim Phillips of the Arlington Heights Public Library, and Nicole Wilhelms of the Downers Grove Public Library - have all participated in the redesign of their libraries' desks. Coming from three different communities, each showed and explained how their new desks are designed to improve their public services. I added a brief report on our local survey of librarians' thoughts about their reference desks. (See the pie chart summary by clicking here. There is also a link to all the individual comments.)

Reference desk trends that I noticed from the presentation:

• Many new desks are removing the barriers between the librarian and the client. A new goal is to get the two side by side for the interview. This might be both standing or both sitting, and often a computer is involved. Having librarian and client side by side can let the librarian bring the client into the search. The client might notice something the librarian has not and redirect the request. The client might also learn self-help skills as a by-product. 
• New reference desks are getting closer to where clients enter the building and closer to the checkout desks. Having reference desks in the back in no longer ideal. Clients will ask other staff before ever getting back to a remote reference desk. 
• Reference desks are getting smaller. 
• Several reference managers vowed to get clutter off of their reference desks, to make them more inviting and not give the impression that the librarians are too busy to help. It was noted that sometimes too many signs and handouts around a desk seem to suggest "Do it yourself" when what a librarian really wants is to offer assistance. 
• Reference departments, especially those with call centers, are taking some tasks more usually performed by circulation clerks or receptionists. Reference and readers' advisory departments are merging. Libraries are reorganizing to have fewer departments. 
• Reference desks go by many names, including Information, Questions, Answers, Ask Us, and many variations including the word "service." A slight majority are still known as Reference according to our survey.

There was much interest in the public service point at the Arlington Heights Public Library, which Nancy Kim Phillips said is hard to call a desk. Librarians stand in the area of the structure to offer help and bring clients to open positions on the counter if necessary. Staff rove and use tablets in many of the reference interviews. One of the Arlington Heights librarians said that she has gotten in healthier shape working the reference shifts of her library. When off the floor, the librarian may be working the call center.

What I did NOT hear at this program was the idea that reference librarians should be pulled from public service desks because their time is too valuable to be assigned walk-up clients with easy questions. I heard this expressed by a manager of a small college library at the ALA Conference in Chicago in 2013. This group still seemed to be committed to reference librarians being on the front lines.

The Adult Reference Librarians Network's next meeting will be held on October 8 at the Indian Prairie Public Library.

This is Dali by Catherine Ingram

A graphic novel treatment is a most appropriate approach to the life of the surrealist artist Salvador Dali. He is remembered for wildly strange art, much of which had elements of humor. Most was oil on canvas, but he also strove to express his own brand of art with his clothing and the design and furnishing of his home. Using a mixture of the most famous Dali images and comic drawings from illustrator Andrew Rae, author Catherine Ingram recounts Dali's strange life in her concise biography This is Dali.

"Outrageous" might be the most appropriate one word to describe Dali. He seems to have enjoyed shocking the public and have no true purpose in life other than self-promotion. About the kindest thing Ingram has to say about Dali, other than he was an artistic genius, was that he was lonely. She points to poor parenting as one reason for his seeming lack of care for others.

Whosoever understands Dali, the author suggests can also understand his art. In This is Dali, she explains the joke behind the melting clocks and suggests that Dali influenced many artists to come, including Alfred Hitchcock and Andy Warhol. I would add that John Pasche probably knew Dali's lips logo when he made a tongue and lips logo for the Rolling Stones. Maybe you'll recognize other ways Dali shaped our world if you give this odd little book a try.

Ingram, Catherine and illustrations by Andrew Rae. This is Dali. Laurence King Publishing, 2014. 80p. ISBN 9781780671093.

The Light in High Places: A Naturalist Looks at Wyoming Wildness, Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep, Cowboys, and Other Rare Species by Joe Hutto

Add Joe Hutto to my list of favorite authors. After finishing Touching the Wild: Living with the Mule Deer of Deadman's Gulch, I had to read his previous book The Light in High Places: A Naturalist Looks at Wyoming Wildness, Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep, Cowboys, and Other Rare Species. The subtitle well describes the wide-ranging subject matter, except it does not indicate how autobiographical a book it is. Anyone who has been charmed by Hutto in Touching the Wild or his early book Illumination in the Flatwoods: A Season with the Wild Turkey will want to read what Hutto tells about himself. He is a most interesting character.

Reading The Light in High Places reminds me how great it was that Bonnie and I went to Wyoming last year and makes me want to go again. Hutto probably does not want the place overrun with tourists, but he sees that well-run, eco-friendly tourism can help with the protection of the places and wildlife that he loves. A reader will see that as a hunter Hutto also sees a place for hunting, but he is greatly troubled by the idea of hunting as sport and big business. The aims of traditional rural life and wildlife conservation are not served by such sport, which caters to people who pay to kill threatened species.

Hutto does not consider himself a cowboy, coming from Florida and trained as a naturalist, but he is very respectful of men and women who grew up with traditional cowboy skills. He has learned many of those skills and managed ranches, but he still seeks advice and assistance from the experts. He sees himself as a dedicated scientist and enjoys spending months alone in species studies on the tops of mountains. He tells us how hard such studies are, but I bet many of us would like to join him for a day or two. Imagine the vistas!

If Worldcat is to be trusted, there are just about 150 copies of The Light in High Places in U.S. libraries, only about three per state. Illinois has eight. I think there should be more copies available. I am afraid Hutto and his eloquent books are among the rare species in need of attention. They should not be allowed to disappear unnoticed.

Hutto, Joe. The Light in High Places: A Naturalist Looks at Wyoming Wildness, Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep, Cowboys, and Other Rare Species. Skyhorse Publishing, 2009. 281p. ISBN 9781602397033.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

The epic history The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson sat on my want-to-read list for a long time. Its size was daunting. Because our church book group chose it for discussion, I finally borrowed it as an audiobook and dove in. Finding the stories compelling and having much early summer gardening to do (time good for listening), I finished its 19 discs (23 hours) in a little over a week.

In her afterward, Wilkerson tells how she researched the migration of blacks from the South to the North, Midwest, and West between 1900 and 1970. Her interest began with her mother's escape from the South. She took that story as inspiration and identified many other migration stories, but in the end, she chose just three stories to tell in detail. Three is the magic number in this book. The stories have three origins: Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana. These migrations took place in the 1930s, the 1940s, and the 1950s, each with a different quality. The cities to which the migrants moved were Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.

Though the journeys began and ended in different places, the people about whom Wilkerson wrote had many similar stories to tell. Jim Crow laws made their lives in the South intolerable and dangerous. Leaving on short notice or without alerting whites who would want to stop them presented a challenge. They all found their new lives better but still subject to acts of discrimination.

Having read numerous books about race relations in American history, I did not expect to be surprised by the cruelty described in this book, but Wilkerson's research unearthed injustices I had not imagined. I felt anger rising as I read about the theft, torture, and murder allowed under Jim Crow laws. Others in our book group reported similar reactions.

We filled our evening with questions, memories, and observations, as The Warmth of Other Suns proved a worthy discussion book as well as a good read.

Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. Random House, 2010. 622p. ISBN 9780679444329.

Audiobook. Brilliance Audio, 2011. 19 compact discs. ISBN 9781455814237.