ENEMY COMBATANT: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Kandahar

Mozzam Begg (with Victoria Brittain). Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Kandahar. New York: New Press, 2006.
HV6432.B44 2006

Review by Chris Gaunt

I rarely purchase books, but I bought this one in mid-December last year. I read it in early January 2007 as I was traveling to D.C. with fellow peace-loving Iowans. We were protesting the five year anniversary of the January 11 opening of the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

Moazzam Begg, a British citizen, was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and accused by the United States of being a terrorist. He was finally released in 2005 without explanation or apology. He tells his story.

I cried when he told about his undeserved torture and its effects, mental and physical. It is obvious that he did not let the experience turn him into a hater. He lived to tell his story and have it published. Good for him. Good for us.

The torture issue resonates with my soul, magnified when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out in 2004. I know from my involvement with the movement to expose and close the SOA/WHINSEC at Ft. Benning, Georgia, that a Freedom of Information Act in 1996 uncovered torture manuals used at that school. It is a dirty little secret that the U.S. military still wants to keep secret.

I recently served a prison sentence and endured on a very small scale the demeaning treatment that is routinely extended to those sucked into one of our U.S. jails or prisons.

For me, torturing comes down to this: the effects on the torturer as well as the victim.

I cannot believe that I will soon travel to Washington D.C. again, to mark the 6th anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantanamo Bay. What a disgrace.

recommendations for winter break

Jonathan Franzen. The Corrections, 2001. PS3556.R352 C67 2001
(a family epic)

Jonathan Lethem. Motherless Brooklyn, 1999. PS3562.E8544 M68 1999
(An unusual crime novel)

Jonathan Lethem. As She Climbed Across the Table, 1998. PS3562.E8544 A9 1998
(Very funny!!!)

Anne Tyler. Digging to America, 2006. PS3570.Y45 D47 2006
(has a very funny scene involving a bicycle helmet)

Anne Tyler. The Accidental Tourist, 1985. PS3570.Y45 A64 1985
(A beautiful novel about love and death)

Kazuo Ishiguro. The Unconsoled, 1995. PR6059.S5 U53 1995
(Kafkaesque and very funny in a dark way)

Bakopoulos, Dean. Please Don't Come Back from the Moon, 2005. PS 3602 .A593
(a moving novel about our changing society especially in the rust belt)

Jonathan Raban (another Jonathan!). Wax Wings, 2003. PR6068.A22 W39 2003
(the boom and bust of the 90's in Seattle)
Recommended by Rebecca Stuhr

...books by Milton Friedman

Search the library catalog by clicking on his name: Friedman, Milton, 1912

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Naomi Klein. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2007.

Reviewed by T. Hatch

Naomi Klein mounts a frontal assault on the madrassa of Bolshevik privatization better known as the Economics Department at the University of Chicago. The recently expired Milton Friedman was the theory-giver for a generation and a half of economists who have come to embrace the aftermath of catastrophic events such as war and natural disasters as the basis of “exciting market opportunities.” The Friedmanite ideology that is the foundation of the “Shock Doctrine” holds that “reconstruction” finishes the job of the original disaster by eliminating the public sphere. At the core of this neoliberalism is the belief that profit and greed practiced on a mass scale create the greatest benefit for society.

The Shock Doctrine is a work of political economy following in many ways the tradition established by Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation. Both works challenge the idea proponed by Friedman and Hayek et al that free markets and free societies are part of the same historical process. Klein argues that liberalized markets not only do not require a free society but often serve as the catalyst for crushing democracy e.g. Tiananmen Square in 1989.

For Klein the danger posed by the “Chicago Boys” is the human misery that is created as a byproduct of their squalid utopianism. “The Marxists had their workers’ utopia, and the Chicagoans had their entrepreneurs’ utopia, both claiming that if they got their way, perfection and balance would follow.” Wherever these corporate conquistadors have worked their magic, 25 to 60 percent of the population lives in poverty. At the end of the day an unfettered capitalism enforces the idea that, indeed, freedom is not free.

Burling Library 2nd Floor HB95 .K54 2007
Also by Naomi Klein:

No Space, No Choice, No Jobs, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. New York: Picador USA, 2000

Burling 2nd Floor HD69.B7 K58x 2000

For other contributions, search the library catalog:

Walt Giersbach '61 has recently published ...

He writes:

I’m very happy to let you know that Wild Child has just published Cruising the Green of Second Avenue. My collection of short stories centers on New York’s Lower East Side in the late 1960s. Klein the Biker, Straight Charlie, Sammy the Madman, Frank and the Chick from Canarsie romp through the pages in the dawning of a new age. Their highs and lows are covered with humor and insight through the eyes of Jake, the narrator. The collection updates a rich heritage of vernacular story-telling in the genre of O. Henry’s Collected Stories and Damon Runyon’s Guys and Dolls.

Cruising the Green of Second Avenue is available as an e-book

--Walt Giersbach '61

http://allotropiclucubrations.blogspot.com

Addy Najera '10 is reading and recommends.....

Dry: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs. New York: St. Martin's Press: 2007

She comments that this book is horribly depressing, but in a good way!

This book is on order.

The End of History and the Last Man

Francis Fukuyama. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: The Free Press, 1992

Reviewed by T. Hatch

This is one of those books that are often mentioned en passant that through repeated and casual use comes to represent a facile shadow of itself (much like Gibbon’s Christians running the Roman Empire into the ground or Weber’s Calvinists single-handedly launching modern capitalism). Accordingly, the demise of the Soviet Union signaled the triumph of capitalism and the end of history.

Fukuyama is at his core a conservative Hegelian. As such he attempts to rescue Hegel from the Marxist mob that had held the venerable philosopher hostage for a century and a half; the Marxists ran roughshod with Hegel’s all ready radical notion of historicism. As victims of the Enlightenment both Fukuyama and the heroic Hegel see history as the progress of humanity towards higher levels of rationality and freedom. Following this path of reason history ended with the establishment of the modern liberal state (an event that arguably occurred long before the 1989-1991 epoch). Nonetheless Fukuyama attempts to establish a “coherent and directional universal history of mankind.” Metanarratives seem to die hard.

What distinguishes Fukuyama from many conservatives, especially the Natural Right crowd associated with the late Leo Strauss a.k.a. the neoconservatives, is that he does not display an overt animus to either modernity or political liberalism. In this he violates the ideology inherent in the weltanschauung of the Weekly Standard orbit. It may be merely coincidental then that Fukuyama broke with the neocons on the righteousness of the US invasion of Iraq. Perhaps a more felicitous title might have been The End of History and the Lonely Man.

2nd floor D16.8 .F85 1992

Find other books by Fukuyama at the Grinnell College Libraries

Angela Winburn is reading J. M. Coetzee ...

Angela writes:

I am currently reading Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee and Splendid Solution by Jeffrey Kluger. I am reading Where the Lilies Bloom by Vera and Bill Cleaver to my son, Sam. This was a favorite, childhood movie of mine.


The libraries edition of Slow Man was published by Viking in 2005. PR9369.3.C58 S56 2005

Splendid Solution : Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio was published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 2004. There are two copies in Kistle Library. QR31.S25 K58 2004. This was the 2007 all Iowa Reads title.

Matthew Horowitz '10 is reading and recommends..

Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government--and How We Take It Back by David Sirota. Three Rivers Press: 2007

He comments that this book is an essential and compelling read for any politically active citizen - especially with the Iowa caucus rapidly approaching.

Mickie O'Brien '11 is reading...

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Burling Library has several editions, including a 2000 State Street Press Edition
PR4034 .P7 2000

Rebecca Stuhr is reading about Librarians in The Bird Artist

I'm reading Howard Norman's The Bird Artist. I can't remember what review I was reading or who wrote the review. In this forgotten review I read about The Bird Artist and it was recommended as one of the favorite novels of the reviewer. So I made a note to myself to read it. Well, I just got started and it opens with the main character remembering the local town (in Nova Scotia) librarian and library, Mrs. Bath. The library cards had "the silhouette of a woman reading in a bathtub." Mrs. Bath claimed to have read all the books in the library, "which was her own living room, dining room, and sitting room." She was a stickler for the rules, "You either remembered your card or had to fetch it." She was also the young bird artist's greatest supporter (along with his mother). "She often provided me with money out of her own till for pens, pencils, inks, special paper." "Just draw. It's a God-given gift."

Anyway, I haven't gotten very far, but enjoyed reading about Mrs. Bath and her role in the development of the young artist's career. I think he goes on to commit a murder--but Mrs. Bath had died by then. I don't think she has any responsibility for that. Compare this to Penelope Lively's discription of libraries and librarians in her latest book (mentioned further down in the blog), Consequences; not pleasing at all.

Norman, Howard. The Bird Artist. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994.
PR 9199. B57 1994

Lively, Penelope. Consequences. Viking, 2007
Smith Memorial PR6062.I89 C58 2007b

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston. Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Reviewed by Rebecca Stuhr

Janie is suddenly back in town after having left it to marry a younger man. The community disapproved and now imagines her having been abandoned and left destitute. Janie, however, has another story, and she still has one friend who is willing to hear the truth. Janie's tale is the basis for the rest of Hurston's novel. To set the community straight, Janie starts from the beginning. She explains how she came to marry her first husband and why she left him for the dashing and ambitious Jodie, and then, after Jodie's death, how she was swept off her feet by the younger, romantic, fun loving, and yet still hard working Tea Cake. Janie's story of her life with Tea Cake is one of love and devotion. Hurston's writing is poetic and moving. Her descriptions of life in an all black community, where Janie lives with Jodie, and life on the Everglades, where she lives with Tea Cake, are detailed and colorful. While in many ways a novel about love, Hurston does not hide from issues of race or the difficulties faced by those in close relationships including jealousy and insecurity. Hurston's details of everyday life, her evocative dialog, and carefully developed characters make this a compelling narrative. Her terrifying description of the hurricane that slammed through southern Florida, breaching the dike around Lake Okeechobee, and the ensuing devastation are especially vivid.


The Grinnell College libraries have a 1978 edition published by the University of Illinois Press.
PS 3515 .U789 T43x 1978.

Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army

Jeremy Scahill. Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. New York: Nation Books, 2007

Reviewed by T. Hatch

What happens when you mix the Christo fascist ideology of the Council for National Policy with the zeal of Donald Rumsfeld’s drive to privatize as much of the Defense Department as possible? The short answer is “private military companies” like Blackwater whose mercenary services are essential to both preserving the occupation of Iraq and corporate profits.

Erik Prince, ex-Navy Seal and founder of Blackwater, sees his company as a necessary and highly profitable adjunct to the US military. Author Jeremy Scahill is not quite as generous in his assessment: “What Blackwater seemingly advocates and envisions is a private army of God-fearing patriots, well paid and devoted to the agenda of U.S. hegemony – supported by far lower paid cannon fodder, foot soldiers from Third World countries, many of which have legacies of brutal U.S.-sponsored regimes or death squads.”

As recent arguments in the US House and Senate demonstrate, there is much squeamishness when the full implications of an operation like Blackwater’s are more closely examined. In addition to the issue of criminal liability, when trigger happy mercenaries are allowed to run amok, there is also the question of immunity from tort liability. Blackwater’s legal team has argued that Blackwater should be immune from civil causes of action in Iraq and elsewhere. By implication the government would foot the bill for contractors killed in war zones and thus privatize profits while making the risk a public liability. It appears as if it pays to be patriotic.

Four Reviews from Leslie Madsen-Brooks '97 ..

Leslie Madsen-Brooks is the Coordinator for Faculty and TA Programs at The Teaching Resource Center at U.C. Davis and a Grinnell alumna, class of 1997.

The Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian. San Francisco: McSweeney's Books, 2006
Smith Memorial PS3551.D75 C55x 2006
What happens when the entire world floods and all that remains is a specially-equipped, floating children’s hospital with 700 sick children, some of their families, and hospital staff? This book offers one vision of a post-apocalyptic world. It’s a long and quiet read, not a page-turner, but is especially thoughtful on the role of families (and their tragedies) in shaping people’s lives.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. New York: Riverhead Books, 2007
PS3608.O832 K58 2007
One of the best books I’ve read in a long time. Not for the faint of heart, this novel begins in 1960s and 1970s Afghanistan and takes us almost through the present day from the perspective of women and children.

Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier. New York: Random House, 2006
Smith Memorial PS3556.R3599 T48 2006
I’m halfway through this one. It’s a pleasure to read. The scope and detail of Frazier’s research is impressive as he tells the tale of a man who has lived long enough to meet John C. Calhoun and complain about cars roaring by on the road in front of his house.

Everyday eBay: Culture, Collecting, and Desires. Edited by Ken Hillis, Michael Petit, and Nathan Scott Epley. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Fascinating stuff about collectors--their seeking, buying, and communities. Definitely recommended for material culture lovers and anyone who collects, well, anything.

Cheryl Neubert is very busy, but when she has time to read she is reading ...

Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005
Smith Memorial HM846 .F74 2005

Raji Pokhrel '08 read Amitav Ghosh over the summer ..

The Circle of Reason. New York: Viking, 1986
PR9499.3.G5346 C57 1986

and

Mistry Rohinton's Fine Balance. New York: Knopf, 1996
PR9199.3.M494 F56 1996

Hannah Yourd '09 is reading ...

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002
PS3555.U4 M53 2002

Raji Pokhrel '08 also thinks that this is an excellent book.

Virginia Andersen '10 is reading in her spare time and for her personal enjoyment...

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Burling Library has several editions, including a 1949 Oxford University Press Edition
PR4571 .A1 1949

Ellen Lambert '08 is enjoying reading ...

Brian Ladd's The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, c1997
HT169.G32 B4127 1997

Brian Ladd graduated from Grinnell in 1979.

She comments that this book is a great read, captivating, and a page turner. She is reading it for class and wants to be reading whenever she has the chance.

And this summer Ellen read Jesus Land: A Memoir by Julia Sheeres. New York: Counterpoint, 2005.

Ben Good '10 read presidential biographies over the summer and recommends ...

Grant by Jean Edward Smith. New York: Simon & Schuster, c2001
E672 .S627 2001
and

Lincoln by David Herbert Donald. New York: Simon & Schuster, c1995
E457 .D66 1995

Heather Parker is reading ...

Gabriel García Márquez. Cien años de soledad. Buenos Aires, Editorial Sud-americana, 1967.
PQ 8180,17 .A73 CF

Lindsey Taggart is enoying reading Civil War Novels

for English 330 with Professor Nestor.

Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty by John William de Forest
Burling has a 1955 edition
PS 1525 .D5 M57x 1955

The Bostonians by Henry James
Burling has a 1976 edition of this work
PS 2116 .B6 1976

and

Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain
Burling has a number of editions of this work including a Norton edition
PS 1317 .B4 1980

Murder in Samarkand

Murray, Craig. Murder in Samarkand: A British Ambassador’s Controversial Defiance of Tyranny in the War on Terror. Edinburgh/London: Mainstream Publishing 2007 [2006].

Reviewed by T. Hatch

If there is one book that persuasively argues that the War on Terror is a morally bankrupt metaphor run amuck, this is it. Ambassador Craig Murray was the Foreign and Common-wealth Office’s man on the scene in Tashkent Uzbekistan. With a reputation for women and whiskey Murray, hardly a radical, soon grew disenchanted with the repressive regime of Islam Karimov. As the Ambassador saw it, it could hardly be about a struggle between good and evil if the Karimov government was on your side.

The US and the UK both viewed President Karimov as an essential partner in the War on Terror. Karimov who had supported the hardliners in the coup against Gorbachev in 1991 shortly thereafter adopted the stance of national independence more as a means of keeping the Soviet system rather than destroying it. Most importantly to the US and the Rumsfeld policy of a “wider Middle East” the Karimov regime provided the use of Karshi Khanabad (K2) airbase. Three squadrons of the USAF guarded by several thousand troops were deep in the heart of Uzbekistan.

Murray, who is quite open about his infidelity and his nervous breakdown, was unable to overcome his moral hang-up about receiving information through torture. Despite tremendous pressure from high levels of the Blair government Murray refused to yield. Partly because of Murray’s loudly denouncing the Karimov government and partly because Gazprom was eventually awarded the natural gas and oil contract sought by western business interests, the US was asked to vacate their prized K2 airbase in November of 2004.

View from Castle Rock

Munro, Alice. View from Castle Rock: Stories. New York: Random House, 2006.

Smith Memorial PR9199.3.M8 V54 2006

Review by Tim Spurgin

I can see why people had trouble with The View from Castle Rock. The collection begins with a curious preface, in which Munro seems to apologize for bringing its contents together, and then the book proceeds to break itself in two. The first half, as you may know, is set in the past. It concerns Munro’s ancestors, taking us through several generations before ending with the story of her own oddly matched parents. The second half focuses on the development of a single individual—the author herself—following her from girlhood to early old age. There is an imbalance here, then, and at times a kind of awkwardness too.

That doesn’t bother me, though. I’m a Munro junkie—I picked up the habit from my mother, I think—and so, while I can’t put Castle Rock up there with Runaway, I won’t hesitate to recommend it. My advice is: Don’t worry too much about that preface, and don’t be afraid to jump ahead to the central piece in the first section—it’s the title story, where Munro imagines her family’s trip across the ocean in 1818. After that, it’s all good. Other high points? From the first half, “Working for a Living,” the one about her parents; and from the second, “Fathers,” “Lying Under the Apple Tree,” and “Hired Girl.” In these pieces, Munro returns to familiar themes—sex, class, other people—and works her usual magic. For this last little bit of summertime, you couldn’t hope to do much better.

Heart for Any Fate: Westward to Oregon, 1845

Crew, Linda. Heart for Any Fate: Westward to Oregon, 1845. Portland: Oregon Historical Society Press : Distributed by the University of Washington Press, c2005

Reviewed by Donna Hoeksema

Heart for Any Fate gives a more balanced view of all of the people involved in an early move from Missouri to Oregon. It is written from the perspective of a young 17 year old traveling with her extended family. It is in the historical fiction category with different insights into the Indians, buffaloes, soldiers, and responsibility. It was a quick read (since I could do it during a busy vacation out to Colorado --- traveling some of the same paths mentioned in the book).

3rd floor PS3553.R439 H4x 2005

Rebecca Stuhr just read ...

Ha Jin's Waiting. New York: Pantheon Books, 1999 3rd floor PS3560.I6 W34 1999.
This novel takes place before, during, and after the cultural revolution in China. A doctor, who ashamed of his country wife's bound feet and simple ways, leaves her in the country as he works as a military doctor in a hospital in the city. There he meets a military nurse. Within the strictures of the military guidelines the two begin a close friendship. For seventeen years the doctor attempts to divorce his wife so that he can marry the nurse. This novel received the National Book Award for Fiction.

She is also reading: The Book Thief by Markus Zusack. 3rd floor PR9619.4.Z87 B6x 2006 and
Consequences by Penelope Lively. Smith Memorial PR6062.I89 C58 2007b

The Next 25 Years: The New Supreme Court and What It Means for Americans

The Next 25 Years: The New Supreme Court and What It Means for Americans

Garbus, Martin. The Next 25 Years: The New Supreme Court and What It Means for Americans (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007).

Reviewed by T. Hatch

Legendary First Amendment lawyer Martin Garbus who has represented Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel, and Andrei Sakharov et al. has authored an urgent cautionary work. Proceeding from the observation by Alexis de Toqueville that in the United States political questions are almost always transformed into judicial questions, Garbus cogently makes a straight forward argument about the likely future of the United States Supreme Court.

Whereas the Rehnquist Court has prepared the way, the new Roberts Court will continue the job of reversing seventy years of American jurisprudence. The Federalist Society goon squad of Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy acting as an unelected, undemocratic elite are committed to squashing acts of Congress. The political agenda of the Roberts Court is to further limit the powers of Congress, make the states more powerful, repudiate precedent (where tactically necessary), seek a return to the halcyon days of a Lockner era laissez-faire Darwinian economics, and to put racial minorities back were they were socially and legally fifty years ago.

Garbus argues that the Gang of Five while pretending that they are “originalists,” who seek to keep the Court removed from politics, are in reality a little less than faithful (“originalists” e.g. Bush v. Gore) and a little more than political. Further, Garbus maintains that while the Supreme Court has always been political, the problem is that the Court is currently infected with the wrong kind of politics.

Barry Byrne has a list of books to recommend ...

Barry writes,

Currently, I am reading Single by Judy Ford. (Single: The Art of Being Satisfied, Fulfilled and Independent. Avon, Mass. : Adams Media, 2004.)

My favorite books are Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson (New York: Knopf, 1998--1st floor B72 .W54 1998), and The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers (New York: Doubleday, 1988--1st floor oversize BL304 .C36 1988 and six part video in the Listening Room--J771).

Within the past year, I have really liked Setting the Table (Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business. New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2006) by Danny Meyer

The Audacity of Hope (The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. New York: Crown Publishers, c2006--2nd floor E901.1.O23 A3 2006) by Barack Obama

Eisenhower on Leadership (Eisenhower on Leadership: Ike's Enduring Lessons in Total Victory Management. San Francisco, CA : Jossey-Bass, 2006) by Alan Alexrod

The World is Flat (The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005. HM846 .F74 2005) by Thomas Friedman

The Search (The Search: How Google and its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture. New York : Portfolio, 2005). by John Battelle

Let My People Go Surfing (Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman. New York: Penguin Press, 2005) by Yvon Chouinard

E=mc2 (E=mc²: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation. New York: Walker, c2000. --Science Library QC73.8.C6 B63x 2000) by David Bodanis

Einstein's Heroes (Einstein's Heroes: Imagining the World Through the Language of Mathematics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). by Robyn Arianrhod

Lies at the Altar (Lies at the Altar: The Truth about Great Marriages. New York: Hyperion, 2006) by Robin Smith

My Einstein (My Einstein: Essays by Twenty-Four of the World's Leading Thinkers on the Man, His Work, and His Legacy. New York : Pantheon Books, 2006). Edited by John Brockman...

Gretchen Revie is reading ...

George Eliot's Middlemarch in the Penguin Classics edition edited by Rosemary Ashton.

Find a copy on the third floor of Burling: PR4662.A2 C37 1986

Gretchen is a former Grinnell College librarian and is now a librarian at Lawrence University. She has twenty pages left to read and next on her list is Disco for the Departed by Colin Cotterill published by Soho. This is from Cotterill's series of novels that take place in Laos and feature Dr. Siri Paiboun. You'll find this at a public library near you.

Sheryl Bissen has been reading and recommends ....

Jeffrey Kluger. Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio. New York: GP Putnam, 2004

Splendid Solution is the 2007 All Iowa Reads book. All Iowa Reads is a program developed by the Iowa Center for the Book to encourage Iowans statewide to read and talk about a single title in the same year. Libraries and other local organizations are holding discussions of the title and sponsoring related events. http://www.iowacenterforthebook.org/air

As part of the 2007 program, the Iowa Center for the Book is collecting stories from Iowans about what they remember of the impact of polio and the development of the polio vaccine. Read what Iowans remember. http://www.iowapoliostories.org/

Science Library QR31.S25 K58 2004

And

Masha Hamilton. The Camel Bookmobile. New York: HarperCollins, 2007

Masha Hamilton will be the banquet speaker at the Iowa Library Association Annual Conference on October 11, 2007 in Coralville.

Read more about Masha Hamilton and the real Camel Bookmobile operated by the Kenya National Library Service. www.mashahamilton.com

3rd Floor PS3558.A44338 .C36 2007

The Declaration of Independence: A Global History

Armitage, David . The Declaration of Independence: A Global History.
Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2007

Reviewed by T. Hatch

Professor Armitage’s, The Declaration of Independence is a terse examination of that hallowed
document placed within both a transhistorical and transnational context. The Declaration was an event, a document, and the beginning of a much imitated genre. While the founding fathers sought a legal method of establishing the United States a member in good standing of the established international order, and avoiding the unseemliness of a call for colonial liberation, the document has taken on a life of its own.

Thomas Jefferson and the other members of the committee charged with drafting the Declaration were operating in a political environment without any concrete precedence. They attempted to straddle the twin rails of natural and positive law. After the first half century following its publication the Declarationlargely passed into positive law (allowing for Abraham Lincoln’s dual interpretation of the document as having one message in 1776 and another message for the future). Like one of the imported bottles of wine in Jefferson’s cellar the Declaration has aged well. Edward Gibbon commenting at the time of French diplomatic recognition (1778) remarked: “…the dark agents of the English Colonies, who founded
their pretended independence [did so] on nothing but the boldness of their revolt.”

The Declaration has served as the model for political movements justifying their existence as varied as the Vietnamese nationalists following Ho Chi Minh in 1945, the Haitian Declaration of Independence in 1804, to numerous documents in Central and South America. The irony, of course, is that whether it was Simon Bolivar or Ho Chi Minh seeking political legitimacy Americans have almost universally rejected these efforts as something less worthy than the original.

Also by David Armitage:

The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800
E18.82 .B75, 2002.

The Ideological Origins of the British Empire
JV1011 .A75, 2000.

Milton and Republicanism
PR3592 .P64 M55, 1995

Theories of Empire, 1450-1800
D210 .T45, 1998

A Union for Empire: Political Thought and the British Union of 1707
JA84 .G7 U55, 1995.

Richard Fyffe recommends the following books

all read recently:

Sandra Braman. Change of State: Information, Policy, and Power. Cambridge: MIT Press
(recently ordered for the libraries)

Michael Ondaatje. Divisadero. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007
(recently ordered for the libraries)

Charles Wright. Scar Tissue: Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006
3rd floor PS3573.R52 S33 2006

The Assault on Reason

Gore, Al. The Assault on Reason. New York : Penguin Press, 2007

Review by Mark Schneider

This is a really important book that I am afraid will largely get
ignored. In his own wordy and repetitive way, Al Gore makes a very
persuasive case that American democracy and the US Constitution are
in serious peril. Unfortunately he tarnishes his message by spending
too much time arguing that television is a root cause and that the
Internet will be our savior. These claims may have some truth to
them, but they are rather speculative. However, I find his arguments
about changes in the ways of politics in general and Washington in
specific very compelling and frightening. Equally frightening is the
extent to which we are sacrificing our liberties willingly in the
interest of security. And Gore has some of the best credentials in
the business to document these changes, having spent significant time
in the House, in the Senate, and in the White House. Not only that,
but as the son of a senator, he has some continuity of experience
back to before the Second World War. Skim or skip the introduction,
conclusion and chapter nine, but please read the rest!

1st floor Smith Memorial E902 .G67 2007

Ben Weyle '07 spent the summer in Grinnell reading

Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. New York: Random House, 2000
3rd floor PS3553.H15 A82 2000

Ben highly recommends this book.

The Grinnell Book Review wishes Ben a fond farewell and a very good year in Washington, D.C.

Other books by Chabon in the Burling collection:

The Final Solution: a Story of Detection
PS3553.H15 F56 2004 (Smith Memorial collection)
A Model World and Other Stories
3rd floor PS3553.H15 M95 1991
Summerland
3rd floor PS3553.H15 S8x 2002
Werewolves in Their Youth: Stories
3rd floor PS3553.H15 W4 1999
Wonderboys
3rd floor PS3553.H15 W66 1995

When Martin Stuhr-Rommereim isn't engaging with electronic gadgets he is reading ...

Elie Wiesel. Night. New York: Hill and Wang, 1960.
D811.5 .W4923 1960

Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007
Smith Memorial Collection DT 516.818 .B43 A3 2007

Brooks, Max. The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead. Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd, 2004.

Top 10 Lessons for Surviving a Zombie Attack

1. Organize before they rise!
2. They feel no fear, why should you?
3. Use your head: cut off theirs.
4. Blades don’t need reloading.
5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair.
6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it.
7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike.
8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert!
9. No place is safe, only safer.
10. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on.

This week Farai Rusinga is reading . . .

Philosophers without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life. Edited by Louise M. Anthony.

Available at the college book store.

Helen Stuhr-Rommereim is reading during the summer ...

when she isn't hard at work at the Print Study Room and St's Rest.

Kazuo Ishiguro. Never Let Me Go. NY: Vintage,
PR6059.S5 N48 2005

Kazuo Ishiguro. When We Were Orphans. NY: Knopf, 2000.
PR6059.S5 W47 2000

Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
DT516.828.B43 A3 2007

Rob Clower read this book at Grinnell's Thursday's Music in the Park

Carroll, Ruth and Latrobe. Tough Enough. NY: H.Z. Walck, 1954.

Rob first read this book when he was four years old. "Just reread it for the first time and it is good."

Molly Dahlberg '07 is reading and recommends ....

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. NY: Knopf, 1987
PS3563.O8749 B4 1987

(The Grinnell College Book Review also recommends the 1998 movie: Listening Room B4125 )

Ramsey, Guthrie P. Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
ML3556 .R32 2003

Cleland, John. Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. Dell, 1982.
PR3348.C65 M45 1982
(this edition of this famous 18th century novel comes with an introduction "for modern readers"!)

Crosby is reading and recommends ...

Smith, Martin Cruz. Gorky Park. New York: Random House, 1981.

This novel features a reluctant detective and it is solidly situated in the cold war.

PS3569.M5377 G6 1981

Crosby's favorite novel is Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter. Available in a "Yearling" edition NY: Dell.
Brief description: When a twelve-year-old orphan comes to live with her austere and wealthy Aunt Polly, her philosophy of gladness brings happiness to the aunt and unloved members of the community.

Crosby writes that Pollyanna's philosophy is mistakenly reduced to mindless optimism. But, Pollyanna doesn't always find it easy to be happy. This novel was originally published in 1913 and is available at Burling Library. PS3531.O7342 P6 1913.

More Martin Cruz Smith books available at Burling:
See the libraries' author exhibit for more on Martin Cruz Smith

TITLE        Death by espionage : intriguing stories of betrayal and deception
CALL #       PN6071.S64 D43 1999.

TITLE        December 6 : a novel
CALL #       PS3569.M5377 D4 2002.


TITLE        Gorky Park
CALL #       PS3569.M5377 G6 1981.


TITLE        Havana Bay : a novel .
CALL #       PS3569.M5377 H38 1999b.



TITLE        Polar Star
CALL #       PS3569.M5377 P65 1989.



TITLE        Red Square
CALL #       PS3569.M5377 R44 1992.

TITLE        Rose
CALL #      PS3569.M5377 R67x 2000

TITLE        Stallion Gate
CALL  #      PS3569.M5377 S7x 1987

TITLE        Wolves eat dogs : a novel
CALL #       PS3569.M5377 W65 2004.

Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption

Savarese, Ralph James. Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption. New York: Other Press, 2007

Review by Michael Cavanagh
This review originally appeared at Amazon.com Michael Cavanagh gave the Libraries' permission to reprint it on this blog. This is a verbatim copy of that review.

I must declare an interest. Savarese is a faculty colleague of mine. I wouldn't normally write an Amazon review of a colleague's work, but this book is so compelling and inspiring that in the past week since I finished it I have all but stopped strangers on the street to tell about it. There are several reasons to read it. It is a well-informed, thought-provoking and very specific book about autism, of special interest to readers like me who knew about autism only from a distance. It is a close-up and very frank story of an unusual and admirable family. It is (as one of your reviewers put it) an adventure story whose subject is the discovery of a mind and soul and the emergence of a young man into the world. Yet one comes to feel that it is also about all of us. Best of all, it's a great read, a real page-turner, with a novel's power to keep you up until midnight asking youself "what next?"

Science Library RJ506.A9 S38 2007

Griffin, 9 years old, Son of Kevin, recommends...

"I'm listening to the audiobook version of The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander. I'm on the third book. I think it's great and exciting and it has deathless warriors in it!"

Stewart Library has these and many other books by Lloyd Alexander;

The Prydain Chronicles:
The Book of Three
The Black Cauldron
The Castle of Llyr
Taran Wanderer
The High King

All published NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston

Chris Guant has read and recommends ...

Shenk, Joshua Wolf. Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled his Greatness. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2005

E457.2 .S47 2005

Nadelson Theodore. Trained to Kill: Soldiers at War. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005
U21.5 .N33 2005

Zinsser, William. On writing well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. New York: HarperCollins, c2006
PE1429 .Z5 2006

"I've read: The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography by Sidney Poitier, and give it a two thumbs up." San Francisco: Harper, 2000.
PN2287.P57 A3 2000

Look for a review of Enemy combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantánamo, Bagram, and Kandahar by Moazzam Begg with Victoria Brittain. New York: New Press, 2006

HV6432 .B44 2006

Katie Dunn has four books going at the same time ...

Tan, Amy. The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life. New York: Penguin Books, 2004.
PS3570.A48 Z46 2004

Savarese, Ralph. Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption. New York: Other Press, 2007.
Science Library RJ506.A9 S38 2007

Levy, David. Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age. New York: Arcade, 2001.
P214 .L48 2001

Freeman, Elizabeth. Head first HTML with CSS & XHTML. Sebastapol: O'Reilly
Science Library QA76.76.H94 F74 2006

Farai Rusinga '08 is reading a lot this summer ...

...and making good use of his proximity to books in the College's bookstore. He's reading:

Plato
Nietzsche
Sophocle's Antigone

Stop by the bookstore and ask Farai for reading recommendations.

Search for these authors in the libraries' catalog

Lindsey Taggart '08 is reading ...

Irving, John. A Son of the Circus. New York: Random House, 1994. 633 pages!

PS3559.R8 S64 1994

Sharon Clayton is reading ...

Adrian, Chris. The Children's Hospital. San Francisco: McSweeney's Books, 2006.

Smith Memorial PS 3551 .D75 C55x 2006

Randye Jones is reading and recommends ...

Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora. Edited by Sheree R. Thomas. New York: Warner Books, 2000.

Black Library PS 648 .S3 D37 2000

Russ Motta is reading several books at once covering a wide range of history. . .

Danziger, Danny and John Gillingham. 1215: The Year of the Magna Carta. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003.

Manchester, William Raymond. Goodbye Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific. Boston : Little, Brown, 1980. D767 .M18

McLaird, James D. Calamity Jane The Woman And The Legend . Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 2005 (ordered for the library)

Shealey Sieck is reading ...

Bentley, Dawn, Heather Cahoon and Melanie Gerth. Goodnight Sweet Butterflies: A Colour Dreamland. Markham, Ont.: Scholastic Canada.


"This is one I don’t mind reading over and over. Wonderful colors and pleasant rhymes."

Catherine Rod is reading ....

Furst, Alan. The Foreign Correspondent. New York: Random House, 2006

"Fun! ... Well not really fun, but interesting!"

Catherine is just back from Ireland and is also reading Yeats. Search for books in the libraries catalog by Yeats.

Kevin Engel is rereading for at least the 15th time ....that makes it a recommendation

Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes. Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday & Co., ©1930

Burling Library's edition has this call number: PR4620 .A2 1953

Beth Bohstedt is rereading ....

All of the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling ....getting ready for the final installment this month!

Nancy Cadmus is reading ...

Baker, Kevin. Paradise Alley. New York : HarperCollins, 2002

PS3552.A43143 P37 2002

Lisa Adkins is reading articles from

The Smithsonian and National Geographic

More details to come!

Donna Hoeksema is reading all about ...

How to tan hides, thanks to the Iowa State Extension Service.

Kim Gilbert is reading...and it needs no recommendation!

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. New York, NY: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2003.

PR 6068 .093 H3627X 2003

"Getting ready for the movie!"

also

Carey, Janet Lee. Wenny Has Wings. New York: Atheneum Books, 2002

Available at Stewart Library

Phil Jones is reading and recommends

MacDonald, Mary Anne. Hedgehog Bakes a Cake. New York: Bantam Books, 1990

Available at Stewart Library in Grinnell

"Kiran loves it!"

Allison Amphlett '08 read and recommends ....

Åsne Seierstad. The Book Seller of Kabul. Translated by Ingrid Christophersen. Boston: Little, Brown, 2003.


On order for Burling Library

Cheryl Neubert read and recommends ....

McCourt, Frank. Teacher Man: a Memoir

Smith Memorial LA 2317.M36.A3 2005

Falling Man

DeLillo, Don. Falling Man: a Novel. New York: Scribner, 2007.

This novel looks at life after 9/11 from the point of view of a survivor, his wife, and son. It begins as the towers are collapsing and ends a number of years later--the characters still in various states of recovery and collapse. Falling Man is a performance artist who appears unannounced over the streets of New York City wearing a business suit, suspended by a harness with one leg bent reenacting the photograph also known as Falling Man. Another thread of the story begins before 9/11 and follows the recruiting and training of one of the hijackers. Not overtly sentimental or melodramatic, DeLillo keeps the reader at some distance from his characters, allowing insight without voyeurism.

On order for Burling Library

Mayflower, A Story of Courage, Community, and War

Philbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower, A Story of Courage, Community, and War. illustrated. 461 pp. New York: Viking.

Review by Walt Giersbach '61

Forget the history you were taught in the fifth grade about the Pilgrims. Disavow yourself of notions of English emigrants seeking religious liberty for all. Purge yourself of the anecdotal fraternity among black-suited Puritans and wampum-clad Native Americans.

Nathaniel Philbrick, in Mayflower, provides a well-researched and extensive history of what really happened in New England between 1620, when the Pilgrims "borrowed" the Indians’ winter supplies of corn, and 1676, when the last warriors were executed, pacified or sold as slaves.

His chronology of two cultures adapting to each other is thorough and insightful. While the Wampanoag, Narragansett, Pequot and other nations had their legends, it’s instructive to see in Mayflower how today’s Americans’ myths derive from the discovery of William Bradford’s “Of Plymouth Plantation,” publication of Longfellow’s “The Courtship of Miles Standish,” and President Lincoln turning Thanksgiving into a gluttonous holiday.

Philbrick’s thesis isn’t to denigrate the English in early America as to chronicle the mistakes that led to hostilities between tribes and settlers. “There are two possible responses to a world suddenly gripped by terror and contention. There is [one] way: get mad and get even. But as the course of King Philip’s War proved, unbridled arrogance and fear only feed the flames of violence.”

Philbrick’s history lesson is as true in 1676 as in 2007.

Burling Library F68 .P44 2006

Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America Boston

Cullen Murphy. Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America Boston. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.

Reviewed by T. Hatch

Cullen Murphy’s Are We Rome? is a concise look at how the “decline and fall” of the
Roman Empire can provide a set of cautionary lessons for the United States. An America invicta, suffering from a hubris born of a sense of exceptionalism and an intractable ignorance of the world, that is in need of some solid historical examples. In Murphy’s book the contrast of America to ancient Rome is viewed through an historicist’s binoculars set against the backdrop of the current war in Iraq.

Murphy sets about his task relying entirely upon secondary source documents. He argues that both Rome and Washington D.C., as centers of their respective political universes, were presided over by an elite that witnessed a growing divide between military and civil society where issues of what is in the public good versus what is of a private advantage were contentious questions frequently asked. Both ruling elites were hostage to a nationalcentric worldview that struggled with the problems associated with their borders and the impossibility of managing imperial projects that were of ever-expanding bigness.

Mr. Murphy concludes with a hopeful prescription for the future of the United States that he calls the Titus Livius Plan. If Americans (presumably thorough their elite leaders) would only cultivate an appreciation of the wider world, stop treating government as an necessary evil, fortify those institutions in society that promote assimilation, and ease the demands on the military our inevitable demise might be delayed. Whether any of Murphy’s remedies are politically possible is, at best, highly problematic.

Rubbish: the Archaeology of Garbage, Science Library TD793.3 .R38, 1992.
The Word According to Eve: Women and the Bible in Ancient Times and Our Own,
BS680.W7 M87, 1998.

Children of Hurin

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Children of Hurin. Edited by Christopher Tolkien and illustrated by Alan Lee. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.

If you are a fan of Tolkien's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy you'll want to read this book. With complex characters and a complicated moral world in which leaders (elves, men, dwarves...) struggle with the question of whether to act defensively or offensively against a great threat, this is an interesting, highly readable, and entertaining epic. It also features a fire breathing, though not undefeatable, dragon. For Tolkien fans, it will increase your knowledge of the first age of Middle Earth (while causing you to wonder how they ever made it to the third age...). As with the Silmarillion, we have Tolkien's son Christopher to thank for creating this book out of the unpublished writings of Tolkien. Beautifully illustrated by Alan Lee.

Not yet at the Library ... but soon.

You Remind Me of Me

Chaon, Dan. You Remind Me of Me. New York: Ballantine Books, 2004

Chaon teaches at Oberlin College. This book looks at the lives of two half-brothers. The oldest was born when the mother was just a teenager. He was adopted and grew up with loving if somewhat neglectful parents. The youngest stayed with the mother who was haunted by the loss of her first child and suffered from addictions and depression. Neglected and abused by his mother, this youngest brother was viciously attacked and nearly killed by the family dog. He lives with both deep physical and metaphorical scars. The narrative shifts from the mother's story to the stories of each brother and moves around in time. Chaon also wrote the short story collection Among the Missing.

Both books are in the libraries collection:
Among the Missing PS 3553 .H277 A8 2001
You Remind Me of Me PS 3553. H277 &68 2004

What are you reading this Summer?

What are you reading this summer? Let our community know--you can send just the title or write up a reason why you think we should read the book. Are there books you'd like the Grinnell College Libraries to be adding to our collection--let us know through this blog. Do you know about the libraries' Smith Memorial Collection? the libraries have a browsing collection of contemporary fiction and nonfiction. The Smith Memorial will be moving to the front of Burling, just around the corner from the entrance. This collection changes over time. The Smith Memorial is there year round and summer is a great time to check it out--and make suggestions!

A Gesture Life

Lee, Chang-rae. A Gesture Life. New York: Riverhead Books, 1999.

Reviewed by Rebecca Stuhr

This is Lee's second novel, his first being Native Speaker, 1995 and his third, Aloft, 2004. (We should be due for another one soon!) His main characters have been reclusive men--not rejecting company or relationships, but not able to whole heartedly embrace them either. In this novel, Franklin Hata lives in a small upscale New England town. He has been a prominent businessman engaged in civic activities. Notably, he is a single adoptive father and has never married. As the novel progresses, the reader learns more and more about the man known around town as Doc Hata. As he retires and considers the rest of his life, Hata reflects on the troubled relationship he has had with his daughter and the reasons for his current solitary way of life. These reflections take him back to his war years and his experiences as a medic during the final months of World War II. He was stationed in a remote area. The fighting is happening elsewhere, and the morale and order of his particular camp begins to deteriorate. During these final days, four women arrive at the camp. These Korean women were euphemistically called volunteers but are indeed slaves. These are the women who were known as comfort women. Lee portrays the unbelievable brutality visited upon these women as seen through the experiences of Hata. Hata is a native of Korea, adopted by Japanese parents, and is one of the few in the camp to speak the language of the women. Because of this, and his responsibilities as a medic, he forms a close, though brief and tragic, relationship with one of the women. It seems as though Hata has never shared his experiences and has perhaps submerged his recollections and feelings from this time contributing to his life-long inability to form close attachments. As we learn the traumatic details of his past, events in the present begin to overtake Hata causing him to carefully consider the relationships he now has. The choices he makes are perhaps not the making of a happy ending, but you sense that Hata is setting things right. This is a thoughtful and intensely felt novel, and like all of Lee's novels, deserves a wide readership.

A Gesture Life PS3562.E3347 G4 1999
Native Speaker PS3562.E3347 N38 1995
Aloft PS3562.E3347 A79 2004

Trees on a Slope

Hwang, Sun-wŏn. Trees on a Slope. Translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005.

Review by Rebecca Stuhr

The action of this novel takes place during and following the Korean War and follows the fortunes of soldiers who become friends while serving in the army. The soldiers come from different backgrounds, were brought into the army for different reasons, and come out of the war with indelible scars. One of the soldiers commits suicide during the war. Another young man is wealthy and educated, but goes adrift after the war bearing the weight of the brutality of his wartime actions. However, he helps one of his comrades to establish a poultry farm, and another he makes sure has the eye-glasses that he needs. The paths of these men reconnect when the former lover of the soldier who committed suicide seeks them out in an effort to understand what happened and why. Hwang Sun-wŏn describes the brutality that men are subjected to and driven to by the state of war, and how the experience of that brutality leaves them internally damaged with little hope for recovery. Hwang Sun-wŏn published Trees on a Slope in Korean in 1960. It appears in this translation as part of the University of Hawai'i Press's Modern Korean Fiction series (the library also has The Dwarf by Cho Se-hui from the same series).

Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food

Fernández-Armesto, Felipe. Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food. NY: The Free Press, 2002.

Review by Rebecca Stuhr

Polymath Fernández-Armesto covers a lot of ground in his cross-cultural history of food. He contemplates the foodways of prehistoric humans, calling the "cooking revolution" the first scientific revolution. He examines the sociability of food beginning with groups of people sitting around the cooking fire, the ritual significance of food, including the practice of cannibalism, the development of herding and breeding, beginning with the herding of snails and oysters, and, of course, the development of agriculture. Fernández-Armesto gives fascinating descriptions of feasts in his chapter on "Food and Rank" ("69,574 guests at a banquet that lasted ten days...." The menu included oxen, sheep, lambs, 20, 000 pigeons, 10,000 fish, and 10,000 desert rats (p. 104)) and he considers the path of food from the elite down to the peasant and from the peasant up to the elite. In perhaps his most interesting chapter, Fernández-Armesto follows the path of food around the world. The most prominent items being sugar, salt, spices, potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, wheat, tomatoes, and some additional fruits and grains. He illustrates how the need for items such as sugar and salt drove European expansionism. In both his discussion of food and rank and in the colonization of the world through certain grains, vegetables, and fruits, Fernández-Armesto's strength is in providing a history that does not privilege the West: Europe or North America. Europe and North America are placed in a historical context with the ancient civilizations that preceded and influenced their rise (something like viewing the world through the Gall-Peters map projection rather than the Mercator map projection).

After all of Fernández-Armesto's historical perigrination, he concludes with the state of cooking today, which features over-processed, overly convenient fast food, the microwave, and the solitary eater. He writes,

"For people who think cooking was the foundation of civilization, the microwave ... is the last enemy ..best suited to that public enemy, the solitary eater. ... The microwave makes possible the end of cooking and eating as social acts. The first great revolution in the history of food is in danger of being undone. The companionship of the campfire, cooking pot and common table, which have helped to bond humans in collaborative living for at least 150,000 years, could be shattered" (p. 222).

But Fernández-Armesto is optimistic that the "excesses of industrialization" will be undone and that the "role of the next revolution in food history will be to subvert the last" (p. 224) .

2nd Floor TX 353 .F437 2002

Freedom of Expression® : Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity

McLeod, Kembrew. Freedom of Expression® : Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity. New York : Doubleday, 2005

Review by Rebecca Stuhr

I'm reviewing this book in honor of Grinnell College's new copyright policy, in which they provide authors with ideas for negotiating copyright in their publishing contracts, information on how to take full (and appropriate) advantage of the fair use provisions in the U.S. copyright law, and provide information about Creative Commons copyright licenses. The entire policy is available here: http://www.lib.grinnell.edu/research/copyright.pdf.

McLeod describes himself (see his web site: kembrew.com) as an "independent documentary filmmaker and a media studies scholar at the University of Iowa whose work focuses on both popular music and the cultural impact of intellectual property law." In his book he explores the implication of the over enforcement of patent and copyright law. McLeod explores cases such as the Fox News suit against the use of its trademarked phrase "fair and balanced." He trademarked the phrase "freedom of expression" in response to this kind of excessive trademarking--although he has now let his trademark lapse. He writes about seed companies and the patents they have on their seeds and the negative implications this has for farmers. McLeod devotes a good part of his book to the effects of the overzealous enforcement of copyright within the realm of hip-hop and sampling. Mcleod also examines the patenting of genetic code. McLeod, a specialist in the field of intellectual property law, does not oppose the protection of creative work, but sees that the level enforcement is stifling creativity and the development of new ideas--two things that the copyright law should be protecting. His book is readable and entertains at the same time that it provides a serious perspective on an important issue for scholars, musicians, scientists, artists, and anyone creating or enjoying or working with intellectual property of any kind.

There is a link to the creative commons licensed pdf of McLeod's book at this URL: http://kembrew.com/books/ and a new paperback edition of his book has been published by University of Minnesota Press under a slightly different title: Freedom of Expression®: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property, to appear in Spring 2007.

2nd floor KF 2979 .M348 2005

The Brief History of the Dead

Brockmeier, Kevin. The Brief History of the Dead. New York: Pantheon, 2006; Vintage 2007.

Reviewed by Rebecca Stuhr

This futuristic tale forsees the end of the human race both living and dead, or perhaps more precisely, the living-dead. Brockmeier alternates the chapters of his novel between their two worlds. The City of the living-dead resembles a city on earth—filled with public transportation, buildings, restaurants, shops, and people from all walks of life. There is pain, happiness, love, and loneliness, but there is no aging or death. People cross over from life into death, and at some point disappear. As the novel begins, a sudden upsurge in the population is followed by a sudden evacuation of the population. It slowly becomes clear to those left in the city that many of them have something in common—and that is that they knew or were known by Laura Byrd. Laura Byrd, as it turns out, may be the sole surviving human on earth. She is sent to Antarctica to conduct a wild-life survey with two other Coca-Cola scientists just before an über-virus sweeps through earth’s human population. Back in Antarctica, Laura finds herself alone and suddenly without electricity or heat. Laura makes two superhuman journeys through the sub-zero temperatures, ice and snow of Antarctica in an attempt to reconnect with her world beyond the South Pole. Brockemeier relied on Ice: Stories of Survival from Polar Exploration (edited by Chris Willis) and Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World for his detailed depiction of Laura Byrd’s Antarctic travels. The details of her journey are horrifying and fascinating and unimaginable (unless you’ve read Nicola Davies's Extreme Animals ….see below)

Besides the intriguing notion of a life after death through the memory of the living, Brockmeier’s future realizes many of the fears we live with today, including climate change, bio-terrorism, and unethical, undisciplined, and uncontrolled corporate behavior. But, along side Brockmeier’s dystopia, there is also a benevolent view of our human need for each other, our ability to nurture and sustain each other, and, even as we seem hell-bent on destryong ourselves, our very will to live and our love for life. Although this is not a light-hearted novel by any means, there are humorous moments. And despite the bleakness of a world pandemic and the annihilation of the human race, Brockmeier's prose evokes beauty and peace. Finally, not to make light of Byrd’s epic struggle, but this reviewer can’t help but wish that Laura Byrd had read up on how penguins huddle together to survive the Antarctic temperatures (see review of Nicola Davies's book on Extreme Animals below) before heading off on her sledge. It’s a fact that might have come in handy when her last heating coil gave way.

Brockmeier is also the author of The Things that Fall from the Sky published in 2002 by Pantheon Books. 1st floor PS3602.R63 T48 2002.

Extreme Animals: The Toughest Creatures on Earth

Davies, Nicola. Extreme Animals: The Toughest Creatures on Earth. Illustrated by Neal Layton. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2006.

Reviewed by Rebecca Stuhr

Many animals are tougher than humans! Those of you who pride yourself for participation in extreme sports should take a half-hour break from your training and exertions to read Davies’s book on extreme animals. You have to read all the way to the end (p. 58) to find out which creature wins the toughest-animal-on-earth award but here’s a hint—it can be boiled, frozen to absolute zero, can survive a vacuum or pressure six times the pressure at the deepest part of the ocean and it isn’t a cockroach. Don’t skip to the end of the book though, because if you do, you’ll miss the fascinating facts about sponges (this reviewers favorite!), click beetles, thermophiles, and wood frogs (a close second). You won’t learn about “squash factor,” brain cooling mechanisms, collapsible lungs, and animal antifreeze. If you already know about animals that are “Truly Tough,” then you might want to read this book anyway for Neal Layton's informative and entertaining illustrations. You might imagine drawing some of these pictures yourself—but their somewhat slapdash appearance is more than made up for by the humorous and inventive way Layton interprets Davies’s extreme animal facts. Humans, please sit down and make way for the truly extreme animal survivors. This book is cataloged as juvenile literature, but reading this book will provide pleasurable and edifying reading for all ages. Recommend it to your local public library! (Read up to the next review to find it out why Laura Byrd would have done well to read this book before embarking on her trip to the Antarctic).

The Ransom of Russian Art

McPhee, John. The Ransom of Russian Art (illustrated).
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994

Reviewed by Philip Kintner

The title of this book may be misleading, and the content is certainly different from most of McPhee’s many sorties. However, his approach to the material through a leading figure, a trademark characteristic, is in place here, for the central character is an American obsessed with collecting Russian art, who, like McPhee, was not equipped to determine relative merits of the various artists and their works. But by collecting, at his own expense and with great risk, literally thousands of pieces, large and small, all illegally, and smuggling them out of Russia during the period after World War II when freedom of artistic expression was forbidden, he preserved an otherwise lost world of Russian art. How he did it, and why, are questions explored in this brief but well-written book, which fits elegantly with the current Faulconer Gallery exhibition, “The Space of Freedom” [March 2007]. Many of the “ransomed” (better: “rescued”) art works came from just such secret showings of artists’ work to other artists. Though not without faults, McPhee’s book reveals well the cloak-and-dagger efforts of one determined individual to prevent the destruction of a generation of innovative art.

2nd floor N 6988 .M33 1994

The In-Between World of Vikram Lall: A Novel

Vassanji, M.G. The In-Between World of Vikram Lall: A Novel. New York: Knopf, 2004.

Reviewed by Rebecca Stuhr

M.G. Vassanji is the gifted Giller Prize winning novelist of The Book of Secrets (1996), four other novels and three collections of short stories .* Born in Kenya and raised in Tanzania, Vassanji’s novels explore the experience of South Asians in Africa. In this novel, Vikram Lall’s in-between world is that of the African-Asian in colonial and post-colonial Africa—regardless of citizenship or nativity—the Asians in Vassanji’s novel are continuously aware of being neither completely accepted by the Black-Africans nor by the European-Africans. The in-between world is also Lull’s in-between emotional and moral state as a result of his experiences during the gruesome brutality of the Kenyan independence struggle and his involvement with post-colonial government corruption.

The novel is told from Lall’s point of view in exile in Toronto having been officially declared the most corrupt man in Kenya. Vassanji has Lall tell his story beginning with his happy childhood in Kenya with his parents, sister Deepa, his uncle and other extended family members and close family friends. He and his sister’s closest friend was Njoroge, a Kikuyu boy their own age. The three of them became friends with two white children, Annie and Bill. This happy childhood became more complicated as the Mau Mau insurrection entered their lives. Njoroge makes Lall swear a childish allegiance to Kenyatta and Lall discovers a beloved uncle’s secret activities in support of the Mau Mau. It wasn’t just that his uncle worked with the Mau Maus, it was the consequences of his action that troubled Lall, most significantly his feeling that his uncle is implicated in some way in the brutal murder of Annie and Bill and their parents. Lall never recovers from these horrific and tragic events. Vassanji’s character tells his story in a cold and detached manner. Lall expresses little guilt or regret for his shady business dealings. His story is just what it is—neither good nor bad.

Through this story the reader learns of the strange position of the Asians of Kenya in particular, and Africa in general and the post independence corruption that has stalled the development of Kenya and other African countries. The story of racism and corruption is a familiar one that can be picked up and set down on many different settings and time periods including, of course, our own. But this novel is not only a history lesson. Beneath it is the much more intimate story of the fate and fortunes of Vikram Lall and his family.

1st Floor PR9199.3.V388 I5 2004
*Other works by M.G. Vassanji
The Gunny Sack. Heinemann, 1989.
PR9381.9.V37 G86x 1989
No New Land: A Novel McClellend & Stewart, 1991
PR9381.9.V37 N6x 1991
Uhuru Street: Short Stories. Heineman, 1991
PR9381.9.V37 U48x 1991
The Book of Secrets. Picador, 1996.
PR9199.3.V388 B66 1996
Amriika. McClellend & Stewart, 1991.
PR9199.3.V388 A8 1999
When She Was Queen. (short stories) Doubleday Canada, 2005
Elvis, Raja: Stories. Penguin Books, 2005

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Boston: Little, Brown, 2000.

Reviewed by Dan McCue

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell is an intriguing, readable study of social epidemiology. Through interviews, academic research, and case study, Gladwell probes into the reasons why certain products and behaviors have infected our society. I learned how Sesame Street and Blue's Clues became infectious learning tools, the secret behind the six degrees of separation (and its spinoff, the six degrees of Kevin Bacon), why 150 is a magic number, how farejumping and crime in New York City are connected, and why it's cool to smoke. It will make you want to be sticky, spread rumors, and find the connectors, mavens, and salespeople in your own social network.

The Expected One

McGowan, Kathleen. The Expected One. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.

Reviewed by Crosby

Remember Mary Magdalene? Well, she is in another book. The Magdalene cult has been very strong in Europe over the past two millennia. Now her presence is being felt in the United States.

Some, if they merely read the inside jacket, may think this book is a recycling of The DaVinci Code (2003). It does deal with the same subject matter: Mary Magdalene (MM) and it does deal with conspiracies and secrets and secret codes (MM does seem to lend herself to those; partly because, in the past, a person could be killed for aligning too closely to her supposed history and teachings). But there are many differences. For one, this one is not as suspenseful as the other book. In some ways, it is more like a travelogue of various places where the author visited. And there lies the major difference with the other books: it is really a disguised autobiography.

The first clue is in one of the dedications: “To Mary Magdalene, my muse, my ancestor”

The second clue is in the afterword: McGowan tells us that she did 20 years of research for this book, primarily via folklore because much of the information about MM is not written, but passed on from generation to generation of ancestors and followers. Books can be found and authors killed and the books edited and distorted. Folklore, according to the author, is more reliable and safer for the participants. And McGowan admits that her information was revealed to her only if she kept her sources secret (even today, and that may be because of the descendants of John the Baptist who are out to seek revenge on MM) so, since she cannot have independent confirmation of the data she chose to call this a fictional story so that she could at least get the story out there.

This book goes beyond the basic idea that MM and Yeshua (Jesus) had children. About 2/3 into the story is where the book becomes very fascinating: basically it is a rewrite of the gospel from the point of view of MM. It is very clever with realistic human interactions and explains a great deal that may have been confusing in the original gospels. It also has several surprises (one of which was referenced above: that John the Baptist—the voice in the wilderness, the eater of locusts and honey—had offspring and, um, guess who the mom is? And guess why the progeny of John hate the progeny of Yeshua . . . ?)

This book is the first in a trilogy. The second book is The Book of Love which is about the book written personally by Yeshua. There may be a bit of controversy over that also.
Stewart Library, Grinnell, Iowa--Main Floor

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1964

Review by Dan McCue

There's a good chance you've heard the phrase "the medium is the message." Marshall McLuhan, author of Understanding Media, spends most of the book explaining why. One of the ways in which he does this is comparing the mechanical, industrial age of years past with its specialized labor to the decentralized, electric age of today, described as the "global village." McLuhan's broad interpretation of medium means everything from the wheel to the television is examined for how it conveys information in our world.

McLuhan wrote Understanding Media in 1964, but his words seem positively prescient at times. Reading this may help you understand why you watch television, why you don't read a newspaper, and why so many of your friends are on Facebook, MySpace, and PLANs.

1st Floor Burling P90 .M26

The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate in Crisis and the Fate of Humanity

Lovelock, James. The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate in Crisis and the Fate of Humanity. New York : Basic Books, 2006.

Review by Mark Schneider

James Lovelock has a way of writing that sometimes inspires, sometimes irritates. He was not the first person to put forth the notion that the atmosphere, the geology, and the biology of the earth all affect one another in profound ways over geologic time, or even that large scale operation of planetary systems are not unlike those of a living organism. However, in his Gaia hypothesis, he pushed the envelope by claiming the earth system is a living organism, and that it has self-healing mechanisms that have evolved in a Darwinian sense. He was 70 in 1979 when he wrote his first in a string of Gaia books, and as a self-identified “independent scientist,” he didn’t have to cater to anyone.

This latest Gaia book takes a highly provocative tone, making a strong (and to me, plausible) case that overpopulation, overdevelopment, and use of fossil fuels have pushed the earth system beyond the ability of natural biological and climatological regulatory systems to control. He further argues that once we have left this stability, most of the effects of climate change (e.g. melting of polar ice) will only further accelerate global warming (or heating, as Lovelock prefers). He’s not just talking tough times for the ski resorts here, but global famine and death from droughts, storms and flooding. Scary stuff!

What originally drew me to read this book was that, in contrast to many environmentalists, he is not averse to high tech solutions to such problems. For example, he is a strong (I mean STRONG) advocate of nuclear power—ultimately fusion, but regular fission reactors now—as an essential step to minimizing the climate change. He seriously discusses the possibility of using a space-mounted sunshade, and of running jet planes on high sulfur fuel to increase high altitude smog as a heat shield. He even suggests “Gaia as religion” to indoctrinate the young—pretty provocative.

Lovelock recognizes many think he is wrong on various points, and seems to respect that. He seems to understand that being understated is not what is needed now. This is not a scientific treatise, but a science-based call to action, or maybe better, a plea from Mother Earth. Read it!

4th floor Science Library QH343.4 .L694x 2006

Eat the Document

Spiotta, Dana. Eat the Document. New York: Scribner, 2006.

Reviewed by Rebecca Stuhr

Mary Whittaker has had to go underground after an anti-war action during the waning years of the Viet Nam war proves fatal. This means separating permanently from her lover, also involved in the action, her family, and all of her friends; it means changing her name and her history. Mary, with a new social security number, identity, and past, eventually marries and has a child. The novel follows her through the initial stages of her descent to anonymity, and then goes forward, 25 years later, to see Mary through the eyes of her 15-year-old son who is slowly catching on to bits of stories that don’t match up and a strange absence about his mother. Mary’s lover Bobby has become Nash. He runs a counter cultural bookshop that appeals to skate boarders, and young radicals. He continues to live by his ideals, but observing now more than acting. Mary and Bobby have been living near each other in the Pacific Northwest but without knowing it. This is not a love story, but an exploration of American culture, the different shapes of resistance, and most of all, the consequences of decisions and actions. In this particular case, the consequence is the loss of an entire past and a future that may lack joy and meaning. Spiotta’s characters are complex and her depiction of radical movements in the 70s and 90s vivid and convincing. Spiotta is also the author of Lightning Field (Scribner, 2002). Both titles are available at Burling Library.