Parecon: Life After Capitalism

Michael Albert. Parecon: Life After Capitalism. London/New York: Verso, 2003.

Reviewed by T. Hatch

Michael Albert, founder of Znet and an acolyte of Noam Chomsky, has imagined a new economic system. In the parecon (i.e. participatory economics) councils of workers and consumers replace corporations. Instead of a system of buyers and sellers in a perpetual effort to fleece one another, where the means of production and output are hegemonic, the ethic of remuneration is altered to reward those who put forth the most effort and sacrifice. Essentially it is an anarchistic vision of the world's economic system that scraps the social contract rationale for earning on property that maintains itself because of unbalanced circumstances.

The values that the parecon holds dear are solidarity, diversity, equity, and participatory self-management. Markets as we know them would cease to exist. “Naked self-interest and callous cash payment” would take a back seat to cooperation and real bottom up participatory democracy. No longer would an anti-social agenda hold sway rewarding the most ruthless amongst us. Albert's effort is aimed at trying to create a world free of markets which he sees as “a no confidence vote on the social capabilities of the human species.”

He is critical of any system that maintains markets. This includes both the central planning and market coordinationist versions of Socialism as well as the fetish for localism that is embodied in Green Bioregionalism. “Economics is conducted by and for workers and consumers. Workers create the social product. Consumers enjoy the social product.” Accordingly, the watch word would be “to each according to effort.”

As laudable as the ethics of intention in economics might be those with a background in economics will have difficulty in swallowing Albert's prescriptions whole. Although the last section of the book is given over to a defense against possible criticisms of his parecon model of economy it is hardly comprehensive.

In a three hundred page treatise on an alternative economic system money is only mentioned once in passing; this only in relation to possible black market activity which would fizzle out because of the lack of possible reward. Forget about money aggregates and even the concepts of money as a store of value and a means of accounting. Beyond this if Albert is eliminating money as a medium of exchange he has not indicated how this might come about.

The parecon as advanced in the book is a global system. How would this come about? Would there be parecon in one country or would it require a international effort to accomplish? Would parecon start in the most advanced capitalist countries first or would there be a corollary on Trotsky's theory of combined and uneven development?

The most stunning part of Albert's work is his naïve belief in equilibrium which surpasses even that of an Alfred Marshall. Even conceding that human nature is not static and that markets are irrational and exploit large portions of humanity it is fanciful to see councils of consumers communicating to producers their needs in advance for a year at a time and having this come off smoothly. That Weberian cage is indeed constructed of iron.

Moonstone – Book One, The Unbidden Magic Series

Brothers, Marilee. Moonstone – Book One, The Unbidden Magic Series. Smyrna, GA: Belle Bridge Books, 2008.

Contributed by Simone Sidwell, Teen Librarian at Grinnell's Stewart Public Library

Moonstone is a well-written and entertaining paranormal young adult novel from former high school teacher and debut author Marilee Brothers. The underclass/trailer-park setting of the novel in “Peacock Flats,” Washington adds an interesting social dimension to the novel, which chronicles the awakening of the “weird psychic powers” of our likeable and funny heroine, fifteen year-old Allie – and the grand mystical mission to come. Allie’s unemployed, single-parent mother suffers from a psychosomatic case of fibromyalgia, making Allie more of the caretaker than Mom. While struggling with the usual teen angst and joys (puberty, crushes, first-romances, school cliques, gangs, bullies), Allie also is visited by a comical hippy-dippy guardian angel who has been relegated to an afterlife in limbo at the local airport in town, and who alerts her to her new powers. This sets Allie off on an entertaining and dangerous adventure centered upon a mystical piece of jewelry - a moonstone necklace given to Allie by a close family friend – and the sinister minion after it. Allie discovers than in addition to weathering the usual ups & downs of a high-school student in Peacock Flats, she has a greater destiny to fulfill as a “star keeper” entrusted with the power Moonstone...Marilee Brothers’ novel stands out for its humor and Allie’s strong point-of-view as an underdog finding her place in the world. This is another [see her review for Bite Me] good choice for public library teen/fantasy collections - I look forward to the next title in this series.

Bite Me – Book One, The Demon Underground Series

Blue, Parker. Bite Me – Book One, The Demon Underground Series. Smyrna, GA: Bell Bridge Books, 2008.

Contributed by Simone Sidwell, Teen Librarian at Grinnell's Stewart Public Library

Bite Me is a well-written and entertaining paranormal mystery/romance with both teen and adult appeal. Val Shapiro seems like your average 17 year old teenager, except that she has to struggle daily to keep her demon side “Lola,” at bay. Lola is a lust demon or succubus, a part of Val (thanks to her demon father) that she struggles to suppress. As a metaphor for teen lust, this paranormal device works well in the novel -- Val is trying to be “a good girl” despite the raging demon hormones. Val learns along the way, however, that totally repressing Lola’s natural urges is just as unhealthy as giving them free-reign, and eventually finds a way to strike a balance between demonic promiscuity on the one hand, and puritanical denial on the other. Val’s uneasiness with her demonic side has made her a loner for most of her teen life, and when she is kicked out of her parents’ house on her 18th birthday she embarks on a positive journey of self-discovery and belonging! outside the confines of school and family: she takes a job in a secret unit of the San Antonio police force and teams up with a telepathic hellhound dog named Fang and a handsome police detective to take on a gang of renegade Vampires that has been attacking the city...Vampires and demons aside, Parker Blue captures a humorous and authentic young adult voice in Val and keeps readers turning pages. Parker’s book would be a popular addition to public libraries teen/fantasy collections. I look forward to the next in the series.

Books, Authors, and Podcasts ...

Learn about Books and Authors through Podcasts

R. Stuhr

Three sites provide podcasts of lectures, interviews, and panel presentations featuring authors and their recently published works. All three are well organized, easy to browse through, and quick to load (depending on your internet set up of course...).

Connie Martinson Talks Books provides 65 podcasts of interviews conducted by Martinson between 1983 and 2007. She interviews a wide variety of authors. Two that stood out for me were her 1995 interview with Barack Obama after Dreams from My Father was published and her 1992 interview with Rosa Parks after her autobiography, My Story appeared.

URL: http://ccdl.libraries.claremont.edu/collection.php?alias=/cmt. Click on the Connie Martinson link to see the list of 65 interviews.

The Free Library of Philadelphia posts a podcast for each of their Author Events. They have several a week so there are more than 255 to choose from. Sponsored by the Free Library's foundation, these events feature novelists, historians, teen authors, romance authors, public affairs authors, and more. Recent podcasts include a pannel of graphic novelists including Art Spiegelman, Jessical Abel, Chip Kidd, Charles Burns, and David Heatley, novelist Christopher Buckley, and fantasy and teen novelist Cornelia Funke. See all FLP has to offer at

http://libwww.freelibrary.org/podcast/.

Finally, FORA.tv offers lectures and panels on all topics: politics, business, culture, technology and science, and "the world." Under "culture" you'll find music, books and authors, religion, history, visual arts and film, law, giving, and sports. Get immersed in this site at

http://fora.tv/.

Was Charles Schulz a genius?

Tibor Fischer thinks so, and he doesn't think that David Michaelis's
new biography does Schulz justice. Find out more by reading Fischer's review at The Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/arts/2008/11/04/bopeanuts104.xml

Or read the biography:

Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis. NY: Harper, 2007.
Burling 3rd Floor PN6727.S3 Z787 2007

Draw your own conclusions by revisiting the strip:

The Complete Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. Published by Fantagraphics Press of Seattle. We are still receiving these volumes and are up to volume 8, taking us through 1966.

Burling 3rd Floor PN6728.P4 S2454x 2004

Strath Haven High School, Martin S-R, class of 2010 is reading ...

Khaled Hosseini. The Kite Runner. NY: Riverhead Books, 2003
Burling PS3608.O525 K58 2003

Paul Rusesabagina. An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography. NY: Penguin Books, 2006.

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. London: Heinemann, 1967
Burling PR9387.9.A3 T5 1967

Guy Delisle. Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea. NY: Farrer, Straus & Giroux, 2007. (In process at Burling Library)

Philip Roth. Indignation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2008 (should be on order for Burling)

Monster Nation: A Zombie Novel
Monster Island: A Zombie Novel
Monster Planet: A Zombie Novel all by David Wellington and published by Thunder's Mouth Press of New York.

Bat-Manga! by Chip Kidd and Geoff Spear. Translated from the Japanese and based on the original Bat Man comic strips. NY: Pantheon Books, 2008.

Breakout: The Chosin Reservoir Campaign, Korea 1950. NY: Fromm International, 1999

Books to Look for at Grinnell College Libraries

The Toss of a Lemon by Padma Viswanathan published by Harcourt 2008. On order

Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth by Marilyn Waring and published in 1999 by University of Toronto Press. Burling HC 79.I5 W384 1999

Home by Marilynne Robinson. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008 On order

A Mercy by Toni Morrison. NY: Knopf, 2008 (should be on order soon).

La Perdida by Jessica Abel. NY: Pantheon Books, 2005. Burling, Latino Collection. PN6727.A25 P47 2006

Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@[squiggle][star]! by Art Spiegelman. New York : Pantheon Books, 2008 (on order soon)

A recent Grinnell College graduate reads ...

The Book review recently heard from a graduate, class of 2008 who is trying to continue her college practice of reading several things at once. Here is what she has to say:

. . . At present I am reading What's the Matter with Kansas? and To the Finland Station by Edmund Wilson. I am sure you know what the first one is about. The second one is about the classical history of revolutionary politics. And this other one I have started . . . is the Unknown Mao, the new biography, which is a pretty easy read, only too bulky to be carried anywhere. To the Finland Station starts in the 1700 and follows this French historian, who for Edmund is sort of the first historian to approach history in a progressive manner rather than in a cyclical manner . . .

What is the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank. NY: Metropolitan Books, 2004.
Burling F 686.2 2004

To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History by Edmund Wilson. London: Macmillan, 1972.
Burling HX 36 W5 1972

Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang. NY: Knopf, 2005
Burling DS778.M3 C38 2005

What are people reading on SEPTA

On their commute from school and work? Well on this particular day it was cold and rainy and there were only a few readers. They were reading Introduction to Continuum Mechanics; The American People, and also train schedules, maps, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Daily Metro, and The Daily News.

Illiterate America

Jonathan Kozol. Illiterate America. NY: New American Library, 1985.

R. Stuhr

Although this book is over 25 years old, I don't think that the statistics on illiteracy presented by Kozol have changed. No Child Left Behind may be the only thing that is different, and I am not sure that that notorious piece of legislation has made a difference. I think that too often policies are put in place and carried out in a way that those who are successful continue to manage to thrive regardless of what environment they are thrown into. And those who are suffering or left out will continue to be left out. Programs are not designed to help the most in need but to capitalize on those who are already making it. They will contribute to getting the numbers that will prove the program successful. Not so different from the tax breaks offered time after time to those at the very top--helping those who are already doing just fine.

So, in Philadelphia, the statistics quoted by the Mayor and the president and director of the Free Library show that 2/3 of the adult population of Philadelphia are considered to function at a very low level of literacy, 47% of the school children drop out of school, usually between 8th and 9th grade. Fewer than 1/2 the households in Philadelphia have internet or computers, and nearly all public school children qualify for free lunch (this is an area with a very high population of private school attendees). Philadelphia just announced a $1 billion budget short fall over the next five years and this will mean cuts in library hours and services, cuts to public recreational facilities, and cuts to other social services across the city. These are all places that provide safe havens, programming to encourage reading and literacy, daily homework help and more. This is happening in a city where the Mayor is clearly dedicated to improving the literacy and school attendance rate.

Based on these statistics, I would say that Kozol's statistics have not changed for the better. Kozol is passionate about his topic. In this book, he presents the problem in the starkest possible terms, he finds fault with on-again off-again government funding and over reliance on the private sector, and he is leading a call to arms to address the situation. Kozol makes the argument that both economically and in terms of safety and well being, we all suffer from the high rate of illiteracy in this country and so it is well worth our personal investment and worth political and governmental investment. He describes programs that have failed because of a lack of understanding and respesct for those who would be the recipients of literacy programs, and he describes the grass roots efforts that have been successful. He makes recommendations for successful programs, and Kozol calls on college students and adults from all communities to hit the pavement to recruit for and to offer literacy programs.

Just coming off of the election where we either had the good fortune to be part of the grass roots effort or at least were witness to what can be achieved by people hitting getting out and working together for a common cause ... seeing something that seemed to be impossible come to fruition... I think that this book is worth reading in 2008. It will make you angry and it will make you sad but it may inspire readers to see where and how they can be of service in their community.

Burling Library LC 151 .K68 1985b

Kozol has written many books all on the theme of education and children:


Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of A Nation.
HV875.57.N48 K69 1995.

Children of Revolution: A Yankee Teacher in the Cuban Schools. 1978
LA486 .K69.

Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools.
LC2803.B7 K6 1967.

The Night is Dark and I am Far from Home.
LA217 .K69 1975.

On Being a Teacher. 1981
LA217 .K688.

Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope
HQ792.U5 K69x 2000.

Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America
HV4505 .K69 1988.

Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools
LC4091 .K69 1991.

The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling
LC212.62 .K69 2005.

The Duel: Pakistan On the Flight Path of American Power

Tariq Ali. The Duel: Pakistan On the Flight Path of American Power (New York: Scribner, 2008)

Reviewed by T. Hatch

During one of the seemingly endless Democratic debates in 2007 when Senator Christopher Dodd opined that General Musharraf “was certainly no Thomas Jefferson” he was firmly in the tradition of U.S. policy towards Pakistan.” Dodd was not complimenting the General for not owning slaves. Rather, he was observing a longstanding continuity of U.S. policy makers backing the military of Pakistan at the expense of that country's chances at genuine democracy and its democratic institutions. That support of the Pakistani military was based on the threat of Soviet expansionism during the Cold War but is now predicated on the “pure fantasy” that there is a jihadi finger ready to squeeze the nuclear trigger.

Ali convincingly places Pakistan's history into a regional context. From the founding of the state which he characterizes as “a big thank-you present to the Muslim League” from the British, to Pakistan's role in the Afghan war against the Soviet Empire in its waning days, to its geopolitical position in the global war on terror, Pakistan suffers from both its propinquity to Afghanistan and its relationship with the United States. Far more of a concern than the jihadists seizing power from the 500,000 man army in Pakistan is the real possibility that by widening the war in Afghanistan (including attacks inside Pakistan itself as proposed by candidate Obama) the sufficient condition is put into place to create a fissure inside the military of Pakistan.

War is about unintended and unforeseen consequences. Operation Enduring Freedom which Ali sees as ensuring that violence and the heroin trade endure is a case in point. An example of the meaty-fisted irony associated with the conduct of war is the fact that the current jihadi manuals being used against NATO and U.S. Forces in Afghanistan were printed at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. The manuals which once made the rounds of the refugee camps, when the mujhadeen were seen as plucky freedom fighters, are now lethal reminders of the consequences of what Chalmers Johnson labeled as “blowback.”

This is a useful book that I'll wager is not on the shelves of the public library in Wassila, Alaska anytime soon.

The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism Andrew J. Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Henry

Andrew J. Bacevich. The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2008)

Reviewed by T. Hatch

Professor Bacevich's The Limits of Power is a slender and powerful little book that is to the ethic of imperialism what Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class was to conspicuous consumption. Since the end of World War II and the founding of the national security state the federal government in general, and the Executive Branch in particular, have acquired power roughly in the same way as John Belushi piled food on his tray in the cafeteria scene in the film Animal House. Not only has this gluttonous acquisition of power continued unabated but the spectator consent-givers that the people of the United States have become have passively watched while the power grab transpired. They only have themselves to blame.

According to Bacevich, a retired U.S. Army colonel and West Point graduate, that the American people persist in their passivity is because they have been co-opted into a reckless consumerism that both excuses and sees as infinite the exercise U.S. power in the world. We find ourselves in the middle of a permanent and global war on “terrorism” largely because of a moral failing. Clearly this is a losing strategy. “American power has limits and is inadequate to the ambitions to which hubris and sanctimony have given rise.” This system perpetuates itself because the modern imperialist “little war” is not something that intrudes on everyday life. In fact, “...most Americans subscribed to a limited-liability version of patriotism, one that emphasized the display of bumper stickers in preference to shouldering a rucksack.” The President may say we are at war but you couldn't tell it by the behavior of the nation. It is not a choice of guns or butter. The only decision left to be made is how creamy do we want the butter?

In the author's view George W. Bush is to blame for a recklessness in office but in regard to the invasion and occupation of Iraq he is firmly in the tradition of the other emperor-presidents who have preceded him. President Bush is certainly part of the longstanding practice of conviction following self-interest. The Bush ideology consists at its core of the belief that history has a purpose (the triumph of freedom over oppression and evil), the United States embodies the cause of freedom, God has chosen the U.S. to ensure that freedom prevails, and for the American way of life to succeed “freedom” must exist everywhere. Of course this was all to be achieved by the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war . However, God's plan for the U.S. was radically altered when the Bush Doctrine sank on its maiden voyage faster than the Titanic.

The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule

Thomas Frank. The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule (New York: Henry Holt
and Company, 2008)

Reviewed by T. Hatch

The Wrecking Crew is essentially an intellectual history dissecting movement conservatism's nihilism and how this translates into the exercise of political power. The “wingers” who descended on Washington D.C. like a biblical plague of locusts beginning with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 have systematically sabotaged the liberal state. By placing those hostile to the project of the liberal state in key positions e.g. lumbermen at the head of the Forestry Service, anti-union zealots at the Department of Labor etc. the wingers have been wildly successful at capturing the state and using it to destroy the loathsome liberalism that has been the source of their “oppression.” The conservative formula for victory is to scatter liberal constituencies hallow out the state, and reward your cronies with the loot.

Following in the tradition of Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Frank documents the “defunding of the left” which he characterizes as “the north star of the conservative project.” It is the story of corrupting lobbyists like Jack Abramoff and right-wing operatives such as Grover Norquist and how they preyed upon the suicidal tendency of liberalism to depend on the fair play of its sworn enemies. Throughout the narrative the leit motif of the interests of business are central and defining to the wingers' cause. All the while the saboteurs, relentlessly advancing a pro business political agenda, adroitly shield themselves with the mantle of libertarianism portraying themselves as merely seeking human freedom. In this respect they took a cue from Milton Friedman who advanced the cause of the freedom sweatshops by repeatedly quoting Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell.

This book is very much the case of “it takes one to know one.” If one views Frank's August 8th interview on Democracy Now he candidly admits to once being a college Republican before his defection. By reading this useful book one develops a greater understanding of how we arrived at the point where we are today in the Bush era where we now have a “market based government.” It remains an open question whether the American liberal state was merely “a forty-year suspension of the market's reign” or not.

From Flames to Samarra

Sedaris, David. When you Are Engulfed in Flames. NY; Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 2008
O'Hara, John. Appointment in Samarra. NY: Random House, 1938.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

What do these two books have in common? Not too much--except that I am in the middle of reading them both. If you are familiar with Sedaris, you will recognize the tone of his latest book--focussing more on Hugh though than the rest of his family. I think Sedaris is at his best when when you are listening to him read, but this is enjoyable reading nonetheless. Painful as his childhood might have been for him, he now lives in Paris and can charge a significant chunk of money for his readings ... so he is doing all right.

Not so much can be said for the characters in O'Hara's brief novel, Appointment in Samarra. It is set in the midst of the depression, social, ethnic, and racial bigotry, unhappy marriages, drinking problems ... but this is a taste of Americana--Pennsylvania Americana. Just as you are starting to get into the story O'Hara introduces a new character and gives you that characters complete background. You get a good feel for the town of Gibbsville and the members of the Lantenengo Country Club. Although this is a tragic novel, it has its humorous moments and I love it when Al Grecco says that Ed, the local mobster and king pin, is the only thing happening from Reading to Wilkes-Barre.

O'Hara Burling 3rd Floor PS3529.H29 A6x
Sedaris Burling, Smith Memorial PS3569.E314 W48 2008

Free to All: Carnegie Libraries and American Culture, 1890-1920

Van Slyk, Abigail A. Free to All: Carnegie Libraries and American Culture, 1890-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

Van Slyk, an architectural historian, focuses on the design decisions to look at the history of public libraries in the United States, specifically the building of Carnegie libraries. Her history is a social history in which the wealthy classes struggle with their desire to build and maintain an institution that served as a place for the elite to engage with and satisfy their cultural tastes. Central libraries were built in center cities as palaces to learning and the arts. Van Slyk notes that spaces that were more attractive to the working classes, newspaper and magazine rooms as well as rooms serving children, were often regulated to basements or ground floors accessible through altnerative entrances. The genteel reader could then use the more elegant spaces without crossing paths with the lower or noisy ranks of society.

Van Slyk looks at floor plans, building designs and furniture to demonstrate the 19th and early 20th century library planners' desire to regulate the behavior of library users. The branch library system developed out of the need to better serve communities and those in the middle and lower classes. In fact, Carnegie's foundation stopped funding central libraries and concentrated on branch buildings.

In her conclusion, Van Slyk writes that the Carnegie building program “helped perpetuate and reinforce a relatively narrow definition of the public library’s function in American society” doing away with an earlier model of the library as a multipurpose cultural institution (art gallery, museum, and book collection) to define library services as the quick delivery of books into the hands of individual readers and “supported larger cultural trends that encouraged libraries to ignore the issue of how readers used the materials that they did borrow" (p. 219).

She looks back on the 19th century social libraries that predated the free library movement, and which were “established specifically to facilitate an active sharing of idea. . . . The efficiency driven public library of the twentieth century defined reading as a solitary activity. In the process, the library lost its potential to serve as a site—literally and figuratively—for public discussion and debate.”

Something we are still living with, but perhaps gradually moving away from.

The Size of the World

Silber, Joan. The Size of the World. NY: W.W. Norton, 2008.

submitted by R. Stuhr

Silber has written a handful of chapters that can stand on their own as short stories or novellas, but they are linked across time, place, and generations through American characters who have lived in and been changed by their experiences in Thailand and Mexico. This is a beautifully written book with interesting and complex characters.

On order for Burling Library.

The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Fantastical Journey Around Your Head

Tallis, Raymond. The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Fantastical Journey Around Your Head. London: Atlantic Books, 2008

Submitted by R. Stuhr

Tallis writes that the human face is "the most sign-packed surface in the universe." National Post reviewer Robert Fulford wrote, "So far as Tallis knows, there's nothing that's uninteresting about the head. After all, a head can sneeze, kiss, laugh, yawn, vomit and cry, sometimes with the owner's permission and sometimes not." The advent of Botox is doing away with the nuances and messages that can be present in a face. The human species craves for these messages as a sign of recognition. To read more about this fascinating book, see Fulford's review.

(soon to be) On order for Grinnell College Libraries

Recommendations from Prairie Light's book buyer Paul Ingram

Just today I stumbled across the fact that Book Sense, the independent book sellers' collaborative front, had become Indie Bound. Indie Bound's Web site is annoying, catering to something . . . not necessarily books or the bookish--but I'm sure books are there. There are also author interviews hidden in there somewhere. I stumbled across one with Lois Lowry, but I couldn't find a link to the interviews, nor could I find a place to search the Web site--it is probably there, but I was just too bothered by the hype to keep looking. BUT The good thing was that in trying to figure out if this site was legitimate, I went to the Prairie Lights Web page to see if the Indie Bound logo was there (and it was) and I found this link to Paul Ingram's "corner." There is a nice varied list of recommendations there with compact but enlightening descriptions. The books range from "country noir" to Iowania to politics and history. Browse and enjoy!

Paul's Corner at Praire Lights Book Store in Iowa City.
http://www.prairielightsbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp?s=regionalcatalog&page=282416

What is the What

Dave Eggers. What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng: A Novel. San Francisco: McSweeney's, 2006. (In paperback by Vintage Books, 2007).

Submitted by R. Stuhr

This much talked about book is the result of a collaboration between Eggers and Deng. Deng is one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. At the age of seven, he ran from his village after being separated from his mother as it was being attacked by a Sudanese government sanctioned group called the Murahaleen. Deng eventually merged with a small group of boys who were led by a teacher from his village. This group grew in size and they made their way to Ethiopia. On their way the boys passed through other burnt out villages, were attacked by government helicopters, government and rebel soldiers and eaten by lions. They watched their friends and fellow travelers die by the side of the road, and traveled themselves with very little hope, and without clothes or food. Once Deng and his group made it to Ethiopia they became part of a large refugee group numbering in the thousands. They lived in relative peace here until the Ethiopian government fell and the new government forced them out of the country. Thousands were killed as they escaped back into Sudan and the survivors made their way to new refugee camps. Deng spent ten years in a UN run camp in Kenya before being one of the last Lost Boys to be sent to the United States. By that time, he was aware that his parents were still alive.

The novel starts as Deng is being robbed in his Atlanta apartment. He is tied up and beaten and as he lies there he begins to narrate his story from the time of his peaceful and happy childhood through the destruction of his village and his years of wandering and life as a refugee. His life in the Kenyan refugee camp is relatively stable compared to his entry into the United States. He describes the hundreds of young men, dropped into different cities in the country without any idea about how to live in an urban industrialized environment and no idea of how to relate to or interact with Americans. They arrived with high expectations to attend college and thrive. Some do and many others continue to struggle. They remain closely connected to each other through email and cell phones--a now scattered by tightly knit extended family.

Eggers' and Deng's collaboration is a beautifully written, heart breaking, and enlightening story. Eggers is founder and editor of McSweeney's, an innovative and fascinating publishing enterprise. See the Blog entry on the The Believer Magazine. Deng has founded the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation and all proceeds from the sales of What is the What go to this foundation. The foundation's goal is to provide educational opportunities for those affected by the conflicts in Sudan. www.valentinoachakdeng.org

Burling First Floor Smith Memorial PS3605.G48 W43 2006

For other books by Dave Eggers

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

Deresiewicz, William. "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education." American Scholar 2008.
available online: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su08/elite-deresiewicz.html
(The libraries subscribe in print).

"Our Best Universities Have Forgotten That the Reason They Exist is to Make Minds, Not Careers."

Submitted by R. Stuhr

Deresiewicz writes harshly about the direction he sees education moving, especially with respect to the elite (ivy league) universities. He takes to task admissions procedures, grading practices (and expectations), social elitism, the move away from humanities and sciences to more practical, career oritented areas, and, related to career orientation, the institutional desire to develop rich alumni with the ability to donate large sums of money over the goals and missions of a liberal arts education. Deresiewicz also sites the disappearance of solitude and reflection, the need for students to conform to what they see as the desires of their professors (Yale students, he writes, think for themselves but only because their professors want them to) to get that A. He points out evidence of grade inflation along with the loss of the expectation that students (faculty, alumni) not take consequences of their actions or behavior.

I feel that anything I write reduces what Mr. Deresiewicz is expressing. His writing is heartfelt and he in fact labels his essay an exhortation. This is an important article for anyone in liberal arts institutions to read and to ponder. Is his take extremist? Does it take someone pointing out the extreme situation to make others more alert to what is happening? He is writing specifically about Yale in the following quotation: "The college career office has little to say to students not interested in law, medicine, or business, and elite universities are not going to do anything to discourage the large percentage of their graduates who take their degrees to Wall Street. In fact, they’re showing them the way. The liberal arts university is becoming the corporate university, its center of gravity shifting to technical fields where scholarly expertise can be parlayed into lucrative business opportunities."

And: "Being an intellectual begins with thinking your way outside of your assumptions and the system that enforces them. But students who get into elite schools are precisely the ones who have best learned to work within the system, so it’s almost impossible for them to see outside it, to see that it’s even there. Long before they got to college, they turned themselves into world-class hoop-jumpers and teacher-pleasers, getting A’s in every class no matter how boring they found the teacher or how pointless the subject, racking up eight or 10 extracurricular activities no matter what else they wanted to do with their time. Paradoxically, the situation may be better at second-tier schools and, in particular, again, at liberal arts colleges than at the most prestigious universities. Some students end up at second-tier schools because they’re exactly like students at Harvard or Yale, only less gifted or driven. But others end up there because they have a more independent spirit. They didn’t get straight A’s because they couldn’t be bothered to give everything in every class. They concentrated on the ones that meant the most to them or on a single strong extracurricular passion or on projects that had nothing to do with school or even with looking good on a college application. Maybe they just sat in their room, reading a lot and writing in their journal. These are the kinds of kids who are likely, once they get to college, to be more interested in the human spirit than in school spirit, and to think about leaving college bearing questions, not resumés."

Deresiewicz is a regular contributor to The Nation and writes frequently for American Scholar, and The New Republic. He taught at Yale from 1998-2008.

Books on libraries

Libraries as Agencies of Culture. Edited by Thomas Augst and Wayne Wiegand. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003. (Appeared originally as a special issue of American Studies The Library as an Agency of Culture, Fall 2001, volume 42, no. 3).

Submitted by R. Stuhr

The essays in this collection each look at some aspect of the role of libraries in supporting cultural and civic life. In his introduction, Augst considers the social interaction of the reader with the book and notes that books acquire social life through exchange and use, thus claiming the innate social nature of libraries. He describes the library as a social enterprise, a physical space, and a symbolic site of collective memory. Augst provides food for thought and some very nicely expressed ideas, including, "To read a book is to borrow from established forms of cultural authority and to refashion that authority within personal and communal contexts of meaning and practice (p. 15).

In "The Sound of the Civic: Reading Noise at the New York Public Library," Ari Kelman, writes about the rule of silence in the New York Public Library reading room, and the code of behavior patrons were expected to follow. He describes the NYPL as a "public institution that attempts to foster private interactions between people and texts.... The library provides information but it cannot facilitate congregation or conversation" (p. 28). He compares this state with Habermas's description of the public sphere which requires conversations among readers (although based on shared texts) to prosper. However dreary this idea of imposed silence and stifled conversation may seem, Kelman contrasts this kind of spiritually nourishing space with the nonstop noise of the city and stresses the goal of the library to "ensure the safe and clear transmission of information from text to individual," p. 40.

Contrast these ideas with "Exploring the American Idea at the New York Public Library," by Jean L. Peer. This essay provides a history of Cold War era discussion forums which the NYPL devised to provide an opportunity for library patrons to read and discuss important documents and texts looking at US democratic principles from a variety of angles. These book forums were provided along with Great Books discussion groups, and eventually, film series. Nothing quiet about these programs!

The Library as Place: History, Community, and Culture. Edited by John E. Buschman and Gloria J. Leckie. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2007.

This is another collection of essays. It is divided into three parts, with part one focusing on public libraries, part two on the research library, and part three on the myths created around libraries. The essays on public libraries are all about creating community, making spaces where disparate people from all walks of life come to feel comfortable, to learn, to read, to be with others, to relax and find refuge. Public libraries have had the role of creating social spaces, furthering the goals of democracy, and building a sense of civic responsibility. Julia A. Hersberger's article on the Greensboro Carnegie Negro Library drives home the idea of taking the library beyond the building as this library moved well past its initial community to serve the entire county through book mobile services. Ronald Tetreault's essay on the rise of military libraries during the time of the British Empire shows the library, in this context, moving from an officers' club to an institution that served enlisted men accompanied by an overall change in the militaries' view of these men which led to respect and improved conditions and opportunities.

Other essays in this collection look at the use of libraries by scholars and undergraduates. Antell and Engel show that scholars value the library as a place to work and where serendipitous discovery can take place. Lisa M. Given finds that undergraduates are still relying heavily on materials within the library as well as finding the library a welcoming place to work. She finds that students like to be able to arrange furniture to suit their needs--moving chairs and tables around to accommodate groups or individual study. Heavy, nailed down furniture is (may be) a thing of the past and she recommends that libraries should consult carefully with their students before renovating spaces. [By the way, this theory was carried out successfully by Georgia Tech and presented in a recent ALA session].

Both of these books provide thoughtful and interesting discussion on the role and purposes of libraries within existing communities and as micro-communities in and of themselves. They promote the idea of the library as a social space where conversations can take place inspired by texts. This can happen between the text and an individual reader or through group discussion. Learning and discovery can take place in solitude or as a shared and collaborative activity.

Library As Place
Burling 1st floor Z716.4 .L485 2007

Libraries as Agencies of Culture
on order for the Grinnell College Libraries

The Struggle For Power: The American Revolution

Theodore Draper. The Struggle For Power: The American Revolution (New York:
Random House, 1996)

Reviewed by T. Hatch

If one supposes that ideology is a litany of highfalutin excuses justifying the nakedly brazen acquisition of power; not a streetlight (that while providing a drunk with a place to steady himself) nonetheless affords at least some illumination, then, this book belongs on the nightstand.

Draper's history of the American Revolution concentrates on the period following the British victory in the Seven Years' War until the beginning of armed hostilities in 1775. With the French now vanquished and no longer a threat to the English colonists, stoked by success, the British sought to make the colonial bureaucracy a bit more rational. Unhappily for the sake of the emerging Empire the colonists were only too thoroughly English. And like all real Englishmen they were adroit at smuggling, loathed paying taxes, and were among the world's finest at rioting. Because it was ambition (not oppression) that drove the colonist to revolt, it was only natural that a group of proper Englishmen should avail themselves of the opportunity to seize political power. So they did.

Because of the debt incurred in the Seven Years' War Parliament stepped up to claim its long dormant power of administration of the colonies. The colonists were used to the economic expansion that marked the first half of the eighteenth century. They were also accustomed to the lax enforcement effort of the custom authorities and quite naturally resented the crackdown. In addition to the unpopular Royal Proclamation of 1763 that enraged colonists who were already purchasing land beyond the Alleghenies, and for whom the Crown's imposition of a land monopoly was disagreeable, found themselves in opposition to a short list of slightly less egregious measures taken by the British government. The Sugar, Currency, and Stamp Acts of 1764 as well as the establishment of the vice-admiralty courts were all resented by the colonists with a propensity to rebellion.

Because the enterprising part of the colonial elite that we know as our founding fathers were able to exploit the “mob” in resisting taxes and duties there is no loose talk among American historians about social revolution. Because colonists held slaves in nearly all of the American colonies there can be no real discussion of a colonial war of liberation either. Like the Glorious Revolution of 1688 the American Revolution took place during a time of relative economic prosperity. In the tradition of their English revolutionary brethren the followers of the American Revolution see the event as a historical sui generis, entirely superior to revolutions in other countries.

Burling 2nd floor E210 .D73 1996

The Winning of the West

Theodore Roosevelt. The Winning of the West. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1904
[1889] 4 vols.

[v. 1. From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 -- v. 2. From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 -- v. 3. The founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 -- v. 4. Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807.]

Reviewed by T. Hatch

Aside from the renown that the twenty-sixth president receives for expropriating the Progressive agenda and his charmingly contrived cowboy persona he also had a career as an historian. The Winning of the West is the story of American expansion beyond the Allegheny mountains. The intrepid frontiersman armed with little more than his rifle and axe, heroically weathering ubiquitous Indian attacks of untold ferocity, settled the “sparsely peopled temperate zone” that is today the central part of the United States. Teddy Roosevelt is then to U.S. historiography what Leon Uris is to the history of Zionism. As Ronald Reagan opined after the invasion of Grenada, “it was lucky we got there when we did.”

Spreading out over the North American continent in Roosevelt's view was only right and natural for the English speaking peoples as it was inevitable anyway. Notions of progress, the march of civilization, and Anglo-Saxon supremacy were self-evident to the right thinking Americans of T.R.'s day (and beyond). To have avoided this clash would have meant caving into “sentimental humanitarians” who though they meant well were nevertheless “the large class of amiable but maudlin fanatics.” Consistent with the Rooseveltian zeitgeist sentimentalism was to deny the settler and pioneer the basic justice of their cause and sentencing the better part of the North American continent to being “kept as nothing but a game preserve for squalid savages.” It was bleeding-heart humanitarianism to grant the barbarians title to the land for which they held no valid deed. Clearly natural right was on the side of the frontier Irish Calvinists- those backwoods “Roundheads” - who understood that “the man who puts the soil to use must of right dispossess the man who does not, or the world will come to a stand still.”

Speaking of barbarians and savages.... If one were a member of an Indian tribe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries here in America social mobility was limited to a promotion from mere barbarian to the more exalted rank of savage. For Roosevelt it was largely a distinction without a difference. To aspire to the social station of savagery meant little more than growing crops and not torturing your captives in a way that offended Anglo-Saxon sensibilities. Either way your days were numbered and the inexorable march of progress demanded that you wither away.

Professor Chomsky has aptly described Theodore Roosevelt as a “lunatic racist.” Not that there is any honor amongst racists – lunatic or otherwise – but contrasted to the misplaced paternalism of a Lord Lugard there is something pathologically grimy about Roosevelt's brand of racism. Lugard as a representative of the British Empire in Northern Africa divided humanity into “advanced” and “backward” races. It was the duty of advanced races to provide the “three C's” of Christianity, civilization, and commerce so that one day they might be self-sufficient and provide the world market with goods and raw materials (see Lord Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa). Not so with T.R. There was not any place in Roosevelt's world for the “backward” races. The future for the American Indian resembled the prospects facing the Picts in England centuries ago.

An excellent companion piece to The Winning of the West is Gore Vidal's Empire. Vidal portrays T.R. as a shallow manic who revels in the banality of phrases such as “dee lighted.” Perhaps there is some justice to Roosevelt's visage on the side of that crime against nature, taste, and historical accuracy that we call Mount Rushmore.

Burling 2nd floor F351 .R79

Mysteries by Donald Westlake and Michael Chabon

Westlake, Donald. What's So Funny. NY: Warner Books, 2007.
Chabon, Michael. The Yiddish Policeman's Union. NY: Harper Collins, 2007.

Submitted by Mark Schneider

I'm a sucker for mystery novels. I find having a light read going is a good thing especially during the summer. Unfortunately, after you have read a number of mysteries, they can get a bit predictable, so it is nice to have a twist. That is why I have long been a fan of Tony Hillerman, but it seems cranking them out has become more of a business for him than a labor of love, and I have found his recent works lackluster at best. However, there are a couple of great novels I have read recently that nicely combine the twist with a good yarn.

What's So Funny by Donald Westlake puts the small time thief in the lead role. In one of his Dortmunder novels (and the only one I've read so far), Dortmunder is a talented criminal who just wants to make a [dis]honest living. He's got a heart, he's modest, he doesn't want to push his luck. He ends up getting drawn into some big time white collar crime as a tool of folks trying to right a decades old wrong involving misappropriated treasures from WWII. Dortmunder wants nothing to do with it, but he and his buddies end up having to be tools of the "good guys" or end up going to jail for their much more small-time misdeeds. Lots of interesting characters, and enough twists to keep you guessing.

Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union takes place in an alternative world where the survivors of the holocaust end up in a settlement in Alaska rather than the Holy Land (don't you remember the catastrophic collapse of the state of Israel in 1948?). Meyer Landsman is a troubled cop with a troubled life, and his best friend and fellow cop Berko Shemets is half Jew, half Tlingit. Prominent is an ultraorthodox sect that plays the role of the local Mafia. Chabon manages to combine the real and the imagined in such a skillful way that the reader is often left wondering: "did he make that up or is that real?" The novel tends to sputter out a little at the end, but even so, I found it the sort of novel I was sad to finish--I just wanted a little more.

Visit the Stewart Library to find books by Donald Westlake.
Both Burling Library and Stewart Library have Michael Chabon's books.

For the Yiddish Policeman's Union stroll over to the 1st floor Smith Memorial PS3553.H15 Y54 2007 at Burling Library.

One's Company

Holland, Barbara. One's Company: Reflections on Living Alone. Akadine Press, 1996.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

Holland considers all of the aspects of living alone and devotes a chapter to each one. Chapters cover the importance of food and its proper preparation, finding the right place to live, the importance of connecting with other people and making merriment part of your day-to-day life, surviving depression, keeping anxiety at bay, and finding appropriate work that suits you. She is practical as well, providing recipes for certain kinds of days, detailed instructions for changing a lock, advice on how to fix your own toilet, and a survey of hobbies and activities that can be used to stave off couchdom (my word) and television addiction.

Holland is a fantastic writer and I have been sharing different parts of the book with anyone who will listen as I've been reading it.

Sadly, the Akadine Press was part of the Common Reader which is no more. But you can find copies of this and other books by Barbara Holland at your favorite used book site.

West of Kabul, East of New York

Ansary, Tamim. West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

In this memoir, Ansary tells the story of his childhood in Kabul, the son of an American woman and an Afghan father. Published before The Kite Runner became the run-away favorite book club read, Ansary shares his impressions of Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion and three decades and counting of devastating war. Ansary's father worked for the government, and his childhood was colored by this fact, which determined both how and where he and his family lived. At the age of 16, in the mid-sixties, Ansary moved with his family to the United States. His father eventually returned to Afghanistan to be with is extended family and to continue his government work. Ansary describes the different ways he and his siblings responded to their Afghan identity. During the late 1970s, Ansary travels throughout South and Central Asia and the Middle East coming as close to Afghanistan as possible with the thin justification of writing an article about his travels. Later, after his return, he attempts to navigate the intricate networks of the Afghan community in exile. Ansary writes with humor and humility. His book is enlightening and thoroughly enjoyable.

For Kite Runner fans, Ansary mentions Khaled Hosseini toward the end of his book, describing him as a "young Afghan doctor whose passion after work was writing--not ghazals, not quasidas, not even rubaiyat, but horror stories in the tradition of H.P. Lovecraft (p. 284).

Burling Library 2nd Floor E 184 .A23 A57 2002

I Don't Believe In Atheists

I Don't Believe In Atheists

Hedges, Chris. I Don't Believe In Atheists. NY: Free Press, 2008.

Reviewed By T. Hatch

Chris Hedges has produced another concise volume dealing with a contemporary moral issue. Hedges who can be described as a left of center philosophical skeptic has attacked head on what he sees as the squalid utopianism of the new or “fundamentalist” atheism of Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins.

It was quite recently that this writer heard the word atheist modified with the adjective fundamentalist. That was one afternoon on NPR and the speaker was coming from a right wing perspective. Perhaps, I thought, the speaker meant any atheist who had the temerity to publish was a fundamentalist. Hedges though is quite specific in defining what he sees as atheistic fundamentalism. “The belief that rational and quantifiable disciplines such as science can be used to perfect human society is no less absurd than a belief in magic, angels and divine intervention.”(p.13)

At no point in the book does Hedges attempt to make an argument that God actually exists. He argues that “Utopian dreams are always psychotic” and the culprits on the secular side of the ledger were Descartes, Hume, Locke, Voltaire, Kant, Diderot, Rousseau, and Thomas Paine. Accordingly, Utopian violence together with industrial and bureaucratic power culminate in totalitarianism. His argument in this respect is a little too direct and the net he casts is a little large. Rousseau is no more responsible for the horrors of Auschwitz than Augustine was for the Inquisition. He specifically cites the Atlantic slave trade as an example of this kind of terror produced by these aforementioned Enlightenment dilettantes. This act of inhumanity was well under way before “the age of reason.”

It is also interesting to note that Hedges repeatedly references Reinhold Niebuhr and contemporary British philosopher John Gray to make his case. There is coherence in this but he also is fond of employing Dostoevsky and Nietzsche to make the same series of points. Talk about a couple of legendary misanthropes!

Despite these inconsistencies, the hang-ups Hedges has with the Jacobins as the first totalitarians (as a technical point and still a stretch why not Napoleon?), his notion that all ethics begin with religion, and his (or my) semantical quibbling with the terms “sin” and “evil,” on balance, it is a solid argument. Indeed Utopian fundamentalists be they religiously or secularly inspired represent the same danger. In fact they can in some instances make common cause and come up with fetching schemes such as the “war on terror.”

A more felicitous title for Hedges' book might have been “Why All Utopians are D#$*%*B@#s (Especially Hitchens, Harris, and Dawkins).”

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food

Jennifer 8. Lee. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food. Twelve, 2008.

Submitted by Jennifer (Wheeler) Rothschild '02

In this book, Lee explores three major things: the history of fortune cookies (they're actaully Japanese and internment had a big role in making them a Chinese restaurant favorite), the phenomenon that is Chinese-American food (as opposed to authentic Chinese food), and how Chinese-American food shapes the Chinese immigrant experience and vice versa.

Fascinating and extremely readable, Lee's journey starts with what happened when an unexpectedly large amount of people got 5 out of 6 numbers right on the Powerball lottery. It turns out they were playing fortune cookie numbers.

Lee traces Chinese restaurants around the world, sometimes following the cookies, sometimes the workers, sometimes the food. She has essays on the evolution of Chop Suey and General Tso's chicken (both very American dishes, while Kung Pao chicken is "authentic" Chinese.) She talks about the advent of delivery and the quest to find the greatest Chinese restaurant in the world. Lee delves into crimes committed on Chinese deliverymen in New York, and how most Chinese restaurants in the states are staffed from an agency under the Manhattan Bridge. She also has great examination on why Jewish people love Chinese food and the story of the Great Kosher Duck Scandal in 1989.

Some random facts from the book:

There are two Chinese restaurants for every McDonald's in the US.
Almost all fortunes are written by just two guys.
Cheap Chinese restaurants in South America are called chifa (chee-fah) which is derived from the Chinese words chi fan (chir fan) which means "to eat food"
Almost all of those little soy sauce packets are made by one company and don't have soy in them.

The writing is engaging and accessible, but well-researched. I highly recommend it, but plan on having Chinese food for dinner.

Leap Days: Chronicles of a Midlife Move

Katherine Lanpher. Leap Days: Chronicles of a Midlife Move. Boston: Springboard Press, 2006.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

Lanpher is a newspaper journalist and radio host. She was born and raised in Illinois (across the river from Iowa) and worked in Minneapolis for most of her career and in 2004 moved to NYC to co-host a new radio program with Al Franken. In this book, she writes as much or more about her childhood and career and how she came to make her move from her spacious St. Paul house, friends, and career, to a small (but lovely) Greenwich Village apartment in New York City, than she does about her actual move and transition, her work at Air America with Al Franken, or what she is doing currently. Although she has since left her radio show at Air America, she continues to live in New York City, suggesting that her transition is complete.

The Bookseller of Kabul

The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad. Translated by Ingrid Christophersen. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

Submitted by R. Stuhr

Seierstad has been a journalist Chechnya, the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan. She got to know "Sultan" and his family and asked if she could live with them to write this work. She has written it in the form of a novel and changed all of the names. Seierstad provides a lot of interesting detail about daily life for one family in Kabul, but she layers this with her own point of view. One doesn't know whether to blame the author or the translator for the condescending tone. Still, I think we need to know as much as we can about these countries that the United States has invaded and is occupying. We need to read widely just because much what we have available to us is written in a highly subjective manner and by Westerners.

Burling 1st Floor CT 1877.5 .K48 S45 2003

Martin Stuhr-Rommereim '14 recommends . . .

Monster Island: A Zombie Novel by David Wellington. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006.
Once you start you don't want to stop reading this super-special-awsome book. It is set in New York City six weeks after a zombie epidemic. The surviving population fights for survival.

Blood Fever by Charles Higson (based on the Ian Flemming character, James Bond). New York: Hyperion, 2006. This is the second in a series of books that feature a young James Bond. He is a member of the Danger Society. Even as a youngster, Bond is clever and manages to foil Count C., who is fascinated with ancient art, in his plot to become the next emperor of Italy.

Little Brother

Little Brother

May 29th, 2008

Little Brother. by Cory Doctorow. New York: Tor Books, 2008.

Review by John Stone

Summary: A high-school senior in San Francisco happens to be near the site of a catastrophic bombing that appears to be the work of terrorists. The Department of Homeland Security arrests, interrogates, imprisons, and mistreats him and several of his friends. After most of them are released, they become underground activists for civil rights, organizing various kinds of demonstrations and protests over an ad hoc pirate network of repurposed Xboxes. Their loose-knit organization becomes powerful enough to prompt a renewed attack by the DHS, which underestimates the resourcefulness of teenagers and, in particular, their ability to use modern communications technology effectively.

The author intended this novel for “young adults,” a category that in this case seems to run from precocious eleven-year-olds to recent high-school graduates. It is set in a dystopian near future in which the consequences of Americans’ willingness to trade liberty for security pervade society. For instance, the protagonist’s high school has security cameras everywhere, running gait-recognition software in a particularly inept attempt to track the movements of students and visitors to the school. DHS officials are portrayed frankly as villains — goonish, occasionally sadistic bureaucrats.

Doctorow uses this somewhat melodramatic coming-of-age plot as a framework into which he can pack quite a bit of information about how to resist and circumvent governments’ attempts to intrude on citizens’ privacy and violate our civil rights. This is less didactic than it sounds. Doctorow establishes the protagonist from the first page as someone who comfortably inhabits a high-tech world and has spent most of his childhood figuring out ways of breaking the ridiculous rules that authorities try to impose, so instead of a lecturer’s drone we hear the voice of a teenage enthusiast explaining to his friends how to beat the system.

The full text of the book is available for free download in many formats at author’s Web site. It’s under a Creative Commons license (Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0)

This review was previously published on John Stone's Web log, _The free thinker_ (http://grnl-static-01-0198.dsl.iowatelecom.net/free-thinker/). It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License, and is reprinted here, with the permission of the author, under the same license.

The Corrections

Jonathan Franzen. The Corrections. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001

By Helen Stuhr-Rommereim, Oberlin College '09

This book probably isn't news to many people. The Corrections was published quite a few years ago now, in 2001, and received a lot of attention. I, however, just recently read it for the first time. The first and most obvious fact about The Corrections is that it is fat—almost 600 pages. The novel is ambitious in scope as well as physical size. The narrative mixes timelines and perspectives, jumping from character to character and managing to make it all the way to Vilnius and a chaotic post-Soviet Lithuania. Though The Corrections reaches far across space and time, the core issues of the narrative are quite every day, dealing with one family and its members' (relatively) typical travails.

The Lamberts are a well-educated, upper middleclass family from St. Jude, Kansas, a small city that greatly resembles Franzen's own hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. The novel covers aspects of each of the three Lambert children's childhood and adolescence, but focuses on Denise, Gary, and Chip's adulthood—all in various states of crisis.

Throughout the novel, I had a sense that Franzen was trying to fully capture the spirit of the present day. He covers all the issues of the 1990s: a booming stock market, Post-Soviet nation states struggling to build a national identity and a functional economy, psychotropic drugs, and the angst of average people in a successful, ostensibly untroubled nation. Franzen succeeds, but his book was published in 2001, and everything in the United States and the world in general has come to feel much more unstable since then. The problems that at one point were burbling under the surface are now acutely visible. It is a small tragedy that this clearly great novel about life in America, a novel that seeks to capture a time so completely, was written just a little too early. It doesn't contain a vision of what was to come.

However, The Corrections is a story about family as much as it is the story of a nation. In this aspect, it is both heartbreaking and astute. I frequently found myself crying during passages about Enid's sadness, frustration, and helplessness. As a 21 year old about to finish college and facing years of difficult decision-making, the book seemed to point out how sad life can be for everyone, even when nothing monumental happens. The problems of the Lamberts are cutting because they are problems that everyone will have.

For additional reading, try Franzen's collection of essays How to be Alone, which cover similar territory to The Corrections and reveal much of Franzen's thinking about writing in general and The Corrections in particular.

Burling 3rd Floor PS3556.R352 C67 2001

How to Be Alone. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002
Burling 3rd Floor PS3556.R352 H69 2002

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon

Crystal Zevon. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon
New York: Ecco, 2007

Reviewed by T. Hatch

I once heard Garrison Keillor say that the desire to meet a favorite author was like wishing to meet a butcher because one enjoys a particular cut of steak. After reading I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, Mr. Keillor's quip has gained an heightened veracity for me.

Warren Zevon was a songwriter known for pop ditties such as “Excitable Boy,” “Lawyers, Guns, and Money,” “Poor Poor Pitiful Me”, and “Werewolves of London” to name just a few;he was the undisputed king of song noir. As a creator of rock n' roll songs (especially lyrics) he was brilliant. As a human being he was a narcissistic failure.

Zevon's ex-wife Crystal cleverly lets this story reveal itself. The book is a chronologically arranged series of witness statements and journal entries that serve as both oral history and narrative. From Zevon's contact with Igor Stravinsky in adolescence until his death in September 2003 he is obsessed with the self-indulgence of sex, drugs, and rock n' roll as a vehicle to celebrity with all its vapid trappings.

As someone who inadvertently performed a cover of “Excitable Boy” the day of Zevon's death and prior to that had purchased his music in record, cassette tape, and compact disc form since the late 1970s I would that I might have averted my gaze as the butcher cased the sausage.

Rebecca Stuhr is reading and listening ...

Farooka Gauhari. An Afghan Woman's Odyssey. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1996. Gauhari's life changed after her husband was abducted during the Coup of 1978. Written before 2001 and the U.S. invasions, this book is less politicized than many recent first person accounts.

Burling 1st Floor DS 371.2 .G379 2004

For enjoyable late night reading ... Barbara Pym. No Fond Return of Love. New York: Dutton, 1982. If you haven't read Barbara Pym, you are in for a real treat. With a strong sense of humor and irony, her heroines battle their way through a world that perceives them as unfortunate and neglected. I have been reading Pym's books since I graduated from college and stumbled upon them in a local ( and most likely long gone) book store near where I was working in San Francisco.

Burling 3rd Floor PR6066.Y58 N6 1982

If you need something to keep you company while you study or work, try the sound track to the movie Babel. This is one of my favorite with music by composers from Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jaques Morelenbaum, Everton Nelson, and Gustavo Santaolalla, as well as contemporary popular music from Mexico, Japan, and the United States (including Earth, Wind, and Fire!).

Grinnell College Libraries have the film on DVD

Listen Rm DVD

B1136

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Edward Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (New York: Modern Library,
circa 1940s [1787]) 3 Volumes

Reviewed by T. Hatch

In this epic metanarrative Gibbon caustically laments that virtue and veracity are not destined to triumph over the lethal combination of “pious fraud and credulity.” Instilling the proper enthusiasm for eloquence, arms, and a reverence for the civil law is, at best, a fleeting endeavor. The love of public virtue (we might call it patriotism these days) is easily subverted. Externally, subversion is perpetrated by those ubiquitous barbarians who lack the perspicacity to appreciate urban living, the arts, and a philosophical outlook on life that is rooted in rational intellectual inquiry. Internally, the “credulous multitude” is subject to myriad diversions and are especially susceptible to spectacle and various forms of ocular amusement. Clearly, engaging in licentious and dissolute mirth-making is no way to run an empire!

As a pragmatic and philosophical atheist Gibbon's abuse of Christianity is a salient feature of this magisterial narrative. It was the Christian's “inflexible obstinacy” and what he saw as their contempt towards mankind (“odio humani generis convicti”) that rankled Gibbon. In its last days the Roman empire was propagating the rule of the Caesars and the Christian gospels; what the Romans had won by the masculine force of arms the Church maintained through a series of effeminate frauds.

The glaring irony of an atheist being on the shortlist of the world's greatest ecclesiastical historians is not lost on this writer. Gibbon's sophistication is evident in his easy contentment and the recompense of the philosopher's smile balanced against the multitude's fanatic veneration of those objects which promised eternal life in paradise. As is evidenced by the early chapters of volume iii, when the Saracen Prophet is extensively abused, Gibbon was an egalitarian when it came to reviling what he saw as superstitious religious practices.

As a master of felicitous locution Gibbon's description of the final siege of Constantinople is magnificent.

The religious merit of subduing the city of the Caesars attracted from
Asia a crowd of volunteers, who aspired to the crown of martyrdom;
their military ardour was inflamed by the promise of rich spoils and
beautiful females; and the sultan's ambition was consecrated by the
presence and prediction of Seid Bechar, a descendant of of the pro-
phet, who arrived in camp, on a mule, with a venerable train of five
hundred disciples.(p.682 vol. iii)

With all due respect to Samuel P. Huntington (who is not fit to sharpen Gibbon's pencils) this is an authentic clash of the civilizations!

Burling has several editions of this work: Burling 1st floor DG311 .G5 1960; Burling 1st floor AC1 .G72; Burling 1st floor DG311 .G5 1960b; and for viewing in our Special Collections DG311 .G42 1787

The Paris Review

The Paris Review was founded in Paris in 1953 by Harold Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. Plimpton had editorial responsibility until his death in 2003. William Styron wrote a letter in the first issue of the review, calling on it to publish "the good writers and good poets, the non-drumbeaters and non-axe-grinders. So long as they're good.” The review also sought to emphasize the writers of fiction and poetry over the writers of criticism. Many important writers and important works appeared in print for the first time within the covers of the Paris Review. Some of the writers introduced to the reading public through the review include: Adrienne Rich, Philip Roth, V. S. Naipaul, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Mona Simpson, Edward P. Jones, and Rick Moody. The Paris Review is also famous for its interviews with writers. Many of these interviews have been anthologized separately and you can check these out from the Grinnell College Libraries. They are also available online at http://www.theparisreview.org/

For an essay on founder Doc Humes see the following article published on February 17, 2008 in the New York Times Book Review: http://tinyurl.com/49x74o


The Grinnell College Libraries have subscribed to The Paris Review since 1953

Other ways to read the Paris Review:

The Paris Review Anthology
Burling 3rd floor PN6014.P23 1990

The Paris Review: Interviews
Burling 3rd Floor PS225 .P26 2006 (2 volumes)

Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews
Burling 3rd Floor (3 separate volumes covering different time periods)
PN453 .W3
PN453 .W73 and
PN453 .W735

Chronicle Commentary urges wealthy colleges to buy the New York Times

Lee Smith has written the following commentary in the Chronicle of Higher Education available online on May 5 and May 9 in the print edition: POINT OF VIEW: The Wealthiest Colleges Should Acquire 'The New York Times'." In this commentary, Smith recommends that the wealthiest colleges commit 3% of their endowment toward buying and running The New York Times. Smith notes the dire circumstances of many of the remaining national newspapers and explains why it is important to continue to have journalists and newspapers--whether their primary mode of publication is online or in print.

The Grinnell College Libraries subscribe to The New York Times in print and have past issues on microfilm back to 1851. There are printed indexes in the reference area through which you can search the paper back to 1851. We also have access through Lexis-Nexis Academic and through Access World News. The college participates in the newspaper program that gives away copies of The New York Times and the Des Moines Register in stands across campus including the Spencer Grill and outside the Kistle Science Library.



temporary URL: http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=ZXnzHRysw3jcHctkhgdfqstWN5SrGNFw
permanent URL for subscribers: http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i35/35a03201.htm

A Different Kind of War

Hans C. von Sponeck. A Different Kind of War: The UN Sanction Regime in Iraq. New York: Berghahn Books, 2006.

Reviewed by T. Hatch

Once upon a time the IMF and the World Bank saw Iraq as an up-and-comer with an annual per capita income of $2,400. After 1991 Iraq was the first nation state to have comprehensive economic sanctions applied against it. Historical parallels to the brutally swift disintegration of Iraqi civil society are virtually non-existent. Hans von Sponeck a United Nations humanitarian coordinator concerned with the administration of the much maligned Oil-for-Food Programme witnessed what his predecessor Denis Halliday referred to as “a criminally flawed and genocidal UN Security Council policy.”

Oil-for-Food in operation from 10 December 1996 until 21 November 2003 was entirely funded by Iraqi revenues. The way it was supposed to work was that the low levels of funding permitted by the United Nations Security Council were deposited in the Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP). Those funds under the control of the UNSC were then budgeted for one of eight humanitarian sections of the program. Despite assertions to the contrary by the Clinton administration and the UK foreign ministry there was no evidence that the Iraqi government withheld humanitarian supplies from the civilian population (pp. 74-75). In fact, funding habitually lagged behind that which was already budgeted. Any data which brought into question the US/UK strategy of weakening Iraq through sanctions was dismissed as either Iraqi propaganda or characterized as being based on inadequate UN data.

As permanent members of the UNSC the US/UK could put a hold on Oil-for-Food funds designated for one of the various areas of the program. This prerogative was vigorously utilized and resulted in actions such as the US representative to the UNSC delaying the delivery of 800 ambulances until the radios were first removed. Additionally, the UN Compensation Commission awarded governments and corporations monies from the inadequately funded Oil-for-Food account at a time of immense human misery in Iraq. About thirty percent of Iraq's permitted oil revenues went to these compensations.

Following the Iraqi Liberation Act in October of 1998 (which called for regime change) President Clinton authorized Operation Desert Fox in December of that year. Desert Fox was a bombing campaign against various Iraqi targets which resulted in “enlarged rules of engagement” in the no-fly zones. Many of the targets were Iraqi oil industry facilities which further reduced that government's ability to fund Oil-for-Food. Of course the US and UK governments maintained that they did not target civilians in their bombing operations. Straight from the pages of the Orwellian play book the British Minister of Defense opined in 1999 that: “We have to continue making these air strikes in order to carry on with our humanitarian work.”

Von Sponeck's work suggests several conclusions. While Tony Blair was George W. Bush's trusty “poodle,” Bill Clinton was in fact his first love. And, the continuity between the Clinton and Bush administrations is such that it is safe to say that George W. Bush did not invent unilateralism in recent American foreign policy. By the way, an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five died as the result of these “humanitarian efforts.”

On order for the Grinnell College Libraries

The Original Laura

Dmitri Nabokov just announced that he will not destroy his father's last novel, The Original Laura. Vladimir Nabokov, Dmitri's father, left instructions to destroy at his death the 138 index cards that make up the novel. Dmitri, Nabokov's literary executor, after letting the matter rest for thirty years, will likely publish his father's last novel. Nabokov wrote this novel on 3 x 5 index cards in pencil, and died before he could finish it. At the time that he was working on it, his publisher reported that after finishing his index cards, Nabokov planned to "deal himself a novel."

The Grinnell College Libraries have 96 entires in their catalog for Vladimir Nabokov, 28 of which are in Russian. Nabokov's most widely known novel is Lolita. Lolita has been made into movies and has been the foundation for many studies and the inspiration for fiction and nonfiction by other writers, including Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books and Russian composer, Shchedrin's opera Lolita. Click on the following link to read a brief interview with Dmitri Nabokov published in the New York Times on May 4, 2008.

http://tinyurl.com/69bfy6


Find books by Nabokov in the Grinnell College Libraries:

http://cat.lib.grinnell.edu/search/a?SEARCH=nabokov%2C+vladimir+vladimirovich+1899&sortdropdown=-

The Audacity of Hope

Barack Obama. The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
New York: Crown Publishers, 2006

Reviewed by T. Hatch

Written with one eye towards an impending presidential campaign The Audacity of Hope is in many ways a testament to Barack Obama's traditionalism. Rather than casting the Senator from Illinois as sui generis even a cursory perusal of this book belies notions of Obama's political uniqueness and originality. With particular attention to chapter eight i.e. “The World Beyond Our Borders” is illustrative of this point. In Weberian terminology Obama may inspire charismatically but his real metier is that of a traditional appeal to well established values.

Chapter eight is largely about Obama's interpretation of the Cold War. It reads something like a high school textbook in that the actions of messrs. Truman, Acheson, Marshall, and Kennan were a heroic response to Soviet expansionism. They were at the center of the design of the post World War II world order which, had by necessity, the US government in a starring role. Obama maintains that the security situation in 2008 is much different than it was in the halcyon days of the Cold War. Although, it seems that this argument is either naïve or disingenuous. Other than the departure of the US government's erstwhile partner in global management the same national security paradigm, albeit with the US as the headlining hegemon, remains firmly in place. Obama's political weltanschauung is quintessentially that of a Cold War liberal.

Unlike the author of the felicitous locution “audacity of hope” Obama does not use words like “oppression” and “imperialism” when describing the past or present role of the US government in the world. Jeremiah Wright unconstrained by electoral strictures is free to “say what a pastor says” and engage in the subversive activity of truth telling. The prophetic tradition of truth telling (and enraging the complacent ones) is neither an effective means of fetching votes nor is it in Barack Obama's nature to seek out confrontation.

Burling 2nd floor E901.1.O23 A3 2006

Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole

Walter Giersbach '61 writes:
Friends,

You may want to consider acquiring Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole by Benjamin R. Barber, '60 or '61. The New York Times Book Review (4/20/08) gave it a thumbnail, saying Ben's thesis is that "we live in a 'radical consumerist society,' shaped by an 'infantilist ethos' as potent as Weber's Protestant ethic once was. 'Affiliated with an ideology of privatization, the marketing of brands and a homogenization of taste'...this ethos sustains consumer capitalism 'at the expense of both civility and civilzation and a growing risk to capitalism itself."

Ben has been a prolific contributor to critical thinking. He is the Gershon and Carol Kekst Professor of Civil Society and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland and president and director of CivWorld. More on his publications can be found at http://www.benjaminbarber.com/biblio.html.

--Keep up the good work.

Walt Giersbach '61

1st floor Smith Memorial HC110.C6 B324 2007

Holling C. Holling, Children's Illustrator

Holling C. Holling, Master of Geo-Naturalistic Picture Books

By Walter Giersbach '61

An obituary in 1978 stated that Holling Clancy Holling “was best known for his geo-historical-fiction volumes for children, believed that children’s literature should be both entertaining and instructive and therefore filled his adventuresome tales with well-researched historical and scientific data.” This terse summary in Twentieth Century Children's Writers (St. Martin's Press) hardly does justice to a giant of children’s literature.

Holling (Aug. 2, 1900-Sept. 7, 1973) introduced me to a world that was both familiar and exotic when I was a child. Paddle-to-the Sea magnified my homely toy boat-building and married it to the alien geography of Lake Nipigon in Canada. The adventure of an Indian boy’s canoe opened a vista of snowmelt turning into burbling stream before becoming the mighty St. Laurence that floated his model canoe to the ocean. Was there ever a child who didn’t wonder if someone might read his message in a bottle floated out to sea—and empathize with the Indian boy?

Six decades later, with time to sieve through memories, I sought to learn who this writer/illustrator was. Generations of young readers have been attracted to Holling’s stories as much for his watercolor illustrations that drew on the American Realist School of Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood as for his stories of mythic proportions. Paddle-to-the-Sea, a Caldecott Honor Book in 1941, so resonated with early readers that it has remained in print for 66 years. It is still recommended by educators and—remarkably—is suggested as a way to teach geography through literature. One of the books’ attractions is a Fog Index of 6.9 and a Flesch Reading Index of 75.2—indications that 90 percent of similar children’s books are harder to read.

Holling was born in Jackson Co., Michigan, where his interest in nature guided him to a multi-faceted vocation: writer, illustrator, naturalist and historian. He was the son of Bennett and Lulah Clancy, and brother to Allen and Gwendaline.

He grew up roaming the southern Michigan woods and reading books about nature, Native Americans and camping that his mother brought him from the public library. “He began to draw at age three and knew by the time he was a teenager that he wanted to write and illustrate books for children like those he had so enjoyed in his earlier reading life,” according to Children's Literature Review (Deborah J. Morad, Editor. Detroit: Gale Research Company, Volume 50, 1999, pp. 44-48)

As a child, he enthusiastically explored the area’s meadows and woods with a thirst for knowledge. “At three,” it’s noted in Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults (2nd ed., Gale Group, 2002) “he was an avid artist, drawing very advanced pictures of horses, cows, and other animals. In his youth, his father once brought him a dead owl. The investigative boy became fascinated with it, making an Indian headdress from the feathers and a belt with the claws. His love of Indian customs and ways was a constant throughout his life.”

“I was mighty fortunate,” Holling is quoted in Major Authors. “When I was a small boy my father was superintendent of schools, so we always had books about. Besides, Mother got from the library in the small town nearby all the good books that could possibly interest me, about animals and Indians and about camping,” Holling said to M. Clyde Armstrong in a Horn Book interview. At that point in his life, the author knew he wanted to make a career of producing these kinds of books for children.

Attending the Chicago Art Institute, he worked primarily in black and white, receiving his diploma in 1923. It was there that he met his future wife, Lucille Webster. At some point in young adulthood, Holling worked as a grocery clerk, factory worker and sailor on a Great Lake ore boat.

After graduating, he spent a year studying in northern New Mexico. He became fascinated with the desert, making color an important feature of his art. Regionalist art in the early 1930s focused on reassuring images of the heartland, and this style may have amplified Holling’s optimism and spirit.

Returning to Chicago, he joined a taxidermy department of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. He also worked under assistant curator and noted anthropologist Ralph Linton. He and Lucille were married in 1925 and the couple became art instructors on the first University World Cruise, sponsored by New York University in 1926-27. After this teaching stint, Holling worked as a freelance designer, advertising illustrator and illustrator for other authors.

His first books, both published in 1923, were Sun and Smoke; Verse and Woodcuts of New Mexico (apparently self-published) and New Mexico Made Easy with Words of Modern Syllables (R.F. Clancy & Co.). These were followed by a succession of books published by P.F. Volland: Little Big Bye-and-Bye, (1926), Roll Away Twins (1927), and Claws of the Thunderbird (1928). Moving to other publishers, he wrote and illustrated Choo-Me-Shoo the Eskimo * (Buzza & Co., 1928), Rocky Billy (Macmillan, 1928), Twins Who Flew Around the World (Platt & Munk, 1930), The Book of Cowboys * (Platt & Munk, 1932), The Book of Indians * (Platt & Munk, 1935), Rum-Tum-Tummy (Saalfield Publishing, 1936) and Little Buffalo Boy * (Garden City Publishing Co., 1939) that drew on naturalism—birds, geography, waterways, Native Americans—he became familiar with. (Titles marked with asterisks are also credited to Lucille Webster Holling.)

Additionally, he illustrated The Blot, Little City Cat, by Phyllis Crawford (1930); Children of Other Lands, by Watty Piper (a.k.a Little Folks of Other Lands, 1932); Kimo, the Whistling Boy, a Story of Hawaii, by Alice Cooper Bailey and illustrated also by Lucille Holling; The Road in Story Land *, edited by Watty Piper (1932); and The Magic Story Tree, a Favorite Collection of Fifteen Fairy Tales and Fables * (1964).

In his early period, Holling fully realized his calling. St. James Guide to Children's Writers, (5th ed. St. James Press) saw his evolution from The Book of Indians and The Book of Cowboys to “a group of singular books which offer blendings of rare elements.” He presented readers with “a unique vision of the country, each focusing first on the wild life Mr. Holling knew so well, but spreading wide into the works of men and the sweep of history.”

The ’40s ushered in his five classics from Houghton Mifflin: Paddle-to-the-Sea (1941), Tree in the Trail (1942), Seabird (1948), Minn of the Mississippi (1951), and Pagoo * (1957). In Tree, a cottonwood watches the pageant of history on the Santa Fe Trail for 200 years, Seabird follows a carved gull with four generations of travelers on ships and a plane, Minn is a turtle hatched in the Mississippi’s headwaters and carried to the Gulf of Mexico, and Pagoo studies life in a tidal pool through the story of a hermit crab.

Pagoo symbolized what Holling worked to achieve, his wanting young people to understand that growing up is difficult. In the Horn Book interview, he said he wanted to “make children aware of this concept…this urge in a minute living thing to change and search, somehow aware that his body is developing into the precise shape that will fit in a shell he will someday find.”
“What we teachers need is Holling’s insight into the relationship between narrative action and factual information,” Terry Borten advised in his analysis, “The Teaching of Paddle-to-the-Sea,” in Learning (January, 1977). “He comments on the energy, simplicity, understanding, and appeal in the story, and the allowance Holling makes for the feelings of children.”
The story lines of these books are well-complemented by their art. Of special interest are the sidebars that make a reader linger. They may be a detailed, hand-lettered pen and ink of a ship’s rigging in Seabird or the Great Lakes displayed “like bowls on a hillside” in Paddle-to-the-Sea. Learning new information was never more inviting and entertaining. Holling was a writer/illustrator who tapped into children’s secret consciousness and curiosity.
Such richness in storytelling and illustration still makes for classical favorites, which says much about this master of children’s literature. That Houghton-Mifflin continues to publish the works in its imprimatur with their original covers and at prices of between $10 and $14 suggests there are bargains to be had. For the inveterate collector, early editions are available at affordable prices.

Still, Holling’s life and work has been surrounded by a lack of acknowledgement. It’s difficult uncovering a published biography, and many references to Holling are little more than a general paragraph describing a few key points in his life. In fact, he was born Holling Allison Clancy in the eponymous Holling Corners, Mich., where his forebears had lived and farmed for generations. He legally changed his name in 1925. The fact that Holling Corners is—or was—in Henrietta Township was clarified for me by Evan J. Farmer, in the Reference Department of the Jackson (Mich.) District Library.

He may have been an autodidact, traveling and doing his own research as he prepared his books. After graduating the Chicago Art Institute, his New Mexico wanderjahr was revelatory. Armstrong infers, “Color, which had never impressed him, hit him here as a tremendous natural mystery, glamorized by the clear dust-free air of Taos.” This newfound love was to become an important feature in his later illustrations.

Major Authors and Illustrators reminds us that Holling’s personal life reflected his interests in the natural world. His avocations were canoeing, archery, hunting, camping and woodcraft.
He was also known as a talented storyteller who enjoyed hearing from his readers. He said in the Horn Book interview, “I receive letters that make me very happy, because I know the writers have understood what I try to say. Although the action part of my stories is fabricated, I have always tried to make the atmosphere surrounding them completely authentic.”

The scarcity of biographical details is intriguing. In his later years, he lived in Pasadena, California, according to Bruce Tabb, Special Collections Librarian at the University of Oregon Libraries. He and Lucille probably found a kindred spirit in their neighbor, illustrator Kay Nielsen who had immigrated from Denmark, according to the University of Pittsburgh libraries. (Nielsen’s designs were featured in the “Ave Maria” and “Night on Bald Mountain” sequences of Walt Disney’s film Fantasia.) Lucille Holling was herself a prolific illustrator of advertising, posters and prints, in addition to books. She worked in a similar optimistic, regionalist style.

Holling died in Pasadena after a long illness, was survived by Lucille, and is buried back home at Nims Cemetery in Henrietta Twsp. His manuscript drafts and book-related material are housed in the Special Collections and Archives at the University of Oregon in Eugene, while his publicity and correspondence are in the Special Collection at the University of California-Los Angeles. We can only hope one of America’s favorite authors will be the subject of a comprehensive analysis of his work. And be long revered by new generations of children young and old.
# # #

2/3/08 rev. 2/20/08, 3/15/08 © Walter Giersbach 2008

Paddle-to-the-Sea is available in Grinnell College's Curriculum Library: PS3515.O44x P3 1989