Brian Mitchell has written ...

Four plays:

Squirrel Lake: A Comedy in Two Acts. Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Heuer, 2002

The Ten Rules of Internet Dating by Brian Mitchell and Brad Erickson. Cedar Rapids, IA: Heuer Publishing, 2005

The above two titles are available at Grinnell College Libraries, Iowa Room.

The Big Five Oh--to be performed in Grinnell in May of 2008

A Fairy's Tale (on it's way to the publisher)

Brian Mitchell is reading American Gods

Neil Gaiman. American Gods. New York: W. Morrow, 2001.

In this futuristic novel, the main character gets of out prison to find out that his wife has died. In addition to this shock, he is offered a job by a man named Wednesday who turns out to be the Odin of Norse mythology. The premise of the novel is that the old gods are fighting for survival with the new gods (e.g., television). Mitchell, circulation supervisor at Grinnell College Libraries, is still deciding whether he recommends this novel or not. Stop by the circulation desk to ask him about it or ... find out for yourself.

This book is available at Stewart Public Library

Royce Wolf recommends ...

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. London: Heinemann Educational, 1967. In this novel, the main character first struggles with the expectations of his village, is exiled with his family, and then returns only to find that White people have moved in, changing the village with their religion and their government. Things continue to fall apart for the main character and for the village. Wolf, math professor at Grinnell College, recommends Things Fall Apart as an exquisite example of the novel genre.

Burling Third Floor PR9387.9.A3 T5 1967.

For more books by Chinua Achebe search the Grinnell College Libraries' catalog.

A selection of books on the nuclear threat

Earlier this month, The New York Review of Books reviewed four books on the nuclear threat. You can read the review, "The Greatest Threat to Us All," by Joseph Cirincione and you should be able to find the books sometime this summer at the Grinnell College Libraries.

Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race by Richard Rhodes and published by Knopf. This book is "in process." You can request it through the catalog.

The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger by Jonathan Schell and published by Metropolitan. For other books by Jonathan Schell in the Grinnell College Libraries, including his 1982 book The Fate of the Earth published by Knopf, click here.

Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark and published by Walker and Company.

America and the Islamic Bomb: The Deadly Compromise by David Armstrong and Joseph Trento and published by Steerforth Press.

The Believer Magazine

The Believer is published by McSweeney's and is particularly attractive because of its annual music issue, which comes complete with CD. If you like alternative music, The Believer combined with The World Café radio program (from Philadelphia) and Iowa's own KUNI evening music program is a great way to find out about artists and their music. The most recent issue of The Believer has a variety of interesting articles including an article on how a lack of understanding of crime statistics causes people to misperceive a lack of safety. This article is by Eula Bliss and called "No-Man's -Land: Fear, Racism, and the Historically Troubling Attitude of American Pioneers." I was reading the magazine when visiting home and both my father and my sister read the article too. There is an article on Karl Marx's kindler-gentler younger days when he practiced his writing in what he called "the violet notebook." The article is by Sam Stark. If you are a Nick Hornby fan, he contributes a regular column in which he discusses the books he is reading. Charles Baxter has contributed an article on fatherhood footnoted by his son. An article on Vladimir Mayakovsky by Michael Amereyda explores Mayakovsky's revolutionary jingles and fiery prose. Other articles review books, interview photographers, animators, and a philosopher, and Tayari Jones writes about being a black writer during Black History Month.
Although Grinnell College Libraries do not subscribe to this magazine, if you can find it in a book store or borrow it from a friend, it is well worth reading.

For more on McSweeney's and The Believer read this article from SF Weekly.com by Francis Reade.

The Twilight Series

Victoria Stuhr '10, Pinole High School in Pinole, California recommends

The Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer. Boston: Little, Brown, 2005, 2006. This Three volume set includes Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse

Meyer has written a vampire romance for young adult readers. Victoria tells the review that the first volume in the series is a romance, the story in the second volume is very sad, and the third and final volume is action packed.

For those of you who don't want any of the plot to be given away before you read it, this review gives away some important information about the books—it may be a spoiler.

The Twilight Series is about a teenage girl who moves to a new town with her dad. At her new school she meets a boy who seems a little strange. Nonetheless, or perhaps because of this, they end up falling in love. The girl discovers that he is a vampire. This is not the only suprise for her, because later on she discovers that her best friend is a werewolf. The vampire boyfriend doesn’t want to let the heroine go, but he doesn’t want to turn her into a vampire. The heroine however is willing to make this sacrifice to stay with him. These stories describe the life of vampires, their family arrangements, and their origins. These are fat books, but Victoria has read right through them and is recommending them to her friends.

You can find out more about these books at http://stepheniemeyer.com/

These books are available at Grinnell's Stewart Library.

Grinnell College Book Review recommends books by Roberto Bolaño

Bolaño, Robert. 1953-2003, was a Chilean poet and novelist. He lived in Spain during the last decades of his life. Read a review from the Washington Post by Michael Dirda of Nazi Literature in the Americas published by New Directions Press. For an article by Bolaño on the short story, follow this link to an article in World Literature Today. Another article from World Literature Today reviews Savage Detectives, a book that received a lot of attention when it appeared in English translation.

These books are available at Grinnell College Libraries:

Bolaño, Roberto, 1953-2003

2666. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, c2004 (2006 printing)
PQ8098.12.O38 A122 2004.

Estrella distante. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 2006.
PQ8098.12.O38 E8 2006.

El gaucho insufrible. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 2003 PQ8098.12.O38 G38 2003.

Monsieur Pain. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 1999.
PQ8098.12.O38 M66 1999.

Nocturno de Chile. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, c2000.

By Night in Chile. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. London : Harville Press, 2003.
PQ8098.12.O38 N6313 2003.

Una novelita lumpen. Barcelona: Mondadori, c2002.

Last Evenings on Earth: Short Stories. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. New York: New Directions Books, 2006.
PQ8098.12.O38 A2 2006.

The Savage Detectives. Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
PQ8098.12.O38 D4813 2007.

Distant Star. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. New York: New Directions Pub., c2004.
PQ8098.12.O38 E813 2004.

H Nazi Literature in the Americas. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews.
New York: New Directions, 2008. ON ORDER

Putas asesinas. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 2006.
PQ8098.12.O38 P88 2006.

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

Jeffrey Toobin. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. New York: Doubleday, 2007

Review by Mark Schneider

If you are a long-term follower of the Supreme Court, then you probably don't need to read this book. In fact, you might want to quibble with Toobin's point of view on particulars. If, on the other hand, you are more like I was before reading this book, and the Supreme Court is a cloistered mystery, then you owe it to yourself as a citizen to read Toobin. Before reading this, I was persuaded and comforted by John Roberts's confirmation testimony of "just calling balls and strikes," and felt, well, how bad could it be? The answer is: pretty bad.

Toobin opened my eyes to the enormous level of politics on the court, and how much the court is dominated by conservative Republicans. But even though Toobin is clearly sounding the alarm (and he certainly isn't alone in that regard), he manages to have kind as well as damning words for all the Justices. I finished the book with generous thoughts about Justice Thomas, who certainly is about as far afield from my own political persuasion as I could imagine. From what I can tell (which includes quizzing people who have met and even tried cases before the Justices), it is a reasonable representation of today's Supreme Court.

A good and current book on an extremely important topic.

First Floor Smith Memorial KF8748 .T66 2007

Human Smoke

Nicholson Baker, author of Double Fold, a book in which he takes the library community to task for throwing away printed newspapers (most likely all replaced with microfilm or digital editions) and old books (perhaps less forgivable--depending on the context), has a new book coming out next week from Simon and Schuster. For an interesting article about this book, follow this New York Times "permalink" to the March 4 review by Charles McGrath. During Baker's Double Fold phase, he bought 6000 volumes of bound newspapers from the British Library, which he stored in a warehouse. He has since donated them to Duke University (all explained in the McGrath review). Even more interesting to me, in his review, McGrath describes Baker's research process for writing his new book, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization. Baker made heavy use of the University of New Hampshire libraries and primary sources: newspapers, letters, diaries--all from the 1930s and 1940s. This time he stored his (borrowed) materials in his barn!

For an interesting look at the research process read McGrath's review and when the book comes out, read that too!

Here is the New York Times gloss on the article:

Books
A Debunker on the Road to World War II
By CHARLES McGRATH

Published: March 4, 2008

“Human Smoke” is an unusual book even for Nicholson Baker, whose career has unspooled in a way as unpredictable as one of his fastidiously meandering sentences.

Submitted by Rebecca Stuhr

Grinnell College Book Review recommends books by Manning Marable

Manning Marable speaks at Grinnell College on March 13, Thursday at 11:00 a.m. Many of his books are currently on display on the first floor of Burling Library:

African and Caribbean Politics from Kwame Nkrumah to the Grenada Revolution. London: Verso, 1987.
JQ1872 .M37x 1987.

Beyond Black and White: Transforming African-American Politics. New York: Verso, 1995.
E185.615 .M277 1995.

Black American Politics: From the Washington Marches to Jesse Jackson. London: Verso, 1985. E185.615 .M275x 1985.

Black Leadership. New York: Columbia University Press, c1998.
E185.615 .M2783 1998.

Black Liberation in Conservative America. Boston: South End Press, c1997.
E185.615 .M2784 1997.

Blackwater: Historical Studies in Race, Class Consciousness, and Revolution. Niwot, Colo: University Press of Colorado, c1993.
Electronic Book.

The Crisis of Color and Democracy: Essays on Race, Class, and Power. Monroe, Me. : Common Courage Press, c1992.
E185.615 .M279 1992.

From the Grassroots: Essays Toward Afro-American Liberation. Boston, MA : South End Press, c1980.
E185.615 .M28 1980.

The Great Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of Race in American Life. New York: Basic Books, c2002.
E185.615 .M283 2002.

How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race, Political Economy, and Society. Boston, MA: South End Press, c1983.
E185.8 .M2 1983.

Living Black History: How Reimagining the African-American Past Can Remake America's Racial Future. New York: Basic Civitas, 2006.
E184.65 .M37 2006.

Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945-2006. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
E185.61 .M32 2007.

Speaking Truth to Power: Essays on Race, Resistance, and Radicalism. Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 1996.
E185.615 .M285 1996.

W.E.B. DuBois, Black Radical Democrat. Boston: Twayne, c1986.
E185.97.D73 M37 1986.

Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil

Rodriguez, Deborah. Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil. New York: Random House, 2007

Reviewed by Rebecca Stuhr

Deborah Rodriguez is the survivor of an abusive marriage, the mother of two teenage sons, and a cosmetologist from Holland, Michigan. She makes her first trip to Afghanistan shortly after the U.S. invasion. Having been trained to give first aid, she first helps out at ground zero after 9/11 and then later joins a mission group to work in Afghanistan. She stays for one month on this first trip. She finds herself to be a little out of place without the skills to make herself useful. But once the the word gets out that she is a beautician, she finds plenty of work caring for the Westerners employed with NGOs in Kabul. It is this month in Afghanistan that sparks her desire to return and open a beauty school as a way to help the women of Kabul.

Beauty salons are advantageous businesses because they can be run by one person. In Afghanistan, men are not allowed in beauty salons because women uncover their heads making beauty salons a safe haven for women. Women can gain a certain amount of autonomy working out of the home and earning their own money. So Rodriguez returns to Afghanistan and stays for five years to operate a beauty school and run a salon. This is no easy task, not only because of the violence and unpredictability of conditions in Kabul during her stay there, but because of her lack of language skills and her unfamiliarity with the customs of Afghanistan. Additionally, beauty salons are associated with prostitution, women bring their troubles into the salon, funding through NGOs is unpredictable, and the neighbors are not always friendly. But, Rodriguez cares for and is in turn cared for by the women she trains and with whom she works.

Rodriguez, through her candid account of her five years in Afghanistan, sheds light on the condition and status of women and the volatility and fragility of day-to-day living in Kabul. For more about post 9/11 Afghanistan read Hamida Ghafour's The Sleeping Buddha. Ghafour meets Deborah Rodriguez and writes about her in her book.

On order for the library