loves reading books by Max Brooks. He carried the Zombie Survival Guide around with him all last school year, and he is currently trying to find the time to finish:
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. New York: Crown, 2006.
If you enjoyed Brooks's mock Survival Guide, this is a more serious look at the threat of Zombie attack world wide.
For those Zombiefiles on the Grinnell College campus, contact [rinaldi] for information about Grinnell Zombies, a Zombie movie a week during spring semester '08. (We just noted the poster in the library this morning--)
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
Barry Byrne recommends the following books
Recently, I have enjoyed these books:
Lance Armstrong's War: One Man's Battle against Fate, Fame, Love, Death, Scandal, and a Few Other Rivals on the Road to the Tour de France by Daniel Coyle. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.
Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding Correcting and Common Dog Problems by Cesar Millan. New York: Harmony Books, 2006.
What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship and Love by Carole Radziwill. New York: Scribner, 2005.
No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home by Chris Offutt. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002.
3rd floor PS3565.F387 Z474 2002
An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography by Paul Rusesabagina. New York: Viking, 2006.
On order for the Grinnell College Libraries
Breaking Clean by Judy Blunt. New York: Knopf, 2002
1st floor CT275.B57984 A3 2002
Myths to Live By by Joseph Campbell. New York: Viking Press, 1972
1sst floor BL315 .C27
The Library has several editions including a version on tape (Listening Room)
Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog (Mary Brave Bird) with Richard Erdoes. New York: G. Weidenfeld, 1990.
2nd floor E99.D1 M425 1990
(Also Ohitika Woman. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994 2nd floor. 2nd floor E99.B8 B733 1994)
A Monk Swimming: A Memoir by Malachy McCourt. New York: Hyperion, 1998
2nd floor F128.9.I6 M376 1998
Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism by George Soros. New York: Public Affairs, 2000.
2nd floor HB3722 .S67x 2000
French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano.
New York: Knopf, 2005.
Lance Armstrong's War: One Man's Battle against Fate, Fame, Love, Death, Scandal, and a Few Other Rivals on the Road to the Tour de France by Daniel Coyle. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.
Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding Correcting and Common Dog Problems by Cesar Millan. New York: Harmony Books, 2006.
What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship and Love by Carole Radziwill. New York: Scribner, 2005.
No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home by Chris Offutt. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002.
3rd floor PS3565.F387 Z474 2002
An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography by Paul Rusesabagina. New York: Viking, 2006.
On order for the Grinnell College Libraries
Breaking Clean by Judy Blunt. New York: Knopf, 2002
1st floor CT275.B57984 A3 2002
Myths to Live By by Joseph Campbell. New York: Viking Press, 1972
1sst floor BL315 .C27
The Library has several editions including a version on tape (Listening Room)
Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog (Mary Brave Bird) with Richard Erdoes. New York: G. Weidenfeld, 1990.
2nd floor E99.D1 M425 1990
(Also Ohitika Woman. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994 2nd floor. 2nd floor E99.B8 B733 1994)
A Monk Swimming: A Memoir by Malachy McCourt. New York: Hyperion, 1998
2nd floor F128.9.I6 M376 1998
Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism by George Soros. New York: Public Affairs, 2000.
2nd floor HB3722 .S67x 2000
French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano.
New York: Knopf, 2005.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Heather Parker recommends two books that she read over winter break
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards. NY: Viking, 2005.
The story takes place in the 1960s. A mother gives birth to twins, a son and a daughter. The father, a doctor, has delivered the twins himself with a nurse in attendance. The boy is healthy but the girl is born with Down Syndrome. The father tells the mother that their daughter has died, but in reality he has given her to a nurse expecting that she will take the child to an institution. The nurse, decides to raise the girl herself and disappears to another city. The story is about the different childhood's experienced by the children. The boy is raised in a family of secrecy while the girl is raised in an open, loving environment.
On order for the library.
Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut. First published in 1985 by Delacorte Press (New York).
Lorrie Moore wrote in the New York Times in 1985: "Leon Trout, Mr. Vonnegut's doppelganger, speaks to us, moreover, from a million years hence, from the afterlife, whence he can best pronounce on what was wrong with us 20th-century folk - our brains were too big - and reveal what, through evolution and for purposes of survival, we became: creatures with smaller brains and flippers and beaks. Even if people of the future ''found a grenade or a machine gun or a knife or whatever left over from olden times, how could they ever make use of it with just their flippers and their mouths?'' Leon Trout asks. And: ''It is hard to imagine anybody's torturing anybody nowadays. How could you even capture somebody you wanted to torture with just your flippers and your mouth?'' For the full review: http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/28/lifetimes/vonnegut-galapagos.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Sounds as though twenty-plus years later, the premise of this novel is still relevant.
3rd floor PS3572.O5 G3 1986
The story takes place in the 1960s. A mother gives birth to twins, a son and a daughter. The father, a doctor, has delivered the twins himself with a nurse in attendance. The boy is healthy but the girl is born with Down Syndrome. The father tells the mother that their daughter has died, but in reality he has given her to a nurse expecting that she will take the child to an institution. The nurse, decides to raise the girl herself and disappears to another city. The story is about the different childhood's experienced by the children. The boy is raised in a family of secrecy while the girl is raised in an open, loving environment.
On order for the library.
Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut. First published in 1985 by Delacorte Press (New York).
Lorrie Moore wrote in the New York Times in 1985: "Leon Trout, Mr. Vonnegut's doppelganger, speaks to us, moreover, from a million years hence, from the afterlife, whence he can best pronounce on what was wrong with us 20th-century folk - our brains were too big - and reveal what, through evolution and for purposes of survival, we became: creatures with smaller brains and flippers and beaks. Even if people of the future ''found a grenade or a machine gun or a knife or whatever left over from olden times, how could they ever make use of it with just their flippers and their mouths?'' Leon Trout asks. And: ''It is hard to imagine anybody's torturing anybody nowadays. How could you even capture somebody you wanted to torture with just your flippers and your mouth?'' For the full review: http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/28/lifetimes/vonnegut-galapagos.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Sounds as though twenty-plus years later, the premise of this novel is still relevant.
3rd floor PS3572.O5 G3 1986
Monday, January 7, 2008
More from Walter Giersbach '61
He writes, ". . . Wild Child has just published the second volume of stories in Cruising the Green of Second Avenue. [See November 15 entry for news about the first volume] The tales take up where Vol. I left off˜bringing back Klein the Biker, Straight Charlie and Sammy the Madman while introducing some new characters facing the difficulties encountered by life in the late 60s."
More information available: http://www.wildchildpublishing.com/content/view/426/125/
For an excerpt: http://www.wildchildpublishing.com/excerpts/cruising2.html
More information available: http://www.wildchildpublishing.com/content/view/426/125/
For an excerpt: http://www.wildchildpublishing.com/excerpts/cruising2.html
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
I've just completed Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish. It's an amazing little book with beautiful language and strong images -- making head cheese, among others! I was surprised that the NY Times named it one of the five best non-fiction books of 2007 -- surprised, but pleased.
Reviewed by Barbara Benda Jenkins '64
| 1st floor Smith Memorial | F627.B4 K35 2007 |
Monday, December 17, 2007
ENEMY COMBATANT: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Kandahar
Mozzam Begg (with Victoria Brittain). Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Kandahar. New York: New Press, 2006.
HV6432.B44 2006
Review by Chris Gaunt
I rarely purchase books, but I bought this one in mid-December last year. I read it in early January 2007 as I was traveling to D.C. with fellow peace-loving Iowans. We were protesting the five year anniversary of the January 11 opening of the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.
Moazzam Begg, a British citizen, was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and accused by the United States of being a terrorist. He was finally released in 2005 without explanation or apology. He tells his story.
I cried when he told about his undeserved torture and its effects, mental and physical. It is obvious that he did not let the experience turn him into a hater. He lived to tell his story and have it published. Good for him. Good for us.
The torture issue resonates with my soul, magnified when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out in 2004. I know from my involvement with the movement to expose and close the SOA/WHINSEC at Ft. Benning, Georgia, that a Freedom of Information Act in 1996 uncovered torture manuals used at that school. It is a dirty little secret that the U.S. military still wants to keep secret.
I recently served a prison sentence and endured on a very small scale the demeaning treatment that is routinely extended to those sucked into one of our U.S. jails or prisons.
For me, torturing comes down to this: the effects on the torturer as well as the victim.
I cannot believe that I will soon travel to Washington D.C. again, to mark the 6th anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantanamo Bay. What a disgrace.
HV6432.B44 2006
Review by Chris Gaunt
I rarely purchase books, but I bought this one in mid-December last year. I read it in early January 2007 as I was traveling to D.C. with fellow peace-loving Iowans. We were protesting the five year anniversary of the January 11 opening of the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.
Moazzam Begg, a British citizen, was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and accused by the United States of being a terrorist. He was finally released in 2005 without explanation or apology. He tells his story.
I cried when he told about his undeserved torture and its effects, mental and physical. It is obvious that he did not let the experience turn him into a hater. He lived to tell his story and have it published. Good for him. Good for us.
The torture issue resonates with my soul, magnified when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out in 2004. I know from my involvement with the movement to expose and close the SOA/WHINSEC at Ft. Benning, Georgia, that a Freedom of Information Act in 1996 uncovered torture manuals used at that school. It is a dirty little secret that the U.S. military still wants to keep secret.
I recently served a prison sentence and endured on a very small scale the demeaning treatment that is routinely extended to those sucked into one of our U.S. jails or prisons.
For me, torturing comes down to this: the effects on the torturer as well as the victim.
I cannot believe that I will soon travel to Washington D.C. again, to mark the 6th anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantanamo Bay. What a disgrace.
recommendations for winter break
Jonathan Franzen. The Corrections, 2001. PS3556.R352 C67 2001
(a family epic)
Jonathan Lethem. Motherless Brooklyn, 1999. PS3562.E8544 M68 1999
(An unusual crime novel)
Jonathan Lethem. As She Climbed Across the Table, 1998. PS3562.E8544 A9 1998
(Very funny!!!)
Anne Tyler. Digging to America, 2006. PS3570.Y45 D47 2006
(has a very funny scene involving a bicycle helmet)
Anne Tyler. The Accidental Tourist, 1985. PS3570.Y45 A64 1985
(A beautiful novel about love and death)
Kazuo Ishiguro. The Unconsoled, 1995. PR6059.S5 U53 1995
(Kafkaesque and very funny in a dark way)
Bakopoulos, Dean. Please Don't Come Back from the Moon, 2005. PS 3602 .A593
(a moving novel about our changing society especially in the rust belt)
Jonathan Raban (another Jonathan!). Wax Wings, 2003. PR6068.A22 W39 2003
(the boom and bust of the 90's in Seattle)
Recommended by Rebecca Stuhr
(a family epic)
Jonathan Lethem. Motherless Brooklyn, 1999. PS3562.E8544 M68 1999
(An unusual crime novel)
Jonathan Lethem. As She Climbed Across the Table, 1998. PS3562.E8544 A9 1998
(Very funny!!!)
Anne Tyler. Digging to America, 2006. PS3570.Y45 D47 2006
(has a very funny scene involving a bicycle helmet)
Anne Tyler. The Accidental Tourist, 1985. PS3570.Y45 A64 1985
(A beautiful novel about love and death)
Kazuo Ishiguro. The Unconsoled, 1995. PR6059.S5 U53 1995
(Kafkaesque and very funny in a dark way)
Bakopoulos, Dean. Please Don't Come Back from the Moon, 2005. PS 3602 .A593
(a moving novel about our changing society especially in the rust belt)
Jonathan Raban (another Jonathan!). Wax Wings, 2003. PR6068.A22 W39 2003
(the boom and bust of the 90's in Seattle)
| |
Monday, December 10, 2007
...books by Milton Friedman
Search the library catalog by clicking on his name: Friedman, Milton, 1912
Thursday, December 6, 2007
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Naomi Klein. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2007.
Reviewed by T. Hatch
Naomi Klein mounts a frontal assault on the madrassa of Bolshevik privatization better known as the Economics Department at the University of Chicago. The recently expired Milton Friedman was the theory-giver for a generation and a half of economists who have come to embrace the aftermath of catastrophic events such as war and natural disasters as the basis of “exciting market opportunities.” The Friedmanite ideology that is the foundation of the “Shock Doctrine” holds that “reconstruction” finishes the job of the original disaster by eliminating the public sphere. At the core of this neoliberalism is the belief that profit and greed practiced on a mass scale create the greatest benefit for society.
The Shock Doctrine is a work of political economy following in many ways the tradition established by Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation. Both works challenge the idea proponed by Friedman and Hayek et al that free markets and free societies are part of the same historical process. Klein argues that liberalized markets not only do not require a free society but often serve as the catalyst for crushing democracy e.g. Tiananmen Square in 1989.
For Klein the danger posed by the “Chicago Boys” is the human misery that is created as a byproduct of their squalid utopianism. “The Marxists had their workers’ utopia, and the Chicagoans had their entrepreneurs’ utopia, both claiming that if they got their way, perfection and balance would follow.” Wherever these corporate conquistadors have worked their magic, 25 to 60 percent of the population lives in poverty. At the end of the day an unfettered capitalism enforces the idea that, indeed, freedom is not free.
Burling Library 2nd Floor HB95 .K54 2007
Also by Naomi Klein:
No Space, No Choice, No Jobs, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. New York: Picador USA, 2000
Burling 2nd Floor HD69.B7 K58x 2000
For other contributions, search the library catalog:
Reviewed by T. Hatch
Naomi Klein mounts a frontal assault on the madrassa of Bolshevik privatization better known as the Economics Department at the University of Chicago. The recently expired Milton Friedman was the theory-giver for a generation and a half of economists who have come to embrace the aftermath of catastrophic events such as war and natural disasters as the basis of “exciting market opportunities.” The Friedmanite ideology that is the foundation of the “Shock Doctrine” holds that “reconstruction” finishes the job of the original disaster by eliminating the public sphere. At the core of this neoliberalism is the belief that profit and greed practiced on a mass scale create the greatest benefit for society.
The Shock Doctrine is a work of political economy following in many ways the tradition established by Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation. Both works challenge the idea proponed by Friedman and Hayek et al that free markets and free societies are part of the same historical process. Klein argues that liberalized markets not only do not require a free society but often serve as the catalyst for crushing democracy e.g. Tiananmen Square in 1989.
For Klein the danger posed by the “Chicago Boys” is the human misery that is created as a byproduct of their squalid utopianism. “The Marxists had their workers’ utopia, and the Chicagoans had their entrepreneurs’ utopia, both claiming that if they got their way, perfection and balance would follow.” Wherever these corporate conquistadors have worked their magic, 25 to 60 percent of the population lives in poverty. At the end of the day an unfettered capitalism enforces the idea that, indeed, freedom is not free.
Burling Library 2nd Floor HB95 .K54 2007
Also by Naomi Klein:
No Space, No Choice, No Jobs, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. New York: Picador USA, 2000
Burling 2nd Floor HD69.B7 K58x 2000
For other contributions, search the library catalog:
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Walt Giersbach '61 has recently published ...
He writes:
I’m very happy to let you know that Wild Child has just published Cruising the Green of Second Avenue. My collection of short stories centers on New York’s Lower East Side in the late 1960s. Klein the Biker, Straight Charlie, Sammy the Madman, Frank and the Chick from Canarsie romp through the pages in the dawning of a new age. Their highs and lows are covered with humor and insight through the eyes of Jake, the narrator. The collection updates a rich heritage of vernacular story-telling in the genre of O. Henry’s Collected Stories and Damon Runyon’s Guys and Dolls.
I’m very happy to let you know that Wild Child has just published Cruising the Green of Second Avenue. My collection of short stories centers on New York’s Lower East Side in the late 1960s. Klein the Biker, Straight Charlie, Sammy the Madman, Frank and the Chick from Canarsie romp through the pages in the dawning of a new age. Their highs and lows are covered with humor and insight through the eyes of Jake, the narrator. The collection updates a rich heritage of vernacular story-telling in the genre of O. Henry’s Collected Stories and Damon Runyon’s Guys and Dolls.
Cruising the Green of Second Avenue is available as an e-book
--Walt Giersbach '61
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