April 16, 2007
“Personal History” by Katharine Graham
This autobiography by the former Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham won, and deserved, a Pulitzer Prize when it was published a few years before her death in 2001. As a prominent female publisher working in turbulent times, Graham certainly led a memoir-worthy life. The early chapters of the book deal with her wealthy girlhood and privileged adolescence are frustratingly laden with famous names and personalities, but this becomes more tolerable as the story moves forward.
As Graham comes more into her own in the story, the book also comes more into focus. The book smoothly explores her development into a wife/mother/Washington D.C. hostess and so the reader is able to better understand the total upheaval in her life when she suddenly must take over as publisher of the family’s major metropolitan newspaper.
Graham’s candid language and blatant acknowledgment of her early struggles in managing the newspaper make her a far more human figure than in the first chapters of the book. In discussing events befalling her paper: the Pentagon papers, Watergate, a pressmen’s strike, it is clear that Graham’s first concern is the Post. Not the prestige of the job, not her own reputation, but the success and security of the Washington Post.
Katharine Graham definitely lived a life worth reading about, and thankfully, she has done an excellent job of writing about it.
ISBN: 0394585852
Sara, reference assistant
Posted by jnardine at 09:44 AM | Comments (0)
April 09, 2007
"Singled Out: How Singles are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After" by Bella DePaulo
As a long time single myself, I was intrigued by the possibilities the title of this book suggested. Here was another educated always single reviewing and addressing our social bias against people who chose not to couple or marry. And there is a bias, both in everyday existence and in government structures like the tax system. DePaulo does a good job of listing and illustrating these biases in a relatively concise fashion. Unfortunately, she also clearly has an axe to grind, and her rage at the situation colors much of her interpretation of daily life and slights toward singles that may or may not be there. I needed to remind myself to sit back and not let her rabidity put me off of her main arguments, which are very valid.
I was also hoping for more constructive input regarding building a fulfilling single life within our current social structure, but there was relatively little material there on what makes single life "happily ever after." De Paulo spent her time speaking against the established paradigm, even in the chapter "The Way We Could Be" that was a prime spot for a new vision of singledom.
So, on the up side De Paulo presents a lot of relevant, valid, and interesting food for thought on the bias against singles in our couple-centric society. On the down side, you have to dig through a lot of angst to get to the relevant material. It's worth a look, especially if you're a sociology buff, but brace yourself for a somewhat less than stimulating read.
ISBN: 0-312-34081-8
Jennifer, reference
Posted by jnardine at 09:14 AM | Comments (0)
April 02, 2007
“Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon” by Charles Slack
This biography of renowned miser Hetty Green is interesting because of its subject’s wealth and thrifty habits; but what I found even more interesting was how the author tried to highlight Hetty’s humanity and failed.
Hetty Green lived from 1834 to 1916 and was born into a Quaker family who happened to control the wealthiest whaling company in America. She inherited her family’s money, some of it through an aunt’s will, on which Hetty allegedly forged the signature. She went on to multiply that early fortune through good investments and extreme thrift, including bringing buckets of dry oatmeal to her bank, where she would add water and heat it on the radiator in order to avoid a restaurant bill.
Hetty is plain old cheap, and she tends to be pretty nasty about it. But author Charles Slack is determined to bring out her human qualities. He plays up the fact that when she was living in various tenements in Hoboken to avoid paying residency taxes, she gave savings banks with a dollar inside to some neighborhood children. Slack’s anecdotes meant to highlight her kindness are overwhelmed by the very nature of her character.
The author’s attempt to redeem Hetty Green’s legacy fail; there aren’t enough positive stories about this woman to stretch this book beyond its slim 226 pages. So while it’s not a very successful as a biography, it is a pretty good story about America’s cheapest and most forgotten tycoon.
ISBN: 006054256x
Sara, reference assistant
Posted by jnardine at 08:30 AM | Comments (0)
March 19, 2007
"Green Cathedrals: The Ultimate Celebration of Major League and Negro League Ballparks" By Philip Lowry
Philip Lowry is a professor in Minnesota and member of the Society of American Baseball Researchers, so he knows what Rogers Hornsby meant when asked about what a ballplayer does during the winter: stare out the window and wait for spring. That is, sadly, also a fan's fate. Yet during those winter months, Lowry has put together a second edition of his classic baseball stadium reference, Green Cathedrals. The first edition, from 1986, collected information on every major league ballpark: when they were built, the architects, their playing field dimensions, occupancy, ownership, current uses, and more.
In the second edition, Lowry expands his subject to include every field to host a major league regular-season or post-season game as well as all stadiums used by teams in the Federal League, Players League, and Negro Leagues—over 400, in all. Entries are arranged alphabetically by city, then chronologically by use within each city. Thus Detroit, for instance, is represented first by Recreation Park, where the 1887 World Champion Detroit Wolverines played, followed by the Bennett Park, Briggs Stadium, and Tiger Stadium incarnations as Michigan and Trumbell. This structure is followed by entries for Mack Park, De Quindre Park, and Sportsman's Park, which hosted Negro League games between 1920 and 1961. Finally, we find today's home of the Tigers, Comerica Park.
While it is difficult to generate excitement for a reference book, this is an extremely interesting way to spend an hour or so—and an invaluable resource for research-minded baseball fans. Understanding the field of play shows why some parks produce teams with unique styles; a small park, for instance, favors power hitters, while a big outfield gives an advantage to fast runners. Lowry makes the book even more interesting by providing tidbits of history for many of these stadia. In fact, the only obvious improvement to this book would be inclusion of a running header, to facilitate navigation to individual items in it.
ISBN: 0802715621
Everett, reference
Posted by jnardine at 09:17 AM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2007
"Lennon Revealed" by Larry Kane
Larry Kane first published this reminiscence of John Lennon in 2005, twenty-five years
after Lennon's death. Kane is a journalist who first got to know Lennon when he
accompanied the Beatles on their 1964 and 1965 American tours. His treatment of his
material is thematic rather than chronological, and is based on his own recollections
of Lennon and on interviews with some of the people who were important in Lennon's life.
Kane's own memories span the time from the first meeting in 1964 to Lennon's death in
1980. In the preface, Kane says "I fundamentally and honestly really liked the man."
This point of view was clear throughout the book, and sometimes I felt that it got in
the way of letting Kane's and others' memories of the man speak for themselves.
However, as I went along, I started experiencing his bias as one of the features of the
story he tells. Anyone looking for a biography or for in-depth analysis of Lennon's
life would probably want to start with a different book: a more traditional,
chronologically arranged biography. However, there's no substitute for the memories and
experience of people who were there at the time, and this is one of many fascinating
pictures of a twentieth century icon and his effect on some of those who knew him.
ISBN: 978-0762429660 (paperback)
Linda, head
Posted by jnardine at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)
February 19, 2007
“The Endurance: Shackleton’s legendary Anarctic expedition” by Caroline Alexander
In the spirit of what the weather channel keeps referring to as an “Arctic blast,” I reminded myself of what cold really is by reading “The Endurance: Shackleton’s legendary Anarctic expedition” by Caroline Alexander. The book retraces Ernest Shackleton’s ill-planned attempt to be the first to hike across Antarctica and is assisted by the ample use of ship photographer Frank Hurley’s salvaged film record of the events.
Alexander approaches the story chronologically, providing context for the expedition by summarizing previous Antarctic explorations and the international competition surrounding them. For the story of the Endurance, Alexander draws material from the diaries, letters and later remembrances of the crew. Photographs and quotations punctuate many of the anecdotes of life aboard the Endurance, as well as the freezing hell endured after its’ sinking. The book makes great use of the existing photographs of the ordeal and they do quite a lot to make these unbelievable circumstances more real to the reader. The ship’s photographer captured impossible, fascinating images, such as the enormous wooden Endurance being cracked like a bundle of twigs by mere shifts in the Antarctic ice.
A good story like this makes it a lot easier to bear temperatures at just barely below freezing for a few weeks!
ISBN: 0375404031
Sara, reference assistant
Posted by jnardine at 09:24 AM | Comments (0)
February 05, 2007
"Not Your Mother's Vampire: Vampires in Young Adult Fiction" by Deborah Wilson Overstreet
“Not Your Mother’s Vampire: Vampires in Young Adult Fiction,” by Deborah Wilson Overstreet is a scholarly discussion of vampire literature geared to young adults. Overstreet includes information about the classic adult vampire fiction, both novels such as The Vampyre (1819) and Dracula (1897) and movies including Nosferatu (1922) and Dracula (1931 and later), and modern classics such as Anne Rice novels. She compares and contrasts the modern young adult vampire novels to these ten classic adult samples. The book includes information on the history of vampire tales, the classic vampire conventions (such as whether or not vampires can see their reflections, be affected by religious objects such as crosses, need an invitation to enter a victim’s home, etc.), and covers several types of vampire tales: becoming a vampire, stories of power negotiations, and romances. There is also a chapter devoted completely to “Buffyverse” the worlds of the Buffy and Angel tv series and their characters. The author teaches a course on Buffy Studies at the University of Maine at Farmington. Although interesting, easy to read, and with a lot of cited sources for further research, the book is very repetitive. It reads almost as if several stand alone journal articles had been strung together into one book since the same ground is plowed over, and over again (but from different perspectives).
ISBN: 0-8108-5365-5
Pam, reserves
Posted by jnardine at 08:17 AM | Comments (0)
January 02, 2007
"The Omnivore's Dilemma: a Natural History of Four Meals" by Michael Pollan
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin is famous for saying "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are". Pollan has called Americans "walking corn flakes" because of the astonishing amount of corn in many, many forms in the 21st century diet, which is driven by technology. He examines a meal from start (planting the crops, raising the animals) to finish (fast food drive-thru or microwaved box), then does the same for an organically grown meal and a hunter/gather meal. Chicken McNuggets will never seem the same ever again.
ISBN: 1594200823
Barb, reference
Posted by jnardine at 09:14 AM | Comments (0)
October 23, 2006
"In the Shadow of No Towers" by Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman is one of my favorite cartoonists because he never flinches. The man developed a comic book about the Holocaust, and Maus became a cultural icon by helping children understand the horror we can inflict upon one another. So who better to commemorate our generation’s defining act of terror, the attacks of September 11, 2001?
No Towers is a tortured book, reflecting Spiegelman’s own struggle to accept and understand these events. It is a personal essay in pictures, recounting his thoughts and actions on and after 9/11. This means the story is about Spiegelman, as much as 9/11, and to help us understand him, Spiegelman includes a short history of the funny papers as an appendix. Still, the levity this provides does not completely counter the crushing weight of loss No Towers conveys. As we reach the fifth anniversary of these horrible events, In the Shadow of No Towers is a powerful memorial and reminder of what we have lost.
ISBN: 0670915416
Everett, reference
Posted by jnardine at 02:22 PM | Comments (0)
October 16, 2006
"Search Engine Visibility" by Shari Thurow
Admit it, by now you've Googled yourself (If you haven't, go to Google and run a search on your name. I'll wait.). It's interesting to see how the world sees us: is the top result you? Are you even on the first page?
Do you want to be? Sheri Thurow is a search engine marketer, and she can help. Her book Search Engine Visibility is straight-forward, crisp, and practical. In it, she provides enough basic theory for context, so one need never ask 'why'. From her five rules of web design to her search engine and directory submission checklists, her advice is clear and easy to follow. Thurow covers improving site visibility at two points: building new pages, and improving existing ones. Along the way she provides examples from her own portfolio as illustrations, and clear explanation of both the techniques to use and the reasons behind them. Her list of website resources is also very nice.
To sum up, the key to a good search engine raking is building a good website. Design with the user in mind, providing quality content and simple navigation, and the spiders will reward you. As Thurow says, "building a site for your target audience and following search engine best practices is one of the most cost-effective components of a search engine marketing campaign".
ISBN: 0735712565
Everett, reference
Posted by jnardine at 08:17 AM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2006
"The Partly Cloudy Patriot" by Sarah Vowell
With the congressional elections drawing near, people may be getting sick of hearing about politics. Vowell's book is a breath of fresh air on this topic. Her perspective as a 30-something liberal urbanite is what you'd expect, but she gets her point across in a very non-offensive and humorous way.
It's a fun, quick read, and will make you think about patriotism and what it means to be an American today.
ISBN: 0743243803
Amanda, reference & instruction
Posted by jnardine at 02:36 PM | Comments (0)
September 25, 2006
“The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop” by Lewis Buzbee
This charmingly honest memoir is a garden of personal joy and celebration where a book geek’s sensibilities and appreciation for the history of books and bookstores blossom in full color. Whether he’s describing acquaintances’ formative reading lists or historical watersheds in printing from Gutenberg to electronic print on demand, Busbee’s passion is warm and infectious.
Buzbee begins his account surveying the interior landscape of book lust and the almost symbiotic relationship between bookstores and buyers. He meanders through his early years as a store clerk at Upstart Crow and Printer’s Inc., two northern California bookstores, before delving into the histories of book making and book distribution. His account of the evolution of bookstores is fascinating, and he ties in historical relationships between various social institutions and the book trade, such as the medieval appearance of the university in Europe, Arabic culture and book copyists. He’s also up to tackling issues such as censorship, reading surveillance coupled to sections of the Patriot Act, and the pros and cons of the proliferation of online bookstores.
Dispersed throughout are engaging anecdotes and winsome facts: For example, Buzbee reminds us that from the 15th to the 18th centuries the normal stacking of books changed from vertical to horizontal. The third series of numbers in an ISBN designates a publisher’s specific listed title. Traveling booksellers sold 90% percent of books in the
U.S. in the 19th century. And the first printed copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses appeared on Joyce’s fortieth birthday, as promised, with paper wrappers the color of the Greek flag.
Buzbee paints delightful portraits of bookstores, celebrated and those less so. The storied Shakespeare and Co. in Paris under the guidance of Sylvia Beach, Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s renown City Lights Bookstore, and Librarie 1789, a Parisian shop specializing in experimental, contemporary writers all come alive with Buzbee’s brush. He also highlights such stores as Grolier Poetry Book Ship, the oldest all-poetry bookshop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Red Balloon Bookshop in St. Paul, Minnesota, and a combination used bookstore and tattoo parlor in Garberville, California. Absent, however, are a host of college town bookstores between the coasts that could rightly have made the list, landmark bookshops such as Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City, Iowa or Shaman Drum Bookstore in Ann Arbor.
Reading shuttles us to appointed worlds of our own choosing, enticing worlds seemingly within our grasp. Buzbee rightly adduces that our initial connection to books and reading is visceral. Books allow us to experience our interior and outer worlds more deeply. And bookstores allow us, more than any other place perhaps, a space “to be alone among others.” They satisfy not only the singular obsession to search and discover on our own, but to do so in the company of other seekers, a passion that doesn’t seem to diminish over time. This book is filled with such subtle epiphanies.
ISBN: 1555974503
Renoir, reference
Posted by jnardine at 09:21 AM | Comments (0)
September 05, 2006
"Search Engine Visibility" by Shari Thurow
Admit it, by now you've Googled yourself (If you haven't, go to Google and run a search on your name. I'll wait.). It's interesting to see how the world sees us: is the top result you? Are you even on the first page?
Do you want to be? Sheri Thurow is a search engine marketer, and she can help. Her book Search Engine Visibility is straight-forward, crisp, and practical. In it, she provides enough basic theory for context, so one need never ask 'why'. From her five rules of web design to her search engine and directory submission checklists, her advice is clear and easy to follow. Thurow covers improving site visibility at two points: building new pages, and improving existant ones. Along the way she provides examples from her own portfolio as illustrations, and clear explanation of both the techniques to use and the reasons behind them. Her list of website resources is also very nice.
To sum up, the key to a good search engine raking is building a good website. Design with the user in mind, providing quality content and simple navigation, and the spiders will reward you. As Thurow says, "building a site for your target audience and following search engine best practices is one of the most cost-effective components of a search engine marketing campaign".
ISBN: 0735712565
Everett, reference
Posted by jnardine at 09:20 AM | Comments (0)
August 28, 2006
"Your Money and Your Man" by Michelle Singletary
Despite the glowing reviews this book got when it came out, my basic feeling is that it should be put in the "only if there's nothing else available" reading pile. Singletary has lots of experience in financial circles, but the straightforward nuggets of information are so diluted by relationship advice and religious standpoints that I had a hard time finishing the book. It is possible that I was just expecting something different. If you are interested in romantic relationships and how money affects them, this would probably worth a read. However, if you're looking for economic education and planning advice, this is not the book for you.
ISBN: 1400063787
Jennifer, reference
Posted by jnardine at 02:02 PM | Comments (0)
August 21, 2006
"Body Outlaws" by Ophira Edut (Ed.)
I can't say it any better than "Booklist," so here it is:
Women who have wrestled with the discomfort of not conforming to standard ideas of beauty and social mores express their opinions in this collection of essays that celebrates the empowerment of those who resist the status quo and ultimately reach self-acceptance. Topics range widely from weight to ethnicity to gender to sexual preference, and the writers come from a rainbow of cultural backgrounds. Latina Marisa Navarro writes about the suppression of sexuality necessary to be the good daughter in her family; Lisa Jervis discusses the underlying politics of nose jobs; Nomy Lamm demands acceptance for being "a freak . . . anarchist dyke . . and a total hottie." Other writers confront anorexia, sex changes, and dieting, and one celebrates sexual abstinence. Twenty-eight thought-provoking essays. Denise Wilms. Copyright © American Library Association.
ISBN: 1580051081
Jennifer, reference
Posted by jnardine at 09:43 AM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2006
"Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction" by Jonathan Culler
What do Marxists, Freudians, Structuralists, New Critics, Post-Colonialists, Feminists, and Deconstructionists have in common? “I don’t know” is not a correct response—but “I can’t understand them” is. The other right answer is that they all apply unique analytical frameworks to the study of literature in an effort to understand “what it means”. But most of us would say “I don’t know.”
Part of the confusion comes from all those different schools of criticism—I couldn’t keep them straight as a graduate student, either. Culler solves this problem by approaching the subject through the common underlying questions that any critic is trying to answer. The book fits eight chapter and an appendix into 133 pages, with each question getting a chapter; Culler only addresses various schools in the appendix. This makes it very easy to follow his clear, concise discussion of the philosophical issues that inspire both literature and the ways of studying it.
Literary Theory is part of an Oxford series that runs from Ancient Philosophy through Empire, Engles, and Ethics to Molecules, Music, Nietzsche and The Twentieth Century: there were about 150 titles in 2000. Each is written by an acknowledged expert on the subject (Culler teaches at Cornell and has published several books). They are designed to provide “stimulating ways in to new subjects,” or a high-level over-view. They are ideal for getting the “big picture” before starting a distributive requirement class because they will help you understand, quickly, both why it is important and how interesting it really it—to someone.
ISBN: 019285383X
Everett, reference
Posted by jnardine at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)
July 17, 2006
“Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure” by Sarah MacDonald
After we spent three weeks traveling around northern India, my friend, who has been living in India since January, gave me this book to read on the long plane ride back to the United States. “Holy Cow” is Sarah MacDonald’s account of living in Delhi for a year while her boyfriend, a news correspondent, completes his assignment to South Asia. MacDonald had been a talk show host in Australia and while she is in India, she decides to investigate the various religions practiced in India – Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Sufism, Islam, and Christianity, in addition to many smaller, related sects. Her experiences with religion structure her account, but she also discusses the history of India and its religions, her experiences as a foreigner in India, and her observations of contemporary Indian life and culture. Her engaging and witty observations of the terror of traffic in Delhi, cheesy yet enjoyable Bollywood films, and Westerners in India seeking enlightenment and drugs ring true.
ISBN: 0-7679-1574-7
Maura, reference
Posted by terhaar at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)
June 15, 2006
"Dancing for Dollars and Paying for Love" by R.D. Egan
"Dancing for Dollars and Paying for Love" may sound like the title of another coed-turned-stripper tell-all, but if that's what you're hunting for, hunt elsewhere. Danielle Egan did indeed work as a stripper, but in the context of a women's studies/sociology graduate student investigating the complicated relationship between exotic dancers and their regular customers. Egan clearly writes for an academic audience while discussing the interactions between dancers and regulars. She explores the lines between fantasy and reality, romance and finance, masochism and narcissism. Egan uses a few first person interactions to illustrate and enliven her discussion, but the majority of the book is dense and occasionally essoteric enough to force you to read sections a couple of times before completely understanding her point. One thing she makes very clear, though, is that sex work is a complex system of power interactions that deserves a great deal of study, especially from feminist and sociological standpoints. In short, this is well worth the time it takes to read.
ISBN: 1403970440
Jennifer, Reference
Posted by jnardine at 02:55 PM | Comments (0)
June 13, 2006
"Maybe I'll Pitch Forever" by Leroy "Satchel" Paige
This year, the National Baseball Hall of Fame wrapped up a special research effort into the Negro Leagues’ history. They collected box scores from almost every game, and they have finally tabulated statistics for these nearly-forgotten players. They celebrated by electing seventeen new members to the Hall, including former Detroit Stars first-baseman Mule Suttles. A large part of the research has now been released in the new book Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball by Lawrence D. Hogan.
I’m sure that Shades of Glory is a fine book, but I’m reading Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever instead. An autobiography from Satchel Paige, crafted from interviews with David Lipman (who also wrote biographies of Bob Gibson and Branch Rickey), it provides a first-hand look at the Negro Leagues. Paige’s distinctively colorful voice carries a joy we are to assume infected these players, in spite of the harsh circumstances of their professional and personal lives. Yet Satch starts his story several games into his first major league season, when he was forty-one, so we know it all worked out for the man many thought should have broken baseball’s color barrier before Jackie Robinson ever finished college.
ISBN: 0803287321
Everett, Reference
Posted by jnardine at 10:27 AM | Comments (0)
June 06, 2006
"Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis" by Jimmy Carter
If you’ve been given the impression that all born-again Christians have the same ideas about how religion and faith inform politics and values, Jimmy Carter can show you a very different way.
ISBN: 0743284577
Linda, Head of UGL
Posted by jnardine at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)
May 03, 2006
"Silent Snow: The Slow Poisoning of the Arctic" by Marla Cone
Who expects the world’s worst toxic contamination to be in the Arctic? No, this isn’t a rhetorical question. In the tradition of “Silent Spring” author Rachel Carson, Cone delivers a whirlwind tour of one of the most perplexing environmental disasters in modern times: the pollution of sparsely populated, isolated Arctic regions by organochlorines (DDT and PCBs) and methyl mercury. Cone explores the global voyage of such toxins as they make their way from southern, industrialized countries by mainly hitchhiking on atmospheric and ocean currents before settling on various rungs of the food chain necessary for the survival of the Inuit and other indigenous peoples. Cone does a fine job sifting through scientific data and interpreting the phenomenon with a layman’s stark curiosity and wonder. She paints a humane, highly personal portrait of families and wildlife whose lives and communities are directly threatened by the contamination. This Arctic dilemma has global implications. And this book shines a much needed light upon its legacies.
ISBN: 080211797X
Renoir, Reference
Posted by jnardine at 11:24 AM | Comments (0)
April 17, 2006
"Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America's Fat Epidemic" by J. Eric Oliver
If you're looking for a dieting how-to, look elsewhere. Fat Politics is about the economic, political and sociological forces behind today's extreme view on body fat. Oliver does not argue that fat is nothing to worry about; he suggests that fat may be a symptom and not a cause of many of the disease which are currently blamed on excess weight. He carefully points out where the holes in the "fat is the ultimate evil" paradigm in which we live. He scrutizes the research behind the current NIH definition of "overweight" and "obese" and finds it wanting. Oliver also takes a very close look at our country's hatred of fatness -a sign of wealth and the power to oppress in earlier eras- and of fat white women -stemming from biological and status-seeking mentalities. This was a fascinating read, especially given the current prevailing attitude towards body weight.
ISBN: 0195169360
Jennifer, Reference
Posted by jnardine at 02:36 PM | Comments (0)
"The Undercover Economist" by Tim Harford
I recently finished "The Undercover Economist: Exposing Why the Rich are Rich, the Poor are Poor – and Why You can Never Buy a Decent Used Car!" by Tim Harford. Harford writes the “Dear Economist” column for the Financial Times and has worked previously at the World Bank, Shell, and Oxford University. This book is written in a very casual style, so it feels like you are having a conversation about economics with a professor over a cup of coffee, instead listening to a lecture or reading a textbook. Harford explains economic concepts like marginal rent, price targeting, and scarcity, but his examples are things most people can relate to, such as the price of coffee at Starbucks or an apartment overlooking Central Park.
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-518997-3
Pam M., Reserves
Posted by jnardine at 09:33 AM | Comments (0)
April 03, 2006
"Cash: The Autobiography" by Johnny Cash, with Patrick Carr
This autobiography of country and rock and roll star Johnny Cash was one of the main sources of information and inspiration for the recent Oscar-winning movie "Walk the Line". In it, Cash reveals plenty about both his professional and personal life. He charts his career for the reader, ranging from the Sun Record days of the mid-1950s (recording his first hits, touring with Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison) to being the top musical act in the world in the late 1960s and early 1970s (his records outselling the Beatles, his famous prison concerts at Folsom Prison and San Quentin, his hit television show), to his career low in the 1980s, to his career revival with hit alternative rock albums in the 1990s with producer Rick Rubin. At least as interesting as his career highlights, though, are the stories he tells of his personal life: growing up picking cotton as a child, his recurrent struggles with addiction to amphetamines, and his quite moving views on spirituality. The tone throughout the book is remarkably humble, and Cash is a wonderful story teller. I thought this was a great book, and recommend it both as the story of one of America's great musicians and as a first-person chronicle of the birth of the rock-and-roll era.
ISBN: 0061013579
Harold T., reference
Posted by jnardine at 09:20 AM | Comments (0)
March 27, 2006
"Nickel and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich
"Nickel and Dimed" reads as smoothly and engagingly as many fictions I've read. Ehrenreich's story of her experiment living as a low wage worker was both fascinating and horrifying. Her description of working conditions in WalMart, family restaurants and cleaning services are vivid and answer many of the questions that the average middle class person asks but can't answer. She also does a really good job of debunking the idea that former welfare recipients are now thriving on the low wage jobs they found when welfare was reformed.
She not only discusses the actual day-to-day physical experiences but delves into how living as a low-wage worker quickly and thoroughly reduced her mental and emotion state to one focused on survival and on winning the approval of her supervisors at any cost. Although Ehrenreich's experiment was admittedly fixed - she had plenty of start-up allowance that the average WalMart employee does not, and she knew that she had an escape at the end of the experiement back into upper middle class comfort - her chronicle still reveals an often-invisible sector of our society that desperately needs to be looked at and addressed.
ISBN: 0-8050-6388-9
Jennifer N., reference
Posted by jnardine at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2006
"Brand New" by Nancy Koehn
A while back I read Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers’ Trust from Wedgwood to Dell" by Nancy Koehn. This book talked about creative business leaders, in most cases their names are their company’s names, such as Wedgwood, Heinz, Marshall Field, Estée Lauder, Howard Schultz (Starbucks), and Dell. These innovative entrepreneurs changed business, at least during the time they were involved, and how it interacted with consumers. With historical coverage going back to the late 1700s and moving on up through the late 1990s, it gives insight into the world of marketing, product placement, and consumer driven businesses. The book has plenty of pictures to illustrate the points and is a quick and interesting read.
ISBN 1-57851-221-2
Pam M., reserves
Posted by jnardine at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2006
"The Elements of Murder" by John Emsley
I am a big fan of murder mysteries and CSI (Las Vegas only, not Miami or New York). Poison plays a role in both. The alchemists of old (including Roger Bacon and Thomas Acquinas!) were looking for the Philosopher's Stone to turn base metal into gold, the Elixer of Life for longevity, and the Alkahest to dissolve anything. Their experiments with toxic elements lead to some accidental self-poisoning, the science of chemistry and some dandy ways for Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and P. D. James to poison people. Forensic science has made poison a less useful murder weapon, but toxic elements are still all around around us. This is non-technical science accompanied by fascinating histories of people who have been murdered with thallium, lead, antimony. mercury and arsenic.
ISBN 0192805991
Barb K, reference
Posted by jnardine at 11:38 AM | Comments (1)
January 24, 2006
"The Beak of the Finch" by Jonathan Weiner
When Darwin first published On the Origin of Species in 1859, he conceded that the evolution of a species by natural selection was so slow as to be impossible to observe directly. Ever since, critics have used science’s inability to observe selection as a weapon against evolutionary theory. Over the past several decades, however, dedicated teams of scientists conducting long-term studies of various populations of organisms have, in fact, observed evolution at work. Jonathan Weiner’s The Beak of the Finch tells the story of the most famous of these studies: Peter and Rosemary Grant’s decades-long work with the finches of the Galapagos Islands, off the coast of Peru. Returning to the same islands year after year, carefully trapping, measuring, and banding thousands of birds, the Grants demonstrated that changes in the finches’ environment resulted in changes in the physical characteristics of the finches themselves – often with surprising speed. Weiner tells their remarkable story in clear, simple language, carefully explaining the intricacies of evolutionary theory in terms understandable even to non-biologists. Although it’s now over ten years old, both the questions it poses and the Grant’s answers remain relevant to understanding evolutionary theory today.
-Scott M., Science
Posted by jnardine at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2006
"The City of Falling Angels" by John Berendt
Of all the non-fiction books I've read in the past few years, this is
one of the very best reads! The author, John Berendt, arrived in
Venice for an extended stay a few days after the spectacular fire that
consumed La Fenice, Venice’s magnificent opera house. His book is a
fascinating look at the fire, the investigation of the fire and the
rebuilding of La Fenice. Equally fascinating are his portraits of the
city, and the people and organizations he came to know during his stay
and his research into the fire. The writing, the characters, and the
suspense make this a real page-turner.
Linda T., Head
Posted by jnardine at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)
"The World in a Phrase" by James Geary
Remember who said, "The art of being a slave is to rule one's master"?
How about, "I shop therefore I am"? Rediscover these and other
aphorisms in James Geary's instructive and entertaining "The World in a
Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism." Geary delivers a whirlwind
tour of the lives and times of aphorists and their terse sayings from
various cultures. From Buddha to Dr. Suess, this book presents a trove
of marvelous witticisms that invite readers to explore the bare
essentials of life in a single insight. In the words of the French
aphorist Joseph Joubert, "A thought is a thing as real as a cannonball."
Renoir G., Reference
Posted by jnardine at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)