David A. Nims Library, Oakmont Regional High School

Graphic Novels — Not Your Father’s Comics

2010-03-29T08:54:00.009-05:00

Comic books have been popular in the U.S since the mid 1930’s, but if you went looking for the latest edition of Superman, The Hulk, or the Classics Illustrated version of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea at your local library back then, you were out of luck. Comic books were not acquired by libraries for circulation to their patrons.

Today patrons go to an online catalog, rather than the drawers of the old card catalog to search for materials. A quick search for “comic books” in the David A. Nims Library’s collection returns 44 titles. Expanding that search to the C/W Mars Union Catalog results in more than 10,000 results! What’s going on here?

Well, these books are not really comic books, but what are called “graphic novels.” They can be hard or soft cover, typically are full color, and have titles such as Logicomix, an Epic Search for Truth, Maus : a Survivor's Tale, and The 9/11 Report : a Graphic Adaptation. I have purchased several titles for the Nims library based on enthusiastic positive reviews, and as I catalog them I always skim through them to get a better sense of their content. After I cataloged Logicomix, an Epic search for Truth, I decided this book was too intriguing to put immediately on the shelves, and I checked it out. Reading it frame by frame, I found I was caught up in this book – it was a true page-turner.

I have always been interested in mathematics and philosophy, and I have a passing familiarity with Bertrand Russell and the other mathematicians featured here. But I was never interested in actually reading Principia Mathematica, the three-volume work of roughly 2,000 pages (362 pages to prove 1 + 1= 2?!) which Russell and Alfred North Whitehead wrote over many years in their attempt to construct the foundation of mathematics on symbolic logic. However, reading Logicomix I learned much about Russell’s life and the struggle he and Whitehead endured to write Principia Mathematica, and I was reminded again that mathematics (even arithmetic) could be an all-consuming intellectual discipline. Furthermore, I came to appreciate Logicomix as a substantial literary and artistic achievement. The authors Apostolos Doxiadis, a mathematician turned novelist and filmmaker, and Christos Papadimitriou, a professor of computer science at the University of California at Berkeley, have created a book of which Carlo Wolff, writing in The Boston Globe, said “reading Logicomix is like stumbling upon the best college class you never expected and settling down for enlightenment.” Imagine, enlightenment from a “comic book!” Barry Mazur, Gerhard Gade University Professor at Harvard University wrote "This magnificent book is about ideas, passions, madness, and the fierce struggle between well-defined principle and the larger good. It follows the great mathematicians--Russell, Whitehead, Frege, Cantor, Hilbert--as they agonized to make the foundations of mathematics exact, consistent, and complete. We see how Gödel illuminates their project. We see the Erinyes of Aeschylus's Oresteia giving up their principle of merciless revenge in favor of considered justice. And we see the band of artists and researchers--and the all-seeking dog Manga--creating, and participating in, this glorious narrative." Other reviews have been just as enthusiastic in their praise for Logicomix. Forget about the categories of "comic book," or even graphic novel, clearly there is a wide-spread consensus that this book is a significant achievement.

If you haven’t already discovered graphic novels, search the David A. Nims Library catalog and check out a selection that piques your interest and curiosity. These books may not change your life (or even your reading habits), but then again they just might.

A Sampling of Recent Acquisitions

2010-01-28T09:19:00.004-05:00

Johann Sebastian Bach: Life and Work by Martin Geck – More than a century ago, Albert Schweitzer indicted Bach biographers for a fixation on the composer's technical mastery, contending that such a focus blinded them to his poetic genius. In 2000 a perceptive German musicologist finally published a life study so perceptive and capacious that even Schweitzer would have applauded, and now a gifted translator has made that award-winning biography accessible to English-speaking readers. Writing for both the scholar and the general reader, Geck delivers a portrait of Bach--as man and as musician--more carefully nuanced and complete than those of any of his predecessors. In his portrait of the young Bach, for instance, Geck teases from a mere handful of documents clues as to how a self-taught organ-tuner won exceptional privileges from Arnstadt authorities. And in probing the repeated metamorphoses in Bach's artistic styles, Geck shows how Bach's rare creative talent fused devotion to tradition with experimental daring. The same analytical sophistication reveals how Bach's music reflects a Christian faith inspired by Lutheran mysticism and Pietist devotion. But even as he unveils the origins of Bach's sublime spirituality, Geck reminds readers of the rooted humanity of a boon companion who relished a mug of hard cider. Ordinary lovers of music will join specialists in praising this book. – Bryce Christensen, starred review, Booklist
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou – An ambitious full-color exploration of the life and ideas of philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell, the book meticulously interconnects Russell's life, the timelessness of his ideas and the process of creating the book. While a comic about the quest for the foundations of mathematics may seem arduous, it is engrossing on many levels; the story moves, despite heavy philosophical and technical information, as the images, dialogue and narration play off each other. Russell's story is framed within a speech he gave on the brink of America's entry into WWII, in which he expounds his life and philosophical journey. Russell's story is also framed by the creators working in Greece, as they discuss and mold his life into a narrative structure. One of the most prominent themes is the conflict and symbiosis between madness and logic. The fear of madness haunts Russell because of childhood trauma, as he neurotically pushes himself toward what he conceives of as its opposite, a system for certainty. Inventive, with both subtle and overt narrative techniques, the comic form organizes the complex ideas into a simpler system, combining to form a smart and engaging journey through the ambiguity of truth. – starred review, Publishers Weekly
Dracula (Norton Critical Editions) by Bram Stoker – Dracula is one of the few horror books to be honored by inclusion in the Norton Critical Edition series. (Others include Frankenstein, The Turn of the Screw, and The Picture of Dorian Gray.) This 100th-anniversary edition includes not only the complete authoritative text of the novel with illuminating footnotes, but also four contextual essays, five reviews from the time of publication, five articles on dramatic and film variations, and seven selections from literary and academic criticism. Nina Auerbach of the University of Pennsylvania and horror scholar David J. Skal are the editors of the volume. Especially fascinating are excerpts from materials that Bram Stoker consulted in his research for the book, and his working papers over the several years he was composing it. The selection of criticism includes essays on how Dracula deals with female sexuality, gender inversion, homoerotic elements, and Victorian fears of "reverse colonization" by politically turbulent Transylvania.
A Little History of the World by E. H. Gombrich – This is an unusual work for Yale University Press: a children's history originally published 70 years ago. But it is a work one can quickly come to love. Gombrich, later known as an art historian, wrote this primer in 1935, when he was a young man in Vienna (it was soon banned by the Nazis as too "pacifist"). Rewritten (and updated) in English mainly by Gombrich himself (who died in 2001, age 92, while working on it), the book is still aimed at children, as the language makes clear: "Then, slowly the clouds parted to reveal the starry night of the Middle Ages." But while he addresses his readers directly at times, Gombrich never talks down to them. Using vivid imagery, storytelling and sly humor, he brings history to life in a way that adults as well as children can appreciate.The book displays a breadth of knowledge, as Gombrich begins with prehistoric man and ends with the close of WWII. In the final, newly added chapter, Gombrich's tone sadly darkens as he relates the rise of Hitler and his own escape from the Holocaust—children, he writes, "must learn from history how easy it is for human beings to be transformed into inhuman beings"—and ends on a note of cautious optimism about humanity's future. – starred review, Publishers Weekly
Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman – When the book opens, Charles Darwin is trying to make a decision, and he is doing so in time-honored fashion: drawing a line down a piece of paper and putting the pros of marriage on one side and the cons on the other. As much as Darwin is interested in wedded life, he is afraid that family life will take him away from the revolutionary work he is doing on the evolution of species. However, the pluses triumph, and he finds the perfect mate in his first-cousin Emma, who becomes his comforter, editor, mother of his 10 children—and sparring partner. Although highly congenial, Charles and Emma were on opposite sides when it came to the role of God in creation. Heiligman uses the Darwin family letters and papers to craft a full-bodied look at the personal influences that shaped Charles’ life as he worked mightily to shape his theories. This intersection between religion and science is where the book shines, but it is also an excellent portrait of what life was like during the Victorian era, a time when illness and death were ever present, and, in a way, a real-time example of the survival of the fittest. Occasionally hard to follow, in part because of the many characters (the family tree helps), this is well sourced and mostly fascinating, and may attract a wider audience than those interested in science. Austen fans will find a romance to like here, too. – Ilene Cooper, starred review, Publishers Weekly

A Sampling of Recent Acquisitions

2009-12-23T12:46:00.004-05:00

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman – If a virulent virus—or even the Rapture—depopulated Earth overnight, how long before all trace of humankind vanished? That's the provocative, and occasionally puckish, question posed by Weisman (An Echo in My Blood) in this imaginative hybrid of solid science reporting and morbid speculation. Days after our disappearance, pumps keeping Manhattan's subways dry would fail, tunnels would flood, soil under streets would sluice away and the foundations of towering skyscrapers built to last for centuries would start to crumble. At the other end of the chronological spectrum, anything made of bronze might survive in recognizable form for millions of years—along with one billion pounds of degraded but almost indestructible plastics manufactured since the mid-20th century. Meanwhile, land freed from mankind's environmentally poisonous footprint would quickly reconstitute itself, as in Chernobyl, where animal life has returned after 1986's deadly radiation leak, and in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, a refuge since 1953 for the almost-extinct goral mountain goat and Amur leopard. From a patch of primeval forest in Poland to monumental underground villages in Turkey, Weisman's enthralling tour of the world of tomorrow explores what little will remain of ancient times while anticipating, often poetically, what a planet without us would be like. – starred review, Publishers Weekly
Napoleon's Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History by Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson – Women who use birth control pills probably care more about their effectiveness than about how they actually work, and although ignorance here may be bliss, it also cheats one of a good science story, involving a driven chemist making a serendipitous discovery about cortisone. Le Couteur and Burreson roll out 17 episodes selected for their salience in affecting health as well as history at large. This pair of chemists doesn't over interpret a particular chemical as a historical influence but makes speculating on, say, piperene, a sporting diversion. Piperene is the molecule that causes taste buds to sting from pepper. Venice had a monopoly on the pepper trade, which rivals wished to break, motivating the voyages of discovery. Although connections frame the authors' tales (the title refers to tin buttons, which contributed to Napoleon's defeat in Russia), each story dwells on its molecular protagonist. The authors diagram the formula and shape of each, from the polymer behind the sheen in silk to the ionic bonds in the taste of salt. Well-conceived, well-done popular science. -- Gilbert Taylor, Booklist
The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler by Thomas Hager – A fast-paced account of the early-20th-century quest to develop synthetic fertilizer. Today hundreds of factories convert atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia in order to manufacture the artificial fertilizers that make modern-day agricultural yields possible. They are based on the technological advance known as the Haber-Bosch process, developed prior to World War I by the German chemists and Nobel laureates Fritz Haber (1868–1934) and Carl Bosch (1874–1940). Hager (The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor’s Heroic Search for the World’s First Miracle Drug, 2006, etc.) offers a superb narrative of these brilliant men and their scientific discovery. Around the turn of the century, the world faced a shortage of the fixed nitrogen needed to provide food for a growing population. Hager sets the stage by describing the world’s reliance in the 19th century on nitrates from Peru and Chile that could be used as natural fertilizer or to make gunpowder, and finds plenty of human drama in the battles to control the lucrative international trade. Determined to help end Germany’s dependence on South American nitrates, Bosch and Haber worked at the German chemical company BASF to find a way to convert nitrogen into ammonia. Bosch developed the process, and Haber designed bigger industrial plants. By 1944, the Haber-Bosch factory at Leuna—a primary target for U.S. bombers—occupied three square miles and employed 35,000 workers. The author not only illuminates the scientists’ complex work, but also digs into their personal lives. Bosch, a melancholic with a huge villa in Heidelberg, asked Hitler to spare Jewish scientists for the sake of German chemistry and physics (the Fuhrer replied: “Then we’ll just have to work 100 years without physics and chemistry!”). Haber, a Jew, developed the chlorine gas used in World War I, sought a way to extract gold from the oceans to pay off German war reparations and conducted research that led to the development of the Zyklon B gas used in Nazi death camps. Science writing of the first order. — starred review, Kirkus Reviews
The Princeton Companion to Mathematics, Timothy Gowers, editor – The Princeton Companion to Mathematics is a friendly, informative reference book that attempts to explain what mathematics is about and what mathematicians do. Over 200 entries by a panel of experts span such topics as: the origins of modern mathematics; mathematical concepts; branches of mathematics; mathematicians that contributed to the present state of the discipline; theorems and problems; the influences of mathematics and some perspectives. Its presentations are selective, satisfying, and complete within themselves but not overbearingly comprehensive. Any reader from a curious high school student to an experienced mathematician seeking information on a particular mathematical subject outside his or her field will find this book useful. The writing is clear and the examples and illustrations beneficial. -- Frank Swetz, Convergence
Wood: Craft, Culture, History by Harvey Green – Histories of materials continue to rise in popularity, exemplified by this excursion into the uses and aesthetics of wood. Green, a student and practitioner of the craft of woodworking, spans the remarkable range of objects created from trees throughout human history. In addition to defining terms, such as the distinction between hard- and softwoods, Green reiterates throughout this fluent and pleasing work the uniqueness of wood, which contributes to its attraction. No two pieces are alike in appearance, and specific species of trees are preferred for specific purposes: ash for baseball bats, oak for ships, cedar for furniture. Whatever object Green investigates, he discovers its layers of historical, commercial, environmental, and artistic significance, not least in the substitution for wood by other materials. Despite this trend, however, wood is always more appealing to sight and touch than its competition: nobody loves a titanium golf club the way they do a persimmon-headed driver. Sophisticated but approachable, Green's work richly satisfies curiosity about the subject. – Gilbert Taylor, Booklist
Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution by Ji-li Jiang – A child's nightmare unfolds in Jiang's chronicle of the excesses of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution in China in the late 1960s. She was a young teenager at the height of the fervor, when children rose up against their parents, students against teachers, and neighbor against neighbor in an orgy of doublespeak, name-calling, and worse. Intelligence was suspect, and everyone was exhorted to root out the "Olds''--old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits. She tells how it felt to burn family photographs and treasured heirlooms so they would not be used as evidence of their failure to repudiate a "black''--i.e., land-owning--past. In the name of the revolution, homes were searched and possessions taken or destroyed, her father imprisoned, and her mother's health imperiled--until the next round of revolutionaries came in and reversed many of the dicta of the last. Jiang's last chapter details her current life in this country, and the fates of people she mentions in her story. It's a very painful, very personal- -therefore accessible--history. -- From Kirkus Reviews
Jefferson's Pillow: The Founding Fathers and the Dilemma of Black Patriotism by Roger Wilkins – Wilkins brings the credentials of a history professor and longtime civil rights activist to this exploration of the reality of slavery and black patriotism in the founding of the nation famous for its notions of freedom. In the lives of George Mason, James Madison, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson, Wilkins finds the essential ingredients of the ideals and standards on which the U.S. was built. He avoids the easy and predictable critique of these men in the contradiction of their ideals and their tolerance for the institution of slavery. Instead, he humanizes them, exploring the dominant influence of their class and status on their ideals and the influence of the material privileges they enjoyed as a result of slavery. Wilkins explores slavery within the context of the times but doesn't moderate the impetus for the current struggle that has resulted from the incapacity of these men to recognize their moral contradictions. This is an important look at the essential and ongoing contradictions at the heart of American ideals of liberty and patriotism. -- from Booklist

Selected Recent English Language Arts Acquisitions

2009-11-17T09:39:00.004-05:00

William Faulkner: Lives and Legacies by Carolyn Porter – In this newest volume in Oxford's Lives and Legacies series, Carolyn Porter, a leading authority on William Faulkner, offers an insightful account of Faulkner's life and work, with special focus on the breathtaking twelve-year period when he wrote some of the finest novels in American literature. Porter ranges from Faulkner's childhood in Mississippi to his abortive career as a poet, his sojourn in New Orleans (where he met a sympathetic Sherwood Anderson and wrote his first novel Soldier's Pay), his short but strategically important stay in Paris, his "rescue" by Malcolm Crowley in the late 1940s, and his winning of the Nobel Prize. But the heart of the book illuminates the formal leap in Faulkner's creative vision beginning with The Sound and the Fury in 1929, which sold poorly but signaled the arrival of a major new literary talent. Indeed, from 1929 through 1942, he would produce, against formidable odds--physical, spiritual, and financial--some of the greatest fictional works of the twentieth century, including As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and Go Down, Moses. Porter shows how, during this remarkably sustained burst of creativity, Faulkner pursued an often feverish process of increasingly ambitious narrative experimentation, coupled with an equally ambitious thematic expansion, as he moved from a close-up study of the white nuclear family, both lower and upper class, to an epic vision of southern, American, and ultimately Western culture. Porter illuminates the importance of Faulkner's legacy not only for American literature, but also for world literature, and reveals how Faulkner lives on so powerfully, both in the works of his literary heirs and in the lives of readers today. – Amazon.com
The Story of Forgetting: A Novel by Stefan Merrill Block – In Stefan Merrill Block’s extraordinary debut, three narratives intertwine to create a story that is by turns funny, smart, introspective, and revelatory. Abel Haggard is an elderly hunchback who haunts the remnants of his family’s farm in the encroaching shadow of the Dallas suburbs, adrift in recollections of those he loved and lost long ago. As a young man, he believed himself to be “the one person too many”; now he is all that remains. Hundreds of miles to the south, in Austin, Seth Waller is a teenage “Master of Nothingness”–a prime specimen of that gangly, pimple-rashed, too-smart breed of adolescent that vanishes in a puff of sarcasm at the slightest threat of human contact. When his mother is diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer’s, Seth sets out on a quest to find her lost relatives and to conduct an “empirical investigation” that will uncover the truth of her genetic history. Though neither knows of the other’s existence, Abel and Seth are linked by a dual legacy: the disease that destroys the memories of those they love, and the story of Isidora–an edenic fantasy world free from the sorrows of remembrance, a land without memory where nothing is ever possessed, so nothing can be lost. Through the fusion of myth, science, and storytelling, this novel offers a dazzling illumination of the hard-learned truth that only through the loss of what we consider precious can we understand the value of what remains. – Amazon.com
The Heretic's Daughter: A Novel by Kathleen Kent – History is more than facts and figures; it's something that happens to all of us. That's the thought that may strike readers of Kent's luminous first novel, set at the time of the Salem witch trials. In fact, Martha Carrier, Kent's grandmother back nine generations, was hanged as a witch in 1692. As portrayed here by her daughter, Sarah, Martha is a proud, stubborn, prickly woman, unbending in her beliefs and uninterested in public opinion. When Sarah returns to her family, having been sent away with a little sister because one of her brothers has the plague, she's not sure she wants to go back to her cold mother and dour, seven-foot father, who has some mysterious connection to Cromwell. But when malicious girls start pointing fingers, neighbor turns against neighbor, and Martha is told she will be arrested for witchcraft, she will not run, and she will not make a false confession. But Martha tells Sarah that when she is interrogated about her mother's activities, she must lie to save herself. Amidst the painful details of jail and persecution, deep-seated suspicion and familial betrayal, it is this powerful act of love that crowns the book. – Highly recommended. Library Journal (starred review) Barbara Hoffert
The Rich Man of Pietermaritzburg by Sibusiso Nyembezi – Published in Zulu more than 50 years ago and voted one of Africa’s best books of the twentieth century, this novel is pure farce about what happens when a stranger comes to town. Mr. C.C. Ndebenkulu, Esq., says he is a very busy city man, well informed, well traveled, and used to doing business with the white owners of abattoirs and butcheries, who never address him without calling him “Esquire.” Out of pure benevolence he has come to help the rural community in Natal, South Africa, sell their cattle for very good money before it is too late. Lured by flattery and greed, many fall for his offer. But not all are tricked. The educated young people and many women laugh at his self-importance and see right through him. Of course, the reader always knows it is a scam; but the angry confrontations are hilarious, especially when the slimy con artist gets his due. – Amazon.com
What I Was: A Novel by Meg Rosoff – “This whole novel is built on a surprise (which caught me totally unaware), but beyond the surprise lies the beauty of what it means to live without junk in your life, only essential beauty, together with the reminder that all of it—the junk and the beauty—will be gone in a twinkling. This is a lovely book.”—Washington Post
Someone Knows My Name: A Novel by Lawrence Hill – Stunning, wrenching and inspiring, the fourth novel by Canadian novelist Hill (Any Known Blood) spans the life of Aminata Diallo, born in Bayo, West Africa, in 1745. The novel opens in 1802, as Aminata is wooed in London to the cause of British abolitionists, and begins reflecting on her life. Kidnapped at the age of 11 by British slavers, Aminata survives the Middle Passage and is reunited in South Carolina with Chekura, a boy from a village near hers. Her story gets entwined with his, and with those of her owners: nasty indigo producer Robinson Appleby and, later, Jewish duty inspector Solomon Lindo. During her long life of struggle, she does what she can to free herself and others from slavery, including learning to read and teaching others to, and befriending anyone who can help her, black or white. Hill handles the pacing and tension masterfully, particularly during the beginnings of the American revolution, when the British promise to free Blacks who fight for the British: Aminata's related, eventful travels to Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone follow. In depicting a woman who survives history's most trying conditions through force of intelligence and personality, Hill's book is a harrowing, breathtaking tour de force. Starred Review, Publisher’s Weekly
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain – The text of this new scholarly edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the first ever to be based on Mark Twain's complete, original manuscript-including its first 665 pages, which had been lost for over a hundred years when they turned up in 1990 in a Los Angeles attic. The text has been thoroughly re-edited using this manuscript, restoring thousands of details of wording, spelling, and punctuation which had been corrupted by Mark Twain's typist, typesetters, and proofreaders. It includes all of the 174 first edition illustrations by Edward Windsor Kemble, which the author called "most rattling good." The editorial matter is extraordinarily rich. A new introduction tells the story of how Mark Twain's book was written, edited, published, and received, and spells out in detail the effect of the newly discovered manuscript on the text. Included are revised and updated maps of the Mississippi River valley, explanatory notes, glossary, and several documentary appendixes such as Twain's literary working notes, facsimile manuscript pages, facsimile reproductions of the author's revisions for his public reading tours, and contemporary advertisements and announcements. Also included are a description of the manuscript and all texts used in preparing this edition and complete lists of the author's revisions.
Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences by James R. Mellow – Award-winning author Mellow offers a thorough reassessment of a man who was both a literary giant and an icon for his age. Uncovering new material, Mellow reveals aspects of the writer's life unexplored by previous biographers. "The best work done on the writer to date."—The New York Times.
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger – What readers will appreciate first in Enger's marvelous novel is the language. His limpid sentences are composed with the clarity and richness for which poets strive. It takes longer to get caught up in the story, but gradually, as the complex narrative unwinds, readers will find themselves immersed in an exceptionally heartfelt and moving tale about the resilience of family relationships, told in retrospect through the prism of memory. "We all hold history differently inside us," says narrator Reuben, who was an adolescent in Minnesota in the 1960s, when his brother, Davy, shot and killed two young men who were harassing the family. Rueben's father--in Rueben's estimation fully capable of performing miracles even though the outside world believed him to be lost in the clouds--packs Reuben and his sister up and follows the trail Davy has left in his flight from the law. Their journey comprises the action in the novel, but this is not really a book about adventures on the road. Rather, it is a story of relationships in which the exploration of character takes precedence over incident. Enger's profound understanding of human nature stands behind his compelling prose. -- Starred Review, Booklist

Selected Recent Art, Music & Film/Theatre Studies Acquistions

2009-11-05T12:52:00.004-05:00

The Triumph of Music: The Rise of Composers, Musicians and Their Art by Tim Blanning – Drawing on examples ranging across the last four centuries, Blanning traces the path of music from its place as servant to its current position of supremacy over all other arts in terms of status, influence, and material rewards. The author intermixes popular and classical music and musicians, jumping back and forth from one era to another, from the concert hall to the iPod, to demonstrate how music has reinforced various social and political agendas...This is not intended to be a history of music; it is a brilliantly written history of the steady growth of the power of music and its performers.--Timothy J. McGee, Library Journal
The Grove Encyclopedia of Materials & Techniques in Art by Gerald Ward – Any genuine work of art is born of the interaction between the artist, his or her materials, and the methods used to create the finished product. This hefty volume is “aimed at providing an introduction . . . to the enormous range of materials and methods used to create works of art from ancient times to the 21st century and . . . to the various techniques used to examine and conserve them by conservators and others.” The comprehensive treatment is unusual in a literature generally devoted to single materials or crafts. Considering both fine arts and crafts—without designating crafts as a lesser art form—the alphabetically arranged articles have been abridged from either the Dictionary of Art (1996) or Grove Art Online, with the sections on history and usage either eliminated or severely edited. Thus, although the content is not new, the focus on materials and techniques is sharper. Each article begins with a succinct introductory paragraph that amounts to a definition of the material or technique. Related terms are noted in small capitals, thus providing internal cross-referencing. The body of each article is detailed, clear, and well written. Entries conclude with extensive updated bibliographies of print works, many published within the last 10 years. Well-placed black-and-white illustrations are augmented by a center section containing color plates, alphabetically arranged, of selected artworks demonstrating the use of materials and techniques, from alabaster to wax encaustic. Beginning with a key to abbreviations, the volume closes with an extensive and accurate index.
Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography by Meryle Secrest – Engrossing story of the Balzac-scaled life of the great architect. Wright (1867-1959) was born in Wisconsin to a Welsh family of radical thinkers and was nurtured to be an architect by his mother, who told him he was destined for greatness. He dropped out of the Univ. of Wisconsin after two semesters to take a draftsman's job at $8.00 a week, and soon was working for the master architect Louis Sullivan (inventor of the skyscraper). Within a year, Wright had become chief designer at Adler and Sullivan and also had married the first of his three wives. In the next 30 years, he was to abandon his wife and six children (and his phenomenally successful practice), calling marriage a "barnyard institution. I am a wild bird''; marry a morphine-addicted heiress and follower of Mary Baker Eddy who was killed by an axe-stroke to the brain by an insane servant; marry a Serbian beauty 30 years his junior who was an instructor for G.I. Gurdjieff; build his beloved house Taliesen (East) three times-- it twice burned to the ground; time and again ingeniously raise prodigious sums of money and spend them in profligate excess; revive his career with the building of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo--the only major structure to remain undamaged in the largest earthquake of the century in 1923 in Japan; and go on to greater triumphs, culminating with the Guggenheim Museum in 1956. Secrest, who had access to the newly opened archives at Wright's Memorial Foundation, does a superb job in telling the human side of Wright's story. And without allowing it to overmaster her narrative, she provides clear architectural background to explicate Wright's designs, stature, and influence. Definitive. -- Kirkus Reviews
Salvador Dalí, 1904-1989 by Robert Descharnes and Gilles Neret – Picasso called Dalí "an outboard motor that’s always running." Dalí thought himself a genius with a right to indulge in whatever lunacy popped into his head. Painter, sculptor, writer, and filmmaker, Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) was one of the century’s greatest exhibitionists and eccentrics — and was rewarded with fierce controversy wherever he went. He was one of the first to apply the insights of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis to the art of painting, approaching the subconscious with extraordinary sensitivity and imagination. This lively monograph presents the infamous Surrealist in full color and in his own words. His provocative imagery is all here, from the soft watches to the notorious burning giraffe. A friend of the artist for over thirty years, privy to the reality behind Dalí’s public image, author Robert Descharnes is uniquely qualified to analyze Dalí — both the man and the myth.
What It Is by Lynda Barry – How do objects summon memories? What do real images feel like? For decades, these types of questions have permeated the pages of Lynda Barry's compositions, with words attracting pictures and conjuring places through a pen that first and foremost keeps on moving. What It Is demonstrates a tried-and-true creative method that is playful, powerful, and accessible to anyone with an inquisitive wish to write or to remember. Composed of completely new material, each page of Barry's first Drawn & Quarterly book is a full-color collage that is not only a gentle guide to this process but an invigorating example of exactly what it is: "The ordinary is extraordinary."--From publisher description.
American Cinema [videorecording] – An analysis of the American motion picture industry that combines rare archival film, key scenes from immortal movies, interviews with leading filmmakers and commentary from noted film scholars and critics.
The Oxford Project by Stephen G. Bloom and Peter Feldstein – "What a marvelous way to get at 'who we are' as people. This powerful, confessional book draws its strength from the truth that so-called ordinary people, not those with bold-faced names, are actually the heroes of our American drama." -- Ken Burns, Emmy award-winning director of The Civil War

Selected Recent History and Social Studies Acquisitions

2009-10-30T13:43:00.003-05:00

Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall by Eve LaPlante – Sewall (1652–1730) was an English-born American jurist who presided over the 1692 witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts. Nineteen innocent men and women were hanged, and one man was pressed to death with large stones, the result of trumped-up charges of witchcraft. Some suspects were strangers to Sewall, but others were his friends. For several years, he struggled with a growing sense of shame and remorse and later assumed in public the blame for the executions. He spent much of the remainder of his life trying to restore himself in the eyes of God. Sewall wrote prodigiously and left behind extensive diaries, poems, essays, books, annotated almanacs, ledgers, and letters. His diary, covering the years from 1672 to 1729, was first published in the nineteenth century and is still in print. LaPlante also chronicles the man's later life—Sewall became the author of America's first antislavery tract and published an essay affirming the equality of the sexes. A fascinating account of the man and of daily life in colonial America.
The Photographer: Into War-torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders by Emmanuel Guibert – In 1986, photographer Didier Lefèvre documented a seasoned Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) team en route to a region in the way of the insurgents’ war with the Soviet army supporting Afghanistan’s then-Marxist government. This wedding of his photos and Guibert’s European-realist comics records his arduous, frightening round trip from Normandy, where his mother lived. During the succeeding 20 years, Lefèvre lost the diary of his return trip but not his photographs. Scandalously few were published at the time, but they profit considerably by appearing in bulk and in this context; they put us near-palpably into their setting. What at first appears to be a very rough visual continuum, constantly jump-cutting from drawings to photos and back, quickly becomes suspenseful. Verbal development comes in the speech-balloons and captions of the drawings; no printing invades the photos, which become the powerful payoffs of the verbiage, at least until Lefèvre’s return trip, in which, his film and his health running out, he nearly perished. He took very few pictures then, and here Guibert rises to the challenge of maintaining the scary impetus of Lefèvre’s adventure. Perhaps no medium other than this one could convey so tangibly what it is to deliver “human services” in a war zone in one of the least geographically hospitable, most beautiful places on earth. A magnificent achievement. -- starred review, Booklist
American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham – It's no surprise that the editor of Newsweek can write a well-researched, well-written, and entertaining book on American history. What stands out about reviews of American Lion, however, is how often critics—even professional historians—said they learned something new about the seventh president. A few reviewers were not so impressed with Meacham's scholarly synthesis, especially regarding Jackson's unwavering approval of slavery, his removal of Native Americans despite the objections of the Supreme Court, and his vindictive qualities. But even these reviewers praised Meacham's ability to tell Jackson's story without resorting to the cliches of high school history textbooks.
One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War by Michael Dobbs – “One Minute to Midnight is nothing less than a tour de force, a dramatic, nail-biting page-turner that is also an important work of scholarship. Michael Dobbs combines the skills of an experienced investigative journalist, a talented writer and an intelligent historical analyst. His research is stunning. No other history of the Cuban missile crisis matches this achievement.” –Martin Sherwin, coauthor of American Prometheus
Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner – Forget your image of an economist as a crusty professor worried about fluctuating interest rates: Levitt focuses his attention on more intimate real-world issues, like whether reading to your baby will make her a better student. Recognition by fellow economists as one of the best young minds in his field led to a profile in the New York Times, written by Dubner, and that original article serves as a broad outline for an expanded look at Levitt's search for the hidden incentives behind all sorts of behavior. There isn't really a grand theory of everything here, except perhaps the suggestion that self-styled experts have a vested interest in promoting conventional wisdom even when it's wrong. Instead, Dubner and Levitt deconstruct everything from the organizational structure of drug-dealing gangs to baby-naming patterns. While some chapters might seem frivolous, others touch on more serious issues, including a detailed look at Levitt's controversial linkage between the legalization of abortion and a reduced crime rate two decades later. Underlying all these research subjects is a belief that complex phenomena can be understood if we find the right perspective. -- starred review, Publishers Weekly
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan – The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Timothy Egan’s critically acclaimed account rescues this iconic chapter of American history from the shadows in a tour de force of historical reportage. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, Egan does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes, “the stoic, long-suffering men and women whose lives he opens up with urgency and respect.” – New York Times

Selected Recent Science & Math Acquisitions

2009-10-27T09:13:00.008-05:00

Tree: A Life Story by David Suzuki and Wayne Grady – "Only God can make a tree," wrote Joyce Kilmer in one of the most celebrated of poems. In Tree: A Life Story, authors David Suzuki and Wayne Grady extend that celebration in a "biography" of this extraordinary — and extraordinarily important — organism. A story that spans a millennium and includes a cast of millions but focuses on a single tree, a Douglas fir, Tree describes in poetic detail the organism's modest origins that begin with a dramatic burst of millions of microscopic grains of pollen. The authors recount the amazing characteristics of the species, how they reproduce and how they receive from and offer nourishment to generations of other plants and animals. The tree's pivotal role in making life possible for the creatures around it — including human beings — is lovingly explored. The richly detailed text and Robert Bateman's original art pay tribute to this ubiquitous organism that is too often taken for granted.
The Fly in the Cathedral: How a Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the International Race to Split the Atom by Brian Cathcart – Cathcart (Test of Greatness: Britain's Struggle for the Atom Bomb), a former reporter for Reuters, presents a superb account of the genesis of nuclear physics in the first third of the 20th century. Although the centerpiece of his story is the experiment performed on April 14, 1932, by John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, in which an atom of lithium was split into two alpha particles (they would win a Nobel prize for this 19 years later), Cathcart fully describes the experiment's scientific and social context. Through crisp prose, interesting analogies and ample insight, he makes the basics of nuclear physics accessible while demonstrating the passion scientists have for their work. Cockcroft and Walton both worked under Nobel laureate Ernest Rutherford at the prestigious Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University at a time when precious little was known about the nucleus at the center of every atom. The race to understand the inner workings of the nucleus and to split an atom into its component parts was an international one, including labs in Germany, Denmark, Russia and the United States. The great progress that was made in a short time was all the more amazing given that labs had limited budgets and virtually all equipment first had to be conceptualized and then made from scratch. Cathcart instills in the reader a sense of excitement as the nuclear age unfolds around the world.
Edison: A Life of Invention by Paul Israel – Edison's name is on 1,093 U.S. patents--more than any other person's. It is a measure of his renown that his surname alone suffices for the title of this book. Israel, managing editor of the Rutgers University edition of Edison's papers, has explored thoroughly the five million pages of documents housed at the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange, N.J., and so he is well positioned to discuss the eminent inventor's achievements. That he does with care and clarity. The well-known inventions--the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, the kinetoscope for motion pictures, the carbon transmitter for telephones--are all here in detail, and so are the lesser-known ones as well as some Edisonian projects that did not succeed. Israel also paints a clear portrait of the man. One learns, among other things, of Edison's difficult relationships with his children, his indifference to his appearance and his singular notions about diet. (In his last years, when he was suffering from stomach trouble, "he consumed nothing more than a pint of milk every three hours.") Edison may well have been the "Inventor of the age," as he was orotundly described in the Grand Prize that he won at the Universal Exposition of 1878 in Paris, but he was in addition a complex and intriguing human being.
The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston – Chronicles the reaction of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) to the September 11 attacks and the October 2001 anthrax attacks, focusing on USAMRIID's top virologist, Peter Jahrling, and his work to combat the possible development of a superpox virus by terrorists worldwide.
Judgment Day - Intelligent Design on Trial [videorecording] – "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial captures the turmoil that tore apart the community of Dover, Pennsylvania, in a landmark battle over the teaching of evolution in public schools. In 2004, the Dover school board ordered science teachers to read a statement to high school biology students about an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution called intelligent design--the idea that life is too complex to have evolved naturally and so must have been designed by an intelligent agent. The teachers refused to comply, and both parents and teachers filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the school board of violating the constitutional separation of church and state. ... Featuring trial reenactments based on court transcripts and interviews with key participants and expert scientists, this program presents the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District."
Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart by Ian Ayres – Why would a casino try and stop you from losing? How can a mathematical formula find your future spouse? Would you know if a statistical analysis blackballed you from a job you wanted? Today, number crunching affects your life in ways you might never imagine. In this lively and groundbreaking new book, economist Ian Ayres shows how today's best and brightest organizations are analyzing massive databases at lightning speed to provide greater insights into human behavior. They are the Super Crunchers. From Internet sites like Google and Amazon that know your tastes better than you do, to a physician's diagnosis and your child's education, to boardrooms and government agencies, this new breed of decision makers are calling the shots. And they are delivering staggeringly accurate results. How can a football coach evaluate a player without ever seeing him play? Want to know whether the price of an airline ticket will go up or down before you buy? How can a formula outpredict wine experts in determining the best vintages? Super crunchers have the answers. In this brave new world of equation versus expertise, Ayres shows us the benefits and risks, who loses and who wins, and how super crunching can be used to help, not manipulate us.

I have seen the future of reading, and its name is Kindle

2009-03-25T10:56:00.024-05:00

Those of you old enough to remember may recall that on October 27, 1975, Bruce Springsteen made the covers of both Newsweek and Time. In one of the accompanying articles, Jon Landau, a critic for Rolling Stone, declared "I have seen the future of rock and roll, and his name is Bruce Springsteen." Well, although not on the cover, Kindle 2, Amazon’s digital reader, was featured in the March 30, 2009 issues of both Newsweek and Time, and once again it seems fair to claim that we are seeing the future here.

Several years ago, when the first speculations were voiced that books were dead, killed by digital readers, I scoffed. But now, although I’ve not (yet) used a Kindle, I believe that it’s only a matter of time before we are all using digital devices to pursue our reading. Already the advantages of a Kindle are clear, such as adjustable font size, an on board dictionary which allows looking up unfamiliar words while reading, and the ability to carry around up to 1,500 books in a small, light-weight package. (Imagine students no longer lugging around 30 pound book bags because all of their reading materials are on their digital reader!)

Are books dead -- probably not. There are some things for which paper seems to be (inherently?) better suited, such as graphics. Art books and picture books are not going away tomorrow, or even next year. I expect that digital and print will coexist as complementary technologies because they each possess individual, unique strengths. I also expect that many of us who are old enough to have read those articles in Newsweek and Time about the Boss in 1975 may never give up the comfort and familiarity of holding, reading and owning books. But for those who have grown up reading text on computers there is an “of course-ness” that applies to digital readers. It is just the way things are.

All of this has enormous implications for libraries. Digital technology has already transformed libraries. (Remember card catalogs? Can't come into the David A. Nims Library at this moment? Well, you can search the catalog right now here.) EBooks and online databases bring library resources to you wherever you have Internet access. And just as the Internet hasn't made libraries obsolete but rather, more accessible, more necessary and more vital, digital readers will dramatically increase library circulations. When we're no longer amassing walls of books in our homes to represent our personal interests and our educational and cultural achievements, but we want books just to read, why would we pay for a digital download when we can borrow it from our library for free?

We're still at the beginning with all of this, and our sense of what will develop in the future is only emerging, but with the theoretical prospect of having "every book ever printed, in any language, all available in under 60 seconds" [Note: this is Amazon's stated goal with the Kindle], this is a very interesting time.

Standards for the 21st-Century Learner

2009-03-09T10:03:00.007-05:00

Recently the American Association of School Librarians published Standards for the 21st-Century Learner, a document which details learner use skills, resources, and tools necessary for students to become effective, independent and responsible life-long learners. In addition to these learning standards, the AASL is also working on indicators and assessments for the new learning standards (to be published in the winter of 2009), and related guidelines for school library media programs.

In future posts I will report on specific skills, dispositions in action, responsibilities, and self-assessment strategies related to the standards; here I want to present the common beliefs upon which these standards for the 21st century are built.

The first common belief is that reading is a window to the world. Of course this seems to go without saying, but in fact it is important to acknowledge and remind ourselves that reading is a foundational skill for learning. Reading is one of the essential skills that educators teach, and it involves not only "decoding and comprehension but also interpretation and the development of new understandings."

Second is that inquiry provides a framework for learning. Essentially, this means that for learning to occur, students must have not only skills, but the disposition to use those skills, coupled with an understanding of their own responsibilities, and self-assessment strategies. Inquiry involves skills, disposition to use those skills, a sense of responsibly and self-assessment.

Third, ethical behavior in the use of information must be taught. Students are taught to "seek diverse perspectives, gather and use information ethically, and use social tools responsibly and safely."

Fourth, technology skills are crucial for future employment needs. Moreover, it must be noted that technology skills are critical not only for future employment, but also learning, both in the future and now.

The final common belief upon which the standards for 21st-century learning are built is that equitable access is a key component for learning. Whereas the first four common beliefs apply to the learner, this fifth applies to the institutional context. Schools are obligated to provide equal access "to books and reading, to information, and to information technology in an environment that is safe and conducive to learning."

The AASL's Standards for the 21st-Century Learner provide a clear statement of what are the appropriate and necessary ingredients in a productive learning environment. Schools and school library media centers will benefit from this clarity.

To see the full Standards document, go to the AASL's web site.

Oakmont Book Group Reading Selection

2008-12-10T09:25:00.010-05:00

I want to use the blog to see if we can pick the next reading selection for the Book Group. Trying to meet during homeroom doesn't really work.

Ms. Woollacott suggests The People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks: "One of the earliest Jewish religious volumes to be illuminated with images, the Sarajevo Haggadah survived centuries of purges and wars thanks to people of all faiths who risked their lives to safeguard it. Geraldine Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March, has turned the intriguing but sparely detailed history of this precious volume into an emotionally rich, thrilling fictionalization that retraces its turbulent journey. In the hands of Hanna Heath, an impassioned rare-book expert restoring the manuscript in 1996 Sarajevo, it yields clues to its guardians and whereabouts: an insect wing, a wine stain, salt crystals, and a white hair. While readers experience crucial moments in the book's history through a series of fascinating, fleshed-out short stories, Hanna pursues its secrets scientifically, and finds that some interests will still risk everything in the name of protecting this treasure. A complex love story, thrilling mystery, vivid history lesson, and celebration of the enduring power of ideas, People of the Book will surely be hailed as one of the best of 2008. --Mari Malcolm for Amazon.com

Max has suggested Monkey: Folk Novel of China by Wu Ch'eng-en and translated by Arthur Waley. Amazon.com describes this as: "Probably the most popular book in the history of the Far East, this classic sixteenth century novel is a combination of picaresque novel and folk epic that mixes satire, allegory, and history into a rollicking adventure. It is the story of the roguish Monkey and his encounters with major and minor spirits, gods, demigods, demons, ogres, monsters, and fairies. This translation, by the distinguished scholar Arthur Waley, is the first accurate English version; it makes available to the Western reader a faithful reproduction of the spirit and meaning of the original."

Max's suggestion prompted me to think of Italo Calvino, one of Italy's greatest and most powerful 20th century fiction writers. Of Calvino's books I'd suggest:

The Baron in the Trees -- the story of an Italian boy who leaves his aristocratic childhood home in favor of the expanse of adjoining trees that cover the surrounding town and countryside and lives the remainder of his life in the world he finds there. His name is Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo, and he applies his ingenious and free-thinking perspective to finding ways of continuing to learn, innovating both for the betterment of his own lifestyle and for the people who live below him, and to cultivating a one-of-a-kind, passion-filled love life. He lives at once removed from and intimately bonded with his family and fellow townspeople, and dies as creatively and note-worthily as he lived, leaving his friends and family inspired by his story, or
Mr. Palomar -- "Here, Calvino, probably Italy's leading novelist before he died, focuses a probing eye on one man's attempt to name the parts of his universe, almost as though Mr. Palomar were trying to define and explain his own existence. Where the Palomar telescope points out into space, Mr. Palomar points in: walking the beach, visiting the zoo, strolling in his garden. Each brief chapter reads like an exploded haiku, with Mr. Palomar reading an universe into the proverbial grain of sand." or
If on a Wnter's Night a Traveler which begins "You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want to watch TV!" Raise your voice--they won't hear you otherwise--"I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe they haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: "I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything; just hope they'll leave you alone...."

However, I want to hear what you would suggest. You can easily post a comment to this blog with your suggestion, accompanied by a brief description, and everyone else in the Book Group (or in the world, but I don't think this blog has a large audience) can comment on your suggestion and/or make their own. We can carry on a little discussion until a consensus develops about our choice.

So, let us all hear from you by posting your comment/suggestion. We're waiting....

The White Tiger wins the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction

2008-10-28T08:39:00.003-05:00

Now that cooler weather is settling in, the sun is setting earlier (Daylight Savings Time ends November 2), and the baseball season is wrapping up with the Philadelphia Phillies and the Tampa Bay Rays playing in the World Series, perhaps you are looking for a book to settle in with by the fire and immerse yourself in a compelling tale. What to read? Book award lists are always a good source to consider when searching for a new read (and yes, there are so many books but so little time...best to focus on the best).

Each October The Man Booker Prize is announced. The Man Booker Prize, administered by the National Book League in the United Kingdom, is awarded to the best full-length novel written in English by a citizen of the UK, the Commonwealth, Eire, Pakistan or South Africa. Past winners included The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey, and Midnight's Children By Salman Rushdie. On October 14th, Aravind Adiga, author of The White Tiger, was selected as this year's winner; Adiga is just the fourth debut novelist to win this coveted prize.

The White Tiger is and exotic tale: born in a village in heartland India, the son of a rickshaw puller, Balram is taken out of school by his family and put to work in a teashop. As he crushes coals and wipes tables, he nurses a dream of escape - of breaking away from the banks of Mother Ganga, into whose depths have seeped the remains of a hundred generations.
The White Tiger is a tale of two Indias. Balram’s journey from the darkness of village life to the light of entrepreneurial success is utterly amoral, brilliantly irreverent, deeply endearing and altogether unforgettable.

Another suggestion is Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, the November selection of the Oakmont Book Group:
Duncan Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end prove neither innocent nor innocuous.
Fifth Business is a remarkable story told by a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real.

Either of these books will be a wonderful treat. Expand your mind and your world -- read!

Summer Reading

2008-06-16T09:47:00.012-05:00

Although the school year may have seemed to pass ever so slowly (to students at least), summer inevitably will fly by. It is time to think about summer reading. Some of us will need books for the beach, others for long plane trips, and some for just settling into a favorite spot to get lost in a page-turner.

Reading is a fundamental, even necessary part of a meaningful and rich life. All of us will always be reading (you're reading this for example), but most of what we read won't change our lives in any real way (again, this for example). However, books have the power to change lives. Undoubtedly, you can name books that have changed your life already -- just think about it for a moment.

At the very least we all have reading to do that is part of Oakmont’s School-Wide Reading Program. The hope is that the books on the various lists can be books that can be significant for you, changing the way you see or understand something, and making an impact in your life that will last beyond your efforts in completing the response questions. But even though there is a lot of choice involved in the reading program, you are also required to read two books; this is an assigned activity. What will you read on your own this summer?

“So many books, so little time” is a cliché, but it is also absolutely true. At the end of the line, there will be books left unread which would have enriched our lives if only…. How do we find and choose the books we should read, the good stuff? One way is through book reviews and recommendations. Here is an unsystematic list of some of my recommendations:

The Sot-weed Factor, by John Barth – Barth's most distinguished masterpiece, this modern classic is a hilarious tribute to all the most insidious human vices, with a hero who is "one of the most diverting...to roam the world since Candide" (Time).
The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro – A tragic, spiritual portrait of a perfect English butler and his reaction to his fading insular world in post-war England. A wonderful, wonderful book.
Demian, by Hermann Hesse – “The electrifying influence exercised on a whole generation just after the First World War by Demian...is unforgettable. With uncanny accuracy this poetic work struck the nerve of the times and called forth grateful rapture from a whole youthful generation who believed that an interpreter of their innermost life had risen from their own midst." – Thomas Mann
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig – One of the most important and influential novels written in the past half-century, this is a powerful, moving, and penetrating examination of how we live . . . and a breathtaking meditation on how to live better. Here is the book that transformed a generation: an unforgettable narration of a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest, undertaken by a father and his young son. A story of love and fear – of growth, discovery, and acceptance – that becomes a profound personal and philosophical odyssey into life's fundamental questions, this uniquely exhilarating modern classic is both touching and transcendent, resonant with the myriad confusions of existence . . . and the small, essential triumphs that propel us forward.
The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss – Even in moments of startling peculiarity, [Krauss] touches the most common elements of the heart. For Leo, obsessed with his death but struggling to be noticed, and for Alma, ready to grow up but arrested by her mother's grief, the persistence of love drives them to an astonishing connection. In the final pages, the fractured stories of The History of Love fall together like a desperate embrace. – The Washington Post - Ron Charles
Fifth Business, by Robertson Davies – A marvelously enigmatic novel, elegantly written and driven by irresistible narrative force.
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov – Awe and exhilaration – along with heartbreak and mordant wit – abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hyper civilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love – love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers – This is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together.
The Enchantress of Florence, by Salman Rushdie – Trying to describe a Salman Rushdie novel is like trying to describe music to someone who has never heard it – you can fumble with a plot summary but you won't be able to convey the wonder of his dazzling prose or the imaginative complexity of his vision. At its heart, The Enchantress of Florence is about the power of story – whether it is the imagined life of a Mughal queen, or the devastating secret held by a silver-tongued Florentine. Make no mistake, it is Rushdie who is the true "enchanter" of this story, conjuring readers into his gilded fairy tale from the very first sentence: "In the day's last light the glowing lake below the palace-city looked like a sea of molten gold." At once bawdy, gorgeous, gory, and hilarious, The Enchantress of Florence is a study in contradiction, highlighted in its barbarian philosopher-king who detests his bloodthirsty heritage even while he carries it out. Full of rich sentences running nearly the length of a page, Rushdie's 10th novel blends fact and fable into a challenging but satisfying read. – Daphne Durham for Amazon.com

"Recommendations for reading" needs to be conversation, a dialogue. What are your suggestions?

How to Make Better Teachers

2008-02-27T08:25:00.016-05:00

As winter winds down, many students in Massachusetts turn their attention to the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests. The MCAS evaluates whether and to what degree students have mastered the basic content and skills the Department of Education has determined to be appropriate for Massachusetts students at several age/grade levels.

But of course teachers are also judged by these so called "high stakes" tests. Students' learning is facilitated and enhanced by the materials available in the classrooms and libraries, the class sizes, the design/comfort and security of the schools, the available co-curricular and athletic opportunities, and certainly also the encouragement and support provided at home. However, we all acknowledge that it is the teacher-student interaction that is paramount in the educational process. Expert teachers are fundamental; they are the most important school resources.

As a recent cover story in Time magazine observed, American public schools are struggling to attract and retain high-quality teachers. Everyone wants great teachers in our classrooms, but how do we make great teachers? Here's the article from the Feb. 25, 2008 issue of Time, and here's a related article on how teachers are trained in countries that top the international rankings in education. What do you think?

Scores in Standardized Test Drop as Recreational Reading Declines

2007-11-19T09:30:00.001-05:00

Recent articles in The Boston Globe and The New York Times report that as students read less for enjoyment, their scores on reading tests also decline. However, this drop in standardized test scores is not confined to reading tests -- performance in other academic disciplines like math and science is also declining. The Globe and Times cite a report from the National Endowment for the Arts -- To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence, a new and comprehensive analysis of reading patterns in the United States published on November 19.

Among the reports findings are these highlights:

Only 30 percent of 13-year-olds read almost every day.
The number of 17-year-olds who never read for pleasure increased from 9 percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004.
Almost half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 never read books for pleasure.
The average person between ages 15 and 24 spends 2 to 2 1/2 hours a day watching TV and 7 minutes reading.

Reading relates to more than educational success as measured by standardized tests. According to NEA chairman Dana Gioia"The habit of regular reading awakens something inside a person that makes him or her take their own life more seriously and at the same time develops the sense that other people's lives are real." Not only are our own lives enriched by reading, but we're more likely to be involved in community/civic service activities: "The poorest Americans who read did twice as much volunteering and charity work as the richest who did not read," Gioia said.

Improve your educational results, enrich your personal experience and life, and make the world a better place by your presence -- READ.

The Globe article is here, the NYT article is here, and a summary of the NEA report is here.

More Recent Acquisitions

2007-11-08T13:00:00.000-05:00

Here are summaries of recent acquisitions to the library collection. Some of these have been selected by faculty, some by my assessments of curricular holes, and some because they are recent winners of various literary awards.

Non-fiction:

The Canon : a Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier / Summary: Award-winning science journalist Angier takes us on a "guided whirligig through the scientific canon." She draws on conversations with hundreds of the world’s top scientists, and her own work as a reporter for the New York Times, to create an entertaining guide to scientific literacy--a joyride through the major scientific disciplines: physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and astronomy. It’s for anyone who wants to understand the great issues of our time--from stem cells and bird flu to evolution and global warming. It’s also one of those rare books that reignites our childhood delight in figuring out how things work: we learn what’s actually happening when our ice cream melts or our coffee gets cold, what our liver cells do when we eat a caramel, how the horse shows evolution at work, and that we really are all made of stardust.
In the Beat of a Heart : Life, Energy, and the Unity of Nature by John Whitfield / Summary: Traces the scientific community's efforts to discover an underlying unity to nature that will explain the remarkable similarities and differences between all things on Earth, profiling key figures who are triggering a scientific revolution that will change how people view the world.
The Storm : What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina : the Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist by Ivor van Heerden and Mike Bryan / Summary: As deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, Ivor van Heerden had for years been warning state and local officials about New Orleans’s vulnerability to flooding. But like Cassandra’s, his predictions were ignored—until Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29, 2005. Suddenly, van Heerden found himself at the center of a media maelstrom. Stepping forward to challenge the official version of events, he revealed the truth about the city’s shoddy levee construction. Now, in The Storm, van Heerden shares up-to-the-minute reporting from his investigations and connects the dots among the Army Corps of Engineers, the bureaucrats, the politicians, and the chain of events—both natural and human—that culminated in catastrophe. An epic of cutting-edge science and systemic bureaucratic failure, The Storm is the first book from a major player in the Katrina disaster and a riveting narrative that brings expertise, passion, and a human viewpoint to America’s greatest natural disaster.
The View From the Center of the Universe : Discovering our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos by Joel R. Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams / Summary: Draws on scientific research and recent discoveries in the fields of astronomy, physics, and cosmology to argue that humans are central to the universe in profound and important ways that are directly related to science.

Biography:

I, Rigoberta Menchú : an Indian Woman in Guatemala edited and introduced by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray ; translated by Ann Wright / Summary: Recounts the life of Rigoberta Menchu, a young Guatemalan peasant woman who turned to catechist work as an expression of political revolt and religious commitment after her brother and parents were murdered by the Guatemalan military; and sheds light on everyday life in Latin America's Indian communities.

Fiction:

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie ; art by Ellen Forney / Summary: In his first book for young adults, bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by acclaimed artist Ellen Forney, that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live.
March by Geraldine Brooks / Summary: As the North reels under a series of unexpected defeats during the dark first year of the war, one man leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. Riveting and elegant as it is meticulously researched, March is an extraordinary novel woven out of the lore of American history. From Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has taken the character of the absent father, March, who has gone off to war, leaving his wife and daughters to make do in mean times. To evoke him, Brooks turned to the journals and letters of Bronson Alcott, Louisa May's father -- a friend and confidant of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. In her telling, March emerges as an idealistic chaplain in the little known backwaters of a war that will test his faith in himself and in the Union cause as he learns that his side, too, is capable of acts of barbarism and racism. As he recovers from a near mortal illness, he must reassemble his shattered mind and body and find a way to reconnect with a wife and daughters who have no idea of the ordeals he has been through. Spanning the vibrant intellectual world of Concord and the sensuous antebellum South, March adds adult resonance to Alcott's optimistic children's tale to portray the moral complexity of war, and a marriage tested by the demands of extreme idealism -- and by a dangerous and illicit attraction. A lushly written, wholly original tale steeped in the details of another time, March secures Geraldine Brooks's place as an internationally renowned author of historical fiction.
The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories / Summary: Contains over thirty selections of vampire fiction written between 1816 and 1984.
Slam by Nick Hornby / Summary: Just when everything is coming together for Sam, his girlfriend Alicia drops a bombshell. Make that ex-girlfriend -- because by the time she tells him she's pregnant, they've already called it quits. Sam does not want to be a teenage dad. There's only one person Sam can turn to -- his hero, skating legend Tony Hawk. Sam believes the answers to life's hurdles can be found in Hawk's autobiography. But even Tony Hawk isn’t offering answers this time -- or is he? In this wonderfully witty, poignant story about a teenage boy unexpectedly thrust into fatherhood, it's up to Sam to make the right decisions so the bad things that could happen, well, don't.
Three Vampire Tales / Summary: Three classic works of vampire literature [The Vampyre / John Polidori -- Carmilla / Sheridan Le Fanu -- Dracula / Bram Stoker] come together for the first time in one volume. Complementing the complete texts are background essays as well as additional selections by the three authors and others. Because the vampire novel has proven so influential in film, an extensive filmography is included.
The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish by Elise Blackwell / Summary: Louis Proby is an old man now, sitting in his study in New Orleans awaiting what they say is a huge storm, Hurricane Katrina. As he watches the skies darken, he remembers his earlier life, as a watchful, curious young man filled with hunger and desire in Cypress Parish, the life that was washed away when the Mississippi River flooded in 1927. He remembers exactly how the Parish was sacrificed to those waters-because the city fathers said it was expendable. They said that flooding Louis's home was necessary to save New Orleans. He has long known that was never the truth. The Parish could have been spared. And he has always known the part his father played in that decision. But what he thinks on now is the dearest cost extracted from him on the day they dynamited the dikes and let the waters flow. He thinks on his first love, Nanette Lançon.
Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher / Summary: There's bad news and good news about the Cutter High School swim team. The bad news is that they don't have a pool. The good news is that only one of them can swim anyway. A group of misfits brought together by T. J. Jones (the J is redundant) to find their places in a school that has no place for them, the Cutter All Night Mermen struggle to carve out their own turf. T. J. is convinced that a varsity letter jacket--unattainable for most, exclusive, revered, the symbol (as far as T. J. is concerned) of all that is screwed up at Cutter High--will be an effective carving tool. He's right. He's also wrong. Still, it's always the quest that counts. And the bus on which the Mermen travel to swim meets--piloted by Icko, the permanent resident of All, Night Fitness--soon becomes the cocoon inside which they gradually allow themselves to talk, to fit, to bloom. Chris Crutcher is in top form with a cast of characters--adults, children, and teenagers--fighting for dignity in a world where tragedy and comedy dance side by side, where a moment's inattention can bring lifelong heartache, and where true acceptance is the only prescription for what ails us.
The Wolf by Steven Herrick / Summary: Sixteen-year-old Lucy, living in the shadow of her violent father, experiences a night of tenderness, danger, and revelation as she and Jake, her fifteen-year-old neighbor, search for a legendary wolf in the Australian outback.

Videos:

America's Working Poor [DVD] / Summary: Presents an examination of the working poor in the United States. Several families including single mothers as head of households describe their lives as members of the working poor community where one unexpected expense, sudden illness, or a missed payment could mean financial ruin.
Malcolm X [DVD] / Spike Lee’s film presents the life and times of Malcolm X, who, through his conversion to Islam, overcame his deprived and criminal past to become an influential civil rights leader.
The Odyssey [DVD] / Summary: Aided by the goddess Athena, warrior-king Odysseus braves the terrors and temptations of a fantastic array of creatures as his return from the Trojan War becomes a decade-long quest to reach his homeland and his faithful wife, Penelope.
Stress & Relaxation Explained [DVD] / Summary: This DVD explores all aspects of stress reduction, including: how stress is a natural part of our lives; different types of stresses and their symptoms; chronic and acute health risks associated with stress; responding positively to stress and anxiety; real life case study; sample of immersive, nature-based guided imagery relaxation exercise; mind/body medicine overview; benefits of relaxation therapies; choosing the best techniques; physical and cognitive relaxation techniques; demonstration of effective relaxation exercises.

More Recent Acquisitions

2007-10-22T10:17:00.000-05:00

Here are summaries of the latest additions to the library collection. Some of these have been selected by faculty, some by my assessments of curricular holes, and some because they are recent winners of various literary awards.

Non-fiction:

The Age of Lincoln by Orville Vernon Burton / Summary: In a remarkable reappraisal of Lincoln, distinguished historian Burton shows how the Kentucky-born president's Southernness empowered him to conduct a civil war that redefined freedom as a personal right protected by the rule of law. In the violent decades that followed, the extent of that freedom would be contested by racism and unregulated capitalism, but not its central place in what defined the country
The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by A.T. Mahan / Summary: An unabridged republication of the 1894 work which traces the history and strategies of naval warfare throughout the world, and argues that despite changes in weaponry, certain principles of naval strategy remain the same.
Leviathan : the History of Whaling in America by Eric Jay Dolin / Summary: "To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme," Herman Melville proclaimed, and this absorbing history demonstrates that few things can capture the sheer danger and desperation of men on the deep sea as dramatically as whaling. Eric Jay Dolin begins his vivid narrative with Captain John Smith's botched whaling expedition to the New World in 1614. He then chronicles the rise of a burgeoning industry -- from its brutal struggles during the Revolutionary period to its golden age in the mid-1800s when a fleet of more than 700 ships hunted the seas and American whale oil lit the world, to its decline as the twentieth century dawned. This sweeping social and economic history provides rich and often fantastic accounts of the men themselves, who mutinied, murdered, rioted, deserted, drank, scrimshawed, and recorded their experiences in journals and memoirs. Containing a wealth of naturalistic detail on whales, Leviathan is the most original and stirring history of American whaling in many decades.
An Ocean of Air : Why the Wind Blows and Other Mysteries of the Atmosphere / Gabrielle Walker / Summary: We spend our lives surrounded by air, hardly even noticing it. It’s the most miraculous substance on earth, yet responsible for our food, our weather, our water, and our ability to hear. In fact, we live at the bottom of an ocean of air. In this exuberant book, gifted science writer Gabrielle Walker peels back the layers of our atmosphere with the stories of the people who uncovered its secrets:

A flamboyant Renaissance Italian discovers how heavy our air really is: for example, the air filling Carnegie Hall weighs seventy thousand pounds;
A one-eyed barnstorming pilot finds a set of winds that constantly blow five miles above our heads;
An impoverished American farmer figures out why hurricanes move in a circle by carving equations with his pitchfork on a barn door;
A well-meaning inventor nearly destroys the ozone layer;
A reclusive mathematical genius predicts, thirty years before he’s proved right, that the sky contains a layer of floating metal fed by the glowing tails of shooting stars.

Sacco and Vanzetti : the Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind by Bruce Watson / Summary: When the Commonwealth of Massachusetts electrocuted Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti on August 23, 1927, it concluded one of the most controversial legal cases in American history. Ever since, debate has raged over what was probably a miscarriage of justice. In the first full-length narrative of the case in thirty years, Bruce Watson unwinds a gripping tale that opens with anarchist bombs going off in a posh Washington, D.C. neighborhood and concludes with worldwide outrage over the execution of the "good shoemaker" and the "poor fish peddler." Watson mines deep archives and new sources, unveiling fresh details about these naïve dreamers and militant revolutionaries. This case still haunts the American imagination. Authoritative and engrossing, Sacco and Vanzetti will capture fans of true crime books and everyone who enjoys riveting American history.
The Singing Neanderthals : the Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body by Steven Mithen / Summary: The propensity to make music is the most mysterious, wonderful, and neglected feature of humankind: this is where Steven Mithen began, drawing together strands from archaeology, anthropology, psychology, neuroscience -- and, of course, musicology -- to explain why we are so compelled to make and hear music. But music could not be explained without addressing language, and could not be accounted for without understanding the evolution of the human body and mind. Thus Mithen arrived at the wildly ambitious project that unfolds in this book: an exploration of music as a fundamental aspect of the human condition, encoded into the human genome during the evolutionary history of our species. Music is the language of emotion, common wisdom tells us. In The Singing Neanderthals, Mithen introduces us to the science that might support such popular notions. With equal parts scientific rigor and charm, he marshals current evidence about social organization, tool and weapon technologies, hunting and scavenging strategies, habits and brain capacity of all our hominid ancestors, from australopithecines to Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthals to Homo sapiens - and comes up with a scenario for a shared musical and linguistic heritage. Along the way he weaves a tapestry of cognitive and expressive worlds -- alive with vocalized sound, communal mimicry, sexual display, and rhythmic movement -- of various species.
The War : an Intimate History, 1941-1945 by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns / Summary: Enriched by maps and hundreds of photographs, the companion volume to the PBS series, "The War" is the story of World War II captured in the hearts, minds, words, and deeds of those who made history at its most essential level: on the battlefields and on the home front.

Reference:

Slavery in the United States : a Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia / Junius P. Rodriguez, editor / Summary: A comprehensive, A to Z resource that covers the social, economical, and political conditions associated with the institution of slavery in America, with over 300 entries, essays, official documents and writings, photographs, and first-person accounts.

Fiction:

The Road by Cormac McCarthy / Summary: A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food-—and each other. The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.
A Thousand Splendid Suns / Khaled Hosseini / Summary: A novel set against the three decades of Afghanistan's history shaped by Soviet occupation, civil war, and the Taliban, which tells the stories of two women, Mariam and Laila, who grow close despite their nineteen-year age difference and initial rivalry as they suffer at the hand of a common enemy: their abusive husband.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte ; with an introduction by Katherine Frank / Summary: "My greatest thought in living is Heathcliff. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be... Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure... but as my own being." Wuthering Heights is the only novel of Emily Bronte, who died a year after its publication, at the age of thirty. A brooding Yorkshire tale of a love that is stronger than death, it is also a fierce vision of metaphysical passion, in which heaven and hell, nature and society, are powerfully juxtaposed. Unique, mystical, with a timeless appeal, it has become a classic of English literature.

Videos (DVD & VHS):

Amistad [DVD] / A fictionalized retelling of the 1839 Supreme Court case involving fifty-three slaves who were captured in Connecticut after taking over the Spanish slave ship "Amistad."
Homicide, Life on the Street. Season 6 [six DVDs] / Summary: Day to day, the officers of the Baltimore Police Department Homicide Division face one of the United States worst crime rates, not to mention the pressures of their own personal lives. Some days, justice isn't just blind, it flat-out just doesn't exist.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest [DVD] / Summary: A nice rest in a state mental hospital beats a stretch in the pen, right? Randle P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), a free-spirited con with lightning in his veins and glib on his tongue, fakes insanity and moves in with what he calls the "nuts." Immediately, his contagious sense of disorder runs up against numbing routine. No way should guys pickled on sedatives shuffle around in bathrobes when the World Series is on. This means war! On one side is McMurphy. On the other is soft-spoken Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), among the most coldly monstrous villains in film history. At stake is the fate of every patient on the ward. Based on Ken Kesey's acclaimed bestseller, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest swept all five major 1975 Academy Awards: Best Picture (produced by Saul Zaentz and Michael Douglas), Actor (Nicholson), Actress (Fletcher), Director (Milos Forman) and Adapted Screenplay (Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman). Raucous, searing and with a superb cast that includes Brad Dourif, Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd in his film debut, this one soars.
The Perfect Pearl [VHS] / Summary: For centuries, man has risked both life and life savings to possess the pearl's beauty. Pure and perfect, glowing and dazzling, a pearl is actually a mistake formed when an oyster reacts to an irritant lodged in its shell. Go back to the late 18th century to meet Kokichi Mikimoto, who developed a technique for culturing pearls that's still used today. Travel to a Japanese oyster hatchery to see how technology is advancing pearl cultivation. Watch divers search for the immense pearls found in the world's largest oyster, the Pinctada maxima. See a strand of South Sea perfect pearls worth $2.3 million. And discover little-known facts as authors, zoologists, scientists and pearl experts reveal the pearl's wondrous history.
REDS [DVD] / Summary: The true story of the love affair of John Reed, American Communist, journalist and activist and Louise Bryant, writer and feminist. Woven into the story are America's great playwright, Eugene O'Neill, anarchist and feminist, Emma Goldman, Bolshevik leader, Gregory Zinoviev and other notable figures whose lives were shaken by the Russian Revolution.
The War [six DVDs] / Summary: The Ken Burns’ documentary THE WAR explores the history and horror of World War II from an American perspective by following the fortunes of so-called ordinary men and women who became caught up in one of the greatest cataclysms in human history. This epic film focuses on the stories of citizens from four American towns taking the viewer through their personal and harrowing journeys, painting vivid portraits of how the war dramatically altered their lives.
Worried Sick [DVD] / Summary: Stress is the curse of modern living -- but is it actually so new? Does it only affect people? Can you really get sick from stress? Can relaxation make you better? Host Alan Alda meets researchers who are exploring the ill effects of stress on health and aging, and how relaxation can help lessen the damage.

Banned Book Week

2007-10-01T09:14:00.000-05:00

Its Banned Book Week this week (Sept 29 - Oct 6, 2007), and to mark it I thought you might be interested in seeing a list of the most frequently challenged/banned books from 1990 to 2000 (This list is from the American Library Association):

Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelo
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
Forever by Judy Blume
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Giver by Lois Lowry
It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Sex by Madonna
Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
The Goats by Brock Cole
Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
Blubber by Judy Blume
Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
Final Exit by Derek Humphry
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
Deenie by Judy Blume
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
Cujo by Stephen King
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
Fade by Robert Cormier
Guess What? by Mem Fox
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Native Son by Richard Wright
Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Jack by A.M. Homes
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
Carrie by Stephen King
Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
Family Secrets by Norma Klein
Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
The Dead Zone by Stephen King
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
Private Parts by Howard Stern
Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
Sex Education by Jenny Davis
The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

How many of these books have you read? (We have at least 36 of these books in our collection.) What if those who wanted to prevent you from reading these books had gotten their way?

Recent Acquisitions

2007-09-28T12:46:00.000-05:00

Non-fiction:

Collected Poems, Prose & Plays by Robert Frost / Summary: Included are all of the plays, a generous selection of prose, all collected poems, and 94 uncollected poems, as well as 17 poems that were previously unpublished. The 1949 Complete Poems is the principle source for the poetry. In The Clearing (1962), as the only subsequent volume Frost published, is given a separate contents entry. Sources are given for all published and unpublished work. The 45 pages of notes cover the "significant differences" between first editions and the Complete Poems, including deleted dedications, notes and dates, and changes in wording. The notes also include helpful definitions and frequent attribution of quotation. Of the prose we are told that most of what is included "bears directly on [Frost's] work as a poet." Many of these texts are based on significant new editorial work by Richardson.
The Diary of Petr Ginz 1941-1942 / edited by Chava Pressburger; translated from the Czech by Elena Lappin / Summary: Lost for sixty years in a Prague attic, this secret diary of a teenage prodigy killed at Auschwitz is an extraordinary literary discovery, an intimately candid, deeply affecting account of a childhood compromised by Nazi tyranny. As a fourteen-year old Jewish boy living in Prague in the early 1940s, Petr Ginz dutifully records the increasingly precarious texture of daily life. With a child's keen eye for the absurd and the tragic, he muses on the prank he played on his science class and then just pages later, reveals that his cousins have been called to relinquish all their possessions, having been summoned east in the next transport. The diary ends with Petr's own summons to Thereisenstadt, where he would become the driving force behind the secret newspaper Vedem, and where he would continue to draw, paint, write, and read, furiously educating himself for a future he would never see. Fortunately, Petr's voice lives on in his diary, a fresh, startling, and invaluable historical document and a testament to one remarkable child's insuppressible hunger for life.
The Last Human : a Guide to Twenty-two Species of Extinct Humans / created by G.J. Sawyer and Viktor Deak ; text by Esteban Sarmiento, G.J. Sawyer and Richard Milner ; with contributions by Donald C. Johanson, Maeve Leakey and Ian Tattersall / Summary: This book tells the story of human evolution, the epic of Homo sapiens and its colorful precursors and relatives. The story begins in Africa, six to seven million years ago, and encompasses twenty known human species, of which Homo sapiens is the sole survivor. Illustrated with spectacular, three-dimensional scientific reconstructions portrayed in their natural habitat developed by a team of physical anthropologists at the American Museum of Natural History and in concert with experts from around the world, the book is both a guide to extinct human species and an astonishing hominid family photo album. The Last Human presents a comprehensive account of each species with information on its emergence, chronology, geographic range, classification, physiology, lifestyle, habitat, environment, cultural achievements, co-existing species, and possible reasons for extinction. Also included are summaries of fossil discoveries, controversies, and publications. What emerges from the fossil story is a new understanding of Homo sapiens. No longer credible is the notion that our species is the end product of a single lineage, improved over generations by natural selection. Rather, the fossil record shows, we are a species with widely varied precursors, and our family tree is characterized by many branchings and repeated extinctions.
The Writer’s Market / Summary: The classic resource for every writer who wants to be published, this volume features more than 3,500 market listings including 500 new markets for 2007.

Biography:

Einstein : His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson / Summary: The first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. Biographer Isaacson explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk--a struggling father in a difficult marriage who couldn't get a teaching job or a doctorate--became the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe. His success came from questioning conventional wisdom and marveling at mysteries that struck others as mundane. This led him to embrace a morality and politics based on respect for free minds, free spirits, and free individuals. These traits are just as vital for this new century of globalization, in which our success will depend on our creativity, as they were for the beginning of the last century, when Einstein helped usher in the modern age.
Lighting the Way : Nine Women Who Changed Modern America by Karenna Gore Schiff / Summary: This inspirational look at nine women who changed modern America profiles Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mother Jones, Alice Hamilton, Frances Perkins, Virginia Durr, Septima Clark, Dolores Huerta, Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias, and Gretchen Buchenholz--women who in their own ways tackled inequity and advocated change.

Fiction:

Dragon’s Keep by Janet Lee Carey / Summary: In 1145 A.D., as foretold by Merlin, fourteen-year-old Rosalind, who will be the twenty-first Pendragon Queen of Wilde Island, has much to accomplish to fulfill her destiny, while hiding from her people the dragon’s claw she was born with that reflects only one of her mother’s dark secrets.
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand / Summary: When it was first published in 1943, The Fountainhead -- containing Ayn Rand’s daringly original literary vision with the seeds of her groundbreaking philosophy, Objectivism -- won immediate worldwide acclaim. This instant classic is the story of an intransigent young architect, his violent battle against conventional standards, and his explosive love affair with a beautiful woman who struggles to defeat him. This centennial edition of The Fountainhead, celebrating the controversial and enduring legacy of its author, features an afterword by Rand's literary executor, Leonard Peikoff, offering some of Ayn Rand's personal notes on the development of her masterwork
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling / Summary: Burdened with the dark, dangerous, and seemingly impossible task of locating and destroying Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes, Harry, feeling alone and uncertain about his future, struggles to find the inner strength he needs to follow the path set out before him.
Knife Edge by Malorie Blackman / Summary: Following Callum’s death, the people who loved him relate how their lives have been changed, especially in reference to his girlfriend, Sephy, and their mixed-race child. Persephone Hadley is six months pregnant with a mixed-race baby. In their society this fact alone will threaten the child’s life every day. To make matters worse, the baby’s father, Callum, is dead. He was hanged for terrorism months ago, but his presence still torments Sephy. And she’s not alone. Callum’s brother, Jude, blames Sephy for the death, and thirsts for revenge...in the form of her life. Obviously, Sephy is not fond of Jude, but when his actions take him to the brink of disaster, his life poised on a knife edge, can she stand by and do nothing? Will she be forced -- once again -- to take sides in a chilling racial drama?
Rucker Park Setup by Paul Volponi / Summary: Best friends Mackey and J.R. have waited their whole lives to win the basketball tournament at Rucker Park, where their favorite pro ballers squared off against street legends. But the day of their big game, J.R. is fatally stabbed and its Mackey’s fault, even though he didn’t wield the knife. Now Mackey has a score to settle, but the killer is watching his every move.
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl / Summary: A darkly funny coming-of-age novel and a richly plotted suspense tale told through the distinctive voice of its heroine, Blue van Meer. After a childhood moving from one academic outpost to another with her father (a man prone to aphorisms and meteoric affairs), Blue is clever, deadpan, and possessed of a vast lexicon of literary, political, philosophical, and scientific knowledge--and is quite the cineaste to boot. In her final year of high school at the elite (and unusual) St. Gallway School in Stockton, North Carolina, Blue falls in with a charismatic group of friends and their captivating teacher, Hannah Schneider. But when the drowning of one of Hannah’s friends and the shocking death of Hannah herself lead to a confluence of mysteries, Blue is left to make sense of it all with only her gimlet-eyed instincts and cultural references to guide--or misguide--her.
Useful Fools by C.A. Schmidt / Summary: Alonso, a dirt-poor teenager living in Peru, helps out at the public health clinic his mother, Magdalena, opened, so that he can see Rosa, the beautiful and wealthy daughter of the clinic's doctor. Alonso and Rosa are both shattered when Magdalena is assassinated by a revolutionary terrorist organization. Left with no hope, Alonso might be seduced into becoming a guerrilla in the same organization that killed his mother. Rosa becomes disgusted with her fathers complacency and leaves wealth and safety behind to somehow help what is left of Alonsos family. In this coming-of-age novel, C. A. Schmidt tells the story of how love can find its way through poverty and war.

Videos (DVD & VHS):

Chuck Close : a Portrait in Progress [DVD ] / Summary: Since 1969, when Chuck Close's first series of black-and-white portraits was exhibited, his paintings have fascinated the public and raised critical controversy. Created from Polaroid photographs, Close's huge close-ups (some as tall as 9 feet) are severe, confrontational, and wholly compelling. Featuring interviews with Close, Chuck Close : a Portrait in Progress traces the artist's evolution. Close, who paints in the pointillist style, spends months on one painting. Today, his "mug shots" brim with warm colors. Dubbed the "mayor of Soho," he specializes in portraits of fellow artists, such as Jasper Johns who is interviewed in this program. The affable Close appears throughout, discussing his childhood learning disabilities and how, despite the 1989 illness that left him nearly completely paralyzed, he continues to triumph artistically.
In Search of Myths & Heroes [DVD] / Summary: Follows Michael Wood as he travels in search of the truth behind four famous legends. Explores not only the historical past and literal truth of these myths, but also the mythic past and archetypal stories behind them. Examines the Biblical myth of the Queen of Sheba, an exotic and mysterious woman of power who, with King Solomon, plays a key role in the founding myths of the modern states of Israel and Ethiopia. Traces the Celtic legend of King Arthur and its role in British literature. Asks whether the legendary Shangri-La as depicted in James Hilton's Lost horizon could have its roots in Indian views of Tibet or in the Tibetan Buddhist stories of the land of Shambhala, a paradise behind the Himalayas. Discusses the Greek hero Jason and his quest for the golden fleece.
A Streetcar Named Desire [DVD] / Summary: Set in the French Quarter of New Orleans during the restless years following WWII, this is a story of Blanche DuBois, a fragile and neurotic woman on a desperate prowl for someplace in the world to call her own. An uncensored version of the story of a repressed widow who visits her sister in New Orleans and is raped and driven mad by her brother-in-law.

Audio Recordings:

The Caedmon Poetry Collection : a Century of Poets Reading Their Work [three CDs] / Poems written and read by T.S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, Louis MacNeice, Robert Graves, Gertrude Stein, E.E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, Stephen Spender, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound and others.
Langston Hughes [CD] / Contents: Dressed up -- When Sue wears red -- Elevator boy -- My people -- Long trip -- Negro dancers -- Ma Lord -- Merry-go-round -- I, too -- Dream keeper -- Dreams -- Water-front streets -- Aunt Sue's stories -- As I grew older -- The weary blues -- Wide river -- Homesick blues -- Afro-American fragment -- The negro speaks of rivers -- Negro -- American heartbreak -- Dream variations -- Feet o'Jesus -- Prayer -- Fire -- Judgement Day -- Bad morning -- Could be -- Bad luck card -- Life is fine -- Bound no'th blues -- Roland Hayes beaten -- Silhouette -- One way ticket -- Graduation -- Mother to son -- Border line -- Genius child -- Suicide's note -- Midnight raffle -- Miss Blues'es child -- Dream boogie -- Motto -- Flatted fifths -- Harlem -- Words like freedom -- Tomorrow -- No regrets -- Too blue -- Little old letter -- Mississippi levee -- Morning after -- Reverie on the Harlem River – Wake. Read by the author.
Robert Frost [CD] / Summary: Robert Frost reads from a selection of his own poetry.
T. S. E. [CD] / T. S. Eliot / Contents: La figlia che piange -- The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock -- Gerontion -- Sweeney among the nightingales -- The waste land -- The hollow men -- The journey of the Magi -- Ash-Wednesday -- East Coker. Read by the author.
W. H. Auden [CD] / Summary: W H. Auden reads from a selection of his own poetry.

Tough Choices or Tough Times

2006-12-20T09:55:00.000-05:00

Yesterday at faculty meeting Jeff briefly mentioned the report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce -- "Tough Choices or Tough Times." Here is a link to a pdf file of the executive summary of the report where you can either read the report online or print it out (28 pages) to have a paper copy (or both).

Blogging at Oakmont

2006-12-20T08:36:00.000-05:00

I hope my presentation at yesterday's Faculty meeting was helpful. Let me again say that I'm not an expert in blogging by any means, but I'm trying to figure it all out at least to the point that it can be an effective and useful medium for us at Oakmont. Please let me know if I can help you out an any way.

Also, I do hope you all will read through the "Recent Acquisitions" post, and comment as you're so inclined. Choosing materials for the library collection is one of the things that I think is most important about what I do here, and I hope you will find things that you and your students can and will use.

Fall Semester Acquisitions...so far

2006-12-19T09:53:00.000-05:00

The list below details recent acquisitions to the library collection. Many of these books and/or videos were requested by specific faculty, so if you have needs or suggestions for materials to support your classroom teaching, please let me know.

Biography

Beethoven : his life & music / Jeremy Siepmann. Summary: Jeremy Siepmann draws an accessible portrait of the turbulent, troubled but determined figure of Beethoven, regarded by many as the greatest composer who ever lived. And with the words comes the music: two CDs of carefully chosen pieces covering all the different genres in which Beethoven made his mark. Readers also gain access to an exclusive website that offers the musical works in full, the music of Beethoven's contemporaries, new essays and more. This revolutionary biography utilizes traditional and new media to provide a uniquely rounded portrait of the composer himself.
Jane Goodall : the woman who redefined man / Dale Peterson. Summary: When Louis Leakey first heard about Jane Goodall's discovery that chimps fashion and use tools, he sent her a telegram: "Now we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as human." But when Goodall first presented her discoveries at a scientific conference, she was ridiculed by the powerful chairman, who warned one of his distinguished colleagues not to be misled by her "glamour." She was too young, too blond, too pretty to be a serious scientist, and worse yet, she still had virtually no formal scientific training. She had been a secretarial school graduate whom Leakey had sent out to study chimps only when he couldn't find anyone better qualified to take the job. And he couldn't tell her what to do once she was in the field -- nobody could -- because no one before had made such an intensive and long-term study of wild apes. Dale Peterson shows clearly and convincingly how truly remarkable Goodall's accomplishments were and how unlikely it is that anyone else could have duplicated them. Peterson details not only how Jane Goodall revolutionized the study of primates, our closest relatives, but how she helped set radically new standards and a new intellectual style in the study of animal behavior. And he reveals the very private quest that led to another sharp turn in her life, from scientist to activist.
Mozart : his life & music / Jeremy Siepmann. Summary: In this lively and accessible biography, Jeremy Siepmann reminds us of a remarkable natural talent who was, however, all too human. Read the text and listen to two CDs containing a carefully chosen cross-section of Mozart's music. Readers also gain access to an exclusive website that offers the musical works in full, the music of Mozart's father, a detailed timeline and more. This revolutionary biography utilizes traditional and new media to provide a uniquely rounded portrait of the composer himself.
Shakespeare / Michael Wood. In this absorbing historical detective story, acclaimed broadcaster and historian Michael Wood takes an entirely fresh approach to the Bard's life, vividly re-creating the turbulent times through which he lived and painting a more convincing and complete portrait of the artist than has ever before been thought possible. Drawing on an extensive range of sources, Wood takes us back into the staterooms and back alleys of Elizabethan England. Marked by murderous plots and government-sponsored terror, religious divisions and rebellious movements, the Spanish Armada and the colonization of the Americas, the dramatic world in which Shakespeare moved is here conjured up like never before. We enter the lodgings where he wrote his greatest plays and meet the real-life characters who inspired his work: doctors, landladies, musicians, foreigners, and members of London's contemporary black population. With 130 illustrations, full-color and black-and-white, Shakespeare is a book to enjoy on many levels-as both a world-class work of historical investigation and a fascinating yet informative visual feast. Filled with fresh discoveries, Michael Wood's pathbreaking work gloriously reinstates the image of William Shakespeare as a thinking artist, a man who held up a mirror to his age, but who was also, as his friend Ben Jonson said, "not of an age, but for all time."
Unbowed : a memoir / Wangari Maathai. Summary: Hugely charismatic, humble, and possessed of preternatural luminosity of spirit, Wangari Maathai, the winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and a single mother of three, recounts her extraordinary life as a political activist, feminist, and environmentalist in Kenya. Born in a rural village in 1940, Wangari Maathai was already an iconoclast as a child, determined to get an education even though most girls were uneducated. We see her studying with Catholic missionaries, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the United States, and becoming the first woman both to earn a PhD in East and Central Africa and to head a university department in Kenya. We witness her numerous run-ins with the brutal Moi government. She makes clear the political and personal reasons that compelled her, in 1977, to establish the Green Belt Movement, which spread from Kenya across Africa and which helps restore indigenous forests while assisting rural women by paying them to plant trees in their villages. We see how Maathai’s extraordinary courage and determination helped transform Kenya's government into the democracy in which she now serves as assistant minister for the environment and as a member of Parliament. And we are with her as she accepts the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded in recognition of her "contribution to sustainable development, human rights, and peace." In Unbowed, Wangari Maathai offers an inspiriting message of hope and prosperity through self-sufficiency.

Nonfiction

The 9/11 report : a graphic adaptation / by Sid Jacobsen and Ernie Colón ; [with a foreword by Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton]. Summary: On December 5, 2005, the 9/11 Commission issued its final report card on the government's fulfillment of the recommendations issued in July 2004: one A, twelve Bs, nine Cs, twelve Ds, three Fs, and four incompletes. Here is stunning evidence that Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón, with more than sixty years of experience in the comic-book industry between them, were right: far, far too few Americans have read, grasped, and demanded action on the Commission's investigation into the events of that tragic day and the lessons America must learn. Using every skill and storytelling method Jacobson and Colón have learned over the decades, they have produced the most accessible version of the 9/11 Report. Jacobson's text frequently follows word for word the original report, faithfully captures its investigative thoroughness, and covers its entire scope, even including the Commission's final report card. Colón's stunning artwork powerfully conveys the facts, insights, and urgency of the original. Published on the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States, an event that has left no aspect of American foreign or domestic policy untouched, The 9/11 Report puts at every American's fingertips the most defining event of the century.
The ancestor’s tale : a pilgrimage to the dawn of evolution / Richard Dawkins. Summary: The renowned biologist and thinker Richard Dawkins presents his most expansive work yet: a comprehensive look at evolution, ranging from the latest developments in the field to his own provocative views. Loosely based on the form of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dawkins's Tale takes us modern humans back through four billion years of life on our planet. As the pilgrimage progresses, we join with other organisms at the forty "rendezvous points" where we find a common ancestor. The band of pilgrims swells into a vast crowd as we join first with other primates, then with other mammals, and so on back to the first primordial organism. Dawkins's brilliant, inventive approach allows us to view the connections between ourselves and all other life in a bracingly novel way. It also lets him shed bright new light on the most compelling aspects of evolutionary history and theory: sexual selection, speciation, convergent evolution, extinction, genetics, plate tectonics, geographical dispersal, and more. The Ancestor's Tale is at once a far-reaching survey of the latest, best thinking on biology and a fascinating history of life on Earth. Here Dawkins shows us how remarkable we are, how astonishing our history, and how intimate our relationship with the rest of the living world.
The buried mirror : reflections on Spain and the New World / Carlos Fuentes. Summary: From the mysterious cave drawings at Altamira to the explosive graffiti on the walls of East Los Angeles, images in Spain and the Americas speak to us of the astonishing richness and vitality of Spanish culture. Carlos Fuentes, an internationally renowned novelist and diplomat, provides a unique history of the forces that have created this remarkable culture.
Evolution : the triumph of an idea / Carl Zimmer. Summary: Charles Darwin's Origin of Species was beautifully written, staunchly defended, and defiantly radical. Yet it emerged long before paleontologists and geologists worked out the chronology of life on Earth, and long before biologists uncovered the molecules that underlie heredity and natural selection. Carl Zimmer's Evolution presents a rich and up-to-date view of evolution that explores the far-reaching implications of Darwin's theory and emphasizes its power, significance, and relevance to our lives today. Filled with rich narrative, award-winning science writing, and the most current information on topics ranging from Darwinian medicine and sexual selection to the origins of language, evolutionary psychology, and the controversies surrounding creationism, Evolution tells in riveting detail the story of a remarkable scientific journey, from the emergence to the triumph of an idea.
Evolution vs. creationism : an introduction / Eugenie C. Scott ; foreword by Niles Eldredge. Summary: Almost eighty years after the Scopes trial, the debate over the teaching of evolution continues to rage. There is no easy resolution--it is a complex topic with profound scientific, religious, educational, and legal implications. How can a student or parent understand this issue, which is such a vital part of education? Evolution vs. Creationism provides a badly needed, comprehensive, and balanced survey. Written by one of the leading advocates for the teaching of evolution in the United states, this accessible resource provides an introduction to the many facets of the current debate--the scientific evidence for evolution, the legal and educational basis for its teaching, and the various religious points of view--as well as a concise history of the evolution-creationism controversy. Each of the four sections of Evolution vs. Creationism provides a resource that will assist the reader in better understanding these issues. The first section addresses the nature of how evolution works as part of the scientific enterprise, as well as a summary of the relationship between religious beliefs and science. A section on the history of the controversy provides a handy synopsis of the lengthy struggles, from before Darwin to the present day, between advocates of creationism and the proponents of evolution. A collection of primary source documents addressing cosmology, law, education, and religious issues from all sides of the debate constitute the third section. The book concludes with a selection of resources for further information for those who wish to study the topic in more depth.
Fermat’s enigma : the epic quest to solve the world’s greatest mathematical problem / Simon Singh ; foreword by John Lynch. Summary: Compelling, dramatic, and entirely accessible, "Fermat's Enigma" is a mesmerizing tale of heartbreak and mastery, and one that will forever change the reader's feelings about mathematics. Simon Singh co-produced an award-winning documentary film on Fermat's Last Theorem that aired on PBS's "Nova" series.
Guns, germs, and steel : the fates of human societies / Jared Diamond. Summary: Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Yet his survey is binocular: one eye has the rather distant vision of the evolutionary biologist, while the other eye--and his heart--belongs to the people of New Guinea, where he has done field work for more than 30 years.
Modern Latin America / Thomas E. Skidmore, Peter H. Smith. Summary: Thoroughly updated and revised, the sixth edition includes a new chapter on Colombia and increased coverage of women and gender. The book also examines such topics as: the impact of 9/11 on U.S.-Latin American relations; drug trafficking; women's roles in Latin American society and politics; and the fragility and uncertainty of democracy in Latin America.
Nickel and dimed : on (not) getting by in America / Barbara Ehrenreich. Summary: This exposé puts human flesh on the bones of such abstractions as "living wage" and "affordable housing." Ehrenreich worked, for a month at a time, at "unskilled" jobs -- as a waitress and chambermaid in Florida, a housecleaner and nursing-home aide in Maine, a Wal-Mart clerk in Minnesota -- to report on how people survive on wages of six or seven dollars an hour. In an easy, conversational style, she brings us the daily life of the working poor and shows that their diligence and good nature cannot earn them a place to live -- a social worker advised Ehrenreich to move to a shelter -- or medical or dental care or, in some cases, enough to eat. In her last chapter, Ehrenreich suggests that the working poor are "the major philanthropists of our society," sacrificing their families, their health, their privacy, and their leisure so that the rest of us can live more cheaply and conveniently.
A photographer’s life : 1990-2005 / Annie Leibovitz. Summary: Presents a collection of photographs taken by American photographer Annie Leibovitz between 1990 and 2005, including portraits, candids, and some nude shots of family, friends, political figures, and celebrities, and landscapes from around the world.
Redemption : the last battle of the Civil War / Nicholas Lemann. Summary: Lemann opens his extraordinary new book with a riveting account of Easter 1873 in Colfax, Louisiana, where a white militia attacked the black community and massacred hundreds. For the next few years, white Southern Democrats waged a campaign of political terrorism aiming to overturn the 14th and 15th Amendments and challenge President Grant's support for the emergent structures of black political power.
Theories of childhood : an introduction to Dewey, Montessori, Erickson, Piaget & Vygotsky / by Carol Garhart Mooney. Summary: A look at the ideas of five educational theorists in relation to early childhood care. An easy-to-learn overview of the theorist opens each chapter. The author then distills the theorists' work to reveal how it relates to child care and children.
This is your brain on music : how an essential human obsession made us who we are : the science of a human obsession / Daniel J. Levitin. Summary: Presents the psychological effects music has on people, investigating its role in human evolution, its effects on emotions, and how musical preferences and expertise are formed.
What evolution is / Ernst Mayr. Summary: At once a spirited defense of Darwinian explanations of biology and an elegant primer on evolution for the general reader, "What Evolution Is" poses the questions at the heart of evolutionary theory and considers how improved understanding of evolution has affected the viewpoints and values of modern man.

Fiction

An abundance of Katherines / John Green. Summary: Having been recently dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine, recent high school graduate and former child prodigy Colin sets off on a road trip with his best friend to try to find some new direction in life while also trying to create a mathematical formula to explain his relationships.
After this / Alice McDermott. Summary: Alice McDermott's powerful novel is a vivid portrait of an American family in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Witty, compassionate, and wry, it captures the social, political, and spiritual upheavals of those decades through the experiences of a middle-class couple, their four children, and the changing worlds in which they live. While Michael and Annie Keane taste the alternately intoxicating and bitter first fruits of the sexual revolution, their older, more tentative brother, Jacob, lags behind, until he finds himself on the way to Vietnam. Meanwhile, Clare, the youngest child of their aging parents, seeks to maintain an almost saintly innocence. After This, alive with the passions and tragedies of a determining era in our history, portrays the clash of traditional, faith-bound life and modern freedom, while also capturing, with McDermott's inimitable understanding and grace, the joy, sorrow, anger, and love that underpin, and undermine, what it is to be a family.
Alphabet of dreams / Susan Fletcher. Summary: Fourteen-year-old Mitra, of royal Persian lineage, and her five-year-old brother Babak, whose dreams foretell the future, flee for their lives in the company of the magus Melchoir and two other Zoroastrian priests, traveling through Persia as they follow star signs leading to a newly-born king in Bethlehem. Includes historical notes.
Black powder war / Naomi Novik. Summary: Captain Will Laurence and his dragon, Temeraire, are waylaid by a mysterious envoy bearing urgent orders for Britain that send them to the Ottoman Empire, where they must escort three valuable dragon eggs back to England.
Black swan green : a novel / David Mitchell. Summary: From award-winning writer Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new. "Black Swan Green" tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen lake; of "nightcreeping" through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran Lps, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons.
The book of lost things / John Connolly. Summary: High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother. He is angry and alone, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness, and as he takes refuge in his imagination, he finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a land that is a strange reflection of his own world, populated by heroes and monsters, and ruled over by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book... The Book of Lost Things. In the tradition of C.S. Lewis and Gregory Maguire's "Wicked," bestselling author Connolly ("The Black Angel") offers a creative coming-of-age story about one boy's journey into adulthood by combining dramatic themes with edge-of-your-seat suspense and a fantastical imagination.
The catcher in the rye / J. D. Salinger. Summary: The influential and widely acclaimed story details the two days in the life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield after he has been expelled from prep school. Confused and disillusioned, he searches for truth and rails against the "phoniness" of the adult world. He ends up exhausted and emotionally ill, in a psychiatrist's office. After he recovers from his breakdown, Holden relates his experiences to the reader.
Every visible thing / Lisa Carey. Summary: Five years after their oldest son, Hugh, disappeared, the members of the Furey family try to move on with their lives, with his mother losing herself in a new career, his father leaving behind his faith, and his two siblings, Owen and Lena, trying to come to terms with the loss of their brother and their own adolescent crises.
Everything is illuminated : a novel / Jonathan Safran Foer. Summary: With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man - also named Jonathan Safran Foer - sets out to find the woman who might or might not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war, an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past. As their adventure unfolds, Jonathan imagines the history of his grandfather's village, conjuring a magical fable of startling symmetries that unite generations across time. Lit by passion, fear, guilt, memory, and hope, the characters in Everything Is Illuminated mine the black holes of history. As the search moves back in time, the fantastical history moves forward, until reality collides with fiction in a heart-stopping scene of extraordinary power. An arresting blend of high comedy and great tragedy, this is a story about searching for people and places that no longer exist, for the hidden truths that haunt every family, and for the delicate but necessary tales that link past and future. Exuberant and wise, hysterically funny and deeply moving, Everything is Illuminated is an astonishing debut.
Frankenstein, or, The modern Prometheus : the 1818 text in three volumes / by Mary Shelley ; illustrated by Barry Moser and with an afterword by Joyce Carol Oates. Summary: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one of the masterpieces of nineteenth-century Gothicism. While staying in the Swiss Alps in 1816 with her lover Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and others, Mary, then eighteen, began to concoct the story of Dr. Victor Frankenstein and the monster he brings to life by electricity. Written in a time of great personal tragedy, it is a subversive and morbid story warning against the dehumanization of art and the corrupting influence of science. Packed with allusions and literary references, it is also one of the best thrillers ever written. Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus was an instant bestseller on publication in 1818. The prototype of the science fiction novel, it has spawned countless imitations and adaptations but retains its original power. The California edition of the Pennyroyal Press Frankenstein unites the dark side of Barry Moser's art with the classic 1818 text of Mary Shelley's tale of moral transfiguration. In a vivid sequence of woodcuts, the reader witnesses the birth of the "monster" as Moser shapes him from darkness and gives him a form simultaneously ghastly in its malice and transfixing in its suffering.
Giraffe / J.M. Ledgard. Summary: In 1975, on the eve of May Day, secret police dressed in chemical warfare suits sealed off a zoo in a small Czechoslovakian town and ordered the destruction of the largest captive herd of giraffes in the world. This apparently senseless massacre lies at the heart of J. M. Ledgard's haunting first novel, which recounts the story of the giraffes from their capture in Africa to their deaths far away behind the Iron Curtain. At once vivid and unearthly, Giraffe is an unforgettable story about strangeness, about creatures that are alien and silent, about captivity, and finally about Czechoslovakia, a middling totalitarian state and its population of sleepwalkers.
His Majesty's Dragon / by Naomi Novik. Summary: This first adventure of a new fantasy series introduces the remarkable dragon Temeraire and his heroic captain, Will Laurence, who are thrust into the world of the Aerial Corps, offering aerial support to the British during the Napoleonic Wars.
The historian : a novel / Elizabeth Kostova. Summary: In this smart retelling of the Dracula story, a young girl's discovery of a mysterious book, blank save for a sinister woodcut of a dragon, impels her father to divulge, reluctantly, details of his vampire-hunting days back in grad school. Halfway through his tale, which is told over several sessions in various atmospheric European locations, he vanishes. His daughter's quest to find him is interwoven with letters that reveal the past in full. Kostova's knowledge of occult arcana is impressive, and she packages her erudition in a graceful narrative that only occasionally lapses into melodrama. The structure--a story within a letter within a flashback--is an innovative complication, but it is soon shaken off by the swift-moving plot. Kostova never strays far from the conventions of the genre, and her historical thriller feels somewhat indebted to best-sellers of the recent past; there are Christian heresies, scholarly sleuths, and a malaprop-prone Eastern European guide.
Jackal in the garden : an encounter with Bihzad / by Deborah Ellis. Summary: Little is known about the fifteenth-century Persian painter Bihzad--we only know that he worked in what is now Afghanistan and Iran, and that he was the first artist to sign his works. Jackal in the Garden imagines Bihzad as an astoundingly gifted dreamer and contrasts him with a strong female protagonist, Anubis, a girl born disfigured into the harem of her vicious father. She must fight for survival--and her struggle leads her to Bihzad and the artists' colony he leads. Both philosophers, they find common ground. Yet their different attitudes offer a sharp, unusual commentary on life, survival, and art.
Jimmy Corrigan : the smartest kid on earth / Chris Ware. Summary: Ware's graphically inventive, wonderfully realized novel-in-comics follows the sad fortunes of four generations of phlegmatic, defeated men while touching on themes of abandonment, social isolation and despair within the sweeping depiction of Chicago's urban transformation over the course of a century. Ware uses Chicago's World's Colombian Exposition of 1893, the great world's fair that signaled America's march into 20th-century modernity, as a symbolic anchor to the city's development and to the narrative arc of a melancholic family as haplessly connected as are Chicago's random sprawl of streets and neighborhoods. In 1893, nine-year-old Jimmy Corrigan is abandoned atop a magnificent fair building by his sullen, brutish father ("I just stood there, watching the sky and the people below, waiting for him to return. Of course he never did"). Nearly a century later, another Jimmy Corrigan -- the absurdly ineffectual, friendless grandson of that abandoned child -- receives a letter from his own long-absent, feckless father, blithely and inexplicably requesting him to come and visit. Ware's surprisingly touching story recounts their strange and pathetically funny reunion, invoking the emotional legacy of the great-grandfather's original act of desertion while presenting a succession of Corrigan men far more comfortable fantasizing about life than living it. The book is wonderfully illustrated in full color, and Ware's spare, iconic drawing style can render vivid architectural complexity or movingly capture the stark despondency of an unloved child.
Keturah and Lord Death / Martine Leavitt. Summary: When Lord Death comes to claim sixteen-year-old Keturah while she is lost in the King’s Forest, she charms him with her story and is granted a twenty-four hour reprieve in which to seek her one true love.
The last town on earth : a novel / Thomas Mullen. Summary: Set against the backdrop of one of the most virulent epidemics that America ever experienced -- the 1918 flu epidemic -- Thomas Mullen's powerful, sweeping first novel is a tale of morality in a time of upheaval.
Lisey’s story : a novel / Stephen King. Summary: Lisey Debusher Landon lost her husband, Scott, two years ago, after a twenty-five-year marriage of the most profound and sometimes frightening intimacy. Scott was an award-winning, bestselling novelist and a very complicated man. Early in their relationship, before they married, Lisey had to learn from him about books and blood and bools. Later, she understood that there was a place Scott went -- a place that both terrified and healed him, that could eat him alive or give him the ideas he needed in order to live. Now it's Lisey's turn to face Scott's demons, Lisey's turn to go to Boo'ya Moon. What begins as a widow's effort to sort through the papers of her celebrated husband becomes a nearly fatal journey into the darkness he inhabited. Perhaps King's most personal and powerful novel, Lisey's Story is about the wellsprings of creativity, the temptations of madness, and the secret language of love
Side effects / Amy Goldman Koss. Summary: As if it doesn't suck enough to have cancer, practically every time you pick up books or see movies where characters get sick, you know they'll be dead by the last scene. In reality, kids get all kinds of cancers, go through unspeakable torture and painful treatments, but walk away fine in the end. From the acclaimed author of The Girls and Poison Ivy, Side Effects is about the pain, fear, and unlikely comedy of 15-year-old Izzy's journey, told in her own powerful and authentic voice. It is Izzy's story--screams and all.
The syringa tree : a novel / Pamela Gien. Summary: Young Elizabeth Grace, the privileged daughter of a part-Jewish doctor and his wife in South Africa in the 1960s, learns firsthand about the cruelties of apartheid when her beloved Xhosa nanny, Salamina, is forced to carry permission papers to enter white areas, and must hide her newborn baby from authorities.
Throne of jade / Naomi Novik. Summary: Captain Will Laurence and his noble dragon Temeraire battle against Bonaparte's invading forces. When China discovers that their rare gift, meant for Napoleon, is now in the hands of the British forces, they demand the return of the dragon.
Wait for me / An Na. Summary: As her senior year in high school approaches, Mina yearns to find her own path in life but working at the family business, taking care of her little sister, and dealing with her mother’s impossible expectations are as stifling as the southern California heat, until she falls in love with a man who offers a way out.

Reference

Africana : the encyclopedia of the African and African American experience / editors, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.-- 2nd ed. Summary: More than 4,000 articles cover prominent individuals, events, trends, places, political movements, art forms, business and trade, religion, ethnic groups, organizations and countries on both sides of the Atlantic. African American history and culture in the present-day United States receive a strong emphasis, but African American history and culture throughout the rest of the Americas and their origins in African istelf have an equally strong presence. The articles that make up Africana cover subjects ranging from affirmative action to zydeco and span over four million years from the earlies-known hominids , to Sean "Diddy" Combs. With entries ranging from the African ethnic groups to members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Africana, Second Edition, conveys the history and scope of cultural expression of people of African descent with unprecedented depth.
The encyclopedia of popular music / compiled & edited by Colin Larkin. Summary: Edited and largely written by Colin Larkin, this exhaustive, meticulous, and authoritative biographical encyclopedia includes information on a broad range of popular music genre from the 1900s to the present day; including rock, pop, jazz, folk, blues, heavy metal, techno, R & B, reggae, and hip-hop. Each entry includes key dates and locations for the artist, critical discographies, record labels and release dates. In addition, the Encyclopedia contains a complete name index, an index of song titles, and extensive bibliographies by artist and subject.
The essential rock discography / Martin C. Strong. Summary: Organized alphabetically, each entry features a complete discography that details every record released, full track listings for each album, B-sides for each single, expanded biographies and band histories, catalogue ordering numbers, top U.S. and U.K. chart positions, issuing labels, and recommendations of must-have recordings. From the Stone Roses to the Rolling Stones, Steeleye Span to Steely Dan, ABBA to AC/DC, The Popes to The Pogues, Green on Red to Deacon Blue, Heaven 17 to Richard Hell, Buffalo Tom to the Cowboy Junkies -- The Great Rock Discography contains everything you need to know about everyone you need to know about. It is an endless and indispensable source of information and entertainment for anyone interested in popular music.
MLA handbook for writers of research papers / Joseph Gibaldi.-- 6th ed. Summary: A style manual for preparing research papers. Includes information on citing electronic publications.
A new reference grammar of modern Spanish / John Butt & Carmen Benjamin.-- 4th ed. Summary: Recognized internationally as the most authoritative and comprehensive guide to contemporary Spanish for English speakers, A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish is an accessible, jargon-free guide to the forms and structures of Spanish as it is currently spoken and written. Examples from contemporary sources from throughout the Spanish-speaking world are used to illustrate grammatical points. Levels of usage--formal, familiar, colloquial, and popular--are indicated, and regional differences in usage are highlighted. This edition has been updated and revised to include the latest findings of the Royal Spanish Academy.

Professional

A challenge to change : the language learning continuum : strategies for more effective language instruction & lessons learned from the articulation and achievement project / Claire W. Jackson, executive editor. Summary: This book presents a descriptive model that offers a flexible and practical approach to student achievement which sets high standards, is performance-based, and identifies the performance characteristics of each stage of language learning. The volume includes essays on standards and assessments and the Language Learning Continuum, plus appendices of sample writings, activities, and assessments.
College knowledge : what it really takes for students to succeed and what we can do to get them ready / David T. Conley. Summary: Contains a comprehensive overview on how students can improve their preparedness for college by taking steps in secondary school, providing research based insights and practices with advice for designing the correct course of study.
Learning to question - to wonder - to learn / by Jamie McKenzie. Summary: Presents a guide to practical classroom strategies for improving the questioning ability of young students, providing suggestions for encouraging them to explore, invent, and discover.

Video

All quiet on the western front [DVD] Summary: In this realistic depiction of the lives of ordinary German soldiers Paul Baumer and his school chums are encouraged to enlist by their bombastic, slogan-chanting teacher, but they quickly learn that actual war is more gore than glory, as they crawl through mud, huddle in trenches, suffer the ordeal of frenzied hand-to-hand combat and dodge screaming shells during World War I.
An American tail & Fievel goes West [DVD] Summary: In An American Tail, a Russian mouse lands in New York in the 1880s, only to be separated from his family. The courageous little mouse braves the strange new world in a thrilling adventure to find his family. Summary: In Fievel Goes West, the fun continues when Fievel joins forces with famed lawdog Wylie Burp to thwart a plot to transform unsuspecting settlers into mouseburgers.
Beowulf & Grendel [DVD] Summary: Adapted from the Anglo-Saxon epic poem, Beowulf, Beowulf & Grendel is a medieval adventure that tells the blood-soaked tale of a Norse warrior's battle against the great and murderous troll, Grendel. Heads will roll in this provocative take on the first major work of English literature. Out of allegiance to the King Hrothgar, the much respected Lord of the Danes, Beowulf leads a troop of warriors across the sea to rid a village of the marauding monster. The monster, Grendel, is not a creature of mythic powers, but one of flesh and blood - immense flesh and raging blood, driven by a vengeance from being wronged, while Beowulf, a victorious soldier in his own right, has become increasingly troubled by the hero-myth rising up around his exploits. Beowulf's willingness to kill on behalf of Hrothgar wavers when it becomes clear that the King is more responsible for the troll's rampages than was first apparent. As a soldier, Beowulf is unaccustomed to hesitating. His relationship with the mesmerizing witch, Selma, creates deeper confusion. Swinging his sword at a great, stinking beast is no longer such a simple act. The story is set in barbarous Northern Europe where the reign of the many-gods is giving way to one - the southern invader, Christ. Beowulf is a man caught between sides in this great shift, his simple code transforming and falling apart before his eyes. Building toward an inevitable and terrible battle, this is a tale where vengeance, loyalty and mercy powerfully entwine. A story of blood and beer and sweat, Beowulf & Grendel strips away the mask of the hero-myth, leaving a raw and tangled tale that rings true through the centuries.
Dante and the divine comedy [DVD] Summary: An introduction to The Divine Comedy, with interpretation and analysis by scholars, dramatized sequences, contemporary images and works by artists inspired by Dante's work.
Fahrenheit 9/11 [DVD] Summary: Michael Moore's view on what happened to the United States on and after September 11, and how the Bush Administration used the tragic event to push forward its agenda for unjust war with Iraq.
The fog of war : eleven lessons from the life of Robert S. McNamara [DVD] Summary: The story of America as seen through the eyes of the former Secretary of Defense, under President Kennedy and President Johnson, Robert S. McNamara. McNamara was one of the most controversial and influential political figures of the 20th century. Now, he offers a candid and intimate journey through some of the most seminal events in contemporary American history. He offers new and often surprising insights into the 1945 bombing of Tokyo, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the effects of the Vietnam War.
Great women artists. Georgia O'Keeffe [DVD] Summary: This documentary portrays the legendary painter as she candidly reveals her warmth, humor, and practical wisdom. For the first time on camera, O'Keeffe openly discusses her work and inspirations taken from the haunting mountain deserts of New Mexico.
Guns, germs, and steel [DVD] Summary: An epic detective story that offers a gripping expose on why the world is so unequal. Professor Jared Diamond traveled the globe for over 30 years trying to answer this question. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book. Why did Eurasians conquer, displace, or decimate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the reverse? Diamond dismantles racially based theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for history's broadest patterns.
Henry V [DVD] Summary: Young King Henry of England asserts a hereditary claim to the throne of France, gathering an army and embarking on a course that will lead to one of England's greatest battlefield triumphs and forever change the face of Europe. This production is by Kenneth Branagh.
In search of Shakespeare [DVD] Summary: Hosted by Michael Wood, this four-part history series explores the life of the world's greatest writer. Mixing travel, adventure, interviews and specially shot sequences with the Royal Shakespeare Company on the road, the series sets the life of Shakespeare in the turbulent times in which he lived--a time of surveillance, militarism and foreign wars. The Bard lived through the Spanish Armada, the Gunpowder Plot and the colonization of the New World, and saw firsthand England's Cultural Revolution, which led the English people into a new Protestant future.
Leonard Bernstein's Candide [DVD] Summary: Leonard Bernstein's brilliant comic operetta is based on the classic Voltaire tale of an innocent young man's journey through a life filled with colorful characters and unexpected life lessons.
Michelagníolo : self portrait [VHS] Summary: Academy Award winning director Robert Snyder's Michelagníolo : self portrait overflows with splendid color images of all of Michelangelo's major works. This is an "autobiography" drawn from Michelangelo's letters, diaries, poems, and testimony of his contemporary biographers, Condivi and Vasari. The film is poignantly higlighted with passages from Dante's "Divine Comedy," and the soaring music of Claudio Monteverdi's "Vespro della Beata Vergine" of 1610. It is a dramatic, gripping story told in his own words.
The proof [VHS tape] Summary: Eureka! For Princeton math whiz Andrew Wiles, tackling an equation is like groping around in a dark mansion, finding the light switch, and suddenly seeing, with utter clarity, where you are. But in Wiles' case, the mathematical challenge of his childhood--proving Fermat’s Last Theorem, a famous enigma that had stumped experts for three centuries--would take eight years of seclusion. With Wiles' apparent success came the triumphant glare of publicity . . . until a disappointing discovery forced him back undercover to retrace the steps of his difficult quest. Follow a fascinating tale of obsession, secrecy, brilliance, and the camaradarie of kindred souls. Enter a rarefied world inhabited by the world’s foremost mathematical minds, where the joy of finding an absolute solution is giddily contagious--whether that proof is entirely your own or a bridge linking others mathematicians' conjectures. With the help of computer animation, see complex mathematical concepts, such as elliptical curves and modular forms, pictured in beautiful 3-D symmetry. And hear Wiles himself describe the "incredible revelation" that finally led him--and three centuries of mathematicians--out of the dark. "Fermat’s Last Theorem has been reponsible for so much," marvels a colleague. "What will we find to take its place?"
Shattered Glass [DVD] Summary: Based on the true story of Stephen Glass, a staff writer for the well respected current events and policy magazine 'The new republic'. He was also a freelance writer featured in 'Rolling Stone', 'Harper's Bazaar' and 'George'. By the mid 1990's, Glass' articles had turned him into one of the most sought-after young journalists in Washington. That is until a new managing editor was hired and Glass's pieces came under greater scrutiny, revealing completely fabricated stories. Special features includes an interview with the real Stephen Glass on the TV program 60 Minutes.
Thomas Jefferson [DVD] Summary: Examines the life of Thomas Jefferson, discussing his role in early America as author of the Declaration of Independence, president, expansionist, and ambassador, and explores the controversy over his ownership of slaves.
To kill a mockingbird [DVD] Summary: Gregory Peck plays a southern lawyer who defends a black man accused of rape in this film version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The way in which it captures a time, a place, and above all, a mood, makes this film a masterpiece.

Sound Recordings (CDs)

Macbeth [sound recording] / William Shakespeare. Summary: Macbeth's ambition unleashes a cycle of violence. Prompted by the supernatural prophecy of three witches, Macbeth kills King Duncan and assumes his throne. Macbeth plunges further into murder and moral decay to keep the crown on his head. While his wife crumbles away in guilt and madness, Macbeth fights to prevent the rest of the prophecy from coming true.
Othello [sound recording] / William Shakespeare. Summary: Shakespeare's most domestic tragedy is a complex journey through jealousy, self-doubt, inadequacies, and societal acceptance. Passed over for military promotion, Iago, perhaps Shakespeare's most nefarious character, manipulates Othello's downfall, culminating in the murder of his beloved wife, Desdemona, and Othello's subsequent suicide. Under David Timson's stewardship as director, the story is beautifully and simply told, embellished only with intermittent brassy flourishes of classical music and a dramatic echo effect and throbbing heart beat to underscore Othello's chaotic descent and rage. While the entire cast is excellent, the trio of Quarshie (Othello), Lesser (Iago), and Fielding (Desdemona) are outstanding.

Whatever Happened to Online Etiquette?

2006-12-18T05:08:00.000-05:00

David Pogue of The New York Times recently wrote a column on online etiquette, and in the column he raises important issues we need to be aware of as we become engaged with our students in online activites. We are endorsing/promoting their use of online communication when we involve them in blogging, and this is a good thing (they're doing it on their own anyway) because it gives us an opportunity to influence and shape their online activity. Here's a link to the article (I don't want to violate copyright by republishing the column here):

The New York Times, December 14, 2006
Whatever Happened to Online Etiquette?

How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century

2006-12-13T11:27:00.000-05:00

The cover story in the December 18th isssue of Time magazine discusses how to build a student for the 21st century. I thought this was relevant to our faculty meeting discussions of College Knowledge. The Time article is here, and below:

How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century

By Claudia Wallis and Sonja Steptoe.

Time (Dec 18, 2006): p50.

There's a dark little joke exchanged by educators with a dissident streak: Rip Van Winkle awakens in the 21st century after a hundred-year snooze and is, of course, utterly bewildered by what he sees. Men and women dash about, talking to small metal devices pinned to their ears. Young people sit at home on sofas, moving miniature athletes around on electronic screens. Older folk defy death and disability with metronomes in their chests and with hips made of metal and plastic. Airports, hospitals, shopping malls--every place Rip goes just baffles him. But when he finally walks into a schoolroom, the old man knows exactly where he is. "This is a school," he declares. "We used to have these back in 1906. Only now the blackboards are green."

American schools aren't exactly frozen in time, but considering the pace of change in other areas of life, our public schools tend to feel like throwbacks. Kids spend much of the day as their great-grandparents once did: sitting in rows, listening to teachers lecture, scribbling notes by hand, reading from textbooks that are out of date by the time they are printed. A yawning chasm (with an emphasis on yawning) separates the world inside the schoolhouse from the world outside.

For the past five years, the national conversation on education has focused on reading scores, math tests and closing the "achievement gap" between social classes. This is not a story about that conversation. This is a story about the big public conversation the nation is not having about education, the one that will ultimately determine not merely whether some fraction of our children get "left behind" but also whether an entire generation of kids will fail to make the grade in the global economy because they can't think their way through abstract problems, work in teams, distinguish good information from bad or speak a language other than English.

This week the conversation will burst onto the front page, when the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, a high-powered, bipartisan assembly of Education Secretaries and business, government and other education leaders releases a blueprint for rethinking American education from pre-K to 12 and beyond to better prepare students to thrive in the global economy. While that report includes some controversial proposals, there is nonetheless a remarkable consensus among educators and business and policy leaders on one key conclusion: we need to bring what we teach and how we teach into the 21st century.

Right now we're aiming too low. Competency in reading and math--the focus of so much No Child Left Behind (NCLB) testing--is the meager minimum. Scientific and technical skills are, likewise, utterly necessary but insufficient. Today's economy demands not only a high-level competence in the traditional academic disciplines but also what might be called 21st century skills. Here's what they are:

Knowing more about the world. Kids are global citizens now, even in small-town America, and they must learn to act that way. Mike Eskew, CEO of UPS, talks about needing workers who are "global trade literate, sensitive to foreign cultures, conversant in different languages"--not exactly strong points in the U.S., where fewer than half of high school students are enrolled in a foreign-language class and where the social-studies curriculum tends to fixate on U.S. history.

Thinking outside the box. Jobs in the new economy--the ones that won't get outsourced or automated--"put an enormous premium on creative and innovative skills, seeing patterns where other people see only chaos," says Marc Tucker, an author of the skills-commission report and president of the National Center on Education and the Economy. Traditionally that's been an American strength, but schools have become less daring in the back-to-basics climate of NCLB. Kids also must learn to think across disciplines, since that's where most new breakthroughs are made. It's interdisciplinary combinations--design and technology, mathematics and art--"that produce YouTube and Google," says Thomas Friedman, the best-selling author of The World Is Flat.

Becoming smarter about new sources of information. In an age of overflowing information and proliferating media, kids need to rapidly process what's coming at them and distinguish between what's reliable and what isn't. "It's important that students know how to manage it, interpret it, validate it, and how to act on it," says Dell executive Karen Bruett, who serves on the board of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a group of corporate and education leaders focused on upgrading American education.

Developing good people skills. EQ, or emotional intelligence, is as important as IQ for success in today's workplace. "Most innovations today involve large teams of people," says former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine. "We have to emphasize communication skills, the ability to work in teams and with people from different cultures."

Can our public schools, originally designed to educate workers for agrarian life and industrial-age factories, make the necessary shifts? The Skills commission will argue that it's possible only if we add new depth and rigor to our curriculum and standardized exams, redeploy the dollars we spend on education, reshape the teaching force and reorganize who runs the schools. But without waiting for such a revolution, enterprising administrators around the country have begun to update their schools, often with ideas and support from local businesses. The state of Michigan, conceding that it can no longer count on the ailing auto industry to absorb its poorly educated and low-skilled workers, is retooling its high schools, instituting what are among the most rigorous graduation requirements in the nation. Elsewhere, organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Asia Society are pouring money and expertise into model programs to show the way.

What It Means to Be a Global Student

Quick! How many ways can you combine nickels, dimes and pennies to get 20C/? That's the challenge for students in a second-grade math class at Seattle's John Stanford International School, and hands are flying up with answers. The students sit at tables of four manipulating play money. One boy shouts "10 plus 10"; a girl offers "10 plus 5 plus 5," only it sounds like this: "Ju, tasu, go, tasu, go." Down the hall, third-graders are learning to interpret charts and graphs showing how many hours of sleep people need at different ages. "?Cuantas horas duerme un bebe?" asks the teacher Sabrina Storlie.

This public elementary school has taken the idea of global education and run with it. All students take some classes in either Japanese or Spanish. Other subjects are taught in English, but the content has an international flavor. The school pulls its 393 students from the surrounding highly diverse neighborhood and by lottery from other parts of the city. Generally, its scores on state tests are at or above average, although those exams barely scratch the surface of what Stanford students learn.

Before opening the school seven years ago, principal Karen Kodama surveyed 1,500 business leaders on which languages to teach (plans for Mandarin were dropped for lack of classroom space) and which skills and disciplines. "No. 1 was technology," she recalls. Even first-graders at Stanford begin to use PowerPoint and Internet tools. "Exposure to world cultures was also an important trait cited by the executives," says Kodama, so that instead of circling back to the Pilgrims and Indians every autumn, children at Stanford do social-studies units on Asia, Africa, Australia, Mexico and South America. Students actively apply the lessons in foreign language and culture by video-conferencing with sister schools in Japan, Africa and Mexico, by exchanging messages, gifts and joining in charity projects.

Stanford International shows what's possible for a public elementary school, although it has the rare advantage of support from corporations like Nintendo and Starbucks, which contribute to its $1.7 million-a-year budget. Still, dozens of U.S. school districts have found ways to orient some of their students toward the global economy. Many have opened schools that offer the international baccalaureate (I.B.) program, a rigorous, off-the-shelf curriculum recognized by universities around the world and first introduced in 1968--well before globalization became a buzzword.

To earn an I.B. diploma, students must prove written and spoken proficiency in a second language, write a 4,000-word college-level research paper, complete a real-world service project and pass rigorous oral and written subject exams. Courses offer an international perspective, so even a lesson on the American Revolution will interweave sources from Britain and France with views from the Founding Fathers. "We try to build something we call international mindedness," says Jeffrey Beard, director general of the International Baccalaureate Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. "These are students who can grasp issues across national borders. They have an understanding of nuances and complexity and a balanced approach to problem solving." Despite stringent certification requirements, I.B. schools are growing in the U.S.--from about 350 in 2000 to 682 today. The U.S. Department of Education has a pilot effort to bring the program to more low-income students.

Real Knowledge in the Google Era

Learn the names of all the rivers in South America. That was the assignment given to Deborah Stipek's daughter Meredith in school, and her mom, who's dean of the Stanford University School of Education, was not impressed. "That's silly," Stipek told her daughter. "Tell your teacher that if you need to know anything besides the Amazon, you can look it up on Google." Any number of old-school assignments--memorizing the battles of the Civil War or the periodic table of the elements--now seem faintly absurd. That kind of information, which is poorly retained unless you routinely use it, is available at a keystroke. Still, few would argue that an American child shouldn't learn the causes of the Civil War or understand how the periodic table reflects the atomic structure and properties of the elements. As school critic E.D. Hirsch Jr. points out in his book, The Knowledge Deficit, kids need a substantial fund of information just to make sense of reading materials beyond the grade-school level. Without mastering the fundamental building blocks of math, science or history, complex concepts are impossible.

Many analysts believe that to achieve the right balance between such core knowledge and what educators call "portable skills"--critical thinking, making connections between ideas and knowing how to keep on learning--the U.S. curriculum needs to become more like that of Singapore, Belgium and Sweden, whose students outperform American students on math and science tests. Classes in these countries dwell on key concepts that are taught in depth and in careful sequence, as opposed to a succession of forgettable details so often served in U.S. classrooms. Textbooks and tests support this approach. "Countries from Germany to Singapore have extremely small textbooks that focus on the most powerful and generative ideas," says Roy Pea, co-director of the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning. These might be the key theorems in math, the laws of thermodynamics in science or the relationship between supply and demand in economics. America's bloated textbooks, by contrast, tend to gallop through a mind-numbing stream of topics and subtopics in an attempt to address a vast range of state standards.

Depth over breadth and the ability to leap across disciplines are exactly what teachers aim for at the Henry Ford Academy, a public charter school in Dearborn, Mich. This fall, 10th-graders in Charles Dershimer's science class began a project that combines concepts from earth science, chemistry, business and design. After reading about Nike's efforts to develop a more environmentally friendly sneaker, students had to choose a consumer product, analyze and explain its environmental impact and then develop a plan for re-engineering it to reduce pollution costs without sacrificing its commercial appeal. Says Dershimer: "It's a challenge for them and for me."

A New Kind of Literacy

The juniors in Bill Stroud's class are riveted by a documentary called Loose Change unspooling on a small TV screen at the Baccalaureate School for Global Education, in urban Astoria, N.Y. The film uses 9/11 footage and interviews with building engineers and Twin Towers survivors to make an oddly compelling if paranoid case that interior explosions unrelated to the impact of the airplanes brought down the World Trade Center on that fateful day. Afterward, the students--an ethnic mix of New Yorkers with their own 9/11 memories--dive into a discussion about the elusive nature of truth.

Raya Harris finds the video more convincing than the official version of the facts. Marisa Reichel objects. "Because of a movie, you are going to change your beliefs?" she demands. "Just because people heard explosions doesn't mean there were explosions. You can say you feel the room spinning, but it isn't." This kind of discussion about what we know and how we know it is typical of a theory of knowledge class, a required element for an international-baccalaureate diploma. Stroud has posed this question to his class on the blackboard: "If truth is difficult to prove in history, does it follow that all versions are equally acceptable?"

Throughout the year, the class will examine news reports, websites, propaganda, history books, blogs, even pop songs. The goal is to teach kids to be discerning consumers of information and to research, formulate and defend their own views, says Stroud, who is founder and principal of the four-year-old public school, which is located in a repurposed handbag factory.

Classes like this, which teach key aspects of information literacy, remain rare in public education, but more and more universities and employers say they are needed as the world grows ever more deluged with information of variable quality. Last year, in response to demand from colleges, the Educational Testing Service unveiled a new, computer-based exam designed to measure information-and-communication-technology literacy. A pilot study of the test with 6,200 high school seniors and college freshmen found that only half could correctly judge the objectivity of a website. "Kids tend to go to Google and cut and paste a research report together," says Terry Egan, who led the team that developed the new test. "We kind of assumed this generation was so comfortable with technology that they know how to use it for research and deeper thinking," says Egan. "But if they're not taught these skills, they don't necessarily pick them up."

Learning 2.0

The chairman of Sun Microsystems was up against one of the most vexing challenges of modern life: a third-grade science project. Scott McNealy had spent hours searching the Web for a lively explanation of electricity that his son could understand. "Finally I found a very nice, animated, educational website showing electrons zooming around and tests after each section. We did this for about an hour and a half and had a ball--a great father-son moment of learning. All of a sudden we ran out of runway because it was a site to help welders, and it then got into welding." For McNealy the experience, three years ago, provided one of life's aha! moments: "It made me wonder why there isn't a website where I can just go and have anything I want to learn, K to 12, online, browser based and free."

His solution: draw on the Wikipedia model to create a collection of online courses that can be updated, improved, vetted and built upon by innovative teachers, who, he notes, "are always developing new materials and methods of instruction because they aren't happy with what they have." And who better to create such a site than McNealy, whose company has led the way in designing open-source computer software? He quickly raised some money, created a nonprofit and--voila!--Curriki.org made its debut January 2006, and has been growing fast. Some 450 courses are in the works, and about 3,000 people have joined as members. McNealy reports that a teenager in Kuwait has already completed the introductory physics and calculus classes in 18 days.

Curriki, however, isn't meant to replace going to school but to supplement it and offer courses that may not be available locally. It aims to give teachers classroom-tested content materials and assessments that are livelier and more current and multimedia-based than printed textbooks. Ultimately, it could take the Web 2.0 revolution to school, closing that yawning gap between how kids learn at school and how they do everything else. Educators around the country and overseas are already discussing ways to certify Curriki's online course work for credit.

Some states are creating their own online courses. "In the 21st century, the ability to be a lifelong learner will, for many people, be dependent on their ability to access and benefit from online learning," says Michael Flanagan, Michigan's superintendent of public instruction, which is why Michigan's new high school graduation requirements, which roll out next year, include completing at least one course online.

A Dose of Reality

Teachers need not fear that they will be made obsolete. They will, however, feel increasing pressure to bring their methods--along with the curriculum--into line with the way the modern world works. That means putting a greater emphasis on teaching kids to collaborate and solve problems in small groups and apply what they've learned in the real world. Besides, research shows that kids learn better that way than with the old chalk-and-talk approach.

At suburban Farmington High in Michigan, the engineering-technology department functions like an engineering firm, with teachers as project managers, a Ford Motor Co. engineer as a consultant and students working in teams. The principles of calculus, physics, chemistry and engineering are taught through activities that fill the hallways with a cacophony of nailing, sawing and chattering. The result: the kids learn to apply academic principles to the real world, think strategically and solve problems.

Such lessons also teach students to show respect for others as well as to be punctual, responsible and work well in teams. Those skills were badly missing in recently hired high school graduates, according to a survey of over 400 human-resource professionals conducted by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. "Kids don't know how to shake your hand at graduation," says Rudolph Crew, superintendent of the Miami-Dade school system. Deportment, he notes, used to be on the report card. Some of the nation's more forward-thinking schools are bringing it back. It's one part of 21st century education that sleepy old Rip would recognize.

Source Citation:Wallis, Claudia, and Sonja Steptoe. "How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century. (Special Issue: The Best Photos of 2006)(Society)(Cover story)." Time 168.25 (Dec 18, 2006): 50. General Reference Center Gold. Thomson Gale. Oakmont Regional High School. 13 Dec. 2006

Thomson Gale Document Number:A155715880

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