Book Talk

September, 2008

I know that presidents don’t have to know everything, but the breadth of knowledge required for the job is staggering. Fortunately, we’ve got one subject covered. Physics for Future Presidents: the Science behind the Headlines by Richard Muller will acquaint you with topics like the dangers of suitcase nukes vs. shoe bombs, the fine points of renewable vs. sustainable energy sources, and cool colors. (Those are not colors that are currently “in”, but those that reflect heat, reducing energy costs.) This applied physics course is accessible to civilian and president alike.

The oft-quoted John Zogby has written The Way We’ll Be: the Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream.  It turns out that Americans are much more caring and socially conscious that the media gives us to believe. Most people are concerned about a store’s treatment of its employees and shop accordingly, embrace diversity, and would choose emotional rather than economic fulfillment. Only 5% of the population feels that corporations do right by consumers. He finds that some industries that have been given the death knell are actually in the process of major re-invention. Ultimately, this is a positive evaluation of America-- something we don’t often hear.

Just when you thought there couldn’t be another book on the Civil War, David Williams has written Bitterly Divided: the South’s Inner Civil War. This is a fascinating examination of conflicts between Southerners. They were almost evenly divided on the subject of succession. The Civil War was also looked at as a rich man’s war; slave owners, planters and politicians were exempted from military service. Rather than grow food to feed the troops, planters continued to grow cotton and tobacco for export. Southern Indians, blacks and anti-confederate whites opposed the war in increasingly overt ways.

For those who take going green seriously we have The Carbon-Free Home: 36 Remodeling Projects to Help Kick the Fossil-Fuel Habit by Stephen and Rebekah Hren
These projects range from simple projects like building a trellis for shade to making a solar wall oven or installing a woodstove. There are so many simple things that can be done quickly and inexpensively like rain barrels and outdoor solar showers that we can all feel good about doing.

Innocent Henry Dampier is on the road selling Bibles in post WW II North Carolina when he has the misfortune to make the acquaintance of Preston Clearwater.  Thief, flim-flam man and part of a car theft ring, Clearwater sees Henry as smart but gullible, and convinces him that he is an undercover FBI agent. What could be better than an honest Bible salesman driving stolen cars for Preston? Many hilarious episodes later Henry begins to catch on that he is being used in The Bible Salesman by Clyde Edgerton.

When three people are murdered, their bodies seemingly drained of blood,  Marie Levant, great-great granddaughter of the Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau, knows that New Orleans’ past is back. The struggle against evil becomes personal when the Laveau descendants are threatened in Yellow Moon by Jewell Parker Rhodes.

An earnest newly minted teacher, Anna Taggert, wants to engage hearts and minds. What she finds in the posh private school are children of hard driving parents for whom the A is everything. Anna realizes that the papers she’s grading are not the work of her students but of their tutors who are part of a lucrative underground economy. Seduced by the same hourly rate as a Manhattan attorney, she starts enjoying the high life, until…  Read Schooled by Anisha Lakhani.

Well, no one ever told me that there were rumors that Babe Ruth was black… it took The Bambino Secret: a Novel of Love, Murder, and Scandal by J. Anderson Cross, for that bit of speculation to enter my awareness. And yes, as a librarian I did check it out. The rumors circulated as far back as his playing days, and have never been positively confirmed or disproved. In the novel, Ruth’s career is caught between a racist baseball commissioner who wants him fired and a sport that badly needs his star quality.

Attracting quite a bit of attention is David Ebershoff’s The Nineteenth Wife.  In 1875 Ann Elizabeth Young separated from her husband Brigham Young and began to work to end polygamy in the United States. Intertwined with that tale is one set in the present involving a young man who must re-enter his fundamentalist sect to find out the truth behind his father’s death.
    
Virginia Cooper
Adult Services Librarian