Common As Air; Revolution, Art , and Ownership By Lewis Hyde

By Lewis Hyde
"Marc Helprin's Digital Barbarism: A Writer's Manifesto argued vehemently last year that when it comes to ownership, intellectual property should be treated like all other property, like a business or a piece of real estate. But his argument came across as little more than an ill-tempered yawp. Now here is MacArthur Fellow Hyde with a different take. Drawing on the writings and lives of the Founding Fathers—above all Benjamin Franklin—Hyde argues convincingly that intellectual property is radically different from real property. Patents and copyrights are a privilege, not a right, and for public, not private, benefit: they recompense inventors and authors for their labor by awarding a "stinted" monopoly (one with conditions), but afterward the fruit of their labors becomes part of the "cultural commons"—open to all. Hyde presents horror stories about current practices: a DNA sequence patented before a use is even found for it, King's "dream" speech not available in the public domain, heirs prohibiting scholars from using a writer's letters when they disagree with the scholar's take on the subject. VERDICT Cogently argued, Common is a compelling take on an important subject for a democracy like ours." (LJ Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

At Home; A Short History Of Private Life

By Bill Bryson
"Bryson (A Short History of Everything) takes readers on a tour of his house, a rural English parsonage, and finds it crammed with 10,000 years of fascinating historical bric-a-brac. Each room becomes a starting point for a free-ranging discussion of rarely noticed but foundational aspects of social life. A visit to the kitchen prompts disquisitions on food adulteration and gluttony; a peek into the bedroom reveals nutty sex nostrums and the horrors of premodern surgery; in the study we find rats and locusts; a stop in the scullery illuminates the put-upon lives of servants. Bryson follows his inquisitiveness wherever it goes, from Darwinian evolution to the invention of the lawnmower, while savoring eccentric characters and untoward events (like Queen Elizabeth I's pilfering of a subject's silverware). There are many guilty pleasures, from Bryson's droll prose--"What really turned the Victorians to bathing, however, was the realization that it could be gloriously punishing"--to the many tantalizing glimpses behind closed doors at aristocratic English country houses. In demonstrating how everything we take for granted, from comfortable furniture to smoke-free air, went from unimaginable luxury to humdrum routine, Bryson shows us how odd and improbable our own lives really are."  (PW Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

American Terroir; Savoring The Flavors Of our Woods, Waters, And Fields

By Rowan Jacobsen
"The belief that individual plots of land can produce significant differences in crops has become an obsession for contemporary gastronomes. Terroir, a French word initially referring to vineyards, now applies to virtually every agricultural product: animal, vegetable, and mineral. Restaurant menus promote their kitchens’ offerings with names of local farms, and consumers demand orthodoxy in sourcing of everything from steak to succotash to salt. Jacobsen documents some of North America’s best growing places and producers. He describes apiculture and honeys in Florida and Arizona. He discovers the best avocados in Mexico’s Michoacán. He finds superior cheeses and maple syrup in Vermont. Northeast Canada yields both mussels and mushrooms. And Jacobsen sources the world’s most esteemed coffee beans from the mountains of Panama. In his travels to these far-flung farms, Jacobsen shows that it is as much farmers’ dedication to their profession that counts as the soil itself." ( Booklist Reviews.)   Check Our Catalog

Private Life

By Jane Smiley
In 1905 Missouri, quiet 27-year-old Margaret Mayfield marries Capt. Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early, a naval officer and an astronomer who is considered a genius and a little odd. By the time they make their way by train to their new life in California, the reader understands that Captain Early is actually somewhat crazy in his obsessions. This is a conclusion that Margaret herself is slow to draw, even as their lives together grow more troubled. Smiley (Ten Days in the Hills) reminds us how difficult it was for all but the boldest women to extract themselves from suffocating life situations 100 years ago. While dealing with intimate matters, this novel also has an epic sweep, moving from Missouri in the 1880s to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, up to the Japanese internment camps of World War II, with the scenes from Margaret's Missouri childhood reminiscent of Willa Cather. VERDICT Not a highly dramatic page-turner but rather a subtle and thoughtful portrayal of a quiet woman's inner strength, this may especially appeal to readers who have enjoyed Marilynne Robinson's recent Gilead and Home. (LJ Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

The Tiger; A True Story Of Vengeance And Survival By John Vaillant

By John Vaillant
"The grisly rampage of a man-eating Amur, or Siberian, tiger and the effort to trap it frame this suspenseful and majestically narrated introduction to a world that few people, even Russians, are familiar with. Northeast of China lies Russia's Primorye province, "the meeting place of four distinct bioregions"–taiga, Mongolian steppes, boreal forests, and Korean tropics--and where the last Amur tigers live in an uneasy truce with an equally diminished human population scarred by decades of brutal Soviet politics and postperestroika poverty. Over millennia of shared history, the indigenous inhabitants had worked out a tenuous peace with the Amur, a formidable hunter that can grow to over 500 pounds and up to nine feet long, but the arrival of European settlers, followed by decades of Soviet disregard for the wilds, disrupted that balance and led to the overhunting of tigers for trophies and for their alleged medicinal qualities. Vaillant (The Golden Spruce) has written a mighty elegy that leads readers into the lair of the tiger and into the heart of the Kremlin to explain how the Amur went from being worshipped to being poached."  (PW Reviews)  Check Our  Catalog

Room

By Emma Donoghue
"Five-year-old Jack and his Ma enjoy their long days together, playing games, watching TV, and reading favorite stories. Through Jack's narration, it slowly becomes apparent that their pleasant days are shrouded by a horrifying secret. Seven years ago, his 19-year-old Ma was abducted and has since been held captive—in one small room. To her abductor she is nothing more than a sex slave, with Jack as a result, yet she finds the courage to raise her child with constant love under these most abhorrent circumstances. He is a bright child—bright enough, in fact, to help his mother successfully carry out a plan of escape. Once they get to the outside world, the sense of relief is short lived, as Jack is suddenly faced with an entirely new worldview (with things he never imagined, like other people, buildings, and even family) while his mother attempts to deal with her own psychological trauma. VERDICT Gripping, riveting, and close to the bone, this story grabs you and doesn't let go. Donoghue (The Sealed Letter) skillfully builds a suspenseful narrative evoking fear and hate and hope—but most of all, the triumph of a mother's ferocious love."  (LJ Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

Last Call; The Rise And Fall Of Prohibition

By Daniel Okrent
"Okrent provides a remarkable breakdown of Prohibition, that uniquely American attempt to banish the sale and consumption of alcohol. In 1919, a constitutional amendment prohibiting the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within the U.S. was ratified and scheduled to go into effect the following year. Okrent traces the roots of the temperance movement, the suffrage movement, and the anti-immigrant sentiment that added sustained fuel to the cause. He also unravels the complicated politics of the era, providing insight into why the Eighteenth Amendment was pushed through and how it was eventually repealed. After Prohibition went into effect, in 1920, the course of American life and culture was profoundly altered in both large and small ways. Everyone knows about the rise of the gangster era, but what is less well documented are the reactions and the responses of ordinary American citizens. Okrent asks and answers some important questions in this fascinating exploration of a failed social experiment." (Booklist Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

Empire Of The Summer Moon

By S.C. Gwynne
"An appropriately fast-paced life of Comanche leader Quanah Parker and his band, the last Native free riders on the plains.Former Time editor and correspondent Gwynne (The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI, 1993, etc.) approaches Parker's life as news, opening with an intriguing gambit—namely, that Parker, who died in 1911, had an Anglo mother who, as he said, "love Indian and wild life so well, no want to go back to white folks." Where his mixed blood might have been a demerit in other Indian groups—and certainly in white society of the time—Parker rose quickly to the leadership of the Quahadi band of Comanches as a young man of perhaps only 20. As Gwynne notes, the Comanches kept the Spanish empire from spreading onto the plains beyond Texas, making even the Apaches farther west seem a mild threat by comparison. The Quahadi band, whom he characterizes as "magnificently aloof," were the toughest of the lot. When Americans entered the picture in the 1830s and beyond, the Quahadis fought them so hard that by the 1870s whole counties formerly settled by Texas ranchers and farmers were depopulated. Parker's tough leadership eventually proved no match for the combined weight of Texas Rangers, the U.S. Army and other heavily armed enemies, who finally broke the Quahadi resistance after removing other Comanche bands to reservations and reducing their number to no more than 2,000. After surrender, Parker continued to insist on preserving Comanche ways, particularly an illegal peyote cult. Gwynne considers Parker alongside Geronimo, the better-known Apache leader, and finds the latter wanting in the comparison. Parker remained a leader of his people to the end, writes the author, one who "looked resolutely forward toward something better" rather than surrendering to embitterment or allowing himself to be put on display as a wild Indian now tamed. "I no monkey," he insisted.A welcome contribution to the history of Texas, Westward expansion and Native America."  (Publisher Description)  Check Our Catalog

Supreme Power; Franklin Roosevelt VS. The Supreme Court By Jeff Shesol

By Jeff Shesol
"Among the governmental principles US citizens cherish most is the separation of powers, a potent assurance against centralized power. Of the three branches, the Supreme Court enjoys the utmost public respect because it is the final arbiter of the Constitution; therefore, Americans are leery of any inappropriate influence. In 1937, the Court withstood an overt challenge to its independence when Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced a measure to expand its membership merely to uphold his New Deal measures. Forced into a constitutional melee, the Court, led by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, accepted the challenge with aplomb. The bench ultimately emerged victorious through a deft combination of intellectual and political shrewdness. Shesol (American studies, Princeton) skillfully and adroitly chronicles events with an incisive attention to detail and an acute literary focus on the "story" without compromising either abstract ideas of constitutional law or political maneuvering. Commendably, the narrative is not a morality play; in this study, the characters make their cases, and readers make the final judgments. This rare volume, appropriate for both academic and public audiences, seamlessly merges scholarly history with unforced readability."   (Choice Reviews)  (Check Our Catalog)

The Sound Of A Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Bailey

By Elisabeth Bailey

"At age 34, Bailey was stricken with a mysterious virus while on a trip to Europe. Her healthy life had been full of activity, and now just the thought of getting up to get something was exhaustive. When a friend found some violets and brought her one in a pot, she also added a live snail below the violet's leaves. Bailey wondered why she needed a snail, but after square holes began to appear in a letter propped on the violet's pot, it occurred to Bailey that the snail needed food. She put a withered flower in the saucer below, and when the snail began to eat, Bailey realized that she could hear it eating—it was the sound of someone very small munching on celery. Soon the author realized she was attached, the snail providing an oasis of calm for her frantic and frustrated thoughts. She worried that the snail's world was too artificial, so her caregiver created a woodland terrarium. Not only did the snail have a new home but Bailey had a new game: hide-and-seek with a snail. She began to read about snails, learning from scientists, early naturalists, poets, and writers, and found herself beginning to understand a snail's world. And when her snail began to lay eggs, Bailey discovered that she might be the first person to record observations of a snail tending its eggs. This beautiful little book will not only make snail lovers of its readers, it will make them appreciate the small things in life"  (Booklist Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

Cleopatra: A Life

By Stacy Schiff
"Pulitzer Prize-winning author Schiff (Véra [Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov]) offers another fine biography here. Though few reliable records remain regarding the Egyptian queen, this book peels back the layers of mystery surrounding Cleopatra and attempts to reveal a legend in her own time. While Schiff takes a few liberties by ascribing emotion to her subject, she demonstrates an immense amount of research. Her narrative does not so much bring forward anything new about Cleopatra as it presents her to the contemporary reader in a more accessible and, indeed, engrossing way. The results complement Diana Preston's Cleopatra and Antony: Power, Love, and Politics in the Ancient World, which examined the reality behind the first "celebrity couple," also with an eye to contemporary readers. VERDICT With her new book, Schiff showcases her skill at capturing a life. Her prose is elegant but easy to read and briskly paced. In spite of extensive research, Schiff's projection of emotions and motivations onto her subject tilts the results more toward pop history than real scholarship. Undergraduates, lovers of biography or ancient history, and those seeking an introduction to Cleopatra will delight in this take on the near-mythical last queen of Egypt."  (Publisher Description)  Check Our Catalog

The Possessed; Adventures With Russian Books And The People Who Read Them

By Elif Batuman
"Can the practice of literary scholarship and the art of literary criticism generate true tales of hilarity, pathos, and revelation? Yes, if you're Batuman, a writer of extraordinary verve and acumen who braids together academic adventures, travelogues, biography, and autobiography to create scintillating essays. A self-described "six-foot-tall first-generation Turkish woman" who grew up in New Jersey, Batuman became enthralled by the great Russian writers, studied Russian, and, after some rough spots, embraced the study of literature as her life calling. Precision is Batuman's path to both humor and intensity, whether she's writing about her fellow comparative-lit grad students at Stanford, "magic" library moments (such as discovering a link between Isaac Babel and King Kong), antic miscommunications at international literary conferences, a visit to St. Petersburg's ice palace, and, in several piquant installments, her strange summer in Samarkand, studying the Uzbek language and literature. Candid and reflective, mischievous and erudite, Batuman writes nimble and passionate essays celebrating the invaluable and pleasurable ways literature can "increase the sum total of human understanding." (Booklist Reviews)  Check Our Catalog