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William Mulholland and the St. Francis Dam (10/15)
'Self-taught civil engineers are probably as trustworthy as self-taught brain surgeons and self-taught airline pilots,' thinks Finn to himself in 100 Sideways Miles. He's thinking about William Mulholland, the engineer better known today as the namesake for Mulholland Drive, home to many famous actors and musicians and the inspiration for...
The Shame of the Fathers (10/15)
In A Killing in Zion, Salt Lake City deputy sheriff Art Oveson is charged with apprehending and arresting members of a Mormon fundamentalist sect who commit the crime of polygamy. But fealty to the law is only part of what drives this Mormon's professional zeal. In his more thoughtful moments Oveson has to admit to himself that he has a ...
Fifteenth Century: Dawn of the Age of Invention (10/15)
The Black Plague had claimed as much as two-thirds of Europe's population in the 14th Century. Life seemed fragile at best, and people who could write felt like it was important to get things down in black and white, to record their stories for posterity. Furthermore, the Church, the medieval everyman's raison d'etre, had pretty...
More Civil War Women Fighters (10/15)
In addition to the four women profiled by Karen Abbott in Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy, many others had well-documented military careers. Some of these famous female soldiers include:
Frances Clalin enlisted as Jack Williams. A Minnesota farmer's wife and mother of three, Clalin signed up to be with her husband, Elmer. Her fellow ...
Patrick Blanc And the Vertical Garden (10/15)
In the past twenty years, planted walls and vertical gardens, one of the many innovations showcased in
The Human Age, have gone from novelty to mainstream, as part of the
reconciliation ecology movement that is working to preserve or increase urban biodiversity. All around the world, vertical gardens are creating dynamic ecosystems that ...
Baltimore's Literary History (10/15)
'Baltimore is warm but pleasant...I belong here, where everything is civilized and gay and rotted and polite.'― F. Scott Fitzgerald
When one thinks of literature and American cities, Baltimore may not immediately come to mind. While 'Charm City' might not have the apparent prestige of San Francisco or New York, Baltimore's ...
Pele, Fire Goddess Of Hawaii (09/15)
In The Islands at the End of the World, Leilani's grandfather tells her, 'Pele's your guardian spirit, yeah? Goddess of lightning.' Leilani, who suffers from epilepsy, replies, 'Yeah. Goddess of the lightning in my head.'
Pele (pronounced 'pell-ay') is the fire goddess of Hawaii, and is powerful and even destructive. According to ...
What's In a (House) Name? (09/15)
Even in the 21st Century, to send a letter to the Queen of England one's envelope might be addressed simply: Her Majesty The Queen. Buckingham Palace. London. No street address or postcode is necessary. Her royal home has a name. As such it follows an ancient and still-popular British custom; naming one's house. While numbered ...
Boarding Schools in the UK (09/15)
The Secret Place is set on the grounds of an Irish boarding school, an educational institution where children live on campus while they attend classes.
Boarding schools have a rich history in Ireland and neighboring UK (The Republic of Ireland was part of the UK through the 19th century and up to 1922).
It is believed The ...
Reducing the Use of Chimpanzees as Research Subjects (09/15)
Since the amount of shared genes between humans and non-human primates such as chimps is significant, the animals were once considered valuable test subjects in cutting-edge clinical studies. Essentially, because of this gene overlap, a trial medicine can be tested on a chimp and its subsequent effects used as a reliable signifier of that...
Konrad Adenauer (09/15)
We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon.
Amanda Eyre Ward's novel The Same Sky takes its title from this quote, which is attributed to Konrad Adenauer, who was the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949-1966. Who was this charismatic leader?
Konrad Adenauer was born in Cologne, Germany...
Second-Wave Feminism (09/15)
In the early 20th century several strides were made for the advancement of women, including the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. These victories were associated with what is commonly referred to as the first wave of feminism. After World War II, however, feminist causes waned, and by the 1950s the image of the...
The Hỏa Lò Prison (09/15)
Who would have ever guessed that Hỏa Lò, the notorious Vietnamese prison compound derisively dubbed the 'Hanoi Hilton' would become a tourist attraction? But that's what's happened, and the ironic, even troubling transition from a place of torture to a ticket-selling tourist trap provides the backdrop for David Freed's mystery ...
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (09/15)
All My Puny Sorrows takes its title from a line in a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834), who is considered by many to be the founder of the Romantic Movement in poetry. He is most famous for the poems Kubla Khan and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Both his works and his literary criticism had huge influences on poets ...
Monks and Wine in Burgundy (09/15)
In Shadows In the Vineyard, we learn how strong a factor the concept of terroir is in winemaking. 'It's the sum of the natural characteristics unique to each parcel or climat of vines: the amount of sunlight and rain an area receives, the pitch and composition of its earth, and, of course, the vines,' writes Maximillian Potter. Terroir ...
The Great Escape (09/15)
Zero Night relates the story of 'The Warburg Wire Job,' one of several mass escapes from German POW camps during World War II, the most well-known of which was 'The Great Escape' from Stalag Luft III on 24-25 March 1944, made famous by the 1963 movie of the same name.
Stalag Luft III was a large prisoner-of-war camp opened in April ...
A Brief History of the U.S. Virgin Islands (09/15)
Land of Love and Drowning opens in the early 1900s when the Virgin Islands were still under the control of Denmark. European powers, namely France, Denmark, and England, had taken an interest in the Virgin Islands since the early 1600s. Denmark settled St. John and St. Thomas by the mid-1600s, and purchased St. Croix from the French in ...
Phineas T. Barnum (09/15)
In 1843 in Bridgeport Connecticut, P.T. Barnum hired Charles Stratton, then aged five, to work in his American Museum. In New York, described as 'just arrived from England,' Charlie became an eleven-year old named Tom Thumb, and soon thrilled the viewing public with his impressions of Napoleon Bonaparte. Of these deceptions, Barnum wrote ...
Asperger Syndrome (09/15)
The star of Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Effect, Don Tillman, is a unique character to say the least. His awkwardness in social settings, his overly logical and mathematical mind, his knack for offending people with blunt truths, and his tendency to obsess over the details of Rosie's pregnancy all combine to create a charming and ...
Michelangelo and Six of His Greatest Works (09/15)
During his long life Michelangelo created numerous great works of art. Six are particularly renowned and are located either in Rome or Florence. In his book Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces, Miles J. Unger examines the artist through these monumental works. The following offers a condensed history and description of each.
Piet&...
Syrian Refugees (09/15)
Unlike Laila, who is a member of the ruling family of her Middle Eastern country, most child refugees don't have the luxury of fleeing to a more hospitable country when their own plunges into war. While The Tyrant's Daughter is set in an unknown Middle-Eastern country probably closer to Iraq than Syria, the plight of the refugees in Syria...
The Asian Elephant (09/15)
As Lakshmi recounts her history in India, we learn that she considers one of her best friends to be an elephant, Mithai (which means 'sweets' or 'dessert'). Her youthful courage in defending Mithai foreshadows her later courage in dealing with the greater complexities of adulthood.
Asian elephants are perhaps not as well known in the ...
Hurricane Katrina and the Danziger Bridge Incident (09/15)
After Hurricane Katrina hit and the levees failed, approximately 80% of New Orleans was under water. Sewage was everywhere, swollen dead bodies floated in the water and lined the streets, the heat was stifling, and – after a few days – it became clear that help was in no hurry to get there. Out of desperation to find food, water...
Martin Amis – Bad Boy of English Letters? (08/15)
The road to publication for Martin Amis' latest novel,
The Zone of Interest, has been less smooth than might be imagined, given that Amis is one of the stars of the British literary firmament.
The New York Times reported that in France and Germany, Amis' longtime publishers rejected it on the grounds, in France, that its humor is puzzling...
The History of Ice Cream (08/15)
A year ago, the big hullabaloo among residents in my city of Henderson, Nevada was the arrival of Blue Bell Ice Cream from Texas. It is a godsend for the Texans who live here, and a curiosity for the rest of us. Beforehand, supermarkets like WinCo had signs announcing it was coming. The anticipation would not, could not, melt. And then, ...
Farm Life in Iowa in the first half of the 20th Century (08/15)
Michelle Hoover's
The Quickening covers roughly the same timeframe and space as Jane Smiley's
Some Luck: from the beginning of World War I (rather than its end in Smiley's novel) to 1950, on neighboring farms in the upper Midwest. Hoover, the granddaughter of four farming families, grew up in Ames, Iowa – where Smiley...
Off-the-Grid Living (08/15)
In California, Frida and Cal Friedman are forced to live off the land without electricity or running water, growing the food they eat. While the couple has no choice but to adopt such a lifestyle, off-the-grid living has been gaining traction in contemporary society. Traditionally, the term refers to living without public utilities, ...
Ping Pong Diplomacy (08/15)
In A Map of Betrayal, Gary Shang is always looking for ways to bring the two countries he loves, China and the United States, together. He claims to be one of the prime drivers for a coup that has come to be called Ping Pong diplomacy, a series of table tennis (ping pong) games between the two countries that signaled a thaw in relations. ...
Muslim Women's Dress Styles (08/15)
The Underground Girls of Kabul explores the custom of bacha posh where girls are dressed as boys and pass off as sons in families. While, by definition, the bacha posh wear male clothing, I thought this would be a good opportunity to explore the various items of Muslim women's attire as I suspect that, like myself, many readers will be ...
Life In Red: Russia in the 1920s (08/15)
Austin Voronkov, the protagonist of Vanessa Mankov's The Invention of Exile, spends two years in the Soviet Union with his American wife, Julia: from 1920 to 1922. This timeframe is part of a difficult period in Russian history, the 1917-1922 civil war between the Bolshevik Red Army and the White Army. This period is rendered with...
A Note to Damien Lewis (08/15)
The world could use a lot more of your stories of miraculous dogs of war. Below, you'll find two other dogs, equally as brave as Antis in The Dog Who Could Fly, who I hope will spark your interest. The sooner, the better.
First, there is Sallie Ann Jarrett, believed to be a bulldog or bull terrier, taken in by the Eleventh Regiment of ...
Chromesthesia (07/15)
Synesthesia, which manifests in many different forms, is a condition where two or more senses intertwine. For example, Thanial, one of the main characters in The Watchmaker Of Filigree Street, 'sees' music. For him, notes, voices and other sounds are perceived as specific colors. He has chromesthesia, a form of synesthesia where a person ...
The Winter Palace (07/15)
From 1711 until 1917, the Winter Palace was the home to Russian Tsars, Tsarinas and their families. The need for fortified residences was lessening in the 18th century, and the palaces reflected this shift. Three distinct Winter Palaces were built, torn down and rebuilt until 1754 when the fourth and final palace was created for Empress ...
Communicating With the Deafblind (07/15)
Deafblindness is either congenital (present from birth) or acquired later in life. It can be attributed to many causes including rubella, glaucoma, cataracts, diabetic retinopathy, and premature birth. Deafblindness is not one monolithic condition; it varies in severity or completeness: some people maintain limited use of one or both ...
Quilting a Fictional Character from Real People (07/15)
Any Jew or Israeli reading this book will recognize much of the famous Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky in Baruch Kotler. This was apparently Bezmozgis' intention, and he drew on Sharansky's extremely vocal and high profile opposition to Israel's 2005 unilateral pullout from the Gaza Strip, including his resignation from the Knesset (the ...
Michel Faber (07/15)
Michel Faber is considered Dutch in the Netherlands, which is where he was born; Australian in Australia, because he lived there for so long; and Scottish in Scotland, where he emigrated with his wife and family in 2003. To say this award-winning writer is revered is an understatement.
Born in 1960 in The Hague, Faber studied Dutch, ...
Joy Division and Ian Curtis (07/15)
The pairing of Ghost Month, a mesmerizing mystery set in contemporary Taiwan, with an introduction to the resolutely non-mainstream late seventies, post-punk English band Joy Division might seem unusual. However, Joy Division's gloomy, abjective music forms the weft interlaced throughout Ed Lin's fine novel. Despondent protagonist ...
Blizzard Survival Stories (07/15)
The weather and complications of a blizzard are intense and all-encompassing. Besides the potential for devastating winds and dangerously low temperatures, the overwhelming amounts of snow impede both visibility and access to travel. The results can be extensive and long-lasting. It can take days to weeks for roads to be cleared, and ...
Calamity Jane (07/15)
Few figures encapsulate the myth-making impulse of The Wild West better than Calamity Jane, whose appearance in Joe Lansdale's Paradise Sky is just the latest in a century-long fascination with this shadowy woman on the fringes of western heroics.
According to Calamity Jane – whose real name was Martha Jane Cannary – she ...
Brando Skyhorse's Unusual Name (07/15)
Brando Skyhorse, author of the memoir Take This Man, has been known by many names. A mistake in his first name meant that his birth certificate read 'Brandon Ulloa' (the last name was his real father's) — but his mother, Maria, had it officially changed three months later to 'Brando,' as she had always intended. Later he was known ...
The Cathars (07/15)
In the fight between the Atemporals and the Anchorites, The Bone Clocks frequently references the Cathars.
The Cathars were members of a religious sect of Christianity that flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries in southern France and northern Italy. They believed in a dualistic theory of religion, with good and evil on opposing ...
Tim Winton (07/15)
Tim Winton, the author of
Eyrie, is that rare thing: a literary best-selling writer. While most American readers might still be getting to know this prolific author, he is as close to a national monument as person can get in his native Australia.
Born in 1960, Winton started work on his first novel at the age of just 19 when he was ...
The Somali Civil War: A Brief Overview (07/15)
Nadifa Mohamed's latest novel is set at the birth of a new conflict for Somalia and runs right up to the present day. To understand the whys and wherefores of Somali lawlessness is to gain insight into one of the most treacherous parts of the world.
In 1991, the country's socialist dictator Mohammed Siad Barre was overthrown, ...
New Orleans' Spanish French Quarter (07/15)
Nestled on page 69 of Empire of Sin is a surprising blink-and-you-might-miss-it sentence in parentheses: 'Spain did, however, rebuild much of the central city after two devastating fires, which is why the architecture of the French Quarter is actually Spanish.'
In 1718, John Law, a Scottish financier who had established a private bank ...
Who Was Shakespeare's Dark Lady? (07/15)
Despite possibly being the most famous and applauded writer that has ever lived, very little about William Shakespeare is known for certain. There are few contemporary accounts and the portraits that are generally held to be of him were all painted long after his death. His name is spelled differently in the few copies of his signature ...
The Extraordinary Brain of Henry Molaison (07/15)
One of the many stories from the history of research into memory and learning related by Benjamin Carey in How We Learn is the story of a man known to science and the world until his death in 2008 only by his initials, H.M.
When Henry Molaison of Hartford Connecticut, born in 1926, was 27 years old, he agreed to undergo brain ...
The Grand Tour (07/15)
In David Nicholls' novel, Us, a couple sets out to show their son Europe as a parting gift before he heads to college. It's to be a Grand Tour, the mother tells her son, 'to prepare you for the adult world, like in the eighteenth century.' She explains that it was 'traditional for young men of a certain class and age to embark on a ...
What Is a Stone Mattress? (07/15)
A 'stone mattress' in the titular tale of this short story collection serves as a painful reminder of past events. It is also Margaret Atwood's nickname for fascinating geological formations called stromatolites.
Stromatolites (from the Greek 'stroma' = mattress/layer and 'lithos' = stone) are most easily described as living ...
Diving into the Spy's Psyche (07/15)
Inasmuch as most of the spies that have been interviewed, researched, quantified and statistically charted are those that have been caught, perhaps the psyche of a good spy is as elusive as spies themselves. Not to mention the fact that a 'good spy' is not so easily defined. There are many types of spies and many reasons for becoming one....
