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Giant Waves (06/11)
Giant waves were once the stuff of nautical tall tales, filed alongside stories of mermaids and giant squid, but today we know better.
The force of waves is hard to comprehend. According to The Wave, an 18 inch wave can topple a wall built to withstand 125-mph winds; a breaking 100-foot wave packs 100 tons of force per square ...
Books about Midwives and Midwifery (06/11)
Blessing becomes her grandmother's apprentice midwife in Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, becoming part of a long and proud historical tradition in her family, and in the human family.
The word 'midwife,' is from Old English midwif, meaning 'with woman', which frames the idea of midwifery - to be with a woman during the birthing ...
An Interview with Goldie Goldbloom (06/11)
Australian author Goldie Goldbloom discusses her debut novel,
The Paperbark Shoe, with Lisa Guidarini. The following are selected excerpts from the
full interview.
You chose to set the book in your native Australia. Do you believe it would have been as effective if the setting had been, say, the 1930s Dust Bowl in the United States, ...
A Beginner's Guide to Hip-hop (05/11)
Hip hop, as a cultural movement, had its origins in the New York City Bronx in the 1970s, mostly among African Americans, with some Jamaican and Latin American influences.
Keith 'Cowboy' Wiggins (of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five) is often credited with coining the term hip hop in 1978 while teasing a friend who had just...
The Caribou (05/11)
Although Donald's growing suspicions about Hans Mohring and other Europeans cross the line into obsession, some American readers may be surprised to learn just how active German U-boats were in Canadian waters during World War II. (U-boat is the anglicized version of unterseeboot, meaning undersea boat, i.e. a submarine).
During...
California Punk (05/11)
Although Jennifer Egan now lives in New York, she grew up in California, and her knowledge of the Bay Area/Los Angeles music scene gives the book a gritty authenticity, with references to bands rarely mentioned in the pages of literary fiction: the Dead Kennedys, the Nuns, Black Flag, the Avengers, the Germs, and Negative Trend are ...
Medgar Evers (05/11)
As Skeeter, Aibileen, and Minny begin their project, the Civil Rights Movement is boiling to high heat. It is 1963 and President Kennedy has just spoken out in support of Civil Rights; however, the message has yet to penetrate Mississippi where Medgar Evers was just brutally murdered by segregationist whites. This example of racial ...
The Equality Trust and Happiness (05/11)
Authors Wilkinson and Pickett work to enact the ideas they put forward in
The Spirit Level on their
Equality Trust website and its campaign for economic equality. Visit this site for blog entries and updates on their work.
Watch a video of Wilkinson and Pickett talking about the ideas in
The Spirit Level:
If money doesn't buy ...
Metafiction & Unreliable Narrators (05/11)
What is Metafiction?
It depends on whom you ask, as the term is somewhat slippery, meaning that various authors and literary critics define it differently. William H. Gass coined the term in 1970 in an essay entitled 'Philosophy and the Form of Fiction'. Commenting on American fiction of the 1960s, Gass pointed out that a new term ...
The Mummers of Newfoundland (04/11)
Two vivid and lively scenes in Galore reflect the occasion of mummers performing house-visits in the fictional outport community of Paradise Deep, Newfoundland. The practice of mumming (also known as mummering or janneying) in Newfoundland originated with the early immigrants from Ireland and the United Kingdom.
Mumming ...
Flotation Tanks (04/11)
'My head will keep on racing throughout this, I have no doubt,' declares the speaker at the beginning of 'Saturday Teatime' as she embarks on her first experience in the device known as a flotation tank, sensory deprivation tank, or isolation tank. And as she predicts, her thoughts do indeed surge in multiple directions, dredging up ...
E. O. Wilson, the Scientist (04/11)
One of the aspects that makes Anthill unique is author E. O. Wilson's long career in biology and entomology. Anthill merits recognition for its literary merits alone, but the author's unique qualifications for the novel's subject matter deserve attention as well.
E. O. Wilson's long career as a natural scientist began in the late ...
Just What Is a Poet Laureate? (04/11)
The United States Poet Laureate* is appointed annually by the Library of Congress, and is poetically described by the LOC as the 'official lightning rod for the poetic impulse of Americans.' (Personally, I like the very idea of a 'collective poetic impulse,' and find its acknowledgement and promotion by an institution of the federal ...
All About Jason Wallace (04/11)
Here is a short story about perseverance:
Out of Shadows was rejected by agents and editors one hundred times before Jason Wallace's current publishing house bought it. One hundred times. And it just won the very prestigious
Costa Children's Book of the Year Award (formerly the Whitbread Award). Thank goodness Jason didn't give up trying....
The Maine Warden Service (04/11)
'The woods. The state. Everything. More and more people keep coming up here, up to Maine, and they don't understand what's special about this place... They have these distorted ideas about nature... and I didn't want to live that way. I thought that if I joined the Warden Service maybe I wouldn't have to, and maybe I could help a few ...
221b Baker Street (04/11)
In
The Brothers of Baker Street, Reggie Heath's law office resides at 221b Baker Street, the same address as the fictional residence of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John H. Watson between 1881 and 1904, according to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. Today at that location, you will find the
Sherlock Holmes Museum, a non-profit organization ...
Pearl S. Buck (04/11)
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (born June 26, 1892 in Hillsboro, West Virginia) was an important and much lauded American writer, famous for her depictions of China and Chinese culture, which earned her a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for the novel
The Good Earth and the first Nobel Prize awarded to an American woman for Literature in 1938 'for her ...
The Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness (04/11)
Location is integral to Laura Bell's memoir; not only does the land around her serve as a subtle metaphor for her emotions, but it also gives her a complex and compelling backdrop for her narrative. Though Bell's memoir stretches across the state of Wyoming, the majority of her story is concentrated in and around the Absaroka-Beartooth ...
Peanuts and Anaphylaxis (04/11)
When asked in an interview if there was any particular event that inspired Mr. Peanut, Adam Ross responded that: 'In 1995, my father told me the strangest, most suspicious story about my cousin, who had severe peanut allergies and was also morbidly obese. According to her husband, he arrived home to find her sitting at the kitchen ...
Mesothelioma & Familial Dysautonomia (04/11)
Two devastating diseases precipitate the health care crises of So Much for That. Glynis develops mesothelioma, a type of invasive cancer that is associated with exposure to asbestos. This type of cancer typically starts in the lungs but can affect the entire mesothelium - the tissue that lines many internal organs. Not only is ...
Houdini and his Vanishing Elephant (04/11)
The magician in
The Magician's Elephant makes an elephant appear. But what about an elephant that
disappears?
In 1918, Houdini made an elephant vanish from the middle of the Hippodrome Theatre in New York before over 5000 pairs of eyes. Jennie was an 8 foot tall, 6,000 pound Asian elephant and when Houdini brought her onto the ...
The Real Bird Man (04/11)
Aeronautical engineer and inventor
Paul MacCready
(1925-2007) earned the title
'birdman' becoming internationally known in 1977 as the 'father of
human-powered flight' when his Gossamer Condor made the first sustained,
controlled flight by a heavier-than-air craft powered solely by its pilot's
muscles. For the feat he received...
Prime Numbers (04/11)
Prime numbers are apparently a big deal in the math world - a place I have visited but not inhabited often. Most of us probably remember that prime numbers are numbers only divisible by themselves and 1, but otherwise don't know (or care) much about them.
The ancient Greeks were the first to give serious study to prime numbers, as ...
The Rockefeller Institute & The History of Penicillin (04/11)
The Rockefeller Institute
The Rockefeller Institute features prominently in A Fierce Radiance. While Dr. James Stanton and the other researchers depicted in the novel are fictional, the Institute is a real place dedicated to biomedical research. It was founded in 1901 by John D. Rockefeller Sr., philanthropist and owner ...
Social Darwinism (04/11)
It may seem that the concept of globalization is a very new one, and that
the growth of free trade and its accompanying controversy belong to our era
alone. In fact, the 1860s saw an explosion of trade between nations, accompanied
by a doctrine of free markets unbridled by government intervention. Unlike
today, though, many of the...
Kodagu (04/11)
'Dizzying' and 'glorious' are the words Sarita Mandanna first uses to describe the Indian district that is her birthplace and the setting for Tiger Hills. Now known primarily as Kodagu rather than the anglicized name, 'Coorg,' used in the novel, the district has long been known, as Mandanna notes, as 'The Scotland of India' by the many ...
The Formation of The Red Cross (03/11)
A Memory of Solferino, by Henry Dunant appears over and over throughout The Surrendered. Sylvie acquired the book from her parents and brought it with her to the orphanage in Korea. She is pictured reading it many times and June eventually steals it from Sylvie. It is the impetus for June's final pilgrimage. Though it is out of print, A ...
HPV Vaccines (03/11)
Cervical cancer, the disease that killed Henrietta Lacks, strikes 11,000-13,000 women in the United States every year, killing 4,000. While the Pap smear (developed by Greek scientist Georgio Papanikolaou) remains the most widely used and effective method for detecting pre-cancerous cells on the cervix, a new vaccine protects women from ...
Paranormal Propagandist: Gray Barker (03/11)
West Virginia, the small American state best known for its 'Wild & Wonderful' motto, ravaged coal mines, and rich Appalachian history, might seem an unlikely birthplace for UFO phenomenology; after all, most people associate aliens and flying saucers with Roswell, New Mexico's otherworldly desert landscape. Without the pioneering West ...
Christine de Pizan (03/11)
Portrayed in The Queen's Lover as mentor to Catherine de Valois, Christine de Pizan was quite a woman! She was the first woman in France, possibly in Europe, to earn her living as a writer. Born in Venice in 1365, her family moved to Paris when she was about five when her father, Tomasso de Pizzano, was appointed as court ...
The Dutch East Indies Company vs. Sakoku (03/11)
There are two nations with two utterly incommensurate notions of power at loggerheads with each other in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.
On the one hand, the Netherlands is represented by the Dutch East Indies Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC in Dutch), a government-chartered company founded in 1602 to ...
Artificial Photosynthesis (03/11)
Much of the science upon which Beard stakes his reputation (even though he may have gleaned it unethically) deals with the concept of artificial photosynthesis, a real proposed solution to energy consumption problems, one that Beard himself explains eloquently and convincingly in a speech to a group of businesspeople and investors. ...
The Winds of the Pyrenees Orientales (03/11)
'The Pyrenees-Orientales is the Command Center of winds. Here they all congregate, quarrel, barter and rule. There are said to be 119 different winds in the Pyrenees-Orientales. (If you could sell wind we'd be rich, people used to say in the days before the foothills got sown with rows of gigantic new turbines, without...
It's All Relative (03/11)
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is, at its heart, about frames of reference. If I were in a dark, windowless train with no bumps that was going in one direction at a constant speed, then I would think I was standing still, but my sister on the train platform would see me speeding away from her. According to Einstein, if I then looked...
Giordano Bruno (03/11)
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was an Italian Dominican priest, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. After studying for several years in Naples, he entered the Order of St. Dominic at the age of 15, and was ordained priest in 1572. He was known for his belief in the infinite nature of the universe, identifying the Earth's sun as just ...
R. Buckminster Fuller: Inventor, Architect, Futurist (03/11)
If you're not already familiar with the wildly eccentric personality of R. Buckminster Fuller when you read The House of Tomorrow, you might be tempted to think that he is a fictional character. However, Richard Buckminster Fuller was, indeed, very real. Born in 1895 in Milton, Massachusetts into the New England tradition of ...
Runaways (03/11)
Nobody knows why Nora Lindell, the main character of Pittard's novel, went missing 30 years ago, but one theory is that she ran away.
Below is some information on modern-day runaways:
Runaways vs throwaways
A runaway episode is either when a child leaves home without permission and stays away overnight; or a child who is ...
Slave Castles & Synthethesia (03/11)
Slave Castles
A pivotal scene in
Amaryllis in Blueberry occurs when the Slepy family visits one of West Africa's slave castles. Though the slave castle in the story isn't mentioned by name, research will lead you to the
Elmina and the Cape Coast region located on the coast of
Ghana.
Castles were constructed along the coveted ...
The Inevitable (02/11)
If the subject of the Inevitable piques your interest, may we suggest...
If you're looking for funeral fiction, William Faulkner's
As I Lay Dying is the king of the canon. Its curious style creates a moving portrait of the Bundren Family attempting to bury its matriarch Addie Bundren. With almost sixty chapters and fifteen narrators, ...
Is Perpetual Motion Just a "Dream?" (02/11)
In The Dream of Perpetual Motion, Prospero claims to have created a perpetual motion engine that can run his Zeppelin indefinitely; supposedly, it will never run out of energy, and will never need a new influx of energy. Is that possible in the real world? According to scientists, no. That doesn't mean that mankind hasn't tried to produce...
The Blitz (02/11)
Following Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. After Poland and France surrendered, German intelligence sources believed that the British, too, were close to capitulation after their retreat from Dunkirk in battle between the Allies and Germany, and that a strategy similar to the...
Monument Rocks (02/11)
Nancy Pickard says that the fictional Testament Rocks in The Scent of Rain and Thunder are based on Monument Rocks located in Gove County, Kansas, a few hundred miles west of her home in Merriam, close to Kansas City.
Set in the high plains, Gove County is cut through from west to east by a deep valley caused by the Smoky Hill River,...
The Appalachian Region (02/11)
According to the
Appalachian Regional Commission, the Appalachian Region stretches along the Appalachian Mountain range from Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi up through parts of Pennsylvania and New York (see map below left). When most people refer to Appalachia, however, they are referring to the central (Virginia, West Virginia, and ...
Churchill's Black Dog (02/11)
Winston Churchill (1874-1965), the famous British prime minister who told Hitler "we shall never surrender" during World War II, was not the first to describe depression as a "black dog." The Oxford English Dictionary cites earlier uses of the phrase in literature and in nursery lore; for example, a sullen child was ...
The Norbulingka and Potala Palaces (02/11)
Until he was forced into exile in 1959, the Dalai Lama lived and studied in two magnificent palaces in Lhasa that housed the historical and religious treasures of his nation.
The buildings and gardens of the Norbulingka (the Summer Palace) cover over 89 acres and were at the heart of the 1959 uprising described in Talty's ...
Death Row Syndrome (02/11)
According to
Amnesty International's 2009 report, the USA's 37 legal executions in 2008 placed it fourth in the world after China (1718), Iran (346) and Saudi Arabia (102). However, this ranking needs to be taken with a pinch of salt as it does not adjust for population size; and does not take into account additional executions that may ...
Polar Bears (02/11)
In Village of the Ghost Bears, Trooper Nathan Active and his fellow law enforcement personnel must discuss the problem of polar bear poaching, because at least one of the suspects in the arson/murder has been involved in the illegal trade of selling polar bear gallbladders to China...
The Value of Bear Gallbladders
As the book ...
Baruch Spinoza (02/11)
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein received a PhD in Philosophy from Princeton University, has taught philosophy at Bernard College and written five previous philosophically motivated novels. Her most recent book of nonfiction is
Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity. Bertrand Russell considered Spinoza 'the noblest and most ...
Events That Precipitated the 2008 Recession (02/11)
Many of the reviews and articles about
Union Atlantic (like
this one) laud Adam Haslett for writing about the collapse of the financial markets before it happened. He handed his editor a first draft of the book the week that Lehman Brothers folded in 2008, one of the events that precipitated the current recession. But the book is set much...
