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The 1972 Democratic Nomination (05/09)
Senator Henry Bonwiller, the presidential candidate to whom Liam Metarey acts
as closest advisor, is fictional, but the rest of the details of the 1972
Democratic nomination battle are true.
The field was crowded with men—and two women—vying to challenge President
Nixon's re-election effort. Nixon was seen as ...
The Bedouin of Saudi Arabia (05/09)
Once the undisputed masters of the desert,
Bedouin tribes have diminished over the last couple of
centuries – mostly due to governments intent on taxation and
political control – to become only about 10% of today's
Saudi population. They are still a distinct sect and
although Nayir al-...
The Victorian Era (05/09)
Each of Margot Livesey's four key characters relates to a specific author: John Keats, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf.
Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) and Charles Dickens were both prominent Victorians, the term used to describe people, things and events during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). A great source ...
Vergil (05/09)
History records that Publius Vergilius Maro, better known as Vergil (or
Virgil), was born in 70 BCE. Scholars argue about his place of birth and
his early education, but legend has it that he was born the son of a farmer in Northern Italy, which
was then known as Cisalpine Gaul ('Gaul, on this side of the Alps').
Despite a ...
Capgras Syndrome (05/09)
The idea of simulacrum, or impostors, has long been a subject of fascination in
fiction, and Capgras syndrome, or variations on its symptoms, often crop up in
short stories and novels. Most recently,
The Echo Maker by Richard Powers revolves around a character who suffers from Capgras syndrome after he suffers a head injury in a ...
A Short History of the Channel Islands, including Guernsey (05/09)
The Channel Islands are a group of islands approximately 30 miles off the coast of Normandy, France (
map).
They are organized into two bailiwicks: The Bailiwick of
Guernsey (made of up of the islands of Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, Herm, Jethou, Brecqhou and Lihou), and the Bailiwick of Jersey (containing the island of Jersey and a few ...
Donating Dresses (05/09)
Lucky's cover features a lime-green dream dress that
Phoebe plans to wear to her over-the-top 8
th grade graduation party.
That beautiful dress, the way it makes Phoebe feel when she tries it on, and the
way it makes her feel when she realizes that her parents can no longer afford
to buy it for her, embodies Phoebe's expectations ...
The Second Sino-Japanese War (05/09)
Joseph Needham's travels in China took place during the latter half of the
conflict known as the Second Sino-Japanese War - the largest war to take
place in Asia during the 20
th century (
map
of Asia).
The seeds of the conflict were sown during the First Sino-Japanese War
(1894-1895), at the end of which China ceded Taiwan and ...
The Slow Food Movement (05/09)
The Slow
Food movement began in Italy as a thoughtful protest against the arrival of American fast food in Rome in the 1980's. Seeking to promote an alternative to the Western diet and way of eating, eating slowly in the Slow Food sense means to eat with a full understanding and appreciation of every single step involved in bringing ...
The Fisher House Program (05/09)
War veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are coming back with injuries that would have been fatal a few years ago. Medical advances mean that more young men and women are returning home with serious brain injuries and requiring artificial limbs. These vets need long periods of rehabilitation. To assist them and their families, the...
Five Notable Pakistani Authors (05/09)
While Indian authors have been the darlings of the literary world for the
past couple of decades, Pakistani novelists writing in English have remained in
the shadows -- but no longer. Even as their country sinks into violence, a growing
number of novelists are winning acclaim around the world. Here are five
Pakistani authors ...
Aleksandar Hemon (05/09)
Aleksandar Hemon's extraordinary life story is more than simply fodder for
book publicists. It informs everything he has written, for his work is
restlessly autobiographical, infused with the urgency of thinking through his
life on paper.
In 1992, Hemon was a young Bosnian writer, just two years out of the
University of ...
The Siege of Leningrad (04/09)
The Siege of Leningrad (September 1941 - January 1944) was one of the longest and most destructive in modern history - spanning 900 days and four Russian winters. Though the actual civilian death toll can never be known it is estimated that well over 600,000 of the approximate 3 million population died, with some estimating the death toll...
Little Known Facts About Robert Frost (04/09)
By the end of his long life, Robert Frost was the éminence grise of American letters, a man whose legend preceded him and who often collaborated in promulgating that legend. Yet Brian Hall depicts a Robert Frost who is distinctly more complex than the one most of us encountered in high school, that 'simple rustic,' that plain-spoken ...
Bosnia and the Siege of Sarajevo (04/09)
The 20th century was an intensely bloody time for the Balkan region (20th century timeline & maps) as it emerged from centuries of control by the Ottoman Empire, and briefer control by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, that triggered World War I, took place on the Latin Bridge (also known as the Princip...
Sindoor and Arranged Marriages (04/09)
With supreme and economical skill, Jhumpa Lahiri uses only a few cultural signifiers to situate her characters in space and time. Almost all of the mothers in her stories, the women from the older generation who emigrate from India to the United States with their husbands, wear vermilion powder in their hair. Called sindoor, this powder ...
The Chacapoyas (04/09)
Jackson's search for La Joya (pronounced la hoi-ya) is a search any of us could embark on, but we might find it more expedient to visit one of the easier to locate
Chachapoya sites. The Chachapoyas, the Warriors of the Clouds, lived in the Andes in what is now Northern Peru - and La Joya, one of many ruined Chachapoyan cities, can ...
Sex Abuse and the Catholic Church (04/09)
The tide of sexual abuse cases against Catholic Church officials took its toll on
William Lobdell, causing him to abandon his faith altogether. Surprisingly,
however, this may not be a widespread effect. According to a
recent survey,
while membership in most religious groups has fallen during the last two
decades,
the Catholic...
Surrey (04/09)
The landscape in which
The Outcast is set plays a large role in the overall feel of the novel. Much of the story takes place in the county of
Surrey, just south of London. Most of Surrey lies in the 'Green Belt' (a ring of rural land around London protected from excess development), making it a popular place of residence for ...
Alzheimer's Disease (04/09)
First described by German psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer in 1906, Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia. It is a progressive brain disorder in which the nerve cells in the brain gradually die off. It afflicts an estimated 26 million people world-wide, and of those, approximately 4.5 million live in the United States. ...
The Chindits (04/09)
Major General Orde Charles Wingate was a controversial figure in the British
military during WWII. He was abrasive and opinionated, with ideas about warfare
that struck those around him as either idiotic or sheer genius. Many of his
superiors were impressed by him; others thought him a madman.
Wingate was born in India in 1903. ...
Industrial Disasters: the Chemical Leak in Bhopal (04/09)
Bhopal (
map) is the capital of Madhya Pradesh in central India. The violent impact of the tremendous chemical leak described in
Animal's People is based on the real life chemical leak in Bhopal in 1984, which is considered to be one of the world's worst industrial disasters.
On the morning of December 3, 1984 a holding tank of stored ...
Conscientious Objectors during WWII (04/09)
'This is a war story. It was not meant to be. It started as a love story, the story of a marriage, but the war has stuck to everywhere like shattered glass. Not an ordinary story of men in battle, but of those who did not go to war. The cowards and shirkers; those who let an error keep them from their duty, those who saw it and hid, those...
Contemporary Slavery (04/09)
On October 28, 2000, President Clinton signed the Trafficking Victims
Protection Act into law. It charges the State Department to direct and sponsor
programs that combat slavery. It also is responsible for evaluating the
abolition efforts of any nation with more than 100 slaves.
One of the primary tools the State Department uses ...
Interesting Facts About Botswana (04/09)
Since independence in 1966, the former British Protectorate of Bechuanaland has transformed itself from one of the continent's poorest nations into one of its most prosperous. Botswana (
map) has vast diamond wealth which has underpinned this boom (Jwaneng, the world's largest and richest diamond mine, was discovered when termites looking ...
Wolves as Totems (04/09)
Although many in the USA will associate totems - objects, animals or plants revered as a symbol of a tribe and often used in rituals - with Native Americans, totems are found in many cultures throughout the world, tracing far back into prehistory. Google the word and you'll find websites such as
animaltotem.com, devoted to helping one find...
The British Class System (03/09)
As mentioned in the notes at the end of
The House at Riverton, author
Kate Morton is fascinated with the whole concept of nobility and servant classes. I think many people who aren't familiar with such a strict class system, notably Americans and Australians like Morton, are also intrigued by the thought that there could have been a whole...
World War II at the Movies (03/09)
Alfred Day's attempt to face the disillusionment of war on a film set is similar to what society at the time was doing at the movie theaters. The massive movie hits of the 40s and 50s, like
To Hell and Back, allowed moviegoers on both sides of the Atlantic to relive moments of the war, if they had been directly involved, or to understand ...
The AMBER Alert Program (03/09)
The
AMBER
Alert Program is a voluntary partnership between law-enforcement agencies,
broadcasters, transportation agencies, and the wireless industry, to activate an
urgent bulletin in the most serious child-abduction cases. The goal of an AMBER
Alert is to instantly galvanize the entire community to assist in the search for
and...
Beaufort Castle and the Four Mothers Movement (02/09)
Beaufort Castle, the setting for
Beaufort, sits on a high, rocky outcropping in southern Lebanon (
map). Known in Arabic as Shqif Arnun ('High Rock'), it soars 1000 meters (more than 3000 feet) above the Litani River Valley. Its commanding,
360-degree views have made it perfectly suited for a command post or lookout, and it has been used ...
Sign Language & Deaf Culture (02/09)
Hundreds of years of evolution have shaped American Sign Language (ASL), today the main sign language for deaf people in the U.S., parts of Canada and Mexico, and many other countries around the world. Derived in part from the personal hand signal repertoires of many deaf individuals, ASL has grown to become a fully functional language, a...
Ken Saro-Wiwa (02/09)
In his acknowledgments, Richard North Patterson confirms that
Eclipse is
loosely based on the life and death of Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995.
Ken Saro-Wiwa (1941-1995) was born Kenule Benson Tsaro-Wiwa in Bori, Rivers
State (a coastal state in the south of Nigeria,
map).
He was the son of Jim Beesom ...
Caravaggio (02/09)
A painting presumed to be by the 17
th century painter
Caravaggio is central to the plot of
The Garden of Evil. The work found (which is purely fictional) is purported to be the artist's copy of an actual oil by Annibale Carracci, entitled
Venus with a Satyr and Cupids.
Caravaggio is one of the most fascinating and influential ...
The Yasa of Genghis Khan (02/09)
As Genghis Khan consolidated the nomadic tribes of the Asian steppe, he realized that a consistent rule of law was necessary to maintain order. He accomplished this by creating his 'Yasa' (or 'Yassa'), a comprehensive set of rules governing nearly all aspects of Mongolian life and culture. The original
Yasa ('decree' or 'order') is ...
The Tiananmen Square Protests (02/09)
Beginning in mid-April, 1989, thousands of demonstrators anchored by a core
group of dissident university students occupied Beijing's Tiananmen Square. In
what has been described as the greatest challenge to the communist state in
China since its inception in 1949, tens of thousands soon joined in the peaceful
protest, angered by ...
Animal Behaviors in Grief and Mating (02/09)
There have been many observations of
elephants grieving. In Joyce Poole's
Coming of Age With Elephants, Poole illustrates the depth of elephant grieving. A clan of elephants was moving towards newer territory, when suddenly one of the elephants fell over. Soon enough the other elephants noticed that one of their ...
The British Resistance (02/09)
During WWII, Winston Churchill initiated the British Resistance Organization, or
Auxiliary Units, as preparation for the expected invasion of the British Isles
by Nazi Germany. In Owen Sheers's alternative history, the Nazis succeed, and
the insurgents mobilize at once. A highly secretive organization, the resistance
primarily ...
East Prussia (02/09)
The Central European region known as Prussia extended from the
south-eastern coast of the Baltic Sea to the
Masurian Lake District which is now divided between Poland, Russia, and
Lithuania. East Prussia was a province in the Eastern part of the region
which, along with the rest of Prussia, became part of the German Empire during...
A Plantagenet Primer (02/09)
Henry II
(1133-1189), the first Plantagenet* king, was born and brought up in France but lived
to rule England for 35 years. His name will always be tied obliquely to the
murder of Archbishop Thomas à Becket at Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, even
though he's often lauded as one of the most effective of all England's
monarchs...
The Black Panthers (01/09)
The author's father, Paul Coates, was a member of the
Black Panther Party. As Coates describes in his book, the Party's original
aims concerned self-defense and social justice. Bobby Seale and Huey Newton
founded the Party in 1966. Its diverse membership, however, made cohesion
difficult and produced geographically clustered ...
Quack Medicine (01/09)
In the nineteenth century, when even mainstream medical therapies included
painful bloodletting and leeching, quack* medicine didn't seem quite so quacky.
If you wanted your hair to grow, you could don a Thermocap to send just the
right amount of heat to your follicles. If your eyes were weak, you could apply
the Neu-Vita ...
Uncle Tom's Cabin, Absinthe & Brooklyn (01/09)
- Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe was the best-selling novel of the 19th century (and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible) and is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850's. In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States alone....
The Underground Railway Secret Code (01/09)
Quilts hung out in a rainstorm, barrels stacked in careful sequence, boats
tied to the dock with five knots facing one direction, songs of freedom and
warning, a blacksmith's hammer ringing out in an undetectable sequence; all are
evidence of the secret codes of the Underground Railroad: cryptic communications
used to facilitate ...
Akbar the Great (01/09)
Salman Rushdie did a tremendous amount of research before writing
The Enchantress of Florence, as evidenced by its six-page bibliography. Many of the characters are drawn from history, the most interesting and prominent being Akbar the Great.
As in the book, Akbar the Great was known to be a wise and benevolent ruler. He ruled the
Mughal ...
Literary Rats (01/09)
Though his book is wildly inventive, Savage is far from the first novelist to anthropomorphize a rat. Firmin stands out for presenting literature as sustenance for the body as well as the mind - as Firmin eats his way through the books, the thoughts, words and deeds contained consume him with intoxicating curiosity.
For every work of ...
Redactions in Modern Literature (01/09)
Though the memo at the end of the novel from the CIA Publications Review Board is addressed to the novel's protagonist, Mark Ruttenberg, thus revealing the redactions (blanked out text) as a fictional device to create an aura of authenticity, the noveldid actually pass by the PRB—six times. Weisberg preemptively redacted his own work...
All About Bananas (01/09)
Bananas may look like they grow on trees but in fact they grow on plants that are related to the lily and orchid family.
The term 'banana republic' was coined by American humorist and short story writer O. Henry, in reference to Honduras - 'republic' in his day being a common euphemism for a dictatorship.
On a number of occasions the term ...
The Roma People in Britain (11/08)
From the first page to the
last, Winspear sympathetically
portrays Maisie Dobb's
acceptance of and respect for
Roma people, and celebrates
their spirit. Sometimes referred
to pejoratively as 'gypsies' in
English speaking countries (a
...
