Monday, August 31, 2009

Books on Political Conspiracy

1. It Can't Happen Here. Sinclair Lewis. Doubleday, 1935

A charismatic Democratic senator who speaks in "noble but slippery ­abstractions" is elected president, in a groundswell of cultish adoration, by a nation on the brink of economic ­disaster. Promising to restore ­America's greatness, he promptly ­announces a government seizure of the big banks and insurance ­companies. He strong-arms the ­Congress into amending the Constitution to give him unlimited emergency powers. He throws his ­enemies into concentration camps. With scarcely any resistance, the country has ­become a fascist dictatorship. No black helicopters here, though. Sinclair Lewis's dystopian ­political satire, now largely forgotten except for its ironic title, was a ­mammoth best seller in 1935, during the depths of the ­Depression and the rise of fascism in Europe. His president, Berzelius ("Buzz") Windrip, is a ruthless phony with the "earthy sense of humor of a Mark Twain"; one of the few who dare oppose him openly is a rural ­newspaper editor who is forced to go on the run. Lewis's prose could be ­ungainly, but he captured with caustic humor the bumptious narrow- ­mindedness of small-town life.

2. The Ministry of Fear. Graham Greene. Viking, 1943

Set in London during the Blitz, "The Ministry of Fear"—the only novel Graham Greene wrote during the war years—opens with a ­now-familiar Hitchcockian gambit: An innocent man stumbles upon a secret and is marked for death. Arthur Rowe, a loner who has just been released from an insane asylum, wins a cake at a carnival by guessing its precise weight. Concealed in the cake is a spool of film intended for a Nazi spy. Rowe becomes the target of a ­shadowy international espionage ring bent on stealing vital British war plans. On this slim armature Greene constructs a richly atmospheric thriller, one of the classics of the genre. His prose is spare and elegant, his pacing masterly. The protagonist, haunted by a terrible crime in his past, loses his memory and comes to feel "directed, controlled, molded, by some agency with a surrealist imagination," pursued through a city where entire buildings can disappear overnight in a bombing raid.

Also made into a film starring Ray Milland and Marjorie Reynolds.









3. Libra. Don DeLillo. Viking, 1988

Don DeLillo, our poet of paranoia, here reimagines the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It's a conspiracy theory about ­conspiracy theories, about the ­powerful ­mythology of the greatest crime of the American century. DeLillo's ­language is dazzling as he presents an ingenious fusing of fact and fiction, theory and reality. A CIA operative ­devises an "electrifying event" that will force the invasion of Cuba. He ­enlists a pawn, Lee Harvey Oswald, to unwittingly carry out a "spectacular miss." But of course a perfect plan conceived by "men in small rooms" must self-destruct in the cold light of reality. This is a ­hallucinatory ­meditation on the ­seductiveness of conspiracy: strangely lyrical and fraught with steadily ­encroaching ­terror. Oswald, the ­puppet, is no more paranoid than his masters; the difference is that they realize that there is always "a world inside the world."

4. Advise and Consent. Allen Drury. Doubleday, 1959
A generation of political junkies got hooked on the ways of Washington because of this book, published 50 years ago. The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, "Advise and Consent" revealed the ­inner ­workings of the Senate—and ­offered compelling drama along the way. An ailing, manipulative, FDR-like president nominates as secretary of state an ­arrogant liberal intellectual and would-be Soviet appeaser, meant to evoke Alger Hiss. In the midst of his vicious confirmation battle, evidence emerges that he was once a member of a secret Communist cell. Allen Drury, who was a reporter in the New York Times's Washington bureau, is not exactly subtle about his politics: All of his bad guys are soft on ­Communism. The capital he depicts is a period piece: Senators all orate like William Jennings Bryan; socialite ­hostesses have boozy salons where senators get sloppy; a hint in a ­newspaper column can destroy a ­politician's career. But it's addictive reading and arguably still the best novel about Washington politics.

Made into a film with Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Don Murray, Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lawford, Gene Tierney, Franchot Tone, Lew Ayres, Burgess Meredith, Eddie Hodges.




5. The Matarese Circle. Robert Ludlum. Bantam, 1979

No one will ever call ­Robert Ludlum a great novelist or even a good writer of prose. But "The Matarese Circle," his best thriller, ­perfectly captured the paranoid ­suspicions of post-Watergate America. In Ludlum's cosmology, it's always a few brave individuals up against ­immense and yet somehow still ­unseen conspiracies. An ancient secret society of assassins-for-hire has been revived by a powerful organization that turns out to be controlling entire governments. Only two men can save the world: one a rogue agent in the CIA, the other in the KGB—sworn ­enemies forced to work together. Eventually they uncover a sinister plot involving a Kennedy-like family and an impostor who is on the verge of being elected to the White House. There is a classic scene in which our hero ­discovers who is in on the conspiracy and it turns out to be . . . everyone.


—Mr. Finder, a member of the ­Association of Former Intelligence Officers, is the author of nine ­novels, including "Paranoia" and "High Crimes." His suspense thriller "Vanished" has just been published by St. Martin's Press.

The Torching of Atlanta

A Currier and Ives depiction of Union troops as they took Atlanta on Sept. 2, 1864.



















Bonds, Russell S. (2009). War Like the Thunderbolt : The Battle and Burning of Atlanta. Westholme Pub Llc 2009















Wortman, Marc. (2009). The bonfire: the siege and burning of Atlanta. New York: PublicAffairs.

Friday, August 28, 2009

a taste of Paine

Who was Paine? Depending on whom you ask, he was ­either an uncompromising free-thinker who made possible the popular embrace of the ­Declaration of Independence, or "a filthy little atheist," as Teddy Roosevelt once ­described him. A seditious subject of the English crown or an honorary French citizen chucked in the Bastille. Or just a fiercely American idealist with too much interest in brandy and democracy and not enough in fashion or personal hygiene.

The painting, a bust circa 1792 by Laurent Dabos of Toulouse, seems to have been lost until only a few years ago, when it surfaced in England. It's a flattering portrait, but—not surprisingly, perhaps—on the back of the canvas an anonymous hand appears to have scribbled something of an insult to Paine.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Keen Eye, Staccato Brush

Slideshow


As he traveled through Italy, the painter focused on details of place, recording with bold strokes not only characteristic buildings or how the distinctive ruddy, lozenge-shaped sails of Venetian fishing boats punctuate an expanse of blue water, but also such specifics as the way Venetian women drape their shawls. His eye was equally acute for qualities of light, as he conjured up the subtleties of changing seasons, times of day and weather with a nuanced palette. In "Prendergast in Italy," the moist gray radiance of early spring in the Mediterranean is suggested in watercolors made during a trip south to escape the cold and damp of a Venetian winter, but mostly the sun shines, skies are dazzlingly blue, flags stir in gentle breezes and water sparkles in detached patterns of light and dark.

Even rain elicits delicious images. A shower provides shimmering reflections in the wet pavement of the Piazza San Marco: the basilica's complex façade, with its rows of stacked columns, lunettes and glittering mosaics, fuses with the figures milling in front of the splendid doors. A more ­determinedly rainy day offers an excuse to translate water and pavement, gondolas, and pedestrians huddled under black umbrellas into a tasty ­orchestration of beiges, grays and cool gray-blue. But we see far more parasols than umbrellas in Prendergast's ­Venice, bold spots of color that form a cheerful, tossing canopy above the throngs swarming over the arched bridges, all of it turned into rapid touches of ­unmodulated hues distilled from the sunlight reflected from the ­canals.

In my experience, Mexico offers as beautiful a landscape and rich an architectural heritage as Italy, but it has nothing to equal Venice. What country does? As far as I know, Venice is unique.

The fine selection in "Prendergast in Italy" draws upon the large collection given to Williams by the widow of the artist's brother and that of the show's joint organizer, the ­Chicago-based Terra Foundation for American Art. What's perhaps most remarkable about the exhibited works is that no matter how familiar or potentially "touristic" Prendergast's subjects, his images are never predictable or trite. However much a view of the Grand Canal resonates with our own experience of Venice, it engages us most deeply as a painting. "Prendergast in Italy" is worth a detour, as the Michelin guides say.


Williams College Museum of Art

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

New chapter in E-Book Readers

Sony Corp., hoping to steal some of Amazon.com Inc.'s thunder in the electronic-book market, unveiled a wireless reader that could be the strongest competitor to Amazon's Kindle this holiday season.

Priced at $399, the Sony Reader Daily Edition is $100 more expensive than the entry-level Kindle, but one-ups the market leader with a touch-sensitive screen and access to books from a range of sources, including libraries. Kindle users are largely limited to books from Amazon's online store.

Sony disclosed Tuesday a marketing partnership with Cleveland-based OverDrive Inc. that will let users of Sony's wireless device enter their Zip Codes and library card number to see what e-books are available from their local library; they can then download e-books remotely to the device until the loans expire.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Try not to gloat

Surely, obviously, clearly, librarians will be among the many that will be, some openly, many covertly, gloating, saying, perhaps just thinking, I told you so.

Yet, let not sanctimony be thy refuge.

Wikipedia, one of the 10 most popular sites on the Web, was founded about eight years ago as a long-shot experiment to create a free encyclopedia from the contributions of volunteers, all with the power to edit, and presumably improve, the content.

Now, as the English-language version of Wikipedia has just surpassed three million articles, that freewheeling ethos is about to be curbed.

Officials at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit in San Francisco that governs Wikipedia, say that within weeks, the English-language Wikipedia will begin imposing a layer of editorial review on articles about living people.

The new feature, called “flagged revisions,” will require that an experienced volunteer editor for Wikipedia sign off on any change made by the public before it can go live. Until the change is approved — or in Wikispeak, flagged — it will sit invisibly on Wikipedia’s servers, and visitors will be directed to the earlier version.

The change is part of a growing realization on the part of Wikipedia’s leaders that as the site grows more influential, they must transform its embrace-the-chaos culture into something more mature and dependable.

It is popular, and often the first result in a search. But ...

Although Wikipedia has prevented anonymous users from creating new articles for several years now, the new flagging system crosses a psychological Rubicon. It will divide Wikipedia’s contributors into two classes — experienced, trusted editors, and everyone else — altering Wikipedia’s implicit notion that everyone has an equal right to edit entries.

And for seven months beginning in November, The New York Times worked with Wikipedia administrators to suppress information about the kidnapping of David Rohde, a correspondent in Afghanistan, from the article about him. The Times argued that the censorship would improve his chances of survival. Mr. Rohde escaped from his Taliban captors in June, but the episode dismayed some Wikipedia contributors.

Who perhaps might have said, had he not escaped, or had his head been cut off, that it was the bad guys that did the horrible deed, not them.

The Writer and His Refuge





Mr. Conroy is famous for having mined his own life and that of his family for material from which to craft his earlier novels "The Great Santini," "The Lords of Discipline," "The Prince of Tides" and "Beach Music." Readers—or moviegoers who've seen the films based on the books—know of his constant ­uprooting because of his father's career as a fighter pilot; his changing feelings about his alma mater, the Citadel; his earlier marriages; his time in Paris and Rome; and—thanks to his cookbook/memoir—his appreciation of food. But I've asked to speak with both Mr. Conroy and Ms. King because I want them to tell me about their time writing in Highlands, N.C., my hometown, and maybe reclaim a little of Mr. Conroy's fame for the Tar Heel State. After all, he lived in both Belmont and New Bern for periods during his youth, and he's been a fan of Thomas Wolfe since his junior year of high school, when his English teacher gave him a copy of "Look Homeward, Angel," then drove him to Asheville to retrace Wolfe's ­footsteps.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Excuse me?

"Do you work here?" she asked, in a barely audible from across the Information Desk, where I sat, behind the front of the desk, waiting to help the next person who came along.

Startled, I pondered that for a moment. I'm sitting at the Desk, the computer screen in front of me. Well, perhaps it wasn't obvious, though it did seem so to me.

"Yes, I do," I answered.

"Can you help me?" she asked. "Over here." She stood by one of the OPAC computers.

I walked over dutifully.

She wanted to print out a list of items, but I advised her that wasn't possible, as OPACs don't have attached printers. Adding, helpfully, I told her she could print from an Internet PC, but would need to provide her own paper (or buy some at Circulation).

That deterred her. Buy, her thoughts were almost visible; me, buy? "Can I get a piece of paper, so I can write down some information?" she countered.

"Sure," I answered, and gave her the scratch paper.

"No, that won't be big enough."

"Well, there are plenty of them," I added helpfully.

"No, that won't do," she insisted. "Can I have just one sheet of paper? How much is one sheet of paper?"

"We do not sell single sheets of paper." I eventually gave her one sheet, and she was content. So was I.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Polite Debate at Grassley's Iowa Town Halls

Not all town-hall meetings are raucous. And some take place in libraries.

Back home for his first set of public events since Congress left its recess, Grassley has packed his town halls, which he holds in the same locations every year, more than ever. When he showed up in Winterset on Wednesday morning, his aides had already moved the event from a meeting room in the library to a nearby park, as a crowd that would normally be about 70 was instead several hundred. In Afton, an event that had been planned at the city hall was moved to a Methodist church nearby, and even then people were standing outside the door trying to hear the longtime senator.

And note this exchange:

Iowans just might be less eager to yell and be rude. When one man in Afton asked Grassley why he was eager to change a health-care system that many Americans like, the senator started referring to a private conservation he had with a Democratic senator on Capitol Hill.

"Which one?" the man shouted.

"I can't tell you that," Grassley said.

"Why not?" the man snapped back.

"Because it was a private conservation," Grassley responded.

"Oh, okay," the man said, and let the senator finish.

Imagine acceptin gthe keeping of confidentiality.

Books on Drinking

A well-stocked library will include these books on the pleasures and hazards of drink, says Iain Gately


1. Under the Volcano. Malcolm Lowry. Penguin, 1947. FIC Lowry

Malcolm Lowry wrote of this novel: “The dream I cherished in my heart was to create a pioneer work . . . and to write at last an authentic drunkard’s story.” He ­succeeded—it is amusing, ­poignant and macabre. Lowry sobered up to write the book, which is set in a provincial Mexican town during its annual festival celebrating the dead. The story describes the last days of Geoffrey Firmin, a ­British diplomat who had been posted to this backwater so that he can kill himself, with mescal, discreetly. “Under the Volcano” offers vivid descriptions of what it feels like to be under the influence, including the dubious pleasure of ­vomiting in your neighbor’s garden and the shame of ­being incontinent and legless. ­Moreover, the novel shows great literary merit as Lowry plays with our sense of time, intercutting flashbacks and black-outs in stream-of-semiconsciousness. Above all, Lowry is a sympathetic observer of humanity, sober or not.

2. Prohibition. Andrew Sinclair. Little, Brown, 1962 973.9 S

I like my history dry. “Prohibition: The Era of Excess” documents, with an ­appropriate degree of cynicism, ­America’s flirtation with ­enforced sobriety. The ­champions of abstinence were frauds or megalomaniacs; the politicians they blackmailed to amend the Constitution without a vote were equally amoral; and the gangsters who profited from keeping Americans wet pushed the murder rate back to frontier-era levels. National Prohibition lasted from 1919 to 1932, encompassing the ­Roaring ’20s, the Great ­Depression and the birth of the modern age. The book is as much testament to the changes that occurred during that period as to the failure of the “noble experiment.” There is a supporting cast of fanatics, lunatics and thieves and final salvation via the intercession of a president promising a new deal. A master of his material, Andrew Sinclair also has an eye for pleasing ephemera, such as this bumper sticker from Michigan in 1929: “Don’t shoot—I’m not a bootlegger.”

3. Vintage. Hugh Johnson. Simon & Schuster, 1989 641.2209 J

“Vintage” is an excellent ­reference work on “the story of wine,” distinguished by its ­genial style and the evident ­affection of its author for his subject. In ­addition to charting how our passion for wine has influenced the ebb and flow of civilizations, the book is packed with esoterica, including the taste and price of Falernian red in ancient Pompeii and the menus of Parisian restaurants during the Franco-Prussian war (roast cat garlanded with rats, served with Bollinger champagne). ­Essential for anyone wishing to know how ­champagne got its fizz or how claret evolved from the generic name for a pink, sour fluid into the Premier Crus of Bordeaux.

4. Gin. Patrick Dillon. Charles Justin, 2003 363.41 D

In the early 1700s, London was the largest, most dissolute and most exciting city in Europe. People flocked to it from the provinces, inspired by the ­pantomime of Dick Whittington and his Cat and the rumor that its streets were paved with gold. The king, William of ­Orange, had come to power in the Glorious Revolution, after sailing over from Holland, the “home of spirits.” He owed his throne to a cabal of landowners and merchants who were suffering from a fall in the price of grain, and he placated them by giving anyone in ­England the right to distill gin, or Geneva, as it was called, in an approximation of the Dutch word for the juniper berries used as flavoring. Demand soared for grain and gin, which was distilled in basements and sold from shops, houses, the crypts of churches, boats, wheelbarrows and stalls at public executions. In “Gin,” ­Patrick Dillon sets the scene and details the fall-out of the West’s first spirits craze with charm and a degree of relish. For roughly half a ­century, until Parliament finally reined in the gin-distilling business, the death rate in London exceeded the birth rate. The city swarmed with “scandalous wretches” (as one Londoner put it) who “ran up and down the streets swearing, cursing and talking beastliness like so many devils” because of “this damn’d bewitching liquor.” While documenting the ­carnage, Dillon makes space for the sea change in public opinion that enabled Parliament to slay the monster it had created. The book is an outstanding example of how narrative nonfiction can bring an era and its concerns back to life.

5. Headlong Hall. Thomas Love Peacock. 1816. FIC Peacock

The Enlightenment collides with the squirearchy in this ­Regency novel set in a Welsh manor over Christmas. Guests argue over “Progress” or its ­absence, and their host, Harry Headlong, moderates their ­debates with claret, port, brandy and aqua vitae. There are skulls, explosions, landscaped gardens, the Peacock-coined word osseocarnisanguineoviscericartilaginonervomedullary (the bony fleshy bloody gutsy gristly marrowy totality of the body), a ball and later betrothals—all lubricated with lashings of booze. ­“Headlong Hall” is also a roman à clef ­featuring Samuel Taylor ­Coleridge and other Romantic poets, drawn from life. Best of all, it is an enthusiastic and stylish picture of the joys of commensal drinking.

—Mr. Gately is the author of “Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol,” published in ­paperback by Gotham.

Books and films asked for today

That old cape magic. Russo, Richard. 123 holds on first copy returned of 72 copies.

Bride wars [videorecording (DVD)]

Shanghai girls. See, Lisa.

Loving Frank. Horan, Nancy.

Stomp out loud [videorecording (DVD)] / a YES/NO Production.

Such sweet thunder; forty-nine pieces on jazz. : Balliett, Whitney.

Elsa & Fred
. Film from Spain.

Raising a child with soul. Jungreis-Wolff, Slovie.

The defector. Silva, Daniel. 599 holds, 213 copies; 26 more on order (18 by Hewlett)

Gertrude Lawrence as Mrs. A; an intimate biography of the great star. Aldrich, Richard Stoddard. no holds on 3 copies; an unusual request, saying the least.

Act like a lady, think like a man. Harvey, Steve. 39 holds on first copy returned of 118 copies

Rules of vengeance. Reich, Christopher.

Knowing [videorecording (DVD)]

Gran Torino [videorecording (DVD)]

Northanger Abbey. Austen, Jane.An unusual one; I have never heard of it.

U.S. Bares ‘Alien Files’ Kept on Immigrants

Adele Macher, researching her Italian roots.
















Immigration files containing a wealth of information collected by American border agents, some of it dating from the late 19th century, will be opened to the public soon and permanently preserved, providing intriguing nuggets about such famous immigrants or visitors as Alfred Hitchcock and Salvador Dalí.

But to millions of Americans, the real treasure will be clues about their own families’ histories in the photographs, letters, interrogation transcripts and recordings that reflect the intense scrutiny faced by those trying to enter the United States during an era when it waged two world wars and adopted increasingly restrictive immigration policies.

Under an agreement signed this year, the files, on some 53 million people, will be gradually turned over by the Department of Homeland Security to the National Archives and Records Administration, beginning in 2010. The material, accounting for what officials describe as the largest addition of individual immigration records in the archives’ history, will be indexed and made available to anyone.





Ms. Macher used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the Alien File kept on her great-aunt Laura D’Amario.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Note to Myself: Take the Kitchen

When cooking in a vacation rental, the author has been known to travel with supplies, but this June she had a revelation: one needs only a cast-iron skillet to survive.


Article by one of my favorite writers, and with a mention of a librarian.

The house, midcentury modern in design, was once the year-round residence of a painter and his wife. The wife had been a librarian, and the kitchen was a curated archive of faintly antiquated but classic equipment: oblong Pyrex bakers, a spindly, nonergonomic can opener, an electric hand mixer with all its parts laid out in a pullout drawer, against the shelving paper. The crockery was without pattern, in neutral shades of bone and brown and black, and the coffee cups were on the small side. Even on vacation, it took me three or four refills to face the day.

Atticus Finch and the limits of Southern liberalism



A revisionist view of Atticus Finch.

Hold that book

2 books, actually:
Evanovich, Janet. (2006). Finger lickin' fifteen. New York: St. Martin's Press.

231 holds on first copy returned of 263 copies









Weiner, Jennifer.(2009). Best friends forever. New York : Atria Books.


548 holds on first copy returned of 172 copies