Tangled Webs

The siege of Washington

Forty Acres and a Goat

Campbell, Will D. (1986). Forty acres and a goat: a memoir. Atlanta: Peachtree Publishers.

Library Journal Reviews This is a funny, touching, beautifully written sequel to Campbell's autobiography, Brother to a Dragonfly. A Baptist preacher, farmer, and civil rights activist, Campbell has combined parable, allegory, and personal recollection to create a fascinating account of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Using animals as symbols and a composite black co-worker named T.J. Eaves as a sounding board, he charts the uncertain course of social change in the South during this turbulent period. One grows to admire Campbell and his pet goat, Jackson, enormously. Although not as focused as his previous memoir, this is wonderful to read. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries. Anthony O. Edmonds, History Dept., Ball State Univ., Muncie, Ind. Copyright 1986 Cahners Business Information.

Nixonland

Perlstein, Rick. Nixonland: the rise of a president and the fracturing of America. New York: Scribner.

Kirkus: A richly detailed descent into the inferno—that is, the years when Richard Milhouse Nixon, "a serial collector of resentments," ruled the land. [sic: Milhous] A solid work of political history, if necessarily long and grim in the telling.

The color of lightning

Jiles, Paulette. (2009). The color of lightning. New York: William Morrow.

Kirkus: A rousing, character-driven tale

a Sudanese "Lost Boy"

Eggers, Dave. (2007). What is the what: the autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng. San Francisco: McSweeney's.

Booklist: does what a novel does best, which is to make us understand the deeper truths of another human being's experience.

archaeological exploration and global political cross-purposes

Unsworth, Barry. (2009). Land of marvels. New York : Nan A. Talese.

Kirkus: Absorbing and irresistible.

story of family, love, and the hold the past has on the present

Rum and Fidel

Bacardi and the long fight for Cuba : the biography of a cause. Tom Gjelten

FDR spy

Persico, Joseph E. (2001). Roosevelt's secret war: FDR and World War II espionage. New York: Random House.

From bibliography of Scorpions.

wrestling with D.H. Lawrence

and other books by Geoff Dyer, including Color of Memory and But Beautiful.

How to eat a small country

Great Soul

Lelyveld, Joseph. (2011). Great soul: Mahatma Gandhi and his struggle with India. New York: Knopf.

Some controversy has arisen in India over the book's mention of Gandhi's possible homosexuality (before the book was actually published in India).

Times review.

love and death in Akron

Rain

originally heard of it months ago; today is 17 April 2011.
Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki is one of the actors in film.

Let it breathe

To cork or not to cork : tradition, romance, science, and the battle for the wine bottle.
George M Taber

Buenos Aires

Hunting Eichmann : how a band of survivors and a young spy agency chased down the world's most notorious Nazi. Neal Bascomb.  Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2009.

Caribbean gothic

Jean Rhys; Charlotte Brontë

Conviction

Minnie Driver, Juliette Lewis, Peter Gallagher, Melissa Leo, Sam Rockwell, Hilary Swank.

Betty Anne Waters is a young woman whose world is shattered when her beloved brother Kenny is convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Steadfastly convinced of his innocence, Betty Anne embarks on an 18-year journey to set Kenny free, using state-of-the-art forensic technology.

Tommy the Cork

McKean, David. (2004). Tommy the Cork : Washington's ultimate insider from Roosevelt to Reagan. S. Royalton, Vt. : Steerforth.



A prominent figure in the pages of Scorpions, Tommy the COrk had the ear of Justices and FDR. Douglas, Black, Brandeis and Jackson owed him their posts to some degree or other.

The education of an American dreamer

Read about the book in an article in the NY Times: Mr. Peterson’s epiphany about the debt came, aptly enough, while he was looking for a house in the Hamptons. It was 1981, and he recounts making a deal with the seller who ran the Women’s Economic Round Table: she would accept his offer on the house if he would give an address about Ronald Reagan’s budget to her group. He started researching, and “what I found astonished me,” he wrote in his autobiography, “The Education of an American Dreamer”: unbridled government spending, unbridled federal tax cuts and no attention to “the elephants in the room” — Social Security and Medicare.

When will there be good news? Kate Atkinson. New York : Little, Brown and Co. 2008.

The author of One Good Turn presents a mystery of suspense involving the unexpected intersection of three lives, including a woman whose life had been shattered thirty years earlier, an ex-detective on a crowded train, and a teenage girl who is called upon to test her preparedness.

Red heat

Conspiracy, murder, and the Cold War in the Caribbean

A saving remnant

A saving remnant : the radical lives of Barbara Deming and David McReynolds.

Saw on new book cart; seemed interesting enough.

A covert affair

A covert affair : the adventures of Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS / Jennet Conant.

Conant wrote Tuxedo Park, a book I enjoyed greatly. This book is about Paul and Julia Child.

1861: the Civil War awakening

How to eat a small country

Vivid and wild

A voyage long and strange : on the trail of Vikings, conquistadors, lost colonists, and other adventurers in early America. Tony Horwitz. New York : Picador USA. 2009.

Sandwiched

Cost. Roxana Robinson. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2008.

Kirkus: fictional case study, at once pedantic and riveting

Fort

Heard about it from Edna Ritzenberg.

508.0744 F

Dry storeroom no. 1: the secret life of the Natural History Museum. Richard Fortey. NY: Knopf. 2008.

De Verdronkene

The storm. Margriet de Moor ; translated by Carol Brown Janeway. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.

Not in Kansas

Finding Oz: how L. Frank Baum discovered the great American story. Evan I. Schwartz. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2009.

Silent films

: the birth of film and the triumph of movie culture. Kobel, Peter.

Fool

by Christopher Moore. on Book-a-Day calendar.