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Editor's Choice

Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland

Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland Neal Ascherson Hill and Wang; ISBN: 0809088452 Neal Ascherson has not set out to write a history of Scotland but rather to piece together a sense of its identity, the sources of its myths, and to puzzle out its meaning to the Scots who live there as well as those who left. Ascherson is a scholar-journalist who, having left Scotland for work in London after the failed 1979 vote for devolution, returned to his native ground to understand what had changed in the intervening twenty years. At the center of his contemplations is the vote for an independent parliament and devolution from English governance and why it succeeded in 1999, having failed to achieve a majority over noes and abstentions when held in 1979. This propelled him to examine the attitudes of Scots toward the very long history of their country. He marks the retrieval by four Scottish students on Christmas Day in 1950 of the Stone of Scone as a galvanizing moment. Until Edward I of England had seized it 700 years before and taken it to Westminster Abbey, Scottish kings had sat on the "Stone of Destiny" during their inauguration. In Westminster Abbey it was placed beneath the wooden throne used by the English kings, a particularly galling placement, since England had not conquered the Scottish kingdom. This is a book of subtle considerations of the notion of nationalism and of love for the independent-minded people of Scotland and for the texture of the land itself. Ascherson's book is full of interest not just for those with ties of birth or sentiment to the place but to anyone interested in the concept of nationalism and local control and how they can function effectively in the 21st century. [CW]

Science/Technology

Interconnections: Bridges, Routers, Switches, and Internetworking Protocols (2nd Edition)

Interconnections: Bridges, Routers, Switches, and Internetworking Protocols (2nd Edition) Radia Perlman Addison-Wesley Pub; ISBN: 0201634481 An appreciation of internetworking protocols serves anyone involved with the business or serious use of computer networks. Computer networking relies upon a number of protocols. One can divide these into two categories. The first can be considered 'In-the-box protocols.' These allow software (including operating systems) to access and use the network and its facilities. The second category functions 'between-the-boxes.' These are protocols that form and maintain the network itself. This latter category tends to be complex. Network infrastructure protocols tend to be less understood and appreciated than application and transport protocols if only because most people, and even network software programmers, take the network for granted. Radia Perlman's detailed guide to network protocols offers an excellent introduction to this area. She writes clearly and engagingly about this topic, a rare thing! Best of all, she works all the way from the high level context down to solutions to remaining thorny problems. In each area, she indicates how protocols have been crafted to solve the problems at hand, how their design involved compromises and how the protocols have remaining unresolved issues or negative features. The book is suitable both for a university networking course and for independent study. Though it's not a light read, few technical books offer such approachable access to subtle and complex material. [EG]

Network Security Hacks

Network Security Hacks Andrew Lockhart O'Reilly & Associates; ISBN: 0596006438 If you're in charge of one or more computers hooked up to a network, you probably already know that you have to deal with security. All well and good, but network security can be complex. You need to stay informed of many different tools and threats, and sometimes it can be difficult to keep up with all the available options. That's where this latest release in the O'Reilly "Hacks" series comes in. Need to quickly set up a VPN? Need to set up a secure logging system? Gather network statistics? Eavesdrop on some dubious traffic? There are whole books written on each of those subjects, but sometimes you just need to get stuff done quickly during a busy day as a sysadmin. This collection of hacks - solutions, really - works not only as a good cookbook of security procedures but also as a concise guide to the kind of security issues you have to think about any time you hook up to a network. Every sysadmin should have a copy on their bookshelf. [AB]

History, Biography, Society

Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1959-1969 (Part One)

Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1959-1969 (Part One) Edited Library of America Advisory Board Library of America; ISBN: 1883011582 Let me start by praising the Library of America, a non-profit publisher whose volumes would grace the shelves of any serious reader. These books are of superb quality both as to their manufacture and their value as literature. The paper they are printed on is so fine that it is easy to underestimate the size of the volume one is to engage with. Volume One of Reporting Vietnam is over 800 pages long and is a chronological collection of newspaper and magazine articles, contemporaneous book excerpts, and television news transcripts from the first half of the American war in Vietnam. The experience of reading through these accounts creates a far more vivid illusion of living through that war than any other historical account of it that I have read. For the most part this is mainstream reporting, from news sources widely available to the American public: The New York Times, Time magazine, Newsweek, Vogue, Ladies Home Journal, CBS, and from books published at the time: The Making of a Quagmire, The Selling of the President 1968, and The Electric Koolaid Acid Test. Early hawkish optimism gives way to a steadily more pessimistic perplexity as the war begins to go badly and our Vietnamese allies provide ample case for disappointment. I will be reading the second volume of this series, Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1969-1975 (Part Two), shortly, and honestly hope that it does not seem so eerily reminiscent of the times we live in today. [MA]

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds Charles MacKay, Ll.D. Three Rivers Press; ISBN: 051788433X This golden oldie was first published in London in two volumes, in 1841 and 1852, and has been in print more or less continuously ever since. Amazon.com presently offers three editions. MacKay was a man with a very keen appreciation of human greed and gullibility in all of its many manifestations and was a firm believer in what has become the maxim that 'those who ignore history are bound to repeat it.' His first chapter, "Money Mania - The Mississippi Scheme," deals with financial manipulations in France in 1719-20 which certainly smack of our recent problems with Enron. His second chapter, "The South-Sea Bubble," charts a sequence of financial enthusiasm, speculation, fraud, and eventual collapse which left a few millionaires but pretty well desolated the British economy as a whole. More than shades of our own recent .com bubble. There follow chapters titled: "The Tulipomania," "The Alchymists" (think of our own pharmaceutical industry), "Modern Prophecies" (think of our own fundamentalist Rapture folks), "Fortune-Telling," "The Magnetizers," "The Influence of Politics and Religion on the Hair and Beard" (a very short chapter, but one of my favorites; exhippies will relish this one), "The Crusades" (cf the Bush administration, same old, same old), "The Witch Mania" (cf The Bush administration, Ashcroft division), and on through similarly relevant chapters titled "The Slow Poisoners," "Haunted Houses," "Popular Follies of Great Cities," "Popular Admiration of Great Thieves," 'Duels and Ordeals," and finally "Relics." Good book. [WW]

The Dictionary of Imaginary Places

The Dictionary of Imaginary Places Alberto Manguel, Gianni Guadalupi Harcourt; ISBN: 0156008726 This handsome tome features an encyclopedic collection of invented realms, geographies, and architecture. Manguel and Guadalupi derive entries from fine works of fantasy writers, the manuscripts of crank futurists, satirists, and children's book authors. Each is presented in the same matter-of-fact tone, though the level of detail varies. The attention to inordinately peripheral aspects, or even entirely invented minutia slyly reveals the authors' pervasive sense of humor to the reader. The emphasis on the trivial plays with the irony of scholarly writing: For all his or her pretense of capturing the essential, the author of an encyclopedia article, not the subject, decides what is important. The entries in the Dictionary of Imaginary Places have an obvious arbitrariness, clearly flaunting the authors' tastes and emphasizing their own priorities. Intricate maps, lovely illustrations and diagrams with consistent and meticulous style embellish the clever prose. Middle Earth figures large in the collection, though the book features literally hundreds of works. The broad scope of the material covers mostly European sources from the eighteenth century to the present. There's no pretense of this being a complete or systematic survey. The authors clearly love the books they work with. Presenting all together, in the same serious mock-scholarly tone, this book creates something new, a delightful connection between extremely diverse visions. Either as a diversion to revisit one's favorite castles in the air or to discover unexpected vistas, the Dictionary offers a delightful cornucopia to readers of fantasy literature. [EG]

I Am Alive and You Are Dead: The Strange Life and Times of Philip K. Dick

I Am Alive and You Are Dead: The Strange Life and Times of Philip K. Dick Emmanuel Carrere, Timothy Bent Metropolitan Books; ISBN: 0805054642 This new book about Philip K. Dick's life, written by French novelist and screenwriter Emmanuel Carrere, is more a literary biography than a dry recitation of his life. Dick's work has enjoyed a great deal of exposure since 1982 as Hollywood mined his books for hit movie scripts, starting with Blade Runner and also succeeding with Total Recall and Minority Report. There is something about Dick's stories, filled as they are with paranoia, psychological extremes, and shifting notions of reality, that stays with the reader and has made his work far more appreciated now than during his lifetime. Dick's life itself was often as weird as his fiction, mostly due to mental problems, which were probably exacerbated by drug use. You can make a good case that Carrere treats Dick's life much as Dick himself may have done, which is a pretty good reason to read it. [AB]

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies Jared Diamond W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN: 0393317552 Most of the world's wealth is centered in the northern hemisphere, land of the European Union, Asia, and North America. According to Jared Diamond, this is no accident. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Diamond is a well-known evolutionary biologist with impressive credentials and writing talent. In 1972, Diamond was in New Guinea studying bird evolution when he met a local politician named Yali. Yali asked him "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo (modern goods)...but we black people had little cargo of our own?" This puzzled Diamond, and his research in the intervening years has resulted in this book. He ably shunts aside some of the more popular explanations such as genetics or intelligence. He presents the theory that much of the current world economic and social climate traces its roots to something as fundamentally "simple" as geography. This very different human history covers time from about 15,000 years ago until the 16th century and revolves around land, sea, animal and plant resources, and the way the continents are distributed across the face of the Earth. Diamond uses these ideas, woven around his experiences in New Guinea, to explain that people have very different physical, intellectual and cultural traits due to their environment. The ideas are well researched, well presented, and thought provoking. A different take on more traditional historical worldviews. [GB]

Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World

Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World Alan Weisman Chelsea Green; ISBN: 1890132284 This book will transport you to the altiplano, the high plain of Colombia on the eastern side of the Andes, where some smart and dedicated people have created another world from the one of druglords and assassinations that is the Colombia we know from the US media. The story of Gaviotas starts in 1971 with a small group of Colombian engineers, scientists, agronomists, doctors, teachers, and artists intent on demonstrating the possibility for a satisfying and sustainable way of life on the then-barren plain. They began by reforesting and designing light windmills and solar collectors effective even in gray weather and simple, sturdy water pumps (some operated by a kids' teeter-totter, which gives you an idea of the wit and inventiveness of these folks). And they found new sources of production serendipitously as they developed their village. The pine trees they planted, native to nearby Honduras, not only helped an understory of native plants get started by protecting it from the harsh sun but also proved to have bark rich in valuable resin which Colombia had been importing for use in paint, cosmetics, medicines etc. The rich biodiversity of this part of Colombia began to reappear as the indigenous tropical forest regenerated under the protection of the imported pines. Colombia straddles the equator and so has no seasonal changes, but its many rivers, rich valleys, and dramatically-varying altitudes provide ecological niches for a huge range of species, surpassed only by the much larger Brazil. This is a heartening book about human ingenuity working to solve basic problems elegantly to bring opportunity for better and more satisfying lives for both rural and urban people. [CW]

Harper & Row's complete field guide to North American wildlife, Eastern edition

Harper & Row's complete field guide to North American wildlife, Eastern edition Henry Hill Collins Harper & Row; ISBN: 0061811637 We have a large collection of field guides at our house, each one devoted principally to the identification of a certain group of plants or animals. Emotion and personal opinion or experience have been scoured away from every last one of them, lest it be considered "unscientific." It never occurred to me that a field guide might be otherwise until we came upon this gem when cleaning out Uncle George's books. In addition to identification and distribution, Collins gives information on ancestry, behavior, longevity and conservation. Snatches of Thoreau and Ogden Nash, the (highly useful) mnemonics of bird songs, personal experiences of the author, and a general clear-eyed reverence for nature infuse this guide with enthusiasm as well as an encyclopedic knowledge of wildlife. I find myself reading it on the couch as I might a novel, contemplating a tramp in the woods the next day. Collins' book is thorough and comprehensive, and describes and illustrates not only the birds, but the mammals, reptiles, amphibians, coastal marine invertebrates, and game and food fish of about half the country. [This month's out-of-print feature is written by Sarah Bennett]

Oddly Enough: Unbelievably Outrageous but True Stories from the News

Oddly Enough: Unbelievably Outrageous but True Stories from the News Robert Basler MQ Publications, Ltd; ISBN: 1840725958 Reuters is the "world's largest international multimedia news agency." It provides financial services and news feeds all over the world and boasts a top-flight (and still cost free!) website at Reuters.com. Reuters' site is a mixed bag of news from every walk of life: international, U.S., business, politics and entertainment to name a few. After reading the (often bad) news, it's refreshing to indulge in a bit of the lighter side. Reuters aptly provides a section titled Oddly Enough. This is a daily section about quirky happenings that may raise eyebrows and/or chuckles from its readers. Go ahead, check it out, we can wait... Now that you're back, you'll probably agree that a collection of these stories would provide a welcome diversion from the daily grind. Thank you Robert Basler for doing just that. Twice. His previous work Six Drown Saving Chicken was his first collection of these strange but true stories from the news, and Oddly Enough continues along this vein. If you're a fan of the bizarre or just want to read something from a guy who once hid inside a trash can on an Indianapolis street and shouted "Thank you!" whenever someone tossed in some refuse (according to friend John Flora), this is a book for you. Well written and infectious. [GB]

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation Lynne Truss Gotham; ISBN: 1592400876 Eats, Shoots & Leaves is a publishing phenomenon. It's hard to imagine that a book-length rant on the declining standards of punctuation by a British book editor could become an international best seller, but it did. This has, I think, less to do with a sudden upsurge of interest in the proper use of commas, than with the wit and hilarity the author brings to the topic. The author Lynne Truss, who habitually carries around a bottle of White Out and thick magic markers for the obliteration and insertion of commas and apostrophes into and out of public signage, is a self-confessed punctuation "stickler" writing principally for the benefit and edification of fellow sticklers. She does so with such over-the-top gusto and dry British humor that even the most careless of hyphenators will find themselves dashing through these pages, reading the funniest bits to their nearest pals. One will find plenty of good advice in these pages as well, focusing as much on the stylistic rationale for proper period placement as on the formal rules. There is ammunition here both for those over-enamored of the comma and those who prefer their text comma free. Sticklers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your sense of proportion. [MA]

Delta Primer: A Field Guide to the California Delta

Delta Primer: A Field Guide to the California Delta Jane Wolff; Preface by Kevin Starr William Stout Publishers; ISBN: 0970973160 This beautifully designed and illustrated book examines the ecology, natural and socioeconomic, of the California Delta, where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers flow into the San Francisco Bay. California's Delta and Great Central Valley have been transformed in the past 150 years from a marshy wetland,whose meandering rivers flooded periodically and enriched the soil, to one of the most agriculturally-productive areas in the world. But the transformation has had severe costs and the agricultural future is now threatened by escalating development and population growth. This process, and its social, environmental, and political consequences, is the meat of Jane Wolff's unique book—unique because she uses not just words, photos, and beautiful drawings and maps to inform the reader. She also creates a deck of cards, so that one can play the supply-demand game as another means to understand the process of transformation and its benefits and losses. The book is eloquently introduced by Kevin Starr, California's State's Librarian and author of many books on California's history. It offers a model for examining essential and threatened ecosystems in a fresh way and proposing compromises between various interests. [CW]

Ways of Seeing

Ways of Seeing John Berger Penguin Books; ISBN: 0140135154 I enjoy going to museums and have a few mounted fine arts prints on my walls at home. Having hardly any background in art history, I've always wondered what I was missing. Paintings, I suspect, contain various hidden codes—for appreciation only by those who can decipher them through knowledge of their context and signs. This book very directly and convincingly initiates the reader into an appreciation of various basic trends in the Western tradition of oil painting. The interpretation has a Marxist touch: It concerns social relations primarily—class, affluence, and sexual roles. Even without a background in the topic, it is easy to follow the arguments linking painting from past centuries with advertising imagery today. The book is really less about art history than about its effects on how we perceive ourselves and take in what is presented to us. Of the seven essays, two are purely visual. My favorite, and the investigation the book is best known for, concerns the objectification of women. In very direct terms, Berger shows how women in the Western pictorial tradition are depicted as conscious of being observed and doing their best to please. This leads to or at least reinforces self-consciousness and a presentational role for women. I found this line of analysis and several others provocative, illuminating, and insightful. [EG]

Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music

Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music Edited by Rob Young Continuum International Publishing Group; ISBN: 0826464505 Have you ever had guests over to your house, and found they could not tell the difference between the music you were playing for them, and the hissing, clanging noises made by the steam radiators? If so then you need this book on your shelves. Mostly drawn from the pages of Wire magazine, these articles cover the zone where sculpture, performance art, and music meet. This is music that is not designed to entertain, but to provoke: and in the provocation to transform the listener. Having read this book, listeners will find that they are better prepared to meet these musical experiences half-of-the-way. The intellectual underpinnings of these performances can be crucial to understanding what it is one is seeing. This understanding may not be necessary to properly appreciate the experience, but possessing that enlightenment will engage readers/listeners in the process; it will begin the process of making them a participant, rather than an audience. And that is the first step to liberation. [MA]

Exploring the Matrix: Visions of the Cyber Present

Exploring the Matrix: Visions of the Cyber Present Karen Haber (Editor) St. Martin's Press; ISBN: 0312313586 Now that we've seen all three of the Matrix movies, what are we to make of the Wachowski Brothers' hallucination of mankind's cyber-future? What WAS the message? Did the good guys win? Is there a place for both human and machine in their vision? Each of us who saw the films probably came away from them with a different view on what the Matrix phenomenon is all about. Undoubtedly many unanswered questions remain, so Haber has brought together a collection of science fiction luminaries to help us sort out the significance of the first film. Released just prior to the Matrix Reloaded, Exploring the Matrix is a collection of 17 essays by such notable authors as Stephen Baxter, Joe Haldeman, Alan Dean Foster, David Brin and others. There are also contributions by digital artists Darrel Anderson, Dean Motter and Rick Berry. These 10- to 25-page pieces explore their author's interpretation of what the film was really about, and how the film reflects existing technological phenomena and our views on reality. The book is well written and fascinating; these writers provide yet another look at what happens if you take the red pill. [GB]

Birth of the Chess Queen: A History

Birth of the Chess Queen: A History Marilyn Yalom HarperCollins; ISBN: 0060090642 For the first 500 years of its existence, the game of chess did not feature a queen. How did this ultra-powerful piece become a part of the game? Given Marilyn Yalom's pedigree (scholar at Stanford's Institute for Women and Gender, author of A History of the Wife and A History of the Breast), it is not surprising that her answer is as much about the cultural history of women as reflected in the game of chess as it is about the history of the game piece. When chess was primarily a domestic recreation, women commonly played it. Only when the game moved into the public space with competitions and such did chess became masculinized - today, only about 5% of players are female. Yalom's fine book is an engaging account of chess and gender history designed to appeal both to chess fans and to history buffs. As long as we're talking about chess, we might as well recommend another new book on the subject, one mostly of interest to the mathematically inclined. It is John J. Watkins's Across the Board: The Mathematics of Chessboard Problems, a nice blend of chess and often deep recreational mathematics. [AB]

Come Fly With Us!: A Global History of the Airline Hostess

Come Fly With Us!: A Global History of the Airline Hostess Johanna Omelia, Michael Waldock Collectors Press; ISBN: 1888054611 They are purveyors of peanuts, seat belt usage instructors, and two-fingered pointers-to-exits. They are the calm during a thunderstorm. In the 1960s, they were the top answer to "what do you want to be when you grow up?" Today, we know them as flight attendants. What began as cabin stewards on single passenger flights at the turn of the 20th century has evolved into the consummate professional flight attendant of today. In their early years, "stewardesses" were expected to be registered nurses, between 5'2" and 5'7" in height, have "good figures," be 20-26 years old and be willing to retire at age 32. (Of course, getting married or having children was cause for immediate dismissal.) On the surface, this book could be thrown on the coffee table and enjoyed as an attractive send up of "coffee tea or me?" It is far, far more. Omelia and Walcock have done their homework. This is a serious history of the flight attendant, beginning with the birth of commercial flight. The text alone is worthy of serious consideration, but it also contains dozens of gorgeous historical photos from the archives of several international airlines. This is a must-have for anyone in the airline industry, especially those on the "front line." To quote an advertising jingle from the '60s: "You've come a long way baby!" [GB]

Fiction

Doctor Sleep

Doctor Sleep Madison Smartt Bell Harcourt; ISBN: 0151261008 Doctor Sleep is set in London in the 1980s during Carnival (this is not your mother's London), the main characters a couple of Americans who've left some things behind, at least until they can cope with them. The narrator has been there five years but not legally, so he's under obligation to some less-than-savory characters. He supports himself doing hypnotherapy—sees clients who want help breaking their nicotine habit, or dealing with agoraphobia, or escaping insomnia. Ironically enough, the novel covers a several-day period when he himself cannot get to sleep and, living too much in his own head, finds himself losing perspective and his girlfriend as well. He smacks himself back into reality with physically harsh bouts of martial art at his local dojo. As his gentle, skilled hypnosis of his clients reveals their secrets, the novel gradually reveals what's he's running from and holds the reader in thrall until some issues are resolved, a little more benignly for him than for his hero, the 16th-century skeptic Giordano Bruno who was done in by the Inquisition. Good writing, satisfying suspense, some scary stuff, and overall an effective escape from the mundane here and now. [CW]

The Full Cupboard of Life

The Full Cupboard of Life Alexander McCall Smith Pantheon; ISBN: 0375422188 Once a month my local newspaper here in Berkeley CA has a "Books" section featuring a list of "Best Sellers in Northern California." In April three of the top ten best sellers in the "Fiction" listings were from the series of mystery novels by Alexander McCall Smith set in contemporary Botswana. The Full Cupboard of Life is the fifth in the series, following: The #1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Tears of the Giraffe, Morality for Beautiful Girls, and The Kalahari Typing School for Men. The Cast of Characters: Mma Precious Ramotswe, detective and folk psychologist, owner of The #1 Ladies Detective Agency; Mma Makutsi, Mma Ramotswe's assistant detective and an entrepreneurial businesswoman; Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, Mma Ramotswe's gentleman friend, owner of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors; Mma Sylvia Potokwane, matron of an orphan farm and forceful practitioner of applied psychology; and various clients of the Detective Agency, Speedy Motors' apprentices and customers, miscellaneous citizens of Gabrone, Botswana, and, of course, numerous baddies and perpetrators. The author, Alexander McCall Smith, was born and raised in what is now Zimbabwe. Previously a Professor of Law at the University of Botswana, he is now Professor of Medical Law at Edinburgh University in Scotland. He has published a number of other books, both professional and fiction. As mystery novels go, these don't feature much in the way of blood and gore or police procedure, but they are chock full of good-humored insight into human behavior, and folly. Highly recommended recreational reading. [WW]

Absolution Gap

Absolution Gap Alastair Reynolds Ace Books; ISBN: 0441011586 Alastair Reynolds continues the best-selling hard SF series he began with Revelation Space and continued in Redemption Ark. Mankind is threatened by the Inhibitors, mysterious entities that aim to wipe out intelligent life in the galaxy. In the last novel, a human faction got hold of powerful weapons that can stand up to the Inhibitors. In this installment, members of that faction must travel to a distant moon controlled by religious zealots to establish an alliance to help to fight off the killing machines. But as desirable as the alliance may seem, the allies may prove worse than the enemy. The main character from the last novel, Clavain, is back, as is the huge, transformed starship, Nostalgia for Infinity. Both find themselves on a new stage full of the kind of rich and imaginative players that made Reynolds' previous Inhibitor novels so much fun. It's great SF on a grand stage. [AB]

The Postman

The Postman David Brin Bantam; ISBN: 0553278746 Multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards attest to the fact that David Brin is an accomplished and well-regarded writer. Startide Rising, and other Uplift War titles are some of his most famous award-winning books and The Postman garnered a great deal of attention when it was first published in 1985. Unfortunately, Kevin Costner's 1997 screen adaptation was widely panned by the critics, and if you liked it (I did), you are in the minority. Don't let the movie detract from the underlying novel. The Postman is about a post-apocalyptic America where the populace is relegated to isolated self-sufficient hamlets. Our hero is lone traveler Gordon Krantz, who happens upon a wrecked U. S. Postal Service Jeep. Gordon assumes the identity of a Postman, complete with tattered uniform. To desperate survivors, Gordon's Postman represents the rebirth of a long lost United States government. He uses the persona to his best advantage, but soon finds himself thrust into the midst of conflict with townspeople and the Holnists, a paramilitary group intent on bringing America back together under a feudalistic model of oppression. While this book "only" won the Locus and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards, it is well-written science fiction entertainment. A worthy read. [GB]

Maus: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History

Maus: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History Art Spiegelman Pantheon Books; ISBN: 0394747232 I come to this book late, as I do to many best-sellers. Portraying Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats had always seemed, from a distance, to be a trifle too trite of a technique to deal with a historical epoch of such gravity and horror. I was wrong. Spiegleman's graphic conceit has the curious effect of humanizing the story, of taking it out of the History Channel's comfortable distance and putting the story into the context of its characters' lives. This is an autobiographical study of the author's relationship to his father, his mother, and their horrific past. Not simply the tale of how his parents were systematically brutalized by the Germans, Maus explores how those experiences distorted their personalities and all their subsequent relationships, including their relationship with their son. This book and its sequel, Maus: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began won the Pulitzer Prize, and rightfully so. I find that weeks after having read it I mentally return to its pages, those images and emotions producing a sensation of smothering. [MA]

Liberty Falling

Liberty Falling Nevada Barr Putnam; ISBN: 0399144595 If the world is too much with you these days, and how can it not be, here's some relief—a murder mystery that's engrossing and intelligent enough to succeed in displacing the news of the day and provide some comfort by the fact that it's fiction, not reality. For those of you who don't know of Nevada Barr, she's a seasoned National Park Ranger. Her murder mysteries, featuring Park Ranger Anna Pigeon, are set in the various parks she knows and capture their special characteristics. This one takes place in June and July in Manhattan and on Ellis and Liberty Island National Monuments, Ellis recently refurbished except for the old hospital, morgue, and infectious disease wards, whose dilapidation and decay offer cover for the bad guys. And the bad guys are pretty bad. Their plan is to disrupt, in a pretty disagreeable way, a July 4 celebration of Ellis Island, the "golden door" to America, and all that the Stature of Liberty stands for. With her much-loved older sister in intensive care in a Manhattan hospital, Anna Pigeon is in town under duress; she much prefers the open spaces, star-filled skies, and quiet of Mesa Verde where she works as a Ranger. She's tough, proudly if fool-hardily fearless, and determined. Once an unexpected suicide off an outlook of Liberty arouses her interest, she doesn't let go until the pieces come together and her suspicion that the jumper was in fact pushed is proven. She does have to overstep her authority a few times (we like that). An excellent summer read. [CW]

Double Duce

Double Duce Aaron Cometbus Last Gasp; ISBN: 086719586X What to do with one's life when one has the freedom to choose and only ironic disdain for the culture one finds oneself in? You'll find out in this entertaining though sad hand-lettered tale of a group of young artists and wastrels in relentless futile search of a transcendent kick. Witness the eventful emergence and scuttling of a community of young adults who recognize no limits or rules and revere bad ideas. Most write their own Zines—self-published artistic creations destined for obscure distribution channels and a select readership. These latter day punks rent a flat at the extreme low end of Berkeley, California: The Double Duce. There's a general collapse of personal standards among these folks, most of whom only aspire to have fun and make their own way. Cometbus relates wacky antics and mislaid plans as well as the dreadful center of gravity after creative response to their morose universe has lost momentum. The individual members of the group come alive both in anecdotes and many finely-articulated portraits. Cometbus penetrates the exuberant self-destruction of the inhabitants of the Double Duce, including himself. We see beyond their ever-deepening morass into their family histories and urges, their constant effort to get at an elusive, playful yet sordid epiphany. [EG]

100 Malicious Little Mysteries

100 Malicious Little Mysteries Martin H. Greenberg (Compiler), Isaac Asimov (Compiler), Joseph D. Olander (Compiler) Sterling; ISBN: 1402711018 There's something satisfying about short stories. They appeal to the literary need for a complete experience. Set the scene, develop a character or two, establish the conflict, resolve it, and everybody lives happily (or not) ever after. No need to remember plot details the next time you can spare a minute or two. No rereading the last couple of pages to refresh the (increasingly) fuzzy recollection of goings on. The only question left unanswered is "What's the next story about?" This book contains 100 short examples of literary satisfaction, ranging from a half page to five or six pages in length. You will undoubtedly recognize several of the authors. There are pieces by Lawrence Treat, Al Nussbaum, Edward D. Hoch, and Michael Gilbert to name a few. Many of the writers will likely be new to you, but that won't detract from these delightfully small but polished gems. If you are in need of a short respite from what ails you, you'll find a hundred perfect distractions to "snack" on here. [GB]

Children's Books

Bridget and the Moose Brothers

Bridget and the Moose Brothers Pija Lindenbaum R & S Books; ISBN: 9129660467 On the chance that some of you may head to Yellowstone this summer and see a moose, as I did last week, I can suggest this amusing anthropomorphic treatment. Bridget is an only child frustrated at her lack of a baby sister to fit in her doll's bed or big brother to play loud music. So she adopts a trio of moose brothers she finds at her apartment building front door in the snowy north. They like the elevator, but the scattering of Lego pieces on Bridget's floor is destabilizing under moose hooves, and besides, they don't know what to make of them. She sets them up with paper and crayons, but after drawing thunderstorms and breaking her crayons, they decide drawing bores them. They like her small animals but want to fling them about. To distract them Bridget suggests a nap on the floor, but the moose brothers prefer her comfy bed, and then they decide it's time to watch TV, shouting for some popcorn. Needless to say, Bridget concludes that maybe she'll make do without this trio and entices them back to the elevator. After enough rides to make them woozy, they're happy to depart for the snow outside and Bridget goes back upstairs to straighten up her room, pick up the moose poop on her floor, and decide that some peace and quiet is preferable to rowdy moose siblings. Sprightly drawings and Lego-decorated endpapers. Lindenbaum has written and illustrated many books of her own and illustrated Astrid Lindgren's Mirabelle. [CW]

The Whale Rider

The Whale Rider Witi Ihimaera Harcourt; ISBN: 0152050167 Here's the novel that provided the basis for the beautiful award-winning film Whale Rider, about Kahutia Te Rangi, a New Zealand Maori girl, and her thrilling role in sustaining her people's culture. It's the story of a young girl who embodies her people's will to survive and maintain their language, beliefs, and rituals in the face of a nearly overwhelming dominant culture. But Kahu is not a symbol but a bright and determined child who knows in her bones the importance of her grandfather's ways and his knowledge as their tribal leader. She tries to join his language classes, but he rejects both her interest and her affection in his focus on finding a boy to educate to the tribe's history and to groom for leadership. Her grandmother, descended from a matriarchal tribe, knows he may be overlooking the born leader. The myths of the Maori of Whangara, New Zealand, are interspersed with the very down-to-earth story narrated by Kahu's young motorcycle-riding uncle who also comes to realize how important his family and his culture are to his future. Ihimaera beautifully conveys the magnificence of the great whales, who play so important a role in the tribe's history and myth, and the challenges facing an indigenous people in the 21st century. The publisher suggests this for ages 10 and up. I see it as one of those books for all ages. [CW]

Figgs and Phantoms

Figgs and Phantoms Ellen Raskin Puffin Books; ISBN: 0140329447 Mona finds most of her family of retired circus performers exasperating. They seem hardly made for this world. Their improbable and impractical businesses barely eke along. Scraps of stylized newspaper articles, letters, book covers and posters fill the pages of this book. These express in stronger terms than even the excellent writing the difficulty of living amongst misfits and clowns in a small town. Side plots reveal Mona's generally miserable demeanor. Mona's beloved uncle is among the least down-to-earth of the characters. Her attempts to help him lead her into strange escapades, worthy of her family notoriety. After her uncle passes away, Mona attempts to find him—an ambitious and strange undertaking considering he has died. Mona's family, you see, has a strange belief in an afterlife in 'Capri.' Normally, Mona would ascribe this to the exasperating weirdness of her relatives. In this case however, she is desperate enough to attempt to investigate. Humor leaps out of nearly every page of this low-key fantasy story. Raskin wrote this cheery story of coming to terms with life in a rich language. For this reason alone the book is suited for older kids and young adolescents rather than younger children. Adults with a taste for the whimsical and needing an antidote for melancholy will appreciate this book, too. [EG]

Inkheart

Inkheart Cornelia Funke Chicken House; ISBN: 0439531640 The bibliophile protagonists discover that exciting books can be dangerous. The title refers to the villain of this uniquely absorbing fantasy story. His heart is literally as black as the ink used to describe him. Despite the Gothic horror structure of the plot, the central character, a twelve-year-old girl named Meggie, never loses her hope and nerve. Funke elaborates a few other characters sufficiently to yield a keen dramatic edge to the extraordinary conclusion. Her writing turns in on itself; the book 'Inkheart' itself plays a central role in the novel. Revelations abound, making it difficult to discuss the book without spoiling it. The central notion concerns the power of reversing the ordinary roles of reader and author, of breaking down the barriers between literature and life. This heady stuff will not spoil the book for the young reader, probably 11-14 would be best. Nor will a child pick up on all the chilling aspects of the all-too-convincing rendering of evil. Inkheart reminds me of The Neverending Story. Both books explore the importance and consequences of fantasy and rupture the boundaries of the story within the story. The philosophical dimension and subtle nuances of the book's conclusion will only be accessible to an adult reader. There's quite a lot for the younger reader as well! [EG]