Fwd: Highlights of Octoberfest

Hi All,  More Picts from Cara to share!

 

Tracy

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Cara Clark <caraclark@hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 12:52 PM
Subject: Highlights of Octoberfest

Here are some highlights of Octoberfest:
 

Crazy rides
 
'
Hugh beer tents
 

Girls in dirndls
 

Boys in lederhosen
 

Big glasses of Beer
 

Man singing and dancing on
table wearing funny hat...
 
It must be Octoberfest!
 
Add bonus:
 

Beautiful Castle and landscape

---

Stay up to date on your PC, the Web, and your mobile phone with Windows Live. See Now

Re: Highlights from South Africa

Thanks Cara, These are great! I'll pass them along to the rest of the book club.

 

Tracy

On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 8:13 AM, Cara Clark <caraclark@hotmail.com> wrote:

Here are some Highlights from South Africa:
 

We were lucky to see so many
animals including elephants, zebras,
impalas, giraffes, wart hogs, hippos,
alligators, baboons, monkeys, lions,
buffalos...etc
 

The beaches were beautiful and we
saw whales, dolphins, and seals
 

and penguins too.
 

The country side was very green and
colorful
 

and Cape town was hopping late into
the night.
 

All and all South Africa had many nice
surprises.

---

Stay up to date on your PC, the Web, and your mobile phone with Windows Live. See Now

--
Tracy Myers
Branch Manager
Southwest Neighborhood Library
900 Wesley Place SW
Washington DC, 20024
202-724-4752
tracy.myers@dc.gov

September and October Book Picks

Hi All, Just an update:

As discussed during the last meeting we will be reading:

September 29 book: Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick 7:00 PM room 221

The Mayflower, is an account of the voyage of the Mayflower and the settlement of Plymouth Colony. From the Mayflower's arduous Atlantic crossing to the eruption of King Philip's War between colonists and natives decades later, Philbrick reveals in this electrifying history of the Pilgrims a fifty-five-year epic, at once tragic and heroic, that still resonates with us today.

October 28 book: When She Was White by Judith Stone 7:00 PM room 221

When I Was White is the story of a black woman born to white parents during the years of official racism in South Africa. Sandra Laing was officially registered and raised as a white child. In 1966, when Sandra was ten, the police removed her from school and she was reclassified as 'colored.'

The movies will be:

September 15 movie: Plymouth Adventure 6:30 Second Floor Lobby
The story of the voyage of the "Mayflower" in its historic voyage across the Atlantic to the New World. The cast list includes Spenser Tracy, Gene Tierney, and Lloyd Bridges among those who made the 96-day storm-filled crossing.

October 13 movie:Catch a Fire 6:30 Second Floor Lobby
A political thriller: the real-life story of a South African hero's journey to freedom. In the country's turbulent and divided times in the 1980s, Patrick Chamusso is an oil refinery foreman and soccer coach who is apolitical - until he and his wife Precious are jailed. Patrick is stunned into action against the country's oppressive reigning system, even as police Colonel Nic Vos further insinuates himself into the Chamussos' lives

Schedule for Film and Book Club – 2008

Jan 14 - 6:30 – 8:30 PM
All the World’s a Stage Film Club
Zulu Dawn - 2nd East Lobby

Jan 28 - 7:00 – 8:30 PM
All the World’s a Stage Book Club
Out of Africa - Room 221

Feb 11 - 6:30 – 8:30 PM
2nd East Lobby
All the World’s a Stage Film Club
Mrs. Brown

Feb 25 - 7:00 – 8:30 PM
All the World’s a Stage Book Club
Four Queens - Popular Library Division

Mar 17 - 6:30 – 8:30 PM
All the World’s a Stage Film Club
Frida - 2nd East Lobby

Mar 24 - 7:00 – 8:30 PM
All the World’s a Stage Book Club
Assorted Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera Biographies - Room 221

Apr 14 - 6:30 – 8:30 PM
All the World’s a Stage Film Club
Tsotsi - 2nd East Lobby

Apr 28 - 7:00 – 8:30 PM
All the World’s a Stage Book Club
Dark Star Safari - Room 221

May12 - 6:30 – 8:30 PM
All the World’s a Stage Film Club
Salaam Bombay! - 2nd East Lobby

May 19 - 7:00 – 8:30 PM
All the World’s a Stage Book Club
Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India by Edward Luce - Room 221

Movie: June 9, 6:30 PM – Chicago
Murderesses Velma Kelly (a chanteuse and tease who killed her husband and sister after finding them in bed together)and Roxie Hart (Who killed her boyfriend when she discovered he wasn't going to make her a star) find themselves on death row together and fight for the fame that will keep them from the gallows in 1920s Chicago.

Book: June 23, 7:00 PM
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Bringing Chicago circa 1893 to vivid life, Erik Larson's spellbinding bestseller intertwines the true tale of two men--the brilliant architect behind the legendary 1893 World's Fair, striving to secure America's place in the world; and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.

Movie: July 14, 6:30 PM - Rasputin: The Mad Monk
The life of the legendary Russian villain Grigori Rasputin, an intense figure as the diabolical healer and mesmerist with a thirst for power. The film begins with the unapologetically crude and barbaric Rasputin expelled from his monastery for his hard-drinking hedonism and violent behavior, and before long he sets his sights on the bustling city of St. Petersburg.

Book: July 28, 7:00 PM - Assorted Biographies on Rasputin
Rasputin, a Russian mystic who is perceived as having influenced the later days of the Russian Czar Nicholas II, his wife the Tsaritsa Alexandra, and their only son the Tsarevich Alexei. Rasputin had often been called the "Mad Monk" while others considered him an "elder", a title usually reserved for monk-confessors), believing him to be a psychic and faith healer

Movie:
August 11, 6:30 PM - Shadow Magic
Ann Hu's Shadow Magic tells the story of an itinerant Englishman (Jared Harris) who's the first to bring motion pictures to China. His hand-cranked projector casts images that are a marvel to his mixed audience of peasants and royalty.

Book: August 25, 7:00 PM - Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler
In Oracle Bones, Peter Hessler explores the human side of China's transformation, viewing modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world through the lives of a handful of ordinary people. In a narrative that gracefully moves between the ancient and the present, the East and the West, Hessler captures the soul of a country that is undergoing a momentous change before our eyes.

Book Club: Meeting this last Monday

Hi All,

 

On Monday the group met and pick the books for June and July:

 

June: Devil in the White City

 

Book Description
Bringing Chicago circa 1893 to vivid life, Erik Larson's spellbinding bestseller intertwines the true tale of two men--the brilliant architect behind the legendary 1893 World's Fair, striving to secure America's place in the world; and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.
 

 

July: Biography of Rasputin (I think we can get enough copies of "The Rasputin File", or if you want to read one of the other Biographies we have you can)

 

Now Oracle Bones was also of interest, and someone (I think Margaret) pointed out that the Olympics are in Beijing this year. The Olympics are in August, and we have not picked the book for August, is this something we want to pick at this time, or would you like to think about it.

Book Description

A century ago, outsiders saw China as a place where nothing ever changes. Today the country has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. In Oracle Bones, Peter Hessler explores the human side of China's transformation, viewing modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world through the lives of a handful of ordinary people. In a narrative that gracefully moves between the ancient and the present, the East and the West, Hessler captures the soul of a country that is undergoing a momentous change before our eyes.

--
Tracy Myers
History Librarian, Social Sciences Department
Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library
901 G St. NW, Washington, DC, 20001
202-727-1161
dclibrarian@gmail.com

November Book

Monday November 26 – 7:00 PM – Room 221

Book: Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog by John Grogan

A Labrador retriever, a dog like no other. He crashed through screen doors, gouged through drywall, flung drool on guests, stole women's undergarments, and ate nearly everything he could get his mouth around, including couches and fine jewelry. Obedience school did no good—Marley was expelled. Neither did the tranquilizers the veterinarian prescribed for him with the admonishment, "Don't hesitate to use these." Marley shut down a public beach and managed to land a role in a feature-length movie, always winning hearts as he made a mess of things. Through it all, he remained steadfast, a model of devotion, even when his family was at its wit's end. Unconditional love, they would learn, comes in many forms. -Amazon.com

October Book

Monday October 22 – 7:00 PM – Room 221

Book: Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk

A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world's great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy–or hüzün– that all Istanbullus share: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire. With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from his glamorous, unhappy parents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and painters–both Turkish and foreign–who would shape his consciousness of his city. Like Joyce's Dublin and Borges' Buenos Aires, Pamuk's Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving. -Amazon.com

September Book

Book: The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan

Meeting: September 24, 7:00 PM

Book Description:

The tale of a simple act of faith between two young people - one Israeli, one Palestinian - that symbolizes the hope for peace in the Middle East.

In 1967, not long after the Six-Day War, three young Arab men ventured into the town of Ramle, in what is now Jewish Israel. They were cousins, on a pilgrimage to see their childhood homes; their families had been driven out of Palestine nearly twenty years earlier. One cousin had a door slammed in his face, and another found his old house had been converted into a school. But the third, Bashir Al-Khairi, was met at the door by a young woman called Dalia, who invited them in.

This act of faith in the face of many years of animosity is the starting point for a true story of a remarkable relationship between two families, one Arab, one Jewish, amid the fraught modern history of the regio. In his childhood home, in the lemon tree his father planted in the backyard, Bashir sees dispossession and occupation; Dalia, who arrived as an infant in 1948 with her family from Bulgaria, sees hope for a people devastated by the Holocaust. As both are swept up in the fates of their people, and Bashir is jailed for his alleged part in a supermarket bombing, the friends do not speak for years. They finally reconcile and convert the house in Ramle into a day-care centre for Arab children of Israel, and a center for dialogue between Arabs and Jews. Now the dialogue they started seems more threatened than ever; the lemon tree died in 1998, and Bashir was jailed again, without charge.

The Lemon Tree grew out of a forty-three minute radio documentary that Sandy Tolan produced for Fresh Air. With this book, he pursues the story into the homes and histories of the two families at its center, and up to the present day. Their stories form a personal microcosm of the last seventy years of Israeli-Palestinian history. In a region that seems ever more divided, The Lemon Tree is a reminder of all that is at stake, and of all that is still possible.
-From Amazon.com

About the Author:

Sandy Tolan is the author of Me & Hank: A Boy and His Hero, Twenty-five Years Later. He has written for the New York Times Magazine and for more than 40 other magazines and newspapers. As cofounder of Homelands Productions, Tolan has produced dozens of radio documentaries for NPR and PRI. His work has won numerous awards, and he was a 1993 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and an I. F. Stone Fellow at the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where he directs the school’s Project on International Reporting.
-From Amazon.com

Links:

August Book

Book: Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King by Antonia Fraser

Meeting: August 27, 7:00 PM

Book Description:
The self-proclaimed Sun King, Louis XIV ruled over the most glorious and extravagant court in seventeenth-century Europe. Now, Antonia Fraser goes behind the well-known tales of Louis’s accomplishments and follies, exploring in riveting detail his intimate relationships with women.

The king’s mother, Anne of Austria, had been in a childless marriage for twenty-two years before she gave birth to Louis XIV. A devout Catholic, she instilled in her son a strong sense of piety and fought successfully for his right to absolute power. In 1660, Louis married his first cousin, Marie-Thérèse, in a political arrangement. While unfailingly kind to the official "Queen of Versailles," Louis sought others to satisfy his romantic and sexual desires. After a flirtation with his sister-in-law, his first important mistress was Louise de La Vallière, who bore him several children before being replaced by the tempestuous and brilliant Athénaïs, marquise de Montespan. Later, when Athénaïs’s reputation was tarnished, the king continued to support her publicly until Athénaïs left court for a life of repentance. Meanwhile her children’s governess, the intelligent and seemingly puritanical Françoise de Maintenon, had already won the king’s affections; in a relationship in complete contrast to his physical obsession with Athénaïs, Louis XIV lived happily with Madame de Maintenon for the rest of his life, very probably marrying her in secret. When his grandson’s child bride, the enchanting Adelaide of Savoy, came to Versaille she lightened the king’s last years—until tragedy struck.

With consummate skill, Antonia Fraser weaves insights into the nature of women’s religious lives—as well as such practical matters as contraception—into her magnificent, sweeping portrait of the king, his court, and his ladies.
-from: Amazon.com

About the Author:
Since 1969 ANTONIA FRASER has written many acclaimed historical works that have been international bestsellers. She is the recipient of many literary awards, including the Wolfson Prize for History, the Saint Louis Literary Award, and the 2000 Norton Medlicott Medal of Britain’s Historical Association. Her works include the biographies Mary Queen of Scots, Cromwell, the Lord Protector and Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration. Four highly praised books focus on women in history: The Weaker Vessel, The Warrior Queens, The Six Wives of Henry VIII and, most recently, Marie Antoinette: The Journey. She is editor of the book The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England. Antonia Fraser is married to Harold Pinter -from: Amazon.com

July Book

Book: The Year 1000 by Robert Lacey

Meeting: July 23, 2007, 7:00 PM, Room 221

Book Description
A vivid and surprising portrait of life in England at the turn of the last millenniuma world that already knew brain surgeons and property developers and, yes, even the occasional gossip columnist. Chapters follow the structure of an ancient calendar, and overflow with such facts as the recipe for a medieval form of Viagra, what clothing was like in a world without buttons, and much more. A standout among millennium books, offering a revealing comparison of the end of the first millennium with the end of the second. -from: Amazon.com

About the Author
Robert Lacey is the coauthor of The Year 1000 and the author of such bestselling books as Majesty, The Kingdom, and The Queen Mother’s Century. He lives in London. -from: Amazon.com

Links:

• http://www.robertlacey.com/
• The Year 1000: Apocalyptic Year Extraordinaire?
  
• Women in the Year 1000
• Map of the Year 1000
• Book Review - The Year 1000

June Book

Meeting Date: June 26 2007, 7:00 PM

Book: The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad

Book Description:
For more than twenty years, Sultan Khan has defied the authorities, whether communist or Taliban, to supply books to the people of Kabul. He has been arrested, interrogated, and imprisoned, and has watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books in the street. Yet he has persisted in his passion for books, shedding light in one of the world's darkest places. This is the intimate portrait of a man of principle and of his family - two wives, five children, and many relatives sharing a small four-room apartment in this war-ravaged city. As they endure the extraordinary trials and tensions of Afghanistan's upheavals, they also still try to live ordinary lives, with work, relaxation, shopping, cooking, marriages, rivalries, and shared joys. Most of all, this is an intimate portrait of family life under Islam. Even after the Taliban's collapse, the women in Khan's family must submit to arranged marriages, polygamous husbands, and crippling limitations on their ability to travel, learn, and communicate with others. Seierstad lived with Khan's family for months, experiencing first-hand Afghani life as few outsiders have seen it. Stepping back from the page, she allows the Khans to speak for themselves, giving us a genuinely gripping and moving portrait of a family, and of a country of great cultural riches and extreme contradictions.
-from: amazon.com

About the Author:
Åsne Seiserstad was born in 1970 and studied Russian, Spanish and the history of Philosophy at Oslo University. She has worked as a war correspondent, first in Russia between 1993 and 1996, then in China in 1997. Between 1998 and 2000 she reported on the war in Kosovo for Norwegian television, and in 2000 she published With Their Backs to the Wall: Portraits from Serbia. In autumn 2001 she spent three months in Afghanistan, reporting for a number of major Scandinavian newspapers. In spring 2003 she reported on the war in Iraq from Baghdad.

Åsne Seiserstad has received numerous awards for her journalism. The Bookseller of Kabul is one of the bestselling Norwegian Books of all time, and has been translated into many languages.
-from: www.virago.co.uk

Links
Asne Seierstad: Profile: Virago
Sarah Waters - profile, interview and extracts from Sarah Waters's works.

Asne Seierstad interview.
A Baghdad Journal - Asne Seierstad.

Amazon.com: The Bookseller of Kabul: Books: Asne Seierstad

A Hundred & One Days: An Interview with Asne Seierstad

Asne Seierstad - A biography of Asne Seierstad.

Book reviews of The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad.

May Book

Meeting Date: May 21, 7:00 PM

Book: Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician by Anthony Everitt

Book Description:

He squared off against Caesar and was friends with young Brutus. He advised the legendary Pompey on his somewhat botched transition from military hero to politician. He lambasted Mark Antony and was master of the smear campaign, as feared for his wit as he was for exposing his opponents’ sexual peccadilloes. Brilliant, voluble, cranky, a genius of political manipulation but also a true patriot and idealist, Cicero was Rome’s most feared politician, one of the greatest lawyers and statesmen of all times. Machiavelli, Queen Elizabeth, John Adams and Winston Churchill all studied his example. No man has loomed larger in the political history of mankind.

In this dynamic and engaging biography, Anthony Everitt plunges us into the fascinating, scandal-ridden world of ancient Rome in its most glorious heyday. Accessible to us through his legendary speeches but also through an unrivaled collection of unguarded letters to his close friend Atticus, Cicero comes to life in these pages as a witty and cunning political operator.

Cicero leapt onto the public stage at twenty-six, came of age during Spartacus’ famous revolt of the gladiators and presided over Roman law and politics for almost half a century. He foiled the legendary Catiline conspiracy, advised Pompey, the victorious general who brought the Middle East under Roman rule, and fought to mobilize the Senate against Caesar. He witnessed the conquest of Gaul, the civil war that followed and Caesar’s dictatorship and assassination. Cicero was a legendary defender of freedom and a model, later, to French and American revolutionaries who saw themselves as following in his footsteps in their resistance to tyranny.

Anthony Everitt’s biography paints a caustic picture of Roman politics—where Senators were endlessly filibustering legislation, walking out, rigging the calendar and exposing one another’s sexual escapades, real or imagined, to discredit their opponents. This was a time before slander and libel laws, and the stories—about dubious pardons, campaign finance scandals, widespread corruption, buying and rigging votes, wife-swapping, and so on—make the Lewinsky affair and the U.S. Congress seem chaste.

Cicero was a wily political operator. As a lawyer, he knew no equal. Boastful, often incapable of making up his mind, emotional enough to wander through the woods weeping when his beloved daughter died in childbirth, he emerges in these pages as intensely human, yet he was also the most eloquent and astute witness to the last days of Republican Rome
(from: Amazon.com)

About the Author:

Anthony Everitt’s fascination with ancient Rome began when he studied classics in school and has persisted ever since. He read English literature at Cambridge University and served four years as secretary general of the Arts Council for Great Britain. A visiting professor of arts and cultural policy at Nottingham Trent University and City University, Everitt has written extensively on European culture and development, and has contributed to the Guardian and Financial Times since 1994. Cicero, his first biography, was chosen by both Allan Massie and Andrew Roberts as the best book of the year in the United Kingdom. Anthony Everitt lives near Colchester, England’s first recorded town, founded by the Romans, and [has written] a biography of Augustus.
(from: Amazon.com)

Links:

• Salon.com review
• ereader - author info

April Book

Meeting Date: April 23, 2007 7:00 PM

Book: Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution by Ruth Scurr

Book Description:
Since his execution by guillotine in July 1794, Maximilien Robespierre has been contested terrain for historians, at once the most notorious leader of the French Revolution and the least comprehensible. Was he a bloodthirsty charlatan or the only true defender of revolutionary ideals? Was his extreme moralismhe was known as The Incorruptiblea heroic virtue or a ruinous flaw? Was he the first modern dictator or the earliest democrat? Against the dramatic backdrop of the French Revolution, historian Ruth Scurr follows the trajectory of Robespierres paradoxical life, from his unprepossessing beginnings as a provincial lawyer opposed to repressive authority and the death penalty, to his meteoric rise in Paris politics as a devastatingly efficient revolutionary leader, righteous and paranoid in equal measure. She explores his reformist zeal, his role in the trial of the king and the fall of the monarchy, his passionate attempt to design a modern republic, even his extraordinary effort to found a perfect religion. And she follows him into the depths of the Terror, as he makes summary execution the order of the day, himself falling victim to the violence at the age of thirty-six. Written with epic sweep, full of nuance and insight, Fatal Purity is a fascinating portrait of a man who identified with the Revolution to the point of madness, and in so doing changed the course of history.

About the Author:
Born in 1971, Ruth Scurr studied at Oxford and Cambridge, where she currently teaches politics and history. A prominent literary critic, she has written for The New York Review of Books and The Times Literary Supplement. Fatal Purity is her first book.

Links:

• French Revolution - Victorian Web
• French Revolution chronology
• The Origins of the French Revolution
• The Project Gutenberg EBook of The French Revolution, by Thomas Carlyle
• The Avalon Project : Declaration of the Rights of Man - 1789
• Pamphlets and Periodicals of the French Revolution of 1848
• Links on the French Revolution

March Book

Meeting Date: Monday March 26, 7:00 PM

Book:Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel

Book Description:
Galileo Galilei's telescopes allowed him to discover a new reality in the heavens. But for publicly declaring his astounding argument--that the earth revolves around the sun--he was accused of heresy and put under house arrest by the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Living a far different life, Galileo's daughter Virginia, a cloistered nun, proved to be her father's greatest source of strength through the difficult years of his trial and persecution.

Drawing upon the remarkable surviving letters that Virginia wrote to her father, Dava Sobel has written a fascinating history of Medici--era Italy, a mesmerizing account of Galileo's scientific discoveries and his trial by Church authorities, and a touching portrayal of a father--daughter relationship. Galileo's Daughter is a profoundly moving portrait of the man who forever changed the way we see the universe.
(from: amazon.com)

About the Author:
Dava Sobel is an award--winning former science writer for the New York Times and has written frequently about science for several magazines, including Audubon, Discover, Life, the New York Times Magazine, and the New Yorker.
(from: amazon.com)

Links

• Galileo's Daughter Website
• Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, 1615
• The Galileo Project
• The Galilian Library
• The Trial of Galileo: Selected Letters

February Book

• Meeting Date: Monday February 26, 2007 7:00 PM
  
  Book: Brutal Journey: The Epic Story of the First Crossing of North America by Paul Schneider
  
  Book Description:
  
  One part Lewis and Clark, one part Heart of Darkness, Brutal Journey tells the story of an army of would-be conquerors who came to the New World on the heels of Corts. Bound for glory, they landed in Florida in 1528. But only four of the four hundred would survive: eight years and a 5,000-mile journey later, three Spaniards and a black Moroccan wandered out of the wilderness to the north of the Rio Grande and into Cortss gold-drenched Mexico. The survivors brought nothing back other than their story, but what a tale it was. They had become killers and cannibals, torturers and torture victims, slavers and enslaved. They became faith healers, arms dealers, canoe thieves, spider eaters, and finally, when there were only the four of them left in the high Texas desert, they became itinerate messiahs. They became, in other words, whatever it took to stay alive long enough to reach Mexico, the only place where they were certain they would find an outpost of the Spanish empire. The journey of the Narvez expedition is one of the greatest survival epics in the history of American exploration. By combining the accounts of the explorers with the most recent findings of archaeologists and academic historians, Brutal Journey offers an authentic narrative to replace a legend of North American exploration.
  (from: amazon.com)
  
  About the Author:
  
  Biography
  
  Born and raised in Massachusetts, mostly Amherst, a college town in the western half of the state. Went to public high school then Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. After stints working with refugees in Thailand, prep-school students in Switzerland, and a brief career as a wire-service stringer in Kenya, I settled into magazine journalism in New York City. On staff at Esquire, and freelancing all over town, (including Vanity Fair where I met my wife) I eventually found myself writing mostly about environmental issues, primarily for the National Aububon Magazine.
  
  That work led to my first book, The Adirondacks, A History of America's First Wilderness, which was a New York Times notable book of 1997. My second book, The Enduring Shore, A History of Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket, was also published by Henry Holt and was well received.
  
  Sometime in between those two books I came across a very brief mention of the Cabeza de Vaca story in an obscure book on the old trails west. I knew immediately that I had to know more about this incredible story of four who survived and crossed America out of 400 who landed in Florida in 1528. That obsession eventually resulted in Brutal Journey, my newest book, which the New York Times called "hard to believe, and impossible to forget."
  (from: amazon.com)
  
  Links
  
• Author Profile
• Cabeza de Vaca in North America
• PBS "The West"
• Online verion of Cabeza de Vaca's La relación

January Book

Meeting Date: Monday January 22nd, 7:00 PM

Book: Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa by Nicholas Shrady

Book Description:
In Tilt, author Nicholas Shrady reveals how the campanile, or bell tower, in Pisa's Campo dei Miracoli became the iconic Tower of Pisa. Even standing straight and true, the tower's marble and lime fa‡ade would be instantly recognizable the world over. Yet its distinctive tilt, which measured 1.6 degrees from vertical when construction was completed in 1370, has long been a mystery. Was it the result of shoddy workmanship or the brainchild of a hunchback maestro who skewed the tower to avenge his own condition? Nearly a millennium since its construction, the tower still stands (more than 4 meters -- or 5 degrees -- askew) in defiance of logic, gravity, and soaring odds -- a mute witness to history as it has unfolded.

Envisioned as a display of wealth and power in Pisa's medieval heyday, the tower was revolutionary in its design. Architectural sleight of hand lent the campanile the appearance of weightlessness even as it supported seven colossal bronze bells. Technical achievements and rare beauty aside, it is the tower's glaring folly that has attracted legions of admirers and would-be saviors -- even as it alarmed engineers.

In addition to having defied the known laws of physics, the tower's cylindrical masonry has concealed a storied past. Galileo was said to have launched his experiments on the velocity of falling bodies from atop its heights. Lord Byron, the Shelleys, and their Romantics frolicked in its listing shadow. Benito Mussolini tried to right the tower by ordering that cement be injected into its foundation. During World War II, the "Tiltin' Hilton" was a suspected enemy hideout and narrowly escaped being bombed. Following a $30 million stabilization and restoration effort lasting more than a decade and into the twenty-first century, Pisa's Leaning Tower has been preserved for the ages as an architectural marvel and a paragon of modern tourism.

Tilt encapsulates the tower's singular history in a hugely entertaining and informative narrative, by turns learned and whimsical, reverent and surprising. Here is a "biography" that, like its subject, is all the more delightful for its thorough improbability. It is a celebration of inspired vision and human machinations, of supreme ambition and spiritual enlightenment, of science and superstition, of faith and miracles. (from: amazon.com)

About the Author:
Nicholas Shrady is the author of Sacred Roads: Adventures from the Pilgrimage Trail. His articles have appeared in Architectural Digest, The New York Times Book Review, Travel & Leisure, Forbes, and Town & Country. Since 1986, he has made his home in Barcelona. His wife, Eva Ortega, and his sons divide their time between Barcelona and their olive grove in the hills above the Ebro Delta. (from: amazon.com)

Links

• Amazon.com reviews
• Offical website of the Tower of Pisa
• Wikipedia entry
• Unoffical webite of the Tower of Pisa
• NOVA webesite: The Fall of the Leaning Tower
• Virtual guide to the Tower of Pisa (360 panorama)
• Destination 360 site
• View the Tower from Google Earth

December 2006

Due to the Holidays we will not meet in December.

November Book

Meeting Date: Monday November 27th, 7:00 PM

Book: Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring by Alexander Rose

Book Description:
Based on remarkable new research, acclaimed historian Alexander Rose brings to life the true story of the spy ring that helped America win the Revolutionary War. For the first time, Rose takes us beyond the battlefront and deep into the shadowy underworld of double agents and triple crosses, covert operations and code breaking, and unmasks the courageous, flawed men who inhabited this wilderness of mirrors–including the spymaster at the heart of it all.

In the summer of 1778, with the war poised to turn in his favor, General George Washington desperately needed to know where the British would strike next. To that end, he unleashed his secret weapon: an unlikely ring of spies in New York charged with discovering the enemy’s battle plans and military strategy.

Washington’s small band included a young Quaker torn between political principle and family loyalty, a swashbuckling sailor addicted to the perils of espionage, a hard-drinking barkeep, a Yale-educated cavalryman and friend of the doomed Nathan Hale, and a peaceful, sickly farmer who begged Washington to let him retire but who always came through in the end. Personally guiding these imperfect everyday heroes was Washington himself. In an era when officers were gentlemen, and gentlemen didn’t spy, he possessed an extraordinary talent for deception–and proved an adept spymaster.

The men he mentored were dubbed the Culper Ring. The British secret service tried to hunt them down, but they escaped by the closest of shaves thanks to their ciphers, dead drops, and invisible ink. Rose’s thrilling narrative tells the unknown story of the Revolution–the murderous intelligence war, gunrunning and kidnapping, defectors and executioners–that has never appeared in the history books. But Washington’s Spies is also a spirited, touching account of friendship and trust, fear and betrayal, amid the dark and silent world of the spy.
(from: Amazon.com)

About the Author
ALEXANDER ROSE earned his doctorate from Cambridge University, where his prizewinning research focused on political and scientific history. He is the author of Kings in the North: The House of Percy in British History, and his writing has appeared in the New York Observer, the Washington Post, and many other publications. He lives in New York City.
(from: Amazon.com)

Links:

• John Honeyman
• Amazon reviews
• Author's website
• National Review Interview
• Spies and Scouts, Secret Writing, and Sympathetic Citizens

October Book

Meeting Date: October 23, 7:00 PM

Book: Selected Genghis Khan Biographies

• Genghis Khan : conqueror of the world / Leo de Hartog.
• Genghis Khan / James Chambers.
• Genghis Khan : his life and legacy / Paul Ratchnevsky
• Genghis khan / Brenda Lange.

This month we are doing things a little different. We are taking on the life of a person as opposed to a single book.

September Book

Meeting Date: September 25, 7:00 PM

Book: The Pirate Hunter : The True Story of Captain Kidd by Richard Zacks

Book Description:
Everybody knows the legend of Captain Kidd, Americas most ruthless buccanneer. Few people realize that the facts of his life make for a much better tale. Kidd was actually a tough New York sea captain hired to chase pirates, a married war hero whose secret mission took a spectacularly bad turn. This harrowing tale traces Kidds voyages in the 1690s from his home near Wall Street to Whitehall Palace in London, from the ports of the Caribbean to a secret pirate paradise off Madagascar. Author Richard Zacks, during his research, also unearthed the story of a long forgotten rogue named Robert Culliford, who dogged Kidd and led Kidds crew to mutiny not once but twice. The lives of Kidd and Culliford play out like an unscripted duel: one man would hang in the harbor, the other would walk away with the treasure. Filled with superb writing and impeccable research, The Pirate Hunter is both a masterpiece of historical detective work and a ripping good yarn, and it delivers something rare: an authentic pirate story for grown-ups.
-from: Amazon.com

About the Author:
Richard Zacks spent more than three years researching The Pirate Hunter, including months at the Public Record Office in London (where he found a pirate prisoner's long-lost diary). Zacks is the author of two previous books of unusual research: the bestselling History Laid Bare and perennial book club favorite An Underground Education. He lives in Pelham, New York.
-from: Amazon.com

Links:
Author Biographical information

The Pirate Hunter Website

Author Interview

Book Browse Review

Salon.com Review

Pirates of the Caribbean, in Fact and Fiction

Pirates - Fact and Legend

Piracy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pirates - National Maritime Museum,

Pirates and Privateers: The History of Maritime Piracy

Elizabeth's Pirates