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Neurofibromatosis (04/15)
Nature, in all its astounding wisdom, has graced the planet, specifically human beings, with millions of options when it comes to heritable genetic conditions. It is always exciting for expectant parents to anticipate whether their offspring will be the gleeful recipient of Mum's freckles or great-granddad's aquiline profile. On...
San Francisco's Chinatown (03/15)
San Francisco's Chinatown (the setting of Lisa See's China Dolls) is the oldest in the United States, and the largest confluence of Chinese people and culture outside of Asia. In 2013, the San Francisco Planning Department announced that Chinatown is 'the most densely populated urban area west of Manhattan' – some 15,000 residents ...
Office Fiction (03/15)
People today seem to spend more time at work than ever before. So why is it that once we've gotten home, kicked off our uncomfortable shoes and loosened our ties, we relax by watching
The Office,
Mad Men, or cult classic
Office Space, read books like Jonas Karlsson's
The Room or even comics such as
Dilbert?
Perhaps it's because we can...
The Royal Society (03/15)
Many of the scientists discussed in
A Garden of Marvels were members of The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. Known today as simply The Royal Society, the group was founded in November 1660, and began as the Gresham College group – a loose collection of natural philosophers and physicians who started meeting ...
Artwork in The Painter (03/15)
Art plays a very important role in Peter Heller's vibrant and introspective second novel, The Painter. Narrator Jim Stegner describes various famous works of art as a way of processing his emotions. He expresses how the colors and textures of each masterpiece affect him at a deep level, and he ponders what these emotions mean about his ...
Zydeco Music (03/15)
In Red Now and Laters, there are several references to zydeco, a type of music descended from Louisiana Creoles.
The commonly accepted explanation for the word 'zydeco' is that it comes from the old Creole adage, 'Les haricots ne sont pas sales,' meaning literally 'the beans aren't salty,' a lamentation that times are hard when you...
The Enigmatic City of Trieste (03/15)
One cannot read Daša Drndić's compelling novel Trieste without being intrigued by its namesake - the affluent and cosmopolitan industrial seaport city of 200,000 residents with historically fluid national allegiances. Located in Italy on the remote northeastern borders of Slovenia and Croatia, Trieste has flown flags of many ...
Sabriye Tenberken and Braille Without Borders (03/15)
In her nonfiction book
For the Benefit of Those Who See, Rosemary Mahoney recounts her experiences at
Braille Without Borders, an international development organization that helps blind and partially sighted students gain independence, workplace skills, and professional training.
Founded in Lhasa, Tibet, the organization is the ...
Crossing Into the Borderlands: The New YA Readers (03/15)
The True Tale Of The Monster Billy Dean, first published in the UK in 2011 by Penguin's adult imprint, Viking, was reviewed as David Almond's debut for adults, but it was simultaneously released as a young adult novel by Puffin, another Penguin imprint. It is one of a growing number of books that straddles the borderlands of adult, young-...
Commercial Diving (03/15)
Because the Boston Harbor cleanup required work underwater, a team of commercial divers was brought in. Trapped Under the Sea focuses primarily on these divers and the disastrous project that lead to two deaths.
Commercial diving includes both offshore and inland projects. Much offshore diving is connected with the oil industry, with ...
A Short Glossary for the 21st Century (03/15)
Throughout Annabelle Gurwitch's book of essays about life for women on the edge of 50, I See You Made an Effort, she references several terms that are gradually or quickly catching on in contemporary conversation. Here are some examples.
Boomeritis refers to injuries in older athletes, especially Baby Boomers, born at the end of World ...
A Brief History of the United States Marine Corps (03/15)
Redeployment author Phil Klay's service as a Marine made him part of what is arguably the most revered part of the United States military. The Corps is not technically a branch of the U.S. military, but is a special service affiliated with the Navy. The Army was established by the Continental Congress on June 14, 1775 and the Navy on...
Smallpox and Xenophobia (03/15)
Frog Music is set in San Francisco in 1876, during a summer notable not only for its record-setting heat waves but also for its smallpox epidemic, one of many that plagued the United States during the nineteenth century even as efforts were being made to eradicate the disease through vaccination and inoculation. According to Donoghue's ...
The Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (03/15)
'In the mess of Central Asia there are as many sides as there are opportunities to steal a march,' Rahman writes in In The Light of What We Know. 'There are no sides to tell us who is doing what, for whom, and why, only exigencies, strategies, short-term objectives, at the level of governments, regions, clans, families, and individuals: ...
Hoodoo (02/15)
To the untrained eye, the strain of magic involving animal spirits and the use of charms and powders in Cynthia Bond's novel might seem to be a branch of voodoo - a belief system that finds its origins in the Western African religion of Vodun. It is crucial to note that Ruby is, in fact, along with others in the community, a practitioner ...
Vietnamese Legends (02/15)
As evidenced in The Frangipani Hotel, Vietnam abounds with mythology and ghost stories. In the country's creation myth, Dragon Lord Lạc Long Quân and his fairy wife, Au Cợ, hatched their 100 children from eggs, giving rise to Vietnam's 100 family surnames. Lạc Long Quân had an undersea palace at the southern ...
Oh Restaurant, From Whence Thou? (02/15)
While buying ready prepared food outside the home has been an intrinsic part of urban culture in Europe from the earliest of days (as can be seen by the many thermopoliums in Pompeii), in the modern era, in general the upper classes, especially the women, would not have chosen to eat a meal outside of a private home - except in the direst...
Unusual Phobias (02/15)
In
My Age of Anxiety, Scott Stossel - journalist and editor of
The Atlantic magazine - describes, in intimate detail, how stressful living with a phobia can be. According to the American Psychological Association, a phobia
is a 'persistent and irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that is excessive and unreasonable,...
Mind the Gap: The Early Days of London's Pioneering Subway (02/15)
While Boston and New York might have been competing stateside to launch the first subway, across the Atlantic, London was already way ahead in getting its underground tube rolling.
In the mid-nineteenth century, congestion was getting to be an increasing problem in the city as the only way to travel around was by buses and cabs, not ...
Justin Vernon (02/15)
Nickolas Butler based one of the characters in Shotgun Lovesongs on Justin Vernon, a successful musician with whom he went to high school in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
Singer, songwriter and producer Justin DeYarmond Edison Vernon was born April 30, 1981 in Eau Claire. According to his father, he started writing songs at the age of 12...
Azaleas (02/15)
If you've always been wowed by azaleas, which feature in Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening, here are some fun facts.
Azaleas, members of the genus Rhodondendron, can be found all around the world. There are deciduous azaleas with origins in North America; evergreen varieties from Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan, and a whole host of...
U.N. Committee Presses Vatican Regarding Pedophile Priests (02/15)
In 2014, the Catholic Church took heat from a United Nations committee investigating its compliance with practices outlined in the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (
UNCRC). The Convention, which establishes international standards for the civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural rights of children, was ratified in...
The Columbia River (02/15)
The mouth of the Columbia River – where it meets the Pacific Ocean at the state border between Oregon and Washington – was John Jacob Astor's intended location for a trading center.
The Columbia River flows for 1,243 miles from its source at Columbia Lake, British Colombia through Washington and Oregon. It is the ...
Was Jesus Bipolar? (02/15)
In
The Good Luck of Right Now, the priest, Father McNamee, is bipolar and chooses to live with it free of medication. 'You know Jesus was most likely bipolar...what if Jesus had been medicated?' he says.
According the National Institute of Health (NIH), Mental Health
website, 'Bipolar disorder, formerly known as manic-depression, is a...
Spiritualism (02/15)
The notion of 'life after death' is a core tenet of Christianity, but when the Fox sisters said they communed with dead spirits in their farmhouse in upstate New York in 1848, many began to define this central belief differently. After the Fox daughters heard repeated tapping in their wood-framed house, they were convinced that the ghost ...
Insomnia (02/15)
Though Black Moon suggests an extreme scenario of a world without sleep, sleeplessness is a real problem in the United States. The World Health Organization defines insomnia as a 'repeated difficulty with sleep initiation, maintenance, duration, and/or quality of sleep and results in daytime impairment.' Insomnia is further categorized ...
The Hungarian Gold Train (02/15)
Although aligned with the Axis powers, Hungary avoided direct participation in World War II until 1941 and most Jews in the country were protected from deportation, although they were subject to anti-Jewish laws. This changed in 1944 when Hitler discovered that Hungary had been secretly engaged in peace negotiations with the USA and UK ...
Here Come the Russians and East Europeans! (02/15)
Belarusian-born Boris Fishman is part of a group of outstanding American writers of Russian or East-European origin which includes Josip Novakovich, from Croatia; Aleksandar Hemon, from Bosnia; Olga Grushin, from Russia; and Gary Shteyngart, of Russian-Jewish origin (who is explored thoroughly in this review of
Little Failure). With the ...
Woodstocks Abound (02/15)
Many Woodstocks come to mind when reading Out of Woods, Lynn Darling's memoir about her move to Woodstock, Vermont. The first is, of course, from the legendary Woodstock Festival in 1969, which was actually held in Bethel, New York after the towns of Wallkill and Woodstock refused the request for a permit. But there are many others. Here ...
Dogs for Defense (02/15)
On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked and the US entered the war. The value of dogs in the military had been proven many times, particularly during WWI, as they were used by the European armies as sentries, message-carriers and fox-hole clearers (of rats before the soldiers entered.). Although there were relatively few military ...
The Dunkirk Evacuation (02/15)
In The Afrika Reich, Guy Saville sets his story in a world in which the 'miracle of Dunkirk' is reimagined as the 'massacre of Dunkirk.' In this book, Britain failed in their mass evacuation of troops from the European mainland. Burton Cole, the protagonist, is a survivor and a former prisoner of the Germans.
The stage for the ...
Iselin, New Jersey: The Ethnoburb (02/15)
In Family Life, the Mishras make their home in the New Jersey suburb of Iselin. Iselin and its sister suburb, the township of Edison, are known to most Indians across the United States as the place to visit for anything Indian. It's here that you can indulge a craving for Mumbai street food, check out the latest fashions, or pick up a new...
Ahoy, MATEys! (02/15)
On June 25, 2004, in its third year, the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) Competition, sponsored by NASA and the Navy, was underway at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Carl Hayden Community High School's team (see
review of
Spare Parts) was a part of this competition.
MATE, ...
Sami Religion (01/15)
Forty Days Without Shadow sheds light on the native Sami people of northern Norway, most of whom are Lutherans. The Sami also take part in shamanic rituals that emphasize strong connections between the natural and spiritual worlds, although Christianity has been slowly making inroads over the centuries forcing the practice of the native ...
Enigmas of the mid-15th Century (01/15)
Throughout The Brotherhood of Book Hunters, Raphaël Jerusalmy makes his protagonist puzzle through conflicting evidence and deal with contradictory information. He also both doubts and finds reinforcements for his personal faith and beliefs. All of this fits nicely with the religious enigmas of the mid-15th Century, which is a ...
Key to a Long, Healthy Life: Friendship (01/15)
It turns out that the secret to enjoying a strong immune system, all but impervious to such annoyances as the common cold, inflammation and even heart disease, is 100% natural, organic, chemical-free, with no nasty side effects and – best of all – it's free. According to a New York Times
article, numerous studies have ...
The Frozen-Water Trade (01/15)
In The Kept, Elspeth works in the ice trade, which began in the early 1800s. Your chilled water, iced tea and sodas (or pop, if you prefer) owe a debt of thanks to this frozen-water trade, which involved the harvesting, transport and sale of natural ice. The industry had broad ramifications affecting the preservation of food, beverages, ...
The Legend of the Crane Wife (01/15)
'And all the stars were crashing round / As I lay eyes on what I'd found.' The epigraph to Patrick Ness's novel comes from
The Decemberists' 2006 album also entitled
The Crane Wife. Clearly artists of all sorts have been inspired by the Japanese folktale on which Ness's novel is very broadly based.
The legend, known as
Tsuru no ...
Macau (01/15)
Like Hong Kong, Macau (also spelled Macao) is a 'Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China' (SAR), but is a fraction of its size - about 28 sq km, (11 sq miles) compared to Hong Kong's 1,100 sq km. The terrain is mostly flat and has a humid, subtropical climate. It is located approximately 40 miles west of Hong Kong,...
Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project (01/15)
During World War II an isolated area in the American Southwest became the primary research and development site for the creation of the most destructive force in human history. As part of the Allied mission to vanquish the threat of the German nuclear development program, scientists and engineers built the atomic bomb in Los Alamos, New ...
Lebanon's Civil War (01/15)
Lebanon is a tiny state (about two-thirds the size of Connecticut) bordering the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Its geographical location, nestled between Syria to the north and Israel to the south, combined with the complex and delicate balance between its various ethnic and religious populations (totaling about 5 million), ...
Systematic Euthanasia (01/15)
In Motherland, one of the brothers, Ani, is a patient at a hospital in Hadamar, which was notorious for implementing the Nazis' systematic euthanasia program.
Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection had the unintended consequence of giving birth to Social Darwinism – determining the course of human evolution through...
The Storied Death of the Independent Bookstore (01/15)
We heard it when Borders Books began to appear. The Independent Bookstore is going to die. And then when Barnes and Noble Bookstores began popping up in many cities and suburbs. And when Amazon hit the scene. And then ebooks. The Independent Bookstore is all but dead. But is this true?
Headline, November 28, 2012,
The Atlantic:
The ...
The Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship (01/15)
In Janet Frame's posthumously published novel In the Memorial Room, New Zealand writer Harry Gill is awarded the annual Watercress-Armstrong Fellowship, which affords him the opportunity to work and live for six months in Menton, France. This novel is based on Frame's own experiences in Menton as a Katherine Mansfield Fellow in 1974. One ...
A Peek Into Stuttering (01/15)
The author's note at the end of
Paperboy recounts his own struggles with stuttering. He admits this story is largely autobiographical, which makes Little Man's description of his stuttering that much more poignant:
'The reason I hate talking to people who don't know me is because when they first see me I look like every other kid. Two ...
New Delhi and Edward Lutyens (01/15)
One of the cities Tristram Hunt visits in Cities of Empire is New Delhi, built separate from Delhi (the original Delhi later came to be called 'Old Delhi'). In India, the Empire's capital started off in the port city of Calcutta, but Delhi became an increasingly appealing proposition. Once the seat of the Mughals who ruled India for ...
Stories In The Sky: The Myths of Ursa Major (01/15)
Since the beginning of time, people have been looking up at the stars, connecting the fiery dots and telling stories about the images they create in the sky. Even in modern times, we are taught to see the man with a belt and a sword, the regal chair, a big dipper and a little one; once you've located at least an approximate location,
...
Living With Someone With Autistic Disorder (12/14)
For parents, siblings and partners of people who have been diagnosed with autistic disorder, something as simple as stopping at the quick mart for milk can be a challenge. Depending upon the person's level of tolerance for changes in routine, and conditions on the day, his/her response could range from nothing out of the ordinary; to ...
Why Quebec Speaks French (12/14)
We did not write a featured review or beyond the book article of
The Long Way Home so here is an earlier 'Beyond the Book' written for
Bury Your Dead. We also have a delightful article all about ducks for
How The Light Gets In (#9).
Why Quebec Speaks French
The province of Quebec is Canada's second most populous province, after ...
