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Jinn and Other Sprites (06/13)
Most Westerners are generally introduced to genies through the story of Aladdin and the Magic Lamp from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (aka The Arabian Nights). In it, Aladdin is tricked into obtaining an old oil lamp in which a jinni has been imprisoned. Through various twists and turns in the story, the jinni is released from...
Parisian Highlights (06/13)
Around 250-300 BCE, the capital of what is now known as France (or, more formally, The Republic of France) was established on the River Seine.
It was inhabited by an Iron Age Gallic tribe, the Parisii. In 52 BCE, it became a Roman settlement, known as Lutetia Parisiorum, and by approximately 300 CE was known as civitas Parisiorum, the ...
Pablo Neruda and Politics (06/13)
The country of Chile might be a vibrant democracy now - its shining 'Jewel of the Pacific,' Valparaíso, lined with upscale businesses and boutique hotels - but there have been turbulent upheavals in its recent political history, and the country's preeminent poet, Nobel Laureate, Pablo Neruda (born Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto)...
New York Locales in Tell the Wolves I'm Home (06/13)
The characters in
Tell the Wolves I'm Home visit numerous locations in New York City and Westchester County, New York, and the accuracy of Rifka Brunt's descriptions adds a rich flavor to the story. If you're the type of person who likes to travel to literary-inspired destinations, you might consider these three stops:
Louise Brooks (06/13)
Louise Brooks (1906-1985), born Mary Louise Brooks, was a dancer,
Ziegfeld girl, silent film actress, memoirist (
Lulu in Hollywood), and in her later years, an icon rediscovered and beloved by French film historians such as Henri Langois, who remarked, 'There is no Garbo! There is no Dietrich! There is only Louise Brooks!' She was best ...
The Women's Refugee Commission (06/13)
Mary Anne Schwalbe was a woman of many careers. She was a high school teacher; head of admissions at Harvard; and a founder, and later, director of the
Women's Refugee Commission. Her work with the WRC was something she was passionate about through the end of her life.
Founded in 1989 (and initially called the Women's Commission), the ...
A Look at the Khmer Rouge (06/13)
Before the Khmer Rouge (pronounced ki-mer roouze, effectively translating as Red Cambodians) wreaked havoc all over Cambodia and killed approximately one quarter of the country's seven million people, they were mostly a fringe communist guerrilla group operating in the jungles in the north of the country. Early in the 70s, then-Prince
...
Gifford Pinchot National Forest (06/13)
The
Gifford Pinchot National Forest is featured in a few of the stories in
Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain. Several characters maintain trails and clear brush, and these serve as interesting metaphors for dealing with life's hurdles. But of course, a national park is more than just a metaphor.
Named for the first Chief ...
Andrew Lang's Fairy Books (06/13)
As readers enjoy
Enchanted, they're exposed to dozens of fairy tale-inspired plot points, some of which are instantly recognizable while others are less familiar. For readers who are inspired to go back to the source of these stories, there are few better resources for fairy tales of all sorts than Andrew Lang's famous
Fairy Books.
...
Conversion Therapy (06/13)
Two thirds of the way through The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Cam's aunt sends her away to God's Promise: a Christian School and Center for Healing. Its mission is to help 'adolescents yearning to break free from the bonds of sexual sin and confusion by welcoming Jesus Christ into their lives.' How does God's Promise achieve what it ...
The House of Borgia (06/13)
The Borgia name is synonymous with corruption, crime, and scandal. In Malice of Fortune, several Borgia family members play both prominent and subtle roles against the backdrop of the Renaissance papacy.
Pope Alexander VI
Born in Spain as Roderic Llançol i de Borja (Rodrigo Borgia), he studied law in Bologne before being ...
The Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve (06/13)
The misguided migration of monarch butterflies to southern Appalachia in Flight Behavior is a fictional event, but Kingsolver grounds her theoretical occurrence in reality. As readers see through the character of Lupe, the Mexican wintering grounds of the monarch butterfly are damaged by drastic flooding and mudslides. This event is, ...
How Long Does it Take for a Manuscript to Find a Home? (06/13)
Sometimes, I think, we are under the magical assumption that a writer has an idea, writes a story, then an editor at a publishing house acquires it, and it is published. Four clean, clear steps in a straight forward-moving line.
Sigh. Maybe I should revise that we to an I.
I am a fiction writer. And my process is – well –...
Morocco's Fossil Industry (06/13)
The Forgiven is, in part, a wonderful travelogue which explores deep into the heart of Morocco, in particular into the lives of the Moroccan fossil diggers.
Morocco is rich in a variety of fossils and because parts of the country's
Anti-Atlas mountains (a part of the Atlas mountains also called Lesser Atlas or Little Atlas) date back ...
Cast of Characters (05/13)
Henry VIII
King of England 1509-1547
Painted by Hans Holbein in 1536
German painter Hans Holbein made his reputation in Basel, designing wood blocks for book printers, and painting portraits and commissions for churches. Despite his relative success, the disturbed conditions of the Reformation led him to doubt his ...
Sources for Stem Cells (05/13)
At the heart of The Laws of Gravity is cord blood - full of potentially life-saving cells. But what is it exactly?
Cord blood is the blood left in the umbilical cord and the placenta after a baby is born and the umbilical cord is cut. Typically, this blood is discarded along with the cord and placenta. Cord blood, though, is full of ...
Welcome to Norvelt, PA (05/13)
'Our dear little Norvelt was founded by Eleanor Roosevelt, who knew common people like us wanted equality...'
The town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, one of 99 subsistence homestead communities created during the Depression for unemployed workers, is a character in Jack Gantos's
Dead End in Norvelt. According to the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,...
The Invention of the Ballpoint Pen (05/13)
It's called an Eterpen, a truly wonderful thing, no messy ink to refill and it dries instantly. He said they have ordered 30,000 of them for the RAF to use in the air (for navigation calculations) and a grateful RAF officer recently smuggled out of France had given one of the samples to Peter, who'd given it to the sergeant, who gave...
A Brief History of Ghana (05/13)
The modern country of Ghana is named after the kings of a medieval civilization in West Africa, the Wagadugu Empire. Later absorbed into the Mali Empire, they were a significant power in trans-Saharan trade, with their capital city on the southern edge of the desert being a major port-of-call for traders and political movers and shakers. ...
Dr. Vincent Lam Tells his Grandfather's Story (05/13)
Although Dr. Vincent Lam was born in Canada, he is 'of the expatriate Chinese community of Vietnam.' Lam is an emergency physician in Toronto, as well as a lecturer with the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. Other medical jobs have included international air evacuation and expedition medicine on ...
The Bombing of Berlin (05/13)
Berlin, Germany's capital city, was home to more than four million citizens at the start of WWII.
Between 1940 and 1945, the city was the target of 363 air raids, with an estimated 20,000 civilians killed during the period. The most significant and organized series of raids occurred from November 1943 to March 1944.
The ...
Rum-Running in Prohibition Era Florida (05/13)
Prohibition in the United States began on January 1920 when the 18th Amendment, ratified the previous year, took effect. It ended with the passing of the 21st Amendment on December 5, 1933, which repealed the 18th. Illegal liquor was, of course, produced and sold during this time. It was typically lousy stuff; poor quality drink made, ...
What is Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy? (05/13)
Muscular Dystrophy encompasses a a group of usually inherited disorders that involve increasing muscle weakness and loss of muscle tissue over time. Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a rapidly worsening form of the disorder that affects only males. The usual cause is a defective gene carried by the mother, but about one-third of cases ...
Track Racing and the Velodrome (05/13)
The first velodrome was built around 1870 in Brighton, England. The word velodrome derives from velocipede (Latin: fast foot), which is the term used to describe any human-powered land vehicle with one or more wheels; and drome, from the Latin dromus meaning racecourse.
There are thousands of velodromes in the world, both indoor and ...
What is Noir? (05/13)
Emily St. John Mandel's writing includes essences of old-fashioned noir. But what is noir?
'Roman noir' is a French expression that literally translates as 'black novel.' Historically, the term was used to describe Gothic novels set in the UK, however, its contemporary usage refers to an American invention - the hardboiled thriller. ...
The Novels of Anna Quindlen (05/13)
Anna Quindlen's memoir
Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake has received rave reviews from BookBrowse readers, but it is just one of her many beloved books; check out the list below for more information on her novels:
Every Last One (2010):
Mary Beth Latham is first and foremost a mother, whose three teenaged children come first, ...
The Battle of the Chosin Reservoir (05/13)
Korea suffered under a brutal Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945. After Japan's defeat in World War II, Korea was divided along the 38th Parallel, with South Korea falling under the jurisdiction of the United States, and North Korea under the Soviet Union. Reunification was the stated ultimate goal, but when North Korea attacked South ...
The Influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile on Thomas Day (05/13)
Wendy Moore illustrates the various cultural influences that led to Thomas Day's peculiar experiment. Among these are the Pygmalion myth (later popularized in George Bernard Shaw's play by that name, as well as the musical, My Fair Lady, based on Shaw's play) and, perhaps most influentially, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's book, Emile, or On ...
Kevin Powers, the Poet (05/13)
Kevin Powers started writing poems and stories at about the age of 13. He began writing poetry about war a year or two after his discharge from the Army as a way to process his own experiences while in Iraq, and eventually decided to take classes to develop his talents. Powers graduated in 2008 with a bachelor's degree in English from ...
Tulsa, the "Oil Capital of the World" (04/13)
In A Map of Tulsa, the protagonist Jim Praley, can't ignore the city's relationship with oil. His girlfriend, Adrienne Booker, is born into a wealthy oil family and Jim remembers 'an issue of National Geographic my dad kept, from the '78 oil crisis. Tulsa was on the cover, an aerial photograph of the refineries, lit up like...
The Year, 1961 (04/13)
Ordinary Grace is set in the Midwestern United States in 1961. Although it was a time of peace and prosperity for much of the country, many important events were taking place around the world that year:
- January 20:
43-year-old John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th President of the United States, still the youngest person ever...
Fraudulent Money-Making Schemes (04/13)
In The Dream Merchant, Jim made his money in fraudulent ways. Aided by his business partner Marvin Gessler, who was the mastermind of the fraud, Jim made millions through elaborate pyramid schemes.
Pyramid schemes rely on recruiting buyers who then recruit other buyers and so on. The original buyer, the con man, needs other buyers ...
Daniel Kahneman (04/13)
Daniel Kahneman is a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist who, along with
Amos Tversky, revolutionized economic theory in the 1970s and is widely regarded as one of the world's most influential living psychologist.
Born in Tel Aviv in 1934 to Lithuanian Jewish parents, Kahneman grew up in Paris, during which time his father was taken by ...
The Young Pioneers (04/13)
Memoirist Wenguang Huang was once a member of China's communist youth organization, which, during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), was known as The Little Red Guard. The group was originally formed by the Communist Party of China in 1949 as The Youth and Children of China Movement, but in 1953, it was renamed The Young Pioneers - the ...
A History of Sanibel Island (04/13)
In Kathy Hepinstall's Civil War-era novel,
Blue Asylum, Iris Dunleavy is sent to live in the Sanibel Asylum for Lunatics on Sanibel Island, Florida for the 'act of defying [her] husband.' Though the area is now considered a mecca for lovers of sea shells (
SanibelHistory.org estimates that the resident population of about 6000 swells by ...
Improvised Explosive Devices (04/13)
An Improvised Explosive Device (IED) is an inexpensive, low-tech weapon designed to cause death or injury to enemy forces. The British Army was the first to call such homemade bombs IEDs in the 1970s, referring to the fertilizer and Semtex explosives used by the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
Although IEDs have become a ...
A Brief History of the Armenian Genocide (04/13)
The word 'genocide' was coined in 1943 by Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish Polish legal scholar, although it didn't enter common usage until the Nuremberg trials (the criminal prosecution of those responsible for the Holocaust). The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines it as 'any of the ...
Lighthouse Keepers (04/13)
In Margot L. Stedman's The Light Between Oceans, Tom Sherbourne takes a job as a lighthouse keeper in Janus Rock, Australia, a place where 'the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best...' But what exactly do lighthouse keepers do? What purpose do they serve?
Generally speaking, a ...
Pilgrimages, Quests & Other Long Journeys (04/13)
In Rachel Joyce's debut novel, Harold Fry sets off on what the book title refers to as an 'unlikely pilgrimage'; but can his journey correctly be called a pilgrimage if it doesn't have a religious destination?
Although most of us probably think of a pilgrimage as having religious connotations, the word has its roots in the Latin ...
How the Evolution of Board Games Demonstrates Changing Social Mores (04/13)
Jill Lepore's new book takes its title from The Mansion of Happiness, a nineteenth century board game that demonstrated Christian morality. Like children's literature of the time, such didactic games were quite popular, but are also timeless: one such board game, The Game of Goose, has origins in ancient Egypt!
Originally marketed ...
The Myths Series (04/13)
A. S. Byatt's
Ragnarok is the most recent addition to
The Myths series, published in the UK by Canongate and around the world by various publishers. Launched in 2005, The Myths series has brought together remarkably talented authors to put their own stamp on ancient myths from around the world, including many that are familiar to Western ...
The Budapest Offensive (04/13)
The stories in Tamas Dobozy's collection, Siege 13, look at some of the emotional and psychological consequences of the Budapest Offensive, one of the longest and deadliest military campaigns of World War II. Beginning in the autumn of 1944, the Budapest Offensive lasted though February 13, 1945. Budapest was officially surrounded on ...
The World's Water Tables in Crisis (04/13)
In How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, the protagonist starts out in the water business by boiling tap water and selling it in plastic water bottles. Later on, he is approached by the country's Defense Department because it wants to build a reliable and safe water supply for the country. But the protagonist and the head honchos in the ...
The Short Life of Siobhan Dowd (04/13)
The seed for A Monster Calls came from Siobhan Dowd (pronounced sh-vawn), a gifted writer who earned critical and popular success for her young adult fiction and received much praise for her work speaking out against censorship. She brought authors into underprivileged schools, made literature accessible to children around the globe, and ...
Three New Zealand Authors of Note (03/13)
The Memory of Love is mainly set in New Zealand where Swedish author Linda Olsson spends half the year. She spends the other half in her native Sweden. Olsson's novels have enjoyed worldwide readership, something, she says that most New Zealand authors rarely experience. There are brilliant New Zealand writers, Olsson says, whom many in ...
A Short History of Chechnya (03/13)
It is during her reporting in Chechnya, during the separatist wars that ravaged the country, that journalist and author Masha Gessen got deeply involved in the larger political context of both the war and Russian President Vladimir Putin's handling of it.
Chechnya lies to the south of the Russian Republic and is bound by ...
What a Way To Go (03/13)
In a passage on suicide, Winterson remarks that 'when natural gas was introduced in the 1960's, the British suicide rate fell by one-third.' I thought that perhaps she was using some creative math for dramatic effect, but a little research revealed that she wasn't exaggerating at all. Here's a summary of the way things were in Great ...
Antigone and The Watch: A Comparison (03/13)
The Greek classic, Antigone (written by Sophocles around 440 BC, based on the older Theban legend), serves as the basis for the modern-day Afghan war story, The Watch. Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya makes no attempt to hide the fact and even invites comparisons, titling two chapters 'Antigone' and 'Ismene' after the two sisters in the tragedy. ...
The Darwin Awards (03/13)
Wendy Northcutt, who has a degree in molecular biology from the University of California at Berkeley, is the creator of the 'Darwin Awards,' pop culture's nod to Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest, awarded annually to one person voted to have 'improved our gene pool by removing themselves from it.' In other words, someone...
Human Trafficking in North Korea (03/13)
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (
UNODC), 'Human trafficking is a crime against humanity. It involves an act of recruiting, transporting, transfering, harbouring or receiving a person through a use of force, coercion or other means, for the purpose of exploiting them. Every year, thousands of men, women and ...
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