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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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 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 ...
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 ...
The Economy of Post-World War II Europe (03/13)
Downing's portrait of post-World War II Europe highlights the wrangling that took place between political and economic leaders over who would get domain of which pieces of land, all rendered nearly unrecognizable by bombs. Indeed, history has told us that even during the thickest action of the world war these leaders kept themselves busy ...
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 ...
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 ...
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...
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 ...
Howard Frank Mosher and The Kingdom (03/13)
The place with which Howard Frank Mosher is most associated is not actually his native home. Born in the Catskill Mountains in 1942, he moved to Vermont's 'Northeast Kingdom' (or as he calls it, 'The Kingdom') as a newlywed in 1964 to take up his first teaching post. According to the NEK (Vermont's Northeast Kingdom)
website, The ...
A History of New York's Great Fires (03/13)
In Lyndsay Faye's novel, The Gods of Gotham, a fire ravages lower Manhattan, setting the stage for her suspenseful historical mystery. In reality, New York City has fallen victim to more than one devastating blaze.
In 1609, Henry Hudson, a British explorer hired by the Dutch to find a faster route to 'the Orient,' followed what is ...
The Kwangju Massacre (03/13)
The family in Forgotten Country flees South Korea in the tumultuous wake of what many South Koreans consider to be the worst tragedy in Korean history since World War II - worse even than the Korean War. Indeed by all accounts the event that took place in May of 1980, known as the Kwangju Massacre, when hundreds of students and private ...
Accepting Death and Dying Well: Additional Resources (03/13)
One cannot finish Dr. Byock's book without resolving, as much as possible, to take responsibility for one's own death and to become deeply involved in the experiences and medical treatments of those we love who are dying.
His website,
www.dyingwell.org, provides readers with additional information and helpful resources on the topic of...
Food Writers (03/13)
In
An Economist Gets Lunch, Tyler Cowen frequently references writers who have shaped the way people think about the culinary arts. These writers are not chefs, but critics who look at the role food plays in modern society. The field has grown so popular that there are actually
specialist courses teaching the art of food writing. ...
The Afrikaans Language (03/13)
Afrikaans words or expressions are peppered throughout André Brink's novel, Philida. Brink started his career writing in Afrikaans, his native language, but switched to writing in English interspersed with Afrikaans which he uses to help maintain the authenticity of his characters. Many of the words can be puzzled out from the ...
826 National (02/13)
Erica Lorraine Scheidt is a long-time volunteer for the non-profit organization,
826 Valencia, headquartered in San Francisco. Her latest effort involves teaching a writing workshop for teens, called Chapter One. In the workshop teens focus on crafting the first chapters of their novels. Here is the description of the workshop:
Calling...
Changing Bedouin Life as Exemplified by the Al-Maria Family (02/13)
Bedouin life has been slowly changing from a traditional nomadic existence to a more settled permanent one. Al-Maria's family effectively illustrates this transition.
Al-Maria adjusts to her Bedouin family's ancient way of life precisely at the same time that its members must adjust to modernity. The family had been experiencing what ...
Refugees in the United States (02/13)
The 1951 Refugee Convention which established the UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, defines a refugee as someone who 'owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to...
The Locavore Food Movement (02/13)
In his preface to Birdseye, Mark Kurlansky faces the issue of whether or not Clarence Birdseye made what we eat better: 'Eating frozen food instead of fresh represents a decline in the quality of food. But very often people are eating frozen food when they would have been eating canned, in which case frozen is an improvement.' Kurlansky ...
The Cuban Missile Crisis (02/13)
For thirteen days in October 1962, the world was on the brink of nuclear war. U.S. spy planes had detected what appeared to be nuclear missile sites being built on the island of Cuba, just ninety miles off the coast of Florida. Soviet ships, originally designed to carry cargo such as lumber or food, had been outfitted to transport nuclear...
Sondesh (02/13)
In The Newlyweds, when Amina returns home to Bangladesh, her mother picks up a box of freshly-made sondesh from a reputed vendor to bring to Amina's aunt.
Bangladesh shares the Bengali language with the Indian state of West Bengal. Bengali sweets (mishti) are famous all over South Asia and sondesh is particularly well-known. Like ...
How the Introduction of Oil and Capitalism Affected Saudi Arabian Culture (02/13)
In
In the Kingdom of Men, Gin McPhee finds herself plopped inside an
ARAMCO (Arabian American Oil Company) compound in the 1960s, an oasis that is neither wholly American nor Arabic but is somehow an incongruous mashup within a country still grappling with the culture shock wrought by 20th century capitalism. But what did that culture ...
Courtroom Drama (02/13)
The thrill of watching a trial unfold - the impassioned speeches, quick-witted lawyers, surprise witnesses, the piecing together of clues, not knowing if justice will prevail - it can all make for exciting, and in some cases legendary, storytelling. 'Courtroom drama', a subgenre of 'legal drama', is a term used to describe dramatic ...
Italy's Role in World War II (02/13)
Italy's
role during WWII can seem puzzling, as the country gave the appearance of switching allegiances more than once during the course of the conflict, at times ostensibly siding with the Axis powers, at others supporting the Allies. This contradiction, though, can be seen as a reflection of a volatile period in Italy's history, as ...
A Message of Hope from King Peggielene Bartels (02/13)
In an
inspirational letter to readers, Peggielene Bartels (aka King Peggy) outlines her goals as the new King of Otuam, Ghana. She begins by stating that:
An important part of my mission as King of Otuam is to bring empowerment to women. I truly believe that the future of Africa lies in the hands of its women... My main mission is...
The Girl Scouts of the USA (02/13)
Although many elements - from her grandma's letters, to her mother's hopes, to her friends' expectations - help shape Rory's understanding of what it means to be a girl in her small community, one institution does more than any other to shape Rory's perception of American girlhood: the
Girl Scouts of the USA.
The Girl Scouts of ...
Introverts and the Internet (02/13)
I wasn't surprised when Susan Cain's book, Quiet, mentioned that introverted people often thrive in the online world and are actually more likely to share personal information there than extroverts. I, for example, though unquestionably an introvert, enjoy reviewing books for BookBrowse, have profiles on several social networking sites, ...
The Abenaki People (02/13)
One of the main characters in Kieran Shield's The Truth of All Things, Perceval Grey, is of Abenaki descent, a key point in the novel. The Abenaki (ah-buh-nah-kee) tribe is one of the many distinct tribes that make up the larger Algonquian (al-GON-kee-un) Nation of North America. (It is important to note that the Algonquian Nation, should...
An Interview with Ramona Ausubel (02/13)
In a thoughtful and personal interview, BookBrowse reviewer
Kim Kovacs talks with Ramona Ausubel, debut author of
No One is Here Except All of Us:
It seems like you hit a mental roadblock after researching your family history, mired in facts that wouldn't form into a novel. In an interview with Penguin you said that you 'got closer...
German Americans (02/13)
It might surprise you to learn that in the latest census, 51 million Americans
self-identified as having German ancestry (estimates suggest that about 1/3 of these are of German ancestry alone, the rest are of partial German ancestry). That's a whopping 17% of the population, more than any other heritage group - over 13 million more than...
The Real-Life Jakob Kuisl and the Life of an Executioner (02/13)
Oliver Pötzsch spent his early years in Bavaria, listening to stories about his family from his grandmother. He says that when he was five or six, she told him that he was a direct descendant of a family named Kuisl, who were employed as executioners. He was too young then to even know what an executioner did, but it sparked a ...
A Quick Guide to Egyptian Dynasties (01/13)
One of the most difficult things to keep straight about ancient Egypt is its dynastic chronologies, thirty-three families of rulers over thousands of years, full of contradictions, inaccuracies, and outright lies. To offer some assistance I have included an incomplete list of the important dynasties, with a few details about each period; ...
Mad Cow and Foot and Mouth Diseases (01/13)
In Graham Swift's novel, Wish You Were Here, the Luxton family twice loses their dairy herds to mass slaughter in the wake of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and Foot and Mouth Disease
(FMD) outbreaks. Two very distinct and separate diseases, BSE and FMD, when they surface in agriculture, can be utterly devastating to farmers and ...
Saskatchewan (01/13)
The vast prairies of Saskatchewan, where one can easily be 'unimaginably bored' are the perfect setting for Richard Ford's Canada. Bordering Montana and North Dakota, it is one of two Canadian provinces that is completely landlocked (Alberta is the other one) and has no geographical features distinguishing its boundaries. It is over 250,...
A Literary Inspiration: Ernest J. Gaines (01/13)
In a
letter to readers, Wiley Cash describes what it was like working with the inspirational Ernest J. Gaines at a fiction workshop in Lafayette, Louisiana. He writes:
I began writing A Land More Kind Than Home while working on my Ph.D. at the University of Louisiana, where I spent five long years sweating, celebrating Mardi Gras, ...
Leoš Janáček (01/13)
Most of Haruki Murakami's novels reference Western music, and 1Q84 is no exception. Czech composer Leoš Janáček's symphonic poem Sinfonietta features prominently throughout.
Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) was born in Hukvaldy, Moravia, in what was once known as the Austrian Empire. He is considered one of the...
Tokyo's Trains (01/13)
Once known as Edo and renamed in the late 1860s, Tokyo - the capital of Japan - is a densely populated metropolis that has over 12 million inhabitants in the city proper and approximately 36 million people in the larger metropolitan prefecture. Located in the Kant? region, it is comprised of 23 wards, as well as 62 municipalities, which ...
Socialist Realism (01/13)
The fictional character of Bruno Krug gained international fame with a literary blockbuster The Orphans of Neustadt, but when we meet him at the beginning of his story, he is busy writing simple stories - called the Factory Gate Fables - about life in Actually Existing Socialism. These stories represent typical literature in the U.S.S.R ...
Ethnology (01/13)
Ethnology is a section of anthropology that analyzes the differences between religion, language, technologies and other social structures of people as categorized by race, nationality or ethnicity. Its goals are broad – to understand the history of human beings and the creation of our various social norms (as defined by race, ...
Scottish Gypsies/Travellers (01/13)
One of the plot details in
Beneath the Abbey Wall involves a family of Travellers whose histories twine with the murder victim's – Jimmy McPhee, and his mother Jenny McPhee, a highly regarded storyteller.
In Scotland, the Traveller population is referred to by the government as Scottish Gypsies/Travellers (distinct from
...
Origins of the Israeli National Anthem (01/13)
Shortly before the Second World War ended and the horrors of the Holocaust slowly came to a close, Jews from all over Europe were housed in 'displaced persons' camps. These camps gave refuge to Jews who no longer had a place to call home - not Poland, not Austria, not Germany, and not even the new home state created for them, Israel.
...
Domestic Service in Early 20th Century Britain (01/13)
In Britain in the early twentieth century, occupational options were few for women. Up until World War I, domestic service constituted the largest single employment for English women, even ahead of factory work. The 1901 census shows that approximately 40.5% of the working adult female population worked in service, to which must be added ...
Quilting As Hobby and Metaphor (01/13)
In Home, Cee learns to quilt while recovering from a near-fatal run-in with a doctor who used poor, black women as experimental subjects in his research. After returning to her hometown, her neighbors keep her company in her sickroom and, with their help, she makes her first quilt. She also starts to put together the broken pieces of her ...
