Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Tomorrow is Veterans Day, when our nation honors American veterans of all wars. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed November 11th as Armistice Day, in commemoration of the end of fighting between Allied nations and Germany on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918; in 1938 it became a legal holiday, and in 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued the first "Veterans Day Proclamation". There was a brief period (1971-5) when the day of the holiday changed under the Uniform Holiday Bill, which requires holidays such as Memorial Day and Presidents' Day to always fall on a Monday, but it was decided to reverse that decision to retain the historic and patriotic significance of the November 11th date.

This year we pay tribute to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on its 32nd anniversary. The Memorial Wall, designed by American architect Maya Lin, was the first part of the Washington, D.C. complex to be completed in 1982.  Her controversial design (at the time it was likened to a "giant tombstone" and many thought the design was too abstract) led to the addition of the Three Soldiers statue in 1984, and the Vietnam Women's Memorial was dedicated in 1993. Learn more about this memorial with books from our catalog:

For Adults

Offerings at the Wall: Artifacts from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection by Thomas B. Allen

Shrapnel in the Heart: Letters and Remembrances from the Vietnam Memorial by Laura Palmer

Boundaries by Maya Lin

For Kids

The Wall by Eve Bunting

The Story of the Vietnam Memorial by David K. Wright

A Wall of Names: The Story of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial by Judy Donnelly

Their Names to Live: What the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Means to America by Brent Ashabranner 


Library Use Only [Genealogy Main 2nd Floor]

To Heal a Nation: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial by Jan C. Scruggs and Joel L. Swerdlow

All They Left Behind: Legacies of the Men and Women on the Wall by Lisa A. Lark 


Links

Vietnam Veterans Memorial [National Park Service]

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Page

Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund  

Veterans Day [U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs]

Young adult books to look forward to in 2015

Even though it's only November, I've already started making a list of the 2015 young adult releases I can't wait to get my hands on. We don't have all these books in the catalog, since some of them don't come out until later in the year, but we do have some of them.

Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke by Anne Blankman

The Cemetery Boys by Heather Brewer

Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen

The Devil You Know by Trish Doller

Playlist For the Dead by Michelle Falkoff

Of Dreams and Rust by Sarah Fine

I Was Here by Gayle Forman

The Racket by John Green

The Last Time We Say Goodbye by Cynthia Hand

Making Pretty by Corey Ann Haydu

Ensnared by A.G. Howard

The Forgotten Crown by Julie Kagawa

Jesse's Girl by Miranda Kenneally

Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella

Things We Know By Heart by Jessi Kirby

Our Brothers at the Bottom of the Bottom of the Sea by Jonathan Kranz

The Start of You and Me by Emery Lord

Forget Me Knots by Emily Murdoch

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

The Summer of Chasing Mermaids by Sarah Ockler

Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver

Kissing in America by Margo Rabb

A Cold Legacy by Megan Shepherd

Survive the Night by Danielle Vega

What You Left Behind by Jessica Verdi

Dietland by Sarai Walker

My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga

Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls by Lynn Weingarten

The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson

What books are you looking forward to reading the most next year? Let us know in the comments!

Science Corner: Marie Curie

...Marie Curie was never easy to understand or categorize. That was because she was a pioneer, an outlier, unique for the newness and immensity of her achievements. But it was also because of her sex. Curie worked during a great age of innovation, but proper women of her time were thought to be too sentimental to perform objective science. She would forever be considered a bit strange, not just a great scientist but a great woman scientist... Professional science until fairly recently was a man’s world, and in Curie’s time it was rare for a woman even to participate in academic physics, never mind triumph over it.

~Julie Des Jardins, "Madame Curie's Passion" (Smithsonian Magazine, October 2011)

2011 marked a century since Marie Curie won her second Nobel Prize - she won the first in 1903, in Physics (shared with her husband, Pierre, and Professor Henri Becquerel), for research on the "radiation phenomena" and her 1911 prize was in Chemistry, "in recognition of her services to the advancement of chemistry by the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, by the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element".

This year marks the fifth time a married couple has won a Nobel Prize (in this case May-Britt and Edvard Moser in Physiology or Medicine) and the fourth time the couple has shared a prize. Marie and Pierre Curie were the first couple, followed in 1935 by their daughter, Iréne Joliot-Curie, and her husband, Frédéric Joliot, who also won in Chemistry. Marie and Iréne were the first women to win Nobel Prizes.

Today marks the 147th birth anniversary of Marie Curie, who was born Maria Sklodowska in Warsaw, Poland, in 1867. Although she soared academically, she was not allowed to attend university, which was men-only.  To continue her education past secondary school, she had to attend underground classes. Marie Curie worked as a tutor and governess for 5 years, studying physics, chemistry, and math in her spare time, until, in 1891, she had saved enough to go to Paris and attend the Sorbonne  By 1894, aged 27, she had advanced degrees in chemistry and mathematics. The same year, she met Pierre Curie, and they married in 1895. Their daughter, Iréne, was born in 1897.  By this time, husband and wife were working together, and they discovered polonium in 1898. A second child, Eve, was born in 1903. Pierre Curie died in an accident in 1906 and she took over his teaching post at the Sorbonne, becoming its first female professor.

Marie Curie won many awards (including some posthumously) and was a member of the Conseil du Physique Solvay, a conference to support and discuss scientific research - their first invitation-only congress was attended by herself, Max Planck, and Albert Einstein. During WWI, she promoted the use of portable X-ray machines in the field, and for that they were nicknamed "Little Curies". She never lost her enthusiasm for science, but her exposure to radioactivity cut her life short.  Marie Curie died in 1934 of aplastic anemia, aged 67.

Want to learn more?  Check out these books from the catalog:


Marie Curie and Her Daughters: The Private Lives of Science's First Family by Shelley Emling

Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie - A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss

The Curies: A Biography of the Most Controversial Family in Science by Denis Brian

Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie by Barbara Goldsmith


Links

Marie Curie [Biography]

Marie Curie and the History of Radioactivity [Science Museum]

Marie Curie's century-old radioactive notebook still requires a lead box [Gizmodo]

Marriage a Nobel tradition for prize winners  [RTE]

Featured Author: Caitlin Moran

'What art should be about,' they will say, 'is revealing exquisite and resonant truths about the human condition.' Well, to be honest - no, it shouldn’t. I mean, it can occasionally, if it wants to; but really, how many penetrating insights to human nature do you need in one lifetime? Two? Three? Once you’ve realised that no one else has a clue what they’re doing, either, and that love can be totally pointless, any further insights into human nature just start getting depressing really.
~Caitlin Moran

Caitlin Moran is an English journalist, TV presenter, and author.  The oldest of eight home-educated children, she wrote her first novel, The Chronicles of Narmo, at age fifteen. Caitlin (once you read her books, you'll feel like you can be on a first name basis with her as well) has had a checkered career after that - working for Melody Maker, presenting a TV show, Naked City - before joining the staff of The Times, a British daily newspaper. Caitlin writes regular columns for The Times, one about television and the other is "the most-read part of the paper, the satirical celebrity column ‘Celebrity Watch’". A comedy series written by Caitlin and her sister Caroline and loosely based on their youth, Raised by Wolves, is currently running on British TV.

Her first adult book, How To Be a Woman, brought her international attention in 2012. Vanity Fair called it "the U.K. version of Tina Fey’s Bossypants" - it's a fresh and funny take on feminism today, interspersed with memoir. Caitlin followed that up with Moranthology, a collection of her columns which gives us her uncensored views on pop culture. Her latest, How To Build a Girl, which Helen Fielding (author Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy) described as "[b]rilliantly observed, thrillingly rude and laugh-out-loud funny", is the coming-of-age story of a 14-year old girl in 1990 who reinvents herself.

Looking for a smart, saucy, hilarious read?  Look no further.  Caitlin is beloved by Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess), Peggy Orenstein, Ayelet Waldman, Zoe Heller, Alexandra Heminsley, and Lena Dunham.  If you like to read Laurie Notaro, Sloane Crosley, Mindy Kaling, and Nora Ephron, do give Caitlin a try!

Links

Not a Feminist?  Caitlin Moran Asks, Why Not? [NPR]

How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran review - a Portnoy's Complaint for girls [Guardian]

Raised By Wolves - TV review [Guardian] 

Atrocious mess, precocious mind: Meet Caitlin Moran, newspaper columnist, TV presenter, pop music pundit...and typical teenage slob [Independent, 1994] 

Caitlin Moran: my letter to the future - video [Guardian]

The Carl Barks Disney Library

Carl Barks in the 1950s was a non-conformist living in a conformist society.  Certainly not a James Dean-style rebel, a hipster, or a beatnik but a more subtle one - a middle-aged man, who was fully aware of the flaws of the society in which he was living, and who wrote and drew stories for children that often reflected his philosophical disillusionment with the prevailing ideologies of the current world.
~Stefano Priarone, "Story Notes: Lost in the Andes"

 We are huge fans of Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck comics, from back in the day when we were little sprouts, and were delighted to find that Fantagraphics has been reissuing them. Carl Barks is the most famous and acclaimed author and illustrator of the Duck comics, with his first story appearing in 1943 and his last story written and drawn in 1968 (though he continued scripting stories until 1974). Even before cartoonists got credit from Disney for their stories, fans who recognized his signature style called him "The Duck Man" or "The Good Duck Artist".

Fun facts about the Barks comics:

• Walt Disney did not exercise creative control over the Duck comics, though they appeared under his signature.
• Though Barks did not invent the main characters in the Duck comics (Donald, his nephews, Daisy), he did invent Duckburg, Uncle Scrooge, Gyro Gearloose, the Beagle Boys, the Junior Woodchucks, and Gladstone Gander.
• The rolling boulder scene at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark was inspired by Barks' "The Seven Cities of Cibola", a Scrooge McDuck story.

The library has acquired several volumes of Fantagraphics' Complete Carl Barks Disney Library. The books vary a bit in content.  One has a scholarly introduction. Another has a short biography of Carl Barks at the end. Some of the books split up the comics into "The Adventures" (longer stories, 24-32 pages), "The Short Stories" (10 pages or less), and "The Gags" (1 page), and others just have a general table of contents at the beginning that lists each comic (many of which were only assigned names by Barks or others considerably after publication). Each book ends with "Story Notes" by a variety of cartoon scholars, mostly Americans but including a few from Italy, and "Where did these duck stories first appear?, giving the name of the volume the comic first appeared in and its date of publication.

Travel to exotic locales! Be amused by wacky hijinks! Scary stories, crime stories, Westerns - the Ducks have it all! Check out one of Duck collections today. If you're still not convinced, consider this recommendation from another ABC Library staffer:

[Carl Barks] was the best writer of Donald Duck/Uncle Scrooge stories ever (with Dan Rosa a close second, but he came much later). I know that I once tried to choose my 10 favorite comic book issues of all time.  It turned out they were ALL Barks' Donald Duck/Uncle Scrooge comics!  My very favorites are: "The Ghost of the Grotto", "The Golden Helmet", "Luck of the North", "Pipeline to Danger", The Seven Cities of Cibola" and "Lost in the Andes".  I could probably quote them verbatim from cover to cover.

Walt Disney's Donald Duck: "The Old Castle's Secret" by Carl Barks

Walt Disney's Donald Duck: "Trail of the Unicorn" by Carl Barks

A Christmas for Shacktown by Carl Barks

Lost in the Andes by Carl Barks

Please note: these books are completely uncensored from the original printing, and may include racial stereotyping. These books are shelved in the adult non-fiction section, so you can decide if they are suitable to share with children.

Links

Lomas Tramway Library's Graphic Novel Club

The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library [Wikipedia]

5 Amazing Things Invented by Donald Duck (Seriously) [Cracked]

Review: Walt Disney's Donald Duck - Christmas on Bear Mountain by Carl Barks [Chicago Tribune]

Walt Disney [Lambiek Comiclopedia]

New & Novel: Music Biographies

There have been a spate of new musicians' biographies and memoirs in the library catalog recently!  Whether you prefer soul, rock, R&B, gospel, Celtic punk, or jazz, you'll find someone to read about.

Bowie: The Biography by Wendy Leigh

Dancing with Myself by Billy Idol

27: A History of the 27 Club Through the Lives of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse by Howard Sounes

Man on the Run: Paul McCartney in the 1970s by Tom Doyle

Face the Music: A Life Exposed by Paul Stanley

Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin by David Ritz

Herbie Hancock: Possibilities by Herbie Hancock with Lisa Dickey

Cold Sweat: My Father James Brown and Me by Yamma Brown with Robin Gaby Fisher

Living Like a Runaway: A Memoir by Lita Ford

Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story by Rick Bragg, Jerry Lee Lewis

On the Road with Janis Joplin by John Byrne Cooke

Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light by Carlos Santana

I'll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the March Up Freedom's Highway by Greg Kot

Special Deluxe: A Memoir of Life and Cars by Neil Young

Here Comes Everybody: The Story of the Pogues by James Fearnley

Rocks: My Life In and Out of Aerosmith by Joe Perry with David Ritz

Mad World: An Oral History of New Wave Artists and Songs That Defined the 1980s by Lori Majewski and Jonathan Bernstein

If you enjoy reading books about music and/or musicians, try other books by Greg Kot, Peter Guralnick, Simon Reynolds, Alex Ross, Rob Sheffield, Greil Marcus, Elijah Wald, Ben Ratliff, Steve Turner, Nadine Cohodas, Ethan Mordden, Ken Emerson, Jean A. Boyd, and Ted Gioia.

Featured Author: Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin is a Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy award-winning writer of science fiction and fantasy. She grew up in California, the daughter of anthropologist Alfred Kroeber and writer Theodora Kroeber.  Le Guin has published seven books of poetry, twenty-two novels, over a hundred short stories (collected in eleven volumes), four collections of essays, twelve books for children, and four volumes of translation. Her novels often feature alternative worlds, and her themes include utopian societies, issues of identity and social structures, and environmentalism. Most of her major works are still in print - some have been in print for over 40 years. Among her enthusiasts are Salman Rushdie, David Mitchell, and Neil Gaiman.

In April 2000, the Library of Congress made her a Living Legend. In 2014, Le Guin was awarded the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by the National Book Foundation, a lifetime achievement award.

Earthsea
The story of Ged (or Sparrowhawk), a mage from the fictional archipelago of Earthsea.

A Wizard of Earthsea 

The Tombs of Atuan

The Farthest Shore

Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea

Tales from Earthsea

The Other Wind
 
Catwings
The story of four winged cats. [Children's]

Catwings

Catwings Return

Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings

Jane On Her Own: A  Catwings Tale 


Hainish/Ekumen
Alternate or future histories set on a collection of worlds, all with a connection to Terra.

Four Ways to Forgiveness 

The Dispossessed

The Left Hand of Darkness 

The Telling 

Le Guin has said on her website that "People write me nice letters asking what order they ought to read my science fiction books in — the ones that are called the Hainish or Ekumen cycle or saga or something. The thing is, they aren't a cycle or a saga. They do not form a coherent history. There are some clear connections among them, yes, but also some extremely murky ones."

Other Books

The Lathe of Heaven 
also on DVD 

The Wind's Twelve Quarters: Short Stories
 
Orsinian Tales

The Eye of the Heron [Large Print]

Always Coming Home  

Annals of the Western Shore [Young Adult] - Gifts, Voices, Powers  

Lavinia

Incredible Good Fortune: New Poems 

The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays On the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination 

The Birthday of the World and Other Stories   

Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew    

She also translated from Spanish Gabriela Mistral: Selected Poems, published by University of New Mexico Press.

Links

7 Reasons to Fall In Love With Ursula K. Le Guin [Bustle]

The Real and Unreal: Ursula K. Le Guin, American Novelist [Bookslut]

The Left and Right Hands of Ursula K. Le Guin [Kirkus]