ancient civilizations

 

The next Books & Beyond meeting will be Tuesday, March 29 at 6:30pm in the library’s conference room.  If you’d like to attend online instead, register your email at https://www.oneallibrary.org/event/5494758.  The topic of discussion will be Academy Award-winning films.  Watch one, read about one, read or listen to the book it was adapted from…the choice is yours.

This week, BAB met to talk about ancient civilizations.  Have a look!

Lost Cities, Ancient Tombs: 100 Discoveries That Changed the World edited by Ann R. Williams

Blending high adventure with history, this chronicle of 100 astonishing discoveries from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the fabulous “Lost City of the Monkey God” tells incredible stories of how explorers and archaeologists have uncovered the clues that illuminate our past.

Venus and Aphrodite: History of a Goddess by Bettany Hughes (not yet available in the JCLC system, request via Interlibrary Loan)

Venus and Aphrodite brings together ancient art, mythology, and archaeological revelations to tell the story of human desire. From Mesopotamia to modern-day London, from Botticelli to Beyoncé, Hughes explains why this immortal goddess continues to entrance us today -- and how we trivialize her power at our peril.

The Inheritors by William Golding

From the author of Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors is a startling novel of the lost world of the Neanderthals, and a frightening vision of the beginnings of a new age.

Dance of the Tiger by Bjorn Kurten (not available in the JCLC system, request via Interlibrary Loan)

Kurten draws on recent anthropological discoveries and his vivid imagination to create a compelling novel of life thirty-five thousand years ago, telling the story of Tiger as he seeks revenge for a savage attack on his tribe.

Written in Stone: A Journey Through the Stone Age and the Origins of Modern Language by Christopher Stevens

In snappy, lively, and often very funny chapters, Written in Stone uncovers the most influential and important words used by our Neolithic ancestors and shows how they are still in constant use today - the building blocks of all our most common words and phrases.

(Great Courses) Ancient Civilizations of North America

In 24 exciting lectures, you’ll learn about the vibrant cities of Poverty Point, the first city in North America, built about 3,500 years ago, and Cahokia, the largest city of ancient North America. You’ll explore the many ways in which the Chacoan environment provided cultural and religious focus for peoples of the southwest. And you’ll learn about the Iroquoian source of some of our most basic “American” values. 

(Great Courses) Maya to Aztec: Ancient Mesoamerica Revealed

Immerse yourself in this epic story with 48 exhilarating half-hour lectures that cover the scope of Mesoamerican history and culture. Although the Spanish eventually conquered all of Mesoamerica, much remains of the original cultures. This course is the ideal way to plan an itinerary, prepare for a tour, or simply sit back and enjoy a thrilling virtual voyage.

(Great Courses) Lost Worlds of South America

Take an adventurous trek to these wilds of South America and the great civilizations of the ancients. In 24 eye-opening lectures, you'll take an in-depth look at the emerging finds and archaeological knowledge of more than 12 seminal civilizations, giving you rich insight into the creative vision and monumental achievements of these wellsprings of human life.

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

In the company of the strangely alluring Mayan god of death and armed with her wits, Casiopea begins an adventure that will take her on a cross-country odyssey from the jungles of Yucatán to the bright lights of Mexico City—and deep into the darkness of the Mayan underworld.

Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Welcome to Mexico City, an oasis in a sea of vampires. Domingo, a lonely garbage-collecting street kid, is just trying to survive when a jaded vampire on the run swoops into his life. Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood drinkers, is smart, beautiful, and dangerous. Domingo is mesmerized. Do Atl and Domingo even stand a chance of making it out alive? Or will the city devour them all?

Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz

Acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes readers on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization.

Walls: A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick by David Frye

Alternately evocative, amusing, chilling, and deeply insightful as it gradually reveals the startling ways that barriers have affected our psyches. The questions this book summons are both intriguing and profound: Did walls make civilization possible? And can we live without them? 

1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric Cline

A compelling combination of narrative and the latest scholarship, 1177 B.C. sheds new light on the complex ties that gave rise to, and ultimately destroyed, the flourishing civilizations of the Late Bronze Age―and that set the stage for the emergence of classical Greece.

Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization by Paul Kriwaczek

Bringing the people of this land to life in vibrant detail, the author chronicles the rise and fall of power during this period and explores the political and social systems, as well as the technical and cultural innovations, which made this land extraordinary. 

GENERAL DISCUSSION:

Red: A History of the Redhead by Jacky Colliss Harvey

The brilliantly told, captivating history of red hair throughout the ages and across multiple disciplines, including science, religion, politics, feminism and sexuality, literature, and art.

·         In medieval historian Michael McCormick’s opinion, the worst year to be alive was 536.

Life as We Knew It by Sarah Beth Pfeffer

Miranda's disbelief turns to fear in a split second when a meteor knocks the Moon closer to the Earth. How should her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis wipe out the coasts, earthquakes rock the continents, and volcanic ash blocks out the sun? As summer turns to Arctic winter, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all, hope, in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world.

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

On a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, Julia and her family awake to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, the environment is thrown into disarray. Yet as she struggles to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, Julia is also coping with the normal disasters of everyday life.

Melancholia

Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgård) celebrate their marriage at a sumptuous party in the home of Justine's sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and brother-in-law John (Kiefer Sutherland). Despite Claire's best efforts, the wedding is a fiasco with family tensions mounting and relationships fraying. Meanwhile, a planet called Melancholia is heading directly towards Earth threatening the very existence of humankind...

Don’t Look Up (requires Netflix subscription)

Two astronomers go on a media tour to warn humankind of a planet-killing comet hurtling toward Earth. The response from a distracted world: Meh.

The Toilet: An Unspoken History

It's a problem as old as civilization itself, the unspoken question on the pages of every history book. From the latrines of the Roman age to the conveniences of the future, this documentary takes its viewers on a full sanitary experience, visiting countries as diverse as China, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, India and Britain, meeting all manner of people who work... with toilets.

This Podcast Will Kill You

Grad students studying disease ecology, Erin and Erin found themselves disenchanted with the insular world of academia. They wanted a way to share their love of epidemics and weird medical mysteries with the world, not just colleagues. Plus, who doesn't love an excuse to have a cocktail while chatting about pus and poop?  We discussed the rabies episode in particular.

Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus by Bill Wasik

In this fascinating exploration, journalist Bill Wasik and veterinarian Monica Murphy chart four thousand years in the history, science, and cultural mythology of rabies.

The documentary I was trying to remember is Chasing the Equinox and it is a National Geographic documentary on Disney+.  Description: “The ancients hid the secrets of their incredible knowledge of astronomy in their temples and palaces, built to align with the sun, on the same day, all over the world. Revealing our species' obsession with the sun, across thousands of years and every continent, this is architectural magic on a cosmic scale.”

Nag Hammad’i Library

The Nag Hammadi Library, a collection of thirteen ancient books (called "codices") containing over fifty texts, was discovered in upper Egypt in 1945. This immensely important discovery includes many primary "Gnostic Gospels" – texts once thought to have been entirely destroyed during the early Christian struggle to define "orthodoxy" – scriptures such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Truth. 

·         The Holy Bible

 

illness & disease

 

The next Genre Reading Group meeting is Tuesday, April 27th on Zoom at 6:30pm and the topic up for discussion is international authors.  The third row of Shelf Care has some selections to choose from if you don’t know where to start: https://oneallibrary.org/adults---reading-recommendations

Last night, on GRG’s one year Zoomiversary, we met to discuss illness & disease, a timely topic in the age of COVID. Here are the books we read:

The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease by Charles Kenney

A vivid, sweeping history of mankind’s battles with infectious disease, for readers of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Yuval Harari’s Sapiens and John Barry’s The Great Influenza.

Zombie Makers: True Stories of Natures Undead by Rebecca Johnson

Are zombies real? As far as we know, dead people do not come back to life and start walking around, looking for trouble. But there are things that can take over the bodies and brains of innocent creatures, turning them into senseless slaves. Meet nature's zombie makers―including a fly-enslaving fungus, a suicide worm, and a cockroach-taming wasp―and their victims.

Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City by Fang Fang and Michael Berry

From one of China’s most acclaimed and decorated writers comes a powerful first-person account of life in Wuhan during the COVID-19 outbreak.

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John Barry

The strongest weapon against pandemic is the truth. Read why in the definitive account of the 1918 Flu Epidemic. 

Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus by Bill Wasik

The most fatal virus known to science, rabies-a disease that spreads avidly from animals to humans-kills nearly one hundred percent of its victims once the infection takes root in the brain. In this critically acclaimed exploration, journalist Bill Wasik and veterinarian Monica Murphy chart four thousand years of the history, science, and cultural mythology of rabies.

Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism: My Journey as a Vaccine Scientist, Pediatrician, and Autism Dad by Peter Hotez

In 1994, Peter J. Hotez's nineteen-month-old daughter, Rachel, was diagnosed with autism. Dr. Hotez, a pediatrician-scientist who develops vaccines for neglected tropical diseases affecting the world's poorest people, became troubled by the decades-long rise of the influential anti-vaccine community and its inescapable narrative around childhood vaccines and autism.

Vaccine Nation: America’s Changing Relationship with Immunization by Elena Conis

With employers offering free flu shots and pharmacies expanding into one-stop shops to prevent everything from shingles to tetanus, vaccines are ubiquitous in contemporary life. Yet, while vaccination rates have soared and cases of preventable infections have plummeted, an increasingly vocal cross section of Americans have questioned the safety and necessity of vaccines. In Vaccine Nation, Elena Conis explores this complicated history and its consequences for personal and public health.

Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs by Michael Osterholm

A leading epidemiologist shares his "powerful and necessary" (Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone) stories from the front lines of our war on infectious diseases and explains how to prepare for global epidemics.

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey

Winner of the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing Winner of the John Burroughs Medal Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award in Natural History Literature

In a work that beautifully demonstrates the rewards of closely observing nature, Elisabeth Tova Bailey shares an inspiring and intimate story of her encounter with a Neohelix albolabris—a common woodland snail. While an illness keeps her bedridden, Bailey watches a wild snail that has taken up residence on her nightstand. As a result, she discovers the solace and sense of wonder that this mysterious creature brings and comes to a greater understanding of her own place in the world.

Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poet’s Respond to the Pandemic edited by Alice Quinn

In this urgent outpouring of American voices, our poets speak to us as they shelter in place, addressing our collective fear, grief, and hope from eloquent and diverse individual perspectives.

An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System, A Tale in Four Lives by Matt Richtel

Drawing on his groundbreaking reporting for the New York Times and based on extensive new interviews with dozens of world-renowned scientists (including Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases), Matt Richtel has produced a landmark book, equally an investigation into the deepest riddles of survival and a profoundly human tale that is movingly brought to life through the eyes of his four main characters, each of whom illuminates an essential facet of our “elegant defense.”

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney

In this gripping narrative history, Laura Spinney traces the overlooked pandemic to reveal how the virus travelled across the globe, exposing mankind's vulnerability and putting our ingenuity to the test. As socially significant as both world wars, the Spanish flu dramatically disrupted -- and often permanently altered -- global politics, race relations and family structures, while spurring innovation in medicine, religion and the arts.

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received. But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin—barely of age herself—finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours.

Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story by Douglas Preston

The #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, named one of the best books of the year by The Boston Globe and National Geographic: acclaimed journalist Douglas Preston takes readers on a true adventure deep into the Honduran rainforest in this riveting narrative about the discovery of a lost civilization -- culminating in a stunning medical mystery.

Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-Science by Peter Hotez

The last five years saw a significant return of epidemic infectious disease, culminating in COVID-19. In our new post–COVID-19 world, how do we prevent future illnesses by expanding scientific and vaccine diplomacy and cooperation, especially to combat the problems that humans have brought on ourselves?

Blue Marble Health: An Innovative Plan to Fight Diseases of the Poor Amid Wealth by Peter Hotez

Clear, compassionate, and timely, Blue Marble Health is a must-read for leaders in global health, tropical medicine, and international development, along with anyone committed to helping the millions of people who are caught in the desperate cycle of poverty and disease.

Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates (requires a Netflix subscription, check your streaming/online rental channels for additional availability)

Take a trip inside the mind of Bill Gates as the billionaire opens up about those who influenced him and the audacious goal’s he’s still pursuing.

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker

The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease.

The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator by Timothy Winegard

A pioneering and groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction that offers a dramatic new perspective on the history of humankind, showing how through millennia, the mosquito has been the single most powerful force in determining humanity’s fate.

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

In his bestselling books, Atul Gawande, a practicing surgeon, has fearlessly revealed the struggles of his profession. Here he examines its ultimate limitations and failures―in his own practices as well as others'―as life draws to a close. Riveting, honest, and humane, Being Mortal shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life―all the way to the very end.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death by Jean-Dominique Bauby

In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor-in-chief of French Elle, the father of two young childen, a 44-year-old man known and loved for his wit, his style, and his impassioned approach to life. By the end of the year he was also the victim of a rare kind of stroke to the brainstem. After 20 days in a coma, Bauby awoke into a body which had all but stopped working: only his left eye functioned, allowing him to see and, by blinking it, to make clear that his mind was unimpaired. Almost miraculously, he was soon able to express himself in the richest detail: dictating a word at a time, blinking to select each letter as the alphabet was recited to him slowly, over and over again. In the same way, he was able eventually to compose this extraordinary book.

Hidden Killers of the English Home (requires an Amazon Prime Video subscription, Check your streaming/online rental channels for additional availability)

We all know that “an Englishman’s home is his castle.” British historian Suzannah Lipscomb beckons us to get off the sofa and look closely at legendary structures from Edwardians, Victorian, Tudor, and even modern times. The myth of the historic English home, with its legendary comforts and warmth, quickly yields to a nightmare of infestations, toxic materials, and unsafe construction practices.

Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore

Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the “wonder” substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. Their courage and tenacity led to life-changing regulations, research into nuclear bombing, and ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives...

Made into a feature film in late 2020. Requires a Netflix subscription, check your streaming/online rental channels for additional availability.

Suspected origins of the plague doctor mask shape:

https://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2008/01/08/bird-hats-and-wax-pants-antipl

 

 

 

 

journalism

 

Last night, the Genre Reading Group met to discuss journalism and journalists. Journalism has been a very challenged and challenging profession as time goes by and there are now myriad definitions of what qualifies.  From the hallowed halls of the big papers to the crowdsourced digital pages of the internet to the airwaves with your favorite broadcaster/podcaster, it seems anyone may report on anything.

The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Kim Barker

When Kim Barker first arrived in Kabul as a journalist in 2002, she barely owned a passport, spoke only English and had little idea how to do the “Taliban Shuffle” between Afghanistan and Pakistan. No matter—her stories about Islamic militants and shaky reconstruction were soon overshadowed by the bigger news in Iraq. But as she delved deeper into Pakistan and Afghanistan, her love for the hapless countries grew, along with her fear for their future stability. In this darkly comic and unsparing memoir, Barker uses her wry, incisive voice to expose the absurdities and tragedies of the “forgotten war,” finding humor and humanity amid the rubble and heartbreak. Now a major motion picture titled Whiskey Tango Foxtrot starring Tina Fey, Margot Robbie, Martin Freeman, Alfred Molina, and Billy Bob Thornton.

The Powers That Be by David Halberstam

Recounts the growth in power and influence of the great media institutions and the changes that they have brought about on the American scene, focusing on the people who make up Time Incorporated, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and CBS.

Other David Halberstam titles

Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz

For all who remain intrigued by the legacy of the Civil War -- reenactors, battlefield visitors, Confederate descendants and other Southerners, history fans, students of current racial conflicts, and more -- this ten-state adventure is part travelogue, part social commentary and always good-humored. 

Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide by Tony Horwitz

With Spying on the South, the best-selling author of Confederates in the Attic returns to the South and the Civil War era for an epic adventure on the trail of America's greatest landscape architect. In the 1850s, the young Frederick Law Olmsted was adrift, a restless farmer and dreamer in search of a mission. He found it during an extraordinary journey, as an undercover correspondent in the South for the up-and-coming New York Times.

A Voyage Long and Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America by Tony Horwitz

What happened in North America between Columbus's sail in 1492 and the Pilgrims' arrival in 1620?
On a visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz realizes he doesn't have a clue, nor do most Americans. So he sets off across the continent to rediscover the wild era when Europeans first roamed the New World in quest of gold, glory, converts, and eternal youth. Horwitz tells the story of these brave and often crazed explorers while retracing their steps on his own epic trek--an odyssey that takes him inside an Indian sweat lodge in subarctic Canada, down the Mississippi in a canoe, on a road trip fueled by buffalo meat, and into sixty pounds of armor as a conquistador reenactor in Florida.

Other Tony Horwitz titles

We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter by Celeste Headlee

Today most of us communicate from behind electronic screens, and studies show that Americans feel less connected and more divided than ever before. The blame for some of this disconnect can be attributed to our political landscape, but the erosion of our conversational skills as a society lies with us as individuals. And the only way forward, says Headlee, is to start talking to each other. In We Need to Talk, she outlines the strategies that have made her a better conversationalist—and offers simple tools that can improve anyone’s communication.

Invisible People: Stories of Lives at the Margins by Alex Tizon

Every human being has an epic story. The late Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Alex Tizon told the epic stories of marginalized people—from lonely immigrants struggling to forge a new American identity to a high school custodian who penned a New Yorker short story. Edited by Tizon’s friend and former colleague Sam Howe Verhovek, Invisible People collects the best of Tizon’s rich, empathetic accounts—including “My Family’s Slave,” the Atlantic magazine cover story about the woman who raised him and his siblings under conditions that amounted to indentured servitude.

Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs (Most) Americans Won’t Do by Gabriel Thompson

Combining personal narrative with investigative reporting, Thompson shines a bright light on the underside of the American economy, exposing harsh working conditions, union busting, and lax government enforcement -- while telling the stories of workers, undocumented immigrants, and desperate US citizens alike, forced to live with chronic pain in the pursuit of 8 an hour.

Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O’Neill

A journalist's twenty-year fascination with the Manson murders leads to shocking new revelations about the FBI's involvement in this riveting reassessment of an infamous case in American history.

GENERAL DISCUSSION:

One member opines that journalism as a profession is dead and recommends: https://journalismisdead.org/about/ 

If humor is your preference, seek out journalists Paul Harvey, Andy Rooney, Lewis Grizzard, and Erma Bombeck.

Articles by local Birmingham journalist Ian Hoppe

Celeste Headlee TEDTalk

microtopics

The Library will be closed Saturday, September 1st through Monday, September 3rd in observance of Labor Day and will reopen at 9am Tuesday, September 4th. 

Winter Hours have resumed: Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday 9am-9pm, Wednesday 9am-6pm, Friday and Saturday 9am-5pm, and Sunday 1pm-5pm.

Upcoming Events:

- Yoga with Marie Blair Tuesday, September 4th and 18th 10am-11am in the Community Meeting Room

- Brown Bag Lunch series each Wednesday at 12:30pm in the Community Meeting Room

- Bookgroups:
-----Great Short Stories Monday 8/10 at 6:30pm

-----Bookies Tuesday 8/11 at 10am discussing “As I Lay Dying” by William Faulkner

-----Genre Reading Group 8/25 at 6:30pm discussing banned & challenged books

-----Lost & Found group 8/27 @ 6:30pm discussing “In Youth is Pleasure” by Denton Welch and “I Capture the Castle” by Dodie Smith

-UAB Neuroscience Café discussing “The Brain-Gut Connection,” the connection between Parkinson’s disease and the microbiome of the gut, Thursday September 13th 6:30pm in the Community Meeting Room

- Stargazing on the Lawn led by experts from Samford University’s Christenberry Planetarium, all ages welcome Tuesday September 18th at 7pm

- Ages 21 and up only: Standing Room Only presents a karaoke party Friday September 21st 6:30pm in the Community Meeting Room

- Ages 21 and up only: Western Fall Wine and Food Festival Friday September 28th at the Birmingham Zoo 6pm-9pm, tickets available at Western Supermarkets and online at www.westernsupermarkets.com.

Last night, the Genre Reading Group met to discuss microtopic books!

The Fever Trail: In Search of the Cure for Malaria by Mark Honigsbaum

Part science, part riveting historical adventure about one of the great scourges to afflict mankind

Every year malaria kills 1.5 to 2.7 million people -- more than half of those deaths are children -- and 300 to 500 million people fall ill with the disease. As of yet, there is no cure. Malaria is a deadly virus with a vicious ability to mutate; it has, over the centuries, changed the course of history as epidemics swept through countries and devastated armies.

Until the middle of the seventeenth century, little was understood about the nature of the disease, or how to treat it. But there was a legend about a beautiful Spanish countess, the Condesa de Chinchón, who was cured of malaria during her stay in Peru by drinking a medicine made from the bark of a miraculous tree. This is the story of the search for the elusive cinchona tree - the only source of quinine - and the trio of British explorers who were given the task of transporting it to the colonies. On a quest that was to absorb the rest of their lives, Spruce, Ledger and Markham endeavored to rid the world of malaria.

But although quinine, and its chemical successors, managed to control malaria for a time, no method of prevention has been proven to be 100% effective. In laboratories and research facilities, the hunt continues - this time for a vaccine.

The Fever Trail is a story of courage, of geopolitical rivalry, of the New World against the Old, of the fabled curse of the cinchona tree - and of a disease that eludes all efforts to contain it. 

American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree by Susan Freinkel

The American chestnut was one of America's most common, valued, and beloved trees―a "perfect tree" that ruled the forests from Georgia to Maine. But in the early twentieth century, an exotic plague swept through the chestnut forests with the force of a wildfire. Within forty years, the blight had killed close to four billion trees and left the species teetering on the brink of extinction. It was one of the worst ecological blows to North America since the Ice Age―and one most experts considered beyond repair. 

In American Chestnut, Susan Freinkel tells the dramatic story of the stubborn optimists who refused to let this cultural icon go. In a compelling weave of history, science, and personal observation, she relates their quest to save the tree through methods that ranged from classical plant breeding to cutting-edge gene technology. But the heart of her story is the cast of unconventional characters who have fought for the tree for a century, undeterred by setbacks or skeptics, and fueled by their dreams of restored forests and their powerful affinity for a fellow species.

Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind by Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey

“A glorious success…The science manages to be as exciting and spellbinding as the juiciest gossip” (San Franscisco Chronicle) in the story of the discovery of “Lucy”—the oldest, best-preserved skeleton of any erect-walking human ancestor ever found.

When Donald Johanson found a partical skeleton, approximately 3.5 million years old, in a remote region of Ethiopia in 1974, a headline-making controversy was launched that continues on today. Bursting with all the suspense and intrigue of a fast paced adventure novel, here is Johanson’s lively account of the extraordinary discovery of “Lucy.” By expounding the controversial change Lucy makes in our view of human origins, Johanson provides a vivid, behind-the-scenes account of the history of pealeoanthropology and the colorful, eccentric characters who were and are a part of it. Never before have the mystery and intricacy of our origins been so clearly and compellingly explained as in this astonighing and dramatic book.

American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America’s Back Roads by Pascale Le Draoulec

Crossing class and color lines, and spanning the nation (Montana has its huckleberry, Pennsylvania its shoofly, and Mississippi its sweet potato), pie -- real, homemade pie -- has meaning for all of us. But in today's treadmill, take-out world -- our fast-food nation -- does pie still have a place?

As she traveled across the United States in an old Volvo named Betty, Pascale Le Draoulec discovered how merely mentioning homemade pie to strangers made faces soften, shoulders relax, and memories come wafting back. Rambling from town to town with Le Draoulec, you'll meet the famous, and sometimes infamous, pie makers who share their stories and recipes, and find out how a quest for pie can lead to something else entirely.

GENERAL DISCUSSION: This book group member brought in a pie, made from a treasured family recipe, and shared that recipe with us, so I’m now sharing it with you!  (With her permission, of course!)

No-Bake Brandy Pie

For convenience, use a store-bought graham cracker crust. Mix the following together until fluffy: 1 c whipped cream, ½ c powdered sugar, and ¼ c brandy.  In a separate bowl, beat 4 eggs until light yellow but still thick. Fold in the cream mixture, then pour into pie crust. Freeze 12-24 hours.

The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong by David Orr

A cultural “biography” of Robert Frost’s beloved poem, arguably the most popular piece of American literature

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood . . .” One hundred years after its first publication in August 1915, Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” is so ubiquitous that it’s easy to forget that it is, in fact, a poem. Yet poetry it is, and Frost’s immortal lines remain unbelievably popular. And yet in spite of this devotion, almost everyone gets the poem hopelessly wrong.

David Orr’s The Road Not Taken dives directly into the controversy, illuminating the poem’s enduring greatness while revealing its mystifying contradictions. Widely admired as the poetry columnist for the New York Times Book Review, Orr is the perfect guide for lay readers and experts alike. Orr offers a lively look at the poem’s cultural influence, its artistic complexity, and its historical journey from the margins of the First World War all the way to its canonical place today as a true masterpiece of American literature.

“The Road Not Taken” seems straightforward: a nameless traveler is faced with a choice: two paths forward, with only one to walk. And everyone remembers the traveler taking “the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” But for a century readers and critics have fought bitterly over what the poem really says. Is it a paean to triumphant self-assertion, where an individual boldly chooses to live outside conformity? Or a biting commentary on human self-deception, where a person chooses between identical roads and yet later romanticizes the decision as life altering?

What Orr artfully reveals is that the poem speaks to both of these impulses, and all the possibilities that lie between them. The poem gives us a portrait of choice without making a decision itself. And in this, “The Road Not Taken” is distinctively American, for the United States is the country of choice in all its ambiguous splendor.

Published for the poem’s centennial—along with a new Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of Frost’s poems, edited and introduced by Orr himself—The Road Not Taken is a treasure for all readers, a triumph of artistic exploration and cultural investigation that sings with its own unforgettably poetic voice.

The Story of Michelangelo’s Pieta by Irving Stone

In novella form, Irving Stone here revivifies the creation of Michelangelo's great Pieta, completed when the sculptor was twenty-four years old. He sketches the sculptor's early apprenticeships, follows him to Rome. There under the patronage of Jacopo Galli for whom he sculpts the Bacchus, Michelangelo receives the radically different commission from the French Cardinal Groslaye, to fill the niche of the Chapel of the Kings of France with a Pieta. Simply told, this is the tale of dedication and sacrifice culminating not in glory but in the secret placing of the Pieta in its intended niche with Groslaye dead in the meantime.

Lowcountry Hurricanes: Three Centuries of Storms at Sea andAshore by Walter Fraser, Jr.

At once sobering and thrilling, this illustrated history recounts how, for the past three hundred years, hurricanes have altered lives and landscapes along the Georgia-South Carolina seaboard. A prime target for the fierce storms that develop in the Atlantic, the region is especially vulnerable because of its shallow, gradually sloping sea floor and low-lying coastline.

With an eye on both natural and built environments, Fraser's narrative ranges from the first documented storm in 1686 to recent times in describing how the lowcountry has endured some of the severest effects of wind and water. This chronology of the most notable lowcountry storms is also a useful primer on the basics of hurricane dynamics.

Fraser tells how the 800-ton Rising Sun foundered in open water near Charles Town during the hurricane of 1700. About one hundred persons were aboard. All perished. Drawing on eyewitness accounts, he describes the storm surge of an 1804 hurricane that submerged most of Tybee Island and swept over the fort on nearby Cockspur Island, drowning soldiers and civilians. Readers may have their own memories of Hurricanes Andrew, Opal, and Hugo. Although hurricanes frequently lead to significant loss of life, Fraser recounts numerous gripping instances of survival and rescue at sea and ashore.

The author smoothly weaves the lowcountry's long social, political, and economic history with firsthand reports and data accumulated by the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Generously illustrated with contemporary and historical photographs, this is a readable and informative resource on one of nature's most awesome forces.

Debut Novels

Upcoming programs:

-Yoga with Marie Blair every Tuesday 10:30-11:30am

-Tuesday April 17th at 6:30pm, Documentaries After Dark presents the film, “Harry and Snowman”

Dutch immigrant Harry DeLeyer journeyed to the United States after World War II and developed a transformative relationship with a broken down Amish plow horse he rescued off a slaughter truck that was bound for the glue factory. Harry paid eighty dollars for the horse and named him Snowman. In less than two years, Harry & Snowman went on to win the triple crown of show jumping, beating the nation's top pedigree horses and wealthiest socialites. They became famous and traveled around the world together. Their chance meeting at a Pennsylvania horse auction saved them both and crafted a friendship that lasted a lifetime. Eighty-six year old Harry tells their Cinderella love story firsthand, as he continues to train on today's show jumping circuit.

-Thursday April 19th at 6:30pm, UAB Neuroscience Café presents the latest research on stroke and aphasia

-Monday April 23rd at 6:30pm, Money Smart Week presents the film, “The Big Short”

Based on the true story of four outsiders who saw what the big banks, media, and government refused to: the global collapse of the economy. A bold investment leads them into the dark underbelly of banking, where everyone and everything is in question.

-Tuesday April 24th at 6:30pm, GRG returns with a discussion of books on TV & film

-Thursday April 26th at 6:30pm, Community Conversation on Aging presents eldercare financial planning

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This week, the Genre Reading Group met to discuss debut novels.  I love debut novels, an author’s first opportunity to make an impact and a statement, a chance to explore new stories, methods, and worlds!  This is a great group, with lots of variety from which to choose!

My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST
NBCC JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FINALIST
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S MOST NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2017
ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST’S MOST NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2017
ONE OF NPR’S ‘GREAT READS’ OF 2017
A USA TODAY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
AN AMAZON.COM BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A BUSINESS INSIDER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

"Impossible to put down." —NPR

"A novel that readers will gulp down, gasping.” —The Washington Post

"The word 'masterpiece' has been cheapened by too many blurbs, but My Absolute Darling absolutely is one." —Stephen King

A brilliant and immersive, all-consuming read about one fourteen-year-old girl's heart-stopping fight for her own soul.

Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At fourteen, she roams the woods along the northern California coast. The creeks, tide pools, and rocky islands are her haunts and her hiding grounds, and she is known to wander for miles. But while her physical world is expansive, her personal one is small and treacherous: Turtle has grown up isolated since the death of her mother, in the thrall of her tortured and charismatic father, Martin. Her social existence is confined to the middle school (where she fends off the interest of anyone, student or teacher, who might penetrate her shell) and to her life with her father.

Then Turtle meets Jacob, a high-school boy who tells jokes, lives in a big clean house, and looks at Turtle as if she is the sunrise. And for the first time, the larger world begins to come into focus: her life with Martin is neither safe nor sustainable. Motivated by her first experience with real friendship and a teenage crush, Turtle starts to imagine escape, using the very survival skills her father devoted himself to teaching her. What follows is a harrowing story of bravery and redemption. With Turtle's escalating acts of physical and emotional courage, the reader watches, heart in throat, as this teenage girl struggles to become her own hero—and in the process, becomes ours as well.

Shot through with striking language in a fierce natural setting, My Absolute Darling is an urgently told, profoundly moving read that marks the debut of an extraordinary new writer.

Motherest by Kristen Iskandrian

A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF 2017

Marrying the sharp insights of Jenny Offill with the dark humor of Maria Semple, MOTHEREST is an inventive and moving coming-of-age novel that captures the pain of fractured family life, the heat of new love, and the particular magic of the female friendship -- all through the lens of a fraying daughter-mother bond.

It's the early 1990s, and Agnes is running out of people she can count on. A new college student, she is caught between the broken home she leaves behind and the wilderness of campus life. What she needs most is her mother, who has seemingly disappeared, and her brother, who left the family tragically a few years prior.

As Agnes falls into new romance, mines female friendships for intimacy, and struggles to find her footing, she writes letters to her mother, both to conjure a closeness they never had and to try to translate her experiences to herself. When she finds out she is pregnant, Agnes begins to contend with what it means to be a mother and, in some ways, what it means to be your own mother.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

One of English literature's classic masterpieces—a gripping novel of love, propriety, and tragedy.

Emily Brontë's only novel endures as a work of tremendous and far-reaching influence. Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, situated on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before. What unfolds is the tale of the intense love between the gypsy foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. Catherine, forced to choose between passionate, tortured Heathcliff and gentle, well-bred Edgar Linton, surrendered to the expectations of her class. As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance at his betrayal is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past. 

And now, a musical interlude...

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Few creatures of horror have seized readers' imaginations and held them for so long as the anguished monster of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The story of Victor Frankenstein's terrible creation and the havoc it caused has enthralled generations of readers and inspired countless writers of horror and suspense. Considering the novel's enduring success, it is remarkable that it began merely as a whim of Lord Byron's.

"We will each write a story," Byron announced to his next-door neighbors, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley. The friends were summering on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland in 1816, Shelley still unknown as a poet and Byron writing the third canto of Childe Harold. When continued rains kept them confined indoors, all agreed to Byron's proposal.
The illustrious poets failed to complete their ghost stories, but Mary Shelley rose supremely to the challenge. With Frankenstein, she succeeded admirably in the task she set for herself: to create a story that, in her own words, "would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror -- one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart."

Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

“At once a scholar’s homage to The Iliad and startlingly original work of art by an incredibly talented new novelist….A book I could not put down.”
—Ann Patchett

“Mary Renault lives again!” declares Emma Donoghue, author of Room, referring to The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller’s thrilling, profoundly moving, and utterly unique retelling of the legend of Achilles and the Trojan War. A tale of gods, kings, immortal fame, and the human heart, The Song of Achilles is a dazzling literary feat that brilliantly reimagines Homer’s enduring masterwork, The Iliad. An action-packed adventure, an epic love story, a marvelously conceived and executed page-turner, Miller’s monumental debut novel has already earned resounding acclaim from some of contemporary fiction’s brightest lights—and fans of Mary Renault, Bernard Cornwell, Steven Pressfield, and Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series will delight in this unforgettable journey back to ancient Greece in the Age of Heroes.

See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt

Lizzie Borden took an ax
And gave her mother forty whacks
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

Or did she?

In this riveting debut novel, See What I Have Done, Sarah Schmidt recasts one of the most fascinating murder cases of all time into an intimate story of a volatile household and a family devoid of love.

On the morning of August 4, 1892, Lizzie Borden calls out to her maid: Someone’s killed Father. The brutal ax-murder of Andrew and Abby Borden in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts, leaves little evidence and many unanswered questions. While neighbors struggle to understand why anyone would want to harm the respected Bordens, those close to the family have a different tale to tell―of a father with an explosive temper; a spiteful stepmother; and two spinster sisters, with a bond even stronger than blood, desperate for their independence.

As the police search for clues, Emma comforts an increasingly distraught Lizzie whose memories of that morning flash in scattered fragments. Had she been in the barn or the pear arbor to escape the stifling heat of the house? When did she last speak to her stepmother? Were they really gone and would everything be better now? Shifting among the perspectives of the unreliable Lizzie, her older sister Emma, the housemaid Bridget, and the enigmatic stranger Benjamin, the events of that fateful day are slowly revealed through a high-wire feat of storytelling.

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: Her mother is stolen away―by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother's stories are set. Alice's only lead is the message her mother left behind: “Stay away from the Hazel Wood.”

Alice has long steered clear of her grandmother’s cultish fans. But now she has no choice but to ally with classmate Ellery Finch, a Hinterland superfan who may have his own reasons for wanting to help her. To retrieve her mother, Alice must venture first to the Hazel Wood, then into the world where her grandmother's tales began―and where she might find out how her own story went so wrong.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under -- maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass

This is the story of Oskar Matzerath, a dwarfish hunchback detained in a mental hospital, convicted of a murder he did not commit. From his third birthday when he received a tin drum, it has become the means of his expression, allowing him to draw forth memories from his past as well as from the Nazi era. Oskar’s imaginative distortion and exaggeration of history reveals a startlingly true portrayal of the human situation.

Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

WINNER OF THE JEWISH QUARTERLY WINGATE PRIZE

10 WOMEN TO WATCH IN 2017--BookPage

A New York Times Notable Book of 2017

After one night's deadly mistake, a man will go to any lengths to save his family and his reputation.

Neurosurgeon Eitan Green has the perfect life--married to a beautiful police officer and father of two young boys. Then, speeding along a deserted moonlit road after an exhausting hospital shift, he hits someone. Seeing that the man, an African migrant, is beyond help, he flees the scene.

When the victim's widow knocks at Eitan's door the next day, holding his wallet and divulging that she knows what happened, Eitan discovers that her price for silence is not money. It is something else entirely, something that will shatter Eitan's safe existence and take him into a world of secrets and lies he could never have anticipated.

WAKING LIONS is a gripping, suspenseful, and morally devastating drama of guilt and survival, shame and desire from a remarkable young author on the rise.

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly erotic, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force—a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses. It is a novel only Anne Rice could write.

Praise for Interview with the Vampire

“A magnificent, compulsively readable thriller . . . Rice begins where Bram Stoker and the Hollywood versions leave off and penetrates directly to the true fascination of the myth–the education of the vampire.”—Chicago Tribune

“Unrelentingly erotic . . . sometimes beautiful, and always unforgettable.”—Washington Post

“If you surrender and go with her . . . you have surrendered to enchantment, as in a voluptuous dream.”—Boston Globe

“A chilling, thought-provoking tale, beautifully frightening, sensuous, and utterly unnerving.”—Hartford Courant