July 2003

Louis and Clark: A Bicentennial Celebration In 1803, Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon negotiated the United States’ purchase of Louisiana from France. With the approval of the treaty in April, the nation instantly doubled in size, adding over 800,000 square miles of land—bought at a cost of about four cents per acre. At the same time Jefferson won an appropriation of $2,500 from Congress to fund a small expeditionary group, whose mission was to explore the uncharted West, and determine the existence of a Northwest Passage to the sea.  With the acquisition of the Louisiana territories, the expedition took on a new urgency.  Led by Jefferson’s secretary, Meriwether Lewis, and Lewis’ friend, William Clark, Jefferson called the group the Corps of Discovery.  In honor of the bicentennial of these two historic events, this month's Travel with Me discussion, led by library staff member Jean Goetzke, focuses on The Journals of Lewis and Clark.  Many books have been published recently which examine the events and personalities involved in the Louisiana Purchase and the Louis and Clark expedition.  Here are just a few: FICTION Glancy, Diane. Stone Heart: A Novel of Sacajawea Hall, Brian. I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company: A Novel of Lewis and Clark.     Thom, James A. Sign-Talker: The Adventure of George Drouillard on the Lewis and Clark Expedition: A Novel. NON-FICTION| Clark, William. Dear Brother: Letters of William Clark to Jonathan Clark. NEW 21 DAY 917.8042/CLA  Gunderson, Mary. The Food Journal of Lewis & Clark: Recipes for an Expedition. NEW 21 DAY 641.5973/GUN  Kennedy, Roger G. Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause: Land, Farmers, Slavery, and the Louisiana Purchase. NEW 21 DAY 973.46/KEN Kukla, Jon A Wilderness so Immense:  The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America. NEW 21 DAY 973.46/KUK  Slaughter, Thomas P.  Exploring Lewis and Clark: Reflections on Men and Wilderness. NEW 21 DAY 917.8/SLA

In This Issue: On Display in the Library All-Star Reads All-Star Movies Famous First Lines Quiz Forthcoming Books Literary Events This Month   On Display in the Library  Look for these displays  in the library in July: Spotlight on Summer Reading Star Spangled Manners Etiquette books Fiction from the Modern West  Have You Driven a Fjord Lately  Look for these author displays: Alexandre Dumas Louise Erdrich Robert Heinlein  Look for this special display: The Cloning Controversy

All-Star Movies The Bad News Bears (1976) Tatum O’Neal stars as the girl pitcher who turns a baseball team of losers into winners in this comedy. Walter Mathau is the team’s drunken coach. Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) A young Robert DeNiro portrays a terminally ill catcher. With Michael Moriarity. Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns (1994) The story of baseball, its moments of glory and shame, is told in this 18-hour documentary narrated by John Chancellor. Bull Durham (1988) Kevin Costner plays an older and more experienced minor league catcher assigned to prep a hot young pitcher (Tim Robbins) for the “Show” (majors). Things get touchy when they compete for the attention of a glamorous baseball groupie played by Susan Sarandon. Nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar. Casey at the Bat: Tall Tales (1985) A retelling of the baseball legend with Elliot Gould, Carol Kane and Howard Cosell. Cobb (1994) A founding member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, Ty Cobb, the “Georgia Peach,” excelled at winning enemies and turning off people-on and off the diamond. Tommy Lee Jones plays Cobb in this film based on the biography by Al Stump. Damn Yankees (1958) Film version of the Broadway musical about a baseball fan who sells his soul to the devil, played by Ray Walston. Dancing great Gwen Verdon stars as the corrupt beauty sent to tempt the all-American boy played by Tab Hunter. Choreography by Bob Fosse. Eight Men Out (1988) John Cusack, Charlie Sheen and John Mahoney bring to life some of the game’s greatest and most infamous players in this film story of the 1919 Black Sox scandal. Field of Dreams (1989) Based on W.P. Kinsella’s novel Shoeless Joe, the film is about a farmer who hears and responds to a voice telling him to build a baseball field in the middle of a cornfield. The field is visited by ghosts of players from another era. Stars: Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones, Amy Madigan, Burt Lancaster and Ray Liotta, as the Shoeless Joe character. Considered one of the best baseball movies of all time. Nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. For the Love of the Game (2000) Pitcher Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner) re-examines his life while pitching a perfect game, after learning he is about to be traded after 20 years with the Detroit Tigers. A League of Their Own (1992) A fun film based on the Woman’s Professional Baseball League launched during the Second World War. Tom Hanks stars as the team's dour manager. Geena Davis and Madonna see action as talented players who helped win a loyal following for the league. Major League (1989) Comedy about how a baseball owner’s plot to move her team to a warmer climate backfires when the team of losers she hires ends up in the running for a pennant. Stars: Charlie Sheen and Tom Berenger. The Natural (1984) Popular film version of Bernard Malmud’s novel inspired by a real life incident. Robert Redford plays Roy Hobbs, a player who mysteriously disappears and then re-appears as a superstar. Also stars Robert Duvall, Oscar-nominated Glenn Close and Barbara Hershey. Pride of the Yankees (1942) Memorable for its recreation of Lou Gerhig’s farewell speech and the real ballplayers who make appearances: Babe Ruth, Bill Dickey and Joe McCarthy, to name a few. Gary Cooper portrays the player known as the “Iron Horse.” Nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Story of America’s Classic Ballparks (1991) Narrated by actor Jeff Daniels, this documentary tells the story of baseball's great playing fields. Four are preserved in this video: Comiskey Park and Wrigley Field in Chicago, the original Tiger Stadium in Detroit (before it was leveled), and Fenway Park in Boston. Al Kaline and other baseball stars appear. —Bill Ott, editor and publisher, Booklist Magazine, American Library Association

All-Star Reads The All-Star game comes to Chicago this month, and in tribute to the great players of the game, both past and present, here is a selection of titles about America's favorite game: FICTION Brock, Darryl. Havana Heat, 2000. Luther Taylor, a deaf-mute pitcher who hopes to win a spot on the New York Giants in 1911, finds himself in Cuba coaching a team of Cubans set to play the Giants in a big-money exhibition game. Fascinating social history, believable characters, and terrific ambience. Duncan, David James. The Brothers K, 1992. Baseball, Vietnam and Seventh Day Adventism form the three corners of this moving, wide-ranging epic of the Chance family in rural Washington State . Brashler, William. The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings, 1973. The history of the Negro Leagues told in the form of a rollicking road novel. Poignant, big-hearted and full of wit. Fromm, Pete. How All This Started. Picador, 2000. Manic depressive Abeline, obsessed with Nolan Ryan, sets out to turn her brother, Austin, into a great pitcher. A desolate Texas landscape, a family in near-total collapse and, somehow, the game of baseball serving as both catalyst for tragedy and a means of survival. Harris, Mark. Bang the Drum Slowly, 1956. The second in Harris’ four-novel sequence narrated by New York Mammoth pitcher Henry “Author” Wiggen finds the Mammoth’s star right-hander caught up in a tragic human drama when reserve catcher Bruce Pearson is diagnosed with Hodgkins disease. Henry, April. Be the One, 2000. In this baseball thriller, the game’s only female scout, Cassidy Sanderson, goes to the Dominican Republic in pursuit of Alberto Cruz, a centerfielder who invokes comparisons to Willie Mays. A look at what scouts do and a sensitive account of a woman trying to succeed in a man's game. Honig, Donald. The Plot to Kill Jackie Robinson, 1992. Suspended reporter Joe Tinker is an eyewitness to a murder in Greenwich Village in 1947. He gets interested in the case when it seems to connect to a possible plot to kill Jackie Robinson before his upcoming major-league debut. An atmospheric hard-boiled period piece by a veteran baseball writer. Kinsella, W. P. Shoeless Joe, 1982. The movie Field of Dreams was based on this enchanting fantasy about an Iowa farmer who hears a voice telling him that if he builds a ballpark, “they will come.” They did, and they have for the last 20 years, in print and on screen. Malamud, Bernard. The Natural, 1952. Malamud’s novel about Roy Hobbs and his pursuit of baseball excellence is considerably darker than the Robert Redford movie based on it. Chasing the Holy Grail, Malamud reminds us, extracts a terrible toll on the would-be hero. Sayles, John. Pride of the Bimbos, 1975. Movie director Sayles was a fine novelist before he turned to film. This rollicking tale of five-man barnstorming softball team that plays in drag finds him at the top of his game. One of the wittiest baseball novels ever written. Stein, Harry. Hoopla, 1983. This boisterous retelling of the Chicago Black Sox story turns the familiar facts of the 1919 scandal into a compelling mix of rollicking comedy and hard-hitting drama. Winegardner, Mark. The Veracruz Blues, 1996. Based on real events, this superb novel tells the story of the Mexican League, a baseball league founded in 1946 when the Pasquel brothers attempted to buy off American major leaguers and mix them with Negro League and Central American stars. Great baseball history and a riveting story. NON-FICTION Angell, Roger. Once More around the Park: A Baseball Reader, 1991.  YA/796.357/ANG For more than 30 years, Angell has been writing about baseball for the New Yorker. This omnibus volume, drawn from several previous collections, brings together the best work of the man who many consider baseball’s best writer. Conan, Neal. Play by Play: Baseball, Radio and Life in the Last Chance League, 2002.  796.357/CON NPR broadcaster Conan left job and family in 2000 to become the voice of the Aberdeen Arsenal, an independent minor league team at the lowest rung on the game's ladder. A fascinating meditation about dreams, failure, baseball and radio. Dawidoff, Nicholas, ed. Baseball: A Literary Anthology, 2002.  810.80355/BAS With this volume in the high-toned Library of America series, baseball literature has officially arrived. It’s a fine anthology, too, ranging from “Casey at the Bat” through John Updike on Ted Williams to Stephen King on his son’s little-league team. Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Wait till Next Year: Recollections of a ’50s Girlhood, 1997. 796.357/GOO Goodwin’s memoir covers the same ground as Kahn’s classic Boys of Summer (see below), but from an entirely different perspective: the classic Brooklyn Dodger teams of the 1950s as seen through the eyes of young girl, devoted to her heroes. Kahn, Roger. The Boys of Summer, 1971.  796.357/KAH-1 The great Brooklyn Dodger teams on the 1950s—Robinson, Snider, Reese, Campanella, Hodges—lovingly recalled by a reporter who covered the team for the New York Herald Tribune. A classic of baseball literature. Rampersad, Arnold. Jackie Robinson: A Biography, 1997.  B/ROBINSON,J./RAM Written to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Robinson's breaking baseball’s color line, this definitive biography combines exhaustive research with vivid prose and notable objectivity. The best book available on Robinson. Ribowsky, Mark. Don't Look Back: Satchel Paige in the Shadows of Baseball, 1994.    796.357/PAIGE Ribowsky separates fact from legend in the life and career of Negro League pitcher Satchel Paige, but he also recognizes that Paige was a genuine American hero—part Babe Ruth, part Will Rogers, but, finally, beyond comparison. Ritter, Lawrence S. The Glory of Their Times: The Story of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It, 1966.  796.357/GLO One of the first—and still perhaps the best—baseball oral histories, this delightful volume gathers the first-person accounts of ball players from the first decades of the twentieth century. Stump, Al. Cobb, 1994.  B/COBB,T./STU Combining the best and worst of American individualism in one ferocious package, Detroit Tiger Hall of Famer Ty Cobb defies our attempts to make sense of him. Stump comes close in this chilling tale of athletic excellence and personal chaos. Whiting, Robert. You Gotta Have Wa, 1989.  796.3570952/WHI The quality of Wa, Japanese for “group harmony,” is what makes Japanese baseball so different from the American version. Whiting explains how culture and sport come together in a country where baseball players bow before the umpire, and fans return foul balls. Courtesy of the American Library Association

Forthcoming Books Look for these titles coming this month: FICTION A Son of War by Melvyn Bragg This is the second volume of a trilogy that began with The Soldier's Return, about a family in a little town in Cumbria, in the northwest of England, in the years following WWII.  A novel written with warmth and compassion.  Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb Historical and contemporary stories overlap in this Civil War epic by Appalachian native McCrumb. The Center of Everything by Laura Moriarty Ten year old Evelyn Bucknow lives in the middle of Kansas and in her mind the 'center of everything.' With the help of some neighbors and teachers, Evelyn tries to make sense out of the vast world around her. Trading Up by Candace Bushnell The latest by the author of Sex and the City takes us to the Hamptons where social climber Janey Wilcox marries rich, but is it enough? MYSTERY To the Nines by Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum, the bounty hunter from Jersey, brings in a slippery criminal and deals with family problems in this ninth novel in the Plum series. Presumption of Death by Perri O'Shaughnessy Attorney Nina Reilly takes a break to re-examine her life, and finds herself searching for the solution to arson and murder. Death Row by William Bernhardt In this latest legal thriller, Tulsa lawyer Ben Kincaid desperately tries to keep a client from being executed. NON-FICTION Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer The author of Into Thin Air uses a double murder by two Mormon fundamentalist brothers as a starting point for exploring the history the fastest growing religion in the Western Hemisphere.

Famous First Lines Quiz How well do you know your fiction?  Take this quiz and see if you can identify the novels from which these first lines are taken. [Hint: There is one novel from each decade of the 20th century.] Can you identify the decade too? 1. We were just outside of Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. 2. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 3. When he was nearly thirteen my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. 4. Abandon all hope ye who enter here is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be see from the back of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street. . .  5. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. 6. I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbines's father over the top of the Standard Oil sign. 7. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again. 8. Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. 9. Who is John Galt? 10. Buck did not read the newspapers or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Click here for the answers

Literary Events in July @ the Library Monday, July 7 Monday Afternoon Book Discussion GPL Conference Room, 1:00 pm Discussion of Isabel Allende's Daughter of Fortune.   Friday July 11 GPL Conference Room, 7:00 pm Travel with Me  Join library staff member Jean Goetzke in a discussion of The Journals of Lewis and Clark. Please sign up at the Info Desk. Around Chicagoland Tuesday July 8 Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 7:30 pm WBEZ Stories on Stage http://www.wbez.org/storiesonstage or (312) 948-4704 Tuesday July 8 Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton St.,Chicago, 8:00 pm Author reading. Ten Little Indians: Stories  Novelist, screenwriter, and director Sherman Alexie returns to the short story with eleven emotionally resonant new stories about Native Americans. Call for information: (312) 255-3700. July 9-13 Sheraton Chicago Northwest, Arlington Heights National Storytelling Conference Keynote presentations by Studs Terkel and Timuel Black. Call 1-800-525-4514 or visit http://www.storynet.org. July 24 - 27  19th Annual Newberry Library Book Fair & Bughouse Square Debates. Call for hours and information: (312) 255-3700. Continuing Now— July 12 Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton St., Chicago Exhibit: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Beyond Sherlock Holmes An exhibit that explores the life and adventures of the man behind the master detective, including magazines, first editions, pirated editions, original illustrations, handwritten correspondence, posters, photographs and artifacts. Free. Call for hours and information: (312) 255-3700.

First Lines Quiz Answers

 1. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter Thompson, 1972.
2.  The Great Gatsby,  F.Scott Fitzgerald, 1925.
3. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960.
4.  American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis, 1991.
5.  1984, George Orwell, 1949.
6.  The Bean Trees,  Barbara Kingsolver, 1988.
7.  Rebecca, Daphne DuMaurier, 1938.
8. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce, 1916.
9.  Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, 1957.
10.  Call of the Wild, Jack London, 1903.

Previous Editions of "Read All About It" January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 To receive a copy of this newsletter monthly in your e-mail,  send a message to 4readers@glenview.lib.il.us with the word "Subscribe" in the subject line To see all the available library e-mail services, go to http://www.glenview.lib.il.us/lns.html "Read All About It" was created by the Reader's Advisory staff of the Glenview Public Library. Glenview Public Library 1930 Glenview Ave. Glenview, IL 60025 Phone: 847-729-7500 E-Mail: 4readers@glenview.lib.il.us