Earth IS in the Balance

We've watched with some envy the dramatic way our neighboring state has committed to the promotion of tourism and economic development. An outstanding way to boost your economy is to draw visitors from outside the state.

But the private sector does a fine job, too. James Bilodeau has compiled a compelling list of free attractions in the Bluegrass State and will be appearing to promote his book, Free Kentucky: Free things to see and do in the Bluegrass State, at Destinations Booksellers this Saturday, April 14, at 11 a.m.

Come by to hear Bilodeau discuss the book and the attractions in Kentucky to get this next spring weekend off to a rousing start. His publisher, Xavier House Publishing, will soon be releasing Free Tennessee and we can only hope they'll consider a Hoosier edition soon.

Then, travel from here to the Falls of the Ohio State Park in Clarksville for Southern Indiana's celebration of Earth Day. This celebration of all things healthy for our planet was the brainchild of Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson. Did you know that our own Carnegie Center's Suellen Wilkinson was a good friend to Sen. Nelson and worked closely with him on Earth Day and other progressive causes?

The celebration at the Falls is a day-long event featuring earth-friendly techniques, products, and ideas you can use. Jamey Aebersold Jazz is subsidizing free admission to the interpretive center and will perform at mid-day. Great food and fun for the kids, too.

For the third straight year, Destinations Booksellers will be participating in the event. This year we've arranged for a corps of local authors to appear to discuss, sign, and sell their books. Please drop by the Destinations tent and show your support for local authors.

In addition, we have a special nature and ecology display set up at the store to commemorate Earth Day.

April is also National Poetry Month and with Easter finery now put away, our prime display is a selection of poetry that most of you have probably never seen.

Have a great week, a great Earth Day, and a great Poetry Month.

Beneath the Radar

Sometimes a book doesn't get its due, and sometimes it gets lost in the mass of information that flows, especially at Christmastime.

I just finished this book and can tell you it's a story I never knew before. From what I had known about Admiral Halsey, I admired him. My admiration is not lessened after reading this, but my empathy for our WWII naval personnel certainly increased.

I'm going to cheat a bit (I still don't have Internet at home) by using a general piece from the publisher to describe the book, but here's a piece of trivia. Admiral William Halsey was colloquially known as "Bull" - and his personality fit the moniker. But Halsey hated the name. He said he didn't want to acquire such a name simply because a drunken journalist type "u" instead of "i" in a dispatch, but the name, intended or not, stuck.

Halsey and his superior, Adm. Chester Nimitz, were both awarded a fifth star at the conclusion of the war, the first ever awarded.
In December 1944, America's most popular and colorful naval hero, Admiral William "Bull" Halsey, unwittingly sailed his undefeated Pacific Fleet into the teeth of a powerful typhoon. Three destroyers were capsized, sending hundreds of sailors and officers into the raging, shark-infested waters. Over the next sixty hours, small bands of survivors fought seventy-foot waves, exhaustion, and dehydration to await rescue at the hands of the courageous Lt. Com. Henry Lee Plage, who, defying orders, sailed his tiny destroyer escort USS Tabberer through 150-mph winds to reach the lost men. Thanks to documents that have been declassified after sixty years and dozens of first-hand accounts from survivors--including former President Gerald Ford--one of the greatest World War II stories, and a riveting tale of survival at sea, can finally be told.

Halsey's Typhoon by Tom Clavin and Bob Drury
ISBN 9780871139481 November 2006 Atlantic Monthly Press (Hardcover) $25

You Are What You Eat

A quick bite, today.

Steve Ettlinger is a food writer. One day, during a picnic with his family, one of the kids went off on the ingredients listing on a package of Twinkies, the Hostess cakes that are an American guilty pleasure.

In Twinkie, Deconstructed, Ettlinger traces the path of each and every listed ingredient and we get to go along on the journey.

There's enough history (of science and food technology as well as social culture) to satisfy the generalist, and enough food trivia to please the most devoted foodie.

It's not all about the Twinkie, but Ettlinger always brings the story back to that end product. What makes it stay soft? Why doesn't it "weep" the oils and fats? Just how many Twinkies are consumed in America each year?

Find out these and other fascinating fact(oids) in the wonderful book. Do you know why Crisco was considered the healthy alternative to butter or lard? And why it suddenly became the leading culprit in the trans-fat discovery? And why Crisco is now "fully hydrogenated?"

By the way, the name Crisco was the result of an employee contest to name it, and it's derived from CRYStallized Cottonseed Oil (from which it is no longer made).

Twinkie, Deconstructed by Steve Ettlinger
ISBN 9781594630187 Hudson Street Press, March 2007 (Hardcover) $23.95

Did You Know (DYK)?

I don't know about you, but I read to learn. The enjoyment of reading is inextricably tied up with the joy of learning. Even with fiction, I require that the author provide me with new information, or new perspectives on information.

When I recommend a book, then, it is because something in that book has met my "edification quotient." The EQ is a stable and useful, if not quite fully developed measure of the depth of a person. I won't go so far as to say it improves the character or quality of a woman or man, but I will venture that an improvement in one's EQ is a cause for celebration and any efforts to share the tool (the book, article, film, or song, the painting, sculpture, lecture, or photograph) that caused that improvement is an imperative.

Whew! That's the long way around to share with you a very brief tidbit from The Iron Whim. You'll recall we touched on it in yesterday's rather lengthy posting. Darren Wershler-Henry has compiled a very readable history of typewriting. It's not entirely a history of the machine itself, but rather, tries to capture the sociological and economic impact that the whole process of typewriting has had on our society, and in particular, our literature and culture.

You may think all of the above is boring, that it sounds like a lot of work. Nope. It's hardly breezy, but it is completely enjoyable and you'll feel your EQ rising with the turn of every page.

Here's a few of the DYK moments...

William S. Burroughs, he of The Naked Lunch, is an acknowledged master of 20th Century avant-garde literature, much of which was semi-autobiographical. The typewriter was an integral part of his ouvre, so much so that when director David Cronenberg brought The Naked Lunch to film, his Kafkaesque touch brought the typewriter into the ranks of horror icon. But did you know that William S. Burroughs was the scion of a major office machine family? We oldsters remember the Burroughs Company mainly as the makers of adding machines (soon to be seen at New Albany's Museum of Trade and Industry?). But Burroughs made a pretty fine typewriter for several years, and the younger Burroughs came to his fascination honestly.

Henry David Thoreau, the civilly disobedient transcendentalist philosopher and no mean writer himself, spent much of his career working in his family's business, which produced the finest pencils in 1840s America. But get this: "In drafting a list of essential supplies for a twelve-day trip into the woods (remember Walden?), Henry David Thoreau (pronounced like 'thorough') neglects to include the pencil with which he composed the list, and conducted his extensive journal-keeping...even though he had worked with his father at Thoreau & Company."

Now, let's just appropriate the following excerpt:

Consider the sentence "Amaranath sasesusos Oronoco initiation secedes Uruguay Philadelphia." (Not quite "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.") The meaning of this sentence has nothing to do with the normal logic of syntax and everything to do with the logic of how letters appear on a typewritten page. It was usually the first thinng ever typed on each new typewriter, and its sole function was to check the alignment of a typewriter that had just rolled off the production line before it was shipped. Unlike most sentences, it was rarely spoken, (duh!) and no one particularly cared what it might mean in the conventional sense.

How does it work? "Amaranath," the misspelled name of an imaginary flower, checks the alignment of the vowel "a" between a number of common consonants. "Oronoco" checks the "o" key, while "secedes," "initiation," and "Uruguay" check three vowels that are among the most commonly used of all letters, "e," "i," and "u." "Sasesusos" not only compares four of the five vowels in the same word against the baseline of the letter "s," but also "includes several of the most common letter combinations in twentieth-century business English." "Philadelphia" checks the horizontal alignment of "i" and "l," the narrowest letters on the keyboard.
How's your EQ now?

The Iron Whim: The Fragmented History of Typewriting by Darren Wershler-Henry
ISBN 9780801445866 March 2007 Cornell University Press (Hardcover) $29.95 331pp.

One on One With the Author

Did you ever want to spice up your book club in a way you've never been able to do?


How about having a national bestselling author make a visit?

Ballantine Books is holding a contest to bring the author of The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood to you.

A naturalist by trade, Sy Montgomery had always felt more comfortable with animals than with people. So she gladly opened her heart and home to a sickly piglet who had been crowded away from feedings by his stronger siblings. Yet Sy had no inkling that this piglet, later named Christopher Hogwood, would not only survive, but flourish - and through Christopher, she soon found herself united with the people in her small town community in ways she had never dreamed possible.

The Good Good Pig is a story about discovering the meaning of family, the value of community, our ability to love and be loved, and our relationship with all creatures great and small. Not only will this not-so-little piggy steal your heart, he'll have your book club talking for hours.

Choose The Good Good Pig as your next book club selection and enter for a chance to have author Sy Montgomery attend one of your club's meetings in person. The first 200 clubs to respond will receive a free hardcover copy of The Good Good Pig. Visit www.goodgoodpig.com/bookclub for full rules and contest details.

Thanks to Ballantine Books for making the above offer. The book is available in hardcover now and in paperback on April 17. Book clubs purchasing five or more copies can get the hardcover for the same price as the paperback between now and that date.

Snap Judgments Can Be Deadly

About once a year, a seemingly complex subject is made simple by an author and the book becomes an unexpected phenomenon. Today's book may just be this year's version of Blink or Freakonomics.

As with many books, I became intrigued with How Doctors Think while listening to NPR's Morning Edition. Jerome Groopman is an M.D. and the holder of a chair at Harvard Medical School. He tells us that somewhere between 15 and 25 percent of all patient encounters with a doctor result in a misdiagnosis. Why? His belief is that doctors are prone to making rapid decisions based on prior inputs, as if diagnosing a malady were some type of timed contest. Giving the patient an answer quickly certainly creates a feeling of confidence in the patient, but it is the thought processes of doctors that we must try to understand.

"Most doctors, within the first 18 seconds of seeing a patient, will interrupt him telling his story and also generate an idea in his mind [of] what's wrong. And too often, we make what's called an anchoring mistake — we fix on that snap judgment."

Listen to the Morning Edition interview with Jerome Groopman here.

How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman, M.D.

ISBN 9780618610030 Houghton-Mifflin, March 2007 (Hardcover) $26

EDITORIAL NOTE: I've been lax in posting the audio for our podcast of NA Books Daily, but I will get those caught up. Please let us know how you use the podcast (link in the left bar) and give us your suggestions for how to make it more useful to you.

Here Speaking English

The post's title is an inside joke, revolving around a language book we know of called Here Speeching American. That's a book that "takes a hilarious look at the challenges confronting English-speaking travelers around the world, from less-than-coherent road signs, to odd sounding food and drink, to impossible-to-follow directions, to other lighthearted examples of fractured English."

If you want to get serious, then you'll be interested in Andrew Roberts' new tome, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900. It's the kind of book I love, and based on our history here in New Albany (English-speaking and otherwise), I think it will appeal to many of you.

Here's an excerpt:

John F. Kennedy was puzzled that Americans rated Theodore Roosevelt so highly, considering that he never led the nation through any war (an estimation that might more profitably be extended to JFK himself). Roosevelt filled the White House like no other peacetime president; Mark Twain accorded the fact that he was 'the most popular human being that ever existed in the United States' to his 'joyous ebullitions of excited sincerity'. Yet there were solid achievements too: he won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 and began constructing the isthmian canal that linked his country's western ocean to its eastern, thus saving US warships from having to make the ninety-day journey around Cape Horn.

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 by Andrew Roberts

ISBN 9780060875985, Feb. 2007 (HarperCollins) $35 (Hardcover)

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I'm Impressed...How About You?

Just had to share with you something that, to me, is a big deal.

Somehow or other, the author of a book featured recently (The Small-Mart Revolution) found our mini-review and recommendation and sent along a thank you with some additional information.

That's exactly the kind of interactivity we hope you'll like. Ann and I just said, "Wow!"

Check the comments at this earlier posting to see what author Michael Shuman thought about it and find out what he's up to. It's pretty exciting.

Think You Know Food?

Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation (ISBN 9780061161391) took America to task for slowly killing itself via a monocultural diet of convenience (and fat). Now, Barry Glassner, author of The Culture of Fear, issues a clarion call for us to abandon food fads and to give up a "fear-based admiration for celebrity chefs" and other so-called experts in his latest, The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food is Wrong.

I know I've adapted my own eating habits since coming to New Albany. My beef consumption is down, but my fast food consumption is down about 95%. When I eat out, I make sure it's at a locally-owned establishment that tries to buy its foodstuffs locally. I patronize the downtown Farmers Market, and I try to eat only enough to satisfy my hunger.

Just out this month from HarperCollins' Ecco imprint, it's $25.95 (ISBN 9780060501211).



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"Small-Mart" Book is Truly Revolutionary

You'll note that Michael H. Shuman's The Small-Mart Revolution sits high atop our first "new and recommended" list. Its subtitle is "How Local Businesses are Beating the Global Competition," but it is far from a "business" book.

I wanted to read this from the first moment I heard about it, and then the Jeffersonville Main Street organization sponsored a smart growth conference and whaddayaknow? Mike Shuman came to lead a breakout session.

Let me just say that everyone should read it. It is the most hopeful communitarian book I've read in years. While it strongly reinforces the axiom that "shopping is a political act," it more accurately addresses the immorality of the way we consume without calling consumers immoral. Shuman doesn't condemn us for shopping at big-box stores. He doesn't expect us to boycott Wal-Mart. But he does offer us compelling reasons to buy local first.

Ann, reading another book altogether last night (wait until you hear about this one...hint: initials B.K.), rediscovered Shuman's reported statistic that on average, the food we eat is transported 1,500 miles - gobbling up a heckuva lot of petroleum to do so.

On the public policy front, Shuman calls for a level playing field for local businesses and makes a convincing argument that nurturing locals pays off for everyone. When comparing business types, he uses the analogies of LOIS and TINA. TINA is the economic development "grail," where far-off corporate interests are coddled and recruited on the basis that "There Is No Alternative (TINA)." He's much more interested in "Locally Owned-Import Subsituting (LOIS)" businesses.

Filled with facts that will make you think. You might just help save the world.

The Small-Mart Revolution by Michael Shuman
ISBN 9781576753866, 2006 Berrett-Koehler (Hardcover) $24

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