TITANIC: End of a Dream by Wyn Craig Wade

Skyhorse (A Herman Graf Book) February 2012 * 384 pages/50 b&w illustrations
A CENTENNIAL EDITION OF THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED BESTSELLER FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1980

TITANIC: End of a Dream relies on survivors' accounts to establish some startling facts, including that almost two-thirds of the first-class passengers survived while only a quarter of the steerage passengers made it to safety. And that those in the lifeboats chose to ignore the piteous cries of passengers in the water, almost all of whom perished. This chilling account demonstrates that the Titanic's sinking was in many ways entirely avoidable. He begins with Titanic leaving on its maiden voyage from Southampton, full of hope and excitement. He then quickly shifts to the scene of confusion and horror right after the sinking, when few facts were known. In the next chapters the sinking comes to life through an official Inquiry into the disaster, due to the work of a Senator from Michigan and his committee who actually met the rescue ship Carpathia in New York and served many of the notables with subpoenas. The Inquiry was held within a week of the rescue ship arriving in New York. Particularly memorable is the chapter detailing the negligence of the Californian - in reality the closest ship to the point of sinking. Therefore, Wyn’s book is based on source material that was very fresh and thus gives a great read that fills in so many details that would otherwise have been lost to time and embellishment.

Titanic was truly a community afloat, with everything you might find in a small city: a government, social classes, and a sense of forward progress. As Titanic left the dock, she was almost a caricature of herself. The appropriately named ship was symbolic of the dreams and expectations of the men, women and children in 1912 prior to World War I. As they looked ahead at the brave new world they were building, Titanic reflected who they were In TITANIC: End of a Dream detail-oriented journalist Wade translates the human emotions of the Titanic sinking into modern culture. Wyn conveys what Titanic—and, more importantly, the sinking of Titanic—meant to the people of that time. If we cannot understand the impact of Titanic on the world of 1912, how can we possibly understand how Titanic integrates into our culture and thinking today?

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The Inquisitor's Apprentice: a children’s fantasy by Chris Moriarty

This title will be released on October 2011. The Inquisitor’s Apprentice Book 2, Manuscript available December 2011. & The Inquisitor’s Apprentice Book 3, Manuscript available December 2012

This book is admirably well plotted, really tight and compelling. The pace is brisk, but well detailed too--and characters are nicely developed. Just generally well written.

I am in LOVE with the setting and the premise. The idea of magic-as-replaced-by-machines, of capitalists as the villains behind the end of "old world" magic. It's brilliant. The way all of these historical characters and institutions (Edison, Houdini, the IWW, Morgan Library, etc) are incorporated and "magicalized" is smart, and never feels arbitrary. And the author appears to have done her research! Reading, I really did feel submerged in the building of the subways, the dingy tenements, Coney Island sideshows, etc.

The biggest issue for me, as I read, was this nagging sense that there was an incongruity to the use of Judaism (and maybe other identities too) as the cultural/religious basis for magic. In the book, some rabbis are understood to be Kabbalists, though mysticism is illegal. As are basic conjuring, spells, hexes, etc. This is INTERESTING. Especially as faith/magic are then replaced by the industrial/capitalistic world. Interesting.

And as a Jewish reader, I liked references to dybbuks. I liked that Yiddish was tossed around.

But there's something off, maybe-- because all the while there was still the "real" Jewish world in the background. Hester Street is the same, and people are running around, trying to get to market before Shabbos. Rabbis are davening in storefront shuls. I couldn't put my finger on what exactly bothered me about this duality of Jewish lives, but something did. Some sense that the author never made clear how these two worlds coexisted. The "magic" world isn't, as it is in Harry Potter, a secret. That would have made more sense to me, Instead, the mothers dashing off to market to make Shabbos before sundown KNOW about the magic world. But it isn't incorporated into their faith or practice, and it doesn't seem to make them question their faith.

I know this may seem like nitpicking, and I certainly wouldn't want this idea to keep a kid from reading and loving this book (which they will). But I wondered how the author understood the theology (not the cultural trappings, but the actual beliefs) of an orthodox Jewish world that happens to be full of magic. Jewish mysticism isn't something most Jews practice (and it wasn't on the LES at the turn of the 20th century either). I couldn't help thinking that if the average frum housewife had experience with magic and mysticism, it might have changed her life.

Also, some points of order bugged me. In the opening scene of the book, much is made about the mother needing to get to market in time for Shabbat, but then she's still out wandering around after sundown. Why she's bothered to rush from work to the market, to buy a whole herring, if she doesn't plan to go home and make dinner in time-- I'm not clear on it. I have a hard time believing that her Rabbi Brother-in-law who lives with her wouldn't be upset about this infraction. But this is minor. It just happened to be on page 3, so set off alarms of Judaism as gimmick. Though other lines, like the one about the MC "memorizing" his bar mitzvah Torah portion, also made me wonder.

I'm also a little confused about when exactly the book is set-- can't be earlier than 1913 because Roosevelt has gone to DC, but the "Pentacle" shirtwaist factory is still in business. The author has used an unusual mix of historical figures/institutions (Edison, Houdini, etc) but then a bunch of people have been reimagined (Astor has become "Astral" and the Morgan Library is the "Morgaunt." Triangle is Pentacle, etc.) I understand that this is a "parallel" world, but I'm not sure why things have to be inconsistant this way. I'm not sure what purpose it served.

Now, I've spent way too much time picking the book apart. In truth, it's a wildly fun read, but in attempting the hybrid/historical/religious novel, Moriarty kind of opened herself up for questions.

And as I'm sure she well knows, Jews tend to ask questions!

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source: http://laurelsnyder.com/?p=1111

visit the official website http://www.inquisitorsapprentice.com

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A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea by Dina Viergut

In 1981, eleven-year-old Saba Hafezi watches as her mother and twin sister, Mahtab, board a plane to America, leaving her in a seaside village in northern Iran. Though she is certain of what she saw, Saba's broken father and colorful slew of surrogate grandmothers claim that Mahtab is dead and that Saba should forget about her troublesome mother; nevertheless, there are others who attribute Saba's belief in her sister's survival to “twin-sense” and relish the possibility that Mahtab might still be alive. Over the next seventeen years, Saba immerses herself in illegal western books, movies, and magazines, and weaves an exquisite parallel American life for her twin sister, one that mirrors her own in bizarre and unlikely ways—and rivals the fates of Ivy-League western shahs—a life that the bookish Saba too might have lived if she'd been allowed to get on that plane.

Beginning with small tokens of adolescence and moving to larger coincidences of unrequited love, the violent consequences of forced marriage to a much older man, and motherhood, Mahtab’s hazier American story keeps pace with her sister like a shadow. Mahtab loses a lover when Saba does. Mahtab finds unexpected wealth in the same way as Saba. But whereas Saba’s story has all the grit and brutality of real life in post-revolution Iran, Mahtab’s is like an American television show as imagined under an Iranian storyteller’s blanket, always returning power and control to the heroine’s hands.

A TEASPOON OF EARTH AND SEA uses strong, colorful characters, a unique narrative voice, and rural eastern storytelling techniques with western-style prose to convey a sense of mystery and a compelling message about identity and being the mistress of one's own fate while living and battling within the fantasy of our other "selves." The bittersweet ending leaves the reader wondering if it matters at all where life takes us or why. Maybe the soul is unchanging and—as the old saying goes—life is written in the veins.

[Riverhead (World English) 2012; Edizioni Piemme (Italy) 2012; Rocco (Brazil) 2012; De Bezige Bij (Netherlands) 2012; Editions Calmann-Levy (France) 2012; Gyldendal (Norway) 2012; Damm (Sweden) 2012; Mare (Germany) 2012; Grup (Turkey) 2012; Modern Press (China) 2012; Wydawnictwo Otwarte (Poland) 2012; Thaning & Appel (Denmark)].

About the author
Dina N. Viergutz was born to a controversial family of doctors and poets in Iran in 1979 and lived and traveled there throughout the Iran-Iraq war. Having escaped the country on the day of her mother’s intended execution, Dina spent some years in Europe before moving to the United States. She speaks three languages and recently became a citizen of France (dual with U.S.), and has spent the last three years living in Paris and Amsterdam with her husband where she researched and wrote A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea. She is a graduate of Princeton and holds two masters degrees from Harvard, and she has just been accepted to the Iowa Writers Workshop beginning in the fall 2011. She has done an array of work, including leading strategic projects for Saks Fifth Avenue and McKinsey in New York City. As a Zuckerman Fellow at Harvard, she has discussed public policy with world leaders, and as a Teaching Fellow and keynote speaker (also at Harvard) she gave speeches to audiences of hundreds before she turned thirty.

picture taken from http://apps.facebook.com/facebookshelf/people/1700632880

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Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin

The Korean title of this indelible novel, Omma rul put’ak hae, contains a sense of commanding trust that is missing in its English translation: “I entrust Mommy [to you].” That trust is irreparably splintered when ‘Mom’ disappears after becoming separated from her rushing husband on a busy Seoul Station platform. In four distinct voices, the character of Mom – a rural farmwoman whose “hands could nurture any life”– is reassembled by her eldest daughter, whose books Mom couldn’t read; her eldest son, for whom she could never do enough; her husband, who never slowed down; and finally Mom herself as she wanders through memories both strange and familiar.

Shin’s breathtaking novel is an acute reminder of how easily a family can fracture, how little we truly know one another, and how desperate need can sometimes overshadow even the deepest love.


Synopsis:
In a crowded Seoul subway station, a rural visitor boards a train. But his wife of fifty years becomes lost in the crowd; the train pulls away without her. He turns around at the next station, but by the time he returns to where he last saw her, she’s gone.

This disappearance is the driving force behind Kyung-sook Shin’s novel Please Look After Mom, a wrenching look into the complex web of family dynamics, the things that bring them together, and the things that tear them apart.

Mom’s vanishing devastates her five grown children and her husband. As the days turn into months and even the police give up searching for her, they find themselves fraught with guilt, consumed by memories of the woman they loved, yet mostly took for granted. These memories are woven together to create, in rich detail, the portrait of a life that may or not be over.

The story is told from four points of view: Chi-hon, the second eldest child and oldest daughter, Hyung-chol, the eldest son, Father, and Mom herself. We start with Chi-hon, a successful novelist. She recalls a hardworking woman, a country wife and mother who was never educated, who often embarrassed and infuriated Chi-hon with her ignorance and superstition. Hyung-chol suffers wracking guilt; as the adored oldest child, Mom both worshipped and pressured him. His dream of becoming the lawyer she wanted him to be, as well as his dream of raising her above her situation and giving her a comfortable life, were lost somewhere along the path his life has taken. Father finds himself lost, unable even to do the simple household tasks his wife always took care of. He too has plenty to berate himself for: selfishness, resentment, adultery, abandonment. As they all wonder how a grown women could have become so thoroughly lost, their recent memories bring up a common theme that points to their mother having severe health and mental problems that none of them wanted to see.

When Mom’s turn comes, we are given the answer to at least one question, though her children may never learn it. She confesses her worry for her younger daughter, a mother with three small children and the closest to Mom in her situation. She recalls her youth, her arranged marriage, all the terror and wonder of motherhood, and she reveals one or two secrets her family will likely never know.

The final chapter returns the story to Chi-hon, who finds herself facing a strange new world: a place where her mother doesn’t exist. There is no resolution to this story, as such. The characters simply fumble ahead, perhaps never knowing what happened to their wife and mother, and only now appreciating what she meant to all of them.

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Please Look After Mom will be released in the United States in April 2011. Knopf, one of Random in the USA will publish this title this April with the first print run of 100,000 copies. This title has sold to 23 countries.

The Verdict: Definitely worth your time. This book will make you call your mom, just to hear her voice and make sure she’s still there.

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about the author:

KYUNG-SOOK SHIN grew up in a remote village in South Korea, the fourth child and oldest daughter of six. Her parents were farmers who could not afford to send her to high school, so at sixteen she moved to Seoul, where her older brother lived. She worked in an electronics plant while attending night school, and published her first collection of stories in 1988, at age twenty-five. She is the author of twelve previous works of fiction, and has been honoured with the 1996 Manhae Literature Prize, the 1997 Dong-in Literature Prize and the 2001 Isang Literary Prize. Beginning in August, she will be spending a year in New York as a visiting professor at Columbia University.

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JERUSALEM JERUSALEM by James Carroll

this title will publish in March by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Jerusalem Jerusalem is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the current disharmony of modern-day Jerusalem and its historical underpinnings.

James Carroll, author of the award-winning, bestselling Constantine’s Sword, tells the richly layered story of the city of Jerusalem and its extraordinary impact on human history and contemporary conflict. He shows how the seemingly never-ending conflicts within this city that is holy to Muslims, Christians, and Jews underscore an important point of history: religion and violence fuel each other. Daily life in Jerusalem is a microcosm of division and dispute, rivalry and tribalism as a myriad of groups and belief systems are pitted against each other: ultra-Orthodox Jews and secular Jews; Israelis and Palestinians; Jews and Arabs; Muslims and Christians; Hamas jihadists and Fatah bureaucrats; Russian immigrant Israelis and native-born Israelis; Latin Catholics and Greek Orthodox; and, overall, modernity and tradition.

Jerusalem Jerusalem is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the current disharmony of modern-day Jerusalem and its historical underpinnings.


To the standard set by Constantine’s Sword, Jerusalem, Jerusalem is again a “rare book that combines searing passion . . . with a subject that has affected all our lives” (Chicago Tribune).

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Legend by Marie Lu, a post-apocalyptic novel

Hardcover, 320 pages
Expected publication: November 28th 2011 by Putnam Juvenile

Born into the slums of Los Angeles, fifteen-year old Day is the country's most wanted criminal. A mysterious boy with no recorded image or fingerprints. A boy who should no longer exist. A boy who watches over his family until one evening, when the plague patrols mark his family's door with an X--the sign of plague infection. A death sentence for any family too poor to afford the antidote. Desperate, Day has no choice; he must steal it.

Born to an elite family in Los Angeles' wealthy Ruby sector, fifteen-year old June is the Republic's most promising prodigy. A superintelligent girl destined for great things in the country's highest military circles. Obedient, passionate, and committed to her country--until the day her brother Metias is murdered while on patrol during a break-in at the plague hospital.

Only one person could be responsible.

Day.

And now it's June's mission to hunt him down.

The truth they'll uncover will become legend

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Biography of Julian Assange: The Most Dangerous Man in the World by Andrew Fowler

THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN THE WORLD, an investigative biography about controversial Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Written by award-winning Australian reporter Andrew Fowler.

The life of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks will be filmed by Hollywood.Josephson Entertainment production companies and Michelle Krumm Prods bought the rights to his biography. While Julian Assange idles in the U.K. pending the outcome of his legal problems related to sexual assault charges, his celebrity and cash flow are growing.

WikiLeaks: The Movie moved a step closer to reality after studio executives picked up the screen rights to Andrew Fowler’s autobiography on Julian Assange, The Most Dangerous Man in the World. The book details Assange’s life from his childhood to the founding of his whistleblower Web site in 2006.

Producers Barry Josephson and Michelle Krumm say they are planning a “suspenseful drama” with the thrill of a Tom Clancy novel. No director is currently attached to the project and there are no cast details.

Assange incurred the ire of U.S. authorities by partnering with the Guardian to publish over 250,000 secret U.S. diplomatic cables. He revealed details of toxic waste dumping in Africa, Guantanamo Bay procedures, and Church of Scientology manuals.

THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN THE WORLD is an in depth look at Assange from his childhood to the current WikiLeaks revolution. Fowler first interviewed Assange in May 2010. The book will be published by Melbourne University Publishing Ltd. in 2011.

check out the merbourne university press catalog: http://www.mup.com.au/uploads/files/ecatalogue/MUP_Catalogue2011%28Jan-Jul%29.pdf

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The Post-American World (Updated and Expanded)

The New York Times bestseller, revised and expanded with a new afterword: the essential update of Fareed Zakaria's international bestseller about America and its shifting position in world affairs.

"This is not a book about the decline of America but rather about the rise of everyone else." So begins Fareed Zakaria's blockbuster on the United States in the twenty-first century, and the trends he identifies there have proceeded faster than anyone anticipated. The 2008 financial crisis turned the world upside down, stalling the United States and other advanced economies. Meanwhile China, India, Brazil, and other emerging markets have surged ahead faster than before, coupling their economic growth with pride, nationalism, and a determination to shape their own future. In this new, 2.0 edition, Zakaria updates the original and makes sense of this rapidly changing world. He brings his trademark lucidity and intelligence to bear on America's toughest problem: in a new global era where the United States no longer dominates the worldwide economy, orchestrates geopolitics, or overwhelms cultures, can the nation continue to thrive?

more info http://books.wwnorton.com/books/978-0-393-08180-0/

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