Jessup Journal

Congratulations to Marietta McCarty who recently won the 2010 Nautilus Book Award for her new publication, How Philosophy Can Save Your Life: 10 Ideas That Matter Most . She received the top honor in the category of Personal Growth/Psychology - the Gold Award. Nautilus Book Awards recognize books that "promote spiritual growth, conscious living, and positive social change as they stimulate the imagination and inspire the reader to new possibilities for a better world." The Nautilus Awards Showcase Exhibit at BookExpo American will be held in New York, May 26-27, 2010. Check out Marietta's facebook page for more information.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie , a review by Mary Jane King, Director Institutional Advancement and Development Must be the season of the wunderkind. No sooner had I said farewell to the precocious Paloma in The Elegance of the Hedgehog than I met 11-year-old Flavia in The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. This debut mystery by Alan Bradley introduces a new and unforgettable sleuth. Flavia lives in one of England's crumbling ancestral homes in the years just following World War II--peace has returned but the war simmers just beneath the surface. She is a self-taught chemist whose specialty is poisons. PVCC's beloved professor emeritus of chemistry, the late Ray Bratton, would have loved her. Everything is chemistry, he was fond of saying. Flavia would most certainly agree. The leisurely pace of life at the manor is interrupted by two events--the arrival on the doorstep of a dead snipe with a postage stamp impaled on its beak and the subsequent discovery of a ...

The Elegance of the Hedgehog , a review by Mary Jane King, Director Institutional Advancement and Development Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog is one of the funniest, cleverest but ultimately most touching books I’ve ever read. Translated from the French by Alison Anderson (would that my French were good enough to read this in the original), Hedgehog takes place in an elegant apartment building in Paris where a concierge, Renée, and a 12-year-old from the fifth floor are living oddly parallel lives until a new arrival, Mr. Ozu, shatters normality and brings them together. The concierge—short, plump and ugly—has the brilliant inner life of an autodidact—a life that began on the day her first-grade teacher took her hand, called her by name, and began to teach her to read. The 12-year-old, Paloma, has startling intelligence which she hides behind a mask of mediocrity as she plots to kill herself and burn down the family flat when she turns 13. From sublime philosophical ...

March is Women's History Month. Celebrate by reading the President's proclamation . Check out the History Channel's coverage of Women's History Month to read about the history of the celebration itself and of famous women. If you'd like to read a book about women in history, you can start with Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation . If you'd rather read about one woman, try Circus Queen & Tinker Bell: The Memoir of Tiny Kline . If you're interested in the women's movement, you might like to read about its origins: Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement . If you're interested in more modern material, try Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975 . And last, but certainly not least, is this book which needs no explanation--the title says it all: In Her Place: A Documentary History of Prejudice Against Women . If none of these suggestions looks good to you, do your own search in the library catalog . My search ...

...African American History Month. Read President Obama's 2010 proclamation here . Your library is full of books, eBooks and videos on a wide range of topics relating to African American history. For example, there's this book featured in our new books list not too long ago, The African American Experience: Black History and Culture Through Speeches, Letters, Editorials, Poems, Songs, and Stories . Another recent publication is Best African American Essays, 2009 . If you're considering doing any traveling over spring break, you might want to check out On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail . If you prefer to read your books online, try this eBook, Unfinished Business: Racial Equality in American History . (You'll need an account to view the book from off campus--call or e-mail us to set up an account.) If you would rather watch a video than read a book, we've got a fabulous series, Eyes on the Prize . The first series covers the time peri...

Photo courtesy of Indiana University Lilly Library Valentine's Day is this Sunday! Have you thought about what you'll be getting your sweetheart or loved one? Have you made special plans? Perhaps, while preparing for Valentine's Day, you wondered about its history, or maybe you're interested in finding out more about romance or love. If so, let us suggest a few sources to satiate your curiosity! For history buffs: For a history of Valentine's Day, check out the Stanford Storytelling Project (available through iTunes U). Diane Ackerman explores A natural history of love in this book, while Martin Bergmann is on a quest to define what love is in The anatomy of loving: the story of man’s quest to know what love is . Curious about the history of Valentine's Day cards? Check out the University of Indiana's A Flowering of Affection: Victorian Valentine Cards at the Lilly Library . Bundling? What's that? Check out the Puritan custom as told on BackStory, with...

" Born Standing Up : a Comic's Life ," a review by Laura Skinner, Technical Services. He grew up two miles from Disneyland and got his earliest gigs there and at Knotts Berry Farm. Elvis Presley once told him he had an "ob-leek" sense of humor. Many of us know him as that "wild and crazy guy" that pranced, together with Dan Ackroyd, around the Saturday Night Live stage, but Steve Martin, in Born Standing Up , reveals himself as neither wild nor crazy, but rather as a shy and quiet artist who spent his down time between shows alone, watching The Brady Bunch in the dimness of a motel room somewhere, scouring antiques shops for forgotten treasures or perfecting his art with the devotion of a master sculptor. His rise to fame was not meteoric but rather a slow and deliberate ascent up a steep hill, the product of old-fashioned hard work and perseverance and also some old-fashioned good luck. This isn't a celebrity tell-all book, full of dirty secret...

"A New World Order," a review by Crystal Newell, circulation/access librarian The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria The "world is flat" according to Thomas Friedman . In this changing political, economical and social environment, the United States' place as hegemon is in question. What are the exact forces contriving to make a post-American world? Who are the up-and-coming players on the world stage? Zakaria explores and answers these questions in a well thought out and easily understood way. He views the changing political stage as an opportunity for the United States. As China and India rise, the United States' place of power will inevitably shift, but we, as readers, have to ask if this is a bad thing. After exploring a decidedly different take on history (Was the West really that influential; what about the East?), Zakaria describes how India and China have risen in recent years, both economically and politically. He also discusses how this affects ...

As I mentioned in my introduction , I read mysteries for fun. I rarely read anything else, honestly. To find good books, I start by browsing the library catalog . But sometimes a book comes to my attention because a lot of people write about it in critical sources like Library Journal or the New York Times Book Review . One of those books is Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin. It is not only a popular success, but a critical success as well. The best mysteries and historical fiction usually test my idea of what would have been acceptable at that time. For example, the "detective" in Mistress of the Art of Death is a woman who performs autopsies and investigates causes of death. While that is perfectly normal to us now, in medieval times that was unheard of, not to mention frowned upon. It was so unusual, in fact, the detective has to pretend she's an assistant to a man while she investigates the brutal murders of the children of Cambridge. Reading histo...

“Microtrends, Under the Microscope," a review by Katie Smith, Academic Advisor Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes by Mark J. Penn For people drawn to both macro- and micro-sociological and societal trends, this book is a definite must-read. Penn describes "microtrends" as phenomena that catch on with one percent or more of the American population, (or at least three million people). Basically, microtrends are small, but potentially powerful and influential social movements. Each chapter covers a different microtrend in the US, and some of my favorites describe the increase in teenagers who knit, individual over team sports, commuter marriages and pet ownership. As a reader, I recognized aspects of myself and my own lifestyle reflected in several microtrends. More telling, Penn explains, is the impact that these small movements can have on the political and business climate in the US through their powerful effect on voting and consumer tre...

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan Never has a book so altered my life's choices as this one. That may sound dramatic, especially considering the title, but it's true. Recently, I have been inspired by all things natural and organic. Basically, I have been inspired to return to a simpler life with less-processed foods; a return to whole foods. (And no, I'm not talking about the store.) In Defense of Food is a treatise written by Michael Pollan on the benefits of food and eating. One may wonder why either of these things would need explicating or defending, but in a world of processed, food-like substances and food industry lobbyists, it is wholly necessary. Pollan basically argues three things: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants" (1). He goes on to describe what each of those tenets mean to the average person fighting his/her way through the grocery aisles in search of what to have for dinner. Along the way he introduces and discusses ideologies like nutri...