Have You Read . . . ?

Pictures From a Drawer: Prison and the Art of Portraiture by Bruce Jackson

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and paging through this simple yet riveting book breathes a powerful new breath of truth into the tired old adage. The book is comprised of old prisoner identification photographs of inmates housed in Arkansas’ Cummins prison during the first half of the 20th Century. Writer, photographer, and filmmaker Bruce Jackson discovered the faded photos in a drawer in 1975, and these many years later using today’s advanced photo restoration technology he has restored the images and presents them here in large, portrait sized prints. The tiny mug shots he found were originally taken as prisoners entered or exited the prison system, but Jackson says, “I always wanted to make them big. The whole purpose of photographs like this is to make people small, to make people part of a bureaucratic dossier. They’re nameless.”

But Jackson has done powerfully right by the subjects here–they still remain nameless, but he has restored to them some of their humanity and their dignity. And to look upon their inscrutable faces and to return the stares of these long vanished human beings is to be sucked into a dark and teeming well of human emotion, surrounded by every permutation of grief, anger, fear, defeat, and defiance imaginable. These photographs are haunting and absolutely mesmerizing, capturing not just visible light on the film’s emulsion, but also burning the lives and stories of these lost individuals onto the images.

“When Writers Speak”

 A writer ponders why many writers seem to sound smarter in print than in person…

The Free Library of Philadelphia will remain open!

Thousands wrote and called the Pennsylvania State Legislature to advocate for the Free Library of Philadelphia system, and they listened! On September 17th, by a vote of 32 to 17, the state senate passed the legislation that was needed for Philadelphia to avoid a “Doomsday” budget scenario, which would have resulted in the layoff of 3,000 city employees and forced the closing of all 54 libraries in the system. One day later, the governor and legislative leaders also reached a tentative agreement on a state spending plan, finally ending the longest state budget stalemate in the country.

So the Free Library will remain open!

Have You Read . . . ?

If the lush green island above looks strangely familiar, that’s because you’ve undoubtedly seen it many times before. Although if you’re having trouble placing just how you know this beautiful wild landscape, that’s because you’re probably used to seeing it look more like this:

Of course you know that the second picture is Manhattan Island as it looks today, the bustling hub of New York City. But the first picture above is the same island, Mannahatta or “Island of Many Hills,” (as it was called by local Native Americans) circa 1609.

For the past ten years the scientific researchers at the Mannahatta Project have been painstakingly recreating what the island would have looked like prior to the arrival of Henry Hudson and his crew on September 12, 1609. When the New World came calling, the island of Mannahatta was an amazingly diverse and abundant natural landscape, with more ecological communities, plant species, and birds than today’s Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks. In addition to housing numerous large mammals, fish, and other wildlife, the island was also home to the Lenape tribe of people. In the 400 years since Hudson’s arrival, Mannahatta gave way to Manhattan, cultural diversity replaced biodiversity, and economic wealth replaced ecological wealth as the land that once existed was rendered virtually unrecognizable. Until now, that is. Over the past decade, the Mannahatta Project has been digitally rebuilding the land of yesterday by analyzing soil records, geography, rivers and wetlands, maps, descriptions of long disappeared plant and animal life, as well as by studying the landscape of the island today. The project is extensive in its research and astounding in its results.

You can explore the island past and present in extensive detail in the new book Mannahatta: a Natural History of New York City. Inside you’ll find a full explanation of the science behind the project, detailed descriptions of just what the researchers discovered about the island, and a look forward to what Manhattan might look like 400 years from now. All of this is accompanied by numerous stunning illustrations of what the researchers believe Mannahatta to have looked like long ago, as well as amazing side by side comparisons of various spots around the city as they look now and how they would have appeared in 1609.  

And for a more distilled and interactive look at the project, check out the very cool Mannahatta Project website. As the project researchers believe, by looking backwards into the past, perhaps we can glimpse a new ecological vision for the future.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

A while back a book on the library shelf caught my eye: 15,003 Answers: The Ultimate Trivia Encyclopedia, 2nd edition.  Just imagine how many family arguments could be settled at the Thanksgiving table if you had this book handy. Having given it a quick perusal, I found a section with the first lines of famous works. Do you know where these are from? (Answers below, no peeking).  

Easy, easier, and easiest…just to get you warmed up:

1. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.  

2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. 

3. Call me Ishmael. 

OK? Try these:

4. Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. 

5. The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail.

6. Marley was dead, to begin with.

7. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

8. All children except one, grow up.

9. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

10. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

Gee, that was fun. More? Here we go:

11. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

12. All this happened, more or less.

13. It was a pleasure to burn.

14. Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, `and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice `without pictures or conversation?’

15. To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the   last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.

16. Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids.

17. When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.

18. “Where’s Papa going with that ax?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.

19. Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

20. 124 was spiteful.

21. The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended.

22. When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.

23. No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinized the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

24. As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

And, last but not least:

25. It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

The answers:

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy 
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 
3. Moby Dick by Herman Melville 
4. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling 
5. Jaws by Peter Benchley 
6. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens 
7. Ulysses by James Joyce (not Homer) 
8. Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie 
9. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 
10. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier 
11. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger 
12. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut 
13. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury 
14. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll 
15. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck 
16. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis 
17. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 
18. Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White 
19. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott 
20. Beloved by Toni Morrison 
21. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke 
22. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
23. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells 
24. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
25. Paul Clifford by Edward George Bulwar-Lytton

 Next time…famous last lines!

In the Pink

Browsing through the Recent Arrivals section here at EPL is a dangerous proposition. Finding incredible, brand new books that are just begging to be read is the easy part. It’s finding the time to read all the intriguing new books that’s hard. Next time you’re in the library, make some time to wander the section (just look for all the shocking pink stickers on the East side of the 2nd floor) and see what’s new. Below are some particularly interesting finds that were hiding on the shelves today just waiting to be discovered.

The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky

Kurlansky, the author of Cod and Salt, explores the eating and cooking habits of America before interstate highways, fast food restaurants, grocery store chains, and frozen foods took over our kitchens, our stomachs, and our lives. This book also features pieces by authors such as Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston, and Nelson Algren written as part of FDR’s New Deal WPA Writer’s Project, which sent writers out into the country to document local eating habits and traditions around the nation during the Great Depression. Featuring regional recipes (Squirrel Stew, anyone?), strange ephemera (a glossary of New York soda jerk slang), and endless food-related curiosities (a period poem called “Nebraskans Eat the Weiners,” celebrating Nebraskans and their outsized appreciation for hot dogs), this book will appeal to both foodie/cookbook junkies and history buffs alike.

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain De Botton

If you’ve ever wondered what people do all day (and why), how you ended up in a job you never dreamed you’d be doing, or what the meaning of all this work is, then this may just be the book for you. An extraordinarily insightful writer, de Botton (How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Architecture of Happiness) examines a widely varied assortment of occupations in an attempt to discover just what it is that makes work alternately rewarding and soul-crushing. And if you’re thinking, “I work all day long, the last thing I want to do in my free time is read about work,” don’t be discouraged. De Botton is a hilarious, witty writer who can make the seemingly driest of subjects compelling and relatable. You have to work all day anyway, why not understand what it all means?

Digging: the Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music by Amiri Baraka

Sometimes controversial, always fiery poet, playwright, and critic Amiri Baraka has collected 20 years of his writings on jazz music. Because he’s Baraka doing what he does, his prose comes across as charged, poetic, rhythmic and highly musical in nature. The focus here is on music, but Baraka never shies away from mixing up autobiography, history, politics, and cultural commentary with his criticism. Whether you’re a jazz novice or an aficionado, Baraka’s love of the music and the performers will get you excited and make you want to slap some records on the turntable and hear the music he’s writing about. And if you think you don’t like jazz, just give Baraka a chance to bring you around. His writing has so much passion and energy, you can’t help but be moved by the beauty and power of his words.

Extreme Ice Now by James Balog

Global warming and climate change are highly charged buzzwords these days, readily inspiring political, cultural, and scientific debate. Regardless of what side you’re on, this new book presents some compelling evidence that the world’s glaciers are indeed in an extreme state of flux. Shot with time lapse as well as conventional photography, the Extreme Ice Survey is the most extensive visual study yet conducted to illustrate the Earth’s melting ice caps. The photographs in this collection were shot at 15 different locations around the Northern Hemisphere and culled from more than 300,000 images collected by the cameras. There is some text accompanying the images, but really, the pictures speak largely for themselves. Although nothing more than frozen water, the images of ice captured in this book are spellbinding, both for their beauty and for what they portend. If you are at all interested in the environment and the Earth’s changing climate, check out this book. If you are uninterested, check it out anyway. As the book says: Today is an opportunity; tomorrow will be a crisis.