Pillars of the Almighty, by f-stop Fitzgerald

OK, so here it is.  In my post for Pillars of the Earth I mentioned that an illustrated source would add to the impact of Ken Follett’s prose.  With  photographer f-stop Fitzgerald’s beautiful work, such a source is available.

We’ve become jaded to the visual elements of the cathedral in our day.  At best, most of us who go to them will take a tour with a guide who repeats the same text 20 times a day; at worst, we will look at, but not see what the average 12th century person would see.  What we see is a big building filled with bits of this and pictures of that.  What even the illiterate masses would see was their own Bible, with clear lessons about sin and salvation, the examples of saints, martyrs, and evangelists, and the everlasting punishments awaiting the damned.  But the technological innovations of the Gothic cathedral would be the psychological setup for congregants to strive for a heaven shown in soaring ceilings, intricate carvings incorporated into the structure, and light pouring through unimaginably large and stained glass windows.

Working with text from Pillars of the Earth (which sadly doesn’t align with the photos), Fitzgerald gives us unique and intimate views of elements that might prove overwhelming or inaccessible to a modern visitor.  The profligate details in medieval churches overwhelm the modern viewer, and are inaccessible both from a physical standpoint and from an iconographic standpoint.  Some of his portraits are black-and-white images that appear to be reproduced as negatives against silver backgrounds.  Others are full-color illustrations drenched with the hues of sunrise and sunset, taking advantage of the east-west alignment required of an cathedral.  And still others are black-and-white closeups of carved figures, including the grotesque gargoyles and monsters that reminded viewers of the imps of hell awaiting sinners.

Fitzgerald doesn’t limit his subject to ancient cathedrals or images—he incorporates a few pieces that have the same feel but an unmistakably modern sensibility.  They show that the fascination and need to build these immense and awe-inspiring buildings was not limited to pre-Reformation communities.  The introduction by sculptor Simon Verity is a reminder that artists are still working in stone to capture visceral religious emotions.

Williamsburg Regional Library has decided to catalog and shelve this kind of book with the original source so that readers will hopefully find them when looking for the original fiction.  (Other authors we’ve done this with include Patrick O’Brian and J.R.R. Tolkien.) Hopefully books like Pillars of the Almighty will drive readers’ imagination and understanding of the story.

Search for Pillars of the Almighty in the WRL Catalog.

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Angry Birds: 50 True Stories of the Fed Up, Feathered, & Furious by Mel White

I have been an avid birdwatcher for years and I am always on the lookout for new and interesting bird books in the library’s collection, so I was excited to see this on the library’s new book shelf.

This book is unique in that it shows what happens when real birds get angry.

Birds are grouped into four levels of angry behavior: annoyed, testy, outraged and furious.  Each level presents snapshots of a wide variety of birds, which include a photo of the bird, a helpful “rap sheet”  of useful facts about the bird that includes its species, physical description, known whereabouts, aliases, and a very brief description of its angry behaviors along with a one-page summary of the bird and its angry behavior.

I found a few of these birds and their behaviors to be quite common, like the Northern Cardinal fighting its reflection in a car window.  But most were new to me and I think they will be new to most readers here in the United States. I especially enjoyed reading about the following birds.

The Fieldfare is one of the annoyed birds. It is a medium-sized songbird from Europe that groups together for protection—when a larger bird like a raven encroaches on their territory, the alarm call is given, and a flock of fieldfares will mob the intruder and shower it with a burst of their collective poop.  This is not just nasty but can prevent the intruder from flying and staying warm, and can even lead to death.

The Masked Lapwing is a testy bird that looks like a character from a Stars Wars movie. It likes to hang out in open spaces like golf courses and playgrounds. It  screams at any people who get too close, and it will not hesitate to use the sharp spurs on it wings, which like a pocket knife can inflict painful wounds on any intruders.

My favorite bird is the Northern Fulmar, an outraged bird from the Arctic regions that protects itself in a unique way, by vomiting a noxious stomach oil onto its predators (or victims).  This particularly nasty oil, which is based on their diet of seafood that includes fish and shrimp, can cause death  to other birds and some rodents,  but can also be used as an emergency source of nourishment for the Fulmar if the bird is unable to hunt for food.  I think the photo of a baby Northern Fulmar engaging in this behavior is particularly amusing.

Interspersed among the snapshots of these real angry birds are two other features. The first is a series of short feathered facts about birds getting angry and taking action.  The second feature is a description of several of the major birds from the mega-hit Angry Birds game, including Terence, Chuck, Matilda and Red.  Each bird gets a background story, a  description of what makes them mad and a rap sheet much like the real angry birds, all of which can help you better appreciate the game.

This book would definitely appeal to younger readers with the tie-in to the popular Angry Birds game. But the interesting stories, high-quality photographs, and well-organized content make this a must-read for anyone interested in birds.  Highly recommended.

Check the WRL catalog for Angry Birds

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Sea, by Mark Laita

I’ve always been a fish guy, and I’ve had aquariums for as long as I can remember.  About a year ago I made a special trip to Atlanta to see the Georgia Aquarium, the world’s largest aquarium.  I was totally blown away by the size of the exhibits and the incredible diversity of sea life.

I recently discovered this book on the new bookshelf, and I am again blown away by some of the same creatures I saw at the Georgia Aquarium.  Sea features over a hundred incredible photos of sea life from the acclaimed photographer Mark Laita.  The colors are so vibrant that these animals almost jump off the page (which thankfully they don’t do) and many are breathtakingly beautiful.

You will not want to miss my top three favorites: the incredible blue & green colors of the Portuguese man o’ war, which looks like an oversized jellyfish with long tentacles; the tessellate eel, a serpent-like creature with a yellow & white pattern with black dots; and a group of moon jellyfish, with the pale blue colors imbedded with electric neon-white flower patterns.

Laita explains in the introduction how he was able to achieve such amazing detail with his photos.  He did this by recreating the sea in his studio using custom built  fish tanks and lighting where he could frame the animals and control the exposure of his photos.  For some of the bigger creatures, like the whale shark, he visited several aquariums (like the Georgia Aquarium) to get their pictures.  Those pictures are much less interesting, and the colors look rather drab compared to those he took in his studio.  But most of the photos in this book are studio-produced and contain unique details like color that you won’t find in any other resource.

I liked the layout of the book, with a few exceptions.  His photos are presented one per page on a black background without descriptions or page numbers to distract from the visual experience.  There is a helpful information index at the back of the book that includes a small snapshot of each creature’s photo along with their name, temperament, maximum length and distribution.  Some people might find the lack of descriptive information on each page annoying (I found the lack of page numbers to be annoying), but you get used to it.  I do think it would take away from the visual experience if he had included them.  Laita provides very general information about how he took these pictures,  though he does not reveal technical details that many would like to know, like what cameras he used and  what programs he used to develop his pictures.  I would also like to have seen a few photos of his studio when he working on this project to see what his custom built fish tanks looked like and the size and position of the strobe lights he used.

Mark Laita has built quite a reputation as a photographer, and he has worked on a multitude of projects.  You can see many of his photos,  including those in this book,  on his web site,  www.marklaita.com.  You should definitely look at the photos from his latest project, Serpentine, which features amazing colors and  shapes of 100 of the most poisonous snakes in the world.  While working on this project he was actually bitten by a deadly black mamba snake, which he didn’t realize until the next day when he was looking at his photographs.  Check out the story from The Daily Mail.  The snake photos, like the sea photos in this book, are absolutely gorgeous. Hopefully the library will be able to get this book when it comes out later this year.

Check the WRL catalog for Sea

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Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia, by Bernhard Grzimek

Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia lives up to its name. It is definitely an encyclopedia, with 17 huge volumes. I don’t necessarily want to admit to being a nerd who reads the encyclopedia for fun but this one is worth a second look, particularly for animal lovers. Our library has two sets of Grzimek’s and the set shelved at the James City County Library in Croaker Road can be checked out (and requested for library users who prefer to go to the Williamsburg branch), so I challenge anyone who is fascinated by books like Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat or anything by Jane Goodall to try Grzimek’s for the sections on animal behavior. If you love to watch Cesar Milan work his magic with dogs or are moved by Dogtown, you’ll be fascinated by the section on canids. If you’ve a passion for birdwatching, tropical fish, or you just love animals, try these great books.

Grzimek’s is a standard for both public and academic libraries and it is prominent in any standard list of essential science reference titles. The academic library where I previously worked considered them so essential for undergraduate students that we bought them both in print and online. We told biology students starting their important essays that they always needed to start their animal research with Grzimek’s.

This said, these books have a lot to offer the everyday reader. They are beautiful volumes with lots of stunning photographs, drawings of individual species, and species distribution maps (although I have to admit, they are large volumes and I didn’t have much success trying to read them in bed). The first volumes are about invertebrates, and then they go up through fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals. I am a sucker for cute, fluffy animals so I pulled out volume 12 about mammals. It starts with general chapters on topics like “Ice Age Giants,” “Migration,” and “Mammals and Humans,” then the accounts of individual species starts with Australian marsupials. For more obscure species, this information may be difficult to find elsewhere. For example, did you know that some species of quolls (carnivorous marsupials in Australia) always die young? They live in an extremely harsh environment and the males die soon after their first breeding season.

Grzimek’s has a lot for bird lovers, including four volumes covering birds from all around the world. I was charmed to learn the one of my favorite childhood birds, the New Zealand Tui, is described as “among the best singers in the world. The song is rich, melodious, and includes soft liquid warbling notes, bell-like calls and chimes.”

We know that our library users are intrigued by animals because circulation is constant on books by  Marc Bekoff, or any DVDs featuring marine life or dogs. So if you are one of the people moved and bewitched by animals and the natural world then these underused library books are well worth another look.

Check the WRL catalog for Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia 

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Napoleon and the Empire of Fashion, edited by Cristina Barreto and Martin Lancaster

This last post of BFGB Fashion Week is for the Jane Austenites. When you’ve paused your latest BBC rewatch or turned the last page of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Rock Star, this catalog from a Milan exhibition is just the eye candy to take you back to the era of Empire waists, flawless white muslin, and feather headdresses. Taken from a private collection of original Napoleonic-era dresses and accessories, exhibit photographs are accompanied by plates from Costume Parisien, the Vogue of the Empire period, and a handful of essays.

Taking their inspiration from the tunics of classical Greece and Rome, ladies put away their corsets in favor of thin-to-transparent cotton muslin gowns that fit the figure. If you associate Empire dress primarily with novels of manners, as I tend to do, it’s easy to overlook what a wild, sensual freedom these dresses actually represent. Gone were the panniers, farthingales, and other heavy infrastructure of earlier court dress—now one could actually dress oneself without a maid… in a gown that silhouetted one’s actual body!

Illustrating trends from 1795 to 1815, this catalog is a great browsing book. Photographs of the preserved and restored clothing are its chief draw, but the essays touch on many topics to do with fashion, trade, and daily life:

• The exhibition demanded specially-made mannequins, because the made-to-measure dresses—worn by women whose ribcages and shoulders were shaped by years of corsetry and deportment lessons—wouldn’t fit properly on a modern silhouette.
• Napoleon assigned uniforms for all official positions partly in order to plough some money back into France’s silk and lacemaking industries, still reeling from the beheading of many of their main clients. He also encouraged consumer spending by cultivating a fashionable horror of being seen twice in the same dress, and was not above publicly ridiculing women who dared to repeat an outfit.
• Where men’s fashion was judged by its close tailoring, a woman’s loose dresses were distinguished by her accessories. First among these was the cashmere shawl, which represented as many as three years of craftsmanship, not counting traveling time from Kashmir to the shops of Paris. Fashionistas like this woman, artfully draped in red, were sporting the financial equivalent of a new car… thus leading to shawl theft, a shawl black market, and, not to be missed, “the affair of the infernal machine” (pages 125-126) in which a shawl saves Joséphine’s life! while Mlle Beauharnais receives a slight hurt on her hand! and an unnamed fashion magazine founder is regrettably killed.

You can preview some of these elegant outfits at the exhibition web site.

Check the WRL catalog for Napoleon and the Empire of Fashion.

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Valentina: American Couture and the Cult of Celebrity, by Kohle Yohannon

Bud continues BFGB Fashion Week with this review: 

From the 1920s through the 1950s, Valentina Schlee was one of the most famous and successful fashion designers in the world. Valentina: American Couture and the Cult of Celebrity, by Kohle Yohannan, details the life and career of this now forgotten woman in a fine book that’s an interesting amalgam of fashion history and gossipy biography.

Born in Russia in 1899, Valentina’s early years are rather mysterious. Throughout her life, she told conflicting tales about herself in order to engender an aura of mystery, but by 1919 she was working as an actress in a theatre in the Crimea. It was here that she met George Schlee, the man who would be her lifelong companion and business partner.  Fleeing Soviet Russia, the Schlees emigrated to the U.S. and in 1928, she opened Valentina Gowns, Inc. on Madison Avenue in New York City. Immediately successful, the business was financially profitable right up till the salon closed in 1957.

From the start, Valentina fashions targeted the upper echelons of society. No crass, ready-made for her. It was café society, Broadway, and motion picture actresses and the glitterati only. Within a few years she only designed for clients she approved of, cavalierly dismissing all others with the simple phrase, “I’m afraid my gowns would not please you, Madame.”

How did a dress designer achieve this kind of clout?

Primarily by being an expert at self-promotion and as much a celebrity as the movie stars and socialites for whom she designed. She created a public persona that was exotic, mysterious, imperious, and intriguing. A globe-trotting sybarite, she socialized with the right people, went to the right clubs, and routinely dropped colorful quotes. Her innate sense of glamour, style, and drama drew publicity, making her a favorite of the gossip columnists and fashion pages. She further cultivated her image by being the primary model for her design line in advertising layouts.

Of course, the clothes themselves also played a role in her success. Valentina’s couture emphasized clean, simple lines and had a timeless quality. They were chic, void of elaborate embellishments, and always comfortable to wear. She despised fashion trends and did not follow them. Her inspirations were often drawn from classical Greek gowns, nun’s habits, and simple peasant styles. She was skilled at using bias cuts to achieve lovely draping effects. Each outfit was designed specifically for the individual client to suit their particular figure, coloring, and lifestyle, minimizing flaws and emphasizing their best features. Examples of her fashions are found throughout the book, which has many large, lovely photos.

Even if you have no real interest in couture, this book is still worth perusing for the many colorful anecdotes about Valentina’s uber-sophisticated private life, including details of  the long term ménage a trois she and George were rumored to have engaged in with actress Greta Garbo.

Author Kohle Yohannan, an art and design historian, has done a wonderful job in resurrecting a forgotten fashion diva. His book will be enjoyed by anyone interested in 20th century social history, fashio, or stories of remarkable women.

Check the WRL catalog for Valentina.

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The 70s: The Decade that Style Forgot, by Tracey Turner

Bud continues BFGB Fashion Week with this review: 

One of the challenges on television’s Project Runway last fall was to create a dress inspired by fashions of the 1970s. There were some comments about “timeless 70s style” or something along those lines.

Timeless 1970s style?  Really?!

I lived through the 1970s, and I speak from experience when I say that the only style that came from that period was bad style. I’m talking polyester shirts, skintight jeans with elephant bell legs, gaudy horse-blanket plaid suits kind of bad style.

If you don’t believe me, just watch any episode of the Brady Bunch… or peruse an ABBA music video… or flip through the pages of a little book entitled The 70s: The Decade That Style Forgot. Truer words were never spoken.

This book is a collection of British fashion advertisements from the period, punctuated by pithy comments. Acid-washed denim safari suits for men, shapeless shirtdresses in some hideous brown flowery, swirly, paisley kind of pattern. Oh, the horror, the horror.

This book is not a heavy intellectual tome. For those of us who survived that fashion-failure decade, it’s an amusing look back at a time that should never have a fashion revival… EVER!

Check the WRL catalog for The 70s: The Decade that Style Forgot.

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The Golden Age of Couture: Paris and London 1947-57, edited by Claire Wilcox

Bud continues BFGB Fashion Week with this review: 

In 1947, fashion designer Christian Dior opened his couture fashion house in Paris and unleashed his “New Look” designs on a female populace tired of wartime deprivations. The style paired highly structured, form-fitting tops with very full skirts, emphasizing a curvaceous feminine figure.

The “New Look” provoked both acclaim and scorn in the world of fashion, but despite mixed reviews it proved hugely influential, re-defining the mode in women’s fashion and reestablishing Paris as the couture capitol of the world.

The Golden Age of Couture details the world of high fashion in the decade after the Second World War. It reveals the role that fashion played both socially and economically in Paris and London and spotlights several well known designers of the period, including Dior, Cristobal Balenciaga, Pierre Balmain, Hubert de Givenchy, Jacques Fath, and Yves Saint Laurent.

The text is scholarly and interesting with intriguing little details. One paragraph on wedding gowns reveals, “It was a couture workshop tradition to leave a blue bow, a pin, a silver coin and a spot of blood from a virgin in the workroom inside a wedding dress.” And for those who think fashion is just fluff and vanity, the book reveals that for France, haute couture “…was also an important business that, before the Second World War, accounted for over 300 million francs in French exports.”

Of course, as befits a fashion book, the photography is beautiful, with many pictures of the gorgeous suits and dresses. Assembled and written by staff members of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, The Golden Age of Couture is an enjoyable read for fashion fans.

Check the WRL catalog for The Golden Age of Couture.

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Gowns by Adrian, by Howard Gutner, and Adrian: Silver Screen to Custom Label, by Christian Esquevin

Welcome to BFGB Fashion Week! Our weeklong tribute to books for the best-dressed comes to you courtesy of Bud, our resident red-carpet critic.

To me, costume design for the movies reached its apex in the 1930s. Hollywood’s golden age of filmmaking was considerably burnished by the talents of such designers as Travis Banton, Dolly Tree, Orry-Kelly, and Edith Head.

One of the best known and most talented costume designers was Gilbert Adrian. Better known simply as Adrian, his famous film credit line, “Gowns by Adrian,” is always a welcome sight for fashionistas lusting after gloriously glamorous and outrageously outré costumes. Mata Hari, Grand Hotel, Dinner at Eight, The Women, and Marie Antoinette are just a few of the films that he worked on.

Gowns by Adrian: the MGM Years 1928-1941, by Howard Gutner, covers Adrian’s 13-year reign as head costume designer for MGM studios. It’s packed with glossy photos (only a few in color, unfortunately) and interesting behind-the-scene stories of the many movies that Adrian worked on and the stars he worked with. Special emphasis is given to three of the best-known actresses whose on-screen images he meticulously embellished. Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, and Norma Shearer each get a chapter of their own, but Adrian’s early movies and the wonderful spectacle films, like Madam Satan, where his imagination really ran wild, are not slighted.

Adrian retired from MGM studios in 1941 and opened his own couture house in Beverly Hills. This period of his career is covered in Adrian: Silver Screen to Custom Label, by Christian Esquevin.

The book explains Adrian’s design aesthetic and provides detailed descriptions and photographs of his couture collections from 1942 until his untimely death at the age of 56 in 1959. Also detailed are his early years at MGM, his personal life, including his marriage to actress Janet Gaynor, and the lasting influence that he has had on American style and fashion.

Both books provide lovely tributes to a uniquely talented American designer. If you like movies and/or couture you’ll enjoy them both.

Check the WRL catalog for Gowns by Adrian: the MGM Years 1928-1941. 

Check the WRL catalog for Adrian: Silver Screen to Custom Label.

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The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe, by Theodore Gray

I bought this book for my teenage son last Christmas, then found myself curled up with a cup of eggnog, regaling my family with nuggets of wisdom such as: Did you know that iodine disinfects by brute chemical attack on microbes? And that zinc slabs are attached to bridges and ships to stop them rusting? Or even that bananas are radioactive?

Much more than a book about chemistry, The Elements can only be described in hyperbolic phrases such as “a visual extravaganza.”  Each element gets a page or two of remarkable photographs on a deep black background, then a few hundred words of conversational but informative text.  The page on copper starts, “Copper is wonderful stuff.  Just wonderful,” goes on to “Copper is the only reasonably priced element that isn’t more or less gray” but also reveals that copper has “the second highest conductivity of any metal.”

The elements are photographed in their natural state (if possible) and also in the surprising everyday objects in which they occur, such as strontium in toothpaste and manganese in an antique glazed tile.

If you can’t tell helium from hydrogen and you wonder why NaCl means salt, then this book is definitely still worth browsing as it brings together subjects from history to art to biology such as when the author talks about lead piping in Rome, colorful titanium jewelry and the possible role of potassium in evolution.

If you can recite the first twenty elements of the periodic table and love all things science then this book is for you as well.  The side of each page lists an element’s atomic number, weight, density, radius, and emission spectrum, as well as its place on the periodic table and its crystal structure.

For purists, the claim that the book covers “Every Known Atom in the Universe” is, of course, out of date, since scientists have recently named two new elements but that doesn’t detract from this great book, which is a fascinating read but also sneaks in a lot of learning.

Check the WRL catalog for The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe.

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A Shadow Falls, by Nick Brandt

In these majestic photographs, the great mammals of East Africa seem to be passing away before our eyes. Elephant, lion, zebra, cheetah, and giraffe are captured in poses so timeless and perfect that it is hard to believe they were taken in the wild. The sepia tone makes them look like old photographs of long-dead relatives. These portraits alternate in the book with awesome two-page panoramas showing animals, alone or en masse, against the empty landscape. As you page through the book, the landscape becomes drier and dustier, and the images of the animals themselves are paler, as if they were fading away.

A Shadow Falls is the second in Nick Brandt’s projected trilogy of books featuring his wildlife photographs taken in Amboseli National Park, Maasai Mara, and other preserves in east Africa. In the first, On This Earth, many of the animals are seen in sunlit, verdant landscapes of grasses and trees. While the photographs in A Shadow Falls are equally stunning, enough so to make you gasp, here the landscape often appears bleak and unable to sustain life. Brandt is now at work on the third book. The titles of the books will form a sentence, the ending of which will not be revealed until the third book is published in 2013: On This Earth, A Shadow Falls, …..

I can’t stop looking at the photograph on the cover of A Shadow Falls. I have never seen such a wonderful elephant. This elephant can no longer be seen in the wild—he is dead, killed by poachers in 2009. Poachers aren’t the only threats: tremendous herds of cattle are being illegally moved into the parks, where they drink what little water there is, forcing the wild animals to leave the protection of the preserve in search of sustenance. As Peter Singer says in an introduction to the book, the shadow that falls on these animals is ours. As much as Nick Brandt’s photographs may fill us with awe, they should also fill us with sorrow—and shame.

Check the WRL catalog for A Shadow Falls

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The Girl in the Song: The True Stories Behind 50 Rock Classics, by Michael Heatley and Frank Hopkinson

The girl from Ipanema never saw a dime from the song. Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto really was tall and tan and young (fifteen years old) and lovely, and she really did walk each day to the sea, or at least to the stores along the beachfront. Among those she passed were lyricist Vinicius de Moraes and musician Antônio Carlos Jobim, who were so enchanted that they wrote a song about the young woman, originally called “Menina que Passa” (“The Girl Who Passes By”), and translated into English as “The Girl from Ipanema.”

It was destined to become one of those songs that everyone knows. It’s in waiting rooms and elevators everywhere. It’s probably in your head right now. Poor Heloísa never got any financial recompense for her role, though she does now have a successful chain of clothing stores, Garota de Ipanema, which is Portuguese for “Girl from Ipanema.”

Cool, huh? There’s plenty more what that came from in The Girl in the Song, a quirky little book about the women who inspired some of the greatest hits in rock history—not that “The Girl from Ipanema” is rock, exactly. Authors Michael Heatley and Frank Hopkinson bend the definition of “rock” a bit, but they also bend the definition of “girl” at one point:

“Well I’m not dumb but I can’t understand / Why she walked like a woman but talked like a man, Oh my Lola”

The story here is that The Kinks were having a late-night party in the apartment of their manager, Robert Wace, who was having a grand time with a girl; “Well we drank champagne and danced all night,” as the song goes. In the morning, Mr. Wace was feeling too poorly to much care if the girl had a five o’clock shadow.

Or how about the much more famous Pattie Boyd, who inspired three different songs? First there was “Something,” by first husband George Harrison of the Beatles (“Something in the way she moves /Attracts me like no other lover”). It’s kind of sad, though, when George croons his plaintive question: “You’re asking me, will my love grow? / I don’t know, I don’t know.” I’m afraid I know, George: Pattie’s going to leave you for your buddy Eric Clapton. The first clue comes from his song “Layla,” named after a Persian literary character who loved a man other than her husband.

Pattie didn’t take the bait then, but it was only a matter of time. Years later, when Boyd had defected to Clapton, she was trying on clothes for a party and she asked how she looked. “Wonderful Tonight,” that’s how she looked: “It’s late in the evening, she’s wondering what clothes to wear / She puts on her makeup and brushes her long blond hair /And then she asks me, Do I look all right? /And I say Yes, you look wonderful tonight.”

Each mini-essay in the book is a treat, with photos and trivia about the women, the songs, and the musicians. You can read the whole thing in one sitting, and with luck, you’ll come across a song that will nudge “The Girl from Ipanema” out of your head.

Check the WRL catalog for The Girl in the Song

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To the Rescue: Found Dogs With a Mission by Elise Lufkin, photographs by Diana Walker

Not for the faint of heart, this book by Elise Lufkin collects 53 stories about how some amazing dogs (and one special cat) overcame incredible hardship to make contributions in a variety of capacities, including therapy, service, and search-and-rescue.  These short, three-to-four page stories are written by the animals’ owners, who represent a wide range of ages and backgrounds. Black and white photographs by Diana Walker show the animals at their best.  If you pick this book up and start reading, you will not be able to put it down. The pictures and stories might bring a few tears, but the outcomes are so positive that you will cheer for these animals despite what they have been through.

To pique your interest, I will highlight three of my favorite animals featured in the book, the dogs Triumph and Kandu and Hope the cat.  Triumph is a beautiful Siberian Husky found by a roadside in Turkey with both of her rear legs cruelly cut off.  Turkish veterinarians posted her plight online, and a woman from the US managed a remarkable overseas adoption, even paying for her airfare. Once Triumph was settled in her new home, the lady had a friend make her two prostheses that she could use to walk and even run with. Triumph went through pet therapy training and now visits a children’s hospital, where she is a big hit with the children, who love to play with her soft fur.

Kandu is a cute little dog born without his front legs. He was adopted by a loving family who had him trained to be a Heeling Pet, where he was received warmly at hospitals and rehab facilities. At one of those facilities Kandu met and formed a special bond with Tyler, a 10-year old boy undergoing therapy after losing both of his feet and several fingers to an illness. Walker’s photograph of Kandu reaching up and licking Tyler’s face will melt your heart and is my favorite photo in the book.

Hope is an amazing cat who was found tending her kittens one day though she was bleeding profusely from what was probably a horrible run-in with an automobile’s fan belt.  After surgery to remove her rear legs,  she was finally adopted after receiving extensive publicity about her plight. Hope has become a natural as a mascot and fund-raiser for the local Humane Society, and members of a local hospice make reservations for Hope to come visit (while the lady who owns her is considered as little more than “Hope’s driver”).

There are several helpful resources located at the back of the book. “Adopting a Dog” is filled with questions and advice for the person interested in adopting a dog with sections like “How to start a search for the dog of your dreams” and tips for going “just to look” at a shelter. “To Get Involved” is a section about how you and your dog can get involved in the services featured in this book. A section with the names and websites of organizations mentioned in the book and a “Recommended Reading” list add value, while the amazing  stories and photos will stay in your memory long after you have finished reading. Highly recommended!

Check the WRL catalog for To the Rescue: Found Dogs with a Mission

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The Architecture of Happiness, by Alain de Botton

If asked to name one of the arts, most people would not think of architecture, despite the fact that it may have the greatest effect on our lives. After all, we live, shelter, work, and play every day in architecture, and whether or not we’re always aware of it aesthetically, it impacts the quality of all of these activities. It’s from a position like this that Alain de Botton builds the arguments in The Architecture of Happiness.

The Swiss-born de Botton, who now makes England home, is one of the premier philosophers of our time. His work lives somewhere between the smarmy ghetto of self-help land and the lofty clouds of most contemporary philosophical scholarship. While de Botton’s name may not mean much to academics, his philosophical positions, explicated in terms that the lay reader can understand and appreciate, are laden with practical applications. He won’t just leave you thinking, he’ll help you understand your everyday experience and make modifications to make it better.

Rather than making a solipsistic case for one particular kind of architecture or bamboozling us with jargon-filled aesthetic hand-waving, de Botton simply asks what makes a work of architecture beautiful. Ultimately, he makes the case that architectural beauty is contextual, depending on whether the work communicates its intent and its surroundings through its structures. He bolsters his position with dozens of well chosen black and white photographs. The book is broken into short but systematic essays, moving gracefully from point to point, and rarely losing momentum as de Botton builds his deceptively simple but elegant argument.

De Botton is not just writing about architecture, he’s doing something about it, leading an effort called Living Architecture, which is commissioning architects to build houses in Britain that vacationers can rent. Check out some of these fascinating buildings here.

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Creature, by Andrew Zuckerman

The baby blue eyes of the panther* on the cover called me across the room. Before I knew what was happening I found myself with an impulse grab from the New Book shelf.

*Leopard, actually. The kitty is a black leopard, but I didn’t discover this till the very end, because there are no words in the book until you get to the last few pages. Except for the index, which helpfully identifies all the animals you didn’t recognize, Creature has no text at all.

With no words to interfere, you as the reader get to devote all your energy to looking at the pictures. Within each picture you get to devote all your energy to looking at the animal, only the animal, and nothing but the animal: there’s no clutter to distract the eye, just a stark white background to throw the critter into focus. It’s marvelous.

Sixty-three animals are featured in 150 photographs. My very favorite is the wild boar, who looks– I don’t know how else to describe this– who looks sassy. I’m also fond of the spotted hyena, who appears thoughtful and inquisitive despite the way her tongue sticks out. Zuckerman’s photos made me fall in love with all the animals in the book.*

*Except for the millipede. And the emperor scorpion.

Some of creatures are in cute poses, but the point isn’t to look at pictures of adorable animals. Instead we get to look at a lot of different animals in a lot of different emotional states. (The alligator is smiling. That’s a good sign, right?) Mature readers will want to luxuriate over each gorgeous photo. Immature readers will want to race through the pages to get maximum animal sensory overload.*

*Yes, that’s exactly what I did, thanks for asking.

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Rescuing Da Vinci, by Robert M. Edsel

Rescuing Da Vinci is an engrossing collection of photographs that document a war-within-a-war: the efforts to safeguard Europe’s art treasures and cultural landmarks from the devastation of World War II. In particular, it describes the work of the Allied Forces “Monuments Men,” whose mission evolved into a post-war treasure hunt for artworks that had been systematically looted from churches, museums, and families throughout Europe on an unprecedented scale.

Hundreds of photographs show familiar works of art in an extraordinary wartime setting. As invasion threatens, Britain lowers its most treasured paintings down Welsh mine shafts, and France evacuates the Mona Lisa to a country estate out of harm’s way. Priceless canvases are rolled up like carpets for transport. In Florence, Michelangelo’s David, too massive and heavy to move, is swaddled in paper and bricked up behind a sand-filled dome like a mummy in a sarcophagus.

Curators followed Hitler’s soldiers into France with a shopping list of artworks to be “acquired” for his proposed Führer Museum. At the top of the list was Vermeer’s “The Astronomer,” promptly confiscated from the Rothschild family, while troops entering Poland were instructed to secure Leonardo da Vinci’s “Lady with an Ermine,” the painting pictured on the book’s cover.

The Monuments Men (MFAA, or Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives) entered the picture when U.S. troops joined the war. Museum officials and art historians in civilian life, their job was to find, identify, and restore to their rightful owners the stolen artworks cached in salt mines and over 1,000 other hiding places throughout Germany. They labored for years through an astonishing flotsam and jetsam of objects displaced by the war. Two photographs, in particular, remain with me: hundreds of Torah scrolls, tossed into a basement, and a dock in Hamburg stacked with thousands of church bells removed from towers across Europe.

The restitution and rediscovery of “lost” artworks continues to this day. You’ll learn more in the text accompanying these photos, and in the companion documentary, The Rape of Europa.

Check the WRL catalog for Rescuing Da Vinci.

Check the WRL catalog for The Rape of Europa.

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This Is Who I Am, by Rosanne Olson

Coming to you straight from the library, it’s live nude girls!

(Let’s see what kind of traffic that phrase brings to the site. We may be looking at a new blog following, here.)

Seriously: This lovely photo-essay features women in all their glorious forms. We have young women, old women, fat women, skinny women, healthy women, disabled women, et cetera et cetera et cetera.

And yes, the women are naked, very much so, but this is as far from smut as it’s possible to get. In fact, photographer/author Olson wrote this as an antidote to smut. She, like most women (me included!) has had it up to here with the distortion and commercialization of women’s bodies.

Let’s face it, none of us– none of us– look like the ladies in the magazines. What’s a girl to do? Well, we could spend our time beating ourselves up… or we could learn to love our bodies, no matter what they look like. Now this is hard to do: we are bombarded with messages telling us to change ourselves. Companies don’t make money off advertisements that tell us to pack on pounds, or to deepen our wrinkles, or to let our hair go gray.

Fortunately, This Is Who I Am shows that beauty comes in a variety of guises. Every single woman in the book is beautiful, though many of them fall outside of mainstream beauty norms. Alongside each photo is a mini-essay in which the woman reflects on her body and what it means to her. Together, the photos and the text offer a gorgeous, thought-provoking read. This is a lovely book, one that should be read not only by women and girls, but by the men who love them.

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