By Nora Levine
Nora Levine can be reached at .

I recently read and enjoyed Tracy Chevalier’s REMARKABLE CREATURES, about two women in the early 19th century who were fascinated by fossils. Mary Anning, the uneducated girl with an eye for finding ‘monsters’ that cannot be explained by Biblical theory, is a real person, whose finds are still displayed in natural history museums. The story of her finds and her friendship with a fossil-hunting spinster is set in a time when proper ladies did not go out on a beach unaccompanied and when scientists were struggling to make sense of new discoveries. The author also wrote Girl with a Pearl Earring.
-- Nancy Adams
   Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP

I attended the NOCALL Spring Institute at the end of March. I was so impressed with all the great speakers. One of those speakers, Mark Sirkin, really connected with my ideas on law firms as businesses. In his presentation, Mr. Sirkin recommended Dan Pink’s older book, A WHOLE NEW MIND. The book was published in 2005, and at times it feels dated, as the current economic down turn has had an affect on Pink’s ideas, mostly in the speed of their adoption. That said, the new information about how the brain works, and in particular how our brains age, bolsters many of Pink’s ideas. Briefly, the thesis is that the Information Age is transforming into the Conceptual Age due to the pressures of abundance, Asia’s development and the effect of automation (i.e. globalization) on the American economy. “We are moving from an economy and society built on the logical, linear, computer like capabilities of the Information Age to an economy and society built on the inventive, empathic, big-picture capabilities...” The Conceptual Age “involves the capacity to detect patterns and opportunities, to create artistic and emotional beauty, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into something new.” It sounds like the new world will be good for librarians in general, if we can all keep it together long enough to get there. The book includes activities and recommendations to strengthen the right side of our brains. If nothing else, the activities will keep us busy so we can think about this great new future for librarians, and not think about the current layoffs.
--Cynthia Berglez

THE WORST HARD TIME: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THOSE WHO SURVIVED THE GREAT AMERICAN DUST BOWL by Timothy Egan. Illustrated.
I found this to be a fascinating book about a topic I knew nothing about, but which affected the entire country. My previous knowledge of the Dust Bowl was from Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and that book wasn’t really about the Dust Bowl, but about what happened to the people who left it, and it was fiction. Timothy Egan writes a non-fiction account of what happened through the stories of several families and individuals, some of whom were still alive when he researched the story. It is a compelling story. He starts with the build-up, why there were so many farmers in the area of the Dust Bowl, which included only a tiny part of Oklahoma, and covered a large part of Kansas, plus parts of Nebraska, Colorado, Texas and New Mexico. We also learn why so much of the prairie was planted with wheat, and then abandoned. The cycle of boom and bust, with fortunes made and lost will not be unfamiliar. It also explains how we ended up with crop subsidies, but that is another story.

What is unfamiliar are many of the details of the dust storms. Fifty mile an hour winds blasted the paint off buildings and dented cars whose batteries had died from the static electricity. Cattle died with their stomachs full of dirt; people died from dust pneumonia. Black Sunday began as the first beautiful clear day in months, and ended with the worst storm of all - so black one couldn’t see their hand in front of their face, so little oxygen in the air that one couldn’t light a lantern. The dust from that storm traveled all the way to Washington D.C., literally. Its arrival in D.C. was what turned the tide in obtaining Federal funding for a program designed to try to stop the destruction and possibly in time heal the land.

This book was loaded with facts, and yet was a real page-turner. Give it a try, you won’t be sorry.
--Cathy Hardy
   Hansson Bridgett

THE GLASS CASTLE by Jeannette Walls
You look at the photo of Rex and Rose Mary Walls on their wedding day and they look so normal. You might assume that, okay, now that they are married, they will get a little ranch house and have 2.5 children and live out their days working and gardening and hoping for grandchildren. NOT. They rarely worked, often did not adequately feed, clothe or house their children, and ended up homeless in New York City by choice.

They had five children (one died in infancy) and the author of this memoir is the middle child, Jeannette Walls. The story begins with her earliest memory as a 3-year-old, on fire, her dress having been too close to the stove as she cooked her own lunch. Yet as neglectful as her parents were, they instilled in her a strength to survive, to face her fears, to work hard and to be compassionate. This book is very definitely a page turner.
--Julie Horst
   Ninth Circuit Library

SCANDAL ON RINCON HILL by Shirley Tallman
Scandal on Rincon Hill is Shirley Tallman’s fourth Sarah Woolson mystery, a fun and well-written read for anyone interested in women in the law, San Francisco history or mysteries with strong female protagonists. Sarah is something of a curiosity -- a woman lawyer in 1881. (The first women were admitted to the bar in California in 1879.) Along with her brother, a crime beat reporter, she winds up not only practicing law, but also playing detective -- and doing both quite well. In Scandal, one of Sarah’s cases is her defense of two young Chinese men who have been wrongly accused of murder in the fashionable Rincon Hill neighborhood. Tallman’s attention to historical detail - from clothing and carriages to actual events and places, like the Laura Fair murder trial, the 2nd Street cut on Rincon Hill, a performance at the Tivoli Opera House or dinner at the Poodle Dog restaurant - enhances, but doesn’t overwhelm the plot and characters.

GAME CHANGE: OBAMA AND THE CLINTONS, MCCAIN AND PALIN, AND THE RACE OF A LIFETIME by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann
If you were as addicted as I was to the 2008 presidential election, you’ll love this behind the scenes look at the campaigns. Many reviewers and TV news shows cherry-picked a few of the more salacious sections, like John Edwards’ affair, which could give one the sense that it was little more than tabloid fodder. Well, it’s not Theodore White’s “Making of the President,” but the authors are experienced political journalists and the book is the result of hundreds of interviews with campaign insiders.

See how the Clinton campaign was harmed by internal fighting and how Palin was selected with little examination when McCain’s preferred candidate fell through at the last minute. Find out how the Clinton campaign blew getting Caroline Kennedy’s endorsement and how many Democratic senators (such as Schumer and Reid) remained publicly neutral, but privately supported Obama.

CARVILLE-BY-THE-SEA: SAN FRANCISCO’S STREETCAR SUBURB by Woody LaBounty
In the 1890s, an odd community of obsolete horse cars and cable cars grew up on the undeveloped sand dunes near the ocean. The cars were bought as weekend getaways by all sorts of people -- from bohemian artists and writers to judges and fresh air enthusiasts. They had a variety of uses: as club houses for women bicyclists, weekend hide-a-ways and, for a few eccentrics, as permanent homes. Over the years, with the coming of paved roads, indoor plumbing and electricity, more roadhouses and full-time homes and stores were built. Western Neighborhood historian LaBounty deftly crafts this almost forgotten story of Carville from photos, postcards, newspaper accounts and other archival material. By the 1920s, as Carville became gentrified, the old cars began to be destroyed or built over. An interesting later section of the book describes searches conducted over the last 80 years to locate the gradually diminishing remaining cars.
--Paula Lichtenberg, Librarian
   Keker & Van Nest LLP