Reviewed by Patricia Selinger, Head, Preservation
This wonderful book describes the author's experience as the first woman apprentice to the master bookbinder William Anthony at the University of Iowa. Bill Anthony's skill is highly respected among bookbinders and conservators. The author's work is a tribute to him as well as a tribute to her own developing skill. She describes how she is taught, how she learns, the relationship of her tools to their actions, and her learned approach to restoration. When Anthony dies before her apprenticeship is complete, we see how her training has prepared her to continue her work. This book can be read on many levels. From a practical point of view, you can read this book as an extended essay on apprenticeship, and how to bind books. From a spiritual point of view, you can infer life lessons and the approach to any daunting task. The book looks like a quick read but it was so rich and detailed, I found myself reading it for several weeks and some parts of it over again in order to digest it all.
May 2006 Archives
Reviewed by Kevin Farley, Collection Librarian for the Humanities
In Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution, noted British historian Simon Schama re-considers the seldom-studied effort of American and British anti-slavery advocates to free slaves before, during, and after the American Revolution. Schama's previous studies — including The Embarrassment of Riches (on the emergence of modern Western democracy, and its seminal contradictions, in seventeenth-century Holland), Citizens (a study of the French Revolution, and its idealistic, and not so idealistic, leaders), Rembrandt's Eyes (an exceptional reading of an artist whose works contributed to the invention of European "personality," or "individuality"), and the recent History of Britain (a scholarly trilogy, and the basis of a BBC/History Channel television series) — display the historian's style and approach as ironic, even satiric; a style that suggests the almost unbelievable nature of the affronts, so worthy of our ironic disbelief and satiric disappointment, that history commits against its unfortunates. Here, Schama describes the altruism, as well as the deceitful self-interest, of those who would help and hinder the American slaves caught in the paradoxes of the American declaration of freedom from British tyranny (Schama is particularly deft in describing the conflicts that Thomas Jefferson endured, and passed on, over slavery). British offers to accept and help free former slaves was tinged by self-interest, Schama notes, but also by extraordinary self-sacrifice, especially in the heroic efforts of the British abolitionist, Granville Sharp. In Schama's brilliant discussion, the personalities of this period, and the realities of slavery — its inescapable consequences — are memorably evoked.
This new publication is not yet available at VCU Libraries. Please look for it soon at Cabell Library.
Reviewed by Renée Bosman, Government Information Librarian
A CIA agent, a shaman, and a defrocked nun. Sound like another joke of the "guy walked into a bar" variety? These are some of the characters who populate this Tom Robbins tale that explores everything from religion, miracles, and taboos to sex, drugs, and Broadway show tunes. The novel follows Switters, a hedonistic, renegade CIA operative, from an unusual errand in Peru to Seattle to Syria to the Vatican. Along the way, he is cursed by a shaman, tries to woo his sixteen-year-old stepsister, and falls in with a convent of desert nuns who harbor a secret document of world-changing magnitude. Sound like a good time? This kooky plot is a perfect vehicle for Robbins's trademark finesse of the English language. His similes would make any English teacher swoon: "Overhead, the lemons swung like papier-mâché stars in a cheesy planetarium." After reading his prose, you'll see why Robbins was named by Writer's Digest as one of the 100 best writers of the 20th century.
Want to read more Tom Robbins? Check out Another Roadside Attraction.
Reviewed by Kevin Farley, Collection Librarian for the Humanities
The English satirist, novelist, and essayist Eric Blair — better known by his pseudonym, George Orwell (see LION for biographical and critical information) — has often been called the conscience of the 20th Century. His works, especially his satires (notably Animal Farm and 1984), cannot be confined merely to the socio-political entrapments set by dictators, demagogues, and even, at times, democracies of that era. Orwell's unsparing dissections of hypocrisy, cant, jingoism, jargon, sloganeering, and deceitfulness of all kinds — practiced at the personal and the political levels (which, thanks to Orwell, we now see as often being one and the same) — comprise an indispensable grammar of the unjust workings of power against the powerless. Animal Farm (subtitled "A Fairy Story") was written shortly after the end of World War II, and was read at the time as an indictment of the tyrannies of Facism, Nazism, and Stalinism; it may also be read, however, as a rebuke to all forms of government that repress the freedom to speak or think in terms that oppose the status quo. The "fairy story" elements of Orwell's fable — the sudden ability for animals to speak; the overthrow of Mr. Jones's farm by the animals (led by the sagacious pigs and their aptly named leader, Napoleon) — enfold an unsettling subtext: under the guise of "freeing" the animals from their oppressor, the pigs pervert the revolution by metamorphosing into oppressors themselves, worse, even, than Mr. Jones. Perhaps most troubling of all — for, in the Swiftian tradition, the ambiguity of Orwell's satire precludes a safe vantage point — Animal Farm allows no innocent optimism for the progress of freedom over tyranny, and in that sense the fable, like all of Orwell's writings, stands as a dire warning against complacency and, most importantly, "groupthink." As the pigs proclaim in one of their many revisions to the rules that govern the happiness of life at Animal Farm: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" — thus declaring a war upon freedom in Orwell's day and in our own.
Cabell Library PS6029 .R8 Various Locations
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Reviewed by Patricia Selinger, Head, Preservation
This book demonstrates investigative journalism at its finest. I'm sure I'll read other books by this author. His research is thorough, well documented, and easy to read and understand. I am one who verifies references and follows up on statistics. This author has credibility. Lethal Passage is about gun control legislation, gun culture, and the industry. I wanted to learn more about the issues and why they evoke such knee-jerk reactions, especially in Virginia. This book answered many questions for me.
Larson makes the issues understandable by tracing the life history of a gun, a Cobray M-11/9, used by a 16-year-old to kill a teacher, injure and terrorize others in 1988 at a school in Virginia Beach. Following the progress of a single gun from design to homicide, the gaps in existing firearms regulations, standards, and responsibility become painfully obvious. I was amazed how cheap and easy it is to get a license to sell guns and that the gun industry has no standards governing licenses. It is much harder and more expensive to get a boat or car license, to become a substitute teacher, or even to get a license to carry a gun. Federal regulations, such as the McClure-Volkmar Act (1986) and the Gun Control Act of 1968, are so full of loopholes they are ineffective. The lack of a uniform system of federal regulations allows buyers and sellers to go where they can find the closest unregulated market. In many cases, it's right across town or the county line.
As Larson states on page 214, "it is always important, however, to read anything on the gun debate carefully with an eye to capturing distortion and undisclosed bias." He clearly shows his bias but makes a compelling case and offers a sensible five-part omnibus federal law he calls the "Life and Liberty Preservation Act", which he knows doesn't have a chance of being passed. Yet, the author cites surveys by the Louis Harris organization which indicate a majority of people favor registration of handguns or limiting their purchase. In this case, pro-gun lobbyists are more persuasive than public opinion, a situation Larson calls "The New Tyranny". Like the author, I am left wondering what will break our tolerance of gun violence. The history of federal gun legislation clearly shows that laws will be made only in the wake of some stunning event. How many people do you know who have been affected by gun violence? Whichever side of the debate you're on, this book will test your opinions.
