Staff Picks: Books
Staff-recommended reading from the
KPL catalog.
When I heard a buzz about a British bestseller written by a very funny woman who wasn’t afraid to talk about feminism, I thought, “This is the book for me!” And when I checked out the book and found a blurb on it that referred to it as “the British version of Tina Fey’s Bossypants,” I thought, “this is definitely the book for me!” Although I see only a few similarities between Bossypants and Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman (both written by funny women who are willing to acknowledge the difficulties of being a mother), it really was the book for me.
Caitlin Moran began her career as a columnist for Melody Maker (a British music magazine) at the ripe young age of 16. Her book is a funny but pertinent look at feminism and women in the Western world today, told through important events/mistakes over the course of her life and career. She’s warm, irreverent, and a bit crass. Reading this book felt to me like getting back in touch with an old friend and laughing about ridiculous life choices made in an effort to be a woman.
Book
How to Be a Woman
9780062124296
Jacqueline Kennedy was a woman who desperately wanted a private life. Clint Hill was the man who was charged with giving her as much of a private life as he was able.
As one of two Secret Service agents on the First Lady’s protective detail, he tells their amazing story in Mrs. Kennedy and Me. Although the stories in this memoir are fascinating, what is most compelling is Mr. Hill’s fierce dedication and loyalty to Mrs. Kennedy as she lived a life that was so very public.
Book
Mrs. Kennedy and Me
9781451648447
Emerson once dreamed that the world shrunk into an apple. An angel told him to eat it, and so he did. A fitting image of transcendentalist thought! The world is so small we can eat it; the mind prevails,"there was never any thing that did not proceed from a thought"; a single human being can do anything.
By most accounts Emerson was a great American, a great speaker, and a great man. He was a transcendentalist, a nature writer, a Unitarian minister, a teacher, a literary figure, a speaker (yes, that was his profession!), a poet. He was anti-slavery, anti-establishment, pro-women's rights (all when it was "unfashionable"); and, even through family deaths and sorrows, he was a champion of unbridled and unparalleled optimism. But what impresses me most is the degree to which he thought for himself, went his own way, and fearlessly lived.
At 24 Emerson visits the South. He's at a bible study. He can hear a slave auction outside. He and his wife, part of the Underground Railroad in Boston, would always be vocal against slavery. On the Emancipation Proclamation he said: “[Lincoln] has been permitted to do more for America than any other American man.” When the war was only about saving the Union, he wouldn't’t let his son enlist. He supported John Brown. In 1844 even the churches wouldn't open their doors for his speeches, which fueled his distrust of organized religion: “God builds his temple in the heart, on the ruins of churches and religions."
On the unity of all persons: “There is one mind common to all individual men” Like Thoreau's chant "Simplicity!" Emerson's chant was "Identity, identity! Friend and foe are one stuff, and the stuff is such and so much that the variations of surface are unimportant.” On us and Nature: “There is a relation between man and nature so that whatever is in matter is in mind.” On beauty: “all is in each” and “the standard of beauty is the entire circuit of natural forms—the totality of nature.” He was so convinced in the power of a single individual that he said "properly there is no history, only biography." In other words, if you want to learn history, read a bunch of biographies--history is nothing but a list of great and terrible people. But we are all potentially great people: “each fine genius that appears is already predicted in our constitution.” In a stoic and Christian way, he thought groups of people only make things worse. After witnessing the French Revolution, he says “It is always becoming evident that the permanent good is for the soul only and cannot be retained in any society or system...the world is always childish." On courage, peace, and nonviolence Emerson was like Martin Luther King Jr: "Courage is grounded always on a belief in the identity of the nature of my enemy with my own [nature], that he with whom you contend is no more than you."
Yes I recommend this biography, but it's a commitment (due to length).
book
Emerson: Mind on Fire
0520088085
There's no way of understating the influence Plato's The Republic had on the history of Western thought. Whitehead said that all philosophy after Plato was nothing but a footnote to what Plato already said (he wrote several dialogues).
Plato was one of the first to start off the great "utopian" tradition of writing about a perfect world, a perfect society, the harmonious family, the best City, a sublime life-after-death, a tranquil existence within oneself--all imaginations that could be real, if only we tried it this way. Everyone has thought of their own version. Think of Jesus' "kingdom of God" and St. Augustine's "city of God" and Thomas More's "utopia" (called "utopia" as a satire because in latin it means "no place") and Martin Luther King's "beloved" community" and B.F. Skinner's in Walden Two. I met a guy at the library that was actually part of a real utopian commune in the U.S. (Emerson almost joined "Brook Farm"). Check out this book for a history of Utopias.
Plato imagines that the perfect city is a mirror of the perfect person. People fundamentally have three parts to their Soul: the rational part, the "spiritive" part (as in a warrior has spirit), and the "appetite" part (or desires). A City has the same parts, and they rank in the same order. Philosopher-Kings rule the city as model's of rational thinking, warriors protect it as model's of spirit and courage and braveness of heart, and the "commoners" make and trade all the stuff as model's of drive and desire and want. Thus we have a city as an extension of the perfectly organized self.
Plato and the gang, very regretfully, decide not to let poets into his city. Read it to find out why!
book
The Republic
0521481732