I am a big fan of Mr. David Simon. His first nonfiction work, Homicide: Life on the Killing Streets, as well as his most recent television series, The Wire, have been reviewed on this site by fellow bloggers. Simon’s Baltimore-centric work has been literary, entertaining, thought-provoking, and page-turning. His writings are dense, but his portraits are so honest that you can’t stop reading.

The Corner was created after Simon and co-writer Ed Burns hung out with a few citizens of one West Baltimore drug corner in 1993. We follow Fat Curt, a middle-aged, disfigured heroin addict, trying to make his "lonesome way down Monroe" and young RC, finding relief from dealing drugs though the simple rivalry of basketball. We also follow Miss Ella, striving to run the Recreation Center without losing her faith in her neighborhood. But most of all, we follow the McCulloughs, a family imprisoned by the Corner. Gary, a former financial guru turned heroin addict, plots "capers," schemes to make 10 or 20 dollars for one "blast" of dope or coke. Fran, a mother of two, struggles with getting clean while being a mother to her two sons. And DeAndre, all of 16 years old, makes his name on the Corner, selling drugs.

But there’s so much more to DeAndre than slinging vials – he’s smart, sensitive, and caring. Of his crew, DeAndre is the one who stands the best chance of finally escaping the violence and pain of the drug trade. Simon’s portrayals of addicts, dealers, thieves, con artists, and tax-paying citizens are so vibrant that you can’t help but love them. You want to cheer them on toward a better life and then cry with them when they fail. Simon’s dedication to authentic description and meticulous journalism transforms "the Drug Dealer" and "the Drug Addict" into real human beings. Along the way, Simon points out the fallacies of society’s treatment of the drug trade.

More than Homicide, The Corner seeks to erase the myths surrounding urban drug use and crime, making the case for a new, realistic treatment of drug prohibition. Because the Corner is out there as real as you or me and it cannot be ignored, lest we abandon our cities, causing fellow citizens to fall to a bottomless chasm of poverty and addiction.

Khaleel Gheba – Miller Branch

Stephen Ambrose’s 1992 book Band of Brothers tells the story of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, "from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest." Developing from Ambrose’s interest in Eisenhower and the pivotal events of D-Day (June 6th, 1944) Band of Brothers takes us away from the political decision makers and grand strategists, putting the reader alongside the fighting men on the front line. Ambrose’s book collects the memories of Easy Company’s members, allowing us to share their circumstances, delights and frustrations as they were deployed — and redeployed — across Europe in the final year of the war. Easy Company’s experience is both representative and extraordinary. It was this close-up first-person detail, in combination with Easy Company’s extraordinary range of battlefield experience, that made the book an ideal candidate for development as a television miniseries.

The HBO miniseries, produced with the involvement of Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, comprises a series of connected mini-feature films. Each episode focuses on a different member of the company, and has a different tone and feel.  We first encounter Easy Company in intensive training at Camp Toccoa, GA. Subsequently, the company parachutes into Normandy as part of the D-Day offensive, fights in Holland as part of Operation Market Garden, spends the winter at Bastogne in the Ardennes, and plays a significant role as allied forces push into Germany and Austria to bring the conflict to a close. The production pays great attention to detail and reveals a larger story by telling a specific — and personal — one in each episode.

The veterans themselves are interviewed in a companion documentary, We Stand Alone Together, and the success of Band of Brothers gave a number of them a wider audience for their remarkable stories. Richard Winters co-authored Beyond Band of Brothers with Cole Kingseed, and was profiled in Biggest Brother by Larry Alexander. Easy Company veterans Bill Guarnere and Babe Heffron collaborated to produce Brothers in Battle. Each of these books offers a different perspective and additional details about Easy Company’s experiences in Europe, providing a cumulative picture of Easy Company’s experience and a window into the larger conflict.

HBO’s companion series, The Pacific, premieres in mid-March 2010. The production is  based on Eugene B. Sledge’s With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa, Robert Leckie’s Helmet for My Pillow, and the experiences of John Basilone detailed in I’m Staying With My Boys. HBO’s new show presents an ideal opportunity to revisit the European Theater after D-Day with the Band of Brothers of Easy Company, 506th P.I.R.

John Jewitt – Savage Branch

Dave Eggers is best known for his work with McSweeney’s, as well as his debut memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and his novel What is the What. But it’s easy to forget how strong Eggers’ journalistic writing can be. With Zeitoun, Eggers removes himself from the picture, along with the ironic humor of McSweeney’s, to tell the bizarre story of one Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-American citizen of New Orleans.

When 2005’s Hurricane Katrina strikes New Orleans, Zeitoun (as he is known to his friends and family) stays behind to keep watch over his family’s house and business. But as the storm evolves into a widespread catastrophe, Zeitoun boards his aluminum canoe and sets off. Rowing through the flood streets of his city, he encounters friends, neighbors, and agents of a government that seems increasingly incapable and inhuman. Along the way, he feeds abandoned dogs and frees elderly survivors, doing his best to be a paragon of Qur’anic charity.

But the story is not exclusively Zeitoun’s. His wife, Kathy, a native New Orleans girl who converted to Islam, is arguably more interesting. As her husband has his "adventure," she tries to keep their children safe as they evacuate out of state to stay with her mother. Kathy’s story of cultural disconnection from her Christian family, as well as her stories about living with her stubborn but lovable husband, was perhaps the most interesting part of the story. Eggers’ sparse prose paints a complex portrait, both pitiable and fierce: a woman driven to the edge of her sanity by nature’s senselessness and humanity’s carelessness.

Zeitoun is fundamentally a journalistic recounting of events, but given how ridiculous and cruel the story becomes, it’s hard to ignore Eggers’ political message. If, by the end of this book, you’re not seething at the callous abuses of power, then you are made of sterner stuff than I. Thanks to Eggers’ dedicated research and straightforward style, Zeitoun’s story strikes at the core of the American dream, revealing the failings that go unreported, unremembered.

Khaleel Gheba – Miller Branch

Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a captivating and challenging combination of science textbook, social history, and biography. The book explores the extraordinary events surrounding the life and death of Henrietta Lacks, and the subsequent repercussions of those events. Rebecca Skloot discusses her book at Howard County Library’s East Columbia Branch on Saturday, February 20 at 1:00 pm. Register to attend the event.

In 1951 Henrietta Lacks was treated for an aggressive form of cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD. Before she passed away, samples of her tissues were harvested for research purposes, and cells from one of her cancerous tumors were sustained artificially in a laboratory. This line of cells (called HeLa from the first two letters of her first and last name) grew and divided, becoming the first self-sustaining line of cells grown in a laboratory. They were shared by the lab’s director, George Gey, with his colleagues throughout the U.S. and around the world. HeLa cells subsequently played a role in the development of the Polio vaccine, were sent into space, and were subjected to nuclear radiation in the name of science. That, however, is only half of the story, since the cells were harvested from Henrietta Lacks without her consent, and without her family’s knowledge.

What is celebrated by scientists as a remarkable new frontier is something else for the family of Henrietta Lacks. Lacks’ experience in hospital and the harvesting of her tissues were part of the social fabric of a segregated Maryland in the 1950s, where the public wards of Johns Hopkins hospital were one of the limited treatment options available to African American patients. Lacks’ descendants understandably have different opinions about their mother’s immortality than the scientists who celebrate her cells. 

Explaining her efforts to access the family’s opinions, author Rebecca Skloot includes herself in the narrative, first as a college student encountering Henrietta Lacks in a footnote, and later as a researcher, author, and supporter of the family. Skloot ably discusses both the personal impact of these events on the Lacks family, and the global significance of the HeLa cell line, telling equally revelatory scientific and family stories.

John Jewitt – Savage Branch

"Worthy of Trust and Confidence" is the motto of the Secret Service and of the men and women who pledge to take a bullet to protect the President and his family. During the Bush administration, Director Mark Sullivan broke with his agency’s long-standing policy of absolute silence and allowed Washington correspondent Ronald Kessler to get an earful.

In Kessler’s new book In The President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect, he does a credible job presenting the origin and history of the United States Secret Service, but the interviews with current and retired Secret Service agents became juicy and salacious gossip. The agents forgot their motto and relished in trashing other agents and political leaders — much akin to reading the tabloids. How much should the American public know about the private affairs of our leaders? Is it important for us to know that Obama smokes, that Gerald Ford was cheap, that Jimmy Carter never bothered to get to know anything about his Secret Service entourage, or that Lady Bird caught Lyndon in a compromising position? I shamelessly ate it up and got a kick out of some of the stories the agents shared with the author. 

Kessler also points out the alarming deficiencies in how the agency currently operates, and how budget cutbacks make protecting the current President a very serious matter. That is one scary thought.

Eve Olsen – Central Library

How do you encourage your children to discover themselves, embrace their passions, and find direction in this world — without suffocating them or compelling them to allow you to live vicariously through them?

Dr. Michael Jinkins of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary begins this discussion in his book Called to Be Human: Letters to My Children on Living a Christian Life. Written as a series of letters to his two adult children, Jeremy and Jessica, we have here a provocative look into the thinking mind and loving heart of a father. Jeremy is wondering what to do with his life, and wants to know how to discern his "calling." Jessica has blunt questions about things like love, friendship, the existence and goodness of God, and the meaning of life.

"After considerable reflection," he writes in his introduction, "I have come to realize I am not very religious myself. (You’ll learn more about what I mean by this in the letters that follow.) And because I don’t really understand what the word spiritual means today — given the fact that it seems to mean something different for every person who uses the term — I’m not sure I would describe myself as spiritual either. I am, however, a person of faith." I had to check the front cover of the book to see if somehow I was the author of this short book, because these words could have very easily been my own.

I don’t have children yet, but I felt that there was much wisdom here for life in general — not just for guidance as a parent, but as a friend, and as a human being. Largely anecdotal, Dr. Jinkins draws from the likes of Karl Barth, Marilynne Robinson, Deitrich Bonhoeffer, John Calvin, G.K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, the Sufi poet Rumi, and the Epic of Gilgamesh. If any of these topics even remotely interest you, this short collection will grip you.

Dan Curry – Savage Branch

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck is my candidate for best opening line in a fiction book: “Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.” The rest of the opening paragraph isn’t bad either, and provides a great orientation for Steinbeck’s exploration of the characters inhabiting this small part of Monterey, CA before the Second World War. Dropping in on Cannery Row, we meet Lee Chong, Dora, Mack, and Doc as we’re introduced to their community. Like much of Steinbeck’s short fiction, the chapters build upon each other in layers, and we see the characters interact with each other in different ways as they struggle to support one another, get ahead, and survive.

Rich details pull you into the book. Cannery Row is a place that Steinbeck knew well, and you can taste the spray coming in off the ocean as you read. The author was friendly with Ed Ricketts, who appears here as Doc, and he based the events of his novel on the real stories and culture of the Row. Steinbeck’s inspirations for the novel are detailed in Real Life on Cannery Row, a comprehensive collection of biographical and historical anecdotes collected by Al Lundy that vividly brings characters and locations to life by placing them in context. If you’re looking for a more visual experience, a 1982 movie starring Nick Nolte and Deborah Winger consolidates material from the novel and its sequel, Sweet Thursday.

You can’t beat the original novel though, and especially that first dynamite paragraph. For a close-up look at an interesting community, check out Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. You’ll be hooked by the end of the first page! Please leave a comment naming your candidate for best opening lines. I’ll be interested to see the list.

John Jewitt – Savage Branch

Did somebody say "recession?" If you’re like me, your head started spinning out of control about a year ago when reports started coming in regarding a slightly downward economic turn. Now that we’re knee-deep in sporadic economic analysis, how to sort through it all without giving yourself an ulcer? I love learning about the world around me.  Just the other day, I was fascinated by how I was able to find a moment of peace and quiet while the whole gamut of industry was clanking away on all sides. 

Anyway, all this talk about the economy gave me a spark of interest in a subject that I’ve never seriously studied before. A quick search through the Library’s catalog pointed me towards Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy (3rd Edition), by Thomas Sowell. What a find! I was tickled that a book titled "Basic Economics" would be more than 600 pages, so I decided to give it a shot.  I am so glad I did.

I found Sowell’s treatment of basic economic principles fascinating and revealing. He teaches with great clarity and patience, never using rhetoric to rush through a point, and sprinkles his text with real-world examples instead of equations and charts. As I turned each page, I felt my synapses firing away, forming connections, conclusions, and even some very strong convictions.  Published in 2007, many of Sowell’s points seemed downright prophetic of what is happening right now in America and elsewhere across the globe. I can’t say I’m any more or less concerned about our economy than before I read this book, but I do feel considerably less confused about it…and my mind has been opened to a truly interesting subject.

Dan Curry – Savage Branch

Anyone know what’s going on with Jon & Kate this week? Or where Megan Fox ate dinner last night? How’s Mischa Barton doing after, you know, the thing? How was your sister’s date with that guy? Did she text you from the restaurant? Have you uploaded those pictures of the kids to Flickr yet? Have you pulled up the real time traffic for your commute?

Moving beyond “how to” guides, Hal Niedzviecki’s provocative new book The Peep Diaries is one of the first efforts (that I’m aware of) to marshal the latest evidence and ask a deeper question about this surfeit of information. If technology and the “instant update” have radically changed both our information appetite and our information diet, what are the social consequences?

Starting at the point where pop culture and technology intersect, Niedzviecki catalogs the emergence of what he calls “peep culture” and argues that “we’re all learning to love watching ourselves and our neighbors…. You need to know. You need to be known.” Niedzviecki cites blogging, reality television, celebrity gossip, and social networking as the pillars of peep. He argues that this “perfect storm” of new media developments and new technology has radically changed both the rules and possibilities for the exchange of personal information in society. In aggregating our fractured pop culture this way, Niedzviecki holds a mirror up to our appetites and concerns. “Suddenly, all things once sacred and private… are to be observed and consumed.” As we indulge the impulse both to watch and be watched, Niedzviecki argues that our identities and values are challenged and transformed.

Niedzviecki’s investigation is a must-read. He uses a range of examples (some of which, by way of warning, are mature in theme and content) to suggest that recent changes in our attitudes toward celebrity, privacy, media, and technology are pervasive and transformative. Ultimately his is a thesis about our voracity for information and knowledge in the twenty-first century, and about our changing perception of what constitutes valid or essential knowledge. Take a look at The Peep Diaries, then come back and share your comments about peep culture.

John Jewitt – Savage Branch

I don’t remember how I first heard about Coop, but I’m glad I found it. Author Michael Perry, a native of Wisconsin, tells the story of being on 37 acres of farmland with fallen fences and overgrown fields, wanting to raise pigs and chickens. In the midst of all this, his pregnant wife has plans of delivering their baby at home.

By trade Perry is a writer — the contributing editor to Men’s Health, with articles appearing in other publications, as well. This, as he says in the book, is his "bread and butter." While working on Coop, he was busy writing; occasionally performing in his band; trying to raise his own chickens and pigs; but above all, being a good husband and father.

I love the way Perry writes about his childhood — the many children his parents took in to raise in addition to their own; their simple life on the farm; and the quiet faith that gave them a solid grounding. One example that stands out in my mind is "Sunday Popcorn." Mike’s mother would make popcorn in a pan on the stove while the family gathered around the kitchen table to help with passing plates of food, mixing up Kool-Aid, and salting the popcorn. During the second part of this Sunday night tradition, everyone was allowed to bring a book to read at the table (prohibited at any other time). Even today, members of the grown families still return to their parents’ house to participate in "Sunday Popcorn."

Perry seems like a down-to-earth, "real" person; he doesn’t put on airs, writing about both his mistakes and his achievements. Once in a while he throws in words I’d never heard before (like "tatterdemalion"), but he covers mundane things, as well as humorous stories — being bitten in the butt while wrestling a pig, accidentally killing one of his chickens by dropping a whole bale of chicken wire on top of it, and explaining how his father once drove home with a "giant lactating Holstein tethered to the bumper of his Ford Falcon."

Coupled with his writing from the heart, covering topics such as the birth of his daughter, and the death of a good friend, Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting is a title you won’t want to miss.

Michele Happel – Miller Branch