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The American People in World War II: Freedom from Fear
by David M. Kennedy

ISBN 0195168933 (0-19-516893-3)
Softcover, Oxford Univ Pr

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Book summary:
Even as the New Deal was coping with the Depression, a new menace was developing abroad. Exploiting Germany's own economic burdens, Hitler reached out to the disaffected, turning their aimless discontent into loyal support for his Nazi Party. In Asia, Japan harbored imperial ambitions of its own. The same generation of Americans who battled the Depression eventually had to shoulder arms in another conflict that wreaked worldwide destruction, ushered in the nuclear age, and forever changed their way of life and their country's relationship to the rest of the world.

The American People in World War II--the second installment of Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning Freedom from Fear--explains how the nation agonized over its role in the conflict, how it fought the war, why the United States emerged victorious, and why the consequences of victory were sometimes sweet, sometimes ironic. In a compelling narrative, Kennedy analyzes the determinants of American strategy, the painful choices faced by commanders and statesmen, and the agonies inflicted on the millions of ordinary Americans who were compelled to swallow their fears and face battle as best they could. The American People in World War II is a gripping narrative and an invaluable analysis of the trials and victories through which modern America was formed. [via]
More editions of The American People in World War II: Freedom from Fear:
- The American People in World War II: Freedom from Fear: ISBN 0195168933 (0-19-516893-3)
  Softcover, Oxford Univ Pr
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As I Lay Dying
by William Faulkner

ISBN 067973225X (0-679-73225-X)
Softcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc

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Book summary:
Faulkner's distinctive narrative structures--the uses of multiple points of view and the inner psychological voices of the characters--in one of its most successful incarnations here in As I Lay Dying. In the story, the members of the Bundren family must take the body of Addie, matriarch of the family, to the town where Addie wanted to be buried. Along the way, we listen to each of the members on the macabre pilgrimage, while Faulkner heaps upon them various flavors of disaster. Contains the famous chapter completing the equation about mothers and fish--you'll see. [via]
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Ava's Man
by Rick Bragg

ISBN 0375724443 (0-375-72444-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Book summary:
The same fierce pride and love that animated All Over but the Shoutin' glow in Rick Bragg's new book. In fact, he informs us in the prologue that it was the readers of his bestselling 1997 memoir about his mother's struggle to raise three sons out of dire poverty who told him what he had to write about next. "People asked me where I believed my own momma's heart and backbone came from ... they said I short-shrifted them in the first book." Bragg sets out to make amends in this heartfelt biography of his maternal grandfather, Charlie Bundrum, who with wife Ava nurtured seven children through hard times that never seemed to ease in rural Alabama and Georgia. "He was a tall, bone-thin man who worked with nails in his teeth and a roofing hatchet in a fist as hard as Augusta brick," writes Bragg, "who inspired backwoods legend and the kind of loyalty that still makes old men dip their heads respectfully when they say his name." Charlie's children adored him so much that 40 years after his premature death in 1958 at age 51, Bragg's elderly aunts and mother began to cry when asked about him. Chronicling Charlie's hardscrabble life in the flinty, expressive cadences of working-class Southern speech, Bragg depicts a rugged individual who would find no place in the homogenized New South. The marvelous stories collected from various relatives--Charlie facing down a truckload of mean drunks with a hammer, hatchet, and 12-gauge shotgun, or brewing illegal white whiskey in the woods ("He never sold a sip that he did not test with his own liver")--are not just snapshots of a colorful character. They're also the author's tribute to an oral culture with tenacious roots and powerful significance in the American South. --Wendy Smith [via]
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Bud, Not Buddy
by Christopher Paul Curtis

ISBN 0440413281 (0-440-41328-1)
Softcover, Yearling Books

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"It's funny how ideas are, in a lot of ways they're just like seeds. Both of them start real, real small and then... woop, zoop, sloop... before you can say Jack Robinson, they've gone and grown a lot bigger than you ever thought they could." So figures scrappy 10-year-old philosopher Bud--"not Buddy"--Caldwell, an orphan on the run from abusive foster homes and Hoovervilles in 1930s Michigan. And the idea that's planted itself in his head is that Herman E. Calloway, standup-bass player for the Dusky Devastators of the Depression, is his father.
Guided only by a flier for one of Calloway's shows--a small, blue poster that had mysteriously upset his mother shortly before she died--Bud sets off to track down his supposed dad, a man he's never laid eyes on. And, being 10, Bud-not-Buddy gets into all sorts of trouble along the way, barely escaping a monster-infested woodshed, stealing a vampire's car, and even getting tricked into "busting slob with a real live girl." Christopher Paul Curtis, author of The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963, once again exhibits his skill for capturing the language and feel of an era and creates an authentic, touching, often hilarious voice in little Bud. (Ages 8 to 12) --Paul Hughes [via]
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Bud, Not Buddy
by Not Available

ISBN 043940200X (0-439-40200-X)
Softcover, Scholastic

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"It's funny how ideas are, in a lot of ways they're just like seeds. Both of them start real, real small and then... woop, zoop, sloop... before you can say Jack Robinson, they've gone and grown a lot bigger than you ever thought they could." So figures scrappy 10-year-old philosopher Bud--"not Buddy"--Caldwell, an orphan on the run from abusive foster homes and Hoovervilles in 1930s Michigan. And the idea that's planted itself in his head is that Herman E. Calloway, standup-bass player for the Dusky Devastators of the Depression, is his father.
Guided only by a flier for one of Calloway's shows--a small, blue poster that had mysteriously upset his mother shortly before she died--Bud sets off to track down his supposed dad, a man he's never laid eyes on. And, being 10, Bud-not-Buddy gets into all sorts of trouble along the way, barely escaping a monster-infested woodshed, stealing a vampire's car, and even getting tricked into "busting slob with a real live girl." Christopher Paul Curtis, author of The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963, once again exhibits his skill for capturing the language and feel of an era and creates an authentic, touching, often hilarious voice in little Bud. (Ages 8 to 12) --Paul Hughes [via]
More editions of Bud, Not Buddy:
- Bud, Not Buddy: ISBN 043940200X (0-439-40200-X)
  Softcover, Scholastic
C. Perry Snell: His Place in St. Petersburg, Florida History
by Judy Lowe Wells

ISBN 0977371506 (0-9773715-0-6)
Hardcover, Orange Blossom Press]

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More editions of C. Perry Snell: His Place in St. Petersburg, Florida History:
- C. Perry Snell: His Place in St. Petersburg, Florida History: ISBN 0977371506 (0-9773715-0-6)
  Hardcover, Orange Blossom Press]
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Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945
by David M. Kennedy

ISBN 0195144031 (0-19-514403-1)
Softcover, Oxford Univ Pr

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Book summary:
You can think of Freedom from Fear as the academic's version of The Greatest Generation: like Tom Brokaw, Stanford history professor David M. Kennedy focuses on the years of the Great Depression and the Second World War and how the American people coped with those events. But there the similarities end--and, in terms of the differences, one might begin by noting that the historian's account is over twice the size of the journalist's.
Whereas Brokaw made use of extensive interviews, Kennedy relies on published accounts and primary sources, all meticulously footnoted. This academic rigor, however, does not render the book dull--far from it. Certainly the subject matter is interesting enough in its own right, but Kennedy offers attention-grabbing turns of phrase on nearly every page. He also unleashes some convention-shattering theses, such as his revelation that "the most responsible students of the events of 1929 have been unable to demonstrate an appreciable cause-and-effect linkage between the Crash and the Depression" and his subsequent argument that, although it made order out of chaos, the New Deal did not reverse the Depression--that, he says, was the war's doing. All in all, Freedom from Fear compares favorably to its companions in the multivolume Oxford History of the United States in both its comprehensive heft and its vivid readability. --Ron Hogan [via]
More editions of Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945:
- Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945: ISBN 0195038347 (0-19-503834-7)
  Hardcover, Oxford Univ Pr
- Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945: ISBN 0195144031 (0-19-514403-1)
  Softcover, Oxford Univ Pr
Gardener
by Sarah Stewart, David Small

ISBN 0374425183 (0-374-42518-3)
Softcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux

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Book summary:
By the author-and-illustrator team of the bestselling The Library

Lydia Grace Finch brings a suitcase full of seeds to the big gray city, where she goes to stay with her Uncle Jim, a cantankerous baker. There she initiates a gradual transformation, bit by bit brightening the shop and bringing smiles to customers' faces with the flowers she grows. But it is in a secret place that Lydia Grace works on her masterpiece -- an ambitious rooftop garden -- which she hopes will make even Uncle Jim smile. Sarah Stewart introduces readers to an engaging and determined young heroine, whose story is told through letters written home, while David Small's illustrations beautifully evoke the Depression-era setting.

The Gardener is a 1997 New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of the Year and a 1998 Caldecott Honor Book.
[via]
More editions of Gardener:
- Gardener: ISBN 0374325170 (0-374-32517-0)
  Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
- The Gardener: ISBN 0374425183 (0-374-42518-3)
  Softcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
The Gardener
by David Small, Sarah Stewart

ISBN 031236749X (0-312-36749-X)
Softcover, Square Fish

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More editions of The Gardener:
- The Gardener: ISBN 031236749X (0-312-36749-X)
  Softcover, Square Fish
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The Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck

ISBN 141770392X (1-4177-0392-X)
Hardcover, Bt Bound

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Book summary:
When The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939, America, still recovering from the Great Depression, came face to face with itself in a startling, lyrical way. John Steinbeck gathered the country's recent shames and devastations--the Hoovervilles, the desperate, dirty children, the dissolution of kin, the oppressive labor conditions--in the Joad family. Then he set them down on a westward-running road, local dialect and all, for the world to acknowledge. For this marvel of observation and perception, he won the Pulitzer in 1940.
The prize must have come, at least in part, because alongside the poverty and dispossession, Steinbeck chronicled the Joads' refusal, even inability, to let go of their faltering but unmistakable hold on human dignity. Witnessing their degeneration from Oklahoma farmers to a diminished band of migrant workers is nothing short of crushing. The Joads lose family members to death and cowardice as they go, and are challenged by everything from weather to the authorities to the California locals themselves. As Tom Joad puts it: "They're a-workin' away at our spirits. They're a tryin' to make us cringe an' crawl like a whipped bitch. They tryin' to break us. Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on'y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin' a sock at a cop. They're workin' on our decency."
The point, though, is that decency remains intact, if somewhat battle-scarred, and this, as much as the depression and the plight of the "Okies," is a part of American history. When the California of their dreams proves to be less than edenic, Ma tells Tom: "You got to have patience. Why, Tom--us people will go on livin' when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we're the people that live. They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, we're the people--we go on." It's almost as if she's talking about the very novel she inhabits, for Steinbeck's characters, more than most literary creations, do go on. They continue, now as much as ever, to illuminate and humanize an era for generations of readers who, thankfully, have no experiential point of reference for understanding the depression. The book's final, haunting image of Rose of Sharon--Rosasharn, as they call her--the eldest Joad daughter, forcing the milk intended for her stillborn baby onto a starving stranger, is a lesson on the grandest scale. "'You got to,'" she says, simply. And so do we all. --Melanie Rehak [via]
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John Philip Duck
by Patricia Polacco

ISBN 0399242627 (0-399-24262-7)
Hardcover, Philomel Books

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Book summary:
Edward loves his pet duck more than anything. He raised it from a baby, and now it follows him everywhere&150even to the big fancy hotel in Memphis where he works with his father. Everyone at the Peabody loves to watch that little duck do tricks; why, it can even waddle up and down in time to a John Philip Sousa march, which is why Edward decides to name it John Philip.
But one day the hotel owner finds John Philip in his lobby fountain and he is NOT amused. Until Edward has an idea. What if he can train a bevy of ducks to march along behind him, swim in the fountain all day, and then march out every evening? If Edward can do that, the owner tells him, he and John Philip will have a permanent place at the Peabody. But can it really be done?
Based on the real-life tradition of the Hotel Peabody Ducks, Patricia Polacco's latest picture book is one of her most charming to date.

[via]
More editions of John Philip Duck:
- John Philip Duck: ISBN 0399242627 (0-399-24262-7)
  Hardcover, Philomel Books
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John Steinbeck
by John Steinbeck

ISBN 1883011159 (1-883011-15-9)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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5 stories in one the grapes of wrath the moon is down cannery row east of eden of mice and men [via]
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John Steinbeck's the Grapes of Wrath
by Frank Galati

ISBN 0140482326 (0-14-048232-6)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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- John Steinbeck's the Grapes of Wrath: ISBN 0140482326 (0-14-048232-6)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath
by Harold Bloom

ISBN 0791082393 (0-7910-8239-3)
Hardcover, Facts on File

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Book summary:
Harold Bloom writes, "The Grapes of Wrath is a flawed but permanent American book." John Steinbeck's novel, still popular a half-century after its original publication, is the focus of this edition of Bloom's Notes. Along with a collection of some of the best criticism available on his work, this text includes a brief biography of the author, structural and thematic analysis, an index of themes and ideas, and more. This series is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School. These texts are the ideal aid for all students of literature, presenting concise, easy-to-understand biographical, critical, and bibliographical information on a specific literary work. Also provided are multiple sources for book reports and term papers with a wealth of information on literary works, authors, and major characters. [via]
More editions of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath:
- John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath: ISBN 0791082393 (0-7910-8239-3)
  Hardcover, Facts on File
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John Steinbeck's the Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck

ISBN 0671006924 (0-671-00692-4)
Softcover, Monarch Notes

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- John Steinbeck's the Grapes of Wrath: ISBN 0671006924 (0-671-00692-4)
  Softcover, Monarch Notes
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Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families
by Walker Evans, James Agee

ISBN 1900828154 (1-900828-15-4)
Hardcover, Distributed Art Pub Inc

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Book summary:
Just what kind of book is Let Us Now Praise Famous Men? It contains many things: poems; confessional reveries; disquisitions on the proper way to listen to Beethoven; snippets of dialogue, both real and imagined; a lengthy response to a survey from the Partisan Review; exhaustive catalogs of furniture, clothing, objects, and smells. And then there are Walker Evans's famously stark portraits of depression-era sharecroppers--photographs that both stand apart from and reinforce James Agee's words.
Assigned to do a story for Fortune magazine about sharecroppers in the Deep South, Agee and Evans spent four weeks living with a poor white tenant family, winning the Burroughs's trust and immersing themselves in a sharecropper's daily existence. Given a first draft of the resulting article, the editors at Fortune quite understandably threw up their hands--as did several other editors who subsequently worked with a later book-length manuscript. The writing was contrary. It refused to accommodate itself to the reader, and at times it positively bristled with hostility. (What other book could take Marx as the epigraph and then announce: "These words are quoted here to mislead those who will be misled by them"?) Response to the book was puzzled or unfriendly, and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men sputtered out of print only a few short years after its publication. It took the 1960s, and a vogue for social justice, to bring Agee's masterwork the audience it deserved.
Yet the book is far more interesting--aesthetically and morally--than the sort of guilty-liberal tract for which it is often mistaken. On an existential level, Agee's text is a deeply felt examination of what it means to suffer, to struggle to live in spite of suffering. On a personal level, it is the painful, beautifully written portrait of one man's obsession. In its collaboration with Evans's photographs, the book is also a groundbreaking experiment in form. In the end, however, it is more than merely the sum of its parts. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is, quite simply, a book unlike any other, simmering with anger and beauty and mystery. --Mary Park [via]
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Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families
by James Agee, Evans Walker

ISBN 0345276965 (0-345-27696-5)
Softcover, Ballantine Books

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Book summary:
Just what kind of book is Let Us Now Praise Famous Men? It contains many things: poems; confessional reveries; disquisitions on the proper way to listen to Beethoven; snippets of dialogue, both real and imagined; a lengthy response to a survey from the Partisan Review; exhaustive catalogs of furniture, clothing, objects, and smells. And then there are Walker Evans's famously stark portraits of depression-era sharecroppers--photographs that both stand apart from and reinforce James Agee's words.
Assigned to do a story for Fortune magazine about sharecroppers in the Deep South, Agee and Evans spent four weeks living with a poor white tenant family, winning the Burroughs's trust and immersing themselves in a sharecropper's daily existence. Given a first draft of the resulting article, the editors at Fortune quite understandably threw up their hands--as did several other editors who subsequently worked with a later book-length manuscript. The writing was contrary. It refused to accommodate itself to the reader, and at times it positively bristled with hostility. (What other book could take Marx as the epigraph and then announce: "These words are quoted here to mislead those who will be misled by them"?) Response to the book was puzzled or unfriendly, and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men sputtered out of print only a few short years after its publication. It took the 1960s, and a vogue for social justice, to bring Agee's masterwork the audience it deserved.
Yet the book is far more interesting--aesthetically and morally--than the sort of guilty-liberal tract for which it is often mistaken. On an existential level, Agee's text is a deeply felt examination of what it means to suffer, to struggle to live in spite of suffering. On a personal level, it is the painful, beautifully written portrait of one man's obsession. In its collaboration with Evans's photographs, the book is also a groundbreaking experiment in form. In the end, however, it is more than merely the sum of its parts. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is, quite simply, a book unlike any other, simmering with anger and beauty and mystery. --Mary Park [via]
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Let the Circle Be Unbroken
by Mildred D. Taylor

ISBN 0140348921 (0-14-034892-1)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
"This dramatic sequel to Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is a powerful novel . . .capable of touching readers of any age." --The Christian Science Monitor
[via]
More editions of Let the Circle Be Unbroken:
- Let the Circle Be Unbroken: ISBN 0803747489 (0-8037-4748-9)
  Hardcover, Dial Books for Young Readers
- Let the Circle Be Unbroken: ISBN 0140348921 (0-14-034892-1)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Mientras Agonizo / As I Lay Dying
by William Faulkner, Javier Coy, Mariano Antolin Rato

ISBN 8437608341 (84-376-0834-1)
Softcover, Catedra Ediciones

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- Mientras Agonizo / As I Lay Dying: ISBN 8437608341 (84-376-0834-1)
  Softcover, Catedra Ediciones
Neon Wilderness
by Nelson Algren, Tom Carson

ISBN 1583225501 (1-58322-550-1)
Softcover, Seven Stories Pr

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More editions of Neon Wilderness:
- Neon Wilderness: ISBN 1888363215 (1-888363-21-5)
  Softcover, Seven Stories Pr
- Neon Wilderness: ISBN 1583225501 (1-58322-550-1)
  Softcover, Seven Stories Pr
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Novels 1930-1935
by William Faulkner, Joseph Blotner

ISBN 0940450267 (0-940450-26-7)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
Between 1930 and 1935, William Faulkner came into full possession of the genius and creativity that made him America's greatest writer of the twentieth century. "As I Lay Dying" is a dark comedy, full of horror and compassion, of a rural Mississippi family bearing the corpse of their matriarch to burial in town. "Sanctuary," a violent novel of sex and social class that moves from Mississippi back roads to the flesh-pots of Memphis, features a sadistic gangster named Popeye and a debutante with an affinity for evil. "Light in August," a near-religious vision of the hopeful stubbornness of ordinary life, is perhaps Faulkner's most moving work. "Pylon," a tale of barnstorming aviators, examines the bonds of loyalty and desire among three men and a woman. All are presented in restored texts as part of The Library of America's new, authoritative edition of Faulker's complete works. [via]
More editions of Novels 1930-1935:
- Novels 1930-1935: ISBN 0940450267 (0-940450-26-7)
  Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
The Road to Perdition
by Max Allen Collins, Bob Lappan, Richard Piers Rayner

ISBN 1563894491 (1-56389-449-1)
Softcover, Vertigo

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Book summary:
Rock Island, Illinois -- 1929. Michael O'Sullivan is a good father and a family man -- and also the chief enforcer for John Looney, the town's Irish Godfather of crime. As Looney's "Angel of Death," O'Sullivan has done the bidding of Chicago gangsters Al Capone and Frank Nitti as well -- but when a gangland execution spells tragedy for the O'Sullivan family, a grieving father and his adolescent son find themselves on a winding road fo treachery, revenge, and revelation.
Writer Max Allan Collins is a two-time winner of the Private Eye Writers of America's Shamus Award for his Nathan Keller historical thrillers "True Detective" and "Stolen Away." Award-winning artist Richard Piers Raynner spent four years working on the artwork for "Road to Perdition," a labor of love that has resulted in some of the most stunningly realistic drawings of 1930s Chicago ever seen on printed page. [via]
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A Room of My Own
by Ann Tatlock

ISBN 0764220233 (0-7642-2023-3)
Softcover, Baker Pub Group

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More editions of A Room of My Own:
- A Room of My Own: ISBN 0764220233 (0-7642-2023-3)
  Softcover, Baker Pub Group
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Sister Carrie
by Theodore Dreiser

ISBN 1417934743 (1-4179-3474-3)
Softcover, Kessinger Pub Co

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Book summary:
Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser's revolutionary first novel, was published in 1900--sort of. The story of Carrie Meeber, an 18-year-old country girl who moves to Chicago and becomes a kept woman, was strong stuff at the turn of the century, and what Dreiser's wary publisher released was a highly expurgated version. Times change, and we now have a restored "author's cut" of Sister Carrie that shows how truly ahead of his time Dreiser was. First and foremost, he has written an astute, nonmoralizing account of a woman and her limited options in late-19th-century America. That's impressive in and of itself, but Dreiser doesn't stop there. Digging deeply into the psychological underpinnings of his characters, he gives us people who are often strangers to themselves, drifting numbly until fate pushes them on a path they can later neither defend nor even remember choosing.
Dreiser's story unfolds in the measured cadences of an earlier era. This sometimes works brilliantly as we follow the choices, small and large, that lead some characters to doom and others to glory. On the other hand, the middle chapters--of which there are many--do drag somewhat, even when one appreciates Dreiser's intentions. If you can make it through the sagging midsection, however, you'll be rewarded by Sister Carrie's last 150 pages, which depict the harrowing downward spiral of one of the book's central characters. Here Dreiser portrays with brutal power how the wrong decision--or lack of decision--can lay waste to a life. --Rebecca Gleason [via]
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Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, Twelve Men
by Theodore Dreiser, Richard Lehan

ISBN 0940450410 (0-940450-41-0)
Hardcover, Library of America

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A master of naturalism, Theodore Dreiser brought the American novel into the twentieth century. Fascinated by the city street, its parade of fashion and its threat of poverty and degradation, his journalistic eye lets us see as they were first seen the now familiar realities of modern living. "Sister Carrie" traces the fate of a small-town girl drawn into the brutal metropolitan worlds of Chicago and New York, and Sinclair Lewis called it "the first fresh air since Mark Twain and Whitman." "Jennie Gerhardt"'s vital but naive heroine emerges superior to the succession of men who exploit her. With honest emotion and respect for unvarnished truth, "Twelve Men" muses on the exemplary lives of ordinary men in search of lasting values with which to face the new century. Together, these three works exemplify the energy, originality, and genius of one of the great modern American writers. [via]
More editions of Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, Twelve Men:
- Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, Twelve Men: ISBN 0940450410 (0-940450-41-0)
  Hardcover, Library of America
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Truth About Sparrows
by Marian Hale

ISBN 0805075844 (0-8050-7584-4)
Hardcover, Henry Holt & Co

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Book summary:
"The Wynns are an unforgettable family. The details of their struggle to survive the Great Depression will linger long after the last page has been read."-Ann M. Martin, winner of the Newbery Honor for A Corner of the Universe

A stunning debut novel about
the true meaning of home

Sadie Wynn doesn't want a new life; her old one suits her just fine. But times are hard in drought-plagued Missouri, and Daddy thinks they'll be better off in Texas. Sadie hates this strange new place, where even children must work at the cannery to help make ends meet and people are rude to her disabled father.

Yet when trouble comes, it is the kindness of these new neighbors that helps the family make it through. And no one helps more than Dollie, a red-headed chatterbox of a girl who just might become a good friend-if Sadie gives her half a chance.

The Truth About Sparrows is a 2005 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
[via]
More editions of Truth About Sparrows:
- Truth About Sparrows: ISBN 0805075844 (0-8050-7584-4)
  Hardcover, Henry Holt & Co
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Water for Elephants: Library Edition
by Sara Gruen

ISBN 1565125606 (1-56512-560-6)
Softcover, Algonquin Books

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Book summary:
Jacob Jankowski says: "I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other." At the beginning of Water for Elephants, he is living out his days in a nursing home, hating every second of it. His life wasn't always like this, however, because Jacob ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. It wasn't a romantic, carefree decision, to be sure. His parents were killed in an auto accident one week before he was to sit for his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. He buried his parents, learned that they left him nothing because they had mortgaged everything to pay his tuition, returned to school, went to the exams, and didn't write a single word. He walked out without completing the test and wound up on a circus train. The circus he joins, in Depression-era America, is second-rate at best. With Ringling Brothers as the standard, Benzini Brothers is far down the scale and pale by comparison.
Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob's life with this circus. Sara Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the squalid, filthy, brutish circumstances in which he finds himself. The animals are mangy, underfed or fed rotten food, and abused. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is put in charge of the "menagerie" and all its ills. Uncle Al, the circus impresario, is a self-serving, venal creep who slaps people around because he can. August, the animal trainer, is a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose occasional flights into madness and brutality often have Jacob as their object. Jacob is the only person in the book who has a handle on a moral compass and as his reward he spends most of the novel beaten, broken, concussed, bleeding, swollen and hungover. He is the self-appointed Protector of the Downtrodden, and... he falls in love with Marlena, crazy August's wife. Not his best idea.
The most interesting aspect of the book is all the circus lore that Gruen has so carefully researched. She has all the right vocabulary: grifters, roustabouts, workers, cooch tent, rubes, First of May, what the band plays when there's trouble, Jamaican ginger paralysis, life on a circus train, set-up and take-down, being run out of town by the "revenooers" or the cops, and losing all your hooch. There is one glorious passage about Marlena and Rosie, the bull elephant, that truly evokes the magic a circus can create. It is easy to see Marlena's and Rosie's pink sequins under the Big Top and to imagine their perfect choreography as they perform unbelievable stunts. The crowd loves it--and so will the reader. The ending is absolutely ludicrous and really quite lovely. --Valerie Ryan [via]
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The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
by Tim Egan

ISBN 0618773479 (0-618-77347-9)
Softcover, Mariner Books

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More editions of The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl:
- The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl: ISBN 0618773479 (0-618-77347-9)
  Softcover, Mariner Books
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The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
by Timothy Egan

ISBN 061834697X (0-618-34697-X)
Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin

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"The Worst Hard Time is an epic story of blind hope and endurance almost beyond belief; it is also, as Tim Egan has told it, a riveting tale of bumptious charlatans, conmen, and tricksters, environmental arrogance and hubris, political chicanery, and a ruinous ignorance of nature's ways. Egan has reached across the generations and brought us the people who played out the drama in this devastated land, and uses their voices to tell the story as well as it could ever be told." Marq de Villiers, author of Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource

The dust storms that terrorized America's High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since, and the stories of the people that held on have never been fully told. Pulitzer Prizewinning New York Times journalist and author Timothy Egan follows a half-dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, going from sod homes to new framed houses to huddling in basements with the windows sealed by damp sheets in a futile effort to keep the dust out. He follows their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black blizzards, crop failure, and the deaths of loved ones. Drawing on the voices of those who stayed and survivedthose who, now in their eighties and nineties, will soon carry their memories to the graveEgan tells a story of endurance and heroism against the backdrop of the Great Depression.

As only great history can, Egan's book captures the very voice of the times: its grit, pathos, and abiding courage. Combining the human drama of Isaac's Storm with the sweep of The American People in the Great Depression, The Worst Hard Time is a lasting and important work of American history.

Timothy Egan is a national enterprise reporter for the New York Times. He is the author of four books and the recipient of several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

As one who, as a young reporter, survived and reported on the great Dust Bowl disaster, I recommend this book as a dramatic, exciting, and accurate account of that incredible and deadly phenomenon. This is cant-put-it-down history. Walter Cronkite

"The Worst Hard Time is wonderful: ribbed like surf, and battering us with a national epic that ranks second only to the Revolution and the Civil War. Egan knows this and convincingly claims recognition for his subjectas we as a country finally accomplished, first with Lewis and Clark, and then for 'the greatest generation,' many of whose members of course were also survivors of the hardships of the Great Depression. This is a banner, heartfelt but informative book, full of energy, research, and compassion." Edward Hoagland, author of Compass Points: How I Lived

"Here's a terrific true storywho could put it down? Egan humanizes Dust Bowl history by telling the vivid stories of the families who stayed behind. One loves the people and admires Egan's vigor and sympathy." Annie Dillard, author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

"The American West got lucky when Tim Egan focused his acute powers of observation on its past and present. Egan's remarkable combination of clear analysis and warm empathy anchors his portrait of the women and men who held on to their placesand held on to their soulsthrough the nearly unimaginable miseries of the Dust Bowl. This book provides the finest mental exercise for people wanting to deepen, broaden, and strengthen their thinking about the relationship of human beings to this earth." Patricia N. Limerick, author of The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West

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More editions of The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl:
- The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl: ISBN 061834697X (0-618-34697-X)
  Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin
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Year Down Yonder
by Richard Peck

ISBN 0142300705 (0-14-230070-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Grandma Dowdel's back! She's just as feisty and terrifying and goodhearted as she was in Richard Peck's A Long Way from Chicago, and every bit as funny. In the first book, a Newbery Honor winner, Grandma's rampages were seen through the eyes of her grandson Joey, who, with his sister, Mary Alice, was sent down from Chicago for a week every summer to visit. But now it's 1937 and Joey has gone off to work for the Civilian Conservation Corps, while 15-year-old Mary Alice has to go stay with Grandma alone--for a whole year, maybe longer. From the very first moment when she arrives at the depot clutching her Philco portable radio and her cat, Bootsie, Mary Alice knows it won't be easy. And it's not. She has to sleep alone in the attic, attend a hick town school where in spite of her worn-out coat she's "the rich girl from Chicago," and be an accomplice in Grandma's outrageous schemes to run the town her own way--and do good while nobody's looking. But being Grandma's sidekick is always interesting, and by the end of the year, Mary Alice has grown to see the formidable love in the heart of her formidable Grandma.
Peck is at his best with these hilarious stories that rest solidly within the American literary tradition of Mark Twain and Bret Harte. Teachers will cherish them as great read-alouds, and older teens will gain historical perspective from this lively picture of the depression years in small-town America. (Ages 12 and older) --Patty Campbell [via]
More editions of Year Down Yonder:
- Year Down Yonder: ISBN 0803725183 (0-8037-2518-3)
  Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
- Year Down Yonder: ISBN 0142300705 (0-14-230070-5)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
You Can't Go Home Again
by Thomas Wolfe

ISBN 0899662943 (0-89966-294-3)
Hardcover, Buccaneer Books

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More editions of You Can't Go Home Again:
- You Can't Go Home Again: ISBN 0606010041 (0-606-01004-1)
  Hardcover, Demco Media
- You Can't Go Home Again: ISBN 0899662943 (0-89966-294-3)
  Hardcover, Buccaneer Books

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La Jardinera / The Gardener
by Sarah Stewart, David Small

ISBN 9802573086 (980-257-308-6)
Softcover, Ediciones Ekare

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- La Jardinera / The Gardener: ISBN 9802573086 (980-257-308-6)
  Softcover, Ediciones Ekare
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Las Uvas De LA Ira
by John Steinbeck, Maria Coy

ISBN 0142002534 (0-14-200253-4)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Las uvas de la ira es un hito en la literatura norteamericana que explora el conflicto entre ricos y pobres, analiza la reacción feroz de un hombre contra la injusticia y el estoicismo de una mujer igualmente heróica, y refleja los horrores de la Gran Depresión. Aunque sigue la migración de miles personas del Dust Bowl, Las uvas de la ira se enfoca en la historia de una familia de Oklahoma, los Joads, echados de su hogar y forzados a viajar rumbo a esa Tierra Prometida que era por ese entoncesy que de algun modo sigue siendoCalifornia. De sus desventurasen un país dividido surge un drama sobre la dignidad humana, a un tiempo trágico y majestuoso en su grandeza su valentía moral.

Publicada por primera vez en 1939, la novela reflejó su época como Uncle Tom's Cabin reflejó los años antes de la Guerra Civil norteamericana. John Steinbeck, un escritor que simpatizaba con la crítica fascista y comunista, insistió en que la versión integral del "Himno de batalla de la República" fuese impresa en la primera edición del libro, que adopta en su título unas palabras del primer verso: "Está pisoteando la vendimia donde se conservan las uvas de la ira." La crónica de Steinbeck sobre el avergonzante maltrato de las clases sociales de los años treinta es tal vez el más "americano" de todos los clásicos norteamericanos.

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More editions of Las Uvas De LA Ira:
- Las Uvas De LA Ira: ISBN 0142002534 (0-14-200253-4)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Las Uvas De La Ira/ the Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck

ISBN 8420676357 (84-206-7635-7)
Softcover, Grupo Anaya Comercial

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Las uvas de la ira es un hito en la literatura norteamericana que explora el conflicto entre ricos y pobres, analiza la reacción feroz de un hombre contra la injusticia y el estoicismo de una mujer igualmente heróica, y refleja los horrores de la Gran Depresión. Aunque sigue la migración de miles personas del Dust Bowl, Las uvas de la ira se enfoca en la historia de una familia de Oklahoma, los Joads, echados de su hogar y forzados a viajar rumbo a esa Tierra Prometida que era por ese entoncesy que de algun modo sigue siendoCalifornia. De sus desventurasen un país dividido surge un drama sobre la dignidad humana, a un tiempo trágico y majestuoso en su grandeza su valentía moral.

Publicada por primera vez en 1939, la novela reflejó su época como Uncle Tom's Cabin reflejó los años antes de la Guerra Civil norteamericana. John Steinbeck, un escritor que simpatizaba con la crítica fascista y comunista, insistió en que la versión integral del "Himno de batalla de la República" fuese impresa en la primera edición del libro, que adopta en su título unas palabras del primer verso: "Está pisoteando la vendimia donde se conservan las uvas de la ira." La crónica de Steinbeck sobre el avergonzante maltrato de las clases sociales de los años treinta es tal vez el más "americano" de todos los clásicos norteamericanos.

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More editions of Las Uvas De La Ira/ the Grapes of Wrath:
- Las Uvas De La Ira/ the Grapes of Wrath: ISBN 8420676357 (84-206-7635-7)
  Softcover, Grupo Anaya Comercial

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