• Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
• Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami
• The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
• Intution by Allegra Goodman
• Mapping Human History by Steve Olson
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• Collapse by Jared Diamond
• The Human Stain by Philip Roth
• March by Geraldine Brooks

Publishers Weekly: "Four children living in northern Ontario struggle to stay together after their parents die in an auto accident in Lawson's fascinating debut, a compelling and lovely study of sibling rivalry and family dynamics in which the land literally becomes a character."   Kirkus Reviews: "A finely crafted debut ... conveys an astonishing intensity of emotion, almost Proustian in its sense of loss and regret."  Washington Post: "Crow Lake is the kind of book that keeps you reading well past midnight; you grieve when it's over.  Then you start pressing it on friends."  Named by both the New York Times and the Washington Post as one of the best books of the year.

Resources for Reading and Discussion

An interview with Lawson about Crow Lake. There are lots of insights here, so be sure to read this one.

Lawson apparently values her privacy because there is surprisingly little information about her on the web. Here is the best biographicial information I could find. You must page down to the bottom to see it.

A short video of Lawson discussing her second novel, On the Other Side of the Bridge, if you want to hear the sound of her voice.

A New York Times review

Lawson uses pond creatures as symbols throughout the book. Here are a few images:

• The water strider ("pond skater"), which lives on the surface of the water.
• Kate found a dead water boatman that was caked with engine oil. Here are two photos of a water boatman, which hangs upside down from the water surface:   1   2
• Photos of a fourth grade science class exploring a pond and the creatures that live in it. There is a photo of the beetle that is encased in a thin bubble of air when it goes beneath the water, but it isn't very clear. You need to page down several times to see it.
• A snapping turtle. Page down to see it. ("Their shells are too small... It makes them nervous").

In March we traditionally discuss the book chosen by Writers & Books for their "If All of Rochester Read the Same Book..." program. Their 2008 book was Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, which follows the lives of four Moroccans who cross the Straits of Gibraltar on a lifeboat in order to immigrate to Spain. This LAVA meeting was open to the public and was listed in the Writers & Books calendar.

Resources for Reading and Discussion

Writers & Books always provides a good interview with the author and a great discussion guide.

A Satellite photo of Spain (top) and northern Africa (bottom) separated by the narrow Strait of Gibraltar.

A closer view of the Strait of Gibralter, with Spain at the top left. The narrow finger of land at the top of the Strait on the Spanish side is the Rock of Gibraltar. Anyone trying to cross the Strait without being seen would avoid it because it is a British military base.

An exaggerated relief map of the Strait with the Rock of Gibraltar clearly visible at the upper left. I think the isolated peak on the other side of the Strait in the upper right is the other half of what the ancient Greeks called the Pillars of Hercules.

I can't be certain, but the photo at the bottom of this page probably shows a tourist on top of the Rock of Gibraltar looking at Africa across the Strait.

Laila Lalami's web site

Laila Lalami's blog

A glossary of Arabic words used in this book

Several types of garments are mentioned in the book:

• The jellaba is worn by both men and women and does not have religious overtones.
• The hijab is worn only by women and is associated with stricter forms of Islam:
• This isn't mentioned in the book, but the former Taliban government in Afghanistan forced women to wear a far more restrictive garment called the burka.

One of Lalami's fans suggested music to accompany each chapter in the book. Here are two of them:

• For chapter called "The Fanatic," he suggests this album because it has the kind of refined music that a middle-age, upper-class Moroccan would listen to. Click on the "Track Listing" tab to hear samples.
• For "Better Luck Tomorrow" he suggests the first song in this album by a first-generation Moroccan immigrant in France. "This song is essentially a warning to would-be immigrants, telling them what really awaits them on the other side, in Europe." The album seems to be a blend of Moroccan and western pop music. Page down to listen to samples.

In 1854 London suffered a cholera epidemic that was initially blamed on the smelly air. Pioneering physician John Snow brought the epidemic to a halt by tracing the actual cause, a neighborhood water pump that was emitting contaminated water. Publishers Weekly: "Against considerable resistance from the medical and bureaucratic establishment, Snow persisted and, with hard work and groundbreaking research, helped to bring about a fundamental change in our understanding of disease and its spread. Johnson weaves in overlapping ideas about the growth of civilization, the organization of cities, and evolution to thrilling effect... an illuminating and satisfying read." Washington Post: "By turns a medical thriller, detective story and paean to city life, Johnson's account of the outbreak and its modern implications is a true page-turner." This best-seller was a New York Times Notable Book.

Resources for Reading and Discussion

The Dept of Epidemiology at UCLA has a comprehensive web site devoted to John Snow.

Photos of the neighborhood where the pump stood

The John Snow Society

Steven Johnson's web site

A New York Times review

A photo of a cholera bacterium

Page 195 of the book notes that Snow modified his map with Voronoi diagram techniques, resulting in an amoeba-like line enclosing the area that was closer by foot to the Broad Street pump than to any other pump. The fourth diagram from the top of this page (the small gray diagram) shows that map. The third diagram from the top shows a map similar to the one in our book, but it provides much more detail if you click on it twice. Using the sliders, go to the extreme right side of the map and look for Dean Street (partly in white and partly in yellow) where Karl Marx and his family were living at the time of the cholera outbreak. When Snow and Whitehead were roaming the neighborhood during the epidemic, it is quite possible they passed Marx on the street. No one in the Marx family died during that epidemic, but the area was so unhealthy in general that only three of the seven Marx children lived to be adults.

When he first began administering chloroform to women during childbirth, Snow faced opposition from religious conservatives who quoted Genesis to support the belief that women were required to suffer during childbirth to pay for Eve's sin. When Queen Victoria asked Snow to provide chloroform when she gave birth, much of that opposition melted away. Here is a light-hearted version of that episode from the Medical Journal of Australia.

Toward the upper left of the Snow's map is Carnaby Steet. Does that ring a bell? In the 60s, Carnaby Street was the center of youth culture in Britain. If you had a new band and wanted to be noticed, you played in the bars on Carnaby Street. If you wanted to buy "mod" clothing, you shopped on Carnaby Street. If you were the Beatles, you did both.

A worker at research lab seemingly discovers a powerful weapon in the fight against cancer. Did he deliberately suppress evidence that disputes his claim? Do those who attack him have ulterior motives? Layer by layer, the author peels apart her characters' personalities and motivations. Kirkus Reviews: "There's something of the breadth and generosity of a Victorian 'three-decker' novel in the skill with which Goodman threads her ingenious plot through an ambitious mobilization of terse confrontations and detail-crammed scenes...Top-notch in every respect. A superlative novel." The Guardian: "Believe it or not, a thriller and a page-turner about scientific fraud. Brilliant." Designated as one of the best books of 2006 by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Resources for Reading and Discussion

An interview with Goodman

A review in the Washington Post by Geraldine Brooks, the author of March

Review in the Boston Globe

A review in Slate by a professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School

Cliff's and Feng's official lab report probably looked a lot like this one, which also involves cancer experiments with "nude mice." If you are squeamish, be forewarned that it has photos.

Allegra Goodman's web site

This book covers recent scientific discoveries that tell us where and when the first humans appeared in Africa and how we spread from there across the globe. In evolutionary terms, all this happened quite recently. All humans are, quite literally, cousins. Genetic differences among the human "races" are amazingly small; the genetic variation among chimpanzees on one hillside is greater than among all the humans on earth. Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences: "Beautifully written and carefully researched." A Discover Best Science Book of the Year. Olson has worked for the National Academy of Sciences and has been a science journalist for more than 20 years.

Resources for Reading and Discussion

The Cave of Lascaux in France, with its spectacular prehistoric art.

The web site for a comparative linguistics project that deals with languages and how they are related. The "Interactive Maps" link on the left side of that page is especially interesting.

Two sound clips of a language with clicking sounds. I assume this is the "Bushmen" language, spoken in south-western Africa, which was discussed in chapter 8. When you get to this page, search for "clicks1.wav" and "clicks2.wav" and then click on each of those two links.

Olson co-authored an article in Nature magazine that provides statistical evidence that everyone on earth is directly descended from an unknown individual who lived surprisingly recently. You have to pay to see the whole article but fortunately there is an NPR interview with Olson that summarizes it. This Washington Post article provides a good summary also.

Echoing the biblical story of Cain and Abel, this classic novel tells the story of sibling rivalry between twin brothers. Set in the Salinas Valley of California at the beginning of the 20th century, it is also a depiction of a particular time and place; one of the proposed names for the novel was The Salinas Valley. Steinbeck considered this to be his greatest novel (even though The Grapes of Wrath is the one that most people remember).

Resources for Reading and Discussion

Overwhelmed students are glad that classics like East of Eden get their own SparkNotes page.

Literary critics have been frustrated by the uneven quality of Steinbeck's work. Here is an excellent discussion of that topic in the New York Review of Books. Be sure to read the section on East of Eden, which is about three-quarters of the way down. It has a truly unexpected insight into the origin of Kate's character

Steinbeck's mother was Olive Hamilton in the book and also in real life. All of the other Hamilton characters in the book are also based on actual relatives of Steinbeck. Steinbeck's grandfather, Samuel Hamilton, really did invent an improved threshing machine.

In chapter 33, section 3, paragraph 3, Tom lights a Rochester lamp, which was an improved kerosene lamp invented and manufactured here in Rochester, NY. Steinbeck demonstrated that he understood what made this lamp unique (the wick was tubular instead of flat) by mentioning that the "flame ran quickly around the Rochester wick."

"A fascinating comparative study of societies that have, sometimes fatally, undermined their own ecological foundations." Boston Globe: "Extremely persuasive . . . replete with fascinating stories, a treasure trove of historical anecdotes [and] haunting statistics." Seattle Times: "Diamond's most influential gift may be his ability to write about geopolitical and environmental systems in ways that don't just educate and provoke, but entertain." Diamond, who is a professor of geography at UCLA, won the Pulitzer Prize for his earlier book Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Resources for Reading and Discussion

A 74 minute lecture by Diamond called How Societies Fail - and Sometimes Succeed. It summarizes the main points of the book.

A review by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker

An unfriendly review of Collapse in the New York Times

Five photos of Easter Island statues:   1   2   3   4   5  

A satellite image of the tiny island of Tikopia (chapter 9), where humans have successfully lived for 3000 years despite its size and isolation. Click the image twice to see more detail.

The Anasazi ruins in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico

A computerized reconstruction of the Chaco Canyon building complex shown above

Diamond says the high level of ecological awareness in the Netherlands might be due to the fact that much of that country is below sea level. The Dutch met the challenge of keeping ocean storms from flooding their country by building a series of storm surge barriers, shown here in yellow. The gates are open in calm weather and closed during severe storms, which can temporarily raise the ocean to disasterous heights because of changes in atmospheric pressure. Here is one section of the Dutch storm barrier in calm weather. Here is a section of it in stormy weather.

The main character of this PEN/Faulkner Award-winning book is an elderly professor named Silk who is forced to resign because of a remark that is wrongly interpreted as racist. Publisher's Weekly: "Then, in a dazzling coup, Roth turns all expectations on their heads, and begins to show Silk in a new and astounding light, as someone who has lived a huge lie all his life, making the fuss over his alleged racism even more surreal. The book continues to unfold layer after layer of meaning. There is a tragedy, as foretold, and an exquisitely imagined ending." Nadine Gordimer, in The Times Literary Supplement (International Book of the Year Selection): "Philip Roth's The Human Stain is the best novel he has written." This novel was chosen by a New York Times poll of 200 prominent writers, critics and editors in 2006 as one of the best works of American fiction in the previous 25 years.

Resources for Reading and Discussion

The Philip Roth Society has lots of resources.

The book's first chapter read aloud by Philip Roth himself.

Faunia's name reminds us of fauns, the half-human, half-goat creatures of Roman myth. It also reflects the name of the Roman fertility goddess Fauna, who likewise was half-human, half-goat.

Some interesting discussion questions from the LitLovers web site.

A brief interview with Roth revealing that he once dated an African-American woman who had relatives who were "lost to all their people" by deciding to pass for white.

Review in the New York Times

An interview in the New York Times that goes into detail about his writing process.

This Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel retells Louisa May Alcott's Little Women from the viewpoint of the girls' father, Mr. March.  March's character is loosely based on Alcott's father, Bronson Alcott, who was an abolitionist and a close friend of such New England luminaries as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.  In Little Women, the girls receive a letter from their father, who is serving in the Civil War, that said little "of the hardships endured, the dangers faced, or the homesickness conquered."  This letter becomes the starting point for Brooks' novel, which fictionalizes both Alcott's Civil War experiences and his earlier life.  Chicago Tribune: "A very great book.  It breathes new life into the historical fiction genre... I give it a hero's welcome."

Resources for Reading and Discussion

The Wikipedia entry for Bronson Alcott, who was the inspiration for the character of Captain March.

The fictional Mr. March married the sister of "the estimable Unitarian Reverend Daniel Day" (chapter 3). The actual Bronson Alcott married the sister of the Unitarian minister Samuel May, a courageous abolitionist and supporter of women's rights.  The May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church in Syracuse, NY, is named for Samuel May, who served as its minister.

Better known than any of these, of course, was Abigail May's and Bronson Alcott's daughter, Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women.

Orchard House, the Alcott's home in Concord

Brooks' web site for March. (Some of the best links from that web site are listed below.)

Geraldine Brooks talks about writing March; this page also has a discussion guide. Note that this material also appears in the back of the book itself.

A long interview with Brooks with stories from her rather wild career as a journalist.

An NPR audio interview with Brooks

The Washington Post reviewer loved March.

But the New York Times reviewer had reservations.

The Wikipedia entry for Concord, Massachusetts. Concord had a population of only about 2500 when the Alcotts lived there. It is astonishing that today we are familiar with the names of so many of those people (the Alcotts, Emerson, Hawthorn, Thoreau).

Photos of historically significant houses in Concord (this page loads slowly).

You can get an idea of how small Concord was in those days by playing with this Google map of Concord. The Alcott's house is at the "A" marker. The Emerson's house is a few blocks to its left at the intersection of Cambridge Turnpike and Lexington Road. Waldon Pond is the green body of water about a mile south of those houses, on the other side of the Concord Turnpike. Click on the "Satellite" icon at the upper right of the map to turn that option on, then zoom in to see more detail and labels.

A long and thoughtful article in the New Yorker by Geraldine Brooks about Bronson Alcott (January 10, 2005, edition).

As noted above, the character of Captain March is loosely based on Bronson Alcott.  Alcott, however, was not a minister, did not serve in the Civil War and did not lose his fortune to John Brown.  Brooks indicates in the Afterward that for this part of Mr. March's character she borrowed heavily from a Civil War memoir called Chaplain Fuller: Being a Life Sketch of a New England Clergyman and Army Chaplain.  That was certainly an appropriate source: the author, Chaplain Arthur Buckminster Fuller, was a Unitarian minister with beliefs similar to those of Alcott.  He was also the brother of Margaret Fuller, the brilliant thinker who served as Alcott's assistant at Alcott's Temple School in Boston.  (And, yes, he was the grandfather of Buckminster Fuller, the inventor of the geodesic dome.)