As I watched everyone riveted by the decision in the Casey Anthony case last week, and the updates on TV and on the internet and on facebook and twitter, I was struck by how even people who didn’t pay much attention to the case at least knew about it. And it has the same fascination that books in the true crime genre have:
Who was involved, and what sordid details about their lives are revealed?
Why did someone die, and how did it happen?
What was the involvement of law enforcement?
What part did the media play in the case?
Some classics of true crime are:
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (One of the earliest true crime books, about a family of four murdered in Kansas in 1959) call no. 364.1523 Ca
The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule (tells the story of serial killer Ted Bundy) call no. 364.1523 Ru
Fatal Vision by Joe McGinness (story of a doctor who was convicted of killing his wife and 2 children) call no. 364.1523 Mc
The setting is the Colorado, 1873, and the contents are letters that Bird wrote to her sister during her six-month journey. Traveling alone, usually on horseback, often with no clear idea of where she would spend the night in what was mostly uninhabited wilderness, she covers over a thousand miles, most of it during the winter months. The “old-fashioned” writing may take some getting used to, but then it flows quite well. Bird’s descriptions of nature are exquisite and her observation of humans astute.
Returning to the U.S. after 20 years in England, Iowa native Bryson decided to reconnect with his mother country by hiking the length of the 2100-mile Appalachian Trail. Awed by merely the camping section of his local sporting goods store, he nevertheless plunges into the wilderness and emerges with a consistently comical account of a neophyte woodsman learning hard lessons about self-reliance. (Publishers Weekly)
A 38-year-old laid-off college professor of Osage Sioux and white blood drives around the U.S. on the “blue highways”—the rural backroads that are colored blue on old maps. The places he discovers in the course of his roundabout trip are unexpected, sometimes mysterious, and full of the wonder of the ordinary. The photographs are crucial. The publisher had wanted to leave them out as a cost-saving measure, but Heat-Moon said he’d rather not publish at all if that were the case. Take a close look at them—they make the people described in the text very real to the reader.
Steinbeck and his poodle Charley embarked on a journey across America in a specially rigged-up pick-up truck called Rocinante (after Don Quixote’s horse). This chronicle of their trip meanders through scenic backroads and speeds along anonymous super-highways, moving from small towns to growing cities to glorious wilderness oases. Steinbeck had me laughing when he makes himself the butt of a joke while changing a flat tire in a deep puddle and he had me shaking with outrage and sadness when describing the integration of a grade school in New Orleans.
The Yangtze is 3964 miles long and Winchester followed it by boat, train, jeep, and on foot from its mouth in the ocean beyond Shanghai to one of its sources high in Tibet. He was very convincing about the importance of this river to China spiritually, geographically, politically, and economically. He gets into the issue of the controversial Three Gorges Dam which hadn’t been completed at that time.
This book takes place in the 1950s in Afghanistan. Eric Newby was bored in London and asked an old friend to accompany him on a mountain-climbing expedition in the wild and remote Hindu Kush. And so they went—although they did stop first for four days of climbing lessons in Wales—becoming the first Englishmen to visit this spectacular region for more than half a century.
Ever since collecting Tuva’s unusual triangular postage stamps as a child, physicist Richard Feynman had been intrigued by the country. But Tuva’s being in the heart of what then-President Ronald Reagan had dubbed the “Evil Empire” made it hard to get a tourist- or any other kind of visa. This book chronicles the lengths to which Ralph Leighton and Richard Feynman went to fulfill their dream of setting foot in Tuva.
The manifesto referred to in the title is “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” You wouldn’t think you’d have to defend food until you learn Pollan’s definition of food: a nutritious substance that is not laden with chemicals. It appears that DOES need defending in this day and age. Pollan critiques both the food industry and the health industry and he “connects the dots” better than most authors–especially if you like writing that is witty as well as succinct. There are some simple, easy, cheap solutions to the problems of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes, but it’ll take nothing less that reforming the whole American way of life. The farmer’s markets, Community Sustainable Agriculture, and Slow Food Movements are attempting just that.
Fine history combined with fine science. The reader learns a lot about orchids and they ARE fascinating. The author writes a first- person description of her relationship with John LaRoche, a man obsessed with orchids, off-putting but at the same time somehow likeable. More than anything, the book is about passion, the author’s no less than John LaRoche’s. See also the movie “Adaptation” (DVD COMEDY) based on the book and starring Meryl Streep.
This is one of those books which can qualify for a couple of the nonfiction subgenres we’ve already talked about: African Memoirs and Humor. According the publisher information, it’s “a hilarious collection of true tales from top safari guide Peter Allison. In a place where the wrong behavior could get you eaten, Allison has survived face-to-face encounters with big cats, angry elephants, and the world’s most unpredictable animals–herds of untamed tourists and foolhardy guides…”
641.013 FI The Art of Eating