Book of the Day Roundup: August 26-30, 2024
Broom for Two
Jennifer Maruno
Scot Ritchie, illustrator
Pajama Press
Hardcover $18.95 (32pp)
978-1-77278-320-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A little witch discovers that some feats are only possible with the help of a friend in this whimsical picture book. After forgetting her broom outside, the witch can no longer fly it properly; her flying test ends in disaster. When she hears a cry for help one stormy night, she rushes to the rescue—rambunctious broom and all. Ramshackle Rat, his home destroyed by lightning, climbs on the back of her broom, and having a friend along for the ride softens all her landings.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (June 10, 2024)
Spiritual Criminals
How the Camden 28 Put the Vietnam War on Trial
Michelle M. Nickerson
University of Chicago Press
Softcover $27.50 (256pp)
978-0-226-83438-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Michelle M. Nickerson’s Spiritual Criminals is a gripping account of the Camden 28, Catholic war protesters who burglarized a federal building and were acquitted in a well-publicized trial in the early 1970s.
While eight members of the group breached a Camden federal building in August of 1971 to steal draft records, others monitored the site. After being tipped off by an informant who supplied critical logistical and financial support during the planning, FBI agents arrested the group’s members. Later, the Camden 28’s legal team made no attempt to prove their innocence. Instead, they attacked the war as justification for the group’s actions, arguing that the government, by planting the informant, had “engineered” the members’ arrests.
The trial was a media sensation, with the Camden 28 drawing support from the likes of Jane Fonda and George Carlin. The defendants argued their points with ferocity and expressed “loving kindness,” creating a courtroom atmosphere “so intimate it was almost spiritual.” The informant, who empathized with their war protest, called them “the greatest Christians I have ever known” and flipped to become a witness hostile to the FBI. The Camden 28 were acquitted, and the publicity and sympathy they inspired raised questions about the war and about government officials “directly undermining the work of political organizations.”
In this fascinating and meticulous book, Nickerson tells the Camden 28’s complicated story, relaying its “multiple origins.” In addition to relating the event itself, the text includes enthralling depictions of the impassioned, idealistic individuals who comprised the Camden 28; the emergence of the Catholic Left as a major cultural movement in the 1960s and 1970s; and the incident’s legacy as a pivotal Vietnam-era protest.
An authoritative text about a Vietnam-era protest and its aftermath, Spiritual Criminals covers a momentous historical event and demonstrates the power of social justice movements.
KRISTEN RABE (June 10, 2024)
The Soul We Share
Ricky Ray
Fly On the Wall Press
Softcover $15.99 (150pp)
978-1-915789-25-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Wherever souls reside, all the rules of time and space, language and thought succumb to an older way of being—and that is where Ricky Ray hangs out with Addie, his old brown dog. An ecomystic animist, Ray’s work explores their relationship romping through the hills and valleys of New England. He serves on the advisory board of Harvard’s Program for the Evolution of Spirituality.
HOW TO GO ON
Sometimes, when defeat
sits in your chest
sinking you past concern,you have to lie down in a field
look up at the sky,
and ask the blades of grass, the little Earthlingswho have been there all night,
who have lived there all their lives,
who are the field you are becomingto slip their slender green
fingers into your mind,
and show you:How to go on? It’s easy:
you open your mouth,
you take in little sips of light.
MATT SUTHERLAND (June 10, 2024)
Life after Dead Pool
Lake Powell’s Last Days and the Rebirth of the Colorado River
Zak Podmore
Torrey House Press
Hardcover $30.00 (360pp)
979-889092002-7
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Written in time with Lake Powell’s water level decline, Life After Dead Pool is Zak Podmore’s clear-eyed but hopeful assessment of the potential restoration of Glen Canyon.
After years of severe drought, Lake Powell’s plummeting elevation is approaching “dead pool” levels, Podmore says. Below this threshold, hydroelectric production would stop at Glen Canyon Dam, Lake Powell’s remaining water would be trapped, and the reservoir would fill with a glacier of mud. The downstream impacts on other waterways would be devastating.
But instead of declaring a crisis, Podmore treats falling water levels as an opportunity to undo the “atrocity” of the original dam. The book’s proposal is that the dam be demolished and the reservoir drained to expose submerged canyon walls, restore native ecosystems, and begin land reparations.
Podmore, who’s rafted the full length of the Colorado and kayaked the perimeter of Lake Powell, acknowledges the “wealthy minority” who use the reservoir for recreation. And in addition to detailing the history of the dam’s creation, the book includes piquing descriptions of the canyon’s rebirth as waters recede, noting the re-emergence of petroglyphs and other artifacts. A biologist declares the shoreline that resurfaced twenty years ago as “the most intact native ecosystem I’ve ever seen”; a research ecologist observes that each tributary canyon hosts a distinct microecosystem; and a desert soils specialist celebrates the return of biocrust communities that slow erosion, hold moisture, and support plant growth. The book even shares a vision of a canyon park dedicated to conservation science and the return of thousands of acres to the Navajo Nation.
Outlining inspiring possibilities for Glen Canyon as Lake Powell recedes, Life after Dead Pool is a captivating vision of regional transformation.
KRISTEN RABE (June 10, 2024)
Let’s Get Festive!
Celebrations Around the World
Joanna Konczak
Ewa Poklewska-Koziełło, illustrator
Kate Webster, translator
NorthSouth Books
Hardcover $27.95 (184pp)
978-0-7358-4570-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In Let’s Get Festive! Joanna Konczak tells the stories of more than thirty holiday celebrations around the world. Packed with interesting trivia, the book is an engaging roundup of the myriad ways that people celebrate.
The holidays covered are organized by theme, both showing the different ways that global cultures celebrate similar events and illustrating what different holidays have in common. There are celebrations of the new year, nature, religious events, the dead, and carnivals, reflecting the fact that “no matter where, why, or how they are celebrated, holidays are usually about the same thing: community and coming together.”
For example, the new year celebrations covered include the Western New Year’s Eve, Chinese New Year, the Persian Nowruz, Judaism’s Rosh Hashanah, and the Thai Songkran. Before discussing those specific celebrations, the text explains the evolution of the Julian and Georgian calendars and how the new year was commemorated then. The individual holidays are then introduced in brief but thorough chapters that cover their origins, key terminology, and some of the ways they are celebrated. Let’s Get Festive! takes the same approach in its other sections, highlighting connections between traditions before telling the stories of the featured celebrations.
Each chapter includes bright, beautiful illustrations that further vivify traditions like the dragon dance and the blowing of the shofar, complementing the text by showing the joy involved in these diverse celebrations. Even less exuberant holidays, like All Saint’s Day and Passover, are illustrated with scenes in which families spend time together and engage in their traditions.
With informative summaries and charming illustrations, Let’s Get Festive! is a warm introduction to festivals around the world.
JEFF FLEISCHER (June 10, 2024)
Kathy Young
