Hilda C. Landers Library & Archives

Most Americans have read John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, which chronicles the plight of the “Exo-dusters,” those who left the southern Great Plains for California during the Dust Bowl. Less well known are the stories of those who remained, weathering the Black Blizzards that lasted throughout much of the 1930s. In The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan builds on the personal narratives of farming families who struggled to survive these conditions in the epicenter of the Dust Bowl – including the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma Panhandle, southwestern Nebraska, and southeastern Colorado.

The Worst Hard Time is standard historical nonfiction, but the inclusion of detailed personal narratives enlivens the book and provides a human face to one of the country’s worst environmental disasters. Egan’s descriptive and lyrical writing helps readers visualize the humbling of the once independent Plains farmer, who dug up the sod and subsequently in his poverty, became reliant on the programs of the New Deal.

These stories may be familiar to readers who have watched Ken Burn’s The Dust Bowl on PBS, which relies heavily on Egan’s interviews and research to tell a broader story about the families who stayed on the Plains and those who left for California.

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Kaitlyn Grigsby
Rating: Recommended

Kaitlyn Grigsby and Matthew Lachkovich won the monthly prize drawing for June. Matthew is also our leader in number of reviews, six posted in 2014.

Submit a review in July to be eligible for the our next drawing. Don’t forget prizes are available for all participants who submit a review between June 2 and August 15.

1. Submit one review and win a book mark.
2. Submit three reviews and win a set of postcards or a refrigerator magnet.
3. Submit five reviews and win a poster from Unshelved or a book.
4. Submit seven reviews and win a tote bag, mug or a book + postcards.
5. Submit 10 reviews and win a bag of library swag.
6. Monthly prize drawings.

This is quite a good book for learning about plants, how food is processed, and about the basis of electrochemical energy and biochemistry, however it leaves a lot to be desired. If you are planning on taking a class on biochemistry in the future, this would probably a good book to get started with. It leaves a lot of information out and is basically targeted towards middle school age students, but, again, it’s fine as an intro. If you want to get some serious learning done, go find another book, because this doesn’t teach ya a whole lot (and some of the information is incorrect, but is “correct enough” for beginners).

TL;DR: It’s okay for newbies, but don’t take it seriously.

Availability: SMCM Library
Review Submitted by: Matthew “cool shirt, bro” Lachkovic
Rating: Recommended with Reservations

Like drinking a cheap wine, afterwards you wonder why you did it. So it is with reading any Janet Evanovich books! They are a quick and silly read (great for beach reading or on travel, when you know you won’t care if you leave the paperback book behind), with cartoonish characterizations and unbelievable storylines. If you want something easy to read (think bubble gum for your eyes), then this is the author for you.

Availability: COSMOS
Review Submitted by: Jane Kostenko
Rating: Recommended with Reservations

In its totality, it’s a very enthralling book, however the traditions in the book left me confused at times. The loyalty to family (or, in some cases, lack of loyalty) and other social interactions left me confused. Some parts of the book even felt poorly written and the ending felt rushed and sloppy. To be honest, if the second half of the book was written as well as the first half, I’d be much happier.

TL;DR, good plot and character development in the first half, but becomes sloppy in the end.

Availability: SMCM Library
Review Submitted by: Matthew “Oh, THAT guy!” Lachkovic
Rating: Recommended with reservations

Long story short, anyone who is a fan of any of the Doctors needs to read this. It has interviews from the actors, the characters, producers, directors, etc., as well as never seen before photographs. In general, it’s a pretty quick read, but (if you’re like me) you’ll want to re-read quite a bit of it. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and learned far more than I expected. Only downside is that they gave Matt Smith twice the information as the other Doctors (though not that surprising since he’s the second most current and so the information is most available), and there was nothing on the twelfth.

Availability: SMCM Library
Review Submitted by: Matthew “Red Beard” Lachkovic
Rating: Must Read for Doctor Who fans

In 1957, a CIA backed coup d’état overthrew democratically elected president of Guatemala. Forty two years later, the Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification concluded that over 1.5 million Guatemalans had been displaced internally, and over 200,000 Guatemalans had fled to Mexico during the forty-year civil war that followed. Over 200,000 more Guatemalans, the vast majority of them indigenous Mayan peoples, were killed or “disappeared” by the State’s armed forces from 1978-1995. The Tattooed Soldier grapples with the fraught history of the USA’s military and economic entanglement in this conflict through the stories of three focal characters; two living in East LA just prior to the 1992 uprising, and one left dead at the hands of the “Jaguar Battalion” after voicing concern over water pollution in the refugee slums of Guatemala.

Antonio Bernal, the first focal character in Pulitzer Prize-winning Hector Tobar’s, The Tattooed Soldier (1998), is a political refugee of the Guatemalan Civil War driven to Los Angeles because his wife (Elena; another focal character) and son were massacred for writing a letter of protest to the departmental government about the harmful health effects caused by untreated sewage seeping into a local barrio’s drinking water. After being evicted from his LA apartment, Antonio wanders LA’s Crown Hill neighborhood and McArthur Park aimlessly until he spies one of his family’s killers playing chess. After stalking the ex-soldier, Guillermo Longoria (the third focal character), Antonio eventually confronts his nemesis in the chaotic midst of the 1992 LA Uprising. Yet the novel hardly presents itself as a “chilling revenge story” (as a blurb from People magazine attests on the cover of the Penguin edition of the book). The majority of the book deals with mapping layers of different forms of economic, social, and environmental injustice across the geographies of Guatemala and the United States. The historical roots of these injustices are mapped through time, as the reader is repeatedly turned from 1992 Los Angeles to Guatemala in the late 1970s and 1980s, as well as through space, with each of the three focal character’s movements within Guatemala and across the United States providing a primary means within the text of fleshing out each character’s emotional states and motivations.

I think The Tattooed Soldier is a modern masterpiece, and as someone who is interested in literary depictions of pollution and socio-environmental issues, I find this a masterpiece of environmental literature. While the spectacular violence of the Civil War and the LA Uprising serve as flash points in the text, it is the slow violence of poisoned water, urban environmental racism, and poverty in both Guatemala and the United States that structure and propel the plot forward. The book’s power, for me, is in its complex depiction of politics, pollution, and poverty’s effects on three character’s identity and motivations. The book helps shed light on the US military-backed atrocities committed in the Guatemalan Civil War and humanizes both the victims and perpetrators of this little-known genocide.

Despite the heavy topic matter, The Tattooed Soldier is often warm, wry, or outright humorous. Weighing in at just 305 pages, this short novel offers more bang for your buck than any other book I’ve read in a long time.

Rating: This book will stick with you as you soldier on through the summer. (trust me, I had worse puns up my sleeve)

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by: Shane D. Hall
Rating: Highly Recommended.

Kiran Sharma, an adolescent child of Indian immigrants living in Cincinnati, doesn’t fit in with his American friends or his Indian friends, and one day while clandestinely putting on his mother’s makeup he realizes the obvious explanation of why: he must be a reincarnation of Krishna, a Hindu deity. Finally, Kiran believes that he has a truly divine explanation for why putting on makeup, playing with dolls, and dancing ballet makes him feel so different from his friends. Throughout this coming-of-age novel, Kiran faces challenges from bullying at school and at temple to figuring out his own sexuality to trying to live up to his parents’ high expectations. On top of all this, Kiran strives to grow in his faith, with everything culminating in his performance in the fall talent show, where Kiran plans to introduce his divine nature to the world.

Blue Boy was an entertaining read with an interesting twist on the stereotypical coming-of-age story. The religious, sexual, social, and familial conflicts Kiran faces are relatable across the board, even if you are not an Indian American sixth grader. However, once I reached the ending I felt like many of Kiran’s conflicts were still unresolved, leaving me desiring a better conclusion from Rakesh Satyal than what was presented. I would still recommend this book to anyone who is interested in coming-of-age novels, modern Hinduism in America, or quirky, sarcastic main characters.

Availability: USMAI
Review Submitted by:Brianna Glase
Rating: Recommended

I’m doing some binge reading to catch up with recent Nevada Barr books. The last two were not enjoyable, but with Borderline, Nevada Barr is back at her finest! The storyline is riveting, the descriptions of Big Bend National Park are alluring, but–most importantly–the heroine has re-found her humor and the author is almost playful with her banter. A great summer read.

Availability: USMAI or COSMOS
Review Submitted by: Jane Kostenko
Rating: Highly Recommended