1 post tagged “franklynmbranley”

Discusses the characteristics of each of the nine planets and explains the techniques used in the discovery and study of them.

 When I was eight, Franklyn M. Braney's "The Nine Planets" made the planets much more fascinating than my science class and much closer to my future than even "Star Trek" reruns on television.

The Fate of the Earth and the Abolition: And, the Abolition (Stanford Nuclear Age Series)

Now combined in one volume, these two books helped focus national attention in the early 1980s on the movement for a nuclear freeze. The Fate of the Earth painted a chilling picture of the planet in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, while The Abolition offered a proposal for full-scale nuclear disarmament. With the recent tensions in India and Pakistan, and concerns about nuclear proliferation around the globe, public attention is once again focused on the worldwide nuclear situation. The author is at the forefront of the discussion. In February 1998, his lengthy essay constituted the centerpiece of a special, widely distributed issue of The Nation dealing with the nuclear arms race. The relevance of his two books for today’s debates is undeniable, as many experts assert that the nuclear situation is more dangerous than ever.

When I was 12, Jonathan Schell's "The Fate of the Earth" (a slim blue paperback) accompanied me to New York City, where the rest of my confirmation class at Grace Episcopal Church of Silver Spring, Md., walked around, saw the sights, caught "Dreamgirls" on Broadway and crawled into sleeping bags to doze on the floors of St. John the Unfinished Cathedral. His description of the devastation a nuclear blast over New York City would wreak on the population fried something in my head. It started me off onto Pat Frank's "Alas, Babylon" and Nevil Shute's "On the Beach." It's part of the reason I enjoy things like Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake." A taste for apocalypse, I guess. Um, why am I a journalist again?

Urban Blues (Phoenix Books)

Charles Keil examines the expressive role of blues bands and performers and stresses the intense interaction between performer and audience. Profiling bluesmen Bobby Bland and B. B. Kind, Keil argues that they are symbols for the black community, embodying important attitudes and roles—success, strong egos, and close ties to the community. While writing Urban Blues in the mid-1960s, Keil optimistically saw this cultural expression as contributing to the rising tide of raised political consciousness in Afro-America. His new Afterword examines black music in the context of capitalism and black culture in the context of worldwide trends toward diversification.

When I was 17, Charles Kiel's "Urban Blues" made social science and anthropology seem as cool as learning how to play guitar.

Paul Beatty's hilarious and scathing debut novel is about Gunnar Kaufman, an awkward black surfer bum who is moved by his mother from Santa Monica to urban West Los Angeles. There, he begins to undergo a startling transformation from neighborhood outcast to basketball superstar, and eventually to reluctant messiah of a "divided, downtrodden people."

When I was 24, Paul Beatty's "The White Boy Shuffle" gave me a painfully funny version of myself, a young black man deeply uneasy about the lines of force the society formed around him, a G.K. over whom I could laugh myself sick.

White Teeth: A Novel

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The Years of Rice and Salt

Zadie Smith's White Teeth is a delightfully cacophonous tale that spans 25 years of two families' assimilation in North London. The Joneses and the Iqbals are an unlikely a pairing of families, but their intertwined destinies distill the British Empire's history and hopes into a dazzling multiethnic melange that is a pure joy to read. Smith proves herself to be a master at drawing fully-realized, vibrant characters, and she demonstrates an extraordinary ear for dialogue. It is a novel full of humor and empathy that is as inspiring as it is enjoyable.

The Years of Rice and Salt, takes a look at our last 600 years, with the added twist that the Black Death has wiped out 99% of the European population. Into that gap step the Chinese, the Islamic nations, the Indians, and the Native Americans. Robinson is obviously very interested in how history happens, and The Years of Rice and Salt is the perfect forum.

When I was 30 and 31, Zadie Smith's "White Teeth" was a wild, funny, comforting read and Kim Stanley Campbell's "The Years of Rice and Salt" was deeply inspiring and utopian, pan-theistic but not Panglossian. I'll let you flip a coin as to which one should be the fifth book.