October 22, 2008
In this issue
BOOKS OF PHOTOGRAPHY
FOR THE EQUINE INCLINED
For millennia horses have played important roles in the lives of humans; they have assisted in transportation, hunting, herding, entertainment, law enforcement, and warfare. People who ride horses feel connected both to nature and the past, and a love for horses usually lasts a lifetime. For the equestrian-minded, independent presses have published three gorgeous books of photography dedicated to these unique animals.
Wild Hoofbeats: America’s Vanishing Wild Horses (Painted Hills Publishing, 978-0-9817936-4-1) is Carol Walker’s ode to the free-roaming horses of Wyoming. Over four years, the author and photographer followed seven bands of horses in the Adobe Town herd, photographing their activities and interactions. With text and beautiful color photos, she tells the stories of her observations. Stallions spotted with battle scars protect their small bands, and as the author comes back to visit her favorites, she sees the bands change as foals are born and young fillies leave instinctually as a deterrent to inbreeding.
Walker is fearless when it comes to these horses, and she often finds herself being run at or surrounded, and usually the center of their attention. Thus, in many of her photos, the subjects stare deep into the camera with a skeptical look. She often takes a sitting position, allowing the horses to become comfortable with her presence. Because of this, she catches moments on camera that are playful or tender, like a stallion nuzzling his filly, and also moments of conflict when two rival bands encounter one another.
The last third of the book covers the roundup the author witnessed in 2005. The herd was reduced from 1,200 to 700. The author watched as some of her favorites were euthanized--including a blind mare who had survived with the help of her stallion--and others were castrated or put up for adoption. A few weeks later she visited a long-term holding facility where many of the herd had been shipped.
In two final chapters, Walker outlines the aspects of wild horse mismanagement and discusses options for solving the problem in the future, including pharmaceutical fertility control, introducing natural predators, and conducting wild horse tours which would give the horses a monetary value.
In The Forgotton Horses (New World Library, 978-1-57731-615-2), photographer Tony Stromberg takes on horses in sanctuaries. Many of his subjects were unwanted, abused, or neglected. Some are even displaced wild horses like Walker’s.
After a brief introduction, Stromberg lets the photos speak for themselves. Most of them are sepia-toned or black and white. Some feature running horses; others show close-ups of horse’s faces or feet. Readers interested in photography will find as much to fascinate here as those interested in horses.
Most often the horses appear in pairs or in packs, nuzzling each other, playfully biting, or running with manes flowing.
The sanctuaries and rescue organizations photographed in the book are listed at the end, with their contact information and a description of their services.
In Horse: A Portrait (Willow Creek Press, 978-1-59543-596-5), German photographer Christiane Slawik tells the stories behind her photographs taken around the world. In Bavaria, a woman dreams of having her photo taken in her wedding gown while she rides her horse in an unusual location. Slawik convinces Andrea to ride into a deep blue lake with her gown falling over the horse’s haunches, and she snaps the bride’s dream photo.
When her friend spots a field of poppies near Slawik’s office from an airplane, the photographer quickly assembles a convoy of horse trailers and takes 1,000 photographs of Andalusians, Arabians, Welsh Ponies, and Norwegian Fjord Ponies frolicking and munching in the red and purple landscape.
“I know certain horses that have never been trained before who come up with new tricks all by themselves,” she writes in the introduction to the section, “Lots of Fun.” The pages that follow depict horses popping balloons, sticking out their tongues, baring their teeth, and playing with each other’s hair.
Other settings for Slawik’s beautiful photographs of expressive horses include a waterfall in Iceland and lush pastures. She also devotes several pages to Jean-Francois Pignon, a horse magician whose shows attract thousands of people eager to see him perform acrobatics on horseback. The entertaining coffee table book is a delight for horse lovers.
by Whitney Hallberg, Managing Editor
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EDITOR’S CHOICE: SOURCEBOOKS
Senior Editor Shana Drehs talks about a new novel that’s close to her heart, To Catch the Lightning by NPR’s Alan Cheuse.
Name and Publisher:
Shana Drehs, Senior Editor, Sourcebooks
How long have you been with the company?
I came to Sourcebooks two years ago after several years at Crown. I’m glad I’ve had the chance to experience publishing from both the conglomerate and independent sides as it’s been quite an education. Sourcebooks is a leading independent publisher and the passion for books and authors is contagious here. Despite these tough times in the economy and industry, fortunately we are producing solid results. Based on recent BookScan data, Sourcebooks’ in-store sales through the register have increased 40% since 2005. And during the first half of 2008, Sourcebooks had the second-highest growth of any large publisher--we outgrew the market three-fold!
What is the book you are most excited by this season, and how did it come to your attention?
I have to say that it’s hard to pick one book out of our fall list as they’re all so compelling. From Nikki Giovanni’s innovative, mixed-media children’s picture book, Hip Hop Speaks to Children, to the visually stunning coffee-table photography book and audio CD, Country Music: The Masters, by renowned country music icon Marty Stuart, this fall season is by far Sourcebooks’ strongest fall season to date. But the one title that’s very close to my heart is To Catch the Lightning, by Alan Cheuse. Of course, we’ve had a relationship with Alan for years as he is known as the “voice of books” for NPR, but this is the first book of Alan’s we’ve had the chance to publish, and we’re absolutely delighted. We began talking to Alan about the novel at BEA in 2007, and it’s been a fascinating journey into history ever since.
What can you tell us about the author?
Alan Cheuse has been working on this book for nine years – his focus and drive to craft a poetic novel drawn from the real life of frontier photographer Edward Curtis has made this a layered, intricate story of choice and sacrifice. This is Alan’s ninth book, and I think this is the one he’s been destined to write. His short fiction has appeared in places such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and The Antioch Review, among other places. He teaches in the Writing Program at George Mason University and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. He is a regular contributor to NPR’s “All Things Considered,” which you can listen to online at www.alancheuse.com.
Who will enjoy this book?
Anyone interested in American history and in stories of how obsession can drive us to do great things and make terrible sacrifices. I think anyone who enjoyed the work of Charles Frazier (who called To Catch the Lightning ”compelling fiction that digs deep into the mystery and sacrifice and selfishness of creative vision.”) would love this. Alan has created a masterful portrait of the legendary Edward Curtis and his quest to capture the past, to document and photograph the fading way of life of the American Indian. It’s about a landscape of unparalleled beauty and tradition, about the dreams that haunt us and the spirits who guide us. Women will love the enduring power of the muses that speak to Edward and the unmistakable pull of family, and men will undoubtedly be engrossed by the hardscrabble determination bound up with a drive to do something big, something that leaves a permanent mark on the world.
ForeWord reviewed To Catch the Lightning in this year’s Sept/Oct issue, as well as Cheuse’s 1999 title from Southern Methodist, Lost and Old Rivers.
Download an excerpt of To Catch the Lightning (in PDF format) from the ForeWord Book Club.
Interview by Editor-in-Chief Heather Shaw
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This week at Shelf Space, Scott Brown talks about The Audacity of Bravery.
At Publishing Insider, Sara Dobie says authors should never give up on writing, and offers three techniques for fighting the writing blues.
At Editor’s Notes, Editor-in-Chief Heather Shaw suggests a few Halloween books.
At Publishing Matters, Eugene Schwartz talks about lessons learned in the Palin banned book hoax and offers some comments on a Publishers Weekly editorial.
Visit www.forewordmagazine.com for publishing news, book reviews, and the ForeWord Book Club.
FAST FOREWORD
Noted National Book Award Authors
National Book Award shortlisted author Salvatore Scibona was lauded by ForeWord editorial assistant Todd Mercer in May 2008.
The Sicilian immigrants of The End (Graywolf Press, 978-1-55597-498-5) haunt their Elephant Park section of Cleveland as much as they inhabit it. Among them are people who attribute a kind of holiness to ritual behavior and others who are beyond any belief in regulation. The story begins with Rocco, a baker with an iron constitution and a permanently estranged family. Rocco bakes bread à la Cal Ripkin, a straight 10,685 days before news of his son’s misfortune in the Korean War ends the streak.
Off autopilot, the baker for once wonders at the state of the world. He debates the comparative value of ideas to feelings in the neighborly company of Mrs. Marini and an oddly grown up teenage boy. A widow for forty years, Mrs. Marini’s second act reflects a willfully restructured attitude that allows no room for guilt or unhappiness. She is intent on shaping an heir and teaching an apprentice her secret occupation.
The End’s old school men worry that their American sons aren’t hardened enough by disappointment. The immigrants seem most American when speaking of white flight and the shifting of neighborhoods’ ethnic makeup. Every family in this novel has been dispassionately busted to rubble, and the urban expanse isolates remaining individuals.
Like the single-minded Rocco, new novelist Salvatore Scibona, who serves as the writing coordinator for Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work Center, steadily fine-tuned this debut for an incredible 3,650 days, the entire lifespan of a dog. His care for language shows at every dignified turn.
Click to visit the Web site for Salvatore Scibona's novel.
The National Book Awards Finalist Reading will be held in New York City on November 18. The 59th Awards Ceremony and Dinner occurs the following night.
Also from the National Book Award Foundation, five fiction writers under the age of thirty-five will be recognized at a celebration at Tribeca Cinemas on November 17.
The End of History
Author Matthew Eck’s debut novel, The Farther Shore (Milkweed, 192 pages, hardcover, $22.00, 978-1-57131-057-6) opens on a rooftop in blacked-out Somalia with a squad of 10th Mountain Division soldiers operating as eyes in the ground. In other words, they’re directing the bombing of the city--not too close to the center, not too far from the edge.
When something, or someone trips the alarms they’ve left in the stairwells of the building, their descent from the building top is both physical and psychological. “I found Santiago and told him we needed to move. Then I looked down at the body. It was small for a man. Santiago bent over the figure with an unrolled compound press, the loose white ends dangling beside him. He stood and said something, but at first I couldn’t hear over the ringing in my ears. Then he was screaming and it came to me in slices, getting louder, then duller, until I finally got it: “They’re just kids.’”
It gets worse, much worse. The dead shark and its dead eye that washes up on the beach of the hospital after they’ve been evacuated is only one of countless lyrical images Eck uses to evoke the sense of total catastrophe that is always underfoot. A beautiful and shocking novel of war and youth.
Matthew Eck’s The Farther Shore (Milkweed Editions) was reviewed in ForeWord’s Nov/Dec 2007 issue by Editor-in-Chief Heather Shaw.
Tech Analyst Ponders eBooks
At eWeek.com, the Web site of the high tech news magazine, communications and technology analyst J. Gerry Purdy discusses what it will take for eBooks and eBook readers to make it into the mainstream.
“Someday--let’s say, hopefully by 2025 but certainly by 2050--technology and business models will have matured so that eBook readers will be used by more than 50 percent of the population,” Purdy writes.
He outlines the features that will be necessary to create a really successful eBook reader, including a more attractive and intuitive user interface, a bright color display, increased durability, acceptable price, and improved distribution of books across networks.
From staff reports. Share your news and information with Whitney Hallberg, Managing Editor.
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Cry of Justice
This handsomely bound and dust-jacketed hardback fantasy novel recently won the CSPA retailer vote for Best Novel of 2007! Ships from Central US warehousing with professional invoicing. Order from Atlas Books Distribution at 419/281-1802 (6883 fax), or via e-mail: order@bookmasters.com
Web page:
Cry of Justice at Bookmasters.com
ISBN 9780977888405
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FOREWORD FOOTNOTES
Art. A MUSEUM OF THEIR OWN: NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS by Wilhelmina Cole Holladay (Abbeville Publishing, 10 x 11, 170 color and b/w illustrations, 240 pages, hardcopy, $50.00, 978-0-7892-1003-6): founder and Chair of the National Museum of Women in the Arts and American National Medal of Arts award winner presents historic details with “spirited anecdotes” of a museum devoted to women artists which opened in 1987 in Washington, D.C.
Biography & Autobiography. MRS. RUSSELL SAGE: WOMEN’S ACTIVISM AND PHILANTHROPY IN GILDED AGE AND PROGRESSIVE ERA AMERICA (Indiana University Press, 34 b/w photographs, 552 pages, softcover $24.95, 978-0-253-22045-5): Director of the Women’s Studies Program and history professor at Auburn University presents the life (1828-1918) of a robber-baron widow who became one of the most important philanthropists of the 20th century.
History. FROM EVE TO DAWN: A HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE WORLD; INFERNOS AND PARADISES -- THE TRIUMPH OF CAPITALISM IN THE 19TH CENTURY, VOL. 3 by Marilyn French (The Feminist Press, 400 pages, softcover, $19.95, 978-1-55861-583-0): pioneering feminist thinker and Harvard Centennial Award winner presents women’s lives in societies through the ages; this volume focusing on the United States, Britain, and countries in Africa.
History. FROM EVE TO DAWN: A HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE WORLD; REVOLUTIONS AND STRUGGLES FOR JUSTICE IN THE 20TH CENTURY, VOL. 4 by Marilyn French (The Feminist Press, 622 pages, softcover, $19.95, 978-1-55861-584-7): literary critic, historian, and author of The Women’s Room presents women’s lives from prehistoric times to the present; this volume covers suffrage and mass organizing that made women a force for change.
History. HARKER’S ONE-ROOM SCHOOLHOUSES: VISIONS OF AN IOWA ICON by Michael P. Harker (University of Iowa Press, 10 x 7, b/w photographs, 96 pages, softcover, $24.95, 978-1-58729-703-8): commercial photographer and author of Still Standing: A Postcard Book of Barn Photographs presents the “glory and decay” of America’s once social and educational center of rural life, e.g., the interior of Humke School with chalkboard words of “Lend a hand to one another in the daily toil of life.” The photos are complemented by professor Paul Theobald’s reflective essay.
Juvenile Nonfiction. THE PROFESSOR OF NARNIA: THE C.S. LEWIS STORY by Will Vaus (Believe Books, 156 pages, softcover, $15.99, 978-0-9817061-0-8): holder of a masters of divinity from Princeton Seminary and author of Mere Theology: A Guide to the Thought of C. S. Lewis presents one of the most popular Christian authors who was the spirit behind the magical land of Narnia.
Performing Arts. KUBRICK’S HOPE: DISCOVERING OPTIMISM FROM 2001 TO EYES WIDE SHUT by Julian Rice (Scarecrow Press, 21 b/w photographs, 304 pages, hardcover, $40.00, 978-0-8108-6206-7): retired professor of English at Florida Atlantic University and author of Deer Women and Elk Men presents a positive interpretation of the director of A Clockwork Orange.
Photography. MICHAEL S. SMITH: HOUSES with Christine Pittel (Rizzoli, 8 ½ x 11, color photographs, 234 pages, hardcover, $50.00, 978-0-8478-3070-1): Town & Country contributor and senior editor at House Beautiful assists the celebrated and renowned designer Smith in telling his story of how design elements fuse to make the ideal home; nine houses examined including one in London and one on Martha’s Vineyard.
Science. THE HANDY ASTRONOMY ANSWER BOOK by Charles Liu (Visible Ink, 100 color illustrations, 344 pages, softcover, $21.95, 978-1-57859-193-0): Harvard graduate, professor of astrophysics, and an associate with the Hayden Planetarium tells the story of the cosmos and its contents; more than 1,000 questions are answered such as “what is a gas giant planet” (planets thick with gas atmospheres, e.g. Jupiter).
Travel. GHOST HUNTER’S GUIDE TO CALIFORNIA’S WINE COUNTRY by Jeff Dwyer (Pelican Publishing, 39 b/w photographs, 240 pages, softcover, $15.95, 978-1-58980-604-7): ghost hunter and experienced paranormal investigator describes 80 locations in historical detail, including their phantom personnel, such as the cuddling couple of Napa’s Cinedome movie theater.
by Alex Moore, Book Review Editor