New & Recommended New & Recommended (March 05, 2003)

This month's picks by Karen Pennington, book buyer at Kepler's, include the latest novel from Louise Erdich, a book about who really discovered America, the latest from sci-fi master William Gibson, and more.

"The Master Butcher's Singing Club" by Louise Erdich is about a German butcher who immigrates to North Dakota after the horrors of World War I, and has his life changed in unexpected ways by those around him. It's a beautifully written book, by the author of "Love Medicine."

"1421: The Year China Discovered America" by Gavin Menzies. No, really. This is serious. The author presents an argument, but little evidence, for the claim that the Chinese mariners in the 1400s were much more advanced than we had thought. In addition to discovering America, Menzies also claims that they circumnavigated the globe 100 years before Magellen. The author is a former submarine commander in the Royal Navy.

"Pattern Recognition" by William Gibson is the first of his novels to be set in the present, but he takes the reader along for his usual dizzying ride. The story is about how an Internet sleuth is hired to track down the source of mysterious footage, which turns out to be very dangerous.

"River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West" by Rebecca Solnit is a biography with a local angle, since the 19th century father of moving pictures did some of his landmark work here on the Farm when it was a Leland Stanford's horse ranch. Muybridge was arrested and charged with killing his wife's lover, so his life obviously involved more than photography.

"On a Grander Scale: The Outstanding Life of Christopher Wren" by Lisa Jardine is a biography of the noted British architect (1632-1723) who designed the reconstruction of St. Paul's Cathedral after the Great Fire of London in 1666. He was also a scientist, inventor and mathematician.

"Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival" by Bern Heinrich is a first-hand account of how animals survive in the throes of New England winters. First-hand, because the author is a professor of biology at the University of Vermont who goes out in winter finding animal dens, counting things, taking notes. Some animals produce a kind of anti-freeze in their blood, it turns out.

"Color: A Natural History of the Palette" by Victoria Finlay is such a good idea for a book it's a wonder it hasn't been done before. The author takes a cultural and historical look at colors, what they mean and how we see them. Color and art, it turns out for many cultures, come just after shelter and food in importance.

"The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number" by Mario Livio is exactly that. Phi (not pi) is what some call the Golden Ratio. As a mark of who live in our community, this book is a best seller at Kepler's.

--Don Kazak