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Five New Simmons Library Diversions Books, Including Works By Jimmy Carter and John McCain

Posted February 28, 2006

This week’s featured Diversions Collection books include Our Endangered Values, The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey, Character Is Destiny, The Trouble with Poetry And Other Poems, and A Wedding in December.

Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis by Jimmy Carter

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LIBRARY JOURNAL: This is a book of reason and tolerance but also of indignation. The former President draws on his religious faith and political experience to comment wisely on a wide range of “hot button” issues. Although Carter’s tone is patient and explanatory, his views are bound to be newsworthy and will rekindle some old fires. He is dismayed by the influence of fundamentalism both in religion and in politics; as he observes, “Narrowly defined theological beliefs have been adopted as the rigid agenda of a political party.” He further accuses the neoconservatives who guide the Bush administration of having imperialistic goals. Carter writes at length about post-9/11 human rights violations, gun control, nuclear proliferation, the death penalty, the dilution of environmental quality, and the dangers of preemptive war. He passionately encourages women to demand a greater leadership role in the church while candidly discussing his own religious beliefs and struggles with the Baptist Church. However, his most cohesive chapter is concerned with the growing gap between rich and poor, which he calls the greatest challenge facing the world in this new century. This book is an eloquent personal testament that deserves a wide readership, regardless of political affiliation. Highly recommended.

The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard

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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY: In a gripping account, Millard focuses on an episode in Teddy Roosevelt’s search for adventure that nearly came to a disastrous end. A year after Roosevelt lost a third-party bid for the White House in 1912, he decided to chase away his blues by accepting an invitation for a South American trip that quickly evolved into an ill-prepared journey down an unexplored tributary of the Amazon known as the River of Doubt. The small group, including T.R.’s son Kermit, was hampered by the failure to pack enough supplies and the absence of canoes sturdy enough for the river’s rapids. An injury Roosevelt sustained became infected with flesh-eating bacteria and left the ex-president so weak that, at his lowest moment, he told Kermit to leave him to die in the rainforest. Millard, a former staff writer for National Geographic, nails the suspense element of this story perfectly, but equally important to her success is the marvelous amount of detail she provides on ! the wildlife that Roosevelt and his fellow explorers encountered on their journey, as well as the cannibalistic indigenous tribe that stalked them much of the way.

Character Is Destiny: Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember by John McCain, with Mark Salter

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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY: As in last year’s Why Courage Matters, McCain’s latest volume uses biography as an illustration of virtue, but this time the senator broadens his palette significantly, telling 34 stories of heroes whose lives embody qualities ranging from honesty and loyalty to curiosity and enthusiasm. At the root of them all, he says, is a willingness to stay true to one’s conscience against all challenges. Thus martyrs appear prominently, from Thomas More and Joan of Arc to Edith Cavell and Father Maximilian Kolbe, as do military heroes, including Pat Tillman, the pro football player whose love of country led him to enlist in the army shortly after 9/11. But the pantheon is inclusive enough to hold Aung San Suu Kyi and Gandhi alongside Churchill and Eisenhower. Although he is reaching out to a younger readership, McCain’s plain but sincere language does not condescend to his audience. He makes occasional oblique references to his experiences as a prisoner of war—describing, for example, how they reinforce his understanding of Victor Frankl’s concept of dignity—but the only chapter centered on his ordeal highlights a furtive moment of kindness from a Vietnamese soldier. Amid much speculation concerning his plans for 2008, McCain has made a declaration of values that liberals can embrace as readily as conservatives.

The Trouble with Poetry And Other Poems by Billy Collins

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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY: Two years after his very visible stint as U.S. poet laureate, Collins (Sailing Alone Around the Room) remains one of the nation’s most popular poets. His light touch, his self-deprecating pathos and his unerring sense of his audience (nothing too difficult, but nothing too lowbrow) explain much of that popularity and remain evident in this eighth collection. “The birds are in their trees,/ the toast is in the toaster,/ and the poets are at their windows,” the volume begins: the poet as sensitive everyman, moved if not baffled by literary legacies, and attracted to simple pleasures, constructs a series of similar days and scenes. “In the Moment” depicts “a day in June,” “the kind that gives you no choice/ but to unbutton your shirt/ and sit outside in a rough wooden chair”; “I Ask You” opens on “an ordinary night at the kitchen table.” Collins’s comic gifts are also much in evidence: “Special Glasses” describes spectacles that “filter out the harmful sight of you”; “The Introduction” makes fun of footnotes and obscurities in other poets’ poems. The dominant note, however, is a gentle sadness, accomplished with care and skill, sometimes (as in “The Lanyard”) garnished by autobiographical wisdom.

A Wedding in December by Anita Shreve

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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY: Recrimination and regret underlie an emotional reunion of seven former classmates from the Kidd Academy, an elite prep school, who gather at an inn in the Berkshire Mountains for a wedding. Nora, the widow of an abusive, renowned poet and the owner of the inn, has agreed to host the wedding of Bridget, ill with cancer, and Bill, who has divorced his wife to marry his high-school sweetheart. Among the wedding guests are Harrison, still in love with Nora and still reeling from the tragic death of his roommate, a gifted but troubled athlete, at the academy some 27 years earlier, and Agnes, a long-single history teacher with a tumultuous love life. Uncertainties bred in the wake of 9/11 also play a role here, although they are summoned indirectly through a story that Agnes is writing about a ship collision in Halifax Harbor in 1917 that left 2,000 dead and hundreds blinded. Operating with a heightened sense of their mortality, the former classmates regard each other’s life decisions with a mixture of envy, wariness, and spite. The skillful, prolific Shreve, who seems to turn out one best-seller per year, seamlessly moves her story between the horrific events of Halifax Harbor and the nearly as horrific reunion, underscoring the fleeting nature of happiness and the painful trade-offs it often requires.

  • These recently published works, selected for your reading pleasure, may be borrowed for 14 days.

  • The Diversions Collection is located on the first floor of the Simmons Library, near the Circulation Desk.

  • To request a book that is currently checked-out, find it in the on-line catalog, then click the “REQUEST” button.

 

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