32% Off Discounts: Lowest Price The Penguin State of the World Atlas: Eighth Edition Review

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The Penguin State of the World Atlas: Eighth Edition Review

Dan Smith's State of the World Atlas provides visually arresting representations of statistics about the political and social state of the world. You learn about wealth and poverty, civil rights, environmental depredation, birth and death rates, the spread of obesity, smoking, varying degrees of freedom, militarization, and much else. In all cases the information is projected onto the world map. In many cases, the information ingeniously *becomes* the map. But just because everything in this book is centered on maps, it is dismaying that Penguin skimped on production. This book should have been printed as a hardcover with sewn binding so that it can lie open flat, revealing the two-page map spreads in all their glory. As it is, either key sections of the maps are lost in the gutter, or you need to break the glued spine, which, I suspect, will lead the book to fall apart fairly quickly. Too bad.

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The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven Review

I should preface this book with a personal explanation. The best way to approach Sherman Alexie is to look into your own personal history regarding American Indians. For me, I grew up with the vague notion that Indians didn't exist anymore. I think a lot of kids that don't live near large Native American populations suffer from this perception. I mean, where in popular culture do you ever come across a modern day Indian? There was that movie "Smoke Signals" (based on one of the stories in this book) and possibly the television show "Northern Exposure" but that is it, ladies and gentlemen. In my own life, realization hit when I started Junior High and read "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" for the very first time. If you've read the book then you know that it dwells on the character "Chief" and his past. I read about him and found out that I knew diddly over squat about Native Americans. They show "Dances With Wolves" in high school homeroom and through that you're supposed to infer contemporary Indian culture? That's like watching "Gone With the Wind" and wondering where all the happy slaves are today. It doesn't make sense. This is why I'm nominating, "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight In Heaven" as the book that should be required in every Junior High and High School in the country immediately. We've all read our "Catcher In the Rye" and "Scarlet Letter". Now let's read something real.
The book is a collection of short stories, all containing repeating characters and events. There is no single plot to the story and while the character of Victor is probably the closest thing the book has to a protagonist, he hardly hogs the spotlight for very long. In this book we witness a single Spokane Reservation. We watch personal triumphs and repeated failures and mistakes. Author Alexie draws on history, tradition, and contemporary realism to convey the current state of the American Indian. You'll learn more than you thought to.
My favorite chapter in this book, bar none, is "A Good Story". In it, a character's mother mentions that her son's stories are always kind of depressing. By this point the reader is more than halfway through the book and has probably thought the same thing (deny it though they might). In response, Junior tells a story that isn't depressing. Just thoughtful and interesting. It's as if Alexie himself has conceded briefly that, no, the stories in this book aren't of the cheery happy-go-lucky nature the reader might be looking for. That's probably because the stories are desperately real and fantastical all at once. To be honest, I feel a bit inadequate reviewing this book. It's obvious that Alexie is probably the greatest writer of his generation. Hence, these stories are infinitely readable and distressing.
This is a good book. This is the book to read when you ask yourself, "What author haven't I ever read before?". This is the book you will find yourself poring over on subways, buses, and taxi cabs. You'll leave it on park benches and run twenty blocks north to retrieve it again. I don't know how many other ways I can say that it's a good book. Well worth reading. Funny and taxing all at once. Sherman Alexie deserves greater praise than any I can give him. All I can say then is that this book is beautiful. Read this book.

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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Review

"Do you know the worst thing about being poor?" asks Junior Spirit at the beginning of "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." It's not hunger, he insists. "Sure, sometimes my family misses a meal, and sleep is the only thing we have for dinner, but I know that, sooner or later, my parents will come busting through the door with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken."
Then Junior tells us the worst thing about being poor, and it will break your heart.
"Diary" is a novel for young adults by Sherman Alexie. It tells the story of a 14-year-old Indian who goes off the rez to attend Reardan, an all-white school. A more pedestrian writer would have his protagonist leave the reservation entirely, but Junior continues to live there with his parents, and he comes to fear that he no longer belongs in either world.
Junior aspires to be a cartoonist, and he fills this "diary" with mordant, self-deprecating drawings. The work of Ellen Forney, they are funny and touching, and help to make the narrative credible as the work of a talented 14-year-old.
Junior's best friend is Rowdy, a sometimes violent young man who may suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome. It is Rowdy who feels most betrayed by Junior's move to Reardan, and the deep rift in their relationship colors the rest of the story.
Many juvenile novels center on youthful rebellion, but while Junior's parents are deeply flawed, he understands that most of their problems stem from the crushing poverty they have endured on the reservation. The story of his sister, whom the family calls Mary Runs Away, is particularly poignant, and provides a counterpoint to her brother's success.
While most of the characters are vividly drawn, I find Junior's geeky friend Gordy a bit wooden. "Don't you hate PCs?" Gordy says. "They are sickly and fragile and vulnerable to viruses. PCs are like French people living during the bubonic plague." Even geeks don't talk that way.
Junior unexpectedly becomes a basketball star, but his spectacular performance in the "big game" comes at the expense of Rowdy and the reservation team, making him feel more traitor than hero. His struggle to resolve this conflict provides the central thrust of the story. The final scene, a twilight game of one-on-one, is only two paragraphs long, but its impact is stunning.
While billed as a "novel for young adults," "Diary" will richly reward the attention of any adult. Read it now, before Hollywood turns it into an innocuous, feel-good movie with a title like "The Little Injun that Could."

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