Enter Oblivion • C.M. Harris
C.M. Harris has the savvy to create a rousing tale, as well as the language, imagery, and wit to deliver it. Taking the reader to 1980s London through clueless Yank boxer/gangster Vince Saviglio, she plonks Vince and reader alike into deepest New Wave culture. He becomes entangled with pop star Jik O’Blivion, along with an entourage held together almost mystically through the aura of Jezebel, mother superior transvestite and drag queen, “a bloke who wants to wear a frock.” Violence, love, and the specter of AIDS all seem far removed from Harris’s The Children of Mother Glory, until the penny drops, and you realize the search for self, love, and family cohesion knows no bounds of gender or geography.
Casperian Books • $15
Landscaping with Native Plants of Minnesota • Lynn M. Steiner
What would be the horticultural analog of a locavore?—a practitioner of “locatillage” or “locaculture”?—in any event, a proponent of landscaping yard and grounds with native Minnesota plants. Steiner’s detailed and extensively-illustrated handbook first defines native plants as those “growing here naturally before European settlement.” She then goes on—methodically yet readably—to her two-pronged approach: identifying Minnesota’s native plants, and showing how best to use them in one’s landscaping plans. To this end are examples of individual homes that utilize prairie, pond, wildlife, and sustainable aspects of these plants, together with detailed zone maps for correct planting, plant profiles, and landscapes to attract butterflies and hummingbirds. Lively and entertaining, it’s a must for ecologically-concerned Minnesota gardeners.
Voyageur Press • $27.99
The Philosophical Breakfast Club: Four Remarkable Friends who Transformed Science and Changed the World • Laura J. Snyder
Mark Zuckerberg launched the Facebook behemoth from his Harvard dorm room, but couldn’t have managed it without the work laid down by four college chums in the 1800s—members of the Philosophical Breakfast Club at Cambridge University in England. Born between 1790 and 1792, they remained in contact over the next half-century, though not always in perfect harmony. Charles Babbage, John Herschel, Richard Jones, and William Whewell dedicated their lives to bringing about a scientific revolution, including the word “scientist,” which Whewell coined in 1833. Babbage essentially invented the modern computer. Astronomer Herschell mapped the southern stars, and helped invent photography. Jones founded the science of economics. Polymath Whewell created the science of tides and more. A remarkable read.
Broadway Books • $27
A Saving Remnant: The Radical Lives of Barbara Deming and David McReynolds • Martin Duberman
Martin Duberman applies his considerable talents as a biographer (see also his powerful 2007 The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein) to explore the parallel lives of Barbara Deming and David McReynolds. The phrase “saving remnant,” Duberman informs, historically has encompassed those few who are “neither indoctrinated nor frightened into accepting oppressive social conditions.” Deming and McReynolds, born in 1917 and 1929, respectively, had to come to terms with their own homosexuality, along with how they—as radicals, rather than run-of-the-mill liberals—tackled the 1960s problems (not sufficiently solved today) of nuclear disarmament, war (then Vietnam), and black civil rights. Duberman also reveals their drastic divergence on the topics of feminism, antipornography, and the direction of the gay movement. A valuable read and reference.
The New Press • $27.95
