Best of
Journal

2002

The Decorated Page: Journals, Scrapbooks Albums Made Simply Beautiful


Gwen Diehn - 2002
    Consider this a superscript above all other entries.”—Booklist. “Encourages those who hesitate to start in on the pristine pages of a nicely bound blank book.... Lively and interesting illustrations make this a good selection for public library collections.”—Library Journal.

Landour Days: A Writer's Journal


Ruskin Bond - 2002
    Bond is an inveterate diarist, but over the years he finds that the nature of what he wants to record has changed, for 'In the autumn of my life, I grow reflective.' The events are small in themselves: the daily happenings in Landour, the birds and flowers that each season brings, and the eccentricities of friends and family. Landour itself is a magical world -- where every month has its own flower, every walker his own style, and the countryside is filled with a beauty all its own -- though uninvited guests will intrude and evenings at the Savoy Bar are not always as peaceful as they might be ... But in his mind Bond ranges further afield. He ponders on the experience of being a writer, on writers he has known and those he loves reading, and on critics, handwriting and typewriters. Filled with warmth and gentle humour, this book captures the timeless rhythm of life in the mountains, and the serene wisdom of one of India's best loved writers.

Exile of Lucifer


D. Brian Shafer - 2002
    Follow Lucifer's deceptive plans to rule over Earth and his inevitable fall from grace.

Fierce People


Dirk Wittenborn - 2002
    Dropped into a world more savage than anything in National Geographic, more cutthroat than anything New York's grimy downtown streets have to offer-the exclusive rural community of Vlyvalle, New Jersey-fifteen-year-old Finn Earl and his recovering mother must fight for survival.

Dark Property


Brian Evenson - 2002
    Menaced by scavengers, she nevertheless begins to suspect that the reality within the fortress may be even more unsettling than the blasted environment outside. As she slips unobtrusively towards the city of the dead, she is pursued by a bounty hunter who cuts a bloody swath after her. On one level, Dark Property is an exploration of religious fanaticism. Although Evenson's characters owe more to the Book of Mormon than the Koran, their frightening intensity will spark recognition in both reviewers and readers. This brooding tale is reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and J. G. Ballard's more disturbing works of fiction. "I admire Evenson's writing and respect his courage." — Andrew Vachss

The Journal of C.J. Jackson: A Dust Bowl Migrant, Oklahoma to California, 1935


William Durbin - 2002
    Jackson, a young farmer whose family is forced to abandon their farm and seek a new life in California. April 10, 1935 The dust has been blowing bad for several years in a row now. And with crop failures coming back to back like they have, hundreds of families have lost their farms. A Monday never passes without Sheriff Jake Allison posting a notice of foreclosure at the Boise City courthouse. Times are so rough, that when they hold an auction to sell a place, the only people that show up are the banks and the insurance companies. Nobody else has a nickel. C.J. Jackson is a young man living through one of the most tragic times in the Dust Bowl of an America fraught with political, economic, and environmental problems. In this intense journal of life in the Oklahoma panhandle, C.J. tells it like it is-and it is bad.

Death and Burial in Ancient Egypt


Salima Ikram - 2002
    This book covers all aspects of death including burial in a specially-prepared tomb. The mummification process is explored in detail.

Eurekas and Euphorias: The Oxford Book of Scientific Anecdotes


Walter Gratzer - 2002
    From the death of Archimedes at the hands of an irritated Roman soldier to the concoction of a superconducting witches' brew at the close of the twentieth century, the stories in Eurekas and Euphorias pour out, told with wit and relish by Walter Gratzer. Open this book at random and you may chance on the clumsy chemist named Sapper who broke a thermometer in a reaction vat and made the discovery that launched the modern dyestuff industry. Or the physicist who dissolved his gold Nobel Prize medal in acid to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Nazis. We meet mathematicians and physicists in prison cells, and even in a madhouse, making important advances in their field. And we witness the careers, sometimes tragic, sometimes carefree, of the great women scientists, from Hypatia of Alexandria, to Sophie Germain and Sonia Kovalevskaya, to Marie Curie and her relentless battle with the French Academy. A glorious parade unfolds to delight the reader, with stories to astonish, to instruct, and most especially, to entertain.