In March 2010, we are celebrating 30 years of recognition of women’s historic contributions to the growth and strength of our Nation in countless recorded and unrecorded ways. It was President Jimmy Carter who issued the first Presidential Proclamation declaring the week of March 8, 1980 as the first National Women’s History Week. Later the National Women’s History Project (NWHP) worked to lobby Congress to expand the week into a month. In 1987, a Congressional Proclamation designated March as the “Women’s History Month.”
The theme selected for this year’s celebration is “Writing Women Back into History.” You will find a display of library books, CDs and DVDs in the Periodical Reading Room by and about women who were artists, engineers, scientists, warriors and much more.
When you visit the display in the Periodicals Room, you can see materials representing the variety of experiences that comprise Women’s History, from the letter writers in Revolutionary War times in Women’s Letters through to Laura Brodie’s account of the admission of the first female cadets at VMI in 1997. In between are the biographies of suffragist Susan B. Anthony; America’s first female doctor, Elizabeth Blackwell; pilot Amelia Earhart; anthropologists Margaret Mead and Mary Leakey, and Maria Stewart, America’s First Black Woman Political Writer.
The National Women’s History Project website is here, and their facebook page is here.
The Friends of Preston Library in concert with the VMI Honors Program will host a program on Wednesday, 3 March 2010 at 5 p.m. in the Turman Room of Preston Library. The guest speaker will be James L. W. West, III. Dr. West is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. He will discuss his book on William Styron, Letters to My Father.
A native of Newport News, author of Sophie’s Choice, The Confessions of Nat Turner, Lie Down in Darkness, A Tidewater Morning, and other celebrated works, William Styron will be remembered as one of the most important writers of the 20th century. Last month, Jim West’s book received a front page review by the Times Literary Supplement.
Copies of Letters to My Father will be available for purchase at the program and for the author to sign. Please join us for an educational and engaging talk and discussion by Professor West of this major American writer. Refreshments will be served.
These are just two of the many books available in the Recreational Reading section, in the Periodicals Room. Stop by and browse the shelves for something fun to read before leaving Post for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Although a self-propelled crane boat made the first passage of the 50-mile waterway on January 7th, and the ocean steamer, SS Ancon, made the trip on August 3rd, today marks the 95th anniversary of the opening of the Panama Canal.
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How Wall Street Created a Nation by Ovidio Diaz Espino.
A native of Panama, Espino, describes the origins of the Panama Canal, detailing the decades of speculation, fraud, and conspiracy that continue to influence international relations in the region. The roles of Theodore Roosevelt, the French Panama Canal Company, and Wall Street are highlighted, with clear attention to their immediate motives–profit and power. |
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The Path Between the Seas by David G. McCullough
The Path Between the Seas tells the story of the men and women involved in the struggle to construct an aquatic passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is a story of astonishing engineering feats, tremendous medical accomplishments, political power plays, heroic successes, and tragic failures. |
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The Sydney B. Williamson Papers.
Sydney Bacon Williamson, Class of 1884, served as Division Engineer for the Pacific Division of the Panama Canal from 1907 to 1914. The bulk of the collection documents Williamson’s engineering assignments in Panama, South America, and the United States, and his service on the Interoceanic Canal Board. On top of biographical information, project details and correspondences there’s also some fantastic photos. |
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Cadiz to Cathay by Miles P. DuVal
A detailed history of the diplomatic issues relating to the construction of the Panama Canal including the proposal and eventual rejection of locating the canal in Nicaragua. |
Information about the opening of the Panama Canal is from the 2009 edition of Chase’s Calendar of Events.
It’s the 65th Anniversary of the Allied Landing in Normandy. Preston Library has an extensive collection of resources related to D-Day, here are our favorites.
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From the Praeger Illustrated Military History Series comes four excellent volumes: Gold & Juno Beach, Omaha Beach, Sword Beach & The British Airborne Landings, and Utah Beach & The U.S. Airborne Landings. These slim volumes are packed with details, chronologies, maps and biographical sketches. |
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In one day the town of Bedford, Virginia lost 21 young men. Unlike other military history books Alex Kershaw’s The Bedford Boys follows the soldiers as well as their families and the hometown they left behind. |
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Not a detailed history of the Normandy Invasion, but rather a series of essays that explore topics as varied as the functioning of Allied High Command, German defensive measures and the contributions of air power. The D-Day Companion offers reader’s a big-picture view of the engagement. |
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A film so epic it needed three directors, The Longest Day, depicts both the Allied and German preparations, mistakes, and random events that shaped the outcome of one of the biggest battles in history. The star studded international cast features: John Wayne, Richard Burton, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum. Keep your eyes peeled for a pre-James Bond Sean Connery in the role of Pvt. Flanagan, he gets the best one-liners.
Based on the meticulously researched book of the same name by former war correspondent Cornelius Ryan, also available at Preston Library. |
Every year Preston Library celebrates our graduating Cadet Assistants by dedicating a book in their honor. The graduating Cadet Assistants chooses any book in the collection and we put the dedication inside the front cover and display them in the library lobby.
Check out what our cadets selected this year…
Have you ever had to read the same book over and over again?
I must have been assigned Hamlet at least 3 times before I graduated from college…not that it isn’t worth revisiting the classics. I just prefer new spins and variations on a theme.
Take for example Beowulf. I love it, really, I’m probably the only one who never complained about having to read it AGAIN. But isn’t it always a little more interesting to hear the story from another perspective? And a lot of times villains are much more interesting characters than heroes. John Gardner’s Grendel is not the dark, scary, one-note monster you remember. This Grendel (although still a monster) is a fully developed character with thoughts and reasons to fuel his actions. If you didn’t have to read it for school you should check it out.
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King Lear is one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies–it’s a good play and also ranks high on the tragedy-meter. There’s not much funny about a King dividing his kingdom based on which daughter loves him most and the ensuing calamity of the decision.
Or is there?
Enter Christopher Moore. Moore’s latest novel, Fool, retells King Lear using the same warped sense of humor you might remember from such novels as You Suck: A Love Story. In this version King Lear’s jester, Pocket, takes over the duty of narrator. Tragedy has never been this funny.
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| And of course the list goes on once you take into account new settings for old stories. |
| Jane Smiley’s Pultizer Prize winning A Thousand Acres is King Lear set on an Iowa Farm. |
| The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski is Hamlet set in Wisconsin, with a dog. |
And my personal favorite:
West Side Story is really Romeo & Juliet, only with better dance numbers. |
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Dr. Lewis Sorley provided the Friends of Preston Library with an engaging Spring Program Thursday, March 26, at 3:00 p.m. in the Turman Room of Preston Library. Dr. Sorley spoke on “Adventures in Research” and revealed several fascinating tales of discovery learned in the course of his research. We learned how his scholarly “detective work” tracked down a member of Gen. Creighton Abrams’ World War II tank crew, how rescuing the records of Lt. Col. Harold Cohen from a fire resulted in his receiving the Distinguished Service Cross–fifty years after the war in which he earned it, how he discovered the secret location of Abrams’ command staff tapes, and other tales of research adventures. A lively and informative question and answer session followed and all had a good time.
Dr. Sorley is the Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Army Historical Foundation. In 2007, he received the General Andrew J. Goodpaster Prize for military scholarship. This spring he serves as VMI’s Gottwald Visiting Professor of Leadership and Ethics. A third-generation graduate of the United States Military Academy, Dr. Sorley earned his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University. In his academic career he has served on the faculties of West Point and the Army War College. His U.S. Army assignments include tank and armored cavalry unit commands in Germany and Vietnam and staff service for the Secretary of Defense and Army Chief of Staff.
Dr. Sorley’s latest book is Honor Bright: History and Origins of the West Point Honor Code and System.
Garrett Peck '90 and Chairman of the Friends, B. Drummond Ayers, Jr. '57
The Friends of Preston Library is delighted to have Garrett Peck, ’90, as our speaker, Friday, October 17, at 1500 hours in the Turman Room. Garrett is the author of The Prohibition Hangover which is provocative social history of American attitudes towards alcohol since the end of Prohibition which was repealed 75 years ago this year. In his investigations for the book Mr. Peck interviewed hundreds of people on all sides of the alcohol debate and travelled extensively throughout the United States, Canada, Germany, Israel, and other areas of the world.
Mr. Peck is a freelance writer for the alcoholic beverage industry and contributes regularly to Beverage Network. He has also written articles about alcohol for The Washington Post, Wine Spectator, Sante, The Forward, and the Northwest Current. In addition to writing about alcohol, he leads the Temperance Tour in Washington, D.C.
Please join us for what will surely be an interesting and engaging program. Refreshments will be served.
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Crisp reads a passage from Goodbye Vienna
The Friends of Preston Library’s Spring Program featured William Crisp, ‘63, Friday, 25 April in the Turman Room of Preston Library. Will read from several of his novels as well as from novels of other writers of spy thrillers such as Len Deighton. He discussed how he writes and how various writers influenced him. These included Deighton, LeCarre, and Hemingway. Will gave an interesting and engaging talk and answered numerous questions from his audience.
Will has written several suspense novels: Spy Trap (1982), The Compleat Agent (1984), and Vengeance is Thine (1986). His latest novel is Goodbye Vienna, published in 2006 by PublishAmerica.
After serving as a rifle platoon leader in Vietnam, Mr. Crisp served as a US Foreign Service officer in Yugoslavia and worked for twenty-five years as an East European business specialist with the Economist Intelligence Unit in Vienna, Austria. In 1996, he returned to VMI to teach in the International Studies program. He is currently working on a non-fiction work about Vietnam.
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