Content & Context

TIMELINE: NOVEMBER 2004

November is when the autumn leaves surrender and fall, but this past month was one of triumphs. After another tense Election Night, President Bush was re-elected. Among the most noteworthy voters were the 140,000 who made up the winning margin in Ohio, and Leroy Chiao, the first person ever to vote from space. There were other triumphs being celebrated this month, although the Red Sox’ World Series victory parade was rained on, as was the opening of the Clinton Presidential Library. Dillon and Jesse Smith became the first set of twins to score perfect 1600s on the SAT’s (neither, by the way, used those expensive review guides). Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it took about 50 years for artist Gilles Chaillet to complete his full-color, 11-by-6 foot drawing of the Italian city. November was also a triumph for Faith—Leana Beasley’s rotweiler Faith, that is. The dog dialed 911 and barked into the phone when Beasley fell out of her wheelchair.

Yasser Arafat, the beloved and hated figurehead of Palestinian nationalism, died this month at the age of 75. Vaughn Meader, who introduced presidential satire before being silenced by the Kennedy assassination 41 years ago this month, died at 68. Theodore Taylor was a Los Alamos nuclear physicist who spoke out against the perils of nuclear proliferation. Melba Phillips, student of Robert Oppenheimer and author of influential physics textbooks, died at age 97. Irene Ferrer, a renowned cardiologist, died this month of congestive heart failure.

• Timeline: October 2004

PLACES & CULTURE

From the Washington Post:

SHIRAHONE, Japan — The milk-hued hot springs of Shirahone have for a thousand years lured legions of stressed-out Japanese, who traversed mountain passes and paid small fortunes to wash away their troubles in the steaming thermal baths. But in a scandal that has precipitated a nationwide crisis of confidence in Japan’s beloved onsen, or hot spring resorts, a national magazine this summer reported that spa owners were secretly conning their customers. Shirahone village leaders came clean in July—admitting they added artificial white dyes to baths after several springs had mysteriously begun losing their coveted natural cream color during the 1990s. The deception created an uproar in Japan, where few things are more cherished in life than stripping down to your birthday suit for a group dip in scorching thermal baths.

From the Chicago Tribune:

CHICAGO* — The draw of living close to water is so strong that million-dollar homes are going up along Bubbly Creek, an infamous stretch of the Chicago River lined with nearly a century’s worth of waste from the city’s livestock slaughterhouses. Hidden from most Chicagoans by factories, warehouses and scrap yards, the murky tributary has festered for decades on the western edge of Bridgeport. Bubbles that gave the creek its name still occasionally rise up from decaying offal and carcasses caked on the bottom, releasing bursts of foul-smelling gases into the air. It is a place where few things live, or stay for long. At least until now. Expensive homes under construction along the once-industrial banks of Bubbly Creek—officially known as the South Fork of the South Branch of the Chicago River—are prompting a push from Mayor Richard Daley’s office to clean it up. Regional and state officials also are taking a closer look at the creek as they decide whether the Chicago River’s sewage-filled canals and channels should be disinfected to remove disease-causing bacteria.

NOVEMBER BOOK BLOG

Book Essay:

• Nancy Drew: dainty tomboy, in the New Yorker.

Book Reviews:

• New C.S. Lewis biography fails to improve on A.N. Wilson’s 1990 volume, says the Boston Globe.

• The coming evangelical consensus, in brief from First Things.
• Is there such a thing as Islamo-Christian civilization? from The Nation.
• Reviews of The Pope in Winter (here, from the London Telegraph) and You Are Peter (here, from First Things).
• Friedrich Nietzsche, gifted musician and music critic, from First Things.
• Classical liberalism as a ‘missionary faith,” from the New Statesman.
• Why the racism of 19th-century southerners wasn’t so black-and-white, from the Atlantic Monthly.
• Liberty-loving slave owners and other contradictions, from The Nation.
• Seven books on racial inequality in education, from the New York Review of Books, and Stanley Crouch on race and authenticity, from the New Criterion.
• Three families who shaped the city of Washington, D.C., from the Washington Post.
• Iraq and the ethics of nation-building, from the Washington Post.
• Collection of ‘everyday’ journalism from Black Hawk Down author, from the New York Times.*
• Latin America during the Cold War, from the London Review of Books.
• Imperial Britain: more diverse than you think, says the London Times.
• A new translation of Sophocles’ Antigone, from the Christian Science Monitor.
• When government goes too far, from King John to John Ashcroft, in the New York Review of Books.
• Bombay: claustrophobe’s nightmare, from the New York Times. *
• Fraud in science, from the New York Review of Books.
• Witchcraft in Baroque Germany, from the London Guardian.
• How to saw someone in half for a magic show, from the London Telegraph.

Biographies:

• Queen Christina of Sweden—P.J. Wodenhouse—Frank Lloyd Wright – Ted Turner
• One author’s search for solitude on desolate Amsterdam Island, from the Economist.
• James Wood on Muriel Spark in the Atlantic Monthly.
• Repair your poetry, from the Christian Science Monitor; Best Poetry ’04 released, new Phillip Levine collection, umpteenth book on the state of poetry, from the NYT.
• Canadian novelist Alice Munro’s excellence exceeds her fame, says Jonathan Franzen in the New York Times.*
• Tom Wolfe’s latest novel offers “little more than cardboard cut-outs” in campus setting, says the Economist.
• British author’s children’s book on dealing with grief, from the Guardian.
• Best picks:
• fiction/non-fiction, from the Christian Science Monitor; editor’s choices from the NYT. *
• October book blog*Requires free registration, or log in with user name and password of “bcread”
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Nathan Bierma is editorial assistant at Books & Culture.He writes the weekly “On Language” column for the Chicago Tribune.