Biblioteca News: Check out the new Sala Infantil
June 13, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

After approval from the board of the Biblioteca Pública, the Sala Infantil was remodeled to be more comfortable for parents and children wishing to participate in one of many activities available at the Biblioteca Pública.

With over 6,000 books available for families to check out, you’re sure to find something interesting.

Hours for the Sala Infantil are 10am–7pm, Monday–Friday and 10am–2pm, Saturdays. Come see what’s new.

Book Fever
By Marcia Loy

Three of my favorites from Erik Larson

To write, publish, or distribute a book is like putting a message in a bottle and tossing it into the sea: its destination is uncertain. Yet time and again the miracle occurs: a book finds its reader, a reader finds his book.

—Gabriel Zaid

One of my favorite history writers is Erik Larson. His books are page-turners. It’s hard to put one down once you’ve started.

Isaac’s Storm, 1999. This was the first Larson book I read and it remains my favorite, perhaps because I lived in Miami for 25 years and survived three hurricanes. The title character is Isaac Monroe Cline, who was sent to Galveston to head the newly formed US Weather Bureau office there. Cline didn’t believe a hurricane could go from Africa across the Atlantic and come up the Gulf of Mexico to hit his city.

It just wasn’t possible. And yet one did in September, 1900. It was the deadliest hurricane in history, in part because the city was unprepared for it. Cline ignored the warnings from the Cuban weather service, although they had pioneered the art of hurricane prediction. He thought they were too likely to issue unwarranted alerts and alarm people needlessly. Thanks to Cline’s arrogance, between 6,000 and 10,000 people died. 

Excerpt: By Friday afternoon, a few sea captains and their crews were still the only men who knew the storm’s true secret—that it had grown into a monster. Some lived; some did not. In Tampa, earlier, storm flags went up, but the schooner Olive set sail anyway for Biloxi, Mississippi. Now she was missing. Two ships ran aground off Florida; their crews feared lost. The storm caught other ships as well—the El Dorado out of New Orleans, and the Concho and Hyades, both out of Galveston. Captain Halsey struggled to keep the Louisiana upright in waves whose backs were planed almost smooth by the intense wind.

Devil in the White City, 2003. When I escaped from Miami I wanted to live in a place that had real weather. I chose Chicago; Chicago has lots of real weather. And the White City in the title of Larson’s book refers to the 1893 Columbian Exposition that took place there. The “devil” was one of the first serial killers in the country.

 My father, as a young boy, attended the fair and rode on the world’s largest Ferris wheel, one that could hold 44 people in each seat. My only quarrel with the book is Larson’s depiction of my favorite architect, Louis Sullivan, as a nasty person.

Excerpt: In Chicago at the end of the nineteenth century amid the smoke of industry and the clatter of trains there lived two men, both handsome, both blue-eyed, and both unusually adept at their chosen skills. Each embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized the rush of America toward the twentieth century. One was an architect, the builder of many of America’s most important structures, among them the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C.; the other was a murderer, one of the most prolific in history and harbinger of an American archetype, the urban serial killer. Although the two never met, at least not formally, their fates were linked by a single, magical event, one largely fallen from modern recollection but that in its time was considered to possess a transformative power nearly equal to that of the Civil War.

Thunderstruck, 2006. Larson’s latest book is another skillful weaving of two stories, the invention of wireless telegraphy with what Larson calls the “second most famous [murder] in England.” It’s the story of Guglielmo Marconi and Hawley Harvey Crippen. Marconi was a very young man when he began experimenting with electricity.

He wasn’t a scientist; he knew nothing about theory, which was just as well because the physics of the day said that it wasn’t possible to send a message through the airwaves. The earth curved and airwaves just kept going straight. If Marconi had known that, he might not have proceeded. Crippen was an American doctor who moved to London as the representative of a patent medicine company. He was unhappily married and of course he met a young woman he thought he couldn’t live without. The story of how these two men’s lives intertwine is the basis of this fascinating book. I expected to enjoy the murder more than the telegraphy, but I found them equally interesting.

Excerpt: The plan called for the men to climb a distant hill, the Celestine Hill, and continue down the opposite flank until completely out of sight of the house, at which point Marconi was to transmit a signal. The distance was greater than anything he had yet attempted—about 1,500 yards—but far more important was the fact that it would be his first try at sending a signal to a receiver out of sight and thus beyond the reach of any existing optical means of communication. If Alfonso received the signal, he was to fire his shotgun...

Slowly the figures in the field shrank with distance and began climbing the Celestine Hill. They continued walking and eventually disappeared over its brow, into a haze of gold.

The house was silent, the air hot and still. Marconi pressed the key on his transmitter.

An instant later a gunshot echoed through the sun-blazed air.

At that moment the world changed, though a good deal of time and turmoil would have to pass before anyone was able to appreciate the true meaning of what just had occurred.

Next week: More history. Happy reading.

Marcia Loy is a member of the steering committee of the Authors’ Sala and a volunteer at the Biblioteca Pública. She can be contacted at marciabookfever@hotmail.com.

San Miguel Style at the Authors' Sala
By Kimberly Kinser

Authors’ Sala
Sandy Baum
Slide show and reading
Fri, June 13, 5–7pm
Auditorio Miguel Malo
Bellas Artes
Hernández Macías 75
50 pesos

Sandy Baum’s slide show features photos from his recently released books, San Miguel’s Mexican Interiors and San Miguel’s Mexican Exteriors, as well as photos from an upcoming title, San Miguel Style: A Magical Town in Mexico with the Lifestyle to Match.

The books lead a tour via 350 color photographs of San Miguel’s indoor and outdoor living, allowing us a glimpse of what lies behind the high walls and closed doors as we walk the cobblestone streets.

Baum has been a professional photographer and pilot for over 40 years. He attended Washington University’s School of Architecture in St. Louis, Missouri, and spent 15 years as a construction project manager in California and Arizona. He has lived here full-time since November 2004.

Baum’s architectural training, construction experience and an acute eye for detail contribute to his extraordinary photographs of interiors and exteriors. He looks for everyday subjects that many people pass by and draws attention to items that might normally go unnoticed.

The two books would not have been possible without the generosity of the San Miguel homeowners who open their homes every Sunday for the House and Garden Tours, directed by Jennifer Hamilton and sponsored by the Biblioteca Pública.

.