AT THE LIBRARY

January 8, 2009

January Titles

With the presidential inauguration coming on full speed and being talked up just about everywhere, certain other events and people associated with January might get overlooked. Among them, consider the following.

January 3 is "Festival of Sleep Day". In recent years, numerous articles have been published about the vital importance of good sleep to good health, both physical and mental. Poor or inadequate rest has been linked to all manner of health conditions, including diabetes, heart problems, hypertension, and depression, as well as to behavioral activity such as impaired driving and poor job performance. The National Sleep Foundation reports that most adults require seven to nine hours of sleep a night to feel well rested, while children ages 5 to 12 need 9 to 11 hours, and adolescents 8 ½ to 9 ½ hours. Shift work, irregular schedules, personal and family demands, late-night television viewing and Internet use, caffeine and alcohol use, and sleep disorders such as sleep apnea almost certainly guarantee that most Americans are not getting the sleep they need to flourish. Readers wanting to learn more about this important issue could choose Combating Sleep Disorders by Kathy Sexton-Radek and Gina Graci or Good Night: the Sleep Doctor's 4-Week Program to Better Sleep and Better Health by Michael Breus.

January 26 does double duty by being "Australia Day" AND "Chinese New Year’s Day". For those interested in delving into the histories and lives of our neighbors on the other side of the world, the Library offers two fascinating works. Australia by Frank Welsh details all the important events in Aussie history, from British penal colony to thriving independent nation. Welsh also explores the darker side of Down Under, including its tortured official relationship with the Aboriginal peoples and its uneasy relationship with its Asian neighbors. In The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed, Michael Meyer takes readers into the robust and ancient culture of the hutongs – the mazes of lanes and courtyards bordered by single story homes where life was Spartan but filled with true neighborliness and a powerful sense of community. Part memoir, part history, and part lament, Meyer vividly recounts the people and places which anyone who was watching world news in early summer of 2008 has already seen: it was that part of the Old City being bulldozed and its residents displaced as China made ready for the Summer Olympics in the city once called Peking.

Finally, January 15, is the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Michael Eric Dyson has written a compelling exploration of the civil rights leader’s legacy in April 4, 1968 : Martin Luther King Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America. According to the review in Library Journal (May 1, 2008), the author "shows how King's bold and charismatic prophecy left a daunting model for any aspiring black leader to live up to. Examining Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Barack Obama, Dyson probes the deep shadow in which these leaders operate as he reiterates the continued resonance of King's productive martyrdom and his call for transformative social justice and racial redemption." Along with his fellow citizens, Mr. Obama is about to set out on a journey to learn more clearly what that means as the United States of America inaugurates him President on January 20.