Linda Mielke has worked in public libraries for 25 years and has been director of the Carroll County Public Library for the last five years.
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a novel written in the 1890s, explores the mistreatment of a young wife by her neurologist husband for the problem of depression. Kept isolated and in absolute confinement, she quickly spirals downward into mental impairment; this profound indictment of the medical treatment of women still has much to teach us in our so-called modern society.
Vince Fitzpatrick is the Curator of the H. L. Mencken Collection at the Enoch Pratt Free Library. He is the author of "H.L. Mencken" and co-author of "The Complete Sentence Workout Book."
John Dos Passos' remarkable "U.S.A." trilogy (1938), which includes the novels "The 42nd Parallel," "Nineteen Nineteen" and "The Big Money," remains underappreciated. With its mix of fiction, history and biography, the book is technically innovative, and with his fine ear for the American idiom, Dos Passos conveys "the speech of the people," the conversations held in freight cars, bedrooms and in bars. The novelist depicts a once-magnificent country that has lost its way and, with his huge concern for life's unfortunates, captures the pathos of broken dreams and shattered lives. He offers us a cache of Americana -- Wobblies and railroad bulls, hoboes and capitalists and all sorts of quacks -- and the novel, a sprawling volume for a sprawling country, repays another reading.
Clarinda Harriss, chair of the Towson University English Department, has published three collections of poetry and contributed to two scholarly works on poetry. Her work appears in many U.S. magazines including Touching Fire: Erotic Writing by Women. She edits and directs BrickHouse Books Inc., Maryland's oldest continuously publishing small press.
Ernest Gaines' "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" never got as much attention as it deserved because Alex Haley's "Roots" came out a short time later and took over the spotlight. Leave aside his insightfulness, his poignancy, his moral passion and his narrative genius for a minute, and there's still this: nobody writes dialect/dialogue like Ernest Gaines -- no apostrophes, no funny spellings, just perfectly attuned word choice and rhythms.
Ronald S. Kozlowski has administered the Anne Arundel County Public Library for six years. He is CEO of the library system with 15 branches. He is a former teacher of English and journalism.
"Sea of Grass" by Conrad Richter. This novel is the story of the classic conflict between the old and the new; it depicts change as negative and positive. Richter's short novel is a beautifully written piece of American fiction.
Ray Jenkins has been a reporter for the Columbus (Ga.) Ledger. In 1954 he was one of two reporters who covered the Phenix City, Ala., upheaval, coverage that won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. He has worked for the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser-Journal, the New York Times in Alabama, the Clearwater (Fla.) Sun, and The Evening Sun, for which he was editorial page editor. His book "Blind Vengeance" was published in 1997.
"The Devil in Massachusetts," by Marion L. Starkey. Published 50 years ago, this was the first modern inquiry into the reign of terror over "witchcraft" that swept Salem Village in 1692. This haunting chapter of American history has been distorted -- and hence diminished -- by Arthur Miller's pseudo-documentary play "The Crucible," and the record sorely needs to be set straight by a book like Ms. Starkey's.
Rafael Alvarez is a reporter for The Sun and a fiction writer. His new book, "Hometown Boy," collects 20 years worth of his articles for this paper. Woodholme House will bring out a new collection of his short stories this fall.
I believe the work of William Saroyan -- particularly the novel "The Human Comedy" and the short story collection "My Name Is Aram" -- has been unjustly ignored and denigrated following its popularity at mid-century. Sentimental? Yes. Willfully naive? Certainly. Yet Saroyan's simple prose sparkles with wonder and possibility, an enduring American quality available to anyone willing to work. Why is joy and innocence considered middle-brow in the Information Age? Pope John Paul I wrote that "joy can become exquisite charity." William Saroyan gave at the office for more than half a century.
Paul McHugh is Henry Phipps professor and the director of the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. He, along with Phillip R. Slavney, M.D., wrote "The Perspectives of Psychiatry," a standard text used in American medical schools. He has also written for the American Journal of Psychiatry, Medicine and Nature Medicine.
"A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter B. Miller Jr. is a novel describing a future after an atomic holocaust, when the power of science and technology again works to destruction by gradually suppressing the Judeo-Christian consciousness of sin (a matter of good and evil, not just right and wrong). This science fiction novel, a favorite of Walker Percy who saw it as a marriage of a subliterary pop form with a subject matter of transliterary import, mirrors the genesis and source of authority behind the culture of death engulfing us now.
James H. Bready writes a monthly column on regional books for these pages. Previously he worked as a reporter, editorial writer and book editor for The Evening Sun.
William Safire writes a column on grammar and usage in the New York Times Magazine, and "On Language" (Times Books, 331 pages, $12.95 hardbound) is the first of the books to result from it. These days, when the English language is being broken and maimed by barbarians within the gates, Safire is its outstanding defender.
Jim Fish has directed the Baltimore County Public Library for three years. He has worked within library systems in California and Massachusetts.
Majorie Kinnan Rawlings' "The Yearling" has a depth to it that goes far beyond a story of a boy and his pet deer in 19th century Florida. Readers from 12 to 92 can still benefit from its treatment of a variety of human themes: love, loneliness, growing up, responsibility, relationships with family and friends, and the struggles and joys of everyday life.
Alonzo D. LaMont Jr. is television studio coordinator in the Communication & Media Studies department at Goucher College. He is also an instructor of the Studio Television Production course at the college.
"Mumbo Jumbo" by Ishmael Reed. It's a fantastic, surreal journey about the advent of dance in 20th century America and its outrageous effects on race relations. It's somewhat of a fantasy/factual re-creation. Reed's use of language and situation is the penultimate use of literary jive.
Mark Ribbing, a Sun reporter covering the telecommunications industry, has a law degree from Columbia. Before joining The Sun he was a staff writer and corporate counsel for the Lehman Communications Corp. in Colorado.
"American Slavery, American Freedom" by Edmund S. Morgan. Even the greatest history books are all too often consigned to a polite oblivion, esteemed by scholars and ignored by the public. This is a shame, because history can pack a sinus-clearing wallop: "American Slavery, American Freedom" brilliantly answers one of the biggest riddles of our past -- how the contradictory national traditions of liberty and racial oppression grew up side-by-side in colonial Virginia.
Carla Hayden has directed the Enoch Pratt Free Library for six years. She worked as chief librarian of the Chicago Public Library and coordinated the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Hayden has also taught library science in Pittsburgh, Pa.
"Brown Girl, Brown Stones" by Paule Marshall. This book is notable as a vibrant, lyrical, realistic depiction of life during the Depression and World War II. Set in Brooklyn, it's the story of Selina Boyce, the daughter of Barbadian immigrants. Marshall combines poverty and racism, the conflicting pulls of an ambitious mother and a dreamer father, and the struggle to be American into a novel that's filled with memorable characters and the tragedy and triumph of life in this country.
James Abbott has since January 1997 served as curator of decorative arts for the Baltimore Museum of Art. He is currently working on an exhibition that explores how American presidents -- from George Washington to Bill Clinton -- have utilized the arts to translate and/or promote an official image or legacy.
"The Architecture of Country Houses" by Andrew Jackson Downing was published in 1850, and since that date it has served as a wonderful, informal guide to not only the concept of building a house but also to the philosophical ideal of a "home." Downing was one of America's first great tastemakers -- almost a Martha Stewart of his day -- who gave advice on architecture, landscape design and the decoration of individual rooms. The "advice" is as valid today as it was to pre-Civil War America. (This book is available in a fairly recent reprint through Dover publications.)
Norma Hill has been with Howard County Library for 19 years. She joined the Howard County Library staff in 1980 and one year later became its assistant director. In July 1996, she became director.
"One Man's Meat" by E.B. White, 1944. 1st ed.
No one has written timeless, delicious stories and essays better than New Yorker writer-editor E.B. White (1899-1985). Though written 55 years ago about White's later years on a saltwater farm in Maine, this book continues to delight as a witty account of geographic novelty, reminiscences on the promise of youth, and powerful insights into the little things in life that can make all the difference.
Dan Fesperman is a Sun reporter and author of the novel "Lie in the Dark," published this month by Soho Press.
"Look Homeward Angel," by Thomas Wolfe. The book world long ago condemned this 1929 explosion of words to the dustbin of the overrated, and Wolfe's overheated verbosity lends an aura of justice to the harsh sentence. Yet, if read between the ages of 18 and 21, there is still no more cathartic rendering of the hot emotional flash of youth -- deeply wounded by every failure, exultant at every triumph -- and the rhythms of its language still burst upon the page with the force of epic poetry.
Margarete Parrish is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work and an expert on teen violence.
I believe that the scriptures of world religions are egregiously ignored and should be added to the curriculum. Students should start with their own scriptures then progress to those of other world religions so that they can come to actually conceptualize the notion of spirituality.
Donna Rifkind is a former literary agent and magazine editor whose writing has been published by Commentary, the American Scholar, the New Criterion, the Wall Street Journal, the Times Literary Supplement, the Washington Post and the New York Times.
I have often thought that Steven Millhauser's first novel, "Edwin Mullhouse" (1972), has never gotten the recognition it deserves. A fictional biography of a recently deceased 11-year-old boy by his best friend, the novel is both a beautifully elegiac book about childhood and a clever, often satirical meditation on the nature of literary biography. The book works on several levels at once in a sly, Nabokovian sort of way; it's not an easy read, but its rewards are great.
Laura Demanski studies and teaches Victorian literature at the University of Chicago. She previously worked at Simon and Schuster and the University of Chicago Press. Demanski is writing a doctoral dissertation about portrayals of the urban underclass.
Mary McCarthy's "Memories of a Catholic Girlhood" goes generally
unrecognized as the original, and surely the most artful and haunting, example of what has become in the 1990s the most characteristically American genre: the memoir of childhood abuse and neglect. McCarthy transcends the genre in this unjustly overlooked work of literature; her story of orphanhood in the 1920s is potent and heartbreaking but, more importantly, she wrests from its cruel details a brilliant meditation on the nature of memory, religion and self-understanding.