[bksvol-discuss] Pultizer Prize winners

From: Carrie Karnos <ckarnos@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Bookshare Vol Group <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 15:55:53 -0700 (PDT)
Hi gang,

The Pulitzer Prize winners were announced today. Of the 5 we can put into the 
collection, there's already 1 in. I will be buying and processing the other 4. 
The winners are:

Fiction: Tinkers by Paul Harding (below are 2 reviews from amazon about this 
book)
Nonfiction: Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its 
Dangerous Legacy by David Hoffman
History: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed
Poetry: Versed by Rae Armantrout
Biography: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by Stiles 
(this is at http://www.bookshare.org/browse/book/149952)

The reviews of Tinkers are:

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Harding's outstanding debut unfurls the history and 
final thoughts of a dying grandfather surrounded by his family in his 
New England home. George Washington Crosby repairs clocks for a living 
and on his deathbed revisits his turbulent childhood as the oldest son 
of an epileptic smalltime traveling salesman. The descriptions of the 
father's epilepsy and the cold halo of chemical electricity that 
encircled him immediately before he was struck by a full seizure are 
stunning, and the household's sadness permeates the narrative as George 
returns to more melancholy scenes. The real star is Harding's language, 
which dazzles whether he's describing the workings of clocks, sensory 
images of nature, the many engaging side characters who populate the 
book, or even a short passage on how to build a bird nest. This is an 
especially gorgeous example of novelistic craftsmanship. (Jan.) 
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier 
Inc. All rights reserved. 
From Booklist
*Starred Review* A tinker is a mender, and in Harding’s spellbinding 
debut, he imagines the old, mendable horse-and-carriage world. The 
objects of the past were more readily repaired than our electronics, but the 
living world was a mystery, as it still is, as it always will be. 
And so in this rhapsodic novel of impending death, Harding considers 
humankind’s contrary desires to conquer the “imps of disorder” and to be one 
with life, fully meshed within the great glimmering web. In the 
present, George lies on his death bed in the Massachusetts house he 
built himself, surrounded by family and the antique clocks he restores. 
George loves the precision of fine timepieces, but now he is at the 
mercy of chaotic forces and seems to be channeling his late father, 
Howard, a tinker and a mystic whose epileptic seizures strike like 
lightning. Howard, in turn, remembers his “strange and gentle” minister 
father. Each man is extraordinarily porous to nature and prone to 
becoming “unhitched” from everyday human existence and entering a state 
of ecstasy, even transcendence. Writing with breathtaking lyricism and 
tenderness, Harding has created a rare and beautiful novel of spiritual 
inheritance and acute psychological and metaphysical suspense. --Donna 
Seaman 

Carrie
[bksvol-discuss] Pultizer Prize winners

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