It's the birthday of the late, great Isaac Asimov. One of the giants of science fiction, Asimov is well-known for works such as the Foundation series. (Movie buffs will remember the 2004 Will Smith film, "I, Robot," based Asimov's ideas on robotics.) But his writing ranged far beyond sci-fi. A search in the library catalog for this author brings up an astounding 190 hits. He wrote detective stories, published in collections such as "The Return of the Black Widowers." He also wrote on a wide variety of nonfiction topics, ranging from history to literature to science.

Asimov backed his science fiction with a strong knowledge of science fact, and many of his nonfiction works cover science topics, such as:

• Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery. (REF 509 A; non-circulating)
• Asimov's New Guide to Science. (Adult Nonfiction 500 A)
• Isaac Asimov's Guide to Earth and Space (Adult Nonfiction 520 A)

Among his other books were works on number theory (Asimov on Numbers), history (Rome, Egypt , the Middle East, France, and North America, and others); the human brain (The Human Brain: Its Capacities and Functions), and even a guide to Shakespeare.

Asimov's books for children include several on the planets; an environmental series covering topics such as acid rain, litter, and rainforests; a biography of Christopher Columbus; and many more.

For information about this remarkable and prolific author, try one of Asimov's autobiographies:

• It's Been a Good Life (BIOG As422)
• In Joy Still Felt : the Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954-1978 (BIOG As422)
• In Memory Yet Green : the Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954 (BIOG As422)

Or, search for "Asimov" in the Biography Resource Center database to read what others had to say about Asimov. For more about Asimov's writings, try searching for articles in the Literature Resource Center. Literature Resource Center provides literary criticism of authors' works, lists any pseudonyms they used, shows who their contemporaries were, and may provide links to related web sites.

Explore!

Today we celebrate the birthday of Abigail Powers Fillmore, the first wife of President Millard Fillmore. Born March 13, 1798, Abigail Fillmore is not nearly as well known as some of her fellow first ladies, such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Abigail Adams, or Jackie Kennedy. So why should we care about her? Well, one of her accomplishments was the establishment of a library at the White House. She noticed that the White House was lacking in books, and so, at her urging, Congress appropriated $250 for a White House library. The first lady was also an early proponent of public libraries. It was Abigail, a teacher, who inspired Millard to join the town library early in his career. You can read more about Abigail (and other first ladies) in the Biography Resource Center database, at http://www.nashua.lib.nh.us/IbrowseAdultAlpha.htm.

More famously, Laura Welch Bush is a former school librarian. For those interested in the life of the current first lady, the Nashua Public Library offers:

Laura Bush : an intimate portrait of the first lady, by Ronald Kessler.
George and Laura : portrait of an American marriage, by Christopher Andersen.
Laura Welch Bush, First Lady, by Tanya Lee Stone (for children).

Her mother-in-law, Barbara Bush, was heavily involved in literacy efforts, as the title of one of our children's books makes clear:

Barbara Bush : first lady of literacy, by June Behrens.

More on Barbara Bush can be found in:

Reflections: Life After the White House by Barbara Bush.
Barbara Bush : a memoir, by Barbara Bush.
Barbara Bush : a biography, by Pamela Kilian.
Barbara Bush, first lady, by Rose Blue and Corinne J. Naden. (for children)

There are many other books on the first ladies in the library's collection. You might also be interested in the White House's own web site about the first ladies, found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/firstladies/.

Although the next Presidential election is still over a year and a half away, some campaigns are already in full swing. One of the most active candidates is Hillary Clinton, who has a legitimate chance of winning the Democratic Party's nomination for President. A Clinton victory would give the United States its first female president; however, she is not the first woman to have run for this office. Believe it or not, Victoria C. Woodhull ran for President as the Equal Rights Party's nominee in 1872, long before women had the right to vote. For more information about Woodhull, you can take a look at the Biography Resource Center database, or check out Other powers : the age of suffrage, spiritualism, and the scandalous Victoria Woodhull by Barbara Goldsmith, which is part of our Women's History Month display.

In the 135 years since Woodhull ran, many women have appeared on the ballot. Some, such as Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME), have even hailed from New England. When a colleague nominated her in 1964, Smith became the first woman to have her name placed in nomination at a major party convention. Other female candidates include Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-NY), who won 151.25 delegates in 1972, Elizabeth Dole, who ran in 2000, and Carol Moseley Braun, who ran in the 2004 election. The Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University lists interesting facts about women who have run for President and other offices on their website. You can also find information about women who have run for President of countries around the world on the Worldwide Guide to Women in Leadership website. If you prefer to read more on this topic, browse our catalog using the subject "women in politics."

In this last week of Women's history month, it seems fitting that we should celebrate the 77th birthday of Sandra Day O'Connor. Although she will be remembered as the first female justice of the United States Supreme Court, a life in law was not O'Connor's ambition. In fact, as a child, O'Connor aspired to be a rancher. O’Connor’s mother Ida Day, a college-educated woman, wanted her daughter to experience more than the ranch on which she lived. She sent Sandra to a private girls' school in Texas. After completing high school at age sixteen, Sandra Day attended Stanford University and graduated magna cum laude in 1950. Her plan to return to ranch life changed due to the influence of one of her teachers, who was also a lawyer. O'Connor enrolled at Stanford Law School and worked on the Stanford Law Review. She graduated in 1952.

Despite her credentials, O'Connor was unable to find a job at a law firm because she was a woman. Her only offer was for a secretarial position, which she declined. O'Connor finally found work as a deputy county attorney in San Mateo, CA. When her husband was stationed in Germany in the mid-1950s, O'Connor worked as a civilian attorney for the Quartermaster Market Center. Back in Arizona, O'Connor took time off to raise her sons, but kept herself busy as a volunteer for the state bar, local zoning commission, Salvation Army, a school for minority children, and other activities. From 1965-1981, she held various positions in Arizona, from Assistant Attorney General to Superior Court Judge. In 1981, O'Connor became the first woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court, where she served until 2006. According to her biography in Contemporary Authors Online, "Although she does not consider herself a feminist, O'Connor was quoted by Merrill McLoughlin of Ladies' Home Journal as commenting: 'I am sure that but for that effort [the women's movement], I would not be serving in this job.'"

You can read more about Sandra Day O'Connor in the Biography Resource Center database and in the following books:

Sandra Day O'Connor : how the first woman on the Supreme Court became its most influential justice by Joan Biskupic Call no: BIOG Oc518 B

The majesty of the law : reflections of a Supreme Court justice by Sandra Day O'Connor ; edited by Craig Joyce Call no: 347.7326 O

Lazy B : growing up on a cattle ranch in the American southwest by Sandra Day O'Connor and H. Alan Day Call no: BIOG Oc518

We also have a video titled A Conversation on the Constitution: judicial independence in which O'Connor, along with fellow justices Stephen G. Breyer and Anthony Kennedy field questions from 50 high school students from the Philadelphia and Los Angeles areas about the significance of the judiciary and the ways that independence is protected by the Constitution. You can find it in the Music Arts and Media Department. Call no: MAM DVD 342.73 C

Source:
Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2007. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC

Wednesday, April 18th marks the 150th anniversary of the birthday of Clarence Seward Darrow. Clarence Darrow is perhaps best known for his involvement in the Scopes trial arguing in behalf of John Scopes. Scopes, a biology teacher, was being tried for teaching evolution in the state of Tennessee in the year 1925, in direct defiance of Tennessee's anti-evolution act. Although there is a tendency to view Darrow as the "evolution" lawyer, he was also involved in many other well-known trials.

Clarence Darrow was born April 18, 1857. After starting a career as a school teacher at a very young age, he decided to become a lawyer. At the age of twenty, he studied law for one year at a school of law in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After that, his legal education took the form of on-the-job training. He was employed by the city of Chicago as an attorney and then by the Chicago and Northwestern Railway as their general attorney. It was in this position that he met Eugene V. Debs, later a Socialist Party candidate for president, and became the defender of the railroad Pullman car workers in the railroad strike between the American Railway Union and the railroad owners. From this point on, Darrow was seen as a defender of the working class and an advocate of civil liberties.

Information about Clarence Darrow is available online as well as in the library. The Clarence Darrow Homepage is a portion of a website done by the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. It provides background information about Clarence Darrow as well as information about some of his most famous cases. The PBS series American Experience has information on its webpage concerning a special called Monkey Trial and biographical information on Clarence Darrow. For those interested in unusual information, the FBI has made available 11 pages of its file on Clarence Darrow under the Freedom of Information Act. Most unusual of all is Findagrave, a website where you can look at the gravesite of a famous person, or in this case, see the site where the ashes of Clarence Darrow were scattered.

The library has some biographies of Clarence Darrow, as well as some books discussing his most notable trials: The people v. Clarence Darrow: the bribery trial of America's greatest lawyer; Arc of justice: a saga of race, civil rights and murder in the Jazz age; The crime of the century : the Leopold and Loeb case; Big Bill Haywood and the radical union movement; Summer for the gods : the Scopes trial and America's continuing debate over science and religion and The great Tennessee monkey trial, a downloadable audiobook available through the state library. The database Biography Resource Center, which is available on the library's website, is an excellent source of information on Clarence Darrow. It can be accessed from home using your library card barcode.

The tempestuous life of Boris Yeltsin came to an end yesterday. Yeltsin, the former president of Russia, was 76. Articles about the leader's life and legacy have been flowing following word of his death.

He is in the spotlight today in the Biography Resource Center database, which provides biographical and other articles about the late president. For a more international view, try the Newsbank database (scroll down the list of databases to "Newsbank" and be sure to select "remote access" if you are reading this outside the library). Go to "America's Newspapers and International News," and then click "Expand to: The World" and search on "Yeltsin." This will bring up the full text of news articles from around the world.

Other good sources of news articles include the Facts.com and EBSCO databases. In particular, EBSCO provides access to more scholarly journal articles in addition to major magazines such as Time and Newsweek. Facts.com has a narrower focus, primarily covering major world events.

To take an in-depth look at Boris Yeltsin's life and times, check out "Yeltsin : a revolutionary life" by Leon Aron. For a more general book about Russian history, including the end of the Soviet Union and the Chechnya conflict, try "Russia and the Russians : a history" by Geoffrey Hosking.

David Halberstam, well-known author, and Pulitzer Prize winner for his reporting for the New York Times during the Vietnam War, died Monday at the age of 73. He died in a car crash in California while on his way from a speaking engagement at Berkeley to an interview during which he had planned to research the subject of a new book.

America's obituaries and death notices, a database available on the library's website, currently has obituaries from ten different newspapers for David Halberstam. These can be accessed by entering his first and last name in the box marked Name of the Deceased. His career as a writer began in 1955, when, after his graduation from Harvard, he traveled to the South to write about race relations there. He went on to report from the Vietnam war, where his goal was to keep the American people informed of the truth about the Vietnam war. In addition to his reporting, he has also written 21 books ranging in topic from history through sports. Regardless of what he was writing, he was first and foremost a reporter.

Biography Resource Center, another database on the library's website, has not yet updated their database information to reflect his death, but only about 24 hours has passed. The database does have considerable information about his writing career and his life, including three narrative biographies .

Nashua Public Library currently has a special display of his writings on the counter to the right of the circulation desk. As a sports fan, Halberstam wrote about people and memorable games. His 2005 book The education of a coach is about Bill Belichick, coach of the New England Patriots. His 2003 book The teammates deals with the bond of friendship formed by four Red Sox team members which still endured sixty years later. After 9/11, David Halberstam wrote a book called Firehouse which told the story of one of the engine and ladder companies in New York most affected by the tragedy of that day. Although this book is currently available only as a downloadable audiobook from the state library, a print copy has been ordered for NPL.

Whether he was writing about war, politics, current events or sports, David Halberstam researched everything thoroughly. All the facts were always there; the reader could believe in what Halberstam wrote as strongly as he did. He will be greatly missed.

"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave." I remembered that from somewhere in the cobwebs of my brain when I saw that Wednesday, May 9 would be the 207th anniversary of the birth of John Brown. That is the first line of what was a famous marching song sung by the Union Army during the Civil War. There are apparently claims that the John Brown of the song is the abolitionist John Brown best remembered for his raid on Harper's Ferry. There are also claims that the John Brown of the song was a Union soldier from Boston, a member of a military glee club. When the song was sung, the John Brown who came to mind was apparently the more famous one, and the song took off from there. The lyrics of the entire song are available at Wikipedia.

John Brown was born on May 9, 1800 in Connecticut and died by hanging December 2,1859 in Charles Town, West Virginia. Son of an abolitionist and an abolitionist himself, he was, at one point in his life, a conductor on the underground railroad in Ohio. Brown had very strong religious beliefs and very strong opinions on the evils of slavery. He also came from a family where insanity was fairly common. His religious beliefs fueled his antislavery opinions and he became convinced that he was representing the hand of God in his dealings with pro-slavery individuals. He became a well-known representative of the antislavery cause in Kansas when, under his command, five pro-slavery individuals were hacked to death with machetes.

His attempt to arm slaves and help them to rise up against slave owners was the defining moment of his life. He was aided and abetted by six prominent Northern abolitionists referred to as the "Secret Six". With a small band of men both black and white, he attacked a federal arsenal in Harper's Ferry VA. He was not joined by vast numbers of slaves wanting to be free. Instead, he ended up surrounded and refused to surrender. When he was finally captured, he was tried for murder and treason among other things, found guilty, and hung. At that time, and in that place, he became a legend to some, a hero to others, and a nutjob to the rest.

The library has a number of resources which will help you to form your own opinion regarding John Brown. Biography Resource Center and World Book Online have informative articles about John Brown. The library also has a number of books in different categories which offer views of John Brown. If you are a fiction reader, you may be interested in Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks or Mine eyes have seen by Ann Rinaldi, or if you like poetry, Stephen Vincent Benet's John Brown's body, although an oldie, could still prove interesting.

The library also has some new biographies of John Brown. Patriotic treason : John Brown and the soul of America by Evan Carton was published in 2006. John Brown, abolitionist : the man who killed slavery, sparked the Civil War, and seeded civil rights by David Reynolds was published in 2005.

When the space shuttle Atlantis lands this week, it will return to Earth with a record holder. At 12:47 CDT today, Sunita Williams broke the record for the longest duration spaceflight by a woman. At that time, Williams surpassed the previous mark of 188 days, 4 hours set in 1996. She is also the woman who has spent the most hours outside a spacecraft, having completed four spacewalks during Expedition 15 with a total time of 29 hours, 17 minutes. It is particularly interesting that the Massachusetts native made history today, as it is the anniversary of another groundbreaking space mission. Twenty-four years ago on this date, the space shuttle Challenger, equipped with a new robotic arm to deploy and retrieve satellites, launched flight STS-7. One of the operators of that device was Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.

Ride is a women of many talents. She received a partial tennis scholarship to a prep school in Los Angeles and was ranked eighteenth on the junior circuit. Tennis legend Billie Jean King even told Ride that she could play professionally. Ride decided instead to focus on her studies, earning both a BS and a BA from Stanford University. She remained at Stanford for her graduate work in physics. In 1978, Ride learned that she was one of 35 people chosen from a field of 8,000 for spaceflight training. She had applied "almost on a whim" when NASA fielded applications for the first time in quite a few years and decided not to exclude women. Ride was assigned to the ground support crew for shuttle flights in 1981 and 1982. She made history in 1983 as the youngest person sent into orbit, as well as the first American woman in space, and ventured into the final frontier again in October 1984. Training for her third mission was cut short in the wake of the Challenger disaster. Ride was named to President Reagan's Rogers Commission, which investigated the explosion. She was the only astronaut on the panel.

Ride's work has extended beyond NASA. She was a member of President Bill Clinton's transition team in 1992 and has dedicated her life to educating others. Ride is a professor of physics at University of California, San Diego and also headed their California Space Institute. She has also worked for Space.com, which maintains a website about the space industry, and founded NASA's EarthKam project, which allows children to take and download photos of the Earth from space.

Ride is particularly passionate about encouraging girls and women to pursue careers in math and science. Ride's mother Joyce had also harbored an interest in science, but noted that in college, she encountered a "wall of silence." She and other women in the class were "nonpersons." Even today, girls face resistance when they show interest in math and science. Former Harvard President Lawrence Summer's comment about girls' lack of ability in those areas is case in point. In an article about Ride that I found through the Biography Resource Center database, author KC Cole notes that it is "quite an achievement" that many of the country's top mathematicians and scientists are women because well into the twentieth century, many were not allowed to receive advanced degrees in those fields. On the lecture circuit, Ride meets many children, both boys and girls, who want to be astronauts, but the college physics classes are predominantly male. According to Cole, Ride "gets the answers when she talks with women who wanted to be astronomers or archaeologists, but were told that they were dumb in math--in the third grade! Or were excluded from the engineering club in high school." Ride also says, "you see all these boys who get C's in math and say, 'I'm going to be an engineer!' And all these girls who get A's in math and say, 'I'm not good enough.'" To remedy this problem, Ride founded Imaginary Lines, which provides support for girls interested in science, math, and technology, and the Sally Ride Club, which is geared toward upper elementary and middle school girls.

Now, the next time you hear Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire," you'll know a little more about the woman in the last verse sandwiched between "Wheel of Fortune" and "heavy metal."

Sources:
"Astronaut Suni Williams Sets the Record Straight, and Long." NASA http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition15/s_williams_record.html (accessed 6/16/07).

Cole, KC. "Sally Ride: a generation later, the first female astronaut is still on a mission." Smithsonian 36 no. 8 (Nov 2005): 64-5. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC.

"Sally Ride." Notable Women Scientists. Gale Group, 2000.
Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC.

Roger Tory Peterson, famous for his field guides to birds, would have been 99 today. He is credited with making bird identification accessible to all levels of birders. There's a nice biographical article about him in the Environmental Encyclopedia, available through our Biography Resource Center database. According to the article, Peterson was born August 28, 1908, and died July 28, 1996. His passion for birds began when he was a boy. An artist by training, he studied at the National Academy of Design and the New York City Art Students' League. His two interests came together in his publication of A Field Guide to the Birds, which was published in 1934. Several newer editions were subsequently produced.

In addition to his Field Guide to the Birds, he also produced guides to wildflowers (A field guide to wildflowers of Northeastern and North-Central North America; a visual approach arranged by color, form, and detail) and plants (A field guide to edible wild plants of Eastern and Central North America). Houghton Mifflin now publishes a series of field guides in his name.

He received many awards for his work, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. There is even a natural history institute named for him: The Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History.

A book about Peterson's life in birding, All Things Reconsidered: My Birding Adventures was released posthumously in 2006, and you can find it here at the library.

On December 1, 1955, a young woman took a stand by refusing to leave her seat on a segregated bus in Alabama, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It seems appropriate that we celebrate the anniversary of Rosa Parks' birth today, during Black History Month.

Parks was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. After marrying, she became involved in the the NAACP and served as the Montgomery chapter's secretary. She was also involved in the Montgomery Voters' League, which assisted African Americans in passing the voter registration tests. For refusing to give up her seat on the bus, Parks was arrested, fined $14, and convicted of violating segregation laws. She challenged the law, and Martin Luther King, Jr. organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Unfortunately, the notoriety hurt Parks, as she was fired from her job, threatened, and hassled. She and her husband left Montgomery and eventually settled in Detroit. Despite earlier disagreements with Civil Rights leaders in Montgomery, Parks continued to fight for equality by raising funds for the NAACP and co-founding the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 and the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1999. Parks passed away on October 24, 2005.*

You can learn more about Rosa Parks from our Biography Resource Center database or from a variety of books, such as:

Rosa Parks / Douglas Brinkley
Quiet strength : the faith, the hope, and the heart of a woman who changed a nation / Rosa Parks with Gregory J. Reed
Great African-American women / Darryl Lyman
A wonderful life : 50 eulogies to lift the spirit / edited by Cyrus M. Copeland. This book contains President Bill Clinton's eulogy of Parks.

*Source:
"Rosa Parks." Newsmakers, Issue 1. Thomson Gale, 2007.
Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2008. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC

I'm tempted to write about the top news story of the day, but I've decided instead to write about something a little more tasteful. So my Governor Spitzer commentary will have to wait because 2008 is the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest opera composers of all time, Giacomo Puccini. Perhaps you've seen La Boheme, Madame Butterfly, or Turandot in person, or listened to recordings of them. You surely have heard Pavarotti's performance of Nessun Dorma (from Turandot) in the famed Three Tenors recording. If you haven't, you really need to.

"It is said that around 1876, Puccini, walked 13 miles to a theater in Pisa to hear Aida, the great Verdi opera, and immediately decided to become an opera composer as well. Serious study, however, would be needed, and with this in mind he secured a stipend from a grand-uncle, and then a scholarship to the Conservatory in Milan. He arrived in late 1880, and studied diligently for the next three years."* The rest, as they say, is history.

So why not read more about Puccini in the Biography Resource Center database, or check out one of these books.
The king and I : thirty-six years with my client, friend, and burden, Luciano Pavarotti : the untold story / by Herbert Breslin and Anne Midgette.
Pavarotti : life with Luciano / Adua Pavarotti with Wendy Dallas

And you must check out one of these recordings, videos and DVDs. You'll be happy you did.
Carreras, Domingo, Pavarotti in concert [sound recording].
The 3 tenors in concert 1994 : [videorecording]
Turandot sound recording / Puccini ; [completed by Franco Alfano].
La bohème [videorecording] / by Giacomo Puccini ; libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica ; The Metropolitan Opera.
My favorite opera for children [compact disc].

* "Giacomo Puccini." Contemporary Musicians, Volume 25. Gale Group, 1999.
Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2008. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC