Word chain

Originally published in the Ketchikan Daily News, July 2015; written by Lisa Pearson.

When it gets really hot, your mind tends to wander a bit. It all started out with an attempt to get Siri (of iPhone fame) to find out the score of the Red Sox-Astros game on the 4th of July. From there I traveled via word ladder to dogs, nutrition, world politics and ancient civilizations. Using the collection at the public library, you can read your way along with me.

“The smartphone: anatomy of an industry” by Elizabeth Woyke explains how that ubiquitous little gadget ended up in your pocket. What technological and marketing advances were made in the three decades between the original handheld cellular phone (which weighed almost 2 pounds and cost 25% of an average yearly salary) to the sleek smartphones of today? What’s involved in designing and assembling a smartphone, and where do all those rare minerals (like tantalum, tin, tungsten and gold) come from? And where does it all go when you upgrade to a thinner, shinier model with 4G LTE capability? And how does Siri relate to Rin Tin Tin?

‘Siri’ becomes ‘serial’, and Rin Tin Tin was one of the most famous animal movie stars of the 1920’s and 30’s. Technically, his films weren’t serials, but he made 27 Hollywood adventure films that appealed equally to adults and children, and the background of this fame is presented in “Rin Tin Tin: the life and the legend”. Susan Orlean goes through the fascinating story of how Rin Tin Tin was rescued from a World War I battlefield by American Lee Duncan, who not only spent hours training the athletic German Shepherd to obey commands, but also wrote a screenplay specifically to show off Rin Tin Tin’s talents. Baby boomers will be more familiar with the popular television show “The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin”, which premiered the same year as Lassie’s show.

From movie serials we go to breakfast cereals, and T.C. Boyle’s 1993 novel “The Road to Wellville”. One of the most famous names in the food industry is Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, and Wellville is a fictional account of the sanitarium supervised by the nutrition-obsessed doctor who invented cornflakes. Boyle is an award-winning author who is skillful at satire and black humor, and his story of the affluent pursuing questionable means to regain their youth holds just as true for today’s society as for the guests of Kellogg’s sanitarium at the beginning of the 20th century. If you would like to learn how cornflakes (and other cereals) are actually made, check out the children’s book “How It Happens at the Cereal Company” by Megan Rocker. You may never eat rainbow-colored food again.

Humorous fiction turns to serious nonfiction with “The Syrian Rebellion” by Fouad Ajami. Ajami was a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and a frequent CNN commentator on Mideast affairs before his death last year. His overview of Syria and the politics and events leading up to the current conflict is an important book for anyone who wants to know more about the regime of Bashar Al-Assad and the uprising that began in the spring of 2011. This isn’t exactly beach reading, but for anyone who is interested in global events, this is good background information.

Syria is easily confused with Assyria, which was a powerful civilization in the Ancient World (the political boundaries are now gone, but the ethnic group remains spread across the area where Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran converge). From the 10th to 7th centuries B.C., Assyria was a major player in the area of Mesopotamia, ruling from the cities of Nineveh and Calah, and occasionally wandering west to sack Egypt and Israel. As the Egyptians and Israelis left behind a better written record, the ancient Assyrians’ image passed down in history is usually that of ruthless decadence. You can learn more about this important era of civilization by reading “The Great Empires of the Ancient World” edited by Thomas Harrison or “The History of the Ancient World : from the earliest accounts to the fall of Rome” by S. Wise Bauer. “Great Empires” is a more visual book (with lots of photos of the beautiful art of the time), while Bauer’s work places Assyria in context with their many neighbors.

So there you go: Siri, Serial, Cereal, Syria and Assyria. If you are looking for a fun way to choose titles in the nonfiction collection at the library, see what chain of words you can come up with and far afield you can explore.