Through letters, literary passages, dictionary definitions, and excerpts from her childhood journal, Alison Bechdel looks back through the lens of loss at growing up with a difficult and elusive father that she has more in common with than she would like to admit--much in the tradition of Spiegelman's Maus. Her style is intrinsically visual but beautifully literary at the same time. I now have a new respect for the graphic genre.

Susan Sontag demonstrates her mastery of the art of eloquent outrage, an art that requires subtlety and restraint, but also an art that, when done well, changes the way you see things every day. She argues that while photographs of devastation, whether from war or natural disasters or human cruelty, are often regarded as "truth," in reality nothing could be more deceiving. When we see a haunting image of some nameless person suffering our heart goes out to them and their plight, and it takes our minds way from the more insidious implications. "Such images," she writes, "cannot be more than an invitation to pay attention, to reflect, to learn, to examine the rationalizations for mass suffering offered by established powers." When Sontag died in December 2004, we lost a great American mind.

It is hard to know what to say about Istvan Banyai because he is able to convey so much in his books without using a single word. Enticing and thought-provoking for adults and children alike, this book shows us that the first way we see something is not the only way to see it, and that someone else may be seeing the exact things you are and perceiving them totally differently. Just glance at a few pages. I guarantee it will make you think.

This is one of those books that butts its way into each busy day--I found myself sneaking pages during lunch breaks and on 5 minute bus rides because the plot and characters are so intriguing. Romantic love is only one of so many kinds of love that drive this novel; a boy's first love who he never stopped loving, a father's love for the son he never know, a writer's love for the manuscript he thought he'd lost (but finds later), a young girl's love for her father who died, for he mother who can't live without him, and for her eccentric younger brother. And amazingly, you find all o these loves sitting on the same park bench by the end of the novel.

As the cover demonstrates, this book is not for the pastel-inclined, but it is absolutely hysterical and had the whole Porter Square Books staff guffawing when it came in. Aside from the power of its images, this book also attests to the great power of a word to force itself into our lexicon, to be used as every part of speech and in every context. Can you flip through it and not laugh? I doubt it.

Well, my friends of the Porter Square Community, the time has come for me to pull a Sal Paradise and hit the road. My life (both reading and otherwise) has been enriched during these 2 years, and hopefully vice versa as well. I'll be roughly following Sal Paradise's route, although by car rather than by hitching rides or trains -- a stop in Des Moines, where all the prettiest girls in the world live, a stop in Colorado, and finally to California, with its "stucco houses and palms and drive-ins, the whole mad thing, the ragged promised land, the fantastic end of America," where I will set down my bags for a while. I will miss you all here, but perhaps when I find my way back to PSB again, I will be able to boil down a city to its gritty pith the way that Kerouac can.

Many pieces in this book demonstrate the power of an image to take your breath away and jolt you out of your comfort zone. The editors have collected images from all over the world, from designers ranging from professional to guerilla, and from issues spanning from the Israel-Palestine conflict to anti-war protests to homophobia and racism. It will absorb you, you will say "Wow" and "Hmm" a lot, you'll realize that an entire evening has passed, and suddenly you see the world a little differently.
Emily P.

Do you ever find yourself wondering (after a State of the Union address, for example) how on earth he-who-shall-not-be-named came to have so much power in our country? Sure, family connections played no small part, but as Stephen Graubard argues, the U. S. presidency has amassed power at an alarming rate throughout the twentieth century. It seems a daunting tome, I know, but Graubard's book accessibly outlines most of the trends in the first three chapters. He then devotes about 30 pages to each president, focusing specifically on the events that led to a consolidation of presidential authority over the legislative and judicial branches and the ways in which secrecy affected that increased power. The twentieth century was one of incredible change, and whether you need to brush up on events you lived through eons ago or you want to learn more about the things your parents and grandparents always talked about, you will find Graubard's work a very well-researched and refreshingly readable political history.

Kate Williamson has created not so much a linear travel narrative as a kaleidoscope of stunning colors and images that she gathered throughout the year she lived in Japan. She doesn't neglect the expected cherry blossoms or sushi lunches, but she also shares with us sumo wrestlers at ATMs, elegant taxicabs, and rubber stamp stands at Shinto shrines. Simply put, this book is an extremely appealing object.