Archive | December, 2006

Caroline Kettlewell

8 Dec

Electric Dreams

Original airdate: December 8, 2006

About the Book: When Eric Ryan is sent by Teach for America to a hard scrabble high school in the heart of North Carolina’s NASCAR country, one of the many things he didn’t count on was Harold Miller sticking his head into his class one morning and announcing, “Hey Mr. Ryan, we’re gonna build an electric car.”

Two regional utilities had challenged a group of elite schools throughout the South to design and build battery-powered electric vehicles. Although Ryan’s underprivileged high school had not even been on the list, somehow Miller had managed to squeak them in and onto an adventure which not only began to take over the lives of Ryan, Miller, and a local engineer named George Hawkins, but an unexpected group of kids with no visible resources, know-how, or expectations.

With an ancient Ford Escort rescued from the compacter, a few hundred pounds of scavenged golf cart batteries, a local minor league NASCAR driver as coach, and the local constabulary looking the other way as the reborn “Shocker” began careening over back roads on test runs, the kids (barely) get their pasted together dark horse to the big contest in Richmond, and then, naturally, win the whole thing.

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John Hodgman

1 Dec

The Areas of My Expertise

Original airdate: December 1, 2006

About the Book: In the great tradition of the American almanac, The Areas of My Expertise is a brilliant and hilarious compendium of handy reference tables, fascinating trivia, and sage wisdom on all topics large and small. Although bestsellers such as Poor Richard’s Almanack and The Book of Lists were certainly valuable, they also were largely true. Here is a different kind of handy desk reference, one in which all of the historical oddities and amazing true facts are sifted through the singular, illuminating imagination of John Hodgman–which is the nice way of saying: He made it all up.

John Hodgman brings his considerable expertise to bear in answering all of the questions book buyers have been asking:
What are the mottoes of the 51 United States?
Who were the U.S. presidents who had hooks for hands?
What role does the Yale secret society “Skull and Bones” play in the secret world government?
What was the menu at the first Thanksgiving, and did it include eels?

John Hodgman is a contributing writer for publications including The New York Times Magazine. He wrote an advice column for McSweeney’s for over a year entitled “Ask a Former Professional Literary Agent,” and currently curates and hosts the Little Gray Book Lectures—a monthly series that has been broadcast on This American Life. He now appears regularly on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show.

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