What-I'm-Reading-Wednesday: Quiet Dell by Jayne Anne Phillips

 Quiet Dell is the spell-binding, fictional account of a murder that shook the nation. Jayne Anne Phillips found the newspaper account of the grisly murder of a widow and her three small children. A con man lured Asta Eicher, a wealthy widow, to her fate through a series of love letters in the early thirties in the small town Quiet Dell close to Clarksburg, West Virginia.

Most of the novel is narrated by Emily Thornhill, a Chicago journalist, who travels to West Virginia to cover the story for her newspaper. During the investigation and trial, the reader learns that Harry Powers seduced and murdered other women.

Briefly mentioned in her first novel, Machine Dreams, the crime and its effect on the Clarksburg community is recounted with detail in Quiet Dell, currently displayed with new books on Floor 3.  

Details of the trial were included in a New York Times article on December 11, 1931. Access is available at the Ort Library on Proquest Historical New York Times database at the link below:

 POWERS CONVICTED; HE FACES HANGING. (1931, Dec 11). New York Times (1923-Current File) Retrieved from http://proxy-fs.researchport.umd.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/99103822?accountid=27669

The Ort Library has nine earlier works by Jayne Anne Phillips available on Floor 5 in the PS3566.H479 area. 

Inside Google's Laboratory

Here's a New York Times piece on Google X, a lab at which Google attempts to make its long-range plans involving robots, space elevators, and much more.

An alternative to Wikipedia?

Times Topics is a feature of The New York Times that serves as a type of reference source for people, companies, and a myriad other newsworthy items. Examples of entities included are Jennifer Granholm, St. Jude Medical, Inc., Boy Scouts, and Marshall University.

Entries sometimes give brief synopses of the significance of the topic, and, when available, give an archive of NYT articles. Thus, Times Topics doesn't give you a cross-section of sources, but the various articles over the years tend to look at the topic from a good variety of angles, and satisfies a need to ascertain the significance of a particular topic.

Not all entries are as detailed as this one on Barack Obama.

How Health Care Reform Affects Higher Education

The historic health care legislation passed by the House of Representatives this week not only means sweeping health care reform but also revamps the federal student loan program.

In short, the bill, attached to the health care legislation, "would end government payments to private, commercial student lenders, leaving the government to lend directly to students. It would also redirect billions of dollars to expand the Pell grant program for low-income students, and to pay for other education initiatives."

To fully understand the impacts of the bill on student lending, please explore these links.

From The Washington Post: "Obama's student loan plan moving forward with health bill"

From The New York Times: "Deal Gives New Life to Overhaul of Student Loans"

From National Public Radio: "Health Care Reform Could Revamp Student Lending"

From GoCollege.com (higher education blog): "With Health Care Vote, Congress Puts an End to FFEL Student Loan Program"

Health Care Reform Media Roundup

In the wake of the passage by Congress of the much-debated and historical health care reform bill, here's a quick rundown of the breadth of coverage in the last few hours:

CSPAN healthcare hub: includes links to streaming video from CSPAN-3: Speaker Pelosi's press briefing, the House vote on the bill and reconciliation, House floor debate, President Obama's remarks, and comments from Senator McCain; in text, the vote tally and text of the bill

NYTimes news analysis: David Sanger worries about the consequences of the passage of this major legislation without a single Republican vote

Fox News: reports on brewing legal challenges to the law

The Washington Post: discusses the logistics of what will happen next, including President Obama's signing ceremony tomorrow. This article was posted at 2:20 today.