sdunlap's blog

On February 25, 2025, the Mechanics’ Institute Library hosted a game night featuring The Royal Game of Ur. Many attendees had never played the game before and were curious about the history and origins plus interested in joining others for some rounds of gaming. If you happened to miss the event, here’s some background of the game, the rules played during the game night, and links to more information.

If you did attend the game night or are interested in other game nights in the future, please fill out this survey to provide feedback and ideas on future library programs. Now on to some history:

The largest and most extensive archaeological expedition of the early 20th century, led by legendary archaeologist Leonard Wolley, excavated the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur -- the birthplace of Abraham, and the capital of early kingdoms in the dawning age of civilization. The Royal Cemetery, where they buried kings, queens, and prominent citizens for over 500 years, had about 2,000 burials and most of them had grave goods. It took years of work to categorize, contextualize, and date all of the artifacts they found during the 12 years from 1922 to 1934—the more spectacular artifacts and structures they found at the deepest, and therefore oldest, levels. 

Among the thousands of grave goods, they found a game board and set of playing pieces. Very much like present-day board games, the board was hollow -- a box that had compartments to store the pieces. Even before this find archaeologists had found the pattern of 20 squares and 5 rosettes, in some cases scratched into stone, over a wide area from Cyprus to Sri Lanka. Scholars and board game devotees have puzzled over the possible rules. How did they play this game? In a delightful YouTube video that introduced me to this game, Assyrianologist Irving Finkel describes how he made a replica of the game based on an illustration in a book, then dragged his sister into playing various versions of the rules he had thought up. 

Tom Scott vs Irving Finkel: The Royal Game of Ur | PLAYTHROUGH | International Tabletop Day 2017

Finkel's video about his discovery of the rules:

Deciphering the world's oldest rule book | Irving Finkel | Curator's Corner S1 Ep1 [PILOT] 

In his book, The Ark before Noah, Finkel describes his having accidentally turned himself into the world's foremost expert on cuneiform writing. His initial plan to study Egyptology fell apart when his Egyptology professor died after Finkel's first day in class. He switched specialties. Then after earning his doctorate, and learning how to translate ancient languages written in cuneiform from the foremost expert of the time, Finkel started a job as a curator at the British Museum. I can only imagine the conversation when his boss told him they had about 130,000 cuneiform tablets for him to translate. 

He found the rules of a game after about 2 years. But what game? The tablet was a letter from an Egyptian astronomer to a Greek astronomer, but the letter did not describe the game in enough detail for anyone 2,000 years later to know exactly what the game board looked like. It took years later for him, with the help of his colleagues, to link these rules to the board of 20 squares we now know as the Royal Game of Ur. Although the tablet dates to 177 BCE, over 2,000 years after the creation of the board and pieces that Wolley's expedition found, this remains the oldest set of rules for a game in all history. 

A word about binary dice

You can find very many websites that describe the Royal Game of Ur and its rules. We have numerous versions of the rules. During the Mechanics' Institute Library's game night in February, I taught only the Finkel rules for the sake of simplicity, but you can find many other sets of rules, many of them guesswork from the time before Finkel found the cuneiform letter. But the game discovered in the Royal Cemetery of Ur had 4 tetrahedral dice (4 sided dice sometimes mistakenly called triangular, they are the shape of the pyramids of Giza). This matches with the rules that Finkel discovered. Why are these important? Some websites tell you that if you do not have tetrahedral dice then just use a six-sided die you have lying around -- do over the throw if it's six and count 5 as the null throw. But this fundamentally changes the game because the odds of a given number coming up on a single die are exactly the same. But 4 binary dice will generate different odds (the same way that in playing craps with 2 six-sided dice the number 7 is the most likely result and the numbers 2 and 12 the least likely). If you do not have tetrahedral dice then use 4 coins. 

The Finkel Rules

You can find the Finkel rules on many websites, but for your convenience, here are the rules I printed out for game night: 

What you need:

1 × game board. 

4 × tetrahedral dice (coins work too). 

14 pieces:  7 × pieces for each player. Light and dark tokens are commonly used.

To play:

The pieces start off the board and move around the board as shown in the diagram below. The first player to have all their pieces enter and exit the board wins. 

Throw the dice to determine who plays first. The high roll wins and the winning roll is the first one played. Each tetrahedron (or coin) has a value of 1 or zero. The roll is the sum of all 4 dice thrown. 

To start, a player places one piece on the board, counting from the first square, moving in the direction of the arrows shown above for the full count of the roll. A player must move a piece if possible, only one piece per roll, either a piece already on the board or place another piece on the board. Only one piece may occupy a square. A piece may "jump over" any other piece, the opponent's or their own.  

If the player cannot move a piece the full count of the roll because it would land on another of their pieces or If the player throws a null roll (all zeros) then that player’s turn ends without moving.

When a piece lands on a rosette, that player gets another turn. If one player’s piece lands on the other’s piece, the piece landed on goes off the board and has to start again from the beginning. 

The rosette in the middle “lane” of the board also acts as a safety square. When occupied, an opponent’s piece cannot land on it, so if a roll would have a piece land on the occupied rosette square, that player has to move some other piece. If no other piece can move, the turn ends without moving.

Leaving the board:

A piece can only leave the board with an exact roll. So if a piece is on the last rosette square, only a roll of 1 allows that piece to exit the board. 

Background information and further reading

I found the story of the excavation of Ur fascinating. The process of discovery and the systematic and meticulous work needed to make sense of the artifacts they found and to contextualize and date them stands as one of the great achievements of modern science and scholarship. I have compiled a list of scholarly articles I consulted in the preparation of February's game night presentation. 

The British Museum's page describes the game board and pieces and the manner by which the archaeologists excavated them. 

Pollock, Susan. Chronology of the Royal Cemetery of Ur. "Iraq" Vol. 47 (1985), pp. 129-158 

Mallowan, M.E.L. Memories of Ur. "Iraq" Spring - Autumn 1960 v.22 pp 1-19

Leon Legrain. Unearthing history at Ur. "Scientific American" 138:6 June 1928 pp 517-519. 

Woolley, C. Leonard. “Excavation at Ur, 1929-30. ”The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland" no. 4 (1930): 879–87.

If you are interested in a PDF of the Finkel rules that we shared at game night, please email [email protected] 

Buy your own replica

We learned how to make your own Royal Game of Ur board and how to obtain playing pieces and dice during game night. For those who are interested in owning a replica set, there are many replica Royal Game of Ur boards and pieces set for sale online. 

The replica shown here that was on display during game night was purchased from the British Museum Online Shop.

A less expensive but not authentic version of the game board set also from the British Museum Online Shop. 

We also have many leftover game boards and pieces from the game night event. If you are interested in some of these pieces please email [email protected].

The Finkel rules date to over 2,000 years after someone buried the game board in a grave in the Royal Cemetery at Ur. We can safely infer that many variations or even other games existed that use that same game board. Imagine, experiment, play test your own games. 

A final note

Head of Technical Services and the Royal Game of Ur game night host Steven Dunlap is retiring at the end of the month. His enthusiasm for games and puzzles, and the history behind their origins (plus his many blog contributions including this one) will be greatly missed. Read more about his upcoming retirement here.

If you attended the Mechanics’ Institute Library’s game night or are interested in future game nights or events in the library, please fill out our survey.

From my personal study of chess, I have found that we not only have a large number of chess books -- in the Mechanics' Institute Library as well as in the world in general -- but also an extensive variety of ways these chess books teach the game. I have occasionally had chess player members ask me for advice about chess books: which ones are the best for beginners? (Beginner in the sense of someone just starting to get serious and take up the study of the game, however many years they have played). Years of working in education combined with years of sometimes fruitless study of the game have led me to realize that the first order of business when you set out to improve your game is to learn how you learn. 

We read a lot about learning styles in the scholarly literature of education. I would not say that learning styles are as individual as a fingerprint; but that we do not have any one, single, clear "correct" way to learn any subject that should work for everyone, whether chess or math or foreign languages. On the other hand, we can identify "learning styles." 

The 10-minute test. 

Typically, chess teachers teach the way they learn. Each chess book writer will therefore teach in a given learning style. My advice to players starts with "the 10-minute test." Take a chess book, say, one you borrowed from the MI Library. Find a timer. You can usually find one standard on most mobile devices or buy a little battery-powered one from any housewares or kitchen store. Set up the pieces on the board, open the book to start studying, then hit the timer. After 10 minutes you will have one of two possible outcomes. One, you breathe a sigh of relief and say "Saved by the bell! Thank goodness I can stop now." Or, you feel annoyed by the interruption because you had immersed yourself in that book and the lesson it had for you. In each case make a note (write it down to be sure) of the author's name. If it's the "saved by the bell," response, then that author may be great for someone else but not for you. If it's the "annoyed by the interruption" response then, congratulations, you have found someone who teaches the way you learn (so seek out more books by that author). 

Below I outline learning styles that players have described to me in addition to my own. For those starting I suggest borrowing one of each "style" and then put it to the 10-minute test. For those that pass, the other authors in that style category will likely help you more than the ones in other categories. (All chess books are located on Balcony 2B unless otherwise indicated).

1. Study entire games

We have numerous master and grandmaster players I have spoken with who swear by the study of the great, instructional games of the past. A long game between expert players will contain the opening, middle-game, and endgame and thereby teach you a useful lesson about each phase of the game to let you see how these phases flow from one to the other. 

Books to start with: 

Andrew Soltis. 365 chess master lessons: take one a day to be a better chess player 794.1 S69t

Intended as a one-year course of study, please do not keep the book checked out for the whole year! Start with the library's copy, then if this works for you, please consider purchasing a copy of your own. 

Irving Chernev. The most instructive games of chess ever played: 62 masterpieces of chess strategy 794.15 C52

A long-time Mechanics Institute member, Chernev's writing has great clarity with simple, straightforward explanations. Some of our Chess Club's Masters and Grandmasters who remember him caution us that they consider some of his analyses either incorrect or outdated. But if you are a beginning-level player this should not concern you -- the essential lessons that Chernev teaches remain sound even if some of his tips and tricks may no longer work against a Grandmaster.  

J.R. Capablanca. My chess career: masterpieces by the master of chess 794.15 C23

Known in his lifetime as "the chess-playing machine," Capablanca was also a gifted teacher. He writes very clear and easy-to-understand annotations of his games.  

2. Compartmentalization: one phase of the game at a time: Opening, middle-game, endgame

The advice you read from Jeremy Silman--the chess book writer who does the best job of teaching in this compartmentalized manner, is to budget your time to study the 3 phases of the game: half your time on the endgame, then one quarter each for the Opening and Middle game. Capablanca came up with a truly brilliant insight about how to teach chess: backwards. Start with the endgame then work your way back to the middle-game and opening. You need to know where you're going to get there. 

Jose Raul Capablanca. Chess fundamentals 794.1 C23 2006

We have a copy updated with algebraic notation.  

Yasser Seirawan with Jeremy Silman. Play winning chess 794.1 S46p

Some MI Chess Club players consider this the best introduction to chess. 

Murray Chandler. How to beat your dad at chess 794.124 C45

A systematic description of 50 ways to checkmate. Many of these checkmate patterns even have names: Anastasia's, Boden's, Phiidor's, and more! Each chapter has a complete explanation with a diagram followed by 6 puzzles for you to apply the lesson. 

Gabor Kallai. Basic chess openings 794.122 K14b  and More basic chess openings 794.122 K14

These two books do the best job of explaining each of the major openings, giving the novice player a way to determine which opening works best for their playing style. As with Chernev, some of the variations in these books are out of date and will not work against a grandmaster. But against opponents that tournament directors pair you with, you will likely do OK. And keep in mind, you should use these books to start with -- as you progress you will find others to take you beyond the basics. 

3. Puzzles, exercises, problems

Richard Reti once commented about studying chess: "A knowledge of combinations is the foundation of positional chess.” (In other words, study puzzles). 

Many high-rated players swear by the use of puzzles, exercises, and problems  (whatever you wish to call them). Sam Shankland, MI Chess Club member and 2018 U.S. Chess champion, said during a recent chess event at the Mechanics Institute that he works with his chess coach because "He can compose chess problems as fast as I can solve them." Puzzles teach tactics and for those who learn best by the study of chess puzzles, here are books of puzzles that break down the tactical ideas: 

Jeff Coakley. Winning chess exercises for kids Child 794.1 C652w (2nd floor) 

As also true of Murray Chanlder's books, many of the best chess books for anyone starting are ones written for children. Coakley uses exercises to teach the basic tactics we all need to know, starting with pins, forks, and skewers. 

Jennifer Shahade. Play like a girl!: [tactics by 9Queens] 794.123 S525

Grandmaster Jennifer Shahade arranges each chapter by a given tactic and follows each explanation with puzzles of increasing difficulty. 

Tim Brennan and Anthea Carson. Tactics time: 1001 chess tactics from the games of everyday chess players 794.1 B83

Taken from the games of lower-rated players, these puzzles expose you to the sort of situations you will most likely encounter in your games in MI tournaments. The editors arrange the selection of puzzles so you do not know ahead of time which tactic the puzzle solution requires. Good for after you have learned what the tactics are. Keep in mind the advice from Paul Whitehead, recently retired chess room coordinator, that you will often find more than one "correct" answer to many of the problems in this book. 

László Polgár. Chess: 5334 problems, combinations, and games 794.1 P765

This education researcher tested his theory of early childhood development by teaching his children advanced chess concepts at a very early age. Nonetheless, he had to start with the easier tasks before he could teach them the more complex ones. This book contains problems and exercises he used to train his three daughters who went on to become 2 grandmasters and 1 international master. 

Lou Hays and John Hall. Combination challenge! 794.12 H425

I suggest you take on this book only after you have completed one or more of the puzzle books listed above. Hays and Hall have arranged the puzzles by tactical concepts and their puzzles draw from some of the more complex games by advanced players. 

Our online catalog lists all our chess books that contain puzzles, problems, and exercises. 

 

4. Thematic and programmatic

I give this name to my own learning style. Books that lay out a given idea or tactical concept, then provide progressively more difficult exercises (puzzles, problems) to apply the lesson of a given chapter. Even better, books in which the chapters progress from simpler to more complex ideas with the earlier ones providing a foundation for understanding the later ones truly exemplify this learning style. 

Some books already mentioned above work well with the thematic and/or programmatic style. Chandler's How to Beat Your Dad at Chess and Shahade's Play Like a Girl have helped me immensely. The following books have done the most to teach me how to play better chess: 

Fred Reinfeld. The complete chess course: from beginning to winning chess! 794.1 R367c

Fred Reinfeld was a much-beloved chess book writer and teacher. In the preface to this revised and updated edition of this book the editor describes the same experience as I had: frustration and failure in studying chess until he found a book by Reinfeld. Now in algebraic notation and the examples checked with a chess computer (and updated as needed), the new editions bring Reinfeld's books into the 21st century. 

Jesus de la Villa. 100 Endgames You Must Know 794.124 D34

de la Villa runs a chess school in Madrid, Spain. He bases his chess writing on his experience with his students. His books, translated into English, provide the best example of books for this learning style. Starting with the easy, simple, endgame patterns he builds on the concepts in the earlier chapters that provide the foundation for learning the more challenging endgame patterns in the later chapters. At the end of each chapter, he gives progressively more difficult exercises for you to apply what you have learned. 

James Eade. Chess for dummies 794.1 E105

Part of the trademark "For Dummies" books, this one takes the thematic and programmatic approach as the earlier chapters establish a foundation for understanding the ideas in the later ones. Although I have not used this book myself, my examination of it shows that it lays out the essentials of chess strategy and tactics that work for this learning style. 

What is your chess learning style? 

Maybe you found one of the 4 learning styles in this post works best for you. Maybe you will find you learn best by combining 2 or more of these. Maybe the answer is "none of the above." The most important point to keep in mind remains that everyone does not learn the same way. This means that if you do not feel that you have made any progress the way you have tried to study chess before, then try something different. And always feel free to ask the Chess Club staff and the Librarians for help -- that's what we're here for.

One Other Consideration:

For beginning study, another important point: learn the traps. I have found that many chess books seldom or never include how to carry out or avoid traps (perhaps they assume the reader already knows these?) You will seldom find something more frustrating on the chess board than having carefully studied and prepared for a game but falling for an easily preventable checkmate (if only you knew about that trap!). 

Alfred Emery. Chess sacrifices and traps  794.1 E53s

The library has a 2008 revised edition of the 1926 classic. Traps never go out of date. 

Bruce Pandolfini. Chess openings: traps and zaps 794.122 P189

Pandolfini is a regular contributor to Chess Life Kids. Do not be put off by the fact that he writes for children, his books will teach adults very effectively. 

Irving Chernev. Winning chess traps: 300 ways to win in the opening 794.1 C52.3 1974

If Chernev's other books pass your 10-minute test, then you'll love his book on traps. 

A Final Word:

Keep in mind if you use online sources such as YouTube or lichess.org then the lessons you find do not have the benefit of editors nor do we find them presented or curated according to any plan or organized structure. I would never say never to using online sources -- I use them myself -- but chess online vs. formally published books provides an object lesson in the usefulness of edited, well-thought-out, well-organized information that you find in good, old-fashioned books.  

 

As I prepare for my upcoming retirement, I recently applied for Social Security benefits. As a warning to fellow Mechanics’ Institute members in my age range, I then received an email after I applied for benefits that read simply that I needed to call a phone number 877-772-3794, to talk to someone about "reviewing your earnings record." I did a web search before calling and found a scam alert [https://www.eastcountymagazine.org/social-security-scam-alert] from a news website that listed this number. I very nearly called that number before checking so I want to put this out there: scammers have a lot of publicly available information about us including our age (and other details). Chances are the timing of the email was intended to arrive just after I applied for retirement benefits and boy did the criminals get that timing right this time. 

If you are not 100% sure that an email comes from the person or agency it claims to come from then do not respond. If you are unsure how to check for fraud please ask a librarian -- that's what we're here for. 

Beware and always be aware everyone.

Additional resources:

Unwanted calls, emails, or texts: https://consumer.ftc.gov/unwanted-calls-emails-texts

Scams & Identity theft: https://consumer.gov/scams-identity-theft

Reporting Fraud: https://consumer.ftc.gov/media/how-report-fraud-reportfraudftcgov

The Mechanics Institute already has numerous different English translations of Dante Alighieri's 3-part set of narrative poems -- The Divine Comedy. Although we already have the award-winning blank verse translation by Allen Mandelbaum, we recently acquired another edition of his translation, this one with an introduction by Nobel Prize-winning poet Eugenio Montale as well as notes by Peter Armour, professor of Italian at Royal Holloway College, University of London. The illustrations provide another unique attribute of our new acquisition: reproductions of 42 drawings by Botticelli. 

The divine comedy  Everyman's Library, 1995, 851 D19ma 

(Illustration: Dante bathing in the river Eunoe by Botticelli)

Well, two places. 

First, at the beginning of 2024, we moved the travel section on the 2nd floor to another location on the 2nd floor—to the aisle where we previously housed the Children's section. We now have all our new fiction books in the corner "nook" facing Post Street on the 2nd floor. 

Second, while reviewing our travel collection, we found many changes in the travel book industry during the pandemic. Two publishers no longer publish print guides: Michelin and Time Out, though they both now have websites to which you can subscribe. On these websites, you can plan your trip and obtain a printout of your itinerary. 

The economic chaos of the pandemic made most of the travel books published before 2020 hopelessly out of date. Travel book publishers understand this too, and have started to turn out new editions of old favorites and new titles as well. The Mechanics Institute Library keeps track of the popularity of a given book in our collection (measured by the number of times a book gets checked out) and purchases the newest editions of the most popular travel guides.

We have found some of the books in our travel section offer somewhat timeless information that rarely goes out of date. Rather than provide listings of restaurants, shops, hotels, or stores, these books describe art, architecture, fountains, historical sites, views, mountains, castles, neighborhoods, murals, buildings, and more. 

For example, the series with the titles: 111 places in [Location] that you must not miss, contains a 2-page description of each of 111 sites, a brief history, and the address and/or directions to find it. A notable book in this series, 111 places in San Francisco you must not miss has an entry for the Mechanics Institute. 

The National Geographic Traveler series books also do not go out of date. They contain listings of festivals and events, in addition to the physical locations. Search our catalog for "National Geographic traveler" to see a list of the titles we have in this series. 

We also have 2 of Art Historian Alta Macadam's "Blue Guide" books: Rome and Florence. Although these contain outdated listings of hotels and restaurants, we keep these in our collection for detailed descriptions of the art, architecture, history, monuments, and more -- you can consult more up-to-date travel books for the more prosaic information.

 

In partnership with the Chess Room staff, we have started a pilot project to have chess eBooks available through Libby.

Libby is a mobile app and website that provides Mechanics Institute members with access to thousands of eBooks, eAudiobooks, and eMagazines.

After holding an informal poll, Christian Brickhouse, our new Scholastic Program Coordinator, let us know that the chess players surveyed would like books covering chess exercises and especially endgame studies. Respondents had a wide range of ratings; therefore, we selected chess eBooks across difficulty levels. Following that feedback, we have selected the following 11 titles for our pilot project:

100 Difficult Chess Puzzles in One Move by Charles Morphy

180 Checkmates in Two Moves, Solutions in Diagrams Part 1 by Charles Morphy

180 Checkmates in Two Moves, Solutions in Diagrams Part 2 by Charles Morphy

180 Checkmates in Two Moves, Solutions in Diagrams Part 3 by Charles Morphy

180 Checkmates Chess Puzzles in Two Moves, Part 1 by Andon Rangelov

Chess for the Gifted and Busy: A Short But Comprehensive Course From Beginner to Expert by Lev Alburt, Al Lawrence

Chess Training Pocket Book: 300 Most Important Positions (Third Revised Edition) (Comprehensive Chess Course Series) by Lev Alburt

Chess Training Pocket Book II: 320 Key Positions for players of all Levels by Lev Alburt, Al Lawrence

100 Endgames You Must Know: Vital Lessons for Every Chess Player Improved and Expanded by Jesus de la Villa

The 100 Endgames You Must Know Workbook: Practical Endgame Exercises for Every Chess Player by Jesus de la Villa

1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players: The Tactics Workbook that Also Explains All Key Concepts by Frank Erwich

In addition to these eBooks, we have recently found that Libby has added the British Chess Magazine to its eMagazine offerings. You can find the last 18 issues on Libby now. (Keep in mind this is a "rolling" 18-month license. In other words, in November of 2024, you can read the April issue of 2023. But in December 2024 the oldest issue you can access will be May 2023).

Some of the great classics of drama are often turned into movies—frequently more than one. How many movie versions of Hamlet do we have? (I can't count that high.) Many of us find differences or interpretations interesting, but sadly, many movies of classic drama (or remakes of classic movies) look like boring, shot-for-shot copies. 

On the other hand, brilliant playwrights such as Tom Stoddard and Orson Welles, and novelists such as Percival Everett and Madeline Miller, have given us a new way to look at old stories through the eyes and the lives of the supporting characters. 

Chimes at Midnight DVD
Orson Welles adapted from Shakespeare's plays most of the scenes in which the character "Falstaff" appears. He then directed and, of course, cast himself in the leading role. One of the great works of black and white cinematography. The MI library has the Criterion Collection DVD of this film. 

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead DVD
This movie version of Stoddard's famous play features brilliant, deadpan performances by Gary Oldman and Tim Roth. 

Maleficent DVD
Sleeping Beauty from the evil fairy's viewpoint. 

Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West / by Gregory Maguire.  Fic Maguire
This novel forms the basis for the musical and the movie. The story traces her career as a nun, nurse, pro-democracy activist, and animal rights defender. 

James: a novel / Percival Everett.  Fic Everett
The story of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of "Jim" the escaped slave. "Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion are shown in a radically new light…" (Publisher's summary)

The song of Achilles / Madeline Miller.  Fic Miller 
The Trojan War from Achilles' perspective. A very popular novel, we still see this mentioned in reviews and essays even now 12 years after its publication.

This is part 2 of our series of posts regarding our collection of short story anthologies.

The Mechanics Institute Library has a deep and extensive collection of short stories dating back to the early 20th century. Many of these you can find in anthologies such as The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Year's Best Stories, or several other short story anthologies in our collection.

For many years we placed these books on the shelf for members to find by simply browsing. As of now (count as of August 2024), we have 578 volumes of short story anthologies. We realized there are so many short stories tucked within these anthologies that we had to improve our catalog so members could discover individual short stories by their favorite authors that only appear in these anthologies. We are pleased to announce that we have completed this re-cataloging project.

To give you a sampling of what we have uncovered, Mechanics Institute staff have read stories by their favorite authors and share their thoughts below.

(Please ask a staff member for assistance if you would like to search for short stories in our catalog.)

Dorothy Parker.  The Banquet of Crow, in Best American Short Stories 1958 (SS B56 1958)

Originally published in 1957 in The New Yorker, it tells the story of a woman living in a traditional marriage of the time. Her union with her husband is disintegrating and despite him moving out to live at his club and enjoying his new lifestyle the protagonist believes he will come back and appreciate her and their marriage on a new level after the separation. To her dismay, she learns otherwise but nevertheless sustains the belief that her husband will eventually eat crow. Parker aptly provides a picture of the isolation of women in upper-middle-class marriages of the time, how their worth was tied so closely to that of their husbands and what female social groups looked like at the time. -- Review by Kathy Bella.

Richard Brautigan. The World War I Los Angeles Airplane, in Best American Short Stories 1972 (SS B56 1972)

Richard Brautigan, although one of the great writers of the Beat Generation, never obtained the same long-term fame and recognition afforded to his contemporaries, like Kerouac, Bukowski, or Ginsberg. He had a meteoric rise (and fall) from fame in the 70s. He wrote in a very unusual, at the time experimental, style consisting of blunt statements of fact written with an almost child-like simplicity. He also mastered the "very short story" decades before the terms "flash fiction" or "microfiction" existed. This story runs for only 4 pages. In a first-person narration he summarizes, using numbered points, as if writing a memo, the life of a fictional father-in-law. Despite (or maybe as a result of?) Brautigan's plain, direct, "like a memo" prose you come away from this story with an incredibly evocative picture of an entire life. Even weeks after reading this I find myself thinking about the man who once saw a rainbow follow his airplane and the rest of the life that he led afterwards.  -- Review by Steven Dunlap

Ursula K. Le Guin. The Shobie's Story, in Year's Best Science Fiction 1991 (SY39s 1991)

The story follows a group of travelers aboard a starship on a journey to establish a new colony. As they navigate the challenges of space travel, interpersonal dynamics unfold, revealing the complexities of human relationships and the quest for belonging in an uncertain universe. Le Guin's narrative delves into themes of identity, community, and the pursuit of a better future against the backdrop of science fiction.  -- Review by Jimmy DeGuzman

Dean & DeLuca: the food and wine cookbook 

For the dedicated and obsessive foodie, have we got a cookbook for you! Dean & Deluca: the food and wine cookbook starts with a brief overview of what differentiates one wine from another (focusing on California wines) and then goes on to advise on the storing and serving the wine to bring out its best flavors. The book then moves on to the main dish with each of the nearly hundred recipes having a list of the best wine pairings.  

I found a lot of information I did not know before. For example, the instruction "room temperature" for serving red wine dates back to a time and place when rooms tended to be a bit colder than now. And white wines can suffer from "overchilling" and will not release all their flavors when too cold. There's lots more to learn here. If you want to make a hobby of gourmet cooking and/or wine collecting, this book will definitely get you started. If you are already a connoisseur this book is a great reference for food and wine pairings.

Based on a story by Akira Kurosawa. You might be surprised but the movie grabs you right away. Jon Voight plays an escaped convict trying, with his best friend (a very young Eric Roberts), to make a getaway by jumping on a set of 4 train engines in a railway yard somewhere in Alaska. Rebecca De Mornay is a railroad worker sleeping in one of these locomotives. When the engineer has a heart attack he accidentally causes a series of events that burn out the brakes while setting the powerful engines off at high speed. 

That's the simple, brief synopsis. But we find so much more going on in this film: a combination of a modern take on Classical Greek tragedy layered with the metaphor of an out-of-control, unstoppable force. Everything about the story and the action and the life of the main character crystallizes with stunning clarity with just one line, spoken calmly, amidst all the noise and terror: "I wish I could."  (To tell you more would be an unforgivable spoiler). 

The Mechanics Institute Library has Runaway Train in DVD.