Happy Holidays From All Of Us At Zandbroz!
Book Feature:
The Disappearing Spoon
By Sam Kean
We recently had the pleasure of selling books for an author talk with Sam Kean about his new book, The Disappearing Spoon. Sam charmed us along with the rest of the audience and the book has become a hit with staff at Zandbroz. We have a few signed copies available; inquire at info@zandbroz.com if you are interested and we can reserve one for you!The Periodic Table is one of man's crowning scientific achievements. But it's also a treasure trove of stories of passion, adventure, betrayal, and obsession. The infectious tales and astounding details in THE DISAPPEARING SPOON follow carbon, neon, silicon, and gold as they play their parts in human history, finance, mythology, war, the arts, poison, and the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them.
We learn that Marie Curie used to provoke jealousy in colleagues' wives when she'd invite them into closets to see her glow-in-the-dark experiments. And that Lewis and Clark swallowed mercury capsules across the country and their campsites are still detectable by the poison in the ground. Why did Gandhi hate iodine? Why did the Japanese kill Godzilla with missiles made of cadmium? And why did tellurium lead to the most bizarre gold rush in history?
From the Big Bang to the end of time, it's all in THE DISAPPEARING SPOON – so stop in and pick up your signed copy before they all disappear!
"It is Right to Draw Their Fur"
Portfolio of drawings by Dave Eggers
Sold Out!
In addition to his talents as a storyteller and author, Dave Eggers is a talented artist; Eggers attended art school and had a short lived cartoon strip during his college days. Realizing he couldn’t get by on his talents in the visual arts, he started writing--and on the way, he started McSweeney’s Publishing and Valencia 826.
We had the privilege of doing a series of book signings with Eggers during the SD Festival of Books. His book “What Is the What” was the 2010 One Book SD and he also did a separate talk about his latest book, “Zeitoun”, followed by a signing event for “It Is Right”. In addition to being articulate, thought-provoking, and incredibly talented, he is perhaps one of the most gracious and patient people we have ever had the pleasure of working with.
We do have a small number of signed copies of some Eggers titles. If you are interested please call 800-352-6697 or email jeff@zandbroz.com.
Dave Eggers signing at SD Festival of Books, September 26
This is an article that was published in the New York Times some years back. Scroll down (all the way down!) for famous names that have come to hang out in our store.
You Left Your Heart Where?
By BRENDA FOWLER Published: March 10, 1996
NOT long ago my friend Elsie Ruth asked me to accompany her on a drive from Chicago to Washington State, where she had some business.
"You're from out here," coaxed Elsie Ruth, a New Yorker who under certain circumstances might make the claim that real culture stops on the east bank of the Hudson. "You'll know what to do if we hit a blizzard. Plus you speak the language."
Feeling terribly missionary, I agreed to go along. We left Chicago early one morning and sped west on Interstate 90. We had just passed the turnoff for Laura Ingalls Wilder's house somewhere in southwestern Minnesota -- "See?" I had said, "there's stuff out here" -- when the car died.
Outside lay an unflinchingly flat and snow-covered farmscape, without a structure in sight, and it was 10 below, before you adjusted for wind chill. I glanced at Elsie Ruth's stricken face and understood immediately that she thought she was going to die in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately, a paranoid friend had advised her to rent a car phone for this journey and this she now retrieved from beneath a bag of pretzels.
"Nothing could be worse," Elsie Ruth shrieked, tearing open a map of the North Central states, and punching out the A.A.A. 800 number she had committed to memory.
For the next half hour we waited silently, watching the ice crystallize in the dregs of a coffee cup on the dashboard. Elsie Ruth tried to write a goodbye letter to her parents, who had warned her not to attempt this trip, but the pen froze. Just as we were resigned to an uncertain future without toes, a truck from Big Richard's Auto Repair and Towing pulled up.
"Where you gals headed?" asked the giant Viking who stepped out, his blond mustache dripping with icicles.
"Please take us to Sioux Falls, South Dakota."
At the garage the mechanic took one look under the hood and told us we couldn't leave until the following afternoon at the earliest.
Neither one of us had ever been to South Dakota before and frankly, we had only the vaguest idea of what to expect. We collected our warmest clothes from the car and called a cab.
"To the downtown?" we inquired.
"Not much open on a Sunday afternoon," the driver remarked as he dropped us off at the corner of Ninth and Phillips Avenue.
It was 2 P.M. and in the west a bright sun was already beginning to slide down the cloudless sky. We started up Phillips. Nothing was moving, not even a car. We zig-zagged up the deserted street, tugging at the doors of restaurants.
Suddenly, there was action ahead. Two people walked out of a building and got into a pickup. We beelined for the spot where they had appeared and to our amazement found a door that opened. We fell into the place stamping our feet and snorting steam. I smelled coffee. A smiling woman in a mini-skirt looked up from behind an antique cash register.
"Hi," she said. Her nose was pierced.
"Wow," Elsie Ruth said. "What is this place?"
It was the Zandbroz Variety and it was definitely part of Elsie Ruth's vocabulary. The large space was stocked with books, stationery, fancy fountain pens, fun toys, perfumes and soaps, and kitchen stuff. We followed the aroma of coffee to the back, where there was an old saloon-style bar. Gulping down our cafes au lait, we consulted the waiter. Where should we go? What should we see? He listened closely to Elsie Ruth's concerns and made a few suggestions.
Our first stop was the Old Courthouse Museum, just a few blocks away from the Zandbroz. Built in 1890, when there was very little to this town at all, it was a grand structure of purply quartzite, quarried from the site. Inside, the walls were covered with vast murals of prairie landscapes, including one that depicted the falls for which the town was named.
"Do you think we're in the West yet?" Elsie Ruth wanted to know.
We made our way into the first exhibit, Castles of the Prairie, which showed the types of dwellings in which people here used to live.
"It says that it takes between 10 and 12 buffalo skins to make one tepee," Elsie Ruth said. We looked at the early photographs of a cluster of Sioux tepees and read how they glowed at night from the fires burning inside. Flaps at the top could be adjusted to direct the smoke out or to catch a breeze.
We moved on to the sod houses. There weren't enough trees for early American settlers to build wooden houses so they cut blocks of sod and stacked them together. We listened to a recorded account of life in a sod house. Sometimes snakes came through the walls and dropped onto the beds. Elsie Ruth shuddered but I could see she was impressed.
Outside again in the brutal cold, we looked toward the west, where the sun was setting behind a cathedral. It seemed too cold for a walk but we climbed the hill to the cathedral anyway and strolled through a neighborhood of pale yellow, blue and white houses.
The sun vanished and it was time for dinner. On the way back down the hill we started to notice how many buildings were constructed of that pink quartzite. As instructed by the Zandbroz waiter, we went to the Sioux Falls Brewing Company, a restaurant housed in an old warehouse.
"If we're in the West, then I'm having a steak," Elsie Ruth announced, admiring the prices.
Within minutes the waiter arrived with the beer we'd ordered. On his tray stood one regular beer for me plus six tiny glasses -- a sampler of the brewery's six beers -- for Elsie Ruth. Printed on the place mat were four spots marked with the names of the usual four -- the prairie wheat ale, the ringneck red ale, the Phillips Avenue pale ale and the buffalo stout. The waiter placed the beers where they belonged and hurried off. It was just beer, but the colors were beautiful.
"To Big Richard's towing service," Elsie Ruth said, raising the pale ale.
The steak arrived and it was huge and succulent. As we ate, we discussed plans for the following day. We were supposed to see the Pettigrew Home and Museum, which had a collection of Indian and pioneer artifacts. There was also a walking tour of the historic warehouse district and we had to look into all the shops that had been closed on Sunday afternoon.
After a night in an unremarkable hotel, we returned to Phillips Avenue and stopped in at Zandbroz for a cup of coffee. Across the street at a bakery we picked up a croissant for breakfast. A few doors down was yet another shop of delicacies. We went inside and were studying some pottery when the saleswoman pressed us to taste the homemade fudge.
Our idling had made us forget about the car. A half-hour past the appointed time we arrived at the garage and listened to the mechanic's diagnosis. The car was not in perfect condition, but it would probably be able to make it across the state to Rapid City, where we could pick up a certain part.
We hopped in the car and, remembering the itinerary worked out by our waiter, decided to swing by the falls. It was another clear day, but much warmer. Someone had told us that the change was due to the Chinook winds, which can raise the temperatures by 40 or 50 degrees in just one day. We stood on a promontory overlooking the falls, a collage of snow, ice and rock, and we listened to the water coursing through.
"I almost wish we could stay here for a while," I said. "This place must be even more beautiful in the spring."
After some time we returned to the car and drove to Zandbroz to fill our coffee mugs and say goodbye to the nice staff. Then we headed for the highway.
"Goodbye, Sioux Falls. It was nice to get to know ya," said Elsie Ruth, veering onto the ramp that would put us on Interstate 90.
She pressed the gas and the car coughed. It spluttered and then died. Exactly half-way around the clover-leaf ramp we rolled to a stop. Elsie Ruth pulled up the emergency brake. Neither of us spoke. She tried to start the car again and again but it wouldn't turn over. I grinned down into the Zandbroz cup. Looking up, I caught Elsie Ruth's reflection in the rear-view mirror. She was smiling.
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