Faculty & Friends Suggested Reading for Winter
2012
(Descriptions and reviews are from Amazon unless otherwise noted.)
NONFICTION:
The Information: a history, a theory, a flood by James Gleick (020 GLE) -Acclaimed science writer James Gleick presents an eye-opening vision of how our
relationship to information has transformed the very nature of human consciousness. A
fascinating intellectual journey through the history of communication and information, from
the language of Africa’s talking drums to the invention of written alphabets; from the
electronic transmission of code to the origins of information theory, into the new information
age and the current deluge of news, tweets, images, and blogs. Along the way, Gleick
profiles key innovators, including Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Samuel Morse, and
Claude Shannon, and reveals how our understanding of information is transforming not only
how we look at the world, but how we live.
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by
Charles Duhigg (158.1 DUH) -- A young woman walks into a laboratory. Over the past two
years, she has transformed almost every aspect of her life. She has quit smoking, run a
marathon, and been promoted at work. The patterns inside her brain, neurologists discover,
have fundamentally changed.
Marketers at Procter & Gamble study videos of people making their beds. They are
desperately trying to figure out how to sell a new product called Febreze, on track to be one
of the biggest flops in company history. Suddenly, one of them detects a nearly
imperceptible pattern—and with a slight shift in advertising, Febreze goes on to earn a
billion dollars a year.
An untested CEO takes over one of the largest companies in America. His first order of
business is attacking a single pattern among his employees—how they approach worker
safety—and soon the firm, Alcoa, becomes the top performer in the Dow Jones.
What do all these people have in common? They achieved success by focusing on the
patterns that shape every aspect of our lives. They succeeded by transforming habits.
At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising
regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building
revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding
how habits work. Habits aren’t destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new
science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.
*Kristin has read this, and she recommends it.
Cooking with the Bible: Recipes for Biblical Meals by Chiffolo and Hesse
(220.8 CHI) -- Each chapter begins with the menu for a biblical feast. A brief essay
describing the theological, historical, and cultural significance of the feast follows. Next
come separate recipes for the dishes served in the meal, followed by more commentary on
the dish itself, preparation methods used in biblical times, and how the dish was served.
Recipes for a wide variety of breads, stews, rice and lentil dishes, lamb, goat, fish and
venison meals, vegetable salads and cakes are detailed, all of them carefully tested. Make
delicious dishes such as Rice of Beersheba, Rebekah's Tasty Lamb Stew, Date and Walnut
Bread, Ful Madames and Scrambled Eggs, Pistachio Crusted Sole, Bamya, Goat's Milk and
Pomegranate Syrup Torte, Haroset a la Greque, Pesach Black Bread, Watermelon Soup with
Ginger and Mint, Date Manna Bread, Oven-baked Perch with Tahini, Braided Challah with
Poppy Seeds and Lemon, and Friendship Cake.
The Amish Way: Patient Faith in a Perilous World by Kraybill, et al. (248.4
KRA) -- This second book by the authors of the award-winning Amish Grace sheds further
light on the Amish, this time on their faith, spirituality, and spiritual practices. They
interpret the distinctive practices of the Amish way of life and spirituality in their cultural
context and explore their applicability for the wider world. Using a holistic perspective, the
book tells the story of Amish religious experience in the words of the Amish themselves.
Due to their long-standing friendships and relationships with Amish people, this author team
may be the only set of interpreters able to provide an outsider-insider perspective.
50 Ways to Help Save the Earth: How You and Your Church Can Make
a Difference by Barnes-Davies (261.8 BAR) -- This easy-to-follow book consists of
seven chapters on topics related to global climate change: "Water," "Energy,"
"Transportation," "Food and Agriculture," "People," "Other Species," and "Wilderness and
Land." Each chapter begins with a statement on how the content relates to global warming,
followed by seven action items ranging from individual efforts to activities that encourage
the involvement of the congregational and wider communities.
The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone On the Media by Gladstone
(302.23 GLA) -- A million listeners trust NPR's Brooke Gladstone to guide them through the
complexities of the modern media. Bursting onto the page in vivid comics by acclaimed artist
Josh Neufeld, this brilliant radio personality guides us through two millennia of media history,
debunking the notion that "The Media" is an external force beyond our control and equipping us
to be savvy consumers and shapers of the news. two-color illustrations
The Post-American World: Release 2.0 by Fareed Zakaria (303.49 ZAK) -Fareed Zakaria’s international bestseller The Post-American World pointed to the “rise of the
rest”—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, and others—as the great story of our
time, the story that will undoubtedly shape the future of global power. Since its publication,
the trends he identified have proceeded faster than anyone could have anticipated. The
2008 financial crisis turned the world upside down, stalling the United States and other
advanced economies. Meanwhile emerging markets have surged ahead, coupling their
economic growth with pride, nationalism, and a determination to shape their own future.
In this new edition, Zakaria makes sense of this rapidly changing landscape. With his
customary lucidity, insight, and imagination, he draws on lessons from the two great power
shifts of the past 500 years—the rise of the Western world and the rise of the United
States—to tell us what we can expect from the third shift, the “rise of the rest.” The great
challenge for Britain was economic decline. The challenge for America now is political
decline, for as others have grown in importance, the central role of the United States,
especially in the ascendant emerging markets, has already begun to shrink. As Zakaria
eloquently argues, Washington needs to begin a serious transformation of its global
strategy, moving from its traditional role of dominating hegemon to that of a more
pragmatic, honest broker. It must seek to share power, create coalitions, build legitimacy,
and define the global agenda—all formidable tasks.
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo (305.5 BOO) -- National Book
Award Winner, Named One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post and
O: The Oprah Magazine. A landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and
sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twentyfirst century’s great, unequal cities.
Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport,
and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and
enterprising Muslim teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage
that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a
childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political
corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter—Annawadi’s “mosteverything girl”—will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest
Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching
closer to the good lives and good times they call “the full enjoy.”
But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a
global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and
economic envy turn brutal. As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest
global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the
imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi.
With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects human beings to one another
in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers carries the reader headlong
into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible
to forget.
The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter (305.8 PAI) -- Telling perhaps the
most important forgotten story in American history, eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter
guides us through more than two thousand years of Western civilization, illuminating not
only the invention of race but also the frequent praise of “whiteness” for economic,
scientific, and political ends. A story filled with towering historical figures, The History of
White People closes a huge gap in literature that has long focused on the non-white and
forcefully reminds us that the concept of “race” is an all-too-human invention whose
meaning, importance, and reality have changed as it has been driven by a long and rich
history of events.
Geek Wisdom: The Sacred Teachings of Nerd Culture by Stephan H. Segal
(306 GEE) -- The geeks have inherited the earth. Computer nerds are our titans of industry;
comic-book superheroes are our Hollywood idols; the Internet is our night on the town.
Clearly, geeks know something about life in the 21st century that other folks don’t—
something we all can learn from. Geek Wisdom takes as gospel some 200 of the most
powerful and oft-cited quotes from movies (“Where we’re going, we don’t need roads”),
television (“Now we know—and knowing is half the battle”), literature (“All that is gold does
not glitter”), games, science, the Internet, and more. Now these beloved pearls of modernday culture have been painstakingly interpreted by a diverse team of hardcore nerds with
their imaginations turned up to 11. Yes, this collection of mini-essays is by, for, and about
geeks—but it’s just so surprisingly profound, the rest of us would have to be dorks not to
read it. So say we all.
The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and
What We Eat by Charles Clover (333.95 CLO) -- Gourmands and health-conscious
consumers alike have fallen for fish; last year per capita consumption in the United States
hit an all-time high. Packed with nutrients and naturally low in fat, fish is the last animal we
can still eat in good conscience. Or can we?
In this vivid, eye-opening book—first published in the UK to wide acclaim and now
extensively revised for an American audience—environmental journalist Charles Clover
argues that our passion for fish is unsustainable. Seventy-five percent of the world's fish
stocks are now fully exploited or overfished; the most popular varieties risk extinction within
the next few decades.
Clover trawls the globe for answers, from Tokyo's sumptuous fish market to the heart of
New England's fishing industry. He joins hardy sailors on high-tech boats, interviews top
chefs whose menu selections can influence the fate of entire species, and examines the
ineffective organizations charged with regulating the world's fisheries. Along the way he
argues that governments as well as consumers can take steps to reverse this disturbing
trend before it's too late. The price of a mouth-watering fillet of Chilean sea bass may seem
outrageous, but The End of the Line shows its real cost to the ecosystem is far greater.
100 Heartbeats: The Race to Save Earth's Most Endangered Species
by Jeff Corwin (333.95 COR) -- Popular television host Jeff Corwin takes readers on a
gripping journey around the world to meet the animals threatened by extinction
It’s no secret that our planet is in crisis. Environmental threats such as climate change,
pollution, habitat loss, and land degradation threaten the survival of thousands of plant and
animal species. In 100 Heartbeats, Jeff Corwin provides an urgent portrait of the wildlife
teetering on the brink.
From the forests slipping away beneath the stealthy paws of the Florida panther, to the
giant panda’s plight to climb ever higher in the mountains of China, Corwin takes you on a
global tour to witness firsthand the critical state of our natural world. Along the way, he
shares inspiring stories of battles being waged and won by the conservationists on the front
lines of defense. The race to save the planet’s most endangered wildlife is under way. Every
heartbeat matters.
We All Fall Down: Living with Addiction by Nic Sheff (362.29 SHE) -- In his
bestselling memoir Tweak, Nic Sheff took readers on an emotionally gripping roller-coaster
ride through his days as a crystal meth and heroin addict. Now in this powerful follow-up
about his continued efforts to stay clean, Nic writes candidly about eye-opening stays at
rehab centers, devastating relapses, and hard-won realizations about what it means to be a
young person living with addiction.
33 Men: Inside the Miraculous Survival and Dramatic Rescue of the
Chilean Miners by Jonathan Franklin (363.11 FRA) -- Award-winning journalist
Jonathan Franklin chronicles the harrowing account of the 33 Chilean miners who were
trapped underground for fourteen weeks in the fall of 2010.
Franklin, with his renowned eye for detail and dialogue, captures the remarkable story of
these men to reveal to the world how they used their native talents to survive against all
odds in a savage environment.
Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent (363.4 OKR) -- A
brilliant, authoritative, and fascinating history of America’s most puzzling era, the years
1920 to 1933, when the U.S. Constitution was amended to restrict one of America’s favorite
pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages.
From its start, America has been awash in drink. The sailing vessel that brought John
Winthrop to the shores of the New World in 1630 carried more beer than water. By the
1820s, liquor flowed so plentifully it was cheaper than tea. That Americans
would ever agree to relinquish their booze was as improbable as it was astonishing.
Writing with both wit and historical acuity, Okrent reveals how Prohibition marked a
confluence of diverse forces: the growing political power of the women’s suffrage
movement, which allied itself with the antiliquor campaign; the fear of small-town, nativestock Protestants that they were losing control of their country to the immigrants of the
large cities; the anti-German sentiment stoked by World War I; and a variety of other
unlikely factors, ranging from the rise of the automobile to the advent of the income tax.
Last Call is capacious, meticulous, and thrillingly told. It stands as the most complete
history of Prohibition ever written and confirms Daniel Okrent’s rank as a major American
writer.
Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global
Warming by Chris Mooney (363.738 MOO) -- One of the leading science journalists
and commentators working today, Chris Mooney delves into a red-hot debate in
meteorology: whether the increasing ferocity of hurricanes is connected to global warming.
In the wake of Katrina, Mooney follows the careers of leading scientists on either side of the
argument through the 2006 hurricane season, tracing how the media, special interests,
politics, and the weather itself have skewed and amplified what was already a fraught
scientific debate. As Mooney puts it: "Scientists, like hurricanes, do extraordinary things at
high wind speeds."
Mooney—a native of New Orleans—has written a fascinating and urgently compelling book
that calls into question the great inconvenient truth of our day: Are we responsible for
making hurricanes even bigger monsters than they already are?
When the Guillotine Fell: The Bloody Beginning and Horrifying End to
France’s River of Blood by Jeremy Mercer (364.66 MER) -- How long did the
guillotine’s blade hang over the heads of French criminals? Was it abandoned in the late 1800s?
Did French citizens of the early days of the twentieth century decry its brutality? No. The blade
was allowed to do its work well into our own time. In 1974, Hamida Djandoubi brutally tortured
22 year-old Elisabeth Bousquet in an apartment in Marseille, putting cigarettes out on her body
and lighting her on fire, finally strangling her to death in the Provencal countryside where he left
her body to rot. In 1977, he became the last person executed by guillotine in France in a
multifaceted case as mesmerizing for its senseless violence as it is though-provoking for its
depiction of a France both in love with and afraid of The Foreigner. In a thrilling and
enlightening account of a horrendous murder paired with the history of the guillotine and the
history of capital punishment, Jeremy Mercer, a writer well known for his view of the underbelly
of French life, considers the case of Hamida Djandoubi in the vast flow of blood that France's
guillotine has produced. In his hands, France never looked so bloody...
Something’s Fishy: An Angler Looks at Our Ditressed Gamefish and
Their Waters, and How We Can Preserve Both by Ted Williams (369.9 WIL) - Well-known nature and conservation writer Ted Williams is an avid fisherman who has
devoted many years to writing about the sport and advocating the preservation of bodies of
water and species of fish. Here, he brings together his love of angling with his profound
sense of responsibility for the environment. Most of the work in this anthology is adapted
from articles originally published in Audubon and Fly Rod & Reel(where Williams is
conservation editor), and these lively, perceptive pieces take readers across the United
States and around the world: trout fishing in Patagonia; bonefishing on South Andros Island
in the Bahamas; and tuna fishing off the coast of Massachusetts. Williams’ passion and
commitment will inspire fishermen everywhere.
This is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion,
about Living a Compassionate Life by David Foster Wallace (370.11 WAL) -Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a
commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the
first time in book form in THIS IS WATER. How does one keep from going through their
comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the
foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric
intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured
piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on
endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend.
Making an Exit: From the Magnificent to the Macabre—How We
Dignify the Dead by Sarah Murray (393 MUR) -- Thoughtful, amusing, and
provocative, Making an Exit will transform the way you look at life's last passage. Because,
as Murray discovers, death is, for many, not an ending but the start of something new.
Author and journalist Sarah Murray never gave much thought to what might ultimately
happen to her remains—that was, until her father died. While he’d always insisted that the
“organic matter” left after a person takes their last breath had no significance, he surprised
his family by setting down elaborate arrangements for the scattering of his own ashes. This
unexpected last request prompted Murray to embark on a series of voyages to discover how
our end is commemorated around the globe—and how we approach our own mortality.
Spanning continents and centuries, Making an Exit is Murray’s exploration of the
extraordinary creativity unleashed when we seek to dignify the dead. Along the way, she
encounters a cremation in Bali in which two royal personages are placed in giant decorative
bulls and consigned to the afterlife in a burst of flames; a chandelier in the Czech Republic
made entirely from human bones; a weeping ceremony in Iran; and a Philippine village
where the casketed dead are left hanging in caves. She even goes to Ghana to commission
her own fantasy coffin.
The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food by
Adam Gopnik (394.1 GOP) -- Never before have we cared so much about food. It
preoccupies our popular culture, our fantasies, and even our moralizing. With our top chefs
as deities and finest restaurants as places of pilgrimage, we have made food the stuff of
secular seeking and transcendence, finding heaven in a mouthful. But have we come any
closer to discovering the true meaning of food in our lives? With inimitable charm and
learning, Adam Gopnik takes us on a beguiling journey in search of that meaning as he
charts America’s recent and rapid evolution from commendably aware eaters to manic,
compulsive gastronomes.
97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New
York Tenement by Jane Ziegelman (394.1 ZIE) -- In 97 Orchard, Jane Ziegelman
explores the culinary life that was the heart and soul of New York's Lower East Side around
the turn of the twentieth century—a city within a city, where Germans, Irish, Italians, and
Eastern European Jews attempted to forge a new life. Through the experiences of five
families, all of them residents of 97 Orchard Street, Ziegelman takes readers on a vivid and
unforgettable tour, from impossibly cramped tenement apartments, down dimly lit
stairwells, beyond the front stoops where housewives congregated, and out into the hubbub
of the dirty, teeming streets. Ziegelman shows how immigrant cooks brought their ingenuity
to the daily task of feeding their families, preserving traditions from home but always ready
to improvise. 97 Orchard lays bare the roots of our collective culinary heritage.
Where a Dobdob meets a Dikdik: A Word Lover’s Guide to the
Weirdest, Wackiest, and Wonkiest Lexical Gems by Bill Casselman (428.1
CAS) -- How many people know how to pronounce humhumunukunukuapuaa*? How many
even know what it is? Bill Casselman does. Dictionary in hand, he'll lead you along the
highways and byways of English--the world's wackiest, most widespread language. And
those who follow will find their vocabularies replete with sesquipedalian vocables and chocka-block with euphuistic lexemes of logorrheic.
Proofiness: How You’re Being Fooled by the Numbers by Charles Seife
(510 SEI) -- Seife shows readers how the power of skewed metrics is being used to alter
perception in both amusing and dangerous ways. Proofiness is behind such bizarre stories
as a mathematical formula for the perfect butt and sprinters who can run faster than the
speed of sound. But proofiness also has a dark side: bogus mathematical formulas used to
undermine our democracy-subverting our justice system, fixing elections, and swaying
public opinion with lies. By doing the real math, Seife elegantly and good-humoredly
scrutinizes our growing obsession with metrics while exposing those who misuse them.
The Irrationals: A Story of the Numbers You Can't Count On by Julian
Havil (512.81 HAV) -- The ancient Greeks discovered them, but it wasn't until the
nineteenth century that irrational numbers were properly understood and rigorously defined,
and even today not all their mysteries have been revealed. In The Irrationals, the first
popular and comprehensive book on the subject, Julian Havil tells the story of irrational
numbers and the mathematicians who have tackled their challenges, from antiquity to the
twenty-first century. Along the way, he explains why irrational numbers are surprisingly
difficult to define--and why so many questions still surround them.
That definition seems so simple: they are numbers that cannot be expressed as a ratio of two integers, or
that have decimal expansions that are neither infinite nor recurring. But, as The Irrationals shows, these
are the real "complex" numbers, and they have an equally complex and intriguing history, from Euclid's
famous proof that the square root of 2 is irrational to Roger Apéry's proof of the irrationality of a number
called Zeta(3), one of the greatest results of the twentieth century. In between, Havil explains other
important results, such as the irrationality of e and pi. He also discusses the distinction between "ordinary"
irrationals and transcendentals, as well as the appealing question of whether the decimal expansion of
irrationals is "random". Fascinating and illuminating, this is a book for everyone who loves math and the
history behind it.
Here’s Looking at Euclid: An Surprising Excursion Through the
Astonishing World of Math by Alex Bellos (513 BEL) -- Too often math gets a bad
rap, characterized as dry and difficult. But, Alex Bellos says, "math can be inspiring and
brilliantly creative. Mathematical thought is one of the great achievements of the human
race, and arguably the foundation of all human progress. The world of mathematics is a
remarkable place."
Bellos has traveled all around the globe and has plunged into history to uncover fascinating
stories of mathematical achievement, from the breakthroughs of Euclid, the greatest
mathematician of all time, to the creations of the Zen master of origami, one of the hottest
areas of mathematical work today. Taking us into the wilds of the Amazon, he tells the story
of a tribe there who can count only to five and reports on the latest findings about the math
instinct—including the revelation that ants can actually count how many steps they’ve
taken. Journeying to the Bay of Bengal, he interviews a Hindu sage about the brilliant
mathematical insights of the Buddha, while in Japan he visits the godfather of Sudoku and
introduces the brainteasing delights of mathematical games.
The Day We Found the Universe by Marcia Bartusiak (520 BAR) -- The riveting
and mesmerizing story behind a watershed period in human history, the discovery of the
startling size and true nature of our universe.
On New Years Day in 1925, a young Edwin Hubble released his finding that our Universe
was far bigger, eventually measured as a thousand trillion times larger than previously
believed. Hubble’s proclamation sent shock waves through the scientific community. Six
years later, in a series of meetings at Mount Wilson Observatory, Hubble and others
convinced Albert Einstein that the Universe was not static but in fact expanding. Here Marcia
Bartusiak reveals the key players, battles of will, clever insights, incredible technology,
ground-breaking research, and wrong turns made by the early investigators of the heavens
as they raced to uncover what many consider one of most significant discoveries in scientific
history.
Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries by Neil deGrasse Tyson
(523.1 TYS) -- Loyal readers of the monthly "Universe" essays in Natural History magazine
have long recognized Neil deGrasse Tyson's talent for guiding them through the mysteries
of the cosmos with stunning clarity and almost childlike enthusiasm. Here, Tyson compiles
his favorite essays across a myriad of cosmic topics. The title essay introduces readers to
the physics of black holes by explaining the gory details of what would happen to your body
if you fell into one. "Holy Wars" examines the needless friction between science and religion
in the context of historical conflicts. "The Search for Life in the Universe" explores astral life
from the frontiers of astrobiology. And "Hollywood Nights" assails the movie industry's
feeble efforts to get its night skies right.
The Book of Time: The Secrets of Time, How it Works and How We
Measure It by Adam Hart-Davis (529 HAR) -- Five sections of insightful text, color
photographs and sidebars call on social and political history, science, religion, philosophy,
psychology, physics, astronomy, commerce and the natural world to explore time from
different perspectives, such as:

How time has been perceived through history, and why a minute can seem like an
hour or an hour can seem like a second

How our experience of time is linked to the natural world -- the sun, the moon,
the tides, the seasons

When, why and how humans organized time into calendars, time zones and other
arbitrary categories

How humans have measured time mechanically, from primitive water clocks and
sundials to atomic clocks

How time is central to our quest to understand the universe and everything in it,
including time travel and other unsolved mysteries.
Time can be billions of years or billionths of a second, but it is always passing ... Or is
it? The Book of Time is a fascinating account of a universal mystery .
Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of
Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel by Michio Kaku (530
KAK) -- One hundred years ago, scientists would have said that lasers, televisions, and the
atomic bomb were beyond the realm of physical possibility. In Physics of the Impossible, the
renowned physicist Michio Kaku explores to what extent the technologies and devices of
science fiction that are deemed equally impossible today might well become commonplace
in the future.
From teleportation to telekinesis, Kaku uses the world of science fiction to explore the
fundamentals—and the limits—of the laws of physics as we know them today. He ranks the
impossible technologies by categories—Class I, II, and III, depending on when they might
be achieved, within the next century, millennia, or perhaps never. In a compelling and
thought-provoking narrative, he explains:
· How the science of optics and electromagnetism may one day enable us to bend light
around an object, like a stream flowing around a boulder, making the object invisible to
observers “downstream”
· How ramjet rockets, laser sails, antimatter engines, and nanorockets may one day take us
to the nearby stars
· How telepathy and psychokinesis, once considered pseudoscience, may one day be
possible using advances in MRI, computers, superconductivity, and nanotechnology
· Why a time machine is apparently consistent with the known laws of quantum physics,
although it would take an unbelievably advanced civilization to actually build one
Kaku uses his discussion of each technology as a jumping-off point to explain the science
behind it. An extraordinary scientific adventure, Physics of the Impossible takes readers on
an unforgettable, mesmerizing journey into the world of science that both enlightens and
entertains.
Napoleon's Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History by Penny LeCouteur (540 LEC)
-- Though many factors have been proposed to explain the failure of Napoleon's 1812
Russian campaign, it has also been linked to something as small as a button-a tin button,
the kind that fastened everything from the greatcoats of Napoleon's officers to the trousers
of his foot soldiers. When temperatures drop below 56°F, tin crumbles into powder. Were
the soldiers of the Grande Armée fatally weakened by cold because the buttons of their
uniforms fell apart? How different our world might be if tin did not disintegrate at low
temperatures and the French had continued their eastward expansion!
This fascinating book tells the stories of seventeen molecules that, like the tin of those
buttons, greatly influenced the course of history. These molecules provided the impetus for
early exploration and made possible the ensuing voyages of discovery. They resulted in
grand feats of engineering and spurred advances in medicine; lie behind changes in gender
roles, in law, and in the environment; and have determined what we today eat, drink, and
wear.
Showing how a change as small as the position of an atom can lead to enormous differences
in the properties of a substance, the authors reveal the astonishing chemical connections
among seemingly unrelated events. Napoleon's Buttons offers a novel way to understand
how our contemporary world works and how our civilization has been shaped over time.
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love,
and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements
by Sam Kean (546 KEA) -- Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)? How did radium (Ra, 88)
nearly ruin Marie Curie's reputation? And why is gallium (Ga, 31) the go-to element for
laboratory pranksters? The Periodic Table is a crowning scientific achievement, but it's also
a treasure trove of adventure, betrayal, and obsession. These fascinating tales follow every
element on the table as they play out their parts in human history, and in the lives of the
(frequently) mad scientists who discovered them. THE DISAPPEARING SPOON masterfully
fuses science with the classic lore of invention, investigation, and discovery--from the Big
Bang through the end of time.
The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and
Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code by Sam Kean (575.1 KEA) -- In The
Disappearing Spoon, bestselling author Sam Kean unlocked the mysteries of the periodic
table. In THE VIOLINIST'S THUMB, he explores the wonders of the magical building block of
life: DNA.
There are genes to explain crazy cat ladies, why other people have no fingerprints, and why
some people survive nuclear bombs. Genes illuminate everything from JFK's bronze skin (it
wasn't a tan) to Einstein's genius. They prove that Neanderthals and humans bred
thousands of years more recently than any of us would feel comfortable thinking. They can
even allow some people, because of the exceptional flexibility of their thumbs and fingers,
to become truly singular violinists.
Kean's vibrant storytelling once again makes science entertaining, explaining human history
and whimsy while showing how DNA will influence our species' future.
Fifty Animals that Changed the Course of History by Eric Chaline (590 CHA)
-- More than 150 elegant drawings, photographs and paintings, as well as excerpts from
literature, highlight the concise text. Each animal is judged by its influence in four
categories:


Edible -- animals that have shaped agriculture, such as the cow
Medical -- animals that are "disease vectors," spreading bacteria and viruses,
from malaria to plague

Commercial -- animals used for trade or in manufacturing

Practical -- animals used for transportation or clothing.
The animals described in Fifty Animals that Changed the Course of History are familiar,
but their roles in human history are easily overlooked. This attractive reference gives us a
fresh perspective on our place in the animal kingdom.
Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan ... And the World by
Courtney Humphries (598.65 HUM) -- Why do we see pigeons as lowly urban pests and how
did they become such common city dwellers? Courtney Humphries traces the natural history
of the pigeon, recounting how these shy birds that once made their homes on the sparse
cliffs of sea coasts came to dominate our urban public spaces. While detailing this evolution,
Humphries introduces us to synanthropy: The concept that animals can become dependent
on humans without ceasing to be wild; they can adapt to the cityscape as if it were a field or
a forest.
Their usefulness largely forgotten, today's pigeons have become as ubiquitous and reviled
as rats. But Superdove reveals something more surprising: By using pigeons for our own
purposes, we humans have changed their evolution. And in doing so, we have helped make
pigeons the ideal city dwellers they are today. In the tradition of Rats, the book that made
its namesake rodents famous, Superdove is the fascinating story of the pigeon's journey
from the wild to the city—the home they'll never leave.
The World of the Polar Bear by Norbut Rosing (599.78 ROS) -- The polar bear is
the largest terrestrial carnivore in the world, uniquely adapted to thrive in the harsh
environment of the Far North. In The World of the Polar Bear, renowned nature
photographer Norbert Rosing follows the polar bear through each season of the year.
This timely third edition has been fully updated and features more than 20 terrific new
photographs. With its thorough and engaging text and spectacular photography, The World
of the Polar Bear includes:

A season-by-season account of the life of the polar bear, including feeding, mating
and rearing of cubs

A new chapter featuring the polar bears of Svalbard, Norway

An intimate look at the animals that share the polar bear's environment, including
seals, arctic foxes, walruses and muskoxen

A section on such northern sky phenomena as sun dogs and northern lights

Many anecdotes and insights about the polar bear -- at once a loving parent, a fierce
predator and a natural jester
Polar bears are seriously threatened by global warming, and this book continues to explore this critical
issue.
How Doctors Think by Jerome E. Groopman (610 GRO) -- How Doctors Think is a
window into the mind of the physician and an insightful examination of the all-important
relationship between doctors and their patients. In this myth-shattering work, Jerome
Groopman explores the forces and thought processes behind the decisions doctors make. He
pinpints why doctors succeed and why they err. Most important, Groopman shows when and
how doctors can -- with our help -- avoid snap judgments, embrace uncertainty,
communicate effectively, and deploy other skills that can profoundly impact our health.
The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the
Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge (612.8 DOI) -- An astonishing new
science called "neuroplasticity" is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human
brain is immutable. In this revolutionary look at the brain, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst
Norman Doidge, M.D., provides an introduction to both the brilliant scientists championing
neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they've transformed. From stroke patients
learning to speak again to the remarkable case of a woman born with half a brain that
rewired itself to work as a whole, The Brain That Changes Itself will permanently alter the
way we look at our brains, human nature, and human potential.
Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual by Michael Pollan (613.2 POL) -- Michael Pollan's
definitive compendium, Food Rules, is here brought to colorful life with the addition of Maira
Kalman's beloved illustrations. This brilliant pairing is rooted in Pollan's and Kalman's shared
appreciation for eating's pleasures, and their understanding that eating doesn't have to be
so complicated. Written with the clarity, concision, and wit that is Michael Pollan's
trademark, this indispensable handbook lays out a set of straightforward, memorable rules
for eating wisely. Kalman's paintings remind us that there is delight in learning to eat well.
*Kristin has read this, and she recommends it.
Fat No More: A Teenager’s Victory Over Obesity by Alberto Hidalgo-Robert
(616.85 HID) -- The first grandchild born into his family in El Salvador, Alberto is showered
with attention and gifts. Soon, though, he is known as "El Gordito," or the little fat boy. By
the age of seven, he weighed a whopping 120 pounds and his pediatrician had started him
on a diet. By the time he was nine he had tried ten different diets. His life became a vicious
cycle of eating to excess, sneaking food and lying to himself and his parents; he was the
butt of practical jokes and teased by peers and strangers, ultimately turning into a recluse,
addicted to food and television.
From the low point of his descent into obesity hell, Hidalgo-Robert chronicles how he was
able to take hold of his life, reinvent himself and become a model for other teenagers who
are battling weight issues. A spirited tale of a young man who lost his way, this book offers
a roadmap for living a healthy life and regaining self-respect and social acceptance. Each
chapter contains "battling" tools, examples of both good and bad behavior and typical selfdeceptions in the war to conquer oneself and live a healthier life. He even includes easy-tomake recipes for delicious foods that will appeal to any teenager.
An absorbing account of one young person s attempts to deal with obesity, this cautionary
tale is for anyone interested in this country's leading health issue.
Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash by Edward Humes (628.4 HUM) - Take a journey inside the secret world of our biggest export, our most prodigious product,
and our greatest legacy: our trash. It’s the biggest thing we make: The average American is
on track to produce a whopping 102 tons of garbage across a lifetime, $50 billion in
squandered riches rolled to the curb each year, more than that produced by any other
people in the world. But that trash doesn’t just magically disappear; our bins are merely the
starting point for a strange, impressive, mysterious, and costly journey that may also
represent the greatest untapped opportunity of the century.
In Garbology, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Edward Humes investigates the trail of that 102
tons of trash—what’s in it; how much we pay for it; how we manage to create so much of it;
and how some families, communities, and even nations are finding a way back from waste
to discover a new kind of prosperity. Along the way , he introduces a collection of garbage
denizens unlike anyone you’ve ever met: the trash-tracking detectives of MIT, the
bulldozer-driving sanitation workers building Los Angeles’ immense Garbage Mountain
landfill, the artists in residence at San Francisco’s dump, and the family whose annual trash
output fills not a dumpster or a trash can, but a single mason jar.
Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages by Anne Mendelson
(641.37 MEN) -- Part cookbook—with more than 120 enticing recipes—part culinary history,
part inquiry into the evolution of an industry, Milk is a one-of-a-kind book that will forever
change the way we think about dairy products.
Anne Mendelson first explores the earliest Old World homes of yogurt and kindred
fermented products made primarily from sheep’s and goats’ milk and soured as a natural
consequence of climate. Out of this ancient heritage from lands that include Greece, Bosnia,
Turkey, Israel, Persia, Afghanistan, and India, she mines a rich source of culinary traditions.
Mendelson then takes us on a journey through the lands that traditionally only consumed
milk fresh from the cow—what she calls the Northwestern Cow Belt (northern Europe, Great
Britain, North America). She shows us how milk reached such prominence in our diet in the
nineteenth century that it led to the current practice of overbreeding cows and
overprocessing dairy products. Her lucid explanation of the chemical intricacies of milk and
the simple home experiments she encourages us to try are a revelation of how pure milk
products should really taste.
The delightfully wide-ranging recipes that follow are grouped according to the main dairy
ingredient: fresh milk and cream, yogurt, cultured milk and cream, butter and true
buttermilk, fresh cheeses. We learn how to make luscious Clotted Cream, magical Lemon
Curd, that beautiful quasi-cheese Mascarpone, as well as homemade yogurt, sour cream,
true buttermilk, and homemade butter. She gives us comfort foods such as Milk Toast and
Cream of Tomato Soup alongside Panir and Chhenna from India. Here, too, are old favorites
like Herring with Sour Cream Sauce, Beef Stroganoff, a New Englandish Clam Chowder, and
the elegant Russian Easter dessert, Paskha. And there are drinks for every season, from
Turkish Ayran and Indian Lassis to Batidos (Latin American milkshakes) and an authentic
hot chocolate.
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (613.26 Foe) -- Jonathan Safran Foer spent
much of his teenage and college years oscillating between omnivore and vegetarian. But on
the brink of fatherhood-facing the prospect of having to make dietary choices on a child's
behalf-his casual questioning took on an urgency His quest for answers ultimately required
him to visit factory farms in the middle of the night, dissect the emotional ingredients of
meals from his childhood, and probe some of his most primal instincts about right and
wrong. Brilliantly synthesizing philosophy, literature, science, memoir and his own detective
work, Eating Animals explores the many fictions we use to justify our eating habits-from
folklore to pop culture to family traditions and national myth-and how such tales can lull us
into a brutal forgetting. Marked by Foer's profound moral ferocity and unvarying generosity,
as well as the vibrant style and creativity that made his previous books, Everything is
Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, widely loved, Eating Animals is a
celebration and a reckoning, a story about the stories we've told-and the stories we now
need to tell.
Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie (658.4 MYC) -- The incredible
story of the man behind TOMS Shoes and One for One, the revolutionary business model
that marries fun, profit, and social good
Why this book is for you:
• You’re ready to make a difference in the world—through your own start-up business, a
nonprofit organization, or a new project that you create within your current job.
• You want to love your work, work for what you love, and have a positive impact on the
world—all at the same time.
• You’re inspired by charity: water, method, and FEED Projects and want to learn how these
organizations got their start.
• You’re curious about how someone who never made a pair of shoes, attended fashion
school, or worked in retail created one of the fastest-growing footwear companies in the
world by giving shoes away.
• You’re looking for a new model of success to share with your children, students, coworkers, and members of your community. You’re ready to start something that matters.
Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled
Water by Peter Gleick (663 GLE) -- Peter Gleick knows water. A world-renowned scientist
and freshwater expert, Gleick is a MacArthur Foundation "genius," and according to the
BBC, an environmental visionary. And he drinks from the tap. Why don’t the rest of us?
Bottled and Sold shows how water went from being a free natural resource to one of the
most successful commercial products of the last one hundred years—and why we are poorer
for it. It’s a big story and water is big business. Every second of every day in the United
States, a thousand people buy a plastic bottle of water, and every second of every day a
thousand more throw one of those bottles away. That adds up to more than thirty billion
bottles a year and tens of billions of dollars of sales.
Are there legitimate reasons to buy all those bottles? With a scientist’s eye and a natural
storyteller’s wit, Gleick investigates whether industry claims about the relative safety,
convenience, and taste of bottled versus tap hold water. And he exposes the true reasons
we’ve turned to the bottle, from fearmongering by business interests and our own vanity to
the breakdown of public systems and global inequities.
Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of
Food by Pamela Ronald (664 RON) -- By the year 2050, Earth's population will double. If
we continue with current farming practices, vast amounts of wilderness will be lost, millions
of birds and billions of insects will die, and the public will lose billions of dollars as a
consequence of environmental degradation. Clearly, there must be a better way to meet the
need for increased food production.
Written as part memoir, part instruction, and part contemplation, Tomorrow's Table argues
that a judicious blend of two important strands of agriculture--genetic engineering and
organic farming--is key to helping feed the world's growing population in an ecologically
balanced manner. Pamela Ronald, a geneticist, and her husband, Raoul Adamchak, an
organic farmer, take the reader inside their lives for roughly a year, allowing us to look over
their shoulders so that we can see what geneticists and organic farmers actually do. The
reader sees the problems that farmers face, trying to provide larger yields without resorting
to expensive or environmentally hazardous chemicals, a problem that will loom larger and
larger as the century progresses. They learn how organic farmers and geneticists address
these problems.
Perfume: The Alchemy of Scent by Jean-Claude Ellena (668 ELL) -- Perfume is a
cutthroat, secretive multibillion-dollar industry, and Ellena provides an insider’s tour,
guiding us from initial inspiration through the mixing of essences and synthetic elements, to
the deluxe packaging and marketing in elegant boutiques worldwide, and even the
increasingly complicated safety standards that are set in motion for each bottle of perfume
that is manufactured. He explains how the sense of smell works, using a palette of fragrant
materials, and how he personally chooses and composes a perfume. He also reveals his
unique way of creating a fragrance by playing with our olfactory memories in order to make
the perfume seductive and desired by men and women the world over.Perfume illuminates
the world of scent and manufactured desire by a perfumer who has had clients the likes of
Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Bulgari, and Hermés.
The Louvre: All the Paintings by Anja Grebe (708.4 GRE) -- An historic publishing
event! Endorsed by the Louvre and for the first time ever, every painting from the world's
most popular museum is available in one stunning book. All 3,022 paintings on display in
the permanent painting collection of the Louvre are presented in full color in this striking,
slipcased book.
Terror and Wonder: Architecture in a Tumultuous Age by Blair Kamin
(724.7 KAM) -- For nearly twenty years now, Blair Kamin of the Chicago Tribune has
explored how architecture captures our imagination and engages our deepest emotions. A
winner of the Pulitzer Prize for criticism and writer of the widely read Cityscapes blog, Kamin
treats his subjects not only as works of art but also as symbols of the cultural and political
forces that inspire them. Terror and Wonder gathers the best of Kamin’s writings from the
past decade along with new reflections on an era framed by the destruction of the World
Trade Center and the opening of the world’s tallest skyscraper.
Kamin paints a sweeping but finely textured portrait of a tumultuous age torn between the
conflicting mandates of architectural spectacle and sustainability. For Kamin, the story of
our built environment over the past ten years is, in tangible ways, the story of the decade
itself. Terror and Wonder considers how architecture has been central to the main events
and crosscurrents in American life since 2001: the devastating and debilitating
consequences of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina; the real estate boom and bust; the use of
over-the-top cultural designs as engines of civic renewal; new challenges in saving old
buildings; the unlikely rise of energy-saving, green architecture; and growing concern over
our nation’s crumbling infrastructure.
Illuminations: A Ro-Mlen Alphabet by Janice Davis Civen (745.6 CIV) -Illuminations is a unique calligraphic alphabet that offers a modern interpretation of an
ancient craft and fresh insights into the beauty and truth beyond conscious human
understanding. Each letter of this modern spiritual alphabet stands for a word that reflects
an aspect of human character and potential, and each letter is beautifully illustrated in the
style of the illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages.
What to Wear, Where: The How-To Handbook for Any Style Situation
by Hillary Kerr (746.9 KER) -- Life is stressful; your outfit shouldn't be. That's the
philosophy behind What to Wear, Where, the second book from the authors of the popular
style guide Who What Wear. This time Hillary Kerr and Katherine Power give readers exactly
what they've asked for: specific advice on how to put together the perfect look for any
social occasion. What to Wear, Where addresses more than 50 major social situations,
explains what you should wear and what you shouldn't wear, and shows you exactly what
the authors would wear. What to Wear, Where is loaded with practical tips and style
suggestions, making it the perfect resource for anyone who wants to feel more confident
about her outfit choices. It's your go-to guide for wardrobe advice and inspiration!
Graffiti World: Street Art from Five Continents & Graffiti Planet 2:
More of the Best Graffiti From Around the World by Nicholas Ganz (751.7
GAN) -- Graffiti has long been a ubiquitous part of the urban landscape, since anonymous,
largely unsung spray-can art first hit city walls in New York and Philadelphia in the late
1960s. As hip-hop culture spread from America, graffiti became a worldwide phenomenon,
emerging in the 1980s as the symbolic artistic language of young people everywhere.
Today's graffiti artists incorporate a variety of mediums, including stickers, stencils, oils,
acrylics, and oil-based chalk, as well as an ever-expanding range of social commentary. This
evolution in style and subject matter has guaranteed graffiti's long-lasting influence on art,
graphic design, and style around the world.
Against the Wall: The Art of Resistance in Palestine by William Parry
(751.7 PAR) -- This stunning book of photographs captures the graffiti and art that have
transformed Israel’s wall into a living canvas of resistance and solidarity.
Mixed with the images are portraits and vignettes, offering a heartfelt and inspiring account
of a people determined to uphold their dignity in the face of profound injustice.
The Painter’s Chair: George Washington and the Making of American
Art by Hugh Howard (757 HOW) -- “I am so hackneyed to the touches of the painters
pencil, that I am now altogether at their beck…no dray moves more readily to the Thill, than
I do to the Painters Chair.”—George Washington, May 16, 1785
When George Washington was born, the New World had virtually no artists. Over the course
of his life and career, a cultural transformation would occur. Virtually everyone regarded
Washington as America’s indispensable man, and the early painters and sculptors were no
exception. Hugh Howard brings to life the founding fathers of American painting, and the
elusive Washington himself, through the history of their portraits. We meet Charles Willson
Peale, the comrade-in-arms; John Trumbull, the aristocrat; Benjamin West, the mentor;
and Gilbert Stuart, the brilliant wastrel and most gifted painter of his day.
Through the Lens: National Geographic Greatest Photos (779 THR) -- For
more than 100 years, National Geographic has set the standard for nature, culture, and
wildlife photography. In Through the Lens, 250 spectacular images—some famous, others
rarely seen—are gathered in one lavish, newly formatted volume.
Through the Lens is divided into geographical regions with a special section devoted to
space exploration. Each geographical section features an outstanding array of photographs
that exemplifies the area’s unique people, wildlife, archaeology, culture, architecture, and
environment, accompanied by brief but informative captions. From Barry Bishop’s heroic
Mount Everest climb in the 1950s to the glorious wildlife of Asia and Africa, from ancient
Maya culture to the Afghan woman found 17 years after her piercing green eyes captivated
the world, these are some of the finest and most important photographs ever taken.
The Beatles: Paperback Writer: 40 Years of Classic Writing & The
Beatles Literary Anthology edited by Mike Evans (781 BEA) – Library Legacies
Donations in memory of Leah Jane Clark (Steve Clark’s mother) -- Spanning 40 years,
these works compile accounts of the Beatles by mainstream reporters, rock journalists,
cultural commentators, acquaintances, and friends, including Greil Marcus and Geroge
Melly. This extensive collection recounts the group’s rise from the Merseybeat music scene;
the British invasion that made them icons in the U.S.; their experimentation with song
structure and sound-recording technique that redefined pop music; their embracing of
psychedelic drugs and pacifism; and the separate paths band members followed after their
acrimonious breakup. The Beatles’ influence on the baby boom generation is also
acknowledged in essays by writers on both sides of the pop-culture divide. Conveying the
excitement of youth culture during the great social changes of the 1960s, the writers
underscore the extremes of a career virtually unparalleled in mass-media history.
Beatles Forever by Nicholas Schaffner (781 SCH) -- A Library Legacies Donation in
memory of Leah Jane Clark (Steve Clark’s mother) -- Great Fan Book about the Fab Four. A
basic bio, rare photos, memorabilia, the occasional first-hand account of the author - this was a great
introduction to the Beatles. Growing up this was the ultimate Beatles bible. No holds barred, but
reverently written, a must for any Beatles fan
33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie
Holiday to Green Day by Dorian Lynskey (782.42 LYN) -- 33 Revolutions Per
Minute is a history of protest music embodied in 33 songs that span seven decades and four
continents, from Billie Holiday crooning "Strange Fruit" before a shocked audience to
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young paying tribute to the Vietnam protesters killed at Kent State
in "Ohio," to Green Day railing against President Bush and twenty-first-century media in
"American Idiot." With the aid of exclusive new interviews, Dorian Lynskey explores the
individuals, ideas, and events behind each song. This expansive survey examines how music
has engaged with racial unrest, nuclear paranoia, apartheid, war, poverty, and oppression,
offering hope, stirring anger, inciting action, and producing songs that continue to resonate
years down the line, sometimes at great cost to the musicians involved.
Dick Clark's The First 25 Years of Rock & Roll by Michael Uslan (784.5 USL) –
A Library Legacies Donation in memory of Leah Jane Clark (Steve Clark’s mother) -- Profiles
the careers of top rock groups and performers from 1955 to the present.
2000 Guitars by Tony Bacon (787.87 BAC) – A Library Legacies Donation in honor of
Betty Neal -- Stringed instruments resembling the modern guitar date back 5,000 years!
Most have six strings, but others have anywhere from four to 12 strings depending on the
model and the player. Some are simply styled and made of wood, while others are
incredibly embellished with lots of added effects. See them all—2,000 of them, in fact—in
the ultimate pictorial guitar collection: 2,000 Guitars. You want guitar heroes? Discover all
of the legendary guitar makers, from Gibson and Gretsch to Fender and Ibanez, and learn
how classic models evolved and who played them. The incredible array of featured
instruments are arranged alphabetically by maker/manufacturer for easy access. For
convenient browsing, sections are further organized by subdivisions, including solid-bodied
guitars, semi-solid-bodied guitars, acoustic guitars, and bass guitars. Clean, modern
spreads showcase thousands of full-color photographs of the world’s most coveted guitars,
including antique instruments like a Wornum Lyre guitar from 1810. This rockin’ catalog
profiles famous guitars like the colorful Fender Stratocaster, hand-painted by George
Harrison and used in the Magical Mystery Tour, B.B. King’s beloved Lucille, and Brian
Setzer’s swingin’ Gretsch Nashville.
Play Their Hearts Out: A Coach, His Star Recruit, and the Youth
Basketball Machine by George Dohrmann (796.32 DOH) -- Winner of the PEN/ESPN
Award for Literary Sportswriting and winner of the Award for Excellence in the Coverage of
Youth Sports.
Eight years of unfettered access and a keen sense of a story’s deepest truths allow Pulitzer
Prize–winning journalist George Dohrmann to take readers inside the machine that produces
America’s basketball stars. Play Their Hearts Out reveals a cutthroat world where boys as
young as eight or nine are subjected to a dizzying torrent of scrutiny and exploitation. At
the book’s heart are the personal stories of two compelling figures: Joe Keller, an ambitious
coach with a master plan to find and promote “the next LeBron,” and Demetrius Walker, a
fatherless latchkey kid who falls under Keller’s sway and struggles to live up to unrealistic
expectations. Complete with a new “where-are-they-now” Epilogue by the author, this
thoroughly compelling narrative exposes the gritty reality that lies beneath so many dreams
of fame and glory.
More Than a Game: The Glorious Present and Uncertain Future of the
NFL by Brian Billick (796. 332 BIL) -- Fresh off the sidelines from a nine-year stint as one
of the most successful leaders in pro football, Super Bowl–winning head coach Brian Billick
has written a book about the sport he knows and loves, giving readers a fresh perspective
on America’s Game. Combining his own experiences with a wealth of new interviews gained
through his unsurpassed access to pro football’s most influential figures, Billick has written a
vibrant, compelling account of the true state of the game today, and the dangers that it
faces in the near future.
The National Football League stands as perhaps America’s last great mass entertainment,
the rare enterprise that brings together a broad cross-section of our increasingly nichedriven marketplace. But even as the game has grown more popular, so has the financial
pressure and stakes for all concerned.
Becoming Odyssa: Epic Adventure on the Appalachian Trail by Jennifer
Pharr Davis (796.51 DAV) -- After graduating from college, Jennifer isn't sure what she wants
to do with her life. She is drawn to the Appalachian Trail, a 2175-mile footpath that stretches
from Georgia to Maine. Though her friends and family think she's crazy, she sets out alone to
hike the trail, hoping it will give her time to think about what she wants to do next. The next four
months are the most physically and emotionally challenging of her life. She quickly discovers
that thru-hiking is harder than she had imagined: coping with blisters and aching shoulders from
the 30-pound pack she carries; sleeping on the hard wooden floors of trail shelters; hiking
through endless torrents of rain and even a blizzard. With every step she takes, Jennifer
transitions from an over-confident college graduate to a student of the trail, braving situations
she never imagined before her thru-hike. The trail is full of unexpected kindness, generosity, and
humor. And when tragedy strikes, she learns that she can depend on other people to help her in
times of need.
Field & Stream: The Total Outdoorsman Manual by T. Edwards Nickens (799
NIC) -- HUNT BETTER How to track a buck, make the toughest shots, master bowhunting
and knife skills, and haul, butcher, and cook wild game.
FISH SMARTER Advice on the best techniques for flyfishing, baitcasting, and spinning, as
well as surefire ways to get the most out of your motorboat, canoe, or kayak.
SURVIVE ANYTHING Whether you fall through thick ice, are swept away by a raging river, or
have a stare down with an angry bear, these skills means the difference between life and
death.
CAMP ANYWHERE Tested and proven expert tips to help you stay warm, eat well, and build
a fire in any situation in record time.
Fly Fishin’ Fool: The Adventures, Misadventures, and Outright
Idiocies of a Compulsive Angler by James Babb (799.12 BAB) -- Critics have
hailed James R. Babb as one of the best nature writers in print, and in Fly Fishin' Fool, the
third and arguably best of his highly successful books about his adventures and
misadventures, fly fishing is yet again a subject for his hilarious musings, and also a
departure. To better skewer the objects of his well deserved scorn, Babb has donned the
fool’s cap “to acquire the freedom enjoyed by fools and jesters in medieval times, snickering
behind a mask of assumed innocence so that he can speak his mind on matters of import
unfettered by the social graces.”
True Notebooks: A Writer’s Year at Juvenile Hall by Mark Salzman (808
SAL) -- In 1997 Mark Salzman, bestselling author Iron and Silk and Lying Awake, paid a
reluctant visit to a writing class at L.A.’s Central Juvenile Hall, a lockup for violent teenage
offenders, many of them charged with murder. What he found so moved and astonished
him that he began to teach there regularly. In voices of indelible emotional presence, the
boys write about what led them to crime and about the lives that stretch ahead of them
behind bars. We see them coming to terms with their crime-ridden pasts and searching for
a reason to believe in their future selves. Insightful, comic, honest and tragic, True
Notebooks is an object lesson in the redemptive power of writing.
The Norton Book of Nature Writing edited by Robert Finch (808.89 FIN) – A
Library Legacies Donation in honor of John Kerr -- This fine, well-annotated anthology offers
selections from familiar writers such as Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Annie Dillard, and
Barry Lopez. It contains surprises as well, including George Orwell's little-known essay,
"Some Thoughts on the Common Toad" and Herman Melville's musings on how the great
white whale came to be so white in the first place, the fruit of the deep natural-historical
research that underlies Moby-Dick. At more than 900 pages, The Norton Book of Nature
Writing is too hefty to pack into the wild, but every page is an inspiration to take into the
world outdoors.
I Love Myself When I Am Laughing... And Then Again: A Zora Neale
Hurston Reader by Zora Neale Hurston (818.52 HUR) – A Library Legacies Donation in
honor of Betty Neal -- The most prolific African-American woman author from 1920 to 1950,
Hurston was praised for her writing and condemned for her independence, arrogance, and
audaciousness. This unique anthology, with 14 superb examples of her fiction, journalism,
folklore, and autobiography, rightfully establishes her as the intellectual and spiritual leader
of the next generation of black writers. In addition to six essays and short stories, the
collection includes excerpts from Dust Tracks on the Road; Mules and Me; Tell My Horse;
Jonah's Gourd Vine; Moses, Man of the Mountain; and Their Eyes Were Watching God. The
original commentary by Alice Walker and Mary Helen Washington, two African-American
writers in the forefront of the Hurston revival, provide illuminating insights into Hurston-the
writer, the person-as well as into American social and cultural history
The Men Who Mapped the World: The Treasure of Cartography by Beau
Riffenburgh (912 RIF) -- From the crude maps of ancient Babylon to the satellite-fueled
precision of Google Maps, cartography has been both a record of dreams and of
discoveries. The Men Who Mapped the World is a beautifully illustrated and highly
informative journey through these discoveries and dreams. Maps have played midwife to
empires, helped win wars, and encouraged our species to venture beyond boundaries of
space and time. Now that inspiring history is literally hands-on with 20 pull-out facsimiles of
significant maps from the archives of the Royal Geographical Society!
Are you planning a trip? Check out these new DK Eyewitness Travel
Guides:
London (914.21 LEA)
Rome (914.56 ERC)
Greece (914.95 GRE)
The Greek Islands (914.95 GRE)
Jerusalem, Israel, Petra, & Sinai (914.95 JER)
Istanbul (914.96 IST)
Beijing & Shanghai (915.1 NEV)
Japan (915.2 JAP)
Tokyo (915.21 TOK)
Egypt (916.2 EGY)
New York City (917.47 BER)
Sydney (919.44 SYD)
Beneath the Sands of Egypt: Adventures of an Unconventional
Archaeologist by Donald Ryan (932 RYA) -- With its spectacular temples, tombs,
monuments, and mummies, as well as esoteric metaphysics, legendary historical
characters, and connections to the Bible, ancient Egypt has enticed the human imagination
for centuries. This search for understanding and drive to uncover a lost civilization has also
been the life work of archaeologist Donald P. Ryan, Ph.D. In Beneath the Sands of Egypt, he
offers an intriguing personal account of a career spent researching the remains of Egypt's
past—including his headline-making rediscovery of a lost tomb in the Valley of the Kings
containing the mummy of the famous female pharaoh Hatshepsut.
The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt (940.2
GRE) -- Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction and winner of the 2011 National
Book Award for Non-Fiction.
Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a
very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and
ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman
philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius—a beautiful poem of the most
dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear
was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal
motion, colliding and swerving in new directions.
The copying and translation of this ancient book-the greatest discovery of the greatest
book-hunter of his age-fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and
thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and
Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare
and even Thomas Jefferson. 16 pages of color illustrations
The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Third Germany by
Ian Kershaw (940.53 KER) -- Countless books have been written about why Nazi Germany
lost the Second World War, yet remarkably little attention has been paid to the equally vital
questions of how and why the Third Reich did not surrender until Germany had been left in
ruins and almost completely occupied. Drawing on prodigious new research, Ian Kershaw,
an award-winning historian and the author of Fateful Choices, explores these fascinating
questions in a gripping and focused narrative that begins with the failed bomb plot in July
1944 and ends with the death of Adolf Hitler and the German capitulation in 1945. The
End paints a harrowing yet enthralling portrait of the Third Reich in its last desperate gasps.
Ghosts in the Fog: The Untold Story of Alaska’s World War II
Invasion by Samantha Seiple (940.54 SEI) -- Few know the story of the Japanese
invasion of Alaska during World War II--until now.
GHOSTS IN THE FOG is the first narrative nonfiction book for young adults to tell the
riveting story of how the Japanese invaded and occupied the Aleutian Islands in Alaska
during World War II. This fascinating little-known piece of American history is told from the
point of view of the American civilians who were captured and taken prisoner, along with
the American and Japanese soldiers who fought in one of the bloodiest battles of hand-tohand combat during the war. Complete with more than 80 photographs throughout and first
person accounts of this extraordinary event, GHOSTS IN THE FOG is sure to become a
must-read for anyone interested in World War II and a perfect tie-in for the 70th
anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History by Robert Hughes (945 HUG)
-- Starting on a personal note, Hughes takes us to the Rome he first encountered as a
hungry twenty-one-year-old fresh from Australia in 1959. From there, he goes back more
than two thousand years to the city’s foundation, one mired in mythologies and
superstitions that would inform Rome’s development for centuries. He explores in rich detail
the formation of empire, the rise of early Christianity, the Crusades, the Renaissance, and
takes us up to the present, through the rise and fall of Mussolini’s fascism. Equal parts
idolizing, blasphemous, outraged, and awestruck, Rome is a portrait of the Eternal City as
only Robert Hughes could paint it.
Ghosts of War: The True Story of a 19-year old GI by Ryan Smithson (956.7
SMI) -- Ryan Smithson joined the Army Reserve when he was just out of high school. At
age nineteen he was deployed to Iraq. His year in combat changed his life.
This is his story. It will change the way you feel about what it means to be an American.
Voices in Our Blood: America's Best on the Civil Rights Movement by
Jon Meacham (973.049) –- A Library Legacies Donation in honor of Betty Neal -- Voices in
Our Blood is a literary anthology of the most important and artful interpretations of the
civil rights movement, past and present. It showcases what forty of the nation's best writers
— including Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck,
Alice Walker, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, and Richard Wright — had to say about
the central domestic drama of the American Century.
Editor Jon Meacham has chosen pieces by journalists, novelists, historians, and artists,
bringing together a wide range of black and white perspectives and experiences. The result
is an unprecedented and powerful portrait of the movement's spirit and struggle, told
through voices that resonate with passion and strength.
FICTION:
The Inquisitor's Key: A Body Farm Novel by Jefferson Bass (F Bas) -- Miranda
Lovelady, Dr. Bill Brockton's protÉgÉ, is spending the summer helping excavate a newly
discovered chamber beneath the spectacular Palace of the Popes in Avignon, France. There
she discovers a stone chest inscribed with a stunning claim: inside lie the bones of none
other than Jesus of Nazareth. Faced with a case of unimaginable proportions, Miranda
summons Brockton for help proving or refuting the claim. Both scientists are skeptical—after
all, fake relics abounded during the Middle Ages—but evidence for authenticity looks strong
initially, and soon grows stronger.
Brockton and Miranda link the bones to the haunting image on the Shroud of Turin, revered
by millions as the burial cloth of Christ, and then a laboratory test finds the bones to be two
thousand years old. The finding triggers a deadly tug-of-war between the anthropologists,
the Vatican, and a deadly zealot who hopes to use the bones to bring about the Second
Coming—and trigger the end of time.
Set against an international landscape, and weaving a rich tapestry of religion, history, art,
and science, The Inquisitor's Key takes Jefferson Bass to an exciting new level of suspense.
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks (F BRO) -The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the
urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those
apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world,
from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most
remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women,
and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell
of that dreadful time.World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a
document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable
spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.
Hercule Poirot's Christmas: A Holiday Mystery by Agatha Christie (F CHR) -The holidays can be murder—and just in time for yuletide comes this holiday edition of one
of Agatha Christie's most popular and confounding mysteries.
The wealthy Simeon Lee has demanded that all four of his sons—one faithful, one prodigal,
one impecunious, one sensitive—and their wives return home for Christmas. But a
heartwarming family holiday is not exactly what he has in mind. He bedevils each of his
sons with barbed insults and finally announces that he is cutting off their allowances and
changing his will. So when the old man is found lying in a pool of blood on Christmas Eve,
there is no lack of suspects. Did Lee's taunts push one of the boys to a desperate act? And
how did the murderer escape from the locked room? Intrepid Belgian detective Hercule
Poirot suspends his own holiday festivities to sift through the motives and evidence
surrounding the crime.
The Round House by Louise Erdrich (F ERD) -- National Book Award Winner. One
Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked.
The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant
to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and
thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe's life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal
his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly
alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.
While his father, who is a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that
defies his efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his
trusted friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own. Their quest takes
them first to the Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe. And this
is only the beginning.
Written with undeniable urgency, and illuminating the harsh realities of contemporary life in
a community where Ojibwe and white live uneasily together, The Round House is a brilliant
and entertaining novel, a masterpiece of literary fiction. Louise Erdrich embraces tragedy,
the comic, a spirit world very much present in the lives of her all-too-human characters, and
a tale of injustice that is, unfortunately, an authentic reflection of what happens in our own
world today.
The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King (F KIN) – In a storytelling tour de
force, Stephen King explores an uncharted corner of the Dark Tower universe—and the
early days of the gunslinger Roland—with the twice-told tale of a murderous shape-shifter, a
“skin-man,” who inspires fear and wonder, fantasies and bedtime stories, and one boy’s
savagely real nightmares.
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver (F KIN) – This is our next Litwits (MHS staff
bookclub) reading selection. Two copies have been ordered and should arrive before
winter break. Join us Thursday, January 24 when we meet to discuss this new Kingsolver
book which critics have called “a dazzling page-turner!” (Elle)
Barbara Kingsolver sets her latest story in rural Appalachia . In fictional Feathertown,
Tennessee, Dellarobia Turnbow--on the run from her stifling life--charges up the mountain
above her husband’s family farm and stumbles onto a “valley of fire” filled with millions of
monarch butterflies. This vision is deemed miraculous by the town’s parishioners, then the
international media. But when Ovid, a scientist who studies monarch behavior, sets up a lab
on the Turnbow farm, he learns that the butterflies’ presence signals systemic disorder--and
Dellarobia's in-laws’ logging plans won’t help. Readers who bristle at politics made personal
may be turned off by the strength of Kingsolver’s convictions, but she never reduces her
characters to mouthpieces, giving equal weight to climate science and human need, to
forces both biological and biblical. Her concept of family encompasses all living beings,
however ephemeral, and Flight Behavior gracefully, urgently contributes to the dialogue of
survival on this swiftly tilting planet. --Mari Malcolm
The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo (F MER) -- In one of the poorest parts of rural
New Hampshire, teenage girls have been disappearing, snatched from back country roads,
never to be seen alive again. For seventeen-year-old Marjorie Richards, the fear raised by
these abductions is the backdrop to what she lives with her own home, every day. Marjorie
has been raised by parents so intentionally isolated from normal society that they have
developed their own dialect, a kind of mountain hybrid of English that displays both their
ignorance of and disdain for the wider world. Marjorie is tormented by her classmates, who
call her "The Talk-funny girl," but as the nearby factory town sinks deeper into economic
ruin and as her parents fall more completely under the influence of a sadistic cult leader,
her options for escape dwindle. But then, thanks to a loving aunt, Marjorie is hired by a
man, himself a victim of abuse, who is building what he calls "a cathedral," right in the
center of town.
By turns darkly menacing and bright with love and resilience, The Talk-Funny Girl is the
story of one young woman's remarkable courage, a kind of road map for the healing of early
abuse, and a testament to the power of kindness and love.
*Kristin has read this, and she recommends it.
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (F MIT) -- A postmodern visionary who is also a master of
styles and genres, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian love of
puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending philosophical and scientific
speculation in the tradition of Haruki Murakami, Umberto Eco, and Philip K. Dick. The result
is brilliantly original fiction that reveals how disparate people connect, how their fates
intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.
“The novel as series of nested dolls or Chinese boxes, a puzzle-book, and yet—not just
dazzling, amusing, or clever but heartbreaking and passionate, too. I’ve never read
anything quite like it, and I’m grateful to have lived, for a while, in all its many worlds.”—
Michael Chabon
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (F MOR) -- Erin Morgenstern’s dark, enchanting
debut takes us to the black and white tents of Le Cirque des Reves, a circus that arrives
without warning, simply appearing when yesterday it was not there. Young Celia and Marco
have been cast into a rivalry at The Night Circus, one arranged long ago by powers they do
not fully understand. Over time, their lives become more intricately enmeshed in a dance of
love, joy, deceit, heartbreak, and magic. Author Morgenstern knows her world inside and
out, and she guides the reader with a confident hand. The setting and tone are never less
than mesmerizing. The characters are well-realized and memorable. But it is the Night
Circus itself that might be the most memorable of all. --Chris Schluep
“Reading this novel is like having a marvelous dream, in which you are asleep enough to
believe everything that is happening, but awake enough to relish the experience and
understand that it is magical.” —Newsday
ZOO by James Patterson (F PAT) -- All over the world, brutal attacks are crippling entire
cities. Jackson Oz, a young biologist, watches the escalating events with an increasing sense
of dread. When he witnesses a coordinated lion ambush in Africa, the enormity of the
violence to come becomes terrifyingly clear.
With the help of ecologist Chloe Tousignant, Oz races to warn world leaders before it's too
late. The attacks are growing in ferocity, cunning, and planning, and soon there will be no
place left for humans to hide. With wildly inventive imagination and white-knuckle suspense
that rivals Stephen King at his very best, James Patterson's ZOO is an epic, non-stop thrillride from "One of the best of the best." (TIME)
The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt: A Novel in Pictures by Caroline Preston (F
Pre) -- Through a kaleidoscopic array of vintage postcards, letters, magazine ads, ticket
stubs, catalog pages, fabric swatches, candy wrappers, fashion spreads, menus, and more,
we meet and follow Frankie on her journey in search of success and love. Once at Vassar,
Frankie crosses paths with intellectuals and writers, among them “Vincent” (alumna Edna
St. Vincent Millay), who encourages Frankie to move to Greenwich Village and pursue her
writing. When heartbreak finds her in New York, she sets off for Paris aboard the S.S.
Mauritania, where she keeps company with two exiled Russian princes and a “spinster
adventuress” who is paying her way across the Atlantic with her unused trousseau. In Paris,
Frankie takes a garret apartment above Shakespeare & Company, the hub of expat life, only
to have a certain ne’er-do-well captain from her past reappear. But when a family crisis
compels Frankie to return to her small New England hometown, she finds exactly what she
had been looking for all along.
Author of the New York Times Notable Book Jackie by Josie, Caroline Preston pulls from her
extraordinary collection of vintage ephemera to create the first-ever scrapbook novel,
transporting us back to the vibrant, burgeoning bohemian culture of the 1920s and
introducing us to an unforgettable heroine, the spirited, ambitious, and lovely Frankie Pratt.
*Marion has read this, and she recommends it.
The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks (F SPA) -- "Everyone wanted to believe that endless
love was possible. She'd believed in it once, too, back when she was eighteen."
In the spring of 1984, high school students Amanda Collier and Dawson Cole fell deeply,
irrevocably in love. Though they were from opposite sides of the tracks, their love for one
another seemed to defy the realities of life in the small town of Oriental, North Carolina. But
as the summer of their senior year came to a close, unforeseen events would tear the
young couple apart, setting them on radically divergent paths.
Now, twenty-five years later, Amanda and Dawson are summoned back to Oriental for the
funeral of Tuck Hostetler, the mentor who once gave shelter to their high school romance.
Neither has lived the life they imagined . . . and neither can forget the passionate first love
that forever changed their lives. As Amanda and Dawson carry out the instructions Tuck left
behind for them, they realize that everything they thought they knew -- about Tuck, about
themselves, and about the dreams they held dear -- was not as it seemed. Forced to
confront painful memories, the two former lovers will discover undeniable truths about the
choices they have made. And in the course of a single, searing weekend, they will ask of the
living, and the dead: Can love truly rewrite the past?
The Final Four by Paul Volponi (F Vol) -- Four players with one thing in common: the
will to win. Malcolm wants to get to the NBA ASAP. Roko wants to be the pride of his native
Croatia. Crispin wants the girl of his dreams. M.J. just wants a chance.
March Madness is in full swing, and there are only four teams left in the NCAA basketball
championship. The heavily favored Michigan Spartans and the underdog Troy Trojans meet
in the first game in the semifinals, and it's there that the fates of Malcolm, Roko, Crispin,
and M.J. intertwine. As the last moments tick down on the game clock, you'll learn how
each player went from being a kid who loved to shoot hoops to a powerful force in one of
the most important games of the year. Which team will leave the Superdome victorious? In
the end it will come down to which players have the most skill, the most drive, and the
most heart.
Read the book before you see the movie! –
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (F HUG) Christmas day release
Life of Pi by Yann Martel (F MAR) Dec. 14, 2012 release
Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer (F MEY) movie out Nov. 16, 2012
The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien (F TOL) Dec. 14
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (F TOL) Nov. 16 release
BIOGRAPHY:
Pops: A life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout (B ARM) -- Louis Armstrong is
widely known as the greatest jazz musician of the twentieth century. He was
a phenomenally gifted and imaginative artist, and an entertainer so irresistibly magnetic
that he knocked the Beatles off the top of the charts four decades after he cut his first
record. Offstage he was witty, introspective, and unexpectedly complex, a beloved colleague
with an explosive temper whose larger-than-life personality was tougher and more sharpedged than his worshiping fans ever knew.
Jane Austen: A Life Revealed by Catherine Reed (B AUS) -- Jane Austen’s
popularity never seems to fade. She has hordes of devoted fans, and there have been
numerous adaptations of her life and work. But who was Jane Austen? The writer herself
has long remained a mystery. And despite the resonance her work continues to have for
teens, there has never been a young adult trade biography on Austen.
Catherine Reef changes that with this highly readable account. She takes an intimate peek
at Austen’s life and innermost feelings, interweaving her narrative with well-crafted digests
of each of Austen’s published novels. The end result is a book that is almost as much fun to
read as Jane’s own work—and truly a life revealed.
The Trouble Begins at 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West
by Sid Fleischman (B CLE) – A Library Legacies Donation in honor of John Kerr -- "Mark
Twain was born fully grown, with a cheap cigar clamped between his teeth." So begins Sid
Fleischman's ramble-scramble biography of the great American author and wit, who started
life in a Missouri village as a barefoot boy named Samuel Clemens.
Abandoning a career as a young steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River, Sam took a
bumpy stagecoach to the Far West. In the gold and silver fields, he expected to get rich
quick. Instead, he got poor fast, digging in the wrong places. His stint as a sagebrush
newspaperman led to a duel with pistols. Had he not survived, the world would never have
heard of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn—or red-headed Mark Twain. Samuel Clemens
adopted his pen name in a hotel room in San Francisco and promptly made a jumping frog
(and himself) famous. His celebrated novels followed at a leisurely pace; his quips at jet
speed. "Don't let schooling interfere with your education," he wrote.
Here, in high style, is the story of a wisecracking adventurer who came of age in the
untamed West; an ink-stained rebel who surprised himself by becoming the most famous
American of his time. Bountifully illustrated.
Lost Boy, Lost Girl: Escaping Civil War in Sudan by Jon Bul. Dau (B DAU) -One of thousands of children who fled strife in southern Sudan, John Bul Dau survived
hunger, exhaustion, and violence. His wife, Martha, endured similar hardships. In this
memorable book, the two convey the best of African values while relating searing accounts
of famine and war. There’s warmth as well, in their humorous tales of adapting to American
life. For its importance as a primary source, for its inclusion of the rarely told female
perspective of Sudan’s lost children, for its celebration of human resilience, this is the
perfect story to inform and inspire young readers.
Anne Frank: Her Life in Words and Pictures from the Archives of the
Anne Frank House (B FRA) -- Produced in association with The Anne Frank House and
filled with never-before-published snapshots, school pictures, and photos of the diary and
the Secret Annex, this elegantly designed album is both a stand-alone introduction to
Anne's life and a photographic companion to a classic of Holocaust literature.
Temple Grandin: How the Girl Who Loved Cows Embraced Autism
and Changed the World by Sy Montgomery (B GRA) -- When Temple Grandin was
born, her parents knew that she was different. Years later she was diagnosed with autism.
While Temple’s doctor recommended a hospital, her mother believed in her. Temple went to
school instead. Today, Dr. Temple Grandin is a scientist and professor of animal science at
Colorado State University. Her world-changing career revolutionized the livestock industry.
As an advocate for autism, Temple uses her experience as an example of the unique
contributions that autistic people can make.
This compelling biography complete with Temple’s personal photos takes us inside her
extraordinary mind and opens the door to a broader understanding of autism.
Soul Surfer: A True Story of Faith, Family, and Fighting to Get Back
on the Board (B HAM) -- She lost her arm in a shark attack and nearly died, but she
never lost her faith. In her #1 New York Times bestseller, Bethany Hamilton tells the
moving story of her triumphant return to competitive surfing, which continues to inspire all
who hear it.
They say Bethany Hamilton has salt water in her veins. How else could one explain the
passion that drives her to surf? Or that nothing—not even the loss of her arm—could come
between her and the waves? That Halloween morning in Kauai, Hawaii, Bethany responded
to the shark’s stealth attack with the calm of a teenage girl with God on her side, resolutely
pushing aside her pain and panic while being rescued and brought back to shore. “When can
I surf again?” was the first thing Bethany asked after her emergency surgery, leaving no
doubt that her spirit and determination were part of a greater story—a tale of personal
empowerment and spiritual grit that shows the body is no more essential to surfing,
perhaps even less so, than the soul.
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (B JOB) -- Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs
conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members,
friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting
story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur
whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal
computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his
personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to
be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with
lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.
American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in US
Military History by Chris Kyle (B KYL) -- He is the deadliest American sniper ever,
called “the devil” by the enemies he hunted and “the legend” by his Navy SEAL brothers . . .
From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in
United States military history. The Pentagon has officially confirmed more than 150 of Kyles
kills (the previous American record was 109), but it has declined to verify the astonishing
total number for this book. Iraqi insurgents feared Kyle so much they named him alShaitan (“the devil”) and placed a bounty on his head. Kyle earned legendary status among
his fellow SEALs, Marines, and U.S. Army soldiers, whom he protected with deadly accuracy
from rooftops and stealth positions. Gripping and unforgettable, Kyle’s masterful account of
his extraordinary battlefield experiences ranks as one of the great war memoirs of all time.
Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits by Linda Gordon (B LAN) -- Winner of the
2010 Bancroft Prize and finalist for the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography:
The definitive biography of a heroic chronicler of America's Depression and one of the
twentieth century's greatest photographers.
We all know Dorothea Lange's iconic photos—the Migrant Mother holding her child, the
shoeless children of the Dust Bowl—but now renowned American historian Linda Gordon
brings them to three-dimensional life in this groundbreaking exploration of Lange's
transformation into a documentarist. Using Lange's life to anchor a moving social history of
twentieth-century America, Gordon masterfully re-creates bohemian San Francisco, the
Depression, and the Japanese-American internment camps. Accompanied by more than one
hundred images—many of them previously unseen and some formerly suppressed—Gordon
has written a sparkling, fast-moving story that testifies to her status as one of the most
gifted historians of our time. Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; a New York
Times Notable Book; New Yorker's A Year's Reading; and San Francisco Chronicle Best
Book. 128 black-and-white photos
Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda (B LAW)
-- The story of an epic life on a grand scale, Michael Korda’s Hero is a gripping, in-depth
biography of the extraordinary, mysterious, and dynamic Englishman still famous the world
over as “Lawrence of Arabia.” An Oxford scholar and archaeologist sent to Cairo as a young
intelligence officer in 1916, Lawrence was a born leader, utterly fearless and seemingly
impervious to pain and fatigue. A bold and ruthless warrior, he was the virtual inventor of
modern insurgency and guerrilla warfare; a writer of genius who alternately sought and fled
the limelight. Korda digs deeper than anyone before him to expose the flesh-and-blood man
and his contradictory nature—farsighted visionary; diplomat and kingmaker; shy, sensitive,
and private man; genius military strategist; arguably the first modern “media celebrity” . . .
and one of its first victims. Hero is the magisterial story of one of the most unique and
fascinating figures of modern times—the arch-hero whose life was, at once, a triumph and a
sacrifice.
We Bought a Zoo: The Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a
Broken Down Zoo, and the 200 Wild Animals That Change Their Lives
Forever by Benjamin Mee (B MEE) -- Benjamin Mee decided to uproot his family and
move them to an unlikely new home: a dilapidated zoo on the English countryside, complete
with over 200 exotic animals. It was his dream to refurbish the zoo and run it as a family
business. There was much work to be done, and none of it easy. Tigers broke loose, money
ran low, the staff grew skeptical, and family tensions ran high. Then tragedy struck. His wife
had a recurrence of a brain tumor, forcing Benjamin and his children to face the heartbreak
of illness and the devastating loss of a wife and mother. But inspired by her memory and
the healing power of the incredible family of animals they had grown to love, Benjamin and
his kids resovled to move forward. The Mee family opened the gates of the revitalized zoo in
July 2007.
The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the
Birth of America by Steven Johnson (B PRI) -- The Invention of Air is a book of worldchanging ideas wrapped around a compelling narrative, a story of genius and violence and
friendship in the midst of sweeping historical change that provokes us to recast our
understanding of the Founding Fathers.
It is the story of Joseph Priestley—scientist and theologian, protégé of Benjamin Franklin,
friend of Thomas Jefferson—an eighteenth-century radical thinker who played pivotal roles
in the invention of ecosystem science, the discovery of oxygen, the founding of the
Unitarian Church, and the intellectual development of the United States. And it is a story
that only Steven Johnson, acclaimed juggler of disciplines and provocative ideas, can do
justice to.
Shakespeare by Bill Bryson (B SHA) – A Library Legacies Donation in honor of John Kerr
-- Bill Bryson's Shakespeare pairs one of history's most celebrated writers with one of the
most popular writers in the English language today. In this elegant, updated, illustrated
edition, the superstitions, academic discoveries and myths surrounding the life of one of the
world's greatest poets are evoked through a series of full-color paintings, drawings,
portraits, documents and photographs. Bryson also discusses the recent discoveries of the
Cobbe portrait and the remains of Shakespeare's first theatre in Shoreditch.
The centuries of mysteries, half-truths and downright lies about Shakespeare are deftly explored, as
Bryson draws a picture that includes many aspects of the poet's life, making sense of the man behind the
masterpieces. In a journey down the streets of Shakespeare's time, Bryson brings to life the hubbub of
Elizabethan England and delights in details of his folios and quartos, poetry and plays. He celebrates the
glory of Shakespeare's language and his ceaseless inventiveness, which gave us hundreds of now
indispensable phrases, images and words.
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail by Cheryl Strayed (B
STR) -- At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her
mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years
later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike
the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington
State—and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was
little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise.” But it was a promise of
piecing back together a life that had come undone.
Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and
both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling
with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young
woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and
ultimately healed her.
Through My Eyes by Tim Tebow (B TEB) -- Now, in Through My Eyes, Tebow brings
readers everywhere an inspirational memoir about life as he chose to live it, revealing how
his faith and family values, combined with his relentless will to succeed, have molded him
into the person that he is today. As the son of Christian missionaries, Tebow has a unique
story to tell—from the circumstances of his birth, to his home-schooled roots, to his recordsetting collegiate football career with the Florida Gators and everything else that took place
in between.
At every step, Tebow's life has defied convention and expectation. While aspects of his life
have been well-documented, the stories have always been filtered through the opinions and
words of others. Through My Eyes is his passionate, firsthand, never-before-told account of
how it all really happened.
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and
Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand (B ZAM) -- On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air
Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of
debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared.
It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft
and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the
Second World War.
The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and
incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the
rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious
talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile.
But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that
led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.
The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream by
Davis, Jenkins, and Hunt (920 DAV) -- Chosen by Essence to be among the forty most
influential African Americans, the three doctors grew up in the streets of Newark, facing city
life’s temptations, pitfalls, even jail. But one day these three young men made a pact. They
promised each other they would all become doctors, and stick it out together through the
long, difficult journey to attaining that dream. Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, and Rameck
Hunt are not only friends to this day—they are all doctors.
This is a story about the power of friendship. Of joining forces and beating the odds. A story
about changing your life, and the lives of those you love most...together.
Americans Who Tell the Truth by Robert Shetterly (920 SHE) -- Stunning portraits
and stirring words of brave citizens from all walks of life. As we in the United States have
the right to speak the truth, we also have the need to be told the truth. Americans have
used this freedom to motivate and empower others to challenge the status quo. Artist
Robert Shetterly?s fifty portraits offer a powerful perspective on what it means to be
American and to be part of a democratic society.
DVDs:
Earth: The Biography (DVD 551 EAR) -- This landmark series uses specialist imaging
and compelling narrative to tell the life story of our planet, how it works, and what makes it
so special. Examining the great forces that shape the Earth - volcanoes, the ocean, the
atmosphere and ice - the programme explores their central roles in our planet's story. How
do these forces affect the Earth's landscape, its climate, and its history? CGI gives the
audience a ringside seat at these great events, while the final episode brings together all
the themes of the series and argues that Earth is an exceptionally rare kind of planet giving us a special responsibility to look after our unique world. This is a series that shows
the Earth in new and surprising ways. Extensive use of satellite imagery reveals new views
of our planet, while timelapse filmed over many months brings the planet to life. Offering a
balance between dramatic visuals and illuminating facts, this ground-breaking series makes
global science truly compelling.
March of the Penguins (DVD 598.47 MAR) -- March of the Penguins instantly
qualifies as a wildlife classic, taking its place among other extraordinary films like
Microcosmos and Winged Migration. French filmmaker Luc Jacquet and his devoted crew
endured a full year of extreme conditions in Antarctica to capture the life cycle of Emperor
penguins on film, and their diligence is evident in every striking frame of this 80-minute
documentary. Narrated in soothing tones by Morgan Freeman, the film focuses on a colony
of hundreds of Emperors as they return, in a single-file march of 70 miles or more, to their
frozen breeding ground, far inland from the oceans where they thrive. At times dramatic,
suspenseful, mischievous and just plain funny, the film conveys the intensity of the
penguins' breeding cycle, and their treacherous task of protecting eggs and hatchlings in
temperatures as low as 128 degrees below zero. There is some brief mating-ritual violence
and sad moments of loss, but March of the Penguins remains family-friendly throughout,
and kids especially will enjoy the Antarctic blue-ice vistas and the playful, waddling appeal
of the penguins, who can be slapstick clumsy or magnificently graceful, depending on the
circumstances. A marvel of wildlife cinematography, this unique film offers a front-row seat
to these amazing creatures, balancing just enough scientific information with the
entertaining visuals. --Jeff Shannon
Gift Of The Magi (2011) (DVD F HEN) -- With the holidays just around the corner,
struggling newlyweds Jim and Della Young are challenged to get each other the perfect gift.
Determined to make each their respective wishes come true, they make a secret sacrifice.
But a series of misunderstandings soon undermine their respective schemes, and fate itself
will play a hand in their loving design.