New Book List
October 2005
DVDs, etc.
Shakespeare in American Communities - Media kit
Shakespeare in American Communities is part of a national theater initiative sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. The media kit includes:
Shakespeare in Our Time video with a focus on introducing students to Shakespeare's life and times and his continuing relevance today;
Teaching Shakespeare audio CD with readings by James Earl Jones and other actors, as well as historical information from leading scholars;
Teacher's Guide to Shakespeare's life and times and his role in American culture, with lesson plans ;
Recitation Contest Booklet with performance evaluation forms and play and sonnet selections;
Fun with Shakespeare brochure with crossword puzzles, short quizzes, and fun facts about the Bard
A Touch of Greatness - DVD
Feature-length documentary film focusing on the extraordinary work of Albert Cullum, an elementary school teacher for over twenty years and a pioneer in American education. Championing an unorthodox educational philosophy, Cullum regularly taught his elementary school children literary masterpieces, most notably the works of Shakespeare, Sophocles and Shaw. Combining interviews with Cullum and his former students with stunning archival footage filmed by director Robert Downey, Sr., the film documents the extraordinary work of this maverick public school teacher who embraced creativity, motivation and self-esteem in the classroom through the use of poetry, drama and imaginative play.
Buena Vista Social Club - DVD
In 1996, Ry Cooder went to Cuba to search for buried treasure. His recording featuring the re-discovered talents of Cuba's foremost folk musicians sold millions and earned a Grammy Award. Cooder now returns to Cuba with film maker Wim Wenders to reveal the stories, personalities, and music of the performers who collaborated on that recording. Includes live performances in Amsterdam and at Carnegie Hall. DVD bonus features includes: 4 additional scenes (performances of Candela and Cien fuegos tiene su guaguanco, an interview with Juan de Marcos, and Alberto Korda discussing his photographs), audio commentary by the director, theatrical trailer, and biographical notes on the musicians and crew, and production notes.
Memories of Carl Sandburg - DVD
Recreates a visit to Sandburg's beloved home Connemara with historical footage of Sandburg reciting his own poems, plus an unforgettable interview of Sandburg by Edward R. Murrow and a visit with his wife Lilian and commentary on his life by his children. 30 min.
The Crucible
Film adaptation of Arthur Miller's play. Bonus features: "A Conversation with Daniel Day-Lewis and Arthur Miller", A "Making of" featurette, and the theatrical trailer. Summary: A group of teenage girls meets in the woods at midnight for a secret love-conjuring ceremony. When the ceremony is witnessed by the town minister, the girls are accused of witchcraft. Soon the entire village is consumed by hysteria, and innocent victims are put on trial, leading to a devastating climax.
FICTION
The Kite Runner - Hossenini, Khaled
Hosseini's stunning debut novel starts as an eloquent Afghan version of the American immigrant experience in the late 20th century, but betrayal and redemption come to the forefront when the narrator, a writer, returns to his ravaged homeland to rescue the son of his childhood friend after the boy's parents are shot during the Taliban takeover in the mid '90s. Amir, the son of a well-to-do Kabul merchant, is the first-person narrator, who marries, moves to California and becomes a successful novelist. But he remains haunted by a childhood incident in which he betrayed the trust of his best friend, a Hazara boy named Hassan, who receives a brutal beating from some local bullies. After establishing himself in America, Amir learns that the Taliban have murdered Hassan and his wife, raising questions about the fate of his son, Sohrab. Spurred on by childhood guilt, Amir makes the difficult journey to Kabul, only to learn the boy has been enslaved by a former childhood bully who has become a prominent Taliban official. The price Amir must pay to recover the boy is just one of several brilliant, startling plot twists that make this book memorable both as a political chronicle and a deeply personal tale about how childhood choices affect our adult lives. The character studies alone would make this a noteworthy debut, from the portrait of the sensitive, insecure Amir to the multilayered development of his father, Baba, whose sacrifices and scandalous behavior are fully revealed only when Amir returns to Afghanistan and learns the true nature of his relationship to Hassan. Add an incisive, perceptive examination of recent Afghan history and its ramifications in both America and the Middle East, and the result is a complete work of literature that succeeds in exploring the culture of a previously obscure nation that has become a pivot point in the global politics of the new millennium. - Publisher's Weekly
The Cat's Pajamas - Bradbury, Ray
Bradbury's imagination exploits the preposterous with fantasy that offers a window into the human psyche. Stories range from the lighthearted, romantic tug-of-war in the title's namesake to more sinister, stomach-churning fare. Some of the characters are decent, while others are dastardly; they are confused, young, withered, or wily. Each piece has a haunting, TwilightZone quality. The author's introduction gives readers insight into his thought processes as he reaches into dark recesses, doles out social justice, and bandies about far-out plots like the President of the United States having to win back the country in a card game with American Indians. Unpublished tales from decades ago and those written in the 21st century all carry Bradbury's unmistakable edginess. – School Library Journal
The Devil You Know - Johnson, Wayne
Booklist starred review: It's Minnesota lake country, not Georgia, this time, but we're back in the canoes, and unspeakable evil is on our tail. Yes, it's Deliverance all over again, but with some remarkable differences. The pull of Dickey's novel was entirely mythic, but Johnson manages the dazzling feat of surrounding his mythic confrontation with a human drama, the coming-of-age of a troubled teenager, that is as subtly realistic as the battle with evil is archetypally grand. David Geist is a 15-year-old cross-country star living with the secret of the abuse he suffered at the hands of his physician father; now that father, Max, is back, having impressed his ex-wife with his personal transformation and confident that a canoe trip with David and his younger sister will bring around his unconvinced children. So it's off to upper Minnesota, where the idyllic lake country harbors a group of meat packers on the run from possible criminal prosecution. What is remarkable about all of this isn't plot, but the way Johnson manipulates his formulaic ingredients. The meat packers emerge not as satanic role players but as fully formed characters, evil, yes, but in frighteningly understandable ways (reminiscent of Stephen Hunter's Dirty White Boys ); the father-son conflict rises above cliche at every seemingly predictable turn; and the descriptive writing is as crisp as a Minnesota morning, utterly unsentimental in its ability to reveal both the beauty and the alien power of the natural world. This novel works on every level, echoing its similarly themed predecessors but never in the slightest derivative. - Booklist
The Plot Against America - Roth, Philip
When Charles Lindbergh, Republican candidate in the 1940 presidential race, defeats popular FDR in a landslide, pollsters scramble for explanations–among them that, to a country weary of crisis and fearful of becoming involved in another European war, the aviator represents "normalcy raised to heroic proportions." For the Roth family, however, the situation is anything but normal, and heroism has a different meaning. As the anti-Semitic new president cozies up to the Third Reich, right-wing activists throughout the nation seize the moment. Most citizens, enamored of isolationism and lost in hero worship, see no evil–but in the Roths' once secure and stable Jewish neighborhood in New Jersey, the world is descending into a nightmare of confusion, fear, and unpredictability. The young narrator, Phil, views the developing crisis through the lens of his family life and his own boyish concerns. His father, clinging tenaciously to his trust in America, loses his confidence painfully and incrementally. His mother tries to shield the children from her own growing fear. An aunt, brother, and cousin respond in different ways, and the family is divided. But though the situation is grim, this is not a despairing tale; suspenseful, poignant, and often humorous, it engages readers in many ways. It prompts them to consider the nature of history, present times, and possible futures, and can lead to good discussions among thoughtful readers and teachers. Bibliographic sources, notes on historical figures, and documentation are included. – School Library Journal
Firethorn - Micklem, Sarah
Booklist starred review: Tired of her life as a drudge, and somewhat annoyed with the gods for their silence, Firethorn flees to the forest to live off the land by herself for a year of learning, by trial and error, the properties and powers of plants. This is a time of blessing by the gods, for she leaves the forest a new and stronger woman, and a healer. Her newfound inner strength makes her restless, and she no longer feels at home in her village. So, after an intense chance meeting during a time of festival, and mating with highborn warrior Sir Galan, Firethorn agrees to accompany him to the war camps as his sheath . In many respects, in-camp life among the warriors is no better than her low station in the village, but she befriends the camp's harlots and makes herself useful by practicing her healing art. As the weeks pass, and the fierce bond between Galan and Firethorn grows stronger, she struggles to find balance in their relationship and a position of greater equal than sheath . Then, when Sir Galan makes a foolish wager with dire consequences, Firethorn uses her gifts to turn the course of his fate. This is a great piece of gritty, feminist fiction, distinguished by a heroine whose vulnerabilities and fresh voice as narrator make her easy to love. - Booklist
Forty Signs of Rain - Robinson, Kim Stanley
An elegantly crafted and beguiling novel set in the very near future. Anna Quibler is a technocrat at the National Science Foundation while her husband, Charlie, takes care of their toddler and telecommutes as a legislative consultant to a senator. Their family life is a delight to observe, as are the interactions of the scientists at the NSF and related organizations. When a Buddhist delegation, whose country is being flooded because of climate change, opens an embassy near the NSF, the Quiblers befriend them and teach them to work the system of politics and grants. The Buddhists, in turn, affect the scientists in delightful and unexpectedly significant ways. The characters all share information and theories, appreciating the threat that global warming poses, but they just can't seem to awaken a sense of urgency in the politicians who could do something about it. (Robinson's characterizations of politicians are barbed, and often hilarious.) As the scientists focus on the minutiae of their lives, the specter of global warming looms over all, inexorably causing a change here, a change there, until all the imbalances combine to bring about a brilliantly visualized catastrophe that readers will not soon forget. Even as he outlines frighteningly plausible scenarios backed up by undeniable facts, the author charms with domesticity and humor. This beautifully paced novel stands on its own, but it is the first of a trilogy. As readers wait impatiently for the next volume, they will probably find themselves paying closer attention to science, to politics, and to the weather. – School Library Journal
Heir to the Glimmering World - Ozick, Cynthia
Though known mainly for short stories distinguished by graceful language, Ozick here demonstrates her facility as a novelist, successfully mixing themes of faith, identity, and art into a crazy salad of a plot set in New York City during the Great Depression. When shy 18-year-old orphan Rose Meadows becomes secretary-factotum to Professor Rudolf Mitwisser, she finds herself in unstable surroundings. Obsessed with his researches into a radical Jewish sect, Mitwisser can't cope with the problems that he and his large, unruly family are facing as recent arrivals to the United States after fleeing the Nazis. The seven dysfunctional refugees, accustomed to luxury in Berlin, are now dependent on their sponsor, young millionaire James A'bair. Though generous, A'bair is neurotic and unreliable, having been emotionally unsettled by his childhood fame as the "Bear Boy" in his father's series of best-selling children's books. When James learns that Rose has inherited a first edition of the original story, complications abound, and Rose must face down family chaos to become her own woman. This witty book will appeal to admirers of the fanciful tales in Ozick's Puttermesser Papers and to readers seeking well-written novels with intellectual depth. - Library Journal
Innocents Aboard: New Fantasy Stories - Wolfe, Gene
Veteran Wolfe doesn't just write stories. He tells wondrously imaginative tales that weave reality with dream and fit so comfortably, or with intentional discomfort, within the psyche that they surely must have dwelt there all along with the other great fables and folk tales, lore and legends that are part of our collective cultural unconscious. The 22 short works of horror and fantasy (and "magic realism" if one disdains genre labels) collected here are further proof that Wolfe ranks with the finest writers of this or any other day. Age has neither dulled nor withered the septuagenarian author: fully half these stories are from the last five years. "The Tree Is My Hat" is a haunting ghost story set on a Pacific Island replete with shark-gods and lost temples. The chilling "The Friendship Light" combines the Lovecraftian with the psychopathological. An ill child finds endless adventure and inescapable nightmare in "Houston, 1943." In "The Lost Pilgrim," a time-traveler intent on sailing with the Pilgrims finds himself on a voyage into Greek myth. Wolfe's magic is so potent that even when his highly unreliable narrators warn us we will never believe them, that they are mad or illogical, we still find it all, no matter how outlandish or surreal the premise, perfectly plausible. Wolfe is a literary treasure, as shown in these short stories as lucid as diamonds of the first water. - Publisher's Weekly
The Swallows of Kabul - Khadra, Yasmina
Booklist starred review: In Kabul under the Taliban, two men walk the city in pain. Atiq, 42, is a part-time jailer; so efficient is the regime's capital punishment machinery that there are never many prisoners in his jail. Atiq's wife is dying of a painful, wasting disease, and he feels these days, after 20 years of unremitting war, that "he can't see the end of the tunnel, and he can't see the end of his nose, either." Mohsen, about 10 years younger, has watched his family's fortunes collapse as successive regimes destroyed business, devalued education, and finally forbade women like his beautiful wife to practice their professions. Indeed, Zunaira won't leave the house anymore, for she refuses to wear the burka that cancels her identity. Atiq's and Mohsen's paths begin converging when Mohsen, in a trance of self-obliteration, helps stone the latest prisoner from Atiq's jail. Out of the spiral of disasters Mohsen's action starts, Zunaira emerges as Atiq's next prisoner, and when he sees how lovely she is, he determines to save her. At the end of Khadra's harrowing portrayal of a society enslaved by anger, Atiq has succeeded and failed, and Zunaira has only possibly been saved. Khadra is the feminine pseudonym of a former Algerian army officer whose experience with Islamic radicals as well as with prolonged warfare bolster the novel's sledgehammer power and authority. - Booklist
Thinner Than Thou - Reed, Kit
Booklist starred review: Imagine a not-so-distant future in which idolatry of everything youthful, perfect, and beautiful has become the only religion, and natural aging, with its spare-tire midriffs, cheesy thighs, and wrinkly faces, is a punishable sin. Such is the perfect setting for the megalomaniacal Reverend Earl to thrive and prosper. From coast to coast, Reverend Earl's luxury spa, Sylphania, is all the rage, and to it the overweight flock for personally supervised weight-loss programs and plenty of preaching on the heavenly state of the Afterfat. For troubled teens suffering with anorexia, bulimia, and overweight, there are the reverend's "convents," in which the "proper" ways to eat and think are taught, and to one of these her parents consign anorexic Annie. When her siblings discover she's gone, and the folks won't talk, they sense big trouble. They set off with Annie's boyfriend to find her and bring her home. Unlikely people, in particular an underground network of religions that recalls a time when gods, not flesh, were worshipped, help them. Reed's visionary tale is brilliant. - Booklist
Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic - Cox, F. Brett
An anthology of fantasy with a pronounced southern flavor. The contributors make up a good cross-section of the field, with a handful of major genre award-winners, including Gene Wolfe, John Kessel, Michael Swanwick, and Michael Bishop, as well as Duncan himself. On the whole, the quality is up to the expectations that this list of names would raise. But while the stories have in common a vaguely southern setting, along with some tendency toward the gothic in subject matter, the variety of approaches may surprise some readers. Wolfe's "Houston, 1943" injects echoes of Peter Pan in a small boy's nightmare; Swanwick's "The Last Geek" brings the title character to a university as guest lecturer; and Kessel's "Every Angel is Terrifying" gives an escaped felon as his guardian a cat that fulfills his every wish. Entries by some of the less-familiar names include Scott Edelman's "My Life is Good," about aliens, obsessed with Randy Newman, who force a humorless scientist to monitor the songwriter's entire life through time travel; Bud Webster's "Christus Destitutus," where Jesus decides to die again in a homeless shelter; and Mark L. Van Name's quasi-psychedelic "Boar Lake." The anthology also includes a number of strong stories from an African-American perspective, including Honoree Fanonne Jeffers's "A Plate of Mojo," a dialect account of a plantation cook's life, and Kalamu Ya Salaam's "Alabama," a spare and stark examination of what lynching meant, not just to the victims but to the perpetrators. And on the science fiction end of the spectrum, Jack McDevitt takes a sobering look at the effects on a small town of the abandonment of the space effort. Judging by evidence here, the southern storytelling tradition is clearly alive and well. - Kirkus
The Nameless Day - Douglass, Sara
The Black Death has decimated Europe, the Hundred Years War is at a turning point and the English and French peasantry are in open revolt—but is this revolution simply a change whose time has come, or is it due to something far more sinister? In this passionate first volume of a new trilogy, evil is afoot in medieval Christian Europe. The archangel St. Michael has given Brother Thomas Neville, a Dominican friar, a mandate to repel evil and restore order. A difficult man at the best of times, Thomas now believes he's above church strictures and secular control. On top of that, Thomas is trying to forge his way through Europe as it self-destructs, and he can't trust the people around him since the evil that's stalking the world can shift shape and take the form of anyone at anytime. Douglass has brilliantly blended detailed research with religion and magic to reinterpret actual historical events, here the shift from extreme spiritualism to humanism that began in 14th-century Europe. She manages to make the reader care about self-absorbed, flawed characters who often act out of fear, greed or stupidity. This captivating historical fantasy ranks with the best in the subgenre. - Publisher's Weekly
Musashi #9 - Miyuki, Takahashi
Graphic novel: This intriguing story follows a lethal 16-year-old girl with the code name Musashi #9, an agent for the ultra-secret organization Ultimate Blue. The UB is also known as "the other United Nations" and has positioned itself above international law in the fight to maintain order against terrorists, extremists, kidnappers and others whose activities threaten to lead to world chaos. The UB swiftly confronts these threats, sending out merciless, coldly efficient agents whose existence is shrouded in shadow and rumor; among them, no agent is as feared as Musashi #9. This book recounts four of Musashi #9's missions, focusing on the predicaments of those Musashi #9 is sent to protect and the nail-biting suspense that comes as the situations escalate. Once she has her targets in sight, she easily overcomes her antagonists. Takahashi crafts a tight narrative that moves as briskly as a well-paced espionage thriller, and the rather feminine manga art style curiously works in the story's favor, offering a delicate counterpoint to the tense violent plots. - Publisher's Weekly
NONFICTION
Aspirin: The Remarkable Story of a Wonder Drug - Jeffreys, Diarmuid
The story of aspirin goes all the way back to ancient Egypt, although how the drug works was discovered only in the 1970s. Its past embraces wars, epidemics, espionage, an Oxfordshire vicar, a forgotten Jewish scientist, the Industrial Revolution, a common tree, the Treaty of Versailles, the world's most powerful pharmaceutical companies, Auschwitz, a mercurial advertising genius, and much more. Bringing alive a compelling cast of characters in a dazzling journey across centuries, Diarmuid Jeffreys reveals how chance and design brought the drug into being as we know it at the end of the nineteenth century, and how intrigue, greed, and ambition combined to make aspirin one of the most commercially successful products of all time. - from the publisher
Contents: If you examine a man -- The bark of an english tree -- The puzzle takes shape -- The birth of a wonderdrug -- Patents, patients, and sell, sell, sell! -- The chemists' war -- Civilization could disappear -- The aspirin age -- A moral collapse -- Soluble solutions and costly competition -- So that's how it works! -- Affairs of the heart -- A twenty-first century wonderdrug -- Notes and sources -- Bibliography.
Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties - Meade, Marion
The four 1920s women writers Meade focuses on were legends in their own time--and what a time it was. Encapsulating the razzle-dazzle and optimism of the Jazz Age, Meade covers each year of the wild and woolly decade, beginning with Dorothy Parker's firing from Vanity Fair , and embracing Zelda Fitzgerald and her wild drinking and dancing in fountains alongside her husband, F. Scott. Across town on West Nineteenth Street, Edna St. Vincent Millay's fingers flew over the keyboard of a featherweight Corona No. 3 (a gift from her married lover, James Lawyer), turning out "Renascence," the poem that would make her famous. With fellow Pulitzer Prize winner Edna Ferber, those three inspired and intrepid women were free-spirited "celebrities" before the term was coined, in an era whose energy and tumult became legendary historically and literarily. Their unusual and indelible lives, and scintillating milieu, are vividly captured by Meade in this fast-paced and informative group biography. - Booklist
The Big Splat, or How Our Moon Came to Be - MacKenzie, Dana
Booklist starred review: Mackenzie prefaces his absorbing account of the new "giant impact" theory of the moon's origin with the fascinating story of humanity's long relationship with Earth's only natural satellite. Evidence of that relationship begins with what is very probably a lunar calendar among the famous Lascaux cave paintings, and continues in early civilizations' timekeeping uses of the moon and classical Greek ideas about the moon's composition. In the fifth century B.C.E., Anaxagoras correctly realized that the moon was made of rock. Later, Aristotle didn't agree, and his view held sway for centuries. During the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Kant, Buffon, and Laplace vastly expanded knowledge and theory about the moon-Earth relationship. Charles Darwin's son George (1845-1912) performed prodigies of calculation to argue that the moon "fissioned" from Earth. American crank T. J. J. See and modest Frenchman Edouard Roche pioneered, respectively, two other lunar-origin theories: See, that Earth "captured" the moon when it passed close by; Roche, that Earth and the moon "coaccreted" in the same part of the solar system. The findings of the Apollo expeditions and the enormous mathematical calculations facilitated by computers helped put forth astronomer and artist William Hartmann's idea that a near-Mars-size planet smashing into Earth produced the moon. Mackenzie is a popular-science ace--magnetically readable, preternaturally clear, amazingly concise. Consider this the popular moon-science book of our times. - Booklist
Contents: Introduction: Genesis Revised -- A Highly Practical Stone -- The Stone Star -- Kepler Laughed -- The Clockwork Solar System -- Daughter Moon -- Captive Moon -- Sister Moon -- Renaissance and Controversy -- “A Little Science on the Moon” -- When Worlds Collide -- The Kona Consensus -- Introducing Theia -- Appendix: Did We Really Go to the Moon? -- Glossary -- References -- Acknowledgments -- Index.
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes - Hughes, Langston
This is the most complete collection of Hughes's poems to date. Known for a few brilliant pieces, Hughes wrote many others-860 are here, and this after unpublished work and juvenilia were excluded. Quite a few are songs or what the editors appropriately term "doggerel." Works are in chronological order, except for two important books printed intact: Montage of a Dream Deferred and Ask you Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz . A short preface, a time line of Hughes' life, and historical endnotes are also included. The time line is as moving as any of Hughes's poems; together, they document an intensely felt life of hardship and perseverance. Persecuted for his leftist politics as well as his skin color, Hughes just kept on writing. Beyond their relative merits-their rhymes, song rhythms, and sometimes dogmatic approach will not appeal to all-these poems are full of beauty, qualified joy, and sharp illustrations of African American life in our century. - Library Journal
Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia - Bin Ladin, Carmen
In 1973, half-Persian, half-Swiss Carmen Dufour married Yeslam bin Laden, Osama's older brother. After a fairy-tale courtship, they married and settled in Saudi Arabia, where Carmen soon received a painful initiation into the strict gender prohibitions of Wahhabi custom. Her Inside the Kingdom not only recounts an often harrowing marriage, which ended in 1988, but also offers unique insights into the family of the world's most notorious terrorist. - Barnes & Noble
The Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal, and Trial by Combat in Medieval France - Jager, Eric
In 1386, Jean de Carrouges accused his former friend, Jacques LeGris, of raping his wife, and the young king of France allowed their dispute to be resolved in what was to be the last legally ordered judicial combat in Paris. Jager deftly blends this story with the background necessary to understand it: the ideas behind trial by combat, the realities of 14th-century marriage, the complexity of the regional and central powers in France, and the personal rivalries at court. Jager describes a harsh and violent era, when public executions were a form of entertainment and both commoners and elites eagerly anticipated the increasingly rare duel to the death. But it was also a time of lawyers, chroniclers and ceremony. Jager doesn't condescend to the people of medieval France but explains the complicated logic by which they could believe that a duel would prove guilt or innocence, pregnancy could be considered proof that sex had been consensual, and a lady could be convicted and executed as a false accuser if her champion lost. A brief history of the duel demonstrates its origins in age-old military tradition rather than divine providence. Jager acknowledges where the definitive facts of his story are unknown while presenting a riveting account that will satisfy general readers and historians alike. - Publisher's Weekly
Letting Go: A Parents' Guide to Understanding the College Years - Coburn Karen, L.
This best-selling guide, read by hundreds of thousands of parents over the past decade, is now better than ever, newly revised and completely updated. Based on real-life experience and recommended by colleges and universities around the country, Letting Go offers compassionate, practical, and up-to-the-minute information to help parents with the emotional and social changes of the college years. Topics covered include: When should parents encourage independence? When should they intervene? What issues of identity and intimacy await students? What are normal feelings of disorientation and loneliness for students? and for parents? What is different about today's college environment? What new concerns about safety, health and wellness, and stress will affect incoming classes? These important issues and more are addressed with wise advice and time-tested counsel in Letting Go -- a realistic and reassuring source for meeting the challenges ahead, from the senior year in high school through college graduation.
Contents: Preface to the Fourth Edition -- PART I: THE COLLEGE EXPERIENCE -- Letting Go -- Some Things Never Change: The Search for Identity, Independence, and Intimacy -- Some Things Do Change: College Life Today -- PART II: A PARENTS' GUIDE: FROM START TO FINISH -- Great Expectations -- Ready, Set, Go: The Departure -- Orientation and Disorientation -- The Freshman Year: Academic Life and the College Scene -- In and Out of Your Life -- Sophomore Slump and the Years Beyond -- The End Is the Beginning -- Resources for Parents and Students -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Index.
Your Name in Print: A Teen's guide to Publishing for Fun, Profit, and Academic Success - Harper, Elizabeth
With young authors such as Christopher Paolini ( Eragon ) making a big name and big money for themselves, it's easy for teens to think that they, too, can make it as a published author. The Harpers (father and daughter) offer an encouraging and mostly down-to-earth look at how to embark on a writing career. They explain the different kinds of writing that can lead to publication--including writing for Web sites, blogs, movie and music reviews, and graphic novels--and show how decent writers can step up in the writing hierarchy, as Elizabeth did, moving from her high-school paper to publishing in the New York Times. There's also plenty of practical information about finding ideas, doing research, and managing a professional career. The book does note that the odds of having a book published are poor, and the you-can-do-it spirit seems, at times, unrealistic. Still, promoting a positive mental attitude isn't all bad, especially when wrapped around writing samples, professional tips, and resource lists. - Booklist
Nature: An Economic History - Vermeij, Geerat J.
From humans to hermit crabs to deep water plankton, all living things compete for locally limiting resources. This universal truth unites three bodies of thought--economics, evolution, and history--that have developed largely in mutual isolation. Here, Geerat Vermeij undertakes a groundbreaking and provocative exploration of the facts and theories of biology, economics, and geology to show how processes common to all economic systems--competition, cooperation, adaptation, and feedback--govern evolution as surely as they do the human economy, and how historical patterns in both human and nonhuman evolution follow from this principle. Using a wealth of examples of evolutionary innovations, Vermeij argues that evolution and economics are one. Powerful consumers and producers exercise disproportionate controls on the characteristics, activities, and distribution of all life forms. Competition-driven demand by consumers, when coupled with supply-side conditions permitting economic growth, leads to adaptation and escalation among organisms. Although disruptions in production halt or reverse these processes temporarily, they amplify escalation in the long run to produce trends in all economic systems toward greater power, higher production rates, and a wider reach for economic systems and their strongest members. - from the publisher
The Rose of Martinique: A Life of Napoleon's Josephine - Stuart, Andrea
Although eventually married to the colossus of her age, Josephine Bonaparte's life was dramatic and eventful before ever meeting Napoleon. Josephine was one of the most remarkable women of the modern era. Andrea Stuart focuses on the woman herself and brings her so utterly to life that we finally understand why Napoleon's last word before dying in exile was the name he had given her, "Josephine." Using diaries and letters, Stuart expertly re-creates Josephine's whirlwind life, which ranged from an isolated Caribbean childhood to being crowned Empress of France. Born Rose de Tasher on her family's Martinique sugar plantation, she was vivacious, pleasure-loving, sensual, and compassionate -- a true Creole. This particular background contributed so immeasurably to who she was as a person that it's impossible to imagine her emerging from any other society. Josephine's life, even more than Napoleon's, gives us a picture of the terrible vicissitudes of the times. She managed to be in the forefront of every important episode of her era's turbulent history: from the slave plantations of the West Indies that bankrolled Europe's rapid economic development; to the last days of the ancien regime; to the Revolution itself, from which she barely escaped the guillotine. She epitomized the wild decadence of post-revolutionary Paris and it was there, as its star, that she first caught the eye of a young Corsican general, Napoleon Bonaparte. The fact that both Josephine and Napoleon were immigrants may explain the intensity of their bond. A true partner to Napoleon, she was a political adviser, hostess par excellence, his confidante and lover. The almost pathological ways they complemented each other remain painfully clear as Stuart traces the denouements of their lives. It was hardly a happy marriage, and Stuart's argument that the emperor's harsh treatment of women in the Code Napol on reflected the dynamics and frustrations of his own marriage seems quite convincing in this context. - from the publisher and Publisher's Weekly
Sex with Kings: Five Hundred Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge - Herman, Eleanor
Throughout the centuries, royal mistresses have been worshiped, feared, envied, and reviled. They set the fashions, encouraged the arts, and, in some cases, ruled nations. Eleanor Herman's Sex with Kings takes us into the throne rooms and bedrooms of Europe's most powerful monarchs. Alive with flamboyant characters, outrageous humor, and stirring poignancy, this glittering tale of passion and politics chronicles five hundred years of scintillating women and the kings who loved them. Curiously, the main function of a royal mistress was not to provide the king with sex but with companionship. Forced to marry repulsive foreign princesses, kings sought solace with women of their own choice. And what women they were! The successful royal mistress made herself irreplaceable. She was ready to converse gaily with him when she was tired, be available until all hours when she was ill, and cater to his every whim. Wearing a mask of beaming delight over any and all discomforts, she was never to be exhausted, complaining, or grief-stricken. With diaries, personal letters, and diplomatic dispatches, Eleanor Herman's trailblazing research reveals the dynamics of sex and power, rivalry and revenge, at the most brilliant courts of Europe. Wickedly witty and endlessly entertaining, Sex with Kings is a chapter of women's history that has remained unwritten -- until now. - from the publisher
Spice: The History of a Temptation - Turner, Jack
Turner not only gives the reader a wonderfully vivid history of the quest for spices and the lucrative spice trade, but he also provides some intriguing insights into why spices once exerted such a hold over the human imagination -- and how they catalyzed the Age of Discovery. He shows how the early spice trade forged an enduring, often exploitative relationship between the West and the East, traces the ambivalent attitude of the Church toward spices, and chronicles the gradual de-mythologizing of spices with the advent of the modern era. In doing so, he has succeeded in writing a book that is at once a social and cultural history, a culinary history and a delightful read. - The New York Times
The Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the World - Hopkins, Roz
One could call it the ultimate travel book: Lonely Planet's insider's peek at 218 countries of the world from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, from populous China to tiny Easter Island. (There are even entries for Kyrgystan and Kiribati.) Illustrated with hundreds of color photographs, this book contains maps, data, and tourist tips, including "best time to visit" and "essential experiences."
Washington Gone Crazy: Senator Pat McCarran and the Great American Communist Hunt - Ybarra, Michael J.
The infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy served as the poster boy for America's anti-Communist crusade of the 1950s, but this long-overdue biography makes clear that the real force behind that crusade was the little-remembered Senator Patrick McCarran. In disturbing detail, Ybarra establishes that while the Wisconsin demagogue was capturing headlines, it was the implacable cold warrior from Nevada who--with much less fanfare--turned anti-Communist paranoia into harsh legislation and draconian public policy, thus chilling debate, abridging civil rights, and destroying careers. McCarran emerges as the man who forged the legislative and procedural weapons for fighting Communism, without which McCarthy could never have even started his legendary witch-hunt. Indeed, by scrutinizing the way postwar politics evolved before McCarthy stepped onto the stage, Ybarra shows readers how McCarran almost single-handedly turned the threat of Communist infiltration into the justification for a monomaniacal campaign, waged with both guile and fury. Though far from sympathetic with McCarran's objectives, Ybarra marvels at his skill in dominating Congress, defying Democratic and Republican presidents, and outmaneuvering senior bureaucrats. And unlike McCarthy, whose influence ended as soon as the Senate censured him in 1954, McCarran inscribed his politics of fear deep in America's public policy, leaving behind dubious laws still in force as late as the 1990s. An eye-opening portrait of a largely forgotten twentieth-century titan. - Booklist
Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond - Kranz, Gene
When the heroic American astronauts of the '60s and '70s inquired, "Houston, do you read?" it was often Krantz's team who answered from the ground. Veteran NASA flight controller Krantz (portrayed by Ed Harris in the film Apollo 13 ) has written a personable memoir, one that follows his and NASA's careers from the start of the space race through "the last lunar strike," Apollo 17 (1972-1973). Krantz's story opens in the world of the first U.S. space scientists, of exploding Mercury-Atlas rockets, flaming escape towers and "the first rule of flight control": "If you don't know what to do, don't do anything!" Its climax is Apollo 13, with Krantz serving as "lead flight director" and helping to save the trapped astronauts' lives. His account of that barely averted disaster evokes the adrenalized mood of the flight controllers and the technical problems ("gimbal lock," oxygen status, return trajectories) that had to be solved for the astronauts to survive. Elsewhere in these often-gripping pages we learn of the quarrels that almost derailed Gemini 9A's spacewalk; "the best leaders the program ever had," among them George Mueller, who revived NASA after a 1966 launchpad fire; the forest of internal acronyms and argot ("Go-NoGo," "all-up," EVA, the Trench, CSM, GNC, FIDO, RETRO, GUIDO); and the combination of teamwork and expertise that made the moon landings possible. Plenty of books (and several films) have already tried to depict the space program's excitement; few of their creators had the first-person experience or the attention to detail Krantz has, whose role as flight control "White" his readers will admire or even wish to emulate. - Publisher's Weekly
REFERENCE
Technology in World History - 7 volumes
From the invention of the wheel to the mapping of the genome, technology has always been deeply intertwined with the course of human history. Now, this fascinating set explores the role technology has played in eighteen separate cultures in world history, and reveals the many ways people use technology to control their environment, express religious values, deploy political power, confer social status, and afford themselves varying degrees of pleasure, comfort, and security. Whether focusing on Egyptian pyramids or medieval cathedrals, the Mayan astronomical calendar or the Internet, Technology in World History illuminates the amazing array of technologies that humans have developed to shape and give meaning to their lives.
Contents: v. 1. Prehistoric and ancient world --The Stone Age -- Ancient Egypt -- Ancient and Classical India. -- v. 2. Early empires -- v. 3 The medieval world -- v. 4. Traditional cultures -- v. 5. The industrial age -- v. 6. The modern world -- v. 7. Reference volume and set index.
Peterson's Four-Year Colleges (2006) - Peterson's Guides
This highly respected source of information on colleges features fact-filled profiles of more than 2,000 colleges and universities. - Barnes and Noble
ks 10-28-05