Nineteen grade 10-12 students have logged over 100 hours each of community service.

SEPTEMBER 2003


NONFICTION

First, some wonderful poetry, essays, and other collections of short works:

Best American Nonrequired Reading (2002) - Eggers, Dave

he Best American Nonrequired Reading 2002 is a selection for readers under twenty-five of the best literature from mainstream and alternative American periodicals: from The New Yorker, Jane, ZYZZYVA, Vibe, The Onion, Spin, Epoch, Time, Little Engines, Modern Humorist, Esquire, and others. Dave Eggers has chosen the highlights of 2001 for this genre-busting collection that includes new fiction, essays, satire, journalism -- and much more. From Eric Schlosser on french fries to Elizabeth McKenzie on awful family to Seaton Smith on how to "jive" with your teen, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2002 is the first and the best. - from the publisher

A House Somewhere: Tales of Life Abroad - George, Don

isiting a place that turns out to have an exceptional pull on your heart and then wanting to establish some sort of residence there is not an uncommon travel experience. From one of the most prominent travel publishers comes this exceptionally rewarding anthology of 18 book excerpts and eight original essays commissioned for inclusion here, and all the pieces share a common theme: settling down in a foreign country. - Booklist

Original Stories by: Isabel Allende, Karl Taro Greenfeld, Jan Morris, Rolf Potts, Mort Rosenbaum, Jeffrey Taylor, Errol Trzebinski, Simon Winchester. Selected writings by: Vida Adamoli, Lily Brett, Tony Cohan, William Dalrymple, Amitav Ghos, Carla Grissmann, James Hamilton-Paterson, Annie Hawes, Peter Hesller, Pico Iyer, Alex Kerr, Frances Mayes, Peter Mayle, Tim Parks, Chris Stewart, Emma Tennant, Paul Theroux, Nial Williams and Christine Breen.

Poetry Anthology, 1912-2002: Ninety Years of America's Most Distinguish Verse Magazine - Parisi, Joseph

Library Journal calls this "a landmark collection." Here's what the publisher tells us: Soon after it was founded by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry magazine became famous for printing the first poems of T. S. Eliot ("The Love Song of Alfred Prufrock"), Carl Sandburg ("Chicago Poems"), and Wallace Stevens ("Sunday Morning"), and revolutionary work by Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, and many other then unknown but now classic authors. Over nine decades, never missing a monthly issue, Poetry has presented virtually every significant poet of the twentieth century - often for the first time - and has become a legend in its own right. Decade by decade, this ninetieth-anniversary anthology from Poetry includes the poems of the major talents - along with several lesser known - in all their variety: William Butler Yeats, Edgar Lee Masters, Sara Teasdale, D. H. Lawrence, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Vachel Lindsay, Robert Graves, May Sarton, Langston Hughes, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Hart Crane, Robert Penn Warren, Dylan Thomas, E. E. Cummings, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Merrill, John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Randall Jarrell, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Robinson Jeffers, Theodore Roethke, Karl Shapiro, Anne Sexton, Thom Gunn, John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, Maxine Kumin, Ted Hughes, Adrienne Rich, and Galway Kinnell.

Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father - Rodriguez, Richard

n explorer of cultural identity, Rodriguez builds on his acclaimed memoir Hunger of Memory with 10 luminous, loosely linked essays on the tensions and cross-pollinations of race, religion and geography in Californians of Mexican descent. - Publisher's Weekly

A Year of Reading: A Month-by-Month Guide to Classics and Crowd-Pleasers - Ellington, H. Elisabeth

imed at individuals and reading groups, A Year of Reading provides five fiction and nonfiction selections for each month with thorough summaries in the following categories: Crowd-Pleasers, Classics, Challenges, Memoirs and Potluck. This book also makes reading more fulfilling by providing additional selections, plus questions about the selections to stimulate thought and discussion. Also included is information on authors, reviews, video and Internet resources and annotated lists of related reading. And if you still think reading is too passive, try one of the many activities suggested, such as author readings, visits to museums, nature hikes and more. - from the publisher

 

There's something old, something new. Books discussed include The Hours, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Becoming American: Personal Essays by First Generation Immigrant Women, The Good Earth, The Rise of Silas Lapham, Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Little Women, The Diary of a Young Girl (Anne Frank), The Story of My Life (Helen Keller), Watership Down, My Antonia, Pride and Prejudice, The Last Voyage of the Karluk: A Survivor's Memoir of Disaster, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, , Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table, and many more!

All Girls: Single-Sex Education and Why It Matters - Stabiner, Karen

nvestigative journalist Karen Stabiner spent pivotal years with the young women of two very different girls' schools: Marlborough, an elite prep school in Los Angeles, and The Young Women's Leadership School in East Harlem, an experimental public school. On both coasts, her subjects are fascinating young women on the brink of adulthood, whose choices will affect their lives. Even-handed and thought-provoking. - from the publisher

Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back - Longman, Jere

f the four American airplanes that were hijacked on 9/11, only one failed to reach its intended target: United Flight 93, which crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Somehow, it seems, the passengers succeeded in thwarting the hijackers, at the cost of their own lives. Here is their heroic story. - Barnes & Noble Online

Detour: My Bipolar Road Trip in 4-D - Simon, Lizzie

n this honest memoir, 23-year-old Simon writes of her life with bipolar disorder. Simon found out that she was suffering from this mental illness while still in high school, and she discusses her feelings of having been different for most of her life and her need for finding others from her "herd." After college and medication adjustments, Simon decided to put aside a career as a theatrical producer in New York City in order to travel around the country interviewing other people afflicted with bipolar disorder. The road trip found Simon asking many questions in her search for validation. The author writes from her head in a punchy style that will seem familiar to anyone dealing with bipolar disorder (or attention deficit disorder). Her fresh, larger-than-life prose will appeal to all readers, especially younger people suffering with this difficult mental illness. - Library Journal

The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI - Kessler, Ronald

e rely on organizations like the Federal Bureau of Investigation to keep us safe and secure, especially when terrorists threaten our well-being. But how much do we really know about it? When was it begun? Who are the men who have run it over the years? And why, of late, has it become so controversial? Ronald Kessler, author of the New York Times bestseller Inside the White House, presents the full story of the FBI, from its formation in 1908 to the terrible events of September 11, 2001. -Barnes & Noble online

Don't Try This at Home: How to Win a Sumo Match, Catch a Great White Shark, and Start an Independent Nation and Other Extraordinary Feats (For Ordinary People) - Fulghum, Hunter S.

f you like the Worst Case Scenario books, you'll love this one. Here's a review from VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates): Prospective Darwin Award wannabes will be overjoyed at this selection of imaginative ways to perform really stupid stunts. Contents include how to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, how to break into Fort Knox, how to catch the Loch Ness Monster, and how to win a Sumo-wrestling match, among many other unlikely feats. Dry humor abounds, from the odd materials needed (outgoing personality, bail money, an English accent, a submarine) to mission objectives (short-sheeting Prince Charles's bed). The advice on how to accomplish the missions, however, is presented earnestly, with technical explanations that seem both logical and plausible. Those pondering how to attempt a seemingly impossible feat will find this book fascinating. It is a detailed, humorous, and bizarre book that should find an eager audience.

Hard Times: An Oral History of Great Depression - Terkel, Studs

irst published in 1970, this classic of oral history features the voices of men and women who lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s. - Amazon.com

Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity : The Challenge for Bioethics - Kass, Leon R.

t the outset of Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity, Leon Kass gives us a status report on where we stand today: "Human nature itself lies on the operating table, ready for alteration, for eugenic and psychic 'enhancement,' for wholesale redesign. In leading laboratories, academic and industrial, new creators are confidently amassing their powers and quietly honing their skills, while on the street their evangelists are zealously prophesying a posthuman future. For anyone who cares about preserving our humanity, the time has come for paying attention." Trained as a medical doctor and a biochemist, Dr. Kass has become one of our most provocative thinkers on bioethical issues. Now, in this brave and searching book, he also establishes himself as a prophetic voice summoning us to think deeply about the new biomedical technologies threatening to take us back to the future envisioned by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. As in Huxley's dystopia, where life has been smoothed out by genetic manipulation, psychoactive drugs and high-tech amusement, our own accelerating efforts to master reproduction and genetic endowment, to retard aging, and to conquer illness, imperfection and even death are animated by our most humane and progressive aspirations. But we are walking too quickly down the road to physical and psychological utopia, Kass believes, without pausing to assess the potential damage to our humanity from this brave new biology. - Publisher's Weekly

Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill - Whitaker, Robert

merican psychiatry has excelled throughout the nation's history, but doctors and drug manufacturers have profited far more than psychiatric patients. When the World Health Organization compared schizophrenics' recovery rates in the U.S and in nations too poor to afford the latest psychopharmaceuticals, it found that a Third World patient was exponentially likelier than an American one to regain sanity. Whitaker's articulate dissection of "mad medicine" in the U.S. explains why that dismaying contrast obtains. Assuming that insanity arises from identifiable physical causes, American psychiatry theorized about those causes and sought to find physical therapies and, later, drugs that attacked those causes. Accordingly, from being shocked with cold water and repeatedly nearly drowned, to suffering chemically and electronically induced grand mal seizures, to having the frontal lobes of their brains chopped off, to being drugged into parkinsonism (the preferred modus nowadays), the mad in America have suffered as essentially nonconsensual experimental subjects. Since World War II, drug companies have made continued testing increasingly worthwhile, despite the lack of encouraging results. This horrifying history is all the more discomfiting because another mode of treatment was successfully used from the late eighteenth century until the 1870s. Called moral treatment by its Quaker champions, it involved treating the mad with kindness and sympathetic companionship rather than drugs and machines. But it cost too much, and it wasn't professional. - Booklist, starred review

Contents: Part One: The Original Bedlam (1750-1900) Bedlam in Medicine, The Healing Hand of Kindness. Part Two: The Darkest Era (1900-1950), Unfit to Breed, Too Much Intelligence, Brain Damage as Miracle Therapy. Part Three: Back to Bedlam (1950-1990s), Modem-Day Alchemy, The Patients' Reality, The Story We Told Ourselves, Shame of a Nation, The Nuremberg Code Doesn't Apply Here. Part Four: Mad Medicine Today (1990s-Present), Not So Atypical, Epilogue, Notes, Index.

Smoke and Ashes: The Story of the Holocaust revised and expanded edition - Rogasky, Barbara

irst published in 1988, this authoritative history has now been expanded to include newly available facts and crucial issues for discussion. The core of the book remains the same, with a writing style both passionate and controlled, combining eyewitness accounts, statistics, and commentary in a spacious format that includes documentary photos (many of them taken by the Nazis) on almost every page. Rogasky has added material about the roles of Nazi "helpers," including German police and bystanders. There's a new section on the Nazi persecution of gay men, and there's more about the rescuers. The chapter on whether the Holocaust is unique covers horrifying recent events, such as the genocide in Rwanda, and a new chapter gives details about contemporary hate groups and answers those who deny that the Holocaust happened. The bibliography now includes Web sites and chapter source notes. This is an outstanding resource for the Holocaust curriculum. - Booklist

Snobbery: The American Version - Epstein, Joseph

oseph Epstein's witty new book surveys American snobbery after the fall of the old Wasp culture of prep schools, Ivy League colleges, cotillions, debutante balls, the Social Register, and the rest of it. With ample humor and insight, Epstein uncovers the new outlets upon which the old snobbery has fastened: food and wine, fashion, high-achieving children, schools, politics, health, being with-it, name-dropping, and much else. Playing throughout Snobbery: The American Version is the question of whether snobbery is part of human nature. - from the publisher

The Story of America : Freedom and Crisis from Settlement to Superpower - Dorling Kindersley Publishing

n alternative title for this might be "The Treasury of American History" as it's an anthology of our nation's favorite stories: Lewis and Clark's expedition, Nat Turner' s revolt, Custer's last stand, Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic flight, and Nixon' s Watergate scandal. If the stories are familiar, the format-at least for the pre-Internet generation-is new. Adapting Web site dynamics to the printed page, the designers enhance the text with sidebars and photographic collages. The stories themselves mimic the skip-and-jump of Web narratives. Nat Turner's revolt opens with slaves plotting an uprising, then steps back to discuss the origins of slavery in the South before returning to the failed revolt and its aftermath. Readers with an above-average attention span may find the chronological shifts jolting and the cluttered pages distracting; but the book never becomes tiresome. Taken together, the stories advance two themes. Weinstein, who heads the Center for Democracy, portrays our nation's history as the crisis-ridden spread of freedom through American society and outward to rest of the world. At the same time, the authors emphasize the key role of individuals; the vivid profiles of Great Men (and Women), contributed by today's leading historians (such as Joseph Ellis and Geoffrey Ward), reinforce this message. With its lively storytelling and thorough coverage of our nation's first five centuries, this truly is a treasury. - Publisher's Weekly

Vanished Civilizations: The Hidden Secrets of Lost Cities and Forgotten Peoples - Reader's Digest

sampling of ancient ruins, this pictorial depiction of about 35 sites presents each vanished civilization in introductory fashion. As a gateway to the wider vistas of archaeology, it touches on the field's basic concepts and timelines but serves mainly to visually excite interest in the societies that built ziggurats, aqueducts, pyramids, and temples. All continents are represented, and although some sites are typical for an album of wonders-that-were (Angkor Wat, Mycenae, Pompeii), many are off the beaten path. Instead of picking Athens to represent ancient Greece, the editors selected the island of Delos; instead of choosing Machu Picchu to stand in for the Incan empire, they decided to include two cultures the Incas either succeeded (the Mocha) or outright conquered (the Chimu). Several pages are devoted to each site, including descriptions of setting, initial excavations, significant artifacts, and the once-powerful Ozymandias who built it. Within each visual framework is basic information about a site and its parent society. -- Booklist

Wagons West: The Epic Story of America's Overland Trails - McLynn, Frank

arely has a book so wonderfully brought to life the riveting tales of Americans' trek to the Pacific. A prolific British writer taken by the complex aspirations and often desperate hardships of the saints and scoundrels who filled the Western trails, McLynn relates their travails with a brio and understanding too seldom encountered in books on this naturally compelling subject. He vividly paints the unforgiving geography and the obstacles of human nature that often daunted but rarely defeated these pioneers. And he overlooks few of the people. There are plenty of familiar characters here, their stories freshly told: the ill-fated Donner Party, the Whitmans on their way to Oregon, mountain man Jim Bridger, the historian Francis Parkman and the Mormons. What helps make this narrative distinctive is that McLynn doesn't limit himself to known pioneers. His pen captures characters and situations from almost every wagon train that crossed the continent on the central trail to Oregon and California in seven or so pivotal years (1841-1847). Women play a large role in his pages. The outsider's perspective that allows McLynn to offer shrewd comparisons between European and American conditions does make one wish for more analysis. Most of all, though, he leaves the reader with a fuller understanding of the grit and resolve that motivated waves of people seeking escape and opportunity to head West and make the United States a continental nation in fact as well as in name. - Publisher's Weekly

Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America - Morgan, Edmund S.

or Morgan, popular sovereignty government of, by and for the people is a myth. Professor emeritus of history at Yale, he argues, in effect, that representative democracy is a tool to bolster rule by the powerful few over the many; the majority are thus led to believe they control their own destiny. In this quietly subversive rereading of our history, American colonists perfected the fiction of popular rule by involving voters in extravagant electoral campaigns and by insisting that elected representatives derived their power from their constituents. Meanwhile, elitist colonial rulers who owned considerable property pulled strings to get their way. Earlier, in England, members of the House of Commons and reformers challenged another governing fiction the divine right of kings and in so doing paved the way for popular sovereignty. Morgan offers a thought-provoking look at how the founding fathers assumed power. - Publisher's Weekly

Monologues for Young Actors - Cohen, Lorraine

rom classic to contemporary--an unparalleled collection of audition pieces for the student or young professional.- from the book cover

Monologues from Literature: A Sourcebook for Actors - Smith, Marisa

lassic and contemporary written words from literature have now been excerpted for stage presentation by actors. Running from 20 seconds to three minutes and covering all ages, styles, and subject matter, these 200 monologues provide fresh material for auditions, drama school tryouts, and class scene work. - from the publisher

Real-Life Drama for Real, Live Students: A Collection of Monologues, Duet Acting Scenes, and a Full-Length Play - Mecca, Judy

ore grist for actors.

Transmutations--Alchemy in Art: Selected Works from the Eddleman and Fisher Collections at the Chemical Heritage Foundation - Principe, Lawrence

lchemy is one of the most evocative subjects in the history of science. Alchemy made important contributions to the development of modern science while firing popular imagination so strongly that portrayals of the alchemist at work pervaded the arts. The more celebrated goals of alchemy, like transmutation of base metals into gold, still tease and tantalize. Transmutations offers a thoughtful look at the role of the alchemist in the 17th and 18th centuries, as depicted in a selection of paintings from the Eddleman and Fisher Collections housed at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. This beautiful full-color book reveals much about the beginnings of chemistry as a profession. - from the publisher

Benjamin Franklin : An American Life - Isaacson, Walter

enjamin Franklin is the Founding Father who winks at us. An ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings, he seems made of flesh rather than of marble. In bestselling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin seems to turn to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. By bringing Franklin to life, Isaacson shows how he helped to define both his own time and ours. He was, during his 84-year life, America's best scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, and business strategist, and he was also one of its most practical -- though not most profound -- political thinkers. He helped invent America's unique style of homespun humor, democratic values, and philosophical pragmatism. But the most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself. America's first great publicist, he was, in his life and in his writings, consciously trying to create a new American archetype. In the process, he carefully crafted his own persona, portrayed it in public, and polished it for posterity.



FICTION

Life of Pi - Martel, Yann

Winner of the Man Booker Prize. The fiction buyer at Barnes & Noble online calls it "one of the best books I've ever read!" Adventurous, funny, and well-written. Here're the publisher's notes:

Pi Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior, a fervent love of stories, and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days lost at sea. Life of Pi is at once a realistic, rousing adventure and a meta-tale of survival that explores the redemptive power of storytelling and the transformative nature of fiction. It's a story, as one character puts it, to make you believe in God. - from the publisher

Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Chabon, Michael

Winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize. It is New York City in 1939. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat to date: smuggling himself out of Nazi-occupied Prague. He is looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn's own Sammy Clay, is looking for a collaborator to create the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book. Out of their fantasies, fears, and dreams, Joe and Sammy weave the legend of that unforgettable champion the Escapist. And inspired by the beautiful and elusive Rosa Saks, a woman who will be linked to both men by powerful ties of desire, love, and shame, they create the otherworldly mistress of the night, Luna Moth. As the shadow of Hitler falls across Europe and the world, the Golden Age of comic books has begun. - from the publisher

Torn Skirt - Godfrey, Rebecca

s a teen in the mid-'80s in British Columbia, Sara Shaw has two lives. At home, she is the responsible daughter who cleans, launders, and manages the bills for her feckless, addicted father. At school, aptly nicknamed "Mount Drug," she hangs out with a group of stoned delinquents. When her father suddenly abandons her, she leaves home for the back alleys of Victoria where she is swept into the world of runaways, pimps, prostitutes, and addicts. Despite the graphic sexual situations and language, this is a touching book about a sensitive, articulate teen who longs for security while recklessly courting danger. She misses her mother who still lives in the commune Sara and her father had left. She regrets not befriending a girl at her school, and tries to compensate by helping the young women she meets on the streets and in a shelter. She imagines life with the kind foster family she is offered, but can't make herself leave the streets and go to them. This first novel is suspenseful, surprisingly funny, and thought provoking. Godfrey's portrayal of the anguish and hope of troubled teens has a searing authenticity. -- School Library Journal

p>Ghost Riders - McCrumb, Sharyn

he prolific McCrumb's latest Appalachian "ballad novel" takes on the Civil War through the eyes of mountain dwellers past and present. Two of the narrators are actual historical figures, both Union sympathizers surrounded by Confederate neighbors: Zebulon Vance, a poor mountain boy who worked his way up to become governor of North Carolina during the turbulent war years, and Malinda Blaylock, a plucky young woman who followed her husband off to war by posing as a man and later joined him as an outlaw. Their stories are rich in detail and serve to illustrate the divisiveness and far-reaching consequences of the war. - Booklist

A School for Sorcery - Sabin, E. Rose

inner of the Andre Norton Gryphon award. Welcome to the Leslie Simonton School for the Magically Gifted. A school where students can expect the unexpected. But be careful. At this school the final exam could be a real...killer. - from the publisher

p>My Legendary Girlfriend - Gayle, Mike

f you liked Bridget Jones…

Here's what the publisher says: A debut that took Great Britain by storm, My Legendary Girlfriend introduced the world to the loveable, lovestruck Will Kelly. It’s been three years since his heartthrob, Agnes, wrecked his life with a chat that started, "It’s like that song. ‘If you love somebody, set him free.’" But no matter how much time goes by, Will doesn’t feel very free. How long can a person stay down in the dumps after being dumped? And how much longer before Will dumps Martina, the sweet but clingy girl he’s seeing? Will anyone ever measure up to his Legendary Girlfriend? Fresh, endearing, and full of humor, My Legendary Girlfriend tells a story that will ring true for everyone who’s ever tried to mend a broken heart.


REFERENCE

Black's Law Dictionary - Garner, Bryan A.

ots o' law.

Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy - Audi, Robert

his new edition of a one-volume dictionary of philosophy features expansions in standing entries and the addition of some 400 new ones across the entire range of the subject (including selective coverage of a number of living philosophers, mostly thinkers in their mid- sixties or older). It covers not only Western and European philosophy, but also African, Arabic, Islamic, Japanese, Jewish, Korean, and Latin-American. In addition to major philosophers, entries include rapidly developing fields such as the philosophy of mind and applied ethics (bioethics, environmental, medical and professional). Audi is Charles J. Mach Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, U. of Nebraska at Lincoln. - Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers - Gibaldi, Joseph

he new 6th edition of the handbook we all know and love.

North Carolina Manual, 2001-2002 edition

Latest edition of who's who and what's what in our state government.


DVD

Lord of the Rings : The Fellowship of the Ring

The widescreen version with 2 discs and lots of special features.