Book of the Week (Oct. 30, 2006)

And for a very different look at the Crescent City:

On the New Book Shelf
Call Number: ML 419 .A75 B78 2006

Louis Armstrong's New Orleans
By Thomas Brothers

In the early twentieth century, New Orleans was a place of colliding identities and histories, and Louis Armstrong was a gifted young man of psychological nimbleness. A dark-skinned, impoverished child, he grew up under low expectations, Jim Crow legislation, and vigilante terrorism. Yet he also grew up at the center of African American vernacular traditions from the Deep South, learning the ecstatic music of the Sanctified Church, blues played by street musicians, and the plantation tradition of ragging a tune.Louis Armstrong's New Orleans interweaves a searching account of early twentieth-century New Orleans with a narrative of the first twenty-one years of Armstrong's life. Drawing on a stunning body of first-person accounts, this book tells the rags-to-riches tale of Armstrong's early life and the social and musical forces that shaped him. The city and the musician are both extraordinary, their relationship unique, and their impact on American culture incalculable. (Publisher's book description)

Book of the Week (Oct. 23, 2006)

On the New Book Shelf
Call Number: HV 636 2005 .L8 B75 2006

The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast

By Douglas Brinkley

Bestselling historian Douglas Brinkley, a professor at Tulane University, lived through the destruction of Hurricane Katrina with his fellow New Orleans residents, and now in The Great Deluge he has written one of the first complete accounts of that harrowing week, which sorts out the bewildering events of the storm and its aftermath, telling the stories of unsung heroes and incompetent officials alike. (Amazon.com book description)

Book of the Week (Oct. 16, 2006)

On the New Book Shelf

Call Number: PS 3557 .O315 Z468 2006

The Making of a Writer: Journals, 1961-1963

by Gail Godwin; edited by Rob Neufeld

Gail Godwin was twenty-four years old and working as a waitress in the North Carolina mountains when she wrote: “I want to be everybody who is great; I want to create everything that has ever been created.” It is a declaration that only a wildly ambitious young writer would make in the privacy of her journal. In the heady days of her literary apprenticeship, Godwin kept a daily chronicle of her dreams and desires, her travels, love affairs, struggles, and breakthroughs. Now, at the urging of her friend Joyce Carol Oates, Godwin has distilled these early journals, which run from 1961 to 1963, to their brilliant and charming essence. . . An inspired and inspiring volume, The Making of a Writer opens a shining window into the life and craft of a great writer just coming into her own.

Gail Godwin is a three-time National Book Award nominee and the bestselling author of many critically acclaimed novels, including A Mother and Two Daughters, Violet Clay, Father Melancholy’s Daughter, Evensong, The Good Husband, Evenings at Five, and, most recently, Queen of the Underworld. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts grant for both fiction and libretto writing. She has written libretti for ten musical works with the composer Robert Starer. Rob Neufeld is a librarian and a book reviewer for the Asheville Citizen-Times. He directs the “Together We Read” program for Western North Carolina. Publisher Book Description

Book of the Week (Oct. 9, 2006)

On the New Book shelf:
Call number: QC 16 .F49 A3 2006

Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character
Edited by Ralph Leighton

Richard Feynman (1918-1988) thrived on outrageous adventures. In the phenomenal national bestsellers "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" and "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" the Nobel Prize-winning physicist recounted in an inimitable voice his adventures trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek, painting a naked female toreador, accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums, solving the mystery of the Challenger disaster, and much else of an eyebrow-raising, hugely entertaining, and astounding nature. One of the most influential and creative minds of recent history, Feynman also possessed an unparalleled ability as a storyteller, a delightful coincidence celebrated in this special omnibus edition of his classic stories. Now packaged with an hour-long audio CD of the 1978 "Los Alamos from Below" lecture, Classic Feynman offers readers a chance to finally hear a great tale in the orator's own voice. (Publisher's book description)

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