Book of the Week (December 15, 2008)

New Reference work (on the first floor in the Reference Collection)
Call number: REF GR 74 .G73 2008

The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales & Fairy Tales (3 volumes)

Edited by Donald Haase

Publisher's description: Folk and fairy tales exist in all cultures and are at the heart of civilization. This Encyclopedia gives students and general readers a broad, multicultural survey of folk and fairy tales from around the world. Included are hundreds of alphabetically arranged entries written by numerous expert contributors.

Entries cover themes and motifs, individuals, characters and character types, national traditions, genres, and a range of other topics. Each entry cites works for further reading, and the Encyclopedia closes with a bibliography of print and electronic resources. Literature students will welcome this book as an aid to understanding and analyzing folk and fairy tales as literary forms, while social studies students will appreciate it as an exploration of the essence of world cultures.

Book of the Week (November 24, 2008)

In Government Documents on the 6th Floor of the Library

Superintendent of Documents Number: LC 1.2 W15

On These Walls: Inscriptions and Quotations in the Buildings of the Library of Congress

By John Y. Cole

About this Book: The Library of Congress may hold the nation's collection of books, but those aren't the only words in the building worth a visit.

The white marble building is a cathedral to the written word. Lofty inscriptions peer out from among the stone columns, murals of classical figures and twining vines that decorate the Great Hall. All the inscriptions go together, says historian John Cole, author of "On These Walls: Inscriptions and Quotations in the Library of Congress." Cole has spent more than four decades in the building, and says it took him years to realize the message behind the quotations.

According to Cole, "There are very few buildings that really aspire in such a way to the noble side of life. Collectively, the inscriptions tell us that if this country can be an educated country, through books and the accumulation of other knowledge, then it will be a better country. It's a very optimistic message."

Take your own personal tour of the Library of Congress, courtesy of National Public Radio

Book of the Week (November 17, 2008)

On the New Book Shelf
Call Number: HD 9349 .M542 R69 2008

Bottlemania: How water went on sale and why we bought it

By Elizabeth Royte

Publisher's Description: In the follow-up to Garbage Land (@ UWSP library: HD 4484.N7 R68 2005), her influential investigation into our modern trash crisis, Elizabeth Royte ventures to Fryeburg, Maine, to look deep into the source—of Poland Spring water. In this tiny town, and in others like it across the country, she finds the people, machines, economies, and cultural trends that have made bottled water a $60-billion-a-year phenomenon even as it threatens local control of a natural resource and litters the landscape with plastic waste.

Moving beyond the environmental consequences of making, filling, transporting and landfilling those billions of bottles, Royte examines the state of tap water today (you may be surprised), and the social impact of water-hungry multinationals sinking ever more pumps into tiny rural towns. Ultimately, Bottlemania makes a case for protecting public water supplies, for improving our water infrastructure and—in a world of increasing drought and pollution—better allocating the precious drinkable water that remains. For more information visit the Bottlemania website.

Book of the Week (November 3, 2008)

On the New Book Shelf

Call Number: DS 555.34 .M5 V38 2008

A History of the Hmong: from Ancient Times to the Modern Diaspora

By Thomas Vang

Publisher's Description: This is the first completely up-to-date Hmong history book ever written by a member of the Hmong people. It describes the earliest civilizations of the Hmong and Miao in China, and why some of the Hmong migrated into Southeast Asia in the early 19th century, particularly to Vietnam, Laos and Thailand; and how the Hmong of Laos were involved with the Lao civil war, especially the secret war from 1962 to 1975 that caused almost a hundred thousand Hmong to flee to Thailand and Western countries as political refugees after the Communists takeover. This book also includes backgrounds on the current Hmong refugee crisis at Nam Khao refugee camp in Thailand and the arrest of former General Vang Pao by the U.S. authorities.

New Book of the Week (October 20, 2008)

To enjoy as a companion to the World Series:

On the New Book Shelf in the Library
Call Number: GV 863 .A1 M644 2008

But Didn't We Have Fun? The Pioneer Age of Baseball
By Peter Morris

Author's Description: I’m very excited about my new book, But Didn’t We Have Fun?. It tells the story of the first generation of ballplayers -- the men who saw baseball transformed from a boy’s game into a professional sport -- in an entirely new way. In fact, what I’ve tried to do as much as possible is to give these pioneers the opportunity to tell their own story for the first time. I’ve collected dozens of the previously unpublished or unavailable reminiscences of these earliest ballplayers and woven them together to bring those extraordinary years back to life.

Standing alone, these men’s recollections can be difficult to follow -- after all, they were addressing their contemporaries and did not have twenty-first-century readers in mind. And even if they had, they could not possibly have anticipated how much the game they loved has changed and grown. So while compiling But Didn’t We Have Fun? I had to be careful to put everything in context and to explain or leave out obscure references. I also had to leave out a lot of names and dates and places that would simply have made the essential parts of their stories more difficult to follow.

What is left is, I think, an extraordinary story -- about how much work these men put in to make the baseballs and the playing fields that made the game possible, about how much belonging to a baseball club meant to them, about what they thought of the changing rules and the coming of professionalism, about the special moments on the diamond that stuck with them for the rest of their lives, and most of all of how they came to love baseball. Best of all, it’s all true, or at least true in the way any person’s honest recollections are -- the details may get confused over time, but their essence becomes clearer. It was a privilege for me to be able to help these men tell their tales.

Book of the Week (October 13, 2008)

On the New Book Shelf in the Library Lobby.
Call Number: PS 3563.O8749 A6 2008

What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction
By Toni Morrison
Edited by Carolyn C. Denard

Publisher's Description: What Moves at the Margin collects three decades of Toni Morrison's writings about her work, her life, literature, and American society. The works included in this volume range from 1971, when Morrison (b. 1931) was a new editor at Random House and a beginning novelist, to 2002 when she was a professor at Princeton University and Nobel Laureate.

Even in the early days of her career, in between editing other writers, writing her own novels, and raising two children, she found time to speak out on subjects that mattered to her. From the reviews and essays written for major publications to her moving tributes to other writers to the commanding acceptance speeches for major literary awards, Morrison has consistently engaged as a writer outside the margins of her fiction. These works provide a unique glimpse into Morrison's viewpoint as an observer of the world, the arts, and the changing landscape of American culture.

The first section of the book, "Family and History," includes Morrison's writings about her family, Black women, Black history, and her own works. The second section, "Writers and Writing," offers her assessments of writers she admires and books she reviewed, edited at Random House, or gave a special affirmation to with a foreword or an introduction. The final section, "Politics and Society," includes essays and speeches where Morrison addresses issues in American society and the role of language and literature in the national culture.

Among other pieces, this collection includes a reflection on 9/11, reviews of such seminal books by Black writers as Albert Murray's South to a Very Old Place and Gayl Jones's Corregidora, an essay on teaching moral values in the university, a eulogy for James Baldwin, and Morrison's Nobel lecture. Taken together, What Moves at the Margin documents the response to our time by one of American literature's most thoughtful and eloquent writers.

Book of the Week (October 6, 2008)

On the New Book Shelf

Call Number: JK 1764 .W635 2008

Millennial Makeover: My Space, YouTube and the Future of American Politics

By Morley Winograd

Publisher's Description: It happens in America every four decades and it is about to happen again. America's demand for change in the 2008 election will cause another of our country's periodic political makeovers. This realignment, like all others before it, will result from the coming of age of a new generation of young Americans-the Millennial Generation-and the full emergence of the Internet-based communications technology that this generation uses so well. Beginning in 2008, almost everything about American politics and government will transform-voting patterns, the fortunes of the two political parties, the issues that engage the nation, and our government and its public policy.

Building on the seminal work of previous generational theorists, Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais demonstrate and describe, for the first time, the two types of realignments-"idealist" and "civic"-that have alternated with one another throughout the nation's history. Based on these patterns, Winograd and Hais predict that the next realignment will be very different from the last one that occurred in 1968. "Idealist" realignments, like the one put into motion forty years ago by the Baby Boomer Generation, produce, among other things, a political emphasis on divisive social issues and governmental gridlock. "Civic" realignments, like the one that is coming, and the one produced by the famous GI or "Greatest" Generation in the 1930s, by contrast, tend to produce societal unity, increased attention to and successful resolution of basic economic and foreign policy issues, and institution-building.

The authors detail the contours and causes of the country's five previous political makeovers, before delving deeply into the generational and technological trends that will shape the next. The book's final section forecasts the impact of the Millennial Makeover on the elections, issues, and public policies that will characterize America's politics in the decades ahead.

Book of the Week (September 29, 2008)

This book is available online and in Government Documents department on the 6th floor of the library.

SuDocs Number: D110.2 OP 2/2

On Point II: the United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom, May 2003-January, 2005.

By Donald P. Wright and Timothy R. Reese

Description from the Combat Studies Institute:

On Point II is the US Army's first historical study of its campaign in Iraq in the decisive eighteen months following the overthrow of the Baathist regime in April 2003. The book examines both the high-level decisions that shaped military operations after May 2003 as well as the effects of those decisions on units and Soldiers who became responsible for conducting those operations.

The authors, historians at the US Army's Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, based this account on hundreds of interviews with key participants and thousands of primary documents. Critical chapters in this book address the decision to disband the Iraqi Army, detainee operations (including the incidents at the Abu Ghraib prison), reconstruction efforts, and the Army's response to the growing insurgency.

At the core of On Point II is the dramatic story of how after May 2003, the US Army reinvented itself by transforming into an organization capable of conducting a broad array of diverse and complex "Full Spectrum" operations. This was the new campaign that confronted American Soldiers beginning in May 2003 as they strived to create stability in Iraq.

Washington Post Review

Book of the Week (September 22, 2008)

On the Library's New Book Shelf
Call Number: JK 1726 H39 2008

Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power
By John Harwood & Gerald F. Seib

Publisher's Description: Prizewinning journalists John Harwood and Gerald F. Seib show how today’s Washington power game really works, through stories of people who are making a difference on Pennsylvania Avenue, America’s power street. These new power brokers, some of whom are rarely seen and are largley unknown, have figured out how to make their voices heard, and how to get things done, amid the complexities of today’s gridlocked Washington.

With unprecedented access to Washington insiders, and with deep insight into the unspoken rules of the road in the capital, Harwood and Seib explain why progress is so difficult and illuminate what it takes to succeed in the high stakes game of politics.Pennsylvania Avenue, the 1.2-mile stretch between the White House and the Capitol, is where the influential and ambitious congregate. Through stories of party strategists, money men, policy-makers, fixers, socialites, lobbyists, spinners, deal-makers, and more, Harwood and Seib explore the great political transformations that have altered in a fundamental way the relationship between Americans and their government.

A new class of politician and radically different ways of conducting business now exist in Washington. Harwood and Seib showcase such master players as Ken Duberstein (the Fixer), a onetime aide to President Ronald Reagan turned superlobbyist, whose contacts and insider knowledge help clients sidestep Avenue jam-ups; Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein (the Businessman), a new breed of power broker who pioneered the age of “big money” in Washington; Rahm Emanuel(the Democratic Strategist), whose aggressive fundraising and crisis-room campaign enabled the Democrats to retake Congress in 2006; Debbie Wasserman Schultz (the Rising Star), a first-term Democratic representative from Florida whose meteoric ascent in the House has earned her influential allies as well as critics; Hilary Rosen (the Advocate), a former entertainment industry lobbyist who skillfully reframed the debate about same-sex marriage; and more.

Inspiring and wonderfully written, Pennsylvania Avenue takes us inside America’s center of influence to show how our government really functions, and the insiders who make things happen.

New York Times Book Review on Pennsylvania Avenue

Book of the Week (September 15, 2008)

On the New Book Shelf - in the future the book will be shelved in the Leisure Reading Collection in the Library's main lobby

Apple Betty & Sloppy Joe: Stirring up the Past with Family Recipes and Stories

By Susan Sanvidge, Diane Sanvidge Seckar, Jean Sanvidge Wouters and Julie Sanvidge Florence

Published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. WHS description: Compiled by four sisters and based on their recollections of their childhood in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Apple Betty & Sloppy Joe captures the glow of memories formed while growing up in a midwestern kitchen. From Lemon Meringue Pie to Tomato Soup Cake, from Mom's Chicken Pie to Grandma Noffke's Sliced Cucumber Pickles, this charming book features hundreds of recipes (some classic, some quirky), plus dozens of food—and cooking-related anecdotes, memories, humorous asides, and period photos that transport readers back to Mom's or Grandma's kitchen, circa 1950.

The Sanvidges share a legacy of beloved dishes and food memories that resonate not just for their family, but for readers everywhere who grew up in a small midwestern town—or wish they had. Nostalgic, funny, and warmhearted, Apple Betty & Sloppy Joe celebrates the ways food and food memories link us to our past, and to each other.

For more information visit the Wisconsin Historical Society's website. They've included an interview and biographies of the authors and a video clip from the Wisconsin Eye.

Book of the Week (September 8, 2008)

On the New Book Shelf in the Library Lobby.
Call Number: QC 981.8 .G56 W35 2008

The Hot Topic: What We can do about Global Warming
By Gabrielle Walker and Sir David King

Publisher's Description: Last year, awareness about global warming reached a tipping point. Now one of the most dynamic writers and one of the most respected scientists in the field of climate change offer the first concise guide to both the problems and the solutions. Guiding us past a blizzard of information and misinformation, Gabrielle Walker and Sir David King explain the science of warming, the most cutting-edge technological solutions from small to large, and the national and international politics that will affect our efforts.

While there have been many other books about the problem of global warming, none has addressed what we can and should do about it so clearly and persuasively, with no spin, no agenda, and no exaggeration. Neither Walker nor King is an activist or politician, and theirs is not a generic green call to arms. Instead they propose specific ideas to fix a very specific problem. Most important, they offer hope: This is a serious issue, perhaps the most serious that humanity has ever faced. But we can still do something about it. And they’ll show us how.

About the Authors: GABRIELLE WALKER is a contributing editor for New Scientist; she was previously climate change editor at Nature. She is the author of An Ocean of Air and Snowball Earth. She lives in London. SIR DAVID KING is the United Kingdom’s chief science adviser and a professor and director of research at the University of Cambridge. He lives in London and Cambridge.

LibraryThing entry

Book of the Week (August 25, 2008)

On the New Book Shelf in the Library Lobby

Call Number: ZA 4482 .B78 2008



Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage

By Alex Bruns



Publisher's Description: We—the users turned creators and distributors of content—are TIME’s Person of theYear 2006, and AdAge’s Advertising Agency of the Year 2007. We form a new Generation C. We have MySpace, YouTube, and OurMedia; we run social software, and drive the development of Web 2.0.

But beyond the hype, what’s really going on? In this groundbreaking exploration of our developing participatory online culture, Axel Bruns establishes the core principles which drive the rise of collaborative content creation in environments, from open source through blogs and Wikipedia to Second Life. This book shows that what’s emerging here is no longer just a new form of content production, but a new process for the continuous creation and extension of knowledge and art by collaborative communities: produsage. The implications of the gradual shift from production to produsage are profound, and will affect the very core of our culture, economy, society, and democracy.

Building on an analysis of key sites including Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, and Second Life, it explores the intellectual, technological, and social implications of produsage, as well as the legal and economic models employed by produsage projects. In doing so, the book highlights the implications of produsage for our culture, democracy, and society.

LibraryThing entry

Book of the Week (August 4, 2008)

On the New Book Shelf in the Library - and in case you regularly browse the new books, they have moved. They are now located in the center of the main lobby, between the two sets of couches.

Call Number: ML 420 .N4 P38 2008

Willie Nelson: An Epic Life

By Joe Nick Patoski

Publisher's Description: From his first performance at age four, Willie Nelson was driven to make music and live life on his own terms. But though he is a songwriter of exceptional depth - "Crazy" was one of his early classics - Willie only found success after abandoning Nashville and moving to Austin, Texas.Red Headed Stranger made country cool to a new generation of fans. Wanted: The Outlaws became the first country album to sell a million copies. And "On the Road Again" became the anthem for Americans on the move.

A craggy-faced, pot-smoking philosopher, Willie Nelson is one of America's great iconoclasts and idols.Now Joe Nick Patoski draws on over 100 interviews with Willie and his family, band, and friends to tell Nelson's story, from humble Depression-era roots, to his musical education in Texas honky-tonks and his flirtations with whiskey, women, and weed; from his triumph with #1 hit "Always On My Mind" to his nearly career-ending battles with debt and the IRS; and his ultimate redemption and ascension to American hero.

About the author: Joe Nick Patoski has been writing about Willie Nelson for 35 years for a number of publications including No Depression, Texas Monthly, Rolling Stone, Country Music, TV Guide, Picking Up the Tempo, and the Austin American-Statesman. The co-author and author of biographies of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Selena and a contributor to the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll and Conjunto, Patoski lives in the Texas Hill Country near the village of Wimberley.

Book of the Week (July 14, 2008)

On the New Book Shelf
Call Number: TX 653 .G38 2008

The Warmest Room in the House
By Steven Gdula

Publisher's Description: The first book that puts the hearth of the American home—its many unique challenges and innovations—in its proper place in contemporary history. Thomas Jefferson once wrote that if you really want to understand the workings of a society, you have to “look into their pots” and “eat their bread.” Steven Gdula gives us a view of American culture from the most popular room in the house: the kitchen. Examining the relationship between trends and innovations in the kitchen and the cultural attitudes beyond its four walls, Gdula creates a lively portrait of the last hundred years of American domestic life.

The Warmest Room in the House explores food trends and technology, kitchen design, appliances and furniture, china and flatware, cookery bookery, food lit, and much more.Gdula traces the evolution of the kitchen from the back room where the work of the home happened to its place at the center of family life and entertainment today. Filled with fun facts about food trends, from Hamburger Helper to The Moosewood Cookbook, and food personalities, from Julia Child to Rachael Ray, The Warmest Room in the House is the perfect addition to any well-rounded kitchen larder.

Book of the Week (June 9, 2008)

On the New Book shelf in the Library

Call Number: LA 217 .C83 2008

Frogs into Princes: Writings on School Reform

By Larry Cuban

Publisher's Description: A collection of Larry Cuban's writings on urban school reform spanning his 45-year career. These carefully selected studies and articles examine instructional, curricular, organizational, and governance reform in mostly poor and minority districts and schools. The volume includes an Introduction and Epilogue that frames the book, giving readers a sense of Cuban's career as teacher, administrator, and researcher and how those experiences were intimately tied to the writings presented here. Cuban's deep compassion for students and educators and his commitment to educational equality for all children is evident in every page of the collection.

The book brings together in one volume the insights gained from nearly 5 decades of thinking about and working in schools and describes how the current standards and accountability movement, propelled by the No Child Left Behind Act, has been detrimental to schools and learning. It argues convincingly that the problems of inner-city schools can only be solved by eliminating poverty and racism within the larger society and offers empirically based and practical knowledge about ways to maximize the possibilities for successful school reform. Cuban is Professor Emeritus of Education at Stanford University.

Book of the Week (May 19, 2008)

On the New Book Shelf
Call Number QL 696.P7 B27 2008

The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird

By Bruce Barcott

Publisher's Description: “The first time we came here I didn’t know what to expect,” she told me as we paddled upstream. “What we found just blew me away. Jaguars, pumas, river otters, howler monkeys. The place was like a Noah’s Ark for all the endangered species driven out of the rest of Central America. There was so much life! That expedition was when I first saw the macaws.”

As a young woman, Sharon Matola lived many lives. She was a mushroom expert, an Air Force survival specialist, and an Iowa housewife. She hopped freight trains for fun and starred as a tiger tamer in a traveling Mexican circus. Finally she found her one true calling: caring for orphaned animals at her own zoo in the Central American country of Belize. Beloved as “the Zoo Lady” in her adopted land, Matola became one of Central America’s greatest wildlife defenders. And when powerful outside forces conspired with the local government to build a dam that would flood the nesting ground of the last scarlet macaws in Belize, Sharon Matola was drawn into the fight of her life.

In The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw, award-winning author Bruce Barcott chronicles Sharon Matola’s inspiring crusade to stop a multinational corporation in its tracks. Ferocious in her passion, she and her confederates–a ragtag army of courageous locals and eccentric expatriates–endure slander and reprisals and take the fight to the courtroom and the boardroom, from local village streets to protests around the world. As the dramatic story unfolds, Barcott addresses the realities of economic survival in Third World countries, explores the tension between environmental conservation and human development, and puts a human face on the battle over globalization. In this marvelous and spirited book, Barcott shows us how one unwavering woman risked her life to save the most beautiful bird in the world.

Book of the Week (May 5, 2008)

On the New Book Shelf on the 1st Floor

Call Number: DS 35.73 .B48 2008

Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West

By Benazir Bhutto

Publisher's Description: Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan in October 2007, after eight years of exile, hopeful that she could be a catalyst for change. Upon a tumultuous reception, she survived a suicide-bomb attack that killed nearly two hundred of her countrymen. But she continued to forge ahead, with more courage and conviction than ever, since she knew that time was running out—for the future of her nation, and for her life.

In Reconciliation, Bhutto recounts in gripping detail her final months in Pakistan and offers a bold new agenda for how to stem the tide of Islamic radicalism and to rediscover the values of tolerance and justice that lie at the heart of her religion. With extremist Islam on the rise throughout the world, the peaceful, pluralistic message of Islam has been exploited and manipulated by fanatics. Bhutto persuasively argues that America and Britain are fueling this turn toward radicalization by supporting groups that serve only short-term interests. She believed that by enabling dictators, the West was actually contributing to the frustration and extremism that lead to terrorism. With her experience governing Pakistan and living and studying in the West, Benazir Bhutto was versed in the complexities of the conflict from both sides. She was a renaissance woman who offered a way out.

In this riveting and deeply insightful book, Bhutto explores the complicated history between the Middle East and the West. She traces the roots of international terrorism across the world, including American support for Pakistani general Zia-ul-Haq, who destroyed political parties, eliminated an independent judiciary, marginalized NGOs, suspended the protection of human rights, and aligned Pakistani intelligence agencies with the most radical elements of the Afghan mujahideen. She speaks out not just to the West, but to the Muslims across the globe who are at a crossroads between the past and the future, between education and ignorance, between peace and terrorism, and between dictatorship and democracy. Democracy and Islam are not incompatible, and the clash between Islam and the West is not inevitable. Bhutto presents an image of modern Islam that defies the negative caricatures often seen in the West. After reading this book, it will become even clearer what the world has lost by her assassination.

Book of the Week (April 21, 2008)

In the Reference Area
Call Number: Ref ML 102 M88 H595 2007

The Rodgers and Hammerstein Encyclopedia
By Thomas S. Hischak

Publisher's Description: Still the most influential and popular songwriting team in the history of the American Musical Theatre, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein represent Broadway musicals at their finest. The team revolutionized the musical play with Oklahoma! in 1943 and then went on to explore territory never put on the musical stage before in such beloved shows as Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music. The team also worked in film, as with State Fair, and in the new medium of television, with Cinderella.

For the first time, the lives, careers, works, songs, and themes of Rodgers and Hammerstein have been gathered together in an encyclopedia that covers the many talents of these men. In addition to their plays and films together, every work that each man did with other collaborators is also discussed. Hundreds of their songs are described, and there are entries on the many actors, directors, and other creative artists who they worked with. A complete list of awards, recordings, and books about the team are included, as well as a chronology of everything either man wrote.

But The Rodgers and Hammerstein Encyclopedia is not just about facts. It explains their work, explores themes in their musicals, and illustrates why they remain a driving force in the American Theatre. This is the first encyclopedia to look specifically at the careers and works of Rodgers and Hammerstein, covering all their musicals together for stage, screen and televsion, but also everything they wrote with others. The purpose is to create a comprehensive guide to the American Musical Theatres foremost collaboration. The encyclopedia is (1) comprehensve, describing the works, the people involved in those works, and many of their famous songs; ( 2) up-to-date, including the most recent revivals of their works and new recordings of their scores; and (3) easy to use, being alphabetically arranged with cross-reference listings, chronological lists, lists of awards and recordings, and bibliographic information for further reading.

New Book of the Week (April 14, 2008)

On the New Book Shelf at the Library

Call Number: JC 599 .U5 B29 2007

Speechless: The Erosion of Free Expression in the American Workplace

By Bruce Barry

Publisher's Description: A factory worker is fired because her boss dislikes the political bumper sticker on her car in the parking lot. Another is canned after refusing to display an American flag at his workstation. A flight attendant is grounded because her airline doesn't like what she's writing in her personal blog. Is it legal to fire people for expressing themselves, even when it's unrelated to performing their jobs' Can you lose your job because of a bumper sticker? For many American workers, the answer is yes.

In Speechless, Bruce Barry confronts the state of free speech in the American workplace. He shows how employers and courts are eroding workers' abilities to express themselves on and off the job, with damaging consequences for individuals, their employers, and civil society as a whole. In defense of free speech in and around the workplace, Barry argues that the experience of liberty in a free society, as well as in life, in general, depends in part on the experience of liberty at work.

Book of the Week (March 31, 2008)

On the New Book Shelf in the Library
Call Number: GT 2485 .A84 2007

The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History

By Katherine Ashenburg

Publisher's description: The question of cleanliness is one every age and culture has answered with confidence. For the first-century Roman, being clean meant a two-hour soak in baths of various temperatures, scraping the body with a miniature rake, and a final application of oil. For the aristocratic Frenchman in the seventeenth century, it meant changing your shirt once a day and perhaps going so far as to dip your hands in some water. Did Napoleon know something we didn’t when he wrote Josephine “I will return in five days. Stop washing”? And why is the German term Warmduscher—a man who washes in warm or hot water—invariably a slightagainst his masculinity?

Katherine Ashenburg takes on such fascinating questions as these in The Dirt on Clean, her charming tour of attitudes to hygiene through time.What could be more routine than taking up soap and water and washing yourself? And yet cleanliness, or the lack of it, is intimately connected to ideas as large as spirituality and sexuality, and historical events that include plagues, the Civil War, and the discovery of germs. An engrossing fusion of erudition and anecdote, Clean considers the bizarre prescriptions of history’sdoctors, the hygienic peccadilloes of great authors, and the historic twists and turns that have brought us to a place Ashenburg considers hedonistic yet oversanitized.

Book of the Week (March 12, 2008)

Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture

By Taylor Clark

Call Number: HD 9199 .U54 S733 2007

Publisher's Description: Starbucked will be the first book to explore the incredible rise of the Starbucks Corporation and the caffeine-crazy culture that fueled its success. Part Fast Food Nation, part Bobos in Paradise, Starbucked combines investigative heft with witty cultural observation in telling the story of how the coffeehouse movement changed our everyday lives, from our evolving neighborhoods and workplaces to the ways we shop, socialize, and self-medicate.

In Starbucked, Taylor Clark provides an objective, meticulously reported look at the volatile issues like gentrification and fair trade that distress activists and coffee zealots alike. Through a cast of characters that includes coffee-wild hippies, business sharks, slackers, Hollywood trendsetters and more, Starbucked explores how America transformed into a nation of coffee gourmets in only a few years, how Starbucks manipulates psyches and social habits to snare loyal customers, and why many of the things we think we know about the coffee commodity chain are false.

Book of the Week (March 5, 2008)

Vanishing America: In Pursuit of Our Elusive Landscapes

By James Conaway

Call Number: E 169.Z83 C66 2007

Publisher's Description: The rich American landscape, both natural and cultural, is being threatened and in some cases wiped away completely. Preservation Editor-at-Large James Conaway takes to the road in Vanishing America, exploring the places, people, and traditions that have helped to shape our national identity.

Part personal narrative and part travelogue, his journey offers a smart and informative account from across the country. From D.C’s National Cathedral to a deserted cabin in Big Sur, from dinosaur bones in New Mexico’s Bisti Badlands to the weatherworn façade of New Orleans, along the way Conaway meets cowboys, hippies, real estate developers, and many others whose stories weave into a national identity at once created, disappearing, destroyed, and continually redefined. Many of the best reflections of what the country once stood for lie around us abused, exploited, or ignored. How do we resolve the notion of preservation within a culture so dependent on growth and prosperity?

With wit and acute urgency, Conaway reminds us that every bit of property, historic landmark, and distinct community, is vulnerable. These essays serve as a lament for what’s being lost, a prompt for what we still have to preserve, and a celebration of our nation’s unique characteristics.

Book of the Week (February 27, 2008)

How to Talk about Hot Topics on Campus

by Robert J. Nash

Call Number: LC 72.2 .N37 2008

Publisher's Description: How to Talk About Hot Topics on Campus fills a gap in the student services and teaching and learning literature by providing a resource that shows how to construct and carry out difficult conversations from various vantage points in the academy. It offers a theory-to-practice model of conversation for the entire college campus that will enable all constituencies to engage in productive and civil dialogue on the most difficult and controversial social, religious, political, and cultural topics.

About the Authors: Robert J. Nash is a professor in the College of Education and Social Services at the University of Vermont. He has published eight books, as well as more than one hundred articles, book chapters, monographs, and book reviews in many of the leading journals in education at all levels. He is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Religion & Education.

DeMethra LaSha Bradley is an assistant director for academic integrity in the Center for Student Ethics and Standards at the University of Vermont (UVM). She is currently pursuing doctoral studies in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies program at UVM. She is the co-author of several book chapters and has made various presentations at national conferences and universities across the United States.

Arthur W. Chickering is Special Assistant to the President of Goddard College in Vermont. He is the author of several Jossey-Bass books, including Education and Identity and Encouraging Authenticity and Spirituality in Higher Education.

Book(s) of the Week (February 18, 2008)

Visit the IMC on the 3rd floor of the Library to check out the winners of the 2008 American Library Association's children's book awards. The Caldecott Medal is presented to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children. The Newbery Medal is presented to the author of the most distinguised contribution to American literature for children.

2008 Caldecott Medal Winner:

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick.

IMC Call Number: PZ 7 .S4654 Inv 2007

From the American Library Association: From an opening shot of the full moon setting over an awakening Paris in 1931, this tale casts a new light on the picture book form. Hugo is a young orphan secretly living in the walls of a train station where he labors to complete a mysterious invention left by his father. In a work of more than 500 pages, the suspenseful text and wordless double-page spreads narrate the tale in turns. Neither words nor pictures alone tell this story, which is filled with cinematic intrigue. Black & white pencil illustrations evoke the flickering images of the silent films to which the book pays homage.

2008 Newbery Medal Winner:

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village
by Laura Amy Schlitz

IMC Call Number: PS 3619 .C43 C55 2007

From the American Library Association: In “Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village,” thirteenth-century England springs to life using 21 dramatic individual narratives that introduce young inhabitants of village and manor; from Hugo, the lord's nephew, to Nelly, the sniggler. Schlitz's elegant monologues and dialogues draw back the curtain on the period, revealing character and relationships, hinting at stories untold. Explanatory interludes add information and round out this historical and theatrical presentation.“Schlitz adds a new dimension to books for young readers - performance,” said Newbery Committee Chair Nina Lindsay. “Varied poetic forms and styles offer humor, pathos and true insight into the human condition. Each entry is superb in itself, and together the pieces create a pageant that transports readers to a different time and place.”

Book of the Week (January 28, 2008)

On the New Book Shelf

Call Number: TD 223 .P73 2007

From the Bottom Up: One Man's Crusade to Clean America's Rivers

By Chad Pregracke

Publisher's Book Description: Chad Pregracke was a high school student when he first glimpsed the trash that littered the bottom of the Mississippi, a shocking sight that launched him on a quest to clean up the river. After four discouraging years seeking government help without success, he decided to take his fund-raising private—and a corporate sponsor decided to take a chance on this naive but unshakably determined young man.Ten years later Chad's one-man project has grown into a $500,000 operation with more than 60 sponsors (including National Geographic). His work has been featured on national news and won numerous honors and accolades, but its grassroots, can-do spirit still thrives aboard the 135-foot barge that serves as home base for his organization, a floating environmental classroom, and an inspiration to people of all ages.

This is the story of his personal triumph as an advocate for America's rivers. Chad measures success in tons of garbage removed and thousands of people with a new stake in—and a new understanding of—the river environment. But From the Bottom Up is much more as well: a first-person chronicle of Chad's own life along the Mississippi featuring colorful characters, a near-death experience, a haunted swamp, and other flourishes worthy of a modern Mark Twain; and a fascinating portrait of the river itself which explores everything from the natural history of mussels and catfish to Indian lore to the key role of the Mississippi in our country's history.

Book of the Week (January 14, 2008)

On the New Book Shelf

Call Number: E 840.8 .O225 A3 2007

Raising Hell for Justice: The Washington Battles of a Heartland Progressive

By David R. Obey

The autobiography of Central Wisconsin's own Dave Obey, published in 2007 by the University of Wisconsin Press.

"Dave Obey's story reminds us that in a city of quicksand it is still possible to stand on principle as a servant of your ideals and the public."—Bill Moyers, author of Moyers on America

"Raising Hell for Justice is a powerful and enlightening political memoir by one of America's all-time great legislators. Obey is one of a vanishing breed in Congress whose entire career in public life has been committed to both advancing a principled agenda and working constructively with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to hammer out agreements that advance that agenda. Obey burns with a passion sparked by his childhood experience growing up in an economically vulnerable working class family and channeled into politics and policy-making by his embrace of Catholic social justice and La Follette progressivism. His compelling memoir demonstrates how ennobling and satisfying a career in the first branch of government can be."–Thomas E. Mann, W. Averell Harriman Chair and senior fellow in governance studies, Brookings Institution

Obey looks back on his journey in politics beginning with his early years in the Wisconsin Legislature, when Wisconsin moved through eras of shifting balance between Republicans and Democrats. On a national level Obey traces, as few others have done, the dramatic changes in the workings of the U.S. Congress since his first election to the House in 1969. He discusses his own central role in the evolution of Congress and ethics reforms and his view of the recent Bush presidency–crucial chapters in our democracy, of interest to all who observe politics and modern U.S. history.

David R. Obey (D-Wausau) is the longest-serving member of the U.S. Congress in Wisconsin history and is the current chair of the House Appropriations Committee. In the 1980s and early 1990s, he chaired the Foreign Operations Subcommittee, which funded America's economic and political response to the collapse of the Soviet Union.