Item of the Week (November 16, 2009)

New DVD series in the IMC - check at the desk on the 3rd floor of the Library
Call Number: E 160 .N246 2009

The National Parks: America's Best Idea
A Film by Ken Burns

PBS description of the series: The National Parks: America's Best Idea is a six-episode series directed by Ken Burns and written and co-produced by Dayton Duncan.

The National Parks: America's Best Idea is the story of an idea as uniquely American as the Declaration of Independence and just as radical: that the most special places in the nation should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone. As such, it follows in the tradition of Burns's exploration of other American inventions, such as baseball and jazz.

The narrative traces the birth of the national park idea in the mid-1800s and follows its evolution for nearly 150 years. Using archival photographs, first-person accounts of historical characters, personal memories and analysis from more than 40 interviews, and what Burns believes is the most stunning cinematography in Florentine Films' history, the series chronicles the steady addition of new parks through the stories of the people who helped create them and save them from destruction. It is simultaneously a biography of compelling characters and a biography of the American landscape.

For more information visit the PBS website and their accompanying guide For Educators.

Book of the Week (November 9, 2009)

Available at the Library in both print and audio!
Ask at the Main Circulation desk for the audio version.

Call Number: DS371.412 .S73 2009

Horse Soldiers: the Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers who rode to Victory in Afghanistan

By Doug Stanton

Publisher's Description: Horse Soldiers is the dramatic account of a small band of Special Forces soldiers who secretly entered Afghanistan following 9/11 and rode to war on horses against the Taliban. The bone-weary American soldiers were welcomed as liberators, and overjoyed Afghans thronged the streets. Then the action took a wholly unexpected turn. During a surrender of six hundred Taliban troops, the Horse Soldiers were ambushed. Dangerously outnumbered, they fought for their lives. At risk were the military gains of the entire campaign: if the soldiers perished or were captured, the effort to defeat the Taliban might be doomed.

Until now the full story of the Horse Soldiers has never been told. Doug Stanton received unprecedented cooperation from the U.S. Army's Special Forces soldiers and Special Operations helicopter pilots, as well as access to voluminous after-battle reports. In addition, he interviewed more than one hundred participants and walked every inch of the climactic battleground. Reaching across the cold mountains of Afghanistan and into the homes of small-town America, Horse Soldiers is a big-hearted and thrilling epic story from one of our preeminent storytellers.

New York Times Book Review of Horse Soldiers

Book of the Week (November 2, 2009)

Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind

Edited by Linda Buzzell and Craig Chalquist

Call Number: BF 353.5 N37 E27 2009

Publisher's Description: In the 14 years since Sierra Club Books published Theodore Roszak, Mary E. Gomes, and Allen D. Kanner’s groundbreaking anthology, Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind, the editors of this new volume have often been asked: Where can I find out more about the psyche-world connection? How can I do hands-on work in this area?

Ecotherapy was compiled to answer these and other urgent questions. Ecotherapy, or applied ecopsychology, encompasses a broad range of nature-based methods of psychological healing, grounded in the crucial fact that people are inseparable from the rest of nature and nurtured by healthy interaction with the Earth.

Leaders in the field, including Robert Greenway, and Mary Watkins, contribute essays that take into account the latest scientific understandings and the deepest indigenous wisdom. Other key thinkers, from Bill McKibben to Richard Louv to Joanna Macy, explore the links among ecotherapy, spiritual development, and restoring community.As mental-health professionals find themselves challenged to provide hard evidence that their practices actually work, and as costs for traditional modes of psychotherapy rise rapidly out of sight, this book offers practitioners and interested lay readers alike a spectrum of safe, effective alternative approaches backed by a growing body of research.

Visit the Ecotherapy website or an article from Time on Ecotherapy