Book of the Week (December 12, 2010)

The Mind's Eye
By Oliver Sacks

Call Number: RC 423 .S23 2010

Visit the author's website

Publisher's Description:  In The Mind’s Eye, Oliver Sacks tells the stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and abilities: the power of speech, the capacity to recognize faces, the sense of three-dimensional space, the ability to read, the sense of sight. For all of these people, the challenge is to adapt to a radically new way of being in the world.


There is Lilian, a concert pianist who becomes unable to read music and is eventually unable even to recognize everyday objects, and Sue, a neurobiologist who has never seen in three dimensions, until she suddenly acquires stereoscopic vision in her fifties.

There is Pat, who reinvents herself as a loving grandmother and active member of her community, despite the fact that she has aphasia and cannot utter a sentence, and Howard, a prolific novelist who must find a way to continue his life as a writer even after a stroke destroys his ability to read.

And there is Dr. Sacks himself, who tells the story of his own eye cancer and the bizarre and disconcerting effects of losing vision to one side.

Sacks explores some very strange paradoxes—people who can see perfectly well but cannot recognize their own children, and blind people who become hyper-visual or who navigate by “tongue vision.” He also considers more fundamental questions: How do we see? How do we think? How important is internal imagery—or vision, for that matter? Why is it that, although writing is only five thousand years old, humans have a universal, seemingly innate, potential for reading?
The Mind’s Eye is a testament to the complexity of vision and the brain and to the power of creativity and adaptation. And it provides a whole new perspective on the power of language and communication, as we try to imagine what it is to see with another person’s eyes, or another person’s mind.

Book of the Week (December 6, 2010)

On the New Book Shelf in the Library Lobby
Call Number: DA 591 .B56 A3 2010

A Journey: My Political Life
By Tony Blair

Publisher's Description: Tony Blair is a politician who defines our times. His emergence as Labour Party leader in 1994 marked a seismic shift in British politics. Within a few short years, he had transformed his party and rallied the country behind him, becoming prime minister in 1997 with the biggest victory in Labour’s history, and bringing to an end eighteen years of Conservative government. He took Labour to a historic three terms in office as Britain’s dominant political figure of the last two decades.

A Journey is Tony Blair’s firsthand account of his years in office and beyond. Here he describes for the first time his role in shaping our recent history, from the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death to the war on terror. He reveals the leadership decisions that were necessary to reinvent his party, the relationships with colleagues including Gordon Brown, the grueling negotiations for peace in Northern Ireland, the implementation of the biggest reforms to public services in Britain since 1945, and his relationships with leaders on the world stage—Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush. He analyzes the belief in ethical intervention that led to his decisions to go to war in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and, most controversially of all, in Iraq.

A Journey is a book about the nature and uses of political power. In frank, unflinching, often wry detail, Tony Blair charts the ups and downs of his career to provide insight into the man as well as the politician and statesman. He explores the challenges of leadership, and the ramifications of standing up, clearly and forcefully, for what one believes in. He also looks ahead, to emerging power relationships and economies, addressing the vital issues and complexities of our global world.

Few British prime ministers have shaped the nation’s course as profoundly as Tony Blair, and his achievements and his legacy will be debated for years to come. Here, uniquely, we have his own journey, in his own words.

Book of the Week (November 22, 2010)

On the New Book Shelf in the Library Lobby

Call Number: F 582 .C66 2010

Wisconsin's Own: Twenty Remarkable Homes

By M. Caren Connolly and Louis Wasserman. Photographs by Zane Williams

Publisher's Description: "Wisconsin's Own" tells the story of the considerable contribution Wisconsin's historic homes have made to American residential architecture. It also answers questions you've likely asked when you've seen a notable historic home: Who built this house? What brought them here? Why did they select that particular style? How is it that this historic home still stands today, despite development pressures?

The houses profiled in "Wisconsin's Own" are a mix of public ones you may have visited and private homes you've been hoping for an invitation to explore. These homes are representative of the varied architectural styles in Wisconsin, from an Italianate along the Mississippi and an interpretation of a sixteenth-century northern Italian villa overlooking Lake Michigan to an Adirondack-style camp in the North Woods and a fourteen-bedroom Georgian Revival mansion on Lake Geneva. The Prairie School is represented, with examples by Frank Lloyd Wright and his mentor Louis Sullivan.

Richly illustrated with the photography of Zane Williams complemented by historical images and watercolors and line drawings by the authors, "Wisconsin's Own" offers an intimate tour of residential treasures - built for captains of industry, a beer baron, Broadway stars, and more - that have endured the test of time.

Book of the Week (November 15, 2010)

On the New Book shelf in the Library
Call Number: E 184 .A1 P29 2010

The History of White People
By Nell Irvin Painter

Publisher's Description: A mind-expanding and myth-destroying exploration of notions of white race—not merely a skin color but also a signal of power, prestige, and beauty to be withheld and granted selectively

Ever since the Enlightenment, race theory and its inevitable partner, racism, have followed a crooked road, constructed by dominant peoples to justify their domination of others. Filling a huge gap in historical literature that long focused on the non-white, eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter guides us through more than two thousand years of Western civilization, tracing not only the invention of the idea of race but also the frequent worship of “whiteness” for economic, social, scientific, and political ends.

Our story begins in Greek and Roman antiquity, where the concept of race did not exist, only geography and the opportunity to conquer and enslave others. Not until the eighteenth century did an obsession with whiteness flourish, with the German invention of the notion of Caucasian beauty. This theory made northern Europeans into “Saxons,” “Anglo-Saxons,” and “Teutons,” envisioned as uniquely handsome natural rulers.

Here was a worldview congenial to northern Europeans bent on empire. There followed an explosion of theories of race, now focusing on racial temperament as well as skin color. Spread by such intellectuals as Madame de Stael and Thomas Carlyle, white race theory soon reached North America with a vengeance. Its chief spokesman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, did the most to label Anglo-Saxons—icons of beauty and virtue—as the only true Americans. It was an ideal that excluded not only blacks but also all ethnic groups not of Protestant, northern European background. The Irish and Native Americans were out and, later, so were the Chinese, Jews, Italians, Slavs, and Greeks—all deemed racially alien. Did immigrations threaten the very existence of America? Americans were assumed to be white, but who among poor immigrants could become truly American? A tortured and convoluted series of scientific explorations developed—theories intended to keep Anglo-Saxons at the top: the ever-popular measurement of skulls, the powerful eugenics movement, and highly biased intelligence tests—all designed to keep working people out and down.

As Painter reveals, power—supported by economics, science, and politics—continued to drive exclusionary notions of whiteness until, deep into the twentieth century, political realities enlarged the category of truly American.

A story filled with towering historical figures, The History of White People forcefully reminds us that the concept of one white race is a recent invention. The meaning, importance, and realty of this all-too-human thesis of race have buckled under the weight of a long and rich unfolding of events.

Read a NY Times review of the book

Book of the Week (November 1, 2010)

Be sure to stop by the Library to see our display on the Greenspans' work in educating students with special needs!

The Learning Tree: Overcoming Learning Disabilities From the Ground Up
By Stanley J. Greenspan, MD and Nancy Thorndike Greenspan

Call Number: LC 4704 .G735 2010

Publisher's Description: Pre-eminent psychiatrist and early childhood expert Stanley Greenspan collaborated with his wife, Nancy Thorndike Greenspan, in their fourth book together, the culmination of many years of research. The authors employ the metaphor of a tree to illustrate how children learn; the roots take in information and plan actions, the trunk represents thinking skills, and the branches stand for academic areas such as reading, writing, and math.

Maintaining that labels serve limited purpose, the Greenspans encourage educators and parents to treat each child according to his or her unique learning profile. Instead of focusing on a diagnosis of ADD or ADHD, the goal is to give attention to the origin of a problem, providing exercises and support as children work through their difficulties. Identifying nine levels of thinking, the authors show parents how to recognize problem areas and then use such methods as their signature Floortime --in which the parent follows the child's lead, challenges her to be creative, expands the action and interaction, and includes sense and motor skills as well as various emotions.

The Learning Tree offers a new understanding of learning problems. Rather than looking just at symptoms, this new approach describes how to find the missing developmental steps that cause these symptoms. The best solution to the problem comes from knowing what essential skills to strengthen.Both parents and early learning professionals will especially welcome the sections on finding and solving learning problems early. With Dr. Greenspan’s characteristic wise optimism, this book “raises the ceiling” for all children who learn differently or with difficulty.

With their developmental approach, the Greenspans focus on practical ways to enhance thinking-based rather than memory-based learning. Several chapters contributed by Richard Lodish, an educator at the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., demonstrate how Greenspan's methods are used in the classroom and will be of particular interest to teachers.

Book of the Week (October 25, 2010)

Washington: A Life

By Ron Chernow

Call Number: E 312 .C495 2010

Publisher's Description: In Washington: A Life celebrated biographer Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of our nation. With a breadth and depth matched by no other one-volume life of Washington, this crisply paced narrative carries the reader through his troubled boyhood, his precocious feats in the French and Indian War, his creation of Mount Vernon, his heroic exploits with the Continental Army, his presiding over the Constitutional Convention, and his magnificent performance as America's first president.

Despite the reverence his name inspires, Washington remains a lifeless waxwork for many Americans, worthy but dull. A laconic man of granite self-control, he often arouses more respect than affection. In this groundbreaking work, based on massive research, Chernow dashes forever the stereotype of a stolid, unemotional man. A strapping six feet, Washington was a celebrated horseman, elegant dancer, and tireless hunter, with a fiercely guarded emotional life. Chernow brings to vivid life a dashing, passionate man of fiery opinions and many moods. Probing his private life, he explores his fraught relationship with his crusty mother, his youthful infatuation with the married Sally Fairfax, and his often conflicted feelings toward his adopted children and grandchildren. He also provides a lavishly detailed portrait of his marriage to Martha and his complex behavior as a slave master.

At the same time, Washington is an astute and surprising portrait of a canny political genius who knew how to inspire people. Not only did Washington gather around himself the foremost figures of the age, including James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, but he also brilliantly orchestrated their actions to shape the new federal government, define the separation of powers, and establish the office of the presidency.

In this unique biography, Ron Chernow takes us on a page-turning journey through all the formative events of America's founding. With a dramatic sweep worthy of its giant subject, Washington is a magisterial work from one of our most elegant storytellers.

A discussion of the Washington: A Life from NPR

Book of the Week (October 18, 2010)

New in the Reference Collection (You can find it on our latest edition - a New Reference Books Display Shelf near the Reference Desk)


Call Number: Ref HG 4009 .B58 2010


The Blue Pages: A Directory of Companies Rated by their Politics and Practices (2nd ed)

By Angie Crouse and the Center for Responsive Politics


Publisher's Description: A new book detailing the political contributions and practices of nearly 5,000 companies goes on sale today, providing consumers with a powerful tool in helping them vote with their wallets.

In it, businesses are organized alphabetically into 13 sectors covering cars, clothes, computers, insurance, financial, food and beverage, health and beauty, home and garden, media and entertainment, telecommunications and Internet, and travel and leisure. Each entry describes unique features of companies’ business practices that may include charitable causes, social programs, labor practices, domestic partner and child-care benefits, nondiscrimination policies and treatment of disabled employees. It also explains whether a company contributes more money to Republicans or Democrats, and how much.

New to The Blue Pages, Second Edition is the reporting of federal lobbying expenditures, which in 2008 totaled $3.3 billion. Additionally, the new edition expands listings with environmental policies and practices of the companies tracked. Each sector overview opens with commentary from an expert in the field.

Book of the Week (Oct 4, 2010)

Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania and other States that Never Made It

By Michael J. Trinklein

Call Number: E 179.5 T87 2010

Publisher's Description: Everyone knows the fifty winners but what about the hundreds of other statehood proposals that never worked out? Lost States is a tribute to such great unrealized states as West Florida, South California, Half-Breed Tracts, Rough and Ready, and others. History buffs will be entertained and enlightened by these bizarre-but-true stories:

Frontier legend Daniel Boone once proposed a state of Transylvania on the borders of Indiana and Illinois. (His plan was resurrected a few years later with the new name of Kentucky.)
Residents of bucolic South Jersey wanted to secede from their "filthy" north Jersey neighbors and form their own union.

The Gold Rush territory of Nataqua could have made a fine state but since no women were willing to live there, they had to settle for being part of California.

Accompanying the stories are beautiful full-color original maps detailing how these states' boundaries might have looked, along with images of real-life artifacts and ephemera. Lost States is a quirky reference book for history buffs, geography geeks, and anyone who enjoys lush, fascinating cartography.

Visit the Wisconsin author's Lost States blog

Book of the Week (September 20, 2010)

Audiobook available for checkout at the Access Services Desk on the first floor of the Library.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

By Jamie Ford, Read by Feodor Chin

Publisher's Description of the book: In the opening pages of Jamie Ford’s stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.

This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept.

Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice–words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago.

Set during one of the most conflicted and volatile times in American history, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is an extraordinary story of commitment and enduring hope. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable duo whose story teaches us of the power of forgiveness and the human heart.

List of other Audiobooks available in the Leisure Reading Collection at the Library

New Book of the Week (September 3, 2010)

Hamlet's Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age

By William Powers

Call Number: HM 851 .P688 2010

Publisher's Description: A crisp, passionately argued answer to the question that everyone who's grown dependent on digital devices is asking: "Where's the rest of my life?"

At a time when we're all trying to make sense of our relentlessly connected lives, this revelatory book presents a bold new approach to the digital age. Part intellectual journey, part memoir, Hamlet's BlackBerry sets out to solve what William Powers calls the conundrum of connectedness. Our computers and mobile devices do wonderful things for us. But they also impose an enormous burden, making it harder for us to focus, do our best work, build strong relationships, and find the depth and fulfillment we crave.

Hamlet's BlackBerry argues that we need a new way of thinking, an everyday philosophy for life with screens. To find it, Powers reaches into the past, uncovering a rich trove of ideas that have helped people manage and enjoy their connected lives for thousands of years. New technologies have always brought the mix of excitement and stress that we feel today. Drawing on some of history's most brilliant thinkers, from Plato to Shakespeare to Thoreau, he shows that digital connectedness serves us best when it's balanced by its opposite, disconnectedness.

Using his own life as laboratory and object lesson, Powers demonstrates why this is the moment to revisit our relationship to screens and mobile technologies, and how profound the rewards of doing so can be. Lively, original, and entertaining, Hamlet's BlackBerry will challenge you to rethink your digital life.

New York Times Sunday Book Review of Hamlet's Blackberry

"Book" of the Week (August 3, 2010)

Check out the Library's new Films on Demand video subscription!

Films on Demand is a web-based,digital, streaming video service that can be incorporated into your classes, allowing students to view the films anywhere and at anytime. The videos cover a wide range of topics and can be viewed in their entirety or by segments.

The educational videos are from Films Media Group; the current list of their most frequently viewed films includes:

• 9/11 through Saudi Eyes
• Mass Media in Society
• Growing Up Online
• The End of Print
• The Once Good Earth: Understanding Soil
• An Anorexic's Tale: The Brief Life of Catherine

Book of the Week (July 19, 2010)

On the New Book Shelf in the Library lobby.

Call Number: ML 420 .S672 A3 2010

Just Kids

By Patti Smith

Publisher's Description: It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation.

Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to Forty-second Street, and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max's Kansas City, where the Andy Warhol contingent held court. In 1969, the pair set up camp at the Hotel Chelsea and soon entered a community of the famous and infamous—the influential artists of the day and the colorful fringe. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding. In this milieu, two kids made a pact to take care of each other. Scrappy, romantic, committed to create, and fueled by their mutual dreams and drives, they would prod and provide for one another during the hungry years.

Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame.

New York Times Book Review of Just Kids

Book of the Week (July 12, 2010)

On the New Book Shelf in the Library Lobby

Call Number: QL 463 .R34 2010

Insectopedia

By Hugh Raffles

Publisher Description: A stunningly original exploration of the ties that bind us to the beautiful, ancient, astoundingly accomplished, largely unknown, and unfathomably different species with whom we share the world.

For as long as humans have existed, insects have existed, too. Wherever we’ve traveled, they’ve traveled, too. Yet we hardly know them, not even the ones we’re closest to: those that eat our food, share our beds, and live in our homes.

Organizing his book alphabetically with one entry for each letter, weaving together brief vignettes, meditations, and extended essays, Hugh Raffles embarks on a mesmerizing exploration of history and science, anthropology and travel, economics, philosophy, and popular culture to show us how insects have triggered our obsessions, stirred our passions, and beguiled our imaginations.

Raffles offers us a glimpse into the high-stakes world of Chinese cricket fighting, the deceptive courtship rites of the dance fly, the intriguing possibilities of queer insect sex, the vital and vicious role locusts play in the famines of west Africa, how beetles deformed by Chernobyl inspired art, and how our desire and disgust for insects has prompted our own aberrant behavior.

Deftly fusing the literary and the scientific, Hugh Raffles has given us an essential book of reference that is also a fascination of the highest order.

For more information: http://insectopedia.org/ or check out the New York Times Review

Book of the Week (June 27, 2010)

How They See Us
Edited by James Atlas

Call Number: E 895 .H69 2010

Publisher's Description: A superpower without parallel since the British Empire, the United States is a source of incessant fascination to the rest of the world. Absurdly rich, alarmingly volatile, we inspire both fear and envy. Just as our aggressive foreign policy has turned our allies against us, the rise of Barack Obama is now seen as our salvation. 9/11, the world historical event that "changed everything," has been superseded by 11/4, the date of his election to the presidency of the United States.

Through it all, "America" remains a phenomenon, a myth, the wonder of the world. "Know thyself" is a difficult injunction to follow and often requires the insights of others. To gain some perspective, How They See Us features writers and intellectuals from around the globe. These trenchant essays constitute a primer of international literature, an aid to self-criticism, and an invitation to celebrate our national virtues.

Book of the Week (June 7, 2010)

In honor of Fathers' Day:

Manhood for Amateurs

By Michael Chabon

Call Number: PS 3553 .H15 Z463 2009

Publisher's Description: A shy manifesto, an impractical handbook, the true story of a fabulist, an entire life in parts and pieces, Manhood for Amateurs is the first sustained work of personal writing from Michael Chabon. In these insightful, provocative, slyly interlinked essays, one of our most brilliant and humane writers presents his autobiography and his vision of life in the way so many of us experience our own lives: as a series of reflections, regrets, and reexaminations, each sparked by an encounter, in the present, that holds some legacy of the past.

What does it mean to be a man today? Chabon invokes and interprets and struggles to reinvent for us, with characteristic warmth and lyric wit, the personal and family history that haunts him even as—simply because—it goes on being written every day. As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as the father of four young Americans, Chabon presents his memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, as a theme played—on different instruments, with a fresh tempo and in a new key—by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor.

Book of the Week (May 17, 2010)

On the New Book Shelf in the Library Lobby

Call Number: E 842.9 L388 2010

Letters to Jackie: Condolences from a Grieving Nation

By Ellen Fitzpatrick

Publisher's Description: It is perhaps the most memorable event of the twentieth century, a moment that left a family and a nation mourning, one that many Americans recall as their first historical memory-the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Within seven weeks of the President's death, Jacqueline Kennedy received more than 800,000 condolence letters. Two years later, the volume of correspondence would exceed 1.5 million letters. For the next forty-six years, the letters would remain essentially untouched.

Now historian Ellen Fitzpatrick has selected approximately 250 of these letters for inclusion in Letters to Jackie, a remarkable human record that perfectly preserves the heart-wrenching grief and soul searching of the nation in a time of crisis. Capturing the extraordinary eloquence of so-called ordinary Americans across generations, regions, race, political leanings, and religion-in messages written on elegant stationery, scraps of paper, in pencil, type, ink smudged by tears, and in barely legible handwriting-the letters capture what John F. Kennedy meant to the country, and how his death for some divided American history into Before and After.

In Letters to Jackie, Fitzpatrick allows Americans to write their own history of these tumultuous times. "The coffin was very small," as one sixteen-year-old girl observed, "to contain so much of so many Americans." In reflecting on their sense of loss, their fears, and their striving, the authors of these letters wrote an American elegy as poignant and as compelling as their shattered and cherished dreams.

Book of the Week (May 3, 2010)

The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England:
A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century

By Ian Mortimer

Call Number: DA 185 .M69 2010

Publisher's Description: The past is a foreign country.
This is your guidebook.

A time machine has just transported you back to the fourteenth century. What do you see? How do you dress? How do you earn a living and how much are you paid? What sort of food will you be offered by a peasant or a monk or a lord? And more important, where will you stay?

The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England is not your typical look at a historical period. This radical new approach shows us that the past is not just something to be studied; it is also something to be lived. All facets of everyday life in this fascinating period are revealed, from the horrors of the plague and war to the ridiculous excesses of roasted larks and medieval haute couture.

Through the use of daily chronicles, letters, household accounts, and poems of the day, Morti-mer transports you back in time, providing answers to questions typically ignored by traditional historians. You will learn how to greet people on the street, what to use as toilet paper, why a physician might want to taste your blood, and how to know whether you are coming down with leprosy.

From the first step on the road to the medieval city of Exeter, through meals of roast beaver and puffin, Mortimer re-creates this strange and complex period of history. Here, the lives of serf, merchant, and aristocrat are illuminated with re-markable detail in this engaging literary journey. The result is the most astonishing social history book you're ever likely to read: revolutionary in its concept, informative and entertaining in its detail, and startling for its portrayal of humanity in an age of violence, exuberance, and fear.

Book of the Week (April 19, 2010)

In honor of Earth Day:

Eco Barons: the Dreamers, Schemers and Millionaires who are Saving our Planet

By Edward Humes

Call Number: GE 195 .H85 2009

Publisher's Description: From Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Humes comes Eco Barons, the story of the remarkable visionaries who have quietly dedicated their lives and their fortunes to saving the planet from ecological destruction.

While many people remain paralyzed by the scope of Earth's environmental woes, eco barons—a new and largely unheralded generation of Rockefellers and Carnegies—are having spectacular success saving forests and wildlands, pulling endangered species back from the brink, and pioneering the clean and green technologies needed if life and civilization are to endure.

A groundbreaking account that is both revealing and inspiring, Eco Barons tells of the former fashion magnate and founder of Esprit who has saved more rainforests than any other person and of the college professor who patented the "car that can save the world," the plug-in hybrid. There are the impoverished owl wranglers who founded the nation's most effective environmental group and forced a reluctant President George W. Bush to admit that humans cause global warming. And there is the former pool cleaner to Hollywood stars who became the guiding force behind a worldwide effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

At a time when there is no shortage of dire news about the environment, Eco Barons offers a story of hope, redemption, and promise—proof that one person with determination and vision can make a difference.

Book of the Week (April 12, 2010)

The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and Crusade for America

By Douglas Brinkley

Call Number: E 757 B856 2009

Publisher's Description: Historian Douglas Brinkley draws on never-before-published materials to examine the life and achievements of our "naturalist president." By setting aside more than 230 million acres of wild America for posterity between 1901 and 1909, Theodore Roosevelt made conservation a universal endeavor. This crusade for the American wilderness was perhaps the greatest U.S. presidential initiative between the Civil War and World War I.

Tracing the role that nature played in Roosevelt's storied career, Brinkley brilliantly analyzes the influence that the works of John James Audubon and Charles Darwin had on the young man who would become our twenty-sixth president. He also profiles Roosevelt's incredible circle of naturalist friends, including the Catskills poet John Burroughs, Boone and Crockett Club cofounder George Bird Grinnell, and Sierra Club founder John Muir, among many others. He brings to life hilarious anecdotes of wild-pig hunting in Texas and badger saving in Kansas. Even the story of the teddy bear gets its definitive treatment.

Destined to become a classic, this extraordinary and timeless biography offers a penetrating and colorful look at Roosevelt's naturalist achievements, a legacy now more important than ever. As we face the problems of global warming, overpopulation, and sustainable land management, this imposing leader's stout resolution to protect our environment is an inspiration and a contemporary call to arms for us all.

New York Times Book Review

Book of the Week (March 30, 2010)

New in the Reference Collection on the First Floor
Call Number: REF HF 5382. C34 2009

Green Careers: Choosing Work for a Sustainable Future
By Jim Cassio and Alice Rush

Publisher's Description:

People of all ages and backgrounds are seeking work in career fields that will help save the planet, yet many people are unaware of the variety of green careers available. This unique career guidance book, based on labor market research, covers green jobs representing almost every area of career interest.

The authors’ extensive experience in workforce development will help you explore tomorrow’s green career options by answering such questions as: What green careers are available? What salary can I expect? What education do I need? What is the demand for this profession? How do I change to a green career?

Green Careers offers clear and concise information about the emerging field of environmental jobs. Chapters include:

*Industry-by-industry overview of green jobs
*Ninety different occupations in twelve different career groups
*Over sixty case studies and interviews of people working in green jobs
*Career planning information
*Job search resources

It is an indispensable guide for finding a career to feel passionate about and prospering while doing what you love.

Book of the Week (March 7, 2010

Confessions of a Public Speaker
By Scott Berkun

Call Number: PN 4129.15 .B48 2010

Publisher's Description: " at 7:48 a.m. on a Tuesday, I am showered, cleaned, shaved, pruned, fed, and deodorized, wearing a pressed shirt and shiny shoes, in a cab on my way to the San Francisco waterfront I'm far from home, going to an unfamiliar place, and performing for strangers, three stressful facts that mean anything can happen "

In this hilarious and highly practical book, author and professional speaker Scott Berkun reveals the techniques behind what great communicators do, and shows how anyone can learn to use them well. For managers and teachers-and anyone else who talks and expects someone to listen-Confessions of a Public Speaker provides an insider's perspective on how to effectively present ideas to anyone. It's a unique, entertaining, and instructional romp through the embarrassments and triumphs Scott has experienced over 15 years of speaking to crowds of all sizes.

With lively lessons and surprising confessions, you'll get new insights into the art of persuasion-as well as teaching, learning, and performance-directly from a master of the trade.

Book of the Week (February 15, 2010)

New in the Instructional Materials Center on the 3rd Floor of the Library. Winner of the 2009 National Book Award for Young People's Literature.

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
by Phillip M. Hoose

Call Number: IMC F 334 .M753 C6554 2009

Publisher's Description: On March 2, 1955, a slim, bespectacled teenager refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Shouting “It’s my constitutional right!” as police dragged her off to jail, Claudette Colvin decided she’d had enough of the Jim Crow segregation laws that had angered and puzzled her since she was a young child.

But instead of being celebrated, as Rosa Parks would be when she took the same stand nine months later, Claudette found herself shunned by many of her classmates and dismissed as an unfit role model by the black leaders of Montgomery. Undaunted, she put her life in danger a year later when she dared to challenge segregation yet again — as one of four plaintiffs in the landmark busing case Browder v. Gayle.

Based on extensive interviews with Claudette Colvin and many others, Phillip Hoose presents the first in-depth account of a major, yet little-known, civil rights figure whose story provides a fresh perspective on the Montgomery bus protest of 1955–56. Historic figures like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks play important roles, but center stage belongs to the brave, bookish girl whose two acts of courage were to affect the course of American history.

Book of the Week (February 8, 2010)

Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat's Jewel Box

By Madeleine Albright

Call Number: NK 7303 .A43 A43 2009

Publisher's Description: New from New York Times bestselling author and former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, Read My Pins is a story and celebration of how one woman’s jewelry collection was used to make diplomatic history. Exploring the use of the pin or brooch as a means of personal and diplomatic expression and featuring a gallery of fascinating photographs, this unique, intimate, and revealing biography offers a whole new side of Secretary Albright, one of our most beloved public servants.

Part illustrated memoir, part social history, Read My Pins provides an intimate look at Albright's life through the brooches she wore. Her collection is both international and democratic—dime-store pins share pride of place with designer creations and family heirlooms. Included are the antique eagle purchased to celebrate Albright's appointment as secretary of state, the zebra pin she wore when meeting Nelson Mandela, and the Valentine's Day heart forged by Albright's five-year-old daughter. Read My Pins features more than 200 photographs, along with compelling and often humorous stories about jewelry, global politics, and the life of one of America's most accomplished and fascinating diplomats.

Book of the Week (February 1, 2010)

Conquering the Sky: The Secret Flights of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk

By Larry E. Tise

Call Number: TL 540 .W7 T569 2009

Publisher's Description: Despite their great achievements following their first powered flights in 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright still enjoyed virtual anonymity until 1908. In seven crucial days in May of that year, however, the eyes of the world were suddenly cast upon them as they sought lucrative government contracts for their flying technology and then had to prove the capabilities of their machines. In these pivotal moments, the brothers were catapulted into unwanted worldwide fame as the international press discovered and followed their covert flight tests, and reported their every move using rudimentary telegraphs and early forms of photography.

From the brothers’ rise to fame on the historic Outer Banks, to the quickly expanding role of the world press and the flights’ repercussions in war and military technology, Tise weaves a fascinating tale of a key turning point in the history of flight.

Book of the Week (January 4, 2010)

Cornflakes with John Lennon: and other tales from a rock 'n roll life.

By Robert Hilburn

Call Number: ML 423 .H5876 A5 2009

Publisher's Description: Robert Hilburn’s storied career as a rock critic has allowed him a behind-the-scenes look at the lives of some of the most iconic figures of our time. He was the only music critic to visit Folsom Prison with Johnny Cash. He met John Lennon during his lost weekend period in Los Angeles and they became friends. Bob Dylan granted him his only interviews during his "born-again" period and the occasion of his 50th birthday. Michael Jackson invited Hilburn to watch cartoons with him in his bedroom. When Springsteen took to playing only old hits, Hilburn scolded him for turning his legendary concerts into oldies revues, and Springsteen changed his set list.

In this totally unique account of the symbiotic relationship between critic and musical artist, Hilburn reflects on the ways in which he has changed and been changed by the subjects he’s covered; Bono weighs in with an introduction about how Hilburn’s criticism influenced and altered his own development as a musician.

Corn Flakes with John Lennon is more than about one man’s adventures in rock and roll: It’s the gripping and untold story of how popular music reshapes the way we think about the world and helps to define the modern American character.

ROBERT HILBURN, the long-time pop music critic and editor of the Los Angeles Times, is one of the most widely read and respected pop writers of the rock and roll era. His reviews and artist profiles have appeared in hundreds of publications around the world. Hilburn is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination committee. He lives in Los Angeles


LA Times Review of the book and additional information about the author