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