UWSP Library

Book of the Week (September 26, 2011)

2011-09-26T10:22:00.000-05:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Library
Call Number: PS 3558 .E476 Z63 2011

Just One Catch: a biography of Joseph Heller
By Tracy Daugherty

Publisher's Description: In time for the 50th anniversary of Catch-22, Tracy Daugherty, the critically acclaimed author of Hiding Man (a New Yorker and New York Times Notable book), illuminates his most vital subject yet in this first biography of Joseph Heller.
Joseph Heller was a Coney Island kid, the son of Russian immigrants, who went on to great fame and fortune. His most memorable novel took its inspiration from a mission he flew over France in WWII (his plane was filled with so much shrapnel it was a wonder it stayed in the air). Heller wrote seven novels, all of which remain in print. Something Happened and Good as Gold, to name two, are still considered the epitome of satire. His life was filled with women and romantic indiscretions, but he was perhaps more famous for his friendships—he counted Mel Brooks, Zero Mostel, Carl Reiner, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, Mario Puzo, Dustin Hoffman, Woody Allen, and many others among his confidantes. In 1981 Heller was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a debilitating syndrome that could have cost him his life. Miraculously, he recovered. When he passed away in 1999 from natural causes, he left behind a body of work that continues to sell hundreds of thousands of copies a year.

Review of the book from the Washington Post

Book of the Week (September 19, 2011)

2011-09-19T11:32:00.002-05:00

On the New book shelf in the Library's lobby
Call Number: HV 6692.M33 H46 2011

The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust
By Diana B. Henriques

Publisher's Description: The inside story of Bernie Madoff and his $65 billion Ponzi scheme, with surprising and shocking new details from Madoff himself. Who is Bernie Madoff, and how did he pull off the biggest Ponzi scheme in history?

These questions have fascinated people ever since the news broke about the respected New York financier who swindled his friends, relatives, and other investors out of $65 billion through a fraud that lasted for decades. Many have speculated about what might have happened or what must have happened, but no reporter has been able to get the full story--until now.
In The Wizard of Lies, Diana B. Henriques of The New York Times--who has led the paper's coverage of the Madoff scandal since the day the story broke--has written the definitive book on the man and his scheme, drawing on unprecedented access and more than one hundred interviews with people at all levels and on all sides of the crime, including Madoff's first interviews for publication since his arrest. Henriques also provides vivid details from the various lawsuits, government investigations, and court filings that will explode the myths that have come to surround the story.

A true-life financial thriller, The Wizard of Lies contrasts Madoff's remarkable rise on Wall Street, where he became one of the country’s most trusted and respected traders, with dramatic scenes from his accelerating slide toward self-destruction. It is also the most complete account of the heartbreaking personal disasters and landmark legal battles triggered by Madoff’s downfall--the suicides, business failures, fractured families, shuttered charities--and the clear lessons this timeless scandal offers to Washington, Wall Street, and Main Street.

"In The Wizard of Lies, Diana Henriques, who covered the Madoff scandal for the New York Times, offers a riveting history of Mr Madoff’s shady dealings and the shattering consequences of his theft. . . . She offers a raw and surprisingly moving portrait about the toll that Mr Madoff’s deceit took on his family."—The Economist

Book of the Week (September 12, 2011)

2011-09-12T10:55:00.000-05:00

On the new book shelf in the Library's Lobby.
Call Number: R 729.5 .G4 B36 2011

Out of Practice: Fighting for Primary Care Medicine in America
By Frederick M. Barken, M.D.

Publisher's Description: Primary care medicine, as we know and remember it, is in crisis. While policymakers, government administrators, and the health insurance industry pay lip service to the personal relationship between physician and patient, dissatisfaction and disaffection run rampant among primary care doctors, and medical students steer clear in order to pursue more lucrative specialties. Patients feel helpless, well aware that they are losing a valued close connection as health care steadily becomes more transactional than relational. The thin-margin efficiency, rapid pace, and high volume demanded by the new health care economics do not work for primary care, an inherently slower, more personal, and uniquely tailored service.

In Out of Practice, Dr. Frederick Barken juxtaposes his personal experience with the latest research on the transformations in the medical field. He offers a cool critique of the market model of medicine while vividly illustrating how the seemingly inexorable trend toward specialization in the last few decades has shifted emphasis away from what was once the foundation of medical practice. Dr. Barken addresses the complexities of modern practice-overuse of diagnostic studies, fragmentation of care, increasing reliance on an array of prescription drugs, and the practice of defensive medicine. He shows how changes in medicine, the family, and society have left physicians to deal with a wide range of geriatric issues, from limited mobility to dementia, that are not addressed by health care policy and are not entirely amenable to a physician s prescription. Indeed, Dr. Barken contends, the very survival of primary care is in jeopardy at a time when its practitioners are needed more than ever.

Illustrated with case studies gleaned from more than twenty years in private practice and data from a wide range of sources, Out of Practice is more than a jeremiad about a broken system. Throughout, Dr. Barken offers cogent suggestions for policymakers and practitioners alike, making clear that as valuable as the latest drug or medical device may be, a successful health care system depends just as much on the doctor-patient relationship embodied by primary care medicine.

Cornell University Press website

Book of the Week (September 5, 2011)

2011-09-06T12:20:00.003-05:00

On the New Book shelf in the Library's lobby
Call Number: HN 90 .M84 B37 20111

Barack Obama, The Aloha Zen President: how a son of the 50th state may revitalize America based on 12 multicultural principles

By Michael Haas

Publisher's Description: Obama's aspiration to transform the United States using Hawaìi as his model has been a conspicuous theme in his books and speeches over the years. In them, he extols Hawaìi's multicultural ethos, describing how a normative, problem-solving mindset predicated on mutual respect and harmonious interchange is inculcated in the culture, politics, and society of the Islands. Indeed, this "Aloha Spirit" is imbued in Barack Obama, is part of what made him irresistibly charismatic as a candidate, and explains why voters in 2010 were baffled at his demeanor after he became the 44th President of the United States.

This unique book examines Obama's decisions as an adult and as president and exposes how they are directly linked to the culture of Hawaìi and Obama's multicultural life as a child. The author and contributors also describe the ways in which native Hawaiians were dispossessed of their sovereignty and their land, how they steadfastly sought justice, and how their quest served as a model for Obama's mobilization of support for his candidacy.

Book of the Week (August 29, 2011)

2011-08-29T12:53:00.000-05:00

On the new book shelf in the Library's lobby
Call Number: SF 487 .L775 2011

A Chicken in Every Yard: the urban farm store's guide to chicken keeping

By Robert and Hannah Litt

Publisher's Description: Got a little space and a hankering for fresh eggs? Robert and Hannah Litt have dispensed advice to hundreds of urban and suburban chicken-keepers from behind their perch at Portland’s Urban Farm Store, and now they’re ready to help you go local and sustainable with your own backyard birds. In this handy guide to breeds, feed, coops, and care, the Litts take you under their experienced wings and share the secrets to:

Picking the breeds that are right for you • Building a sturdy coop in one weekend for $100 • Raising happy and hearty chicks • Feeding your flock for optimal health and egg nutrition • Preventing and treating common chicken diseases • Planning ahead for family, neighborhood, and legal considerations • Whipping up tasty egg recipes from flan to frittata

With everything that first-timers will need to get started—along with expert tips for more seasoned keepers—this colorful, nuts-and-bolts manual proves that keeping chickens is all it’s cracked up to be.

A Chicken in Every Yard website

Book of the Week (August 8, 2011)

2011-08-09T12:44:00.000-05:00

On the New book shelf in the Library's lobby
Call number: PS 3552.A45 C76 2010

The Cross of Redemption: uncollected writings
By James Baldwin

Publisher's Description: The Cross of Redemption is a revelation by an American literary master: a gathering of essays, articles, polemics, reviews, and interviews that have never before appeared in book form.
James Baldwin was one of the most brilliant and provocative literary figures of the past century, renowned for his fierce engagement with issues haunting our common history. In The Cross of Redemption we have Baldwin discoursing on, among other subjects, the possibility of an African-American president and what it might mean; the hypocrisy of American religious fundamentalism; the black church in America; the trials and tribulations of black nationalism; anti-Semitism; the blues and boxing; Russian literary masters; and the role of the writer in our society.

Prophetic and bracing, The Cross of Redemption is a welcome and important addition to the works of a cosmopolitan and canonical American writer who still has much to teach us about race, democracy, and personal and national identity. As Michael Ondaatje has remarked, “If van Gogh was our nineteenth-century artist-saint, Baldwin [was] our twentieth-century one.”

Review from the New York Times

Book of the Week (August 1, 2011)

2011-08-02T13:27:00.001-05:00

Everything is Obvious:*Once you know the answer

By Duncan J. Watts

Call Number: BF 441 .W347 2011

Publisher's Description: Why is the Mona Lisa the most famous painting in the world? Why did Facebook succeed when other social networking sites failed? Did the surge in Iraq really lead to less violence? How much can CEO’s impact the performance of their companies? And does higher pay incentivize people to work hard?

If you think the answers to these questions are a matter of common sense, think again. As sociologist and network science pioneer Duncan Watts explains in this provocative book, the explanations that we give for the outcomes that we observe in life—explanation that seem obvious once we know the answer—are less useful than they seem.

Drawing on the latest scientific research, along with a wealth of historical and contemporary examples, Watts shows how common sense reasoning and history conspire to mislead us into believing that we understand more about the world of human behavior than we do; and in turn, why attempts to predict, manage, or manipulate social and economic systems so often go awry.

It seems obvious, for example, that people respond to incentives; yet policy makers and managers alike frequently fail to anticipate how people will respond to the incentives they create. Social trends often seem to have been driven by certain influential people; yet marketers have been unable to identify these “influencers” in advance. And although successful products or companies always seem in retrospect to have succeeded because of their unique qualities, predicting the qualities of the next hit product or hot company is notoriously difficult even for experienced professionals.

Only by understanding how and when common sense fails, Watts argues, can we improve how we plan for the future, as well as understand the present—an argument that has important implications in politics, business, and marketing, as well as in science and everyday life.

New York Times Review

Book of the Week (July 18, 2011)

2011-07-19T12:04:00.002-05:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Library Lobby

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris
By David McCullough

Call Number: DC 718 .A44 M39 2011

Publisher's Description: The Greater Journey is the enthralling, inspiring—and until now, untold—story of the adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, architects, and others of high aspiration who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900, ambitious to excel in their work.

After risking the hazardous journey across the Atlantic, these Americans embarked on a greater journey in the City of Light. Most had never left home, never experienced a different culture. None had any guarantee of success. That they achieved so much for themselves and their country profoundly altered American history. As David McCullough writes, “Not all pioneers went west.”

Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in America, was one of this intrepid band. Another was Charles Sumner, who enrolled at the Sorbonne because of a burning desire to know more about everything. There he saw black students with the same ambition he had, and when he returned home, he would become the most powerful, unyielding voice for abolition in the U.S. Senate, almost at the cost of his life.

Two staunch friends, James Fenimore Cooper and Samuel F. B. Morse, worked unrelentingly every day in Paris, Cooper writing and Morse painting what would be his masterpiece. From something he saw in France, Morse would also bring home his momentous idea for the telegraph.

Pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk from New Orleans launched his spectacular career performing in Paris at age fifteen. George P.A. Healy, who had almost no money and little education, took the gamble of a lifetime and with no prospects whatsoever in Paris became one of the most celebrated portrait painters of the day. His subjects included Abraham Lincoln.

Medical student Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote home of his toil and the exhilaration in “being at the center of things” in what was then the medical capital of the world. From all they learned in Paris, Holmes and his fellow “medicals” were to exert lasting influence on the profession of medicine in the United States.

Writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, and Henry James were all “discovering” Paris, marveling at the treasures in the Louvre, or out with the Sunday throngs strolling the city’s boulevards and gardens. “At last I have come into a dreamland,” wrote Harriet Beecher Stowe, seeking escape from the notoriety Uncle Tom’s Cabin had brought her.

The genius of sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the son of an immigrant shoemaker, and of painters Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent, three of the greatest American artists ever, would flourish in Paris, inspired by the examples of brilliant French masters, and by Paris itself.

Nearly all of these Americans, whatever their troubles learning French, their spells of homesickness, and their suffering in the raw cold winters by the Seine, spent many of the happiest days and nights of their lives in Paris. McCullough tells this sweeping, fascinating story with power and intimacy, bringing us into the lives of remarkable men and women who, in Saint-Gaudens’ phrase, longed “to soar into the blue.”

Review from the LA Times
More from the publisher

Book of the Week (July 11, 2011)

2011-07-11T10:01:00.003-05:00

Beyond the Trees: Stories of Wisconsin Forests
By Candice Gaukel Andrews

Published by the Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS)

Call Number: SD 428 .A2 W627 2011

Wisconsin Historical Society's description: The diversity of landscapes evoked in Beyond the Trees is matched only by the characters who inhabit them. Traverse the footsteps of Ojibwe hunters and early explorers in the remote woods of Brule River State Forest. Trek past the remains of bygone logging and CCC camps in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Glimpse into the world of Great Lakes shipping in Point Beach State Forest. Walk on trails named after John Muir and Increase Lapham in the Kettle Moraine State Forest, and experience urban green space at Milwaukee's Havenwoods State Forest. From orchids to oak savannah, beaver to brook trout, and white-tailed deer to timber wolves, discover Wisconsin's flora and fauna.

Richly illustrated with color photographs by the author's husband, John T. Andrews, and other professional photographers, Beyond the Trees is also an intimate visual portrait of these stunning landscapes. Archival images, informative sidebars, locator maps, and contact information for Wisconsin state and national forests round out this unique book.

Nature writer Candice Gaukel Andrews weaves together contemporary observations and historical reminiscences in Beyond the Trees: Stories of Wisconsin Forests. Readers will journey to some of the most pristine and notable places in the Upper Midwest: Wisconsin's state and national forests.

Additional Information from the WHS

Book of the Week (July 4, 2011)

2011-07-05T12:11:00.001-05:00

Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America
By John McMillian

You can find it on the New Book shelf in the Library's lobby
Call Number: PN 4888.U5 M35 2011

How did the New Left uprising of the 1960s happen? What caused millions of young people-many of them affluent and college educated-to suddenly decide that American society needed to be completely overhauled?

In Smoking Typewriters, historian John McMillian shows that one answer to these questions can be found in the emergence of a dynamic underground press in the 1960s. Following the lead of papers like the Los Angeles Free Press, the East Village Other, and the Berkeley Barb, young people across the country launched hundreds of mimeographed pamphlets and flyers, small press magazines, and underground newspapers. New, cheaper printing technologies democratized the publishing process and by the decade's end the combined circulation of underground papers stretched into the millions. Though not technically illegal, these papers were often genuinely subversive, and many of those who produced and sold them-on street-corners, at poetry readings, gallery openings, and coffeehouses-became targets of harassment from local and federal authorities. With writers who actively participated in the events they described, underground newspapers captured the zeitgeist of the '60s, speaking directly to their readers, and reflecting and magnifying the spirit of cultural and political protest. McMillian pays special attention to the ways underground newspapers fostered a sense of community and played a vital role in shaping the New Left's highly democratic "movement culture."
Deeply researched and eloquently written, Smoking Typewriters captures all the youthful idealism and vibrant tumult of the 1960s as it delivers a brilliant reappraisal of the origins and development of the New Left rebellion.

Book of the Week (June 27, 2011)

2011-06-27T16:08:00.000-05:00

Strange New Worlds: The Search for Alien Planets and Life Beyond our Solar System
By Ray Jayawardhana

Call Number: QB 820 .J39 2011

Soon astronomers expect to find alien Earths by the dozens in orbit around distant suns. Before the decade is out, telltale signs that they harbor life may be found. If they are, the ramifications for all areas of human thought and endeavor--from religion and philosophy to art and biology--will be breathtaking. In Strange New Worlds, renowned astronomer Ray Jayawardhana brings news from the front lines of the epic quest to find planets--and alien life--beyond our solar system.

Only in the past fifteen years, after millennia of speculation, have astronomers begun to discover planets around other stars--hundreds in fact. But the hunt to find a true Earth-like world goes on. In this book, Jayawardhana vividly recounts the stories of the scientists and the remarkable breakthroughs that have ushered in this extraordinary age of exploration. He describes the latest findings--including his own--that are challenging our view of the cosmos and casting new light on the origins and evolution of planets and planetary systems. He reveals how technology is rapidly advancing to support direct observations of Jupiter-like gas giants and super-Earths--rocky planets with several times the mass of our own planet--and how astronomers use biomarkers to seek possible life on other worlds.

Strange New Worlds provides an insider's look at the cutting-edge science of today's planet hunters, our prospects for discovering alien life, and the debates and controversies at the forefront of extrasolar-planet research.

A Review from The Times Higher Education
For author events, media interviews, etc, check out the book's Facebook site

facebook.com/pages/Strange-New-Worlds-by-Ray-Jayawardhana/159891930719787

Book of the Week (June 20, 2011)

2011-06-20T15:36:00.001-05:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Library Lobby

Covert Affair: Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS
By Jennet Conant

Call Number: D810 .S8 C3863 2011

New York Times Book Review

Publisher's Description: Bestselling author Jennet Conant brings us a stunning account of Julia and Paul Child’s experiences as members of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in the Far East during World War II and the tumultuous years when they were caught up in the McCarthy Red spy hunt in the 1950s and behaved with bravery and honor. It is the fascinating portrait of a group of idealistic men and women who were recruited by the citizen spy service, slapped into uniform, and dispatched to wage political warfare in remote outposts in Ceylon, India, and China.

The eager, inexperienced 6 foot 2 inch Julia springs to life in these pages, a gangly golf-playing California girl who had never been farther abroad than Tijuana. Single and thirty years old when she joined the staff of Colonel William Donovan, Julia volunteered to be part of the OSS’s ambitious mission to develop a secret intelligence network across Southeast Asia. Her first post took her to the mountaintop idyll of Kandy, the headquarters of Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, the supreme commander of combined operations. Julia reveled in the glamour and intrigue of her overseas assignment and lifealtering romance with the much older and more sophisticated Paul Child, who took her on trips into the jungle, introduced her to the joys of curry, and insisted on educating both her mind and palate. A painter drafted to build war rooms, Paul was a colorful, complex personality. Conant uses extracts from his letters in which his sharp eye and droll wit capture the day-to-day confusion, excitement, and improbability of being part of a cloak- and-dagger operation.

When Julia and Paul were transferred to Kunming, a rugged outpost at the foot of the Burma Road, they witnessed the chaotic end of the war in China and the beginnings of the Communist revolution that would shake the world. A Covert Affair chronicles their friendship with a brilliant and eccentric array of OSS agents, including Jane Foster, a wealthy, free-spirited artist, and Elizabeth MacDonald, an adventurous young reporter. In Paris after the war, Julia and Paul remained close to their intelligence colleagues as they struggled to start new lives, only to find themselves drawn into a far more terrifying spy drama. Relying on recently unclassified OSS and FBI documents, as well as previously unpublished letters and diaries, Conant vividly depicts a dangerous time in American history, when those who served their country suddenly found themselves called to account for their unpopular opinions and personal relationships.

Book of the Week (June 6, 2011)

2011-06-06T13:23:00.000-05:00

Green is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege

By Will Potter

Call Number: GE 197 .P68 2011

Visit the Book's Blog http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/

Publisher's Description: At a time when everyone is going green, most people are unaware that the FBI is using anti-terrorism resources to target environmentalists. Here is a guided tour into an underground world of radical activism and an introduction to the shadowy figures behind the headlines. But here also is the story of how everyday people are prevented from speaking up for what they believe in. Like the Red Scare, this "Green Scare" is about fear and intimidation, and Will Potter outlines the political, legal, and public relations strategies that threaten even acts of nonviolent civil disobedience with the label of "eco-terrorism."

Book of the Week (May 23, 2011)

2011-05-23T10:26:00.002-05:00

Looking for an audiobook for your summer travels? Stop by the Library's lobby and check out one of our new titles - possibly this Swedish mystery, that is the last of the Kurt Wallander series:

The Troubled Man
By Henning Mankell

Publisher's Description: Håkan von Enke is a troubled man. At a birthday party, he confides to Swedish police detective Kurt Wallender the story of a 1980 incident that involved an unidentified submarine illegally entering Swedish waters when he was a naval admiral. When von Enke goes missing soon after, Wallander investigates even though it’s not his case; von Enke is his daughter’s future father-in-law.

Robin Sachs is terrific at voicing the gloomy Wallander (also a troubled man) as he faces his demons of old age, memory loss, diabetes, and lost loves. Sachs is untroubled by the Swedish names and locations, and he rolls through them without hesitation or unnecessary showiness. He also creates distinctive character voices with authentic accents for Wallander’s fellow detectives, von Enke, and von Enke’s American friends. This is Wallander’s last outing, a development that will result in many troubled fans.

Book of the Week (May 16, 2011)

2011-05-17T12:40:00.000-05:00

Congrats to the Pointers baseball team on their WIAC championship and NCAA tourney berth!
Ready for some more baseball? Check the library's new book shelf for some recent titles including:

The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican town of San Pedro de Macoris
By Mark Kurlansky

Call number: GV 863.29 .D65 K87 2010
New York Times Sunday Book Review

Publisher's Description: The intriguing, inspiring history of one small, impoverished area in the Dominican Republic that has produced a staggering number of Major League Baseball talent, from an award-winning, bestselling author. In the town of San Pedro in the Dominican Republic, baseball is not just a way of life. It's the way of life. By the year 2008, seventy-nine boys and men from San Pedro have gone on to play in the Major Leagues-that means one in six Dominican Republicans who have played in the Majors have come from one tiny, impoverished region. Manny Alexander, Sammy Sosa, Tony Fernandez, and legions of other San Pedro players who came up in the sugar mill teams flocked to the United States, looking for opportunity, wealth, and a better life. Because of the sugar industry, and the influxes of migrant workers from across the Caribbean to work in the cane fields and factories, San Pedro is one of the most ethnically diverse areas of the Dominican Republic. A multitude of languages are spoken there, and a variety of skin colors populate the community; but the one constant is sugar and baseball.

The history of players from San Pedro is also a chronicle of racism in baseball, changing social mores in sports and in the Dominican Republic, and the personal stories of the many men who sought freedom from poverty through playing ball. The story of baseball in San Pedro is also that of the Caribbean in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and on a broader level opens a window into our country's history. As with Kurlansky's Cod and Salt, this small story, rich with anecdote and detail, becomes much larger than ever imagined. Kurlansky reveals two countries' love affair with a sport and the remarkable journey of San Pedro and its baseball players. In his distinctive style, he follows common threads and discovers wider meanings about place, identity, and, above all, baseball.

Book of the Week (May 9, 2011)

2011-05-10T13:07:00.000-05:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Library's Lobby:

Triumph of the City: How our Greatest Invention Makes us Richer, Smarter, Greenier, Healthier, and Happier

By Edward Glaeser
Call Number: HT 361 G53 2011

Publisher's Description: A pioneering urban economist offers fascinating, even inspiring proof that the city is humanity's greatest invention and our best hope for the future.

America is an urban nation. More than two thirds of us live on the 3 percent of land that contains our cities. Yet cities get a bad rap: they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, crime ridden, expensive, environmentally unfriendly... Or are they? As Edward Glaeser proves in this myth-shattering book, cities are actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in cultural and economic terms) places to live. New Yorkers, for instance, live longer than other Americans; heart disease and cancer rates are lower in Gotham than in the nation as a whole. More than half of America's income is earned in twenty-two metropolitan areas. And city dwellers use, on average, 40 percent less energy than suburbanites.

Glaeser travels through history and around the globe to reveal the hidden workings of cities and how they bring out the best in humankind. Even the worst cities-Kinshasa, Kolkata, Lagos- confer surprising benefits on the people who flock to them, including better health and more jobs than the rural areas that surround them. Glaeser visits Bangalore and Silicon Valley, whose strangely similar histories prove how essential education is to urban success and how new technology actually encourages people to gather together physically. He discovers why Detroit is dying while other old industrial cities-Chicago, Boston, New York-thrive. He investigates why a new house costs 350 percent more in Los Angeles than in Houston, even though building costs are only 25 percent higher in L.A. He pinpoints the single factor that most influences urban growth-January temperatures-and explains how certain chilly cities manage to defy that link. He explains how West Coast environmentalists have harmed the environment, and how struggling cities from Youngstown to New Orleans can "shrink to greatness." And he exposes the dangerous anti-urban political bias that is harming both cities and the entire country.

Using intrepid reportage, keen analysis, and eloquent argument, Glaeser makes an impassioned case for the city's import and splendor. He reminds us forcefully why we should nurture our cities or suffer consequences that will hurt us all, no matter where we live.

New York Times Book Review (February 11, 2011)

Book of the Week (May 2, 2011)

2011-05-02T10:54:00.000-05:00

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
By Lawrence Wright

Call Number: HV 6432.7 .W75 2006

A Pulitzer Prize winner, National Book Award finalist, and a Time, Newsweek, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year

Publisher's Description: A sweeping narrative history of the events leading to 9/11, a groundbreaking look at the people and ideas, the terrorist plans and the Western intelligence failures that culminated in the assault on America. Lawrence Wright’s remarkable book is based on five years of research and hundreds of interviews that he conducted in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, England, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States.

The Looming Tower achieves an unprecedented level of intimacy and insight by telling the story through the interweaving lives of four men: the two leaders of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri; the FBI’s counterterrorism chief, John O’Neill; and the former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al-Faisal.

As these lives unfold, we see revealed: the crosscurrents of modern Islam that helped to radicalize Zawahiri and bin Laden . . . the birth of al-Qaeda and its unsteady development into an organization capable of the American embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the attack on the USS Cole . . . O’Neill’s heroic efforts to track al-Qaeda before 9/11, and his tragic death in the World Trade towers . . . Prince Turki’s transformation from bin Laden’s ally to his enemy . . . the failures of the FBI, CIA, and NSA to share intelligence that might have prevented the 9/11 attacks.

The Looming Tower broadens and deepens our knowledge of these signal events by taking us behind the scenes. Here is Sayyid Qutb, founder of the modern Islamist movement, lonely and despairing as he meets Western culture up close in 1940s America; the privileged childhoods of bin Laden and Zawahiri; family life in the al-Qaeda compounds of Sudan and Afghanistan; O’Neill’s high-wire act in balancing his all-consuming career with his equally entangling personal life—he was living with three women, each of them unaware of the others’ existence—and the nitty-gritty of turf battles among U.S. intelligence agencies.

Brilliantly conceived and written, The Looming Tower draws all elements of the story into a galvanizing narrative that adds immeasurably to our understanding of how we arrived at September 11, 2001. The richness of its new information, and the depth of its perceptions, can help us deal more wisely and effectively with the continuing terrorist threat.

Book of the Week (April 25, 2011)

2011-04-25T12:43:00.000-05:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Libary Lobby, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History:

Call Number: E 457.2 .F66 2010

The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
By Eric Foner

Publisher's Description: Winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in History, the Bancroft Prize, and the Lincoln Prize: from a master historian, the story of Lincoln's-and the nation's-transformation through the crucible of slavery and emancipation.

In this landmark work of deep scholarship and insight, Eric Foner gives us the definitive history of Lincoln and the end of slavery in America. Foner begins with Lincoln's youth in Indiana and Illinois and follows the trajectory of his career across an increasingly tense and shifting political terrain from Illinois to Washington, D.C. Although “naturally anti-slavery” for as long as he can remember, Lincoln scrupulously holds to the position that the Constitution protects the institution in the original slave states. But the political landscape is transformed in 1854 when the Kansas-Nebraska Act makes the expansion of slavery a national issue.

A man of considered words and deliberate actions, Lincoln navigates the dynamic politics deftly, taking measured steps, often along a path forged by abolitionists and radicals in his party. Lincoln rises to leadership in the new Republican Party by calibrating his politics to the broadest possible antislavery coalition. As president of a divided nation and commander in chief at war, displaying a similar compound of pragmatism and principle, Lincoln finally embraces what he calls the Civil War's “fundamental and astounding” result: the immediate, uncompensated abolition of slavery and recognition of blacks as American citizens. Foner's Lincoln emerges as a leader, one whose greatness lies in his capacity for moral and political growth through real engagement with allies and critics alike.

Review from the New York Times

Book of the Week (April 18, 2011)

2011-04-18T13:28:00.000-05:00

On most of the Best Books lists for 2010

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
By Rebecca Skloot

Call Number: RC 265.6 .L24 S55 2010

Rebecca Skloot's website
Review from the New York Times

Publisher's Description: Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?

Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.

Book of the Week (April 11, 2011)

2011-04-11T14:43:00.001-05:00

Happy National Library Week!

The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood
By James Gleick

Call Number: Z 665 .G547 2011

Publisher's Description: James Gleick, the author of the best sellers Chaos and Genius, now brings us a work just as astonishing and masterly: a revelatory chronicle and meditation that shows how information has become the modern era’s defining quality—the blood, the fuel, the vital principle of our world.

The story of information begins in a time profoundly unlike our own, when every thought and utterance vanishes as soon as it is born. From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long-misunderstood talking drums of Africa, Gleick tells the story of information technologies that changed the very nature of human consciousness. He provides portraits of the key figures contributing to the inexorable development of our modern understanding of information: Charles Babbage, the idiosyncratic inventor of the first great mechanical computer; Ada Byron, the brilliant and doomed daughter of the poet, who became the first true programmer; pivotal figures like Samuel Morse and Alan Turing; and Claude Shannon, the creator of information theory itself.

And then the information age arrives. Citizens of this world become experts willy-nilly: aficionados of bits and bytes. And we sometimes feel we are drowning, swept by a deluge of signs and signals, news and images, blogs and tweets. The Information is the story of how we got here and where we are heading.

Review from the New York Times

Book of the Week (April 4, 2011)

2011-04-04T13:37:00.000-05:00

In recognition of National Poetry Month:

The Poets Laureate Anthology
Edited by Elizabeth Hun Schmidt

Call Number: PS 591 .P63 P64 2010

Publisher Description: The first anthology to gather poems by the forty-three poets laureate of the United States. As a record of poetry, The Poets Laureate Anthology is groundbreaking, charting the course of American poetry over the last seventy-five years, while being, at the same time, a pleasure to read, full of some of the world’s best-known poems and many new surprises. Elizabeth Hun Schmidt has gathered and introduced poems by each of the forty-three poets who have been named our nation’s poets laureate since the post (originally called Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress) was established in 1937.

Poets range from Robert Pinsky, William Carlos Williams, and Elizabeth Bishop to Charles Simic, Billy Collins, and Rita Dove. Schmidt’s spirited introductions place the poets and their poems in historical and literary context and shine light on the interesting and often uneasy relationship between politics and art. This is an inviting, monumental collection for everyone’s library, containing much of the best poetry written in America over the last century.

Review from The BookSlut, a monthly web magazine and daily blog for book lovers

Book of the Week (March 28, 2011)

2011-03-28T15:36:00.000-05:00

How to Write a Sentence: and how to read one
By Stanley Fish

Call Number: PE 1441 .F57 2011 (Currently on the New Book Shelf in the Library Lobby)

Publisher's Description: Some appreciate fine art; others appreciate fine wines. Stanley Fish appreciates fine sentences. The New York Times columnist and world-class professor has long been an aficionado of language: "I am always on the lookout for sentences that take your breath away, for sentences that make you say, 'Isn't that something?' or 'What a sentence!'" Like a seasoned sportscaster, Fish marvels at the adeptness of finely crafted sentences and breaks them down into digestible morsels, giving readers an instant play-by-play.

In this entertaining and erudite gem, Fish offers both sentence craft and sentence pleasure, skills invaluable to any writer (or reader). His vibrant analysis takes us on a literary tour of great writers throughout history—from William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Henry James to Martin Luther King Jr., Antonin Scalia, and Elmore Leonard. Indeed, How to Write a Sentence is both a spirited love letter to the written word and a key to understanding how great writing works; it is a book that will stand the test of time.

Interview with the author on NPR's "Talk of the Nation"

Book of the Week (March 21, 2011)

2011-03-22T12:48:00.001-05:00

Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq By John W. Dower

Call Number: E 745 .D69 2010

Publisher's Description: Finalist for the 2010 National Book Award in Nonfiction: The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian returns with a groundbreaking comparative study of the dynamics and pathologies of war in modern times.

Over recent decades, John W. Dower, one of America’s preeminent historians, has addressed the roots and consequences of war from multiple perspectives. In War Without Mercy (1986), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, he described and analyzed the brutality that attended World War II in the Pacific, as seen from both the Japanese and the American sides. Embracing Defeat (1999), winner of numerous honors including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, dealt with Japan’s struggle to start over in a shattered land in the immediate aftermath of the Pacific War.

Turning to an even larger canvas, Dower now examines the cultures of war revealed by four powerful events—Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, and the invasion of Iraq in the name of a war on terror. The list of issues examined and themes explored is wide-ranging: failures of intelligence and imagination, wars of choice and “strategic imbecilities,” faith-based secular thinking as well as more overtly holy wars, the targeting of noncombatants, and the almost irresistible logic—and allure—of mass destruction. Dower’s new work also sets the U.S. occupations of Japan and Iraq side by side in strikingly original ways. Cultures of War offers comparative insights into individual and institutional behavior and pathologies that transcend “cultures” in the more traditional sense, and that ultimately go beyond war-making alone.

Book of the Week (March 14, 2011)

2011-03-14T13:43:00.000-05:00

Reality is Broken: why games make us better and how they can change the world

By Jane McGonigal

Call Number: GV 1201.38 .M34 2011

Publisher's Description: More than 174 million Americans are gamers, and the average young person in the United States will spend ten thousand hours gaming by the age of twenty-one. According to world-renowned game designer Jane McGonigal, the reason for this mass exodus to virtual worlds is that videogames are increasingly fulfilling genuine human needs. In this groundbreaking exploration of the power and future of gaming, McGonigal reveals how we can use the lessons of game design to fix what is wrong with the real world.

Drawing on positive psychology, cognitive science, and sociology, Reality Is Broken uncovers how game designers have hit on core truths about what makes us happy and utilized these discoveriesto astonishing effect in virtual environments. Videogames consistently provide the exhilarating rewards, stimulating challenges, and epic victories that are so often lacking in the real world. But why, McGonigal asks, should we use the power of games for escapist entertainment alone? Her research suggests that gamers are expert problem solvers and collaborators because they regularly cooperate with other players to overcome daunting virtual challenges, and she helped pioneer a fast-growing genre of games that aims to turn gameplay to socially positive ends.

In Reality Is Broken, she reveals how these new alternate reality games are already improving the quality of our daily lives, fighting social problems such as depression and obesity, and addressing vital twenty-first-century challenges-and she forecasts the thrilling possibilities that lie ahead. She introduces us to games like World Without Oil, a simulation designed to brainstorm-and therefore avert- the challenges of a worldwide oil shortage, and Evoke, a game commissioned by the World Bank Institute that sends players on missions to address issues from poverty to climate change.

McGonigal persuasively argues that those who continue to dismiss games will be at a major disadvantage in the coming years. Gamers, on the other hand, will be able to leverage the collaborative and motivational power of games in their own lives, communities, and businesses. Written for gamers and nongamers alike, Reality Is Broken shows us that the future will belong to those who can understand, design, and play games.

Reality is Broken website

Book of the Week (February 28, 2011)

2011-02-28T13:56:00.001-06:00

The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World

By Edward Dolnick

Call Number: Q 127 .E8 D65 2011

Publisher's Description: The Clockwork Universe is the story of a band of men who lived in a world of dirt and disease but pictured a universe that ran like a perfect machine. A meld of history and science, this book is a group portrait of some of the greatest minds who ever lived as they wrestled with nature’s most sweeping mysteries. The answers they uncovered still hold the key to how we understand the world.

At the end of the seventeenth century—an age of religious wars, plague, and the Great Fire of London— when most people saw the world as falling apart, these earliest scientists saw a world of perfect order. They declared that, chaotic as it looked, the universe was in fact as intricate and perfectly regulated as a clock. This was the tail end of Shakespeare’s century, when the natural and the supernatural still twined around each other. Disease was a punishment ordained by God, astronomy had not yet broken free from astrology, and the sky was filled with omens. It was a time when little was known and everything was new. These brilliant, ambitious, curious men believed in angels, alchemy, and the devil, and they also believed that the universe followed precise, mathematical laws—a contradiction that tormented them and changed the course of history.

The Clockwork Universe is the fascinating and compelling story of the bewildered geniuses of the Royal Society, the men who made the modern world.

Edward Dolnick's Web Site
Review from the Wall Street Journal

Book of the Week (February 21, 2011)

2011-02-22T13:27:00.000-06:00

At Home: A Short History of Private Life

By Bill Bryson

Call Number: GT 165.5 B79 2010

Publisher's Description: From one of the most beloved authors of our time—more than six million copies of his books have been sold in this country alone—a fascinating excursion into the history behind the place we call home. Review from the New York Times

"Houses aren't refuges from history. They are where history ends up."

Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to "write a history of the world without leaving home." The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has figured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture.

Bill Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and he is a master at turning the seemingly isolated or mundane fact into an occasion for the most diverting exposition imaginable. His wit and sheer prose fluency make At Home one of the most entertaining books ever written about private life.

Book of the Week (February 14, 2011)

2011-02-14T14:11:00.000-06:00

Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater
By Larry Stempel

Call Number: ML 1711.8 .N3 S73 2010

Publisher's Description: The definitive history of the Broadway musical: the shows, the stars, the movers, and the shakers. Showtime brings the history of Broadway musicals to life in a narrative as engaging as the subject itself. Beginning with the scandalous Astor Place Opera House riot of 1849, Larry Stempel traces the growth of musicals from minstrel shows and burlesques, through the golden age of Show Boat and Oklahoma!, to such groundbreaking works as Company and Rent.

Through each stage of its development, Stempel describes the Broadway stage with vivid accounts of the performers drawn to it, and detailed portraits of the creators who wrote the music, lyrics, and stories for its shows, both beloved and less well known. But Stempel travels outside the theater doors as well, to illuminate the wider world of musical theater as a living genre shaped by the forces of American history and culture. He reveals not only how musicals entertain their audiences but also how they serve as barometers of social concerns and bearers of cultural values.

Showtime is the culmination of decades of painstaking research on a genre whose forms have changed over the course of two centuries. In covering the expansive subject before him, Stempel combines original research—including a kaleidoscope of primary sources and archival holdings—with deft and insightful analysis. The result is nothing short of the most comprehensive, authoritative history of the Broadway musical yet published. 16 pages of four-color; 105 black-and-white illustrations

A Review of Showtime in the New York Times Sunday Book Review

Book of the Week (February 7, 2011)

2011-02-08T09:44:00.001-06:00

Winner of the 2010 Caldecott Award for
Best Picture Book Illustrations

Available in the IMC (3rd floor)
Call Number: PZ 7 .S808566 Si 2010

A Sick Day for Amos McGee
Written by Philip C. Stead
Illustrated by Erin E. Stead

Publisher's Description: Amos McGee, a friendly zookeeper, always made time to visit his good friends: the elephant, the tortoise, the penguin, the rhinoceros, and the owl. But one day—"Ah-choo!"—he woke up with the sniffles and the sneezes. Though he didn't make it into the zoo that day, he did receive some unexpected guests…Philip Stead's gently humorous tale of friendship and dedication is illustrated by his wife Erin Stead's elegant drawings, embellished with subtle hints of color.

Book of the Week (January 31, 2011)

2011-01-31T12:45:00.001-06:00

The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future
By Laurence C. Smith

Call Number: GE 149 .S622 2010

Pubisher's Description: A vivid forecast of our planet in the year 2050 by a rising star in geoscience, distilling cutting-edge research into four global forces: demographic trends, natural resource demand, climate change, and globalization.

The world's population is exploding, wild species are vanishing, our environment is degrading, and the costs of resources from oil to water are going nowhere but up. So what kind of world are we leaving for our children and grandchildren? Geoscientist and Guggenheim fellow Laurence Smith draws on the latest global modeling research to construct a sweeping thought experiment on what our world will be like in 2050. The result is both good news and bad: Eight nations of the Arctic Rim (including the United States) will become increasingly prosperous, powerful, and politically stable, while those closer to the equator will face water shortages, aging populations, and crowded megacities sapped by the rising costs of energy and coastal flooding.
The World in 2050 combines the lessons of geography and history with state-of-the-art model projections and analytical data-everything from climate dynamics and resource stocks to age distributions and economic growth projections. But Smith offers more than a compendium of statistics and studies- he spent fifteen months traveling the Arctic Rim, collecting stories and insights that resonate throughout the book. It is an approach much like Jared Diamond took in Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse, a work of geoscientific investigation rich in the appreciation of human diversity.
Packed with stunning photographs, original maps, and informative tables, this is the most authoritative, balanced, and compelling account available of the world of challenges and opportunities that we will leave for our children.

Wall Street Journal Review of the book.

Book of the Week (January 24, 2010)

2011-01-24T10:53:00.000-06:00

The Imperfectionists: a novel
By Tom Rachman

Call Number: PR 9199.4 .R323 I57 2010

Publisher's Description: Set against the gorgeous backdrop of Rome, Tom Rachman’s wry, vibrant debut follows the topsy-turvy private lives of the reporters, editors, and executives of an international English language newspaper as they struggle to keep it—and themselves—afloat.

Fifty years and many changes have ensued since the paper was founded by an enigmatic millionaire, and now, amid the stained carpeting and dingy office furniture, the staff’s personal dramas seem far more important than the daily headlines. Kathleen, the imperious editor in chief, is smarting from a betrayal in her open marriage; Arthur, the lazy obituary writer, is transformed by a personal tragedy; Abby, the embattled financial officer, discovers that her job cuts and her love life are intertwined in a most unexpected way. Out in the field, a veteran Paris freelancer goes to desperate lengths for his next byline, while the new Cairo stringer is mercilessly manipulated by an outrageous war correspondent with an outsize ego. And in the shadows is the isolated young publisher who pays more attention to his prized basset hound, Schopenhauer, than to the fate of his family’s quirky newspaper.As the era of print news gives way to the Internet age and this imperfect crew stumbles toward an uncertain future, the paper’s rich history is revealed, including the surprising truth about its founder’s intentions.

From the New York Times Book Review
"This first novel by Tom Rachman, a London-born journalist who has lived and worked all over the world, is so good I had to read it twice simply to figure out how he pulled it off. I still haven't answered that question, nor do I know how someone so young ... could have acquired such a precocious grasp of human foibles. The novel is alternately hilarious and heart-wrenching." — Christopher Buckley

Book of the Week (January 3, 2010)

2011-01-06T12:10:00.000-06:00

We have the audiobook and the print version of the recently published autobiography of Mark Twain.

Print Call Number: PS 1331 .A2 2010
Ask at the Main Access Services Desk for the Audio Book

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1
Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith

Read the NY Times Sunday Book Review

Publisher's Description: "I've struck it!" Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. "And I will give it away—to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography." Thus, after dozens of false starts and hundreds of pages, Twain embarked on his "Final (and Right) Plan" for telling the story of his life. His innovative notion—to "talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment"—meant that his thoughts could range freely. The strict instruction that many of these texts remain unpublished for 100 years meant that when they came out, he would be "dead, and unaware, and indifferent," and that he was therefore free to speak his "whole frank mind." The year 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of Twain's death. In celebration of this important milestone and in honor of the cherished tradition of publishing Mark Twain's works, UC Press is proud to offer for the first time Mark Twain's uncensored autobiography in its entirety and exactly as he left it. This major literary event brings to readers, admirers, and scholars the first of three volumes and presents Mark Twain's authentic and unsuppressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave as he intended.

Book of the Week (December 12, 2010)

2010-12-13T13:40:00.000-06:00

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)

2010-12-06T15:35:00.002-06:00

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)

2010-11-23T10:51:00.004-06:00

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)

2010-11-15T13:23:00.003-06:00

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)

2010-11-02T10:39:00.004-05:00

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)

2010-10-26T19:57:00.004-05:00

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)

2010-10-20T10:43:00.003-05:00

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)

2010-10-07T12:45:00.003-05:00

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)

2010-09-21T13:47:00.004-05:00

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)

2010-09-03T15:31:00.003-05:00

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)

2010-08-06T08:16:00.004-05:00

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)

2010-07-20T08:25:00.004-05:00

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)

2010-07-13T10:03:00.004-05:00

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)

2010-06-29T20:35:00.004-05:00

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)

2010-06-11T10:42:00.003-05:00

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)

2010-05-20T09:03:00.004-05:00

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)

2010-05-03T14:49:00.003-05:00

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)

2010-04-21T11:22:00.004-05:00

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)

2010-04-14T13:28:00.003-05:00

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)

2010-04-01T12:09:00.003-05:00

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

2010-03-09T08:34:00.004-06:00

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)

2010-02-18T12:33:00.004-06:00

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)

2010-02-10T16:09:00.003-06:00

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)

2010-02-01T12:24:00.002-06:00

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)

2010-01-11T12:28:00.004-06:00

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

Book of the Week (December 14, 2009)

2009-12-14T11:24:00.004-06:00

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: the True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession

By Allison Hoover Bartlett

Call Number: Z 992.8 B37 2009

Publisher's Description: A compelling narrative set within the strange and genteel world of rare-book collecting: the true story of an infamous book thief, his victims, and the man determined to catch him.Rare-book theft is even more widespread than fine-art theft. Most thieves, of course, steal for profit. John Charles Gilkey steals purely for the love of books.

In an attempt to understand him better, journalist Allison Hoover Bartlett plunged herself into the world of book lust and discovered just how dangerous it can be.Gilkey is an obsessed, unrepentant book thief who has stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of rare books from book fairs, stores, and libraries around the country. Ken Sanders is the self-appointed "bibliodick" (book dealer with a penchant for detective work) driven to catch him. Bartlett befriended both outlandish characters and found herself caught in the middle of efforts to recover hidden treasure. With a mixture of suspense, insight, and humor, she has woven this entertaining cat-and-mouse chase into a narrative that not only reveals exactly how Gilkey pulled off his dirtiest crimes, where he stashed the loot, and how Sanders ultimately caught him but also explores the romance of books, the lure to collect them, and the temptation to steal them.

Immersing the reader in a rich, wide world of literary obsession, Bartlett looks at the history of book passion, collection, and theft through the ages, to examine the craving that makes some people willing to stop at nothing to possess the books they love.

NY Times Sunday Book Review

Book of the Week (November 30, 2009)

2009-12-02T11:33:00.004-06:00

On Display in the Library lobby. Stop by the Library and check out the Anime exhibit!

Call Number: NC1766.J3 D73 2003

Anime explosion! : the what? why? & wow! of Japanese animation

By Patrick Drazen

Publisher's Description: Suddenly anime is . . . exploding. But where did Japanese animation come from, and what does it all mean? Written for fans, culture watchers, and perplexed outsiders, this is an engaging tour of the anime megaverse, from older arts and manga traditions to the works of modern directors like Miyazaki and Otomo. Read about anime standbys like giant robots, samurai, furry beasts, high school heroines, and gay/girl/fanboy love-even war and reincarnation, plus all of anime's major themes, styles, and conventions. At the end of the book are essays on 15 of fandom's favorite anime, including Evangelion, Esca-flowne, Sailor Moon, and Patlabor.

"A good resource and guide to the foundation, historical development and overall themes in Japanese animation and serves as an excellent reference source whether you are an established fan or a person who wants to learn about the cultural aspects of this specific and increasingly popular genre. It is an easy yet thorough read on the myriad of societal aspects and cultural references Japanese animation holds." — Active Anime

ABI Inform Complete Added to Library's Business Databases

2009-12-02T11:13:00.005-06:00

Two new components have been added to ABI Inform, one of the Library's business databases.

ABI/INFORM DatelineSearch a unique resource focusing on hard-to-find local and regional business news coverage of large corporations, privately held companies, local start-ups, executive profiles, marketing, finance, and industry news. Provides access to business information not typically found in national news sources. Contains news and analysis, information on local markets, and more gathered from major business tabloids, magazines, daily newspapers, wire services, and city, state, and regional business publications.

ABI/INFORM Trade & IndustrySearch more than 1200 business periodicals with a trade or industry focus. Provides users with the latest industry news, product and competitive information, marketing trends, and a wide variety of other topics. Contains publications on every major industry, including finance, insurance, transportation, construction, and many more.

Both are located in the ABI Inform Complete (Proquest) database, and are listed in the Business and Communication categories under “Article Databases by Subject”. The new additions are funded through the UW System/Council of UW Libraries.

Item of the Week (November 16, 2009)

2009-11-18T12:36:00.003-06:00

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)

2009-11-11T10:24:00.004-06:00

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)

2009-11-04T12:36:00.003-06:00

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

Book of the Week (October 28, 2009)

2009-10-27T18:39:00.003-05:00

In Honor of Halloween!

On the New Book Shelf in the Library
Call Number: BF 1566 .P38 2009

Witch Hunts in the Western World: Persecution and Punishment from the Inquisition through the Salem Trials

By Brian A. Pavlac

Publisher's Description: This comprehensive resource explores the intersection of religion, politics, and the supernatural that spawned the notorious witch hunts in Europe and the New World. Witch Hunts in the Western World: Persecution and Punishment from the Inquisition through the Salem Trials traces the evolution of western attitudes towards magic, demons, and religious nonconformity from the Roman Empire through the Age of Enlightenment, placing these chilling events into a wider social and historical context.

Witch hunts are discussed in eight narrative chapters by region, highlighting the cultural differences of the people who incited them as well as the key reforms, social upheavals, and intellectual debates that shaped European thought. Vivid accounts of trials and excerpts from the writings of both witch hunters and defenders throughout the Holy Roman Empire, France, the British Isles and colonies, Southern Europe, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe bring to life one of the most intriguing and shocking periods in Western history.

This in-depth and comprehensive resource explores the intersection of religion, politics, and the supernatural that spawned the notorious witch hunts in Europe and the New World. Witch Hunts in the Western World traces the evolution of western attitudes towards magic, demons, and religious nonconformity from the Roman Empire through the Age of Enlightenment, placing these chilling events into a wider social and historical context. Witch hunts are discussed in fascinating detail by region, highlighting the cultural differences of the people who incited them as well as the key reforms, social upheavals, and intellectual debates that shaped European thought. Vivid accounts of trials and excerpts from the writings of both witch hunters and defenders throughout the Holy Roman Empire, France, the British Isles and colonies, Southern Europe, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe bring to life one of the most intriguing and shocking periods in Western history.

Accessible narrative chapters make this a fascinating volume for general readers while offering a wealth of historic information for students and scholars. Features include a complete glossary of terms, timeline of major events, recommended reading selections, index, and black and white illustrations.

Book of the Week (October 14, 2009)

2009-10-15T12:32:00.003-05:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Library Lobby

Call Number TX 750 C27 2009

The Foie Gras Wars: How a 5,000-year-old Delicacy Inspired the World's Fiercest Food Fight

By Mark Caro

Publisher's Description: In announcing that he had stopped serving the fattened livers of force-fed ducks and geese at his world-renowned restaurant, influential chef Charlie Trotter heaved a grenade into a simmering food fight, and the Foie Gras Wars erupted. He said his morally minded menu revision was meant merely to raise consciousness, but what was he thinking when he also suggested — to Chicago Tribune reporter Mark Caro — that a rival four-star chef 's liver be eaten as "a little treat"? The reaction to Caro's subsequent front-page story was explosive, as Trotter's sizable hometown moved to ban the ancient delicacy known as foie gras while an international array of activists, farmers, chefs and politicians clashed forcefully and sometimes violently over whether fattening birds for the sake of scrumptious livers amounts to ethical agriculture or torture.

"Take a dish with a funny French name, add ducks, top it all off with celebrity chefs eating each other's livers, and that's entertainment," Caro writes. Yet as absurd as battling over bloated waterfowl organs might seem, the controversy struck a serious chord even among those who had never tasted the stuff. Reporting from the front lines of this passionate dining debate, Caro explores the questions we too often avoid: What is an acceptable amount of suffering for an animal that winds up on our plate? Is a duck that lives comfortably for twelve weeks before enduring a few weeks of periodic force-feedings worse off than a supermarket broiler chicken that never sees the light of day over its six to seven weeks on earth? Why is the animal-rights movement picking on such a rarefied dish when so many more chickens, pigs and cows arebeing processed on factory farms? Then again, how could the treatment of other animals possibly justify the practice of feeding a duck through a metal tube down its throat?

In his relentless yet good-humored pursuit of clarity, Caro takes us to the streets where activists use bullhorns, spray paint, Superglue and/or lawsuits as their weapons; the government chambers where politicians weigh the ducks' interests against their own; the restaurants and outlaw dining clubs where haute cuisine preparations coexist with Foie-lipops; and the U.S. and French farms whose operators maintain that they are honoring tradition, not abusing animals. Can foie gras survive after 5,000 years? Are we on the verge of a more enlightened era of eating? Can both answers be yes? Our appetites hang in the balance.

New Book of the Week (October 5, 2009)

2009-10-07T09:54:00.003-05:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Library lobby
Call Number: NA 105 .S79 2009

Time Honored: A Global View of Architectural Conservation

By John H. Stubbs

Publisher's Description: Time Honored is a comprehensive survey of the practice, theory, and structure of architectural heritage conservation throughout the world. Offering an argument for why architectural conservation is indispensable to modern life, Time Honored describes its parameters and evolution in an historical context, and then methodically presents approaches used in various countries, showing how historic preservation in the West differs from conservation in the rest of the world.

Illustrated throughout with over 300 photographs, drawings, maps, and charts. No other book navigates the global conservation programs, policies, and project types so completely.
This introductory volume of an ambitious series that will profile architectural conservation practices in different regions around the world lays a broad groundwork for the principles and practices of historic restoration and preservation.

Book of the Week (September 25, 2009)

2009-10-01T15:26:00.004-05:00

On the 3rd Floor of the Library in the Instructional Materials Center

Call Number: GV 865 .K67 W56 2009

You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?

By Jonah Winter

Publisher's Description: In this striking picture book biography, an old-timer tells us what made Sandy Koufax so amazing. We learn that the beginning of his career with the Brooklyn Dodgers was rocky, that he was shy with his teammates, and experienced discrimination as one of the only Jews in the game. We hear that he actually quit, only to return the next season—different—firing one rocket after another over the plate. We watch him refuse to play in the 1965 World Series because it is a Jewish high holy day. And we see him in pain because of an overused left arm, eventually retiring at the peak of his career. Finally, we are told that people are still “scratchin’ their heads over Sandy,” who remains a modest hero and a mystery to this day.

Library News (September 28, 2009)

2009-10-01T13:45:00.006-05:00

A selection of Audiobooks are now available for checkout at the UWSP Library!

The books are part of the Leisure Reading Collection and are available at the Main Desk on the 1st Floor of the Library.

Audio Titles in Leisure Reading include:

Playing for Pizza by John Grishman
Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
In Defense of Food: an eater's manifesto by Michael Pollan
House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Marley & Me by John Grogan
Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton
Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

Watch for additional titles soon!

Book of the Week (September 21, 2009)

2009-09-24T12:30:00.004-05:00

On the New Book Shelf behind the Reference Desk

Call Number: REF GE 42 .E533 2009 (2 volumes)

Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy

Publisher's Description: The field of environmental ethics is a new but now well-established sub-discipline of philosophy. Emerging in the mid-1970s, the field coalesced with the inaugural volume of the journal Environmental Ethics in 1979 and developed rapidly. By the turn of the century, most colleges and universities offered courses, if not major programs of study, in this important discipline.

The Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy addresses the needs of upper high school students, undergraduate researchers, teachers and professors, as well as general readers by examining the philosophical and ethical issues underlying contemporary and historical environmental issues, policies, and debates. More than 300 peer-reviewed articles cover concepts, institutions, topics, events and people, including global warming, animal rights, environmental movements, alternative energy, green chemistry, industrial ecology, and eco-sabotage. Additional features include 200 photographs and illustrations, thematic outline, annotated bibliography, and a comprehensive index.

Humanities International Complete

2009-09-18T12:04:00.005-05:00

Another New Badgerlink Database!

Humanities International Complete
Humanities International Complete provides full text of hundreds of journals, books and other published sources from around the world. The database includes all data from Humanities International Index™ (more than 2,200 journals and 2.71 million records) plus unique full-text content, much of which is not found in other databases. The database includes full text for more than 1030 journals.

Humanities International Complete is an invaluable resource for students, researchers, and educators interested in all aspects of the humanities, with worldwide content pertaining to literary, scholarly and creative thought. Major subject areas include literature, philosophy, the arts, history, culture and multi-disciplinary humanities research areas. The database also includes original creative works including poems, fiction, photographs, paintings and illustrations.

Use the Find Article Database link on the Library's home page or the Databases by Subject listings in the Humanities fields to try out this new tools for finding scholarly information in the Humanities.

Book of the Week (September 14, 2009)

2009-09-15T16:15:00.002-05:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Library
Call Number: PS 508 G39 .G39 2009

Gay American Autobiography: Writings from Whitman to Sedaris

Edited by David Bergman

Publisher's Description: In the first anthology to survey the full range of gay men’s autobiographical writing from Walt Whitman to the present, Gay American Autobiography draws excerpts from letters, journals, oral histories, memoirs, and autobiographies to provide examples of the best life writing over the last century and a half.

Volume editor David Bergman guides the reader chronologically through selected writings that give voice to every generation of gay writers since the nineteenth century, including a diverse array of American men of African, European, Jewish, Asian, and Latino heritage. Documenting a range of life experiences that encompass tattoo artists and academics, composers and drag queens, hustlers and clerks, it contains accounts of turn-of-the-century transvestites, gay rights activists, men battling AIDS, and soldiers attempting to come out in the army. Each selection provides important insight on the wide spectrum of ways gay men have defined and lived their lives, highlighting how self-awareness changes an author’s experience.

The volume includes an introduction by Bergman and headnotes for each of the nearly forty entries. Bringing many out-of-print and hard-to-find works to new readers, this challenging and comprehensive anthology chronicles American gay history and life struggles over the course of the past 150 years.

Book of the Week (September 7, 2009)

2009-09-09T10:17:00.006-05:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Library

Call Number: GV 1045 .M36 2009

Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists are Changing American Cities

By Jeff Mapes

Publisher's Description: In a world of growing traffic congestion, expensive oil, and threats of cataclysmic climate change, a grassroots movement is carving out a niche for bicycles on the streets of urban cityscapes. In Pedaling Revolution, Jeff Mapes explores the growing urban bike culture that is changing the look and feel of cities across the U.S. He rides with bike advocates who are taming the streets of New York City, joins the street circus that is Critical Mass in San Francisco, and gets inspired by the everyday folk pedaling in Amsterdam, the nirvana of American bike activists. Mapes, a seasoned political journalist and long-time bike commuter, explores the growth of bike advocacy while covering such issues as environmental safety, and health aspects of bicycling for short urban trips. His rich cast of characters includes Noah Budnick, a young bicycle advocate in New York who almost died in a crash near the Brooklyn Bridge, and Congressman James Oberstar (D-MN), who took to bicycling in his fifties and helped unleash a new flood of federal money for bikeways. Chapters set in Chicago and Portland show how bicycling has become a political act, with seemingly dozens of subcultures, and how cyclists, with the encouragement of local officials, are seizing streets back from motorists.

Pedaling Revolution is essential reading for the approximately one million people who regularly ride their bike to work or on errands, for anyone engaged in transportation, urban planning, sustainability and public health-and for drivers trying to understand why they're seeing so many cyclists. All will be interested in how urban bike activists are creating the future of how we travel and live in 21st century cities.

Review from the New York Times Sunday Book Review

Badgerlink Upgrades

2009-09-01T15:10:00.010-05:00

Library Expands Database Offerings

Badgerlink is celebrating its 10th Anniversary. It supplies Wisconsin universities, schools, libraries and all residents with access to many article and newspaper databases. Three major resources that are part of our library's holdings from EbscoHost were upgraded over the summer.

Academic Search Premier, an upgrade of Academic Search Elite, covers a broad range of academic disciplines and offers full-text access to an additional 2,500 journal titles. Business Source Premier, an upgrade of Business Source Elite offers full text of over 2,000 business journals, as well as market research reports, industry reports, company profiles and SWOT analyses. Newspaper Source Plus includes full text for over 1,500 papers including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor and the Chicago Tribune.

On a not so positive note, the subscription to Proquest National and Wisconsin newspapers was cancelled by Badgerlink. A majority of the newspapers covered are included in the Ebsco upgrades, but an analysis of possible replacement of the lost coverage is underway.

Book of the Week (August 24, 2009)

2009-08-26T09:34:00.004-05:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Library Lobby
Call Number:QC 903 .G53 2009

The Politics of Climate Change
By Anthony Giddens

Climate change differs from any other problem that, as collective humanity, we face today. If it goes unchecked, the consequences are likely to be catastrophic for human life on earth. Yet for most people, and for many policy-makers too, it tends to be a "back of the mind" issue. We recognise its importance and even its urgency, but for the most part it is swamped by more immediate concerns. Politicians have woken up to the dangers, but at the moment their responses are mainly on the level of gesture rather than being, as they have to be, both concrete and radical.

Political action and intervention, on local, national and international levels, is going to have a decisive effect on whether or not we can limit global warming, as well as how we adapt to that already occurring. At the moment, however, Anthony Giddens argues controversially, we do not have a systematic politics of climate change. Politics as usual won't allow us to deal with the problems we face, while the recipes of the main challenger to orthodox politics, the green movement, are flawed at source. Giddens introduces a range of new concepts and proposals to fill in the gap, and examines in depth the connections between climate change and energy security.

This book is likely to become a classic in the field. It will be of appeal to everyone concerned about how we can cope with what amounts to a crisis for our civilisation.

About the Author
Anthony Giddens is the former director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is now a member of the House of Lords. His many books include The Third Way and Europe in the Global Age.

New Book of the Week (July 20, 2009)

2009-07-20T09:39:00.003-05:00

On the New Book shelf in the Library

Call Number: HF 5415.1265 .C646 2009

Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at at Time

By Joel Comm

Pubishers' Description: Since 2006, forward–thinking companies like Apple, JetBlue, Whole Foods, and GM have discovered the instant benefits of leveraging the social media phenomenon known as Twitter to reach consumers directly, build their brand, and increase sales. Twitter is at the leading edge of the social media movement, allowing members to connect with one another in real time via short text messages–called "tweets"–that can be received either via the Twitter site or by e–mail, instant messenger, or cell phone. Many companies have started building entire teams within their organization dedicated solely to responding to tweets from consumers about their brand. And this is just the beginning.

In Twitter Power, Internet marketing and Web innovation expert Joel Comm shows businesses and marketers how to integrate Twitter into their existing marketing strategies to build a loyal following among Twitter members, expand awareness for their product or service, and even handle negative publicity due to angry or disappointed consumers. The book also presents case studies of companies on the forefront of the Twitter movement, to help reader′s develop their own social networking strategies. Twitter Power is the result of extensive testing and participation in the social networking community and is a must–have for any business that wants to keep up with the social media movement.

Book of the Week (June 22, 2009)

2009-06-25T09:17:00.002-05:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Library
Call Number: TX 754.O98 W35 2009

Sex, Death and Oysters: A Half-Shell Lover's World Tour
By Robb Walsh

Publisher's Description: When award-winning Texas food writer Robb Walsh discovers that the local Galveston Bay oysters are being passed off as Blue Points and Chincoteagues in other parts of the country, he decides to look into the matter. Thus begins a five-year journey into the culture of one of the world’s oldest delicacies.

Walsh’s through-the-looking-glass adventure takes him from oyster reefs to oyster bars and from corporate boardrooms to hotel bedrooms in a quest for the truth about the world’s most profitable aphrodisiac. On the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf coasts of the U.S., as well as the Canadian Maritimes, Ireland, England, and France, the author ingests thousands of oysters—raw, roasted, barbecued, and baked—all for the sake of making a fair comparison. He also considers the merits of a wide variety of accompanying libations, including tart white wines in Paris, Guinness in Galway, martinis in London, microbrews in the Pacific Northwest, and tequila in Texas.

Sex, Death and Oysters is a record of a gastronomic adventure with illustrations and recipes—a fascinating collection of the most exciting, instructive, poignant, and just plain weird experiences on a trip into the world of the most beloved and feared of all seafoods.

Book of the Week (June 8, 2009)

2009-06-10T10:56:00.005-05:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Library

Call number: BF 431 .N57 2009

Intelligence and How to Get It

by Richard Nisbett

Who are smarter, Asians or Westerners? Are there genetic explanations for racial differences in test scores? What makes some nationalities excel in engineering and others in music? Will math and science remain a largely male preserve. From the damning research of The Bell Curve to the more recent controversy surrounding geneticist James Watson's statements, one factor has been consistently left out of the equation: culture.

In the tradition of The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould, world-class social psychologist Richard E. Nisbett takes on the idea of intelligence as something that is biologically determined and impervious to culture--with vast implications for the role of education as it relates to social and economic development. Intelligence and How to Get It asserts that intellect is not primarily genetic but is principally determined by societal influences. Nisbett's commanding argument, superb marshaling of evidence, and fearless discussions of the controversial carve out new and exciting terrain in this hotly debated field.

Library Thing Entry

Book of the Week (May 25, 2009)

2009-05-27T10:33:00.004-05:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Library

Call Number: HV 6432.44 .N7 G34 2009

The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror

By Beverly Gage

Publisher's Description: Just after noon on September 16, 1920, as hundreds of workers poured onto Wall Street for their lunchtime break, a horse-drawn cart packed with dynamite exploded in a spray of metal and fire, turning the busiest corner of the financial center into a war zone. Thirty-nine people died and hundreds more lay wounded, making the Wall Street explosion the worst terrorist attack to that point in U.S. history.

In The Day Wall Street Exploded, Beverly Gage tells the story of that once infamous but now largely forgotten event. Based on thousands of pages of Bureau of Investigation reports, this historical detective saga traces the four-year hunt for the perpetrators, a worldwide effort that spread as far as Italy and the new Soviet nation. It also takes readers back into the decades-long but little-known history of homegrown terrorism that shaped American society a century ago. The book delves into the lives of victims, suspects, and investigators: world banking power J.P. Morgan, Jr.; labor radical "Big Bill" Haywood; anarchist firebrands Emma Goldman and Luigi Galleani; "America's Sherlock Holmes," William J. Burns; even a young J. Edgar Hoover.

It grapples as well with some of the most controversial events of its day, including the rise of the Bureau of Investigation, the federal campaign against immigrant "terrorists," the grassroots effort to define and protect civil liberties, and the establishment of anti-communism as the sine qua non of American politics. Many Americans saw the destruction of the World Trade Center as the first major terrorist attack on American soil, an act of evil without precedent. The Day Wall Street Exploded reminds us that terror, too, has a history.

About the Author: Beverly Gage teaches U.S. history at Yale University. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, Slate.com, The Nation, and The Washington Post. She has been featured as a guest commentator on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and in Time magazine.

Library Thing Link

Book of the Week (April 27, 2009)

2009-04-30T13:12:00.005-05:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Library lobby

Call Number: D 756.5 .B7 K67 2009

With Wings Like Eagles

By Michael Korda

Publisher's Description: Michael Korda's brilliant work of history takes the reader back to the summer of 1940, when fewer than three thousand young fighter pilots of the Royal Air Force—often no more than nine hundred on any given day—stood between Hitler and the victory that seemed almost within his grasp. Korda re-creates the intensity of combat in "the long, delirious, burning blue" of the sky above southern England, and at the same time—perhaps for the first time—traces the entire complex web of political, diplomatic, scientific, industrial, and human decisions during the 1930s that led inexorably to the world's first, greatest, and most decisive air battle. Korda deftly interweaves the critical strands of the story—the invention of radar (the most important of Britain's military secrets); the developments by such visionary aircraft designers as R. J. Mitchell, Sidney Camm, and Willy Messerschmitt of the revolutionary, all-metal, high-speed monoplane fighters the British Spitfire and Hurricane and the German Bf 109; the rise of the theory of air bombing as the decisive weapon of modern warfare and the prevailing belief that "the bomber will always get through" (in the words of British prime minister Stanley Baldwin).

As Nazi Germany rearmed swiftly after 1933, building up its bomber force, only one man, the central figure of Korda's book, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, the eccentric, infuriating, obstinate, difficult, and astonishingly foresighted creator and leader of RAF Fighter Command, did not believe that the bomber would always get through and was determined to provide Britain with a weapon few people wanted to believe was needed or even possible. Dowding persevered—despite opposition, shortage of funding, and bureaucratic infighting—to perfect the British fighter force just in time to meet and defeat the German onslaught.

Korda brings to life the extraordinary men and women on both sides of the conflict, from such major historical figures as Winston Churchill, Neville Chamberlain, and Reichsmarschall Herman Göring (and his disputatious and bitterly feuding generals) to the British and German pilots, the American airmen who joined the RAF just in time for the Battle of Britain, the young airwomen of the RAF, the ground crews who refueled and rearmed the fighters in the middle of heavy German raids, and such heroic figures as Douglas Bader, Josef František, and the Luftwaffe aces Adolf Galland and his archrival Werner Mölders.

Winston Churchill memorably said about the Battle of Britain, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." Here is the story of "the few," and how they prevailed against the odds, deprived Hitler of victory, and saved the world during three epic months in 1940.

Book of the Week (April 20, 2009)

2009-04-24T14:01:00.002-05:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Library
Call Number: HD 30.2 J375 2009

What Would Google Do?
By Jeff Jarvis

Publisher's Description: A bold and vital book that asks and answers the most urgent question of today: What Would Google Do?

In a book that's one part prophecy, one part thought experiment, one part manifesto, and one part survival manual, internet impresario and blogging pioneer Jeff Jarvis reverse-engineers Google—the fastest-growing company in history—to discover forty clear and straightforward rules to manage and live by.

At the same time, he illuminates the new worldview of the internet generation: how it challenges and destroys, but also opens up vast new opportunities. His findings are counterintuitive, imaginative, practical, and above all visionary, giving readers a glimpse of how everyone and everything—from corporations to governments, nations to individuals—must evolve in the Google era.

Along the way, he looks under the hood of a car designed by its drivers, ponders a worldwide university where the students design their curriculum, envisions an airline fueled by a social network, imagines the open-source restaurant, and examines a series of industries and institutions that will soon benefit from this book's central question.

The result is an astonishing, mind-opening book that, in the end, is not about Google. It's about you.

Library Thing entry

Book of the Week (April 15, 2009)

2009-04-15T11:52:00.003-05:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Library

Call Number: SB 455.3 E25 2009

Our Life in Gardens

By Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd

In honor of Spring - which seems to have finally arrived in Wisconsin!

From the Publisher: Renowned garden designers Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd begin their entertaining, fascinating, and unexpectedly moving book about the life and garden they share. The book contains much sound information about the cultivation of plants and their value in the landscape, and invaluable advice about Eck and Winterrowd’s area of expertise: garden design.

There are chapters about the various parts of their garden, and sections about particular plants—roses and lilacs, snowdrops and cyclamen—and vegetables. The authors also discuss the development of their garden over time, and the dark issue that weighs more and more on their minds: its eventual decline and demise. Our Life in Gardens is a deeply satisfying perspective on gardening, and on life.

Book of the Week (April 8, 2009)

2009-04-07T10:45:00.004-05:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Library's Lobby
Call Number: LD 3071 .L33 R66 2009

The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University

By Kevin Roose

Publisher's Description: No drinking.No smoking.No cursing.No dancing.No R-rated movies. Kevin Roose wasn't used to rules like these. As a sophomore at Brown University, he spent his days drinking fair-trade coffee, singing in an a cappella group, and fitting right in with Brown's free-spirited, ultra-liberal student body. But when Roose leaves his Ivy League confines to spend a semester at Liberty University, a conservative Baptist school in Lynchburg, Virginia, obedience is no longer optional.

Liberty is the late Reverend Jerry Falwell's "Bible Boot Camp" for young evangelicals, his training ground for the next generation of America's Religious Right. Liberty's ten thousand undergraduates take courses like Evangelism 101, hear from guest speakers like Sean Hannity and Karl Rove, and follow a forty-six-page code of conduct that regulates every aspect of their social lives. Hoping to connect with his evangelical peers, Roose decides to enroll at Liberty as a new transfer student, leaping across the God Divide and chronicling his adventures in this daring report from the front lines of America's culture war.

His journey takes him from an evangelical hip-hop concert to choir practice at Falwell's legendary Thomas Road Baptist Church. He experiments with prayer, participates in a spring break mission trip to Daytona Beach (where he learns to preach the gospel to partying coeds), and pays a visit to Every Man's Battle, an on-campus support group for chronic masturbators. He meets pastors' kids, closet doubters, Christian rebels, and conducts what would be the last print interview of Rev. Falwell's life. Hilarious and heartwarming, respectful and thought-provoking, The Unlikely Disciple will inspire and entertain believers and nonbelievers alike.

About the Author: Kevin Roose is a senior at BrownUniversity, where he studies English literature and writes regular columns for the Brown Daily Herald. His work has been featured in Esquire, SPIN, mental_floss, and other publications. You can visit his Web site at www.kevinroose.com.

Book of the Week (March 23, 2009)

2009-03-26T12:42:00.004-05:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Library's lobby

Call Number: PS 3612 .E34295 P56 2009

The Piano Teacher: a novel

By Janice Y. K. Lee

Publisher's Description: In the sweeping tradition of The English Patient, a gripping tale of love and betrayal set in war-torn Hong Kong.

In 1942, Will Truesdale, an Englishman newly arrived in Hong Kong, falls headlong into a passionate relationship with Trudy Liang, a beautiful Eurasian socialite. But their love affair is soon threatened by the invasion of the Japanese as World War II overwhelms their part of the world. Will is sent to an internment camp, where he and other foreigners struggle daily for survival. Meanwhile, Trudy remains outside, forced to form dangerous alliances with the Japanese—in particular, the malevolent head of the gendarmerie, whose desperate attempts to locate a priceless collection of Chinese art lead to a chain of terrible betrayals.

Ten years later, Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong and is hired by the wealthy Chen family as their daughter’s piano teacher. A provincial English newlywed, Claire is seduced by the heady social life of the expatriate community. At one of its elegant cocktail parties, she meets Will, to whom she is instantly attracted—but as their affair intensifies, Claire discovers that Will’s enigmatic persona hides a devastating past. As she begins to understand the true nature of the world she has entered, and long-buried secrets start to emerge, Claire learns that sometimes the price of survival is love.

About the Author: Janice Y. K. Lee was born and raised in Hong Kong and went to boarding school in the United States before attending Harvard College. She is a former features editor at Elle and Mirabella magazines in New York. The Piano Teacher is her first book.

Read the New York Times Book Review by Lisa Fugard

New Book of the Week (March 9, 2009)

2009-03-09T12:13:00.004-05:00

The library has multiple copies of this new book by UWSP's own Professor Charles Long. You can find a copy to check out in the 5th floor stacks, or browse the title in the Reference Room on the 1st floor.

Call Number: QL 719 .W5 L66 2008

The Wild Mammals of Wisconsin
By Charles A. Long

Publisher's Description: The latest book by Professor Charles A. Long "The Wild Mammals of Wisconsin" is a comprehensive treatise on mammals found in Wisconsin, updating information on classification, identification, geography and other concepts of their biology. These include ecology (and status), habitats (including dens and nests), reproduction (both development and aging), and estimates of home range, movements, and density (with seasonality whenever possible). Geographic and micro-geographic variation of races and species are described, based on thousands of preserved specimens, many listed as essential specimens examined. The analysis also includes Upper Michigan, northern Illinois, and occasionally even eastern Minnesota.

The problem of appropriate names is discussed, with fair attention to diverse opinions. Taxonomic synonymies include original names, invalid homonyms and synonyms that have been used, and the names deemed acceptable. The phylogeny of higher taxonomic groups, such as families and orders, provide curious histories and adaptations. Pre-historic and exterminated mammals are described, including the discovery of an elk-moose. Modern concepts, such as evolution and speciation and the biome concept are introduced. Genetics, physiology, animal diseases, relation of hosts to humanity, ecological succession, and zoogeography are discussed.

An especially appealing section on former naturalists who studied Wisconsin mammals includes some surprises: John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Hartley H. T. Jackson, and the first woman mammalogist - Martha Maxwell of Portage. Detailed accounts are given for 69 species (not counting the few now exterminated), in 17 families and seven orders. A glossary, four appendices, and a magnificent bibliography are at the end. Countless illustrations include grand wildlife artists of past and present. To quote Long: "All together we hope to express tribute to nature, and wildlife poetry and art."

Book of the Week (February 16, 2009)

2009-02-19T09:33:00.003-06:00

In the IMC collection on the 3rd floor of the Library
Call number :PZ7 G1273 GR 2008

The Graveyard Book

By Neil Gaiman

Winner of the Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children's literature in 2008 and currently #1 on the NY Times best selling books for young adults.

Publisher's Description: Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy-an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family. . . .

About the Author: Neil Gaiman is the author of the New York Times bestselling children's book Coraline and of the picture books The Wolves in the Walls and The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, illustrated by Dave McKean. He wrote the script for the film MirrorMask and is also the author of critically acclaimed and award-winning novels and short stories for adults, as well as the Sandman series of graphic novels. Among his many awards are the Newbery Award, World Fantasy Award, the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Bram Stoker Award.

New York Times Book Review of The Graveyard Book

Book of the Week (February 9, 2009)

2009-02-09T09:28:00.005-06:00

Hot Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How it can Renew America

By Thomas L. Friedman

Call Number: GE 197 .F76 2008

Publisher's Description: Thomas L. Friedman's No. 1 bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see the world, and globalization, in a new way. With his latest book, Friedman brings a fresh and provocative outlook to another pressing issue: the interlinked crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy--both of which could poison our world if we do not act quickly and collectively.

"Green is the new red, white, and blue," Friedman declares, and proposes that an ambitious national strategy--which he calls geo-greenism--is not only what we need to save the planet from overheating, it is what we need to make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure in the coming E.C.E.--the Energy-Climate Era. Green-oriented practices and technologies, established at scale everywhere from Washington to Wal-Mart, are both the only way to mitigate climate change and the best way for America to "get its groove back"--to "reknit America at home, reconnect America abroad, retool America for the new century, and restore America to its natural place in the global order."

As in The World Is Flat and his previous bestseller The Lexus and the Olive Tree, he explains the future we are facing through an illuminating account of recent events. He explains how 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the flattening of the world by the Internet, which has brought three billion new consumers onto the world stage, have combined to bring the climate and energy issues to main street. But they have not really gone down main street yet. Indeed, it is Friedman's view that we are not really having the green revolution that the press keeps touting, or, if we are, "it is the only revolution in history," he says, "where no one got hurt." No, to the contrary, argues Friedman, we're actually having a "green party." We have not even begun to be serious yet about the speed and scale of change that is required.

With all that in mind, Friedman lays out his argument that if we are going to avoid the worst disruptions looming before us as we enter the Energy-Climate Era, we are going to need several disruptive breakthroughs in the clean-technology sphere--disruptive in the transformational sense. He explores what enabled the disruptive breakthroughs that created the IT (Information Technology) revolution that flattened the world in information terms and then shows how a similar set of disruptive breakthroughs could spark the ET--Energy Technology--revolution. Time and again, though, Friedman shows why it is both necessary and desirous for America to lead this revolution--with the first green president, a green New Deal, and spurred by the Greenest Generation--and why meeting the green challenge of the twenty-first century could transform America every bit as meeting the Red challenge, that of Communism, did in the twentieth century.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L. Friedman--fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the world we live in today.

Book of the Week (January 26, 2009)

2009-01-27T10:58:00.003-06:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Library lobby
Call Number: HD 9940.A2 T56 2009

Where Am I Wearing? A Global Tour to the Countries, Factories, and People that Make Our Clothes

By Kelsey Timmerman

Product Description: Ninety-seven percent of our clothes are made overseas. Yet globalization makes it difficult to know much about the origin of the products we buy—beyond the standard "Made in" label. So journalist and blogger Kelsey Timmerman decided to visit each of the countries and factories where his five favorite items of clothing were made and meet the workers. He knew the basics of globalized labor—the forces, processes, economics, and politics at work. But what was lost among all those facts and numbers was an understanding of the lives, personalities, hopes, and dreams of the people who made his clothes.

In Bangladesh, he went undercover as an under-wear buyer, witnessed the child labor industry in action, and spent the day with a single mother who was forced to send her eldest son to Saudi Arabia to help support her family. In Cambodia, he learned the difference between those who wear Levi's and those who make them. In China, he saw the costs of globalization and the dark side of the Chinese economic miracle.

Bouncing between two very different worlds—that of impoverished garment workers and his own Western lifestyle—Timmerman puts a personal face on the controversial issues of globalization and outsourcing. Whether bowling with workers in Cambodia or riding a roller coaster with laborers in Bangladesh, he bridges the gap between impersonal economic forces and the people most directly affected by them. For anyone who wants to truly understand the real issues and the human costs of globalization, Where Am I Wearing? is an indispensable and unforgettable journey.

Want to learn more? Visit the Where Am I Wearing blog

Book of the Week (January 5, 2009)

2009-01-08T12:26:00.003-06:00

On the New Book Shelf in the Library

Call Number: NA 7117.5 .R66 2008

Green Homes: Case Studies for the 21st Century

by E. Ashley Rooney

Publisher's Description: Building a green home or redesigning an existing home to be green is more than energy efficiency and preservation of natural resources. It is about integrating cost-effective design and materials to better the well being of inhabitants.

Explore the many ways architects have achieved sustainability, incorporating commonsense strategies of solar orientation, natural ventilation, recycling of household water, and making use of cutting-edge materials and building technologies such as earth sheltering, thermal mass, super insulation, geothermal heating and cooling, and photovoltaic electrical generation - all without compromising their aesthetic goals.

Here are more than 50 green homes in North America, shown in 400 color photographs. Many have won major awards; others have been the subject of media attention and tours. This book will help the homeowner, builder, and architect design homes that are more energy efficient, reduce consumption and emissions, and incorporate sustainable materials. The residences presented here demonstrate the range of potential solutions and ideas for building a sustainable house.

Book of the Week (December 15, 2008)

2008-12-17T10:33:00.003-06:00

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)

2008-11-26T11:23:00.004-06:00

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)

2008-11-18T12:41:00.003-06:00

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)

2008-11-03T09:14:00.002-06:00

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)

2008-10-20T09:19:00.002-05:00

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)

2008-10-13T10:22:00.002-05:00

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)

2008-10-06T12:56:00.006-05:00

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)

2008-09-30T09:36:00.004-05:00

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)

2008-09-25T10:44:00.007-05:00

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)

2008-09-15T14:46:00.003-05:00

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)

2008-09-08T08:35:00.004-05:00

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)

2008-08-27T10:48:00.003-05:00

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)

2008-08-04T09:41:00.002-05:00

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.