Book of the Week (April 2, 2007)

On Display on top of the New Book shelf collection until 4/13, then in the Leisure Reading Collection in the main library's lobby

Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu

By J. Maarten Troost

Publisher's Description: After his misadventures among the natives of heat-blasted Kiribati, memorably chronicled in The Sex Lives of Cannibals, it would be understandable for Maarten Troost to be in no hurry to return to the South Pacific. But then in a strangely appropriate place for a modern epiphany, the aisle of a Super Stop & Shop, he discovers that he feels remarkably out of place among the trappings of twenty-first-century American life, and longs to return to simpler days when a shortage of beer numbered among his chief concerns.So off again he goes, this time to Vanuatu, with his girlfriend-turned-wife, Sylvia. Like Tarawa, Vanuatu proves to be a fallen paradise, breathtaking in its beauty but also maddeningly backward. With his trademark sardonic wit, Troost relates his run-ins with Mother Nature (volcanoes, typhoons, earthquakes, giant centipedes) and the kava-besotted, clothing-optional lifestyle of the islanders. Perhaps as a result of these customs, Sylvia gets pregnant, and soon their son is born in slightly-more-civilized Fiji. As they contend with new parenthood in a country known for cannibalism and government coups, their boy begins to take quite naturally to island living, in complete contrast to his dad.A rip-roaringly funny account of life in the farthest corners of the world, Getting Stoned with Savages again reveals the wry appreciation of the absurd and infectious joy of discovery that make Troost one of the most engaging and original travel writers around.

Book of the Week (March 26, 2007)

On the New Book Shelf
Call Number: PS 3563 .O8745 Z75 2006

In Search of Willie Morris

By Larry L. King

Publisher's Description: The intimate biography of the charismatic, hugely talented, influential, and troubled Willie Morris-star editor of Harper's in the 1960s and author of North Toward Home and My Dog Skip. Willie Morris, the famously talented-and complex-writer and editor, helped to remake American journalism and wrote more than a dozen books, with several classics among them. His time at the head of Harper's magazine, where he was made editor at age thirty-two, is legendary. With writers like David Halberstam, Norman Mailer, and author of this book, Larry L. King, Harper's became the magazine to read and the place to be in print. Morris was friend, colleague, or mentor to a remarkable cast of writers-William Styron, James Jones, Truman Capote, George Plimpton, Gay Talese, and later in life, Barry Hannah, Donna Tartt, John Grisham, and Winston Groom. In Search of Willie Morris is a wise, sometimes raucous, and moving look at Morris that conveys the energy and activity of the years at the top and the troubles, talents, late rallies, and mysteries of his later life. Written with the affection of a close friend and the critical insight of a fellow writer, it is an absorbing biography of an extraordinarily gifted literary man and raconteur who inspired both wonder and frustration, and who left behind a legacy and a body of work that endures.

Book of the Week (March 12, 2007)

On the New Book Shelf

Call Number: E 184 .H66 N397 2006

Enrique's Journey

By Sonia Nazario

Publisher's Description: In this astonishing true story, award-winning journalist Sonia Nazario recounts the unforgettable odyssey of a Honduran boy who braves unimaginable hardship and peril to reach his mother in the United States. When Enrique is five years old, his mother, Lourdes, too poor to feed her children, leaves Honduras to work in the United States. The move allows her to send money back home to Enrique so he can eat better and go to school past the third grade.Lourdes promises Enrique she will return quickly. But she struggles in America. Years pass. He begs for his mother to come back. Without her, he becomes lonely and troubled. When she calls, Lourdes tells him to be patient. Enrique despairs of ever seeing her again. After eleven years apart, he decides he will go find her.Enrique sets off alone from Tegucigalpa, with little more than a slip of paper bearing his mother’s North Carolina telephone number. Without money, he will make the dangerous and illegal trek up the length of Mexico the only way he can–clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains.With gritty determination and a deep longing to be by his mother’s side, Enrique travels through hostile, unknown worlds. Each step of the way through Mexico, he and other migrants, many of them children, are hunted like animals. Gangsters control the tops of the trains. Bandits rob and kill migrants up and down the tracks. Corrupt cops all along the route are out to fleece and deport them. To evade Mexican police and immigration authorities, they must jump onto and off the moving boxcars they call El Tren de la Muerte–The Train of Death. Enrique pushes forward using his wit, courage, and hope–and the kindness of strangers. It is an epic journey, one thousands of immigrant children make each year to find their mothers in the United States.Based on the Los Angeles Times newspaper series that won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for feature writing and another for feature photography, Enrique’s Journey is the timeless story of families torn apart, the yearning to be together again, and a boy who will risk his life to find the mother he loves.

Book of the Week (March 5, 2007)

In Honor of Women's History Month, on the new book shelf in the library:
Call Number: E 342.1 .M2 A45 2006

A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation

By Catherine Allgor


Publisher's Description: When the roar of the Revolution had finally died down, a new generation of politicians was summoned to the Potomac to assemble the nation’s capital. Into that unsteady atmosphere—which would soon enough erupt into another conflict with Britain—Dolley Madison arrived, alongside her husband, James. Within a few years, she had mastered both the social and political intricacies of the city, and by her death in 1849 was the most celebrated person in Washington. And yet, to most Americans, she’s best known for saving a portrait from the burning White House.

Why did her contemporaries so admire a lady so little known today? In A Perfect Union, acclaimed historian Catherine Allgor reveals how Dolley manipulated the contstraints of her gender to construct an American democratic ruling style and to achieve her husband’s political goals. By emphasizing cooperation over coercion—building bridges instead of bunkers—she left us with not only an important story about our past but a model for a modern form of politics.