Book of the Week (Oct 4, 2010)

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

By Michael J. Trinklein

Call Number: E 179.5 T87 2010

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

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

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

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

Visit the Wisconsin author's Lost States blog

Book of the Week (September 20, 2010)

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

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

By Jamie Ford, Read by Feodor Chin

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

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

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

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

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

New Book of the Week (September 3, 2010)

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

By William Powers

Call Number: HM 851 .P688 2010

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

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

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

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

New York Times Sunday Book Review of Hamlet's Blackberry

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

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

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

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

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