Book of the Week (March 23, 2009)

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)

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)

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)

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.