Common As Air; Revolution, Art , and Ownership By Lewis Hyde

By Lewis Hyde
"Marc Helprin's Digital Barbarism: A Writer's Manifesto argued vehemently last year that when it comes to ownership, intellectual property should be treated like all other property, like a business or a piece of real estate. But his argument came across as little more than an ill-tempered yawp. Now here is MacArthur Fellow Hyde with a different take. Drawing on the writings and lives of the Founding Fathers—above all Benjamin Franklin—Hyde argues convincingly that intellectual property is radically different from real property. Patents and copyrights are a privilege, not a right, and for public, not private, benefit: they recompense inventors and authors for their labor by awarding a "stinted" monopoly (one with conditions), but afterward the fruit of their labors becomes part of the "cultural commons"—open to all. Hyde presents horror stories about current practices: a DNA sequence patented before a use is even found for it, King's "dream" speech not available in the public domain, heirs prohibiting scholars from using a writer's letters when they disagree with the scholar's take on the subject. VERDICT Cogently argued, Common is a compelling take on an important subject for a democracy like ours." (LJ Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

At Home; A Short History Of Private Life

By Bill Bryson
"Bryson (A Short History of Everything) takes readers on a tour of his house, a rural English parsonage, and finds it crammed with 10,000 years of fascinating historical bric-a-brac. Each room becomes a starting point for a free-ranging discussion of rarely noticed but foundational aspects of social life. A visit to the kitchen prompts disquisitions on food adulteration and gluttony; a peek into the bedroom reveals nutty sex nostrums and the horrors of premodern surgery; in the study we find rats and locusts; a stop in the scullery illuminates the put-upon lives of servants. Bryson follows his inquisitiveness wherever it goes, from Darwinian evolution to the invention of the lawnmower, while savoring eccentric characters and untoward events (like Queen Elizabeth I's pilfering of a subject's silverware). There are many guilty pleasures, from Bryson's droll prose--"What really turned the Victorians to bathing, however, was the realization that it could be gloriously punishing"--to the many tantalizing glimpses behind closed doors at aristocratic English country houses. In demonstrating how everything we take for granted, from comfortable furniture to smoke-free air, went from unimaginable luxury to humdrum routine, Bryson shows us how odd and improbable our own lives really are."  (PW Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

American Terroir; Savoring The Flavors Of our Woods, Waters, And Fields

By Rowan Jacobsen
"The belief that individual plots of land can produce significant differences in crops has become an obsession for contemporary gastronomes. Terroir, a French word initially referring to vineyards, now applies to virtually every agricultural product: animal, vegetable, and mineral. Restaurant menus promote their kitchens’ offerings with names of local farms, and consumers demand orthodoxy in sourcing of everything from steak to succotash to salt. Jacobsen documents some of North America’s best growing places and producers. He describes apiculture and honeys in Florida and Arizona. He discovers the best avocados in Mexico’s Michoacán. He finds superior cheeses and maple syrup in Vermont. Northeast Canada yields both mussels and mushrooms. And Jacobsen sources the world’s most esteemed coffee beans from the mountains of Panama. In his travels to these far-flung farms, Jacobsen shows that it is as much farmers’ dedication to their profession that counts as the soil itself." ( Booklist Reviews.)   Check Our Catalog

Private Life

By Jane Smiley
In 1905 Missouri, quiet 27-year-old Margaret Mayfield marries Capt. Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early, a naval officer and an astronomer who is considered a genius and a little odd. By the time they make their way by train to their new life in California, the reader understands that Captain Early is actually somewhat crazy in his obsessions. This is a conclusion that Margaret herself is slow to draw, even as their lives together grow more troubled. Smiley (Ten Days in the Hills) reminds us how difficult it was for all but the boldest women to extract themselves from suffocating life situations 100 years ago. While dealing with intimate matters, this novel also has an epic sweep, moving from Missouri in the 1880s to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, up to the Japanese internment camps of World War II, with the scenes from Margaret's Missouri childhood reminiscent of Willa Cather. VERDICT Not a highly dramatic page-turner but rather a subtle and thoughtful portrayal of a quiet woman's inner strength, this may especially appeal to readers who have enjoyed Marilynne Robinson's recent Gilead and Home. (LJ Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

The Tiger; A True Story Of Vengeance And Survival By John Vaillant

By John Vaillant
"The grisly rampage of a man-eating Amur, or Siberian, tiger and the effort to trap it frame this suspenseful and majestically narrated introduction to a world that few people, even Russians, are familiar with. Northeast of China lies Russia's Primorye province, "the meeting place of four distinct bioregions"–taiga, Mongolian steppes, boreal forests, and Korean tropics--and where the last Amur tigers live in an uneasy truce with an equally diminished human population scarred by decades of brutal Soviet politics and postperestroika poverty. Over millennia of shared history, the indigenous inhabitants had worked out a tenuous peace with the Amur, a formidable hunter that can grow to over 500 pounds and up to nine feet long, but the arrival of European settlers, followed by decades of Soviet disregard for the wilds, disrupted that balance and led to the overhunting of tigers for trophies and for their alleged medicinal qualities. Vaillant (The Golden Spruce) has written a mighty elegy that leads readers into the lair of the tiger and into the heart of the Kremlin to explain how the Amur went from being worshipped to being poached."  (PW Reviews)  Check Our  Catalog

Room

By Emma Donoghue
"Five-year-old Jack and his Ma enjoy their long days together, playing games, watching TV, and reading favorite stories. Through Jack's narration, it slowly becomes apparent that their pleasant days are shrouded by a horrifying secret. Seven years ago, his 19-year-old Ma was abducted and has since been held captive—in one small room. To her abductor she is nothing more than a sex slave, with Jack as a result, yet she finds the courage to raise her child with constant love under these most abhorrent circumstances. He is a bright child—bright enough, in fact, to help his mother successfully carry out a plan of escape. Once they get to the outside world, the sense of relief is short lived, as Jack is suddenly faced with an entirely new worldview (with things he never imagined, like other people, buildings, and even family) while his mother attempts to deal with her own psychological trauma. VERDICT Gripping, riveting, and close to the bone, this story grabs you and doesn't let go. Donoghue (The Sealed Letter) skillfully builds a suspenseful narrative evoking fear and hate and hope—but most of all, the triumph of a mother's ferocious love."  (LJ Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

Last Call; The Rise And Fall Of Prohibition

By Daniel Okrent
"Okrent provides a remarkable breakdown of Prohibition, that uniquely American attempt to banish the sale and consumption of alcohol. In 1919, a constitutional amendment prohibiting the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within the U.S. was ratified and scheduled to go into effect the following year. Okrent traces the roots of the temperance movement, the suffrage movement, and the anti-immigrant sentiment that added sustained fuel to the cause. He also unravels the complicated politics of the era, providing insight into why the Eighteenth Amendment was pushed through and how it was eventually repealed. After Prohibition went into effect, in 1920, the course of American life and culture was profoundly altered in both large and small ways. Everyone knows about the rise of the gangster era, but what is less well documented are the reactions and the responses of ordinary American citizens. Okrent asks and answers some important questions in this fascinating exploration of a failed social experiment." (Booklist Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

Empire Of The Summer Moon

By S.C. Gwynne
"An appropriately fast-paced life of Comanche leader Quanah Parker and his band, the last Native free riders on the plains.Former Time editor and correspondent Gwynne (The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI, 1993, etc.) approaches Parker's life as news, opening with an intriguing gambit—namely, that Parker, who died in 1911, had an Anglo mother who, as he said, "love Indian and wild life so well, no want to go back to white folks." Where his mixed blood might have been a demerit in other Indian groups—and certainly in white society of the time—Parker rose quickly to the leadership of the Quahadi band of Comanches as a young man of perhaps only 20. As Gwynne notes, the Comanches kept the Spanish empire from spreading onto the plains beyond Texas, making even the Apaches farther west seem a mild threat by comparison. The Quahadi band, whom he characterizes as "magnificently aloof," were the toughest of the lot. When Americans entered the picture in the 1830s and beyond, the Quahadis fought them so hard that by the 1870s whole counties formerly settled by Texas ranchers and farmers were depopulated. Parker's tough leadership eventually proved no match for the combined weight of Texas Rangers, the U.S. Army and other heavily armed enemies, who finally broke the Quahadi resistance after removing other Comanche bands to reservations and reducing their number to no more than 2,000. After surrender, Parker continued to insist on preserving Comanche ways, particularly an illegal peyote cult. Gwynne considers Parker alongside Geronimo, the better-known Apache leader, and finds the latter wanting in the comparison. Parker remained a leader of his people to the end, writes the author, one who "looked resolutely forward toward something better" rather than surrendering to embitterment or allowing himself to be put on display as a wild Indian now tamed. "I no monkey," he insisted.A welcome contribution to the history of Texas, Westward expansion and Native America."  (Publisher Description)  Check Our Catalog

Supreme Power; Franklin Roosevelt VS. The Supreme Court By Jeff Shesol

By Jeff Shesol
"Among the governmental principles US citizens cherish most is the separation of powers, a potent assurance against centralized power. Of the three branches, the Supreme Court enjoys the utmost public respect because it is the final arbiter of the Constitution; therefore, Americans are leery of any inappropriate influence. In 1937, the Court withstood an overt challenge to its independence when Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced a measure to expand its membership merely to uphold his New Deal measures. Forced into a constitutional melee, the Court, led by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, accepted the challenge with aplomb. The bench ultimately emerged victorious through a deft combination of intellectual and political shrewdness. Shesol (American studies, Princeton) skillfully and adroitly chronicles events with an incisive attention to detail and an acute literary focus on the "story" without compromising either abstract ideas of constitutional law or political maneuvering. Commendably, the narrative is not a morality play; in this study, the characters make their cases, and readers make the final judgments. This rare volume, appropriate for both academic and public audiences, seamlessly merges scholarly history with unforced readability."   (Choice Reviews)  (Check Our Catalog)

The Sound Of A Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Bailey

By Elisabeth Bailey

"At age 34, Bailey was stricken with a mysterious virus while on a trip to Europe. Her healthy life had been full of activity, and now just the thought of getting up to get something was exhaustive. When a friend found some violets and brought her one in a pot, she also added a live snail below the violet's leaves. Bailey wondered why she needed a snail, but after square holes began to appear in a letter propped on the violet's pot, it occurred to Bailey that the snail needed food. She put a withered flower in the saucer below, and when the snail began to eat, Bailey realized that she could hear it eating—it was the sound of someone very small munching on celery. Soon the author realized she was attached, the snail providing an oasis of calm for her frantic and frustrated thoughts. She worried that the snail's world was too artificial, so her caregiver created a woodland terrarium. Not only did the snail have a new home but Bailey had a new game: hide-and-seek with a snail. She began to read about snails, learning from scientists, early naturalists, poets, and writers, and found herself beginning to understand a snail's world. And when her snail began to lay eggs, Bailey discovered that she might be the first person to record observations of a snail tending its eggs. This beautiful little book will not only make snail lovers of its readers, it will make them appreciate the small things in life"  (Booklist Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

Cleopatra: A Life

By Stacy Schiff
"Pulitzer Prize-winning author Schiff (Véra [Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov]) offers another fine biography here. Though few reliable records remain regarding the Egyptian queen, this book peels back the layers of mystery surrounding Cleopatra and attempts to reveal a legend in her own time. While Schiff takes a few liberties by ascribing emotion to her subject, she demonstrates an immense amount of research. Her narrative does not so much bring forward anything new about Cleopatra as it presents her to the contemporary reader in a more accessible and, indeed, engrossing way. The results complement Diana Preston's Cleopatra and Antony: Power, Love, and Politics in the Ancient World, which examined the reality behind the first "celebrity couple," also with an eye to contemporary readers. VERDICT With her new book, Schiff showcases her skill at capturing a life. Her prose is elegant but easy to read and briskly paced. In spite of extensive research, Schiff's projection of emotions and motivations onto her subject tilts the results more toward pop history than real scholarship. Undergraduates, lovers of biography or ancient history, and those seeking an introduction to Cleopatra will delight in this take on the near-mythical last queen of Egypt."  (Publisher Description)  Check Our Catalog

The Possessed; Adventures With Russian Books And The People Who Read Them

By Elif Batuman
"Can the practice of literary scholarship and the art of literary criticism generate true tales of hilarity, pathos, and revelation? Yes, if you're Batuman, a writer of extraordinary verve and acumen who braids together academic adventures, travelogues, biography, and autobiography to create scintillating essays. A self-described "six-foot-tall first-generation Turkish woman" who grew up in New Jersey, Batuman became enthralled by the great Russian writers, studied Russian, and, after some rough spots, embraced the study of literature as her life calling. Precision is Batuman's path to both humor and intensity, whether she's writing about her fellow comparative-lit grad students at Stanford, "magic" library moments (such as discovering a link between Isaac Babel and King Kong), antic miscommunications at international literary conferences, a visit to St. Petersburg's ice palace, and, in several piquant installments, her strange summer in Samarkand, studying the Uzbek language and literature. Candid and reflective, mischievous and erudite, Batuman writes nimble and passionate essays celebrating the invaluable and pleasurable ways literature can "increase the sum total of human understanding." (Booklist Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

Best American Science Writing 2010

By Jerome Groopman

"Edited by New York Times bestselling author Jerome Groopman, The Best American Science Writing 2010 collects in one volume the most crucial, thought-provoking, and engaging science writing of the year. Distinguished by new and impressive voices as well as some of the foremost names in science writing---David Dobbs, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Larissa MacFarquhar among them---this eleventh edition features outstanding journalism from a wide variety of publications, providing a comprehensive overview of the year's most compelling, relevant, and exciting developments in the world of science. Provocative and engaging, The Best American Science Writing 2010 reveals just how far science has brought us---and where it is headed next."  (Publisher Description)  Check Our Catalog

Best American NonRequired Reading 2010

Edited By Dave Eggers
"Eggers here obliges the dictates of the "Best American" series—beloved of many public library habitués—with an eclectic mix of entries. The first section includes mostly ironic works, here under goofy headings, e.g., "Best American Patents" and "Best American Lawsuits." But the contents of "Best American Poems Written in the Last Decade by Soldiers and Citizens Fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan" are moving and well crafted, and their inclusion after such light, mocking fare jars and calls into some doubt Eggers's probity. The remaining 90 percent of the book contains longer short stories and journalism, and some of the more famous choices, e.g., Sherman Alexie's funny, wincing account of his father's hospitalization and Andrew Sean Greer's retelling of being gay at a NASCAR encampment, are ragingly humorous. George Saunders's faux-ethnography of life in another kind of encampment, among homeless crackheads in Sacramento, may be the piece that will have the longest shelf life. David Rohde's story of his abduction by and escape from the Taliban and Evan Ratliff's Wired assignment to try to disappear in a ubiquitously networked world are celebrated for what they chronicle, not how well they are written. Verdict Essential for public libraries, but colleges should pass. Readers may not consume this cover to cover, but some lesser-known writers and journals get much-deserved attention."  (Library Journal)   Check Our Catalog

Growing A Garden City: How Farmers, First Graders, Counselors...Are Transforming..Their Neighborhoods

By Jeremy N. Smith
"America is experiencing a food disconnect. On one hand, nearly one in four Americans say they regularly lack enough money to buy food. On the other, approximately one-third are considered to be clinically obese. It is a conundrum, to be sure, and yet the solution may come through something as basic as the community farm. In his profile of Missoula, Montana, Smith energetically demonstrates how one city embraced the local food movement through the establishment of city gardens, food kitchens, co-op subscriptions, college internships, and farm work-therapy programs to transform a population that was as much at risk as any in America into one that now stands as a model for community-supported agriculture. Through dynamic profiles of key players such as Josh Slotnick, director of the Program in Ecological Agriculture and Society; Tim Hall, head of Missoula's Community Gardens; and Tim Ballard, overseer of the Youth Harvest program for at-risk teens, the entire scope of this citywide confluence of actual needs and agricultural solutions is distilled to the personal level. Bright, vibrant, and buoyantly accessible, this effervescent celebration of the local food movement thrums with regional, national, and international implications."  (Booklist Reviews)   Check Our Catalog

The Dirty Life; On Farming, Food and Love

By Kristin Kimball
"Kimball chucked life as a Manhattan journalist to start a cooperative farm in upstate New York with a self-taught New Paltz farmer she had interviewed for a story and later married. The Harvard-educated author, in her 30s, and Mark, also college educated and resolved to "live outside of the river of consumption," eventually found an arable 500-acre farm on Lake Champlain, first to lease then to buy. In this poignant, candid chronicle by season, Kimball writes how she and Mark infused new life into Essex Farm, and lost their hearts to it. By dint of hard work and smart planning--using draft horses rather than tractors to plow the five acres of vegetables, and raising dairy cows, and cattle, pigs, and hens for slaughter--they eventually produced a cooperative on the CSA model, in which members were able to buy a fully rounded diet. To create a self-sustaining farm was enormously ambitious, and neighbors, while well-meaning, expected them to fail. However, the couple, relying on Mark's belief in a "magic circle" of good luck, exhausted their savings and set to work. Once June hit, there was the 100-day growing season and an overabundance of vegetables to eat, and no end to the dirty, hard, fiercely satisfying tasks, winningly depicted by Kimball."   (PW Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

How To Disappear; Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails and Vanish Without A Trace

By Frank A. Ahearn

"How to Disappear is the authoritative and comprehensive guide for people who seek to protect their privacy as well as for anyone who’s ever entertained the fantasy of disappearing—whether actually dropping out of sight or by eliminating the traceable evidence of their existence.

Written by the world’s leading experts on finding people and helping people avoid being found, How to Disappear covers everything from tools for disappearing to discovering and eliminating the nearly invisible tracks and clues we tend to leave wherever we go. Learn the three keys to disappearing, all about your electronic footprints, the dangers and opportunities of social networking sites, and how to disappear from a stalker.

Frank Ahearn and Eileen Horan provide field-tested methods for maintaining privacy, as well as tactics and strategies for protecting personal information and preventing identity theft. They explain and illustrate key tactics such as misinformation (destroying all the data known about you); disinformation (creating fake trails); and, finally, reformation—the act of getting you from point A to point B without leaving clues."  (Publisher Description)  Check Our Catalog

The Pledge; A History Of The Pledge Of Allegiance

By Jeffrey Owen Jones
"On a summer evening in Boston in the year 1892, a thirtyseven- year-old former clergyman named Francis Bellamy sat down at his desk and began to write: “I Pledge allegiance to my flag…” Neither Bellamy nor anyone else could have imagined at the time that the single twenty-three-word sentence that emerged would evolve into one of our most familiar patriotic texts. Who could have suspected, though, that the simple flag salute would become a lightning rod for bitter controversy? Congress’ 1954 decision to add “under God” to the Pledge has made it the focus of three U.S. Supreme Court cases and at least one other landmark appellate decision. The debate continues today, but along with it exists a widely held admiration and support for this simple affirmation of our shared patriotism." (Publisher Description)  Check Our Catalog

Eels; An Exploration, From New Zealand To tthe Sargasso, Of The World's Most Mysterious Fish

By James Prosek
"Ask your average North American: eels, those slimy snakelike creatures, are generally held in poor regard. For nature writer Prosek (Trout; Fly-Fishing the 41st), however, they are a compelling mystery, and in his riveting synthesis of cultural, geographical, and botanical sleuthing, he investigates their reputation at home and abroad. The author--for whom the eel was once merely bait for bass--delves into the closely held traditions of the Maori of New Zealand, where eels are revered; into the beliefs of the Micronesian island of Pohnpei, where eels are considered members of a tribal clan; into the heart of the largest seafood market in the world, in Japan, a nation that consumes more than 130,000 tons of eels each year; into the reclusive world of Eel Weir Hollow in the Catskills, where fisherman Ray traps and smokes as much as one ton of eels a season; and to the fabled Sargasso Sea, where eels are thought to start their trek to the world's lakes, rivers, and streams--though, even now, no one knows precisely where the world's population of eels spawns, an enduring scientific mystery awaiting a solution. "  (PW Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

Play Their Hearts Out; A Coach, His Star Recruit and the Youth Basketball Machine

By George Dohrmann
"Basketball fans frequently hear references to AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) summer leagues, in which young players have a chance to hone their games. The AAU leagues are often criticized for exploiting young kids, but most of these charges have been based on rumor or hearsay. Until now. Dohrmann, the last sportswriter to win a Pulitzer Prize, spent approximately nine years researching this book; the story begins in 2000, when he convinced AAU coach Joe Keller to give him unfettered access to his team, the Inland Stars. The only condition was that the book wouldn't be published until the players—then 9 and 10 years old—were in college. Keller is a fascinating subject, a mix of positive characteristics—he is a genuinely caring father figure for many of his players—and profoundly negative. In Dohrmann's portrayal, Keller emerges as a shameless promoter of himself and his players, a poor coach, and a man for whom ethics are always relative. Money, of course, is key; surprisingly, there are lots of ways for coaches to profit in the underground basketball world, mainly from shoe companies (the real villains in this story) in the form of cash as well as products, prestige, and influence. In fact, as Dohrmann shows, everyone makes money in this "amateur" enterprise except the kids. An eye-opening look at the underbelly of modern American sports." (Booklist Reviews)    Check Our Catalog

Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century 1907-1948 Learning Curve

By William H. Patterson
"It may surprise readers schooled in Heinlein's stern, even quasi-fascistic visions of the future to learn that their author was a sometime liberal Democrat involved in postwar party politics in his adopted California. It will not surprise them to know that Heinlein, on the road to a lifetime's service in the Navy until being drummed out for medical reasons, was infamous among subordinates as a by-the-book disciplinarian of a Captain Bligh—or perhaps Queeg—bent. By Heinlein aficionado Patterson's account, he discovered science fiction early on, but initially took to it as a means of having to work a real job. World War II robbed him of that escape, but he worked intently to write stories for pulp magazines that criss-crossed the genres of science fiction and fantasy until building up the skills and stamina to begin the huge novels for which he would become famous. "Just before Pearl Harbor," writes Patterson, "he had intended to raise his sights...to the slick magazines and book publication, which pretty much implied then that he would leave science fiction behind." Yet science fiction would flourish after the war, with its futuristic visions as wrought by contemporaries such as E.E. "Doc" Smith, Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp. Patterson pays fitting homage to those writers as mentors and competitors, also giving due to longtime editor John Campbell, who advised Heinlein of what would work (plenty of plot complications) and what wouldn't (leave religion out of it)."   (Kirkus Reviews)
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Hitch-22; A Memoir

By Christopher Hitchens
"*Starred Review* Hitchens, who, in his earlier books, has expressed contempt for both God and Mother Teresa (although not in that order), is often described as a contrarian. In fact, in his book Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001), he himself noted that he "can appear insufferable and annoying," albeit without intending to. This memoir, bracing, droll, and very revealing, gives him yet another description: storyteller. He writes with a voice you can hear clearly, warmed by smoke and whiskey, and draws readers into his story, which proves as personal as it is political. As with many memoirs, it is not the public moments that are so fascinating, though there are plenty of those. Hitchens takes readers with him to Havana and Prague, Afghanistan and Iraq; tests himself by being waterboarded (he was disappointed in his early capitulation); and hobnobs with politicians and poets. He almost gets himself beaten up by defacing a poster in Iraq with a Hitler mustache. But the most intriguing stories are the personal ones, both from his early days, at home and at boarding school, and from his later life, when he learns that his mother was Jewish, which, if only technically, makes him Jewish as well. This revelation leads Hitchens on a quest to learn the story of his family, many of whom died in the Holocaust. How this new identity squares with his oft-proclaimed atheism sheds a different light on the meaning of religious identity. (He struggles mightily with his political identity as well.) Few authors can rile as easily as Hitchens does, but even his detractors might find it difficult to put down a book so witty, so piercing, so spoiling for a fight. He makes you want to be as good a reader as he is a writer."   (Booklist Reviews)
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American Vegan Kitchen; Delicious Comfort Food From Blue Plate Specials To

By Tamasin Noyes

Do you ever crave the delicious comfort foods served at your local diner, deli, or neighborhood cafe? This cookbook shows you how to make vegan versions of your favorite dishes in your own home kitchen.These 175+ recipes will satisfy vegans and non-vegans alike with deli sandwiches, burgers and fries, mac and cheese, pasta, pizza, omelets, pancakes, tasty soups and salads, casseroles, and desserts. Put together your own Blue Plate Specials from the roadside eateries of Route 66. Sample favorites from the cafes of San Francisco to the bistros of New York. Enjoy truly great American flavors from tempting ethnic dishes to the homestyle comfort foods of the heartland.Recipes include: Around-the-Clock Coffee Cake, Beer-Battered Onion Rings, Darngood Donut Bites, Cajun Pot Pie, Fork-and-Knife Reubens, Midtown Greek Salad, Spicy Balsamic Maple Wingz, Yankee Cornbread, Southern Fried Seitan, Mom's Apple Pie, and many more.From coast-to-coast and cover-to-cover, American Vegan Kitchen helps you serve up great homestyle vegan recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and desserts. The book contains 30 full-color photos and helpful icons to bring American comfort food home to your table."  (Vegan Heritage Press)  Check Our Catalog "

Thrillers: 100 Must Reads

Edited By David Morrell

"The top names in the thriller genre today reflect on and examine suspense classics in 100 riveting essays. Created by the International Thriller Writers organization and edited by First Bloodauthor Morrell and critic Wagner, this anthology starts far into the past with Lee Child's examination of the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur and proceeds up to the modern publishing game changer, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. The other titles mentioned include a variety of obvious choices, like Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain and John le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, but some are head scratchers, like Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Jules Verne's Mysterious Island. Each essay persuades the reader to understand why a particular title deserves to be featured, including the not so obvious choices. The debate to define a thriller and separate it from the mystery genre will intensify even further thanks to the various selections here. VERDICT This is an essential reference book for readers' advisory; suspense fans will also enjoy browsing to find new titles and authors to savor"   (LJ Reviews)     Check Our Catalog

Dangerously Funny; The Uncensored Story Of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour

by David Bianculli

"Beginning with his decidedly wry and ironic title, veteran television critic and current NPR Fresh Air commentator Bianculli (Teleliteracy: Taking Television Seriously) immediately sets the tone for this deliciously informative and entertaining story of the venerable Smothers Brothers' 50--year run and their tempestuous struggles with the CBS censors during the three-season reign of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Combining extensive interviews with siblings Tom, Dick, and Sherry Smothers; Smothers stalwarts Pat Paulsen, comedian David Steinberg, and musician Mason Williams; and television industry suit Fred Silverman, this is a revelatory and surprisingly balanced treatment of the conflict between the artists and the corporatists. Bianculli excels at juxtaposing the story of the longest continuing, artistically subversive comedy team with the contemporary political landscape. Highlights include the superbly related back story of the mock "Pat Paulson for President" campaign. Verdict This title will appeal to pop culture and 1960s counterculture fans, students of communication and the history of mass media, and to all entertainment and comedy readers."  (LJ Express Reviews)
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Uncle Tungsten; Memories Of A Chemical Boyhood By Oliver Sacks

By Oliver Sacks
"Sacks (Awakenings) is one of a handful of contemporary scientist-authors with immediate name recognition, and deservedly so. Best known for the tales of his experiences as a clinical neurologist, he has a special gift for conveying the humanity and hopes of patients struggling with sometimes bizarre mental disorders. In his memoir, he writes with the same enthusiasm and empathy about his boyhood infatuation with chemistry. As a youth, Sacks was insatiably curious about the properties of chemical substances and was ardently encouraged by his family, especially his Uncle Dave, nicknamed "Uncle Tungsten" for the light bulbs he manufactured with tungsten wire filaments. Delighting in the experiments that he conducted, Sacks also read about and clearly idolized the great chemists. His book is much more than just the lab notes of a junior chemist, though. It is also about growing up Jewish and coming of age in London during the wartime years. The passion that Sacks felt for learning permeated every aspect of his young life, and it comes through vividly in his adult prose. Tungsten could not possibly have a more inspiring spokesman." (LJ Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

The Great Divorce; A 19th Century Mother’s Extraordinary Fight. Against Her Husband, the shakers, and Her Times

By Ilyon Woo
"Known today for their elegant hand-hewn furniture, in the early 19th century the Shakers were a radical religious sect whose members renounced sexuality, property, and family to join a Christian utopian community. And if a father joined the Shakers with his children, as James Chapman did in 1814 in upstate New York, his estranged wife had neither parental rights nor legal recourse. In his smoothly narrative and revealing debut, Woo objectively deciphers this segregated society that, despite its stance in the Chapman case, believed in gender equality and was led by its own "Mother Lucy." Eunice Chapman successfully took her case against the Shakers and her husband to the New York legislature, where she obtained a divorce and regained legal custody of her three children, forcibly taking them back in 1818. Full of information about women's lives and status at the time, the book makes the case that Eunice's charisma and obsessive determination helped her overcome the usual rejection of women in the public sphere. Both Eunice's struggle and the Shakers' story fascinate equally while dispelling romanticized myths of utopian societies in the tumultuous postrevolutionary period." (PW Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

The Secret Lives Of Somerset Maugham

By Selina Hastings
So great an influence does Somerset Maugham hold over English literature of the twentieth century that many biographers have sought to capture his remarkable life. Not only did Maugham write great novels, he also held sway in theater and even in film, gaining substantial wealth as a result. Moreover, his vast circle of acquaintances spanned both literary and political spheres. Despite celebrity, Maugham determined to hide his personal life from prying eyes. A stutterer, he dreaded public embarrassment. An only partially closeted homosexual, he had a justifiable horror of suffering Oscar Wilde's sad fate. Maugham took pains that all his correspondence be destroyed prior to his death, but some escaped the flames, and Hastings draws on those letters and on interviews with Maugham's daughter. These coalesce into compelling, nonjudgmental portraits of Maugham's brothers, wife, and daughter and of the many men with whom he notoriously consorted. Pointedly, but not deterministically, connecting Maugham's literary output with his life, Hastings has achieved an especially readable biography that sheds new light on a literary giant. "  (Booklist Reviews)   Check Our Catalog

The King’s Best Highway; The Lost History Of The Boston Post Road

By Eric Jaffe
"Journalist and first-time author Jaffe travels the fabled stretch of road connecting New York and Boston.The Boston Post Road, writes the author, is best envisioned as "a lasso tossed from Manhattan toward the Bay, its knot landing at New Haven, wrangling southern New England." With a purpose larger than pinpointing a particular path, he tells a three-pronged tale about transportation, commerce and communication that stretches over four centuries. Jaffe examines the ancient Indian footpaths followed by colonial messengers who wore a trail through the wilderness sufficiently established to support regular mail service by 1673. The muddy, rutted paths had by 1789 become a "loosely pebbled splendor" later trumped by turnpikes and expressways. The "King's best highway," once the conduit for quill-penned letters and newspapers that galvanized the American Revolution, by the 1990s featured cell-phone towers above and fiber optic wires beneath." (Kirkus Reviews)
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This Will Change Everything; Ideas That Will Shape The World

By John Brockman
"Part of a series stemming from his online science journal Edge (www.edge.com), including What Have You Changed Your Mind About? and What Is Your Dangerous Idea?, author and editor Brockman presents 136 answers to the question, "What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?" Milan architect Stefano Boeri responds with a single sentence: "Discovering that someone from the future has already come to visit us." Most others take the question more seriously; J. Craig Venter believes his laboratory will use "digitized genetic information" to direct organisms in creating biofuels and recycling carbon dioxide. Like biofuels, several topics are recurrent: both Robert Shapiro and Douglas Rushikoff consider discovering a "Separate Origin for Life," a terrestrial unicellular organism that doesn't belong to our tree of life; Leo M. Chalupa and Alison Gopnik both consider the possibility resetting the adult brain's plasticity-its capacity for learning-to childhood levels. Futurologist Juan Enriquez believes that reengineering body parts and the brain will lead to "human speciation" unseen for hundreds of thousands of years, while controversial atheist Richard Dawkins suggests that reverse-engineering evolution could create a highly illuminating "continuum between every species and every other." Full of ideas wild (neurocosmetics, "resizing ourselves," "intuit[ing] in six dimensions") and more close-to-home ("Basketball and Science Camps," solar technology"), this volume offers dozens of ingenious ways to think about progress."(PW Annex Reviews)
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Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand By Helen Simonson

By Helen Simonson
"You are about to travel to Edgecombe St. Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as familiar as the members of your own family. Among them is Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired), the unlikely hero of Helen Simonson's wondrous debut. Wry, courtly, opinionated, and completely endearing, Major Pettigrew is one of the most indelible characters in contemporary fiction, and from the very first page of this remarkable novel he will steal your heart."  (Publisher Content)
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Committed; A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage

By Elizabeth Gilbert

"After her Brazilian boyfriend is denied re-entry at a border crossing, Gilbert must marry him if they want to continue living together in the United States. Despite her insistence in Eat, Pray, Love never to remarry, Gilbert comes to terms with the institution after several months of enforced exile abroad with her boyfriend. This well-researched, thought-provoking investigation into marriage in the Western world, interspersed with her own personal journey to the altar, is highly recommended for anyone considering tying the knot."  (LJ Express Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

Last Night In Montreal

By Emily St. John Mandel
"When Lilia Albert is seven, the father she has not seen in more than a year suddenly appears in the middle of the night and steals her away from her rural Canadian home. She is never again seen by her mother or brother. Instead, her independently wealthy dad moves her from one U.S. city to another, along the way educating her in matters both practical and not. Is he a spurned ex-husband who refuses to accept the court's custody decision? Or is he Lilia's savior, taking her away from something awful? When the novel opens, Lilia is a twentysomething Brooklyn dishwasher living with a disgruntled grad student named Eli Jacobs. When Lilia unceremoniously leaves him—a pattern she's perfected—Eli is bereft. As he obsessively searches for her, the story integrates the viewpoints of private investigator Christopher Graydon and Graydon's neglected daughter, Michaela, who has long resented Lilia's looming presence in her family's life. While the plot is occasionally contrived, the fast pacing and unusual characters make this a compelling first novel.:  (LJ Reviews)   Check Our Catalog

Carver; Collected Stories (Library Of America)

By Raymond Carver
"Perhaps no writer has been more of an advocate for the short story than Carver (1938-1988). This collection offers a beautiful view of his work within this genre and contains lesser-known pieces as well as some of his most memorable work, such as "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please" and "Cathedral." The stories are brilliant and demonstrate the finite detail needed to produce an important short work--whether vignette or fully developed story. Thematic ideas range from despair to poignant life moments, all of which fall into the realm of reality. Readers will detect Carver's specific tone and voice, which identified the American short story of the late 20th century and beyond. One of the volume's most valuable offerings is the manuscript of Beginners, stories eventually published, under the editorship of Gordon Lish, as What We Talk about When We Talk about Love (1981). These stories give readers a glimpse into the working relationship between the writer and his editor. In sum, this collection is a perfect selection of works from a master of the short story. Students studying the genre will appreciate and learn from this collection, and scholars will appreciate its breadth and depth. " (Choice Reviews)
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The Man With The Golden Touch; How The Bond Films Conquered The World

By Sinclair McKay
"Not a "making-of" film book, like so many others, but rather an exploration of the themes and impact of the James Bond movies, this lively volume is sure to appeal to fans of 007. The author, clearly a huge Bond fan himself, writes with a wry tone, but he's brimming with knowledge and insight. He tracks the movies from their origin, as cold-war spy adventures, through their transition to fantastic adventures in supervillainy, to—horror of horrors!—quaint artifacts of a bygone era, and then, inevitably, back around to relevance again. He compares and contrasts the movies to their source material, Ian Fleming's novels and short stories, and he fills the book with delightful Bond arcana."  (Booklist Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

What I Eat; Around The World In 80 Diets By Peter Menzel

By Peter Menzel

"Michael Pollan meets Anthony Bourdain in What I Eat, a portrait of 80 people from 30 countries—each photographed with all the food they eat in one day. Photos and profiles of a soldier, a sumo wrestler, a competitive eater, a world-famous chef (Ferran Adrià; of El Bulli), a welfare mom and recovering addict, a Sudanese refugee, a model, a monk and more are accompanied by details of how old each person is, how tall and heavy, how active, and just how many calories he or she puts away in a day. The winning blend of stunning photography and sensitive reportage expands our understanding of the complex relationships among individuals, society, and food."  (Publisher Content)  Check Our Catalog

97 Orchard; an Edible History Of Five Immigrant Families In One New York Tenement

By Jane Ziegelman
"In this compelling foray into forensic gastronomy, Ziegelman pulls the facade off the titular 97 Orchard Street tenement.The result is a living dollhouse that invites us to gaze in from the sidewalk.With minds open and mouths agape, we witness the comings and goings of the building's inhabitants in the years surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. By focusing on the culinary lives of individuals from a variety of ethnic groups, Ziegelman pieces together a thorough sketch of Manhattan's Lower East Side at a time when these immigrants were at the forefront of a rapidly changing urban life. The food facts she uncovers are sure to interest and astound even those outside the culinary community, and guarantee that the reader will never look at a kosher dill pickle, a wrapped hard candy, or even the delectable foie gras the same way again. Ziegelman cleverly takes this opportunity to show us that in learning about food, we're actually learning about history—and when it comes to the sometimes surprising journey some of our favorite meals have taken to get here, it's fascinating stuff."  (Booklist Reviews)
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LIBRARY STAFF RECOMMENDS THE FOLLOWING 17 TITLES ( Some Old, Some New )

The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

The Beak of the Finch tells the story of two Princeton University scientists - evolutionary biologists - engaged in an extraordinary investigation. They are watching, and recording, evolution as it is occurring - now - among the very species of Galapagos finches that inspired Darwin's early musings on the origin of species. They are studying the evolutionary process not through the cryptic medium of fossils but in real time, in the wild, in the flesh.
The finches that Darwin took from Galapagos at the time of his voyage on the Beagle led to his first veiled hints about his revolutionary theory. But Darwin himself never saw evolution as Peter and Rosemary Grant have been seeing it - in the act of happening. For more than twenty years they have been monitoring generation after generation of finches on the island of Daphne Major - measuring, weighing, observing, tracking, analyzing on computers their struggle for existence.
We see the Grants at work on the island among the thousands of living, nesting, hatching, growing birds whose world and lives are the Grants' primary laboratory. We explore the special circumstances that make the Galapagos archipelago a paradise for evolutionary research: an isolated population of birds that cannot easily fly away and mate with other populations, islands that are the tips of young volcanoes and thus still rapidly evolving as does the life that they support, a food supply changing radically in response to radical variations of climate - so that in a brief span of time the Grants can see the beak of the finch adapt. And we watch the Grants' team observe evolution at a level that was totally inaccessible to Darwin: the molecular level, as the DNA in the blood samples taken from the birds reveals evolutionary change.
Here, brilliantly and lucidly recounted - with important implications for our own day, when man's alterations of the environment are speeding the rate of evolutionary changes - is a scientific enterprise in the grand manner, an abstraction made concrete, a theory validated in life.
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The Swan Thieves

Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe, devoted to his profession and the painting hobby he loves, has a solitary but ordered life. When renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient, Marlow finds that order destroyed. Desperate to understand the secret that torments the genius, he embarks on a journey that leads him into the lives of the women closest to Oliver and a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism. Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late 20th, from young love to last love. THE SWAN THIEVES is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope.
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The Journals of John Cheever

An abridged edition of John Cheever's journals, which he began in the late 1940s and continued for more than three decades, provides a revealing study of the author, his personal life, his literary art, and his emotional life.
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Moondust: In Search Of The Men Who Fell To The Earth

The Apollo Moon landings have been called the last optimistic act of the twentieth century. Twelve astronauts made this greatest of all journeys, and all were indelibly marked by it. Journalist Smith reveals the stories of the nine still living men caught between the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Earth's collective dreaming: we relive the flashbulbs, the first shocking glimpse of Earth from space, the sense of euphoria and awe. This was the first global media event, and the astronauts were its superstars. They had been schooled by NASA for deep space but were completely unprepared for fame. Marriages crumbled under the strain. The wild and happy sixties gave way to the cynicism and self-doubt of the seventies, and the Moonwalkers faced their greatest challenge: how to find meaning in life when the biggest adventure you could possibly have was a memory.--From publisher description.A portrait of the twelve men who journeyed to the moon draws on interviews with the nine surviving astronauts who walked on the moon to determine how their lives had been transformed by the experience and its aftermath.
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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Follows the author's family's efforts to live on locally- and home-grown foods, an endeavor through which they learned lighthearted truths about food production and the connection between health and diet.
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Watership Down

A visually enhanced trade edition of the top-selling modern classic follows the survival tale of a group of wild rabbits who are forced to flee their doomed warren and find a safe place to live in the face of brutal challenges, an adventure that explores metaphorical themes about environmentalism and social oppression.
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Twilight

Bored with her new life in a rainy Washington town, Isabella Swan finds her situation transforming into one of thrills and terror when she becomes involved with alluring vampire Edward Cullen, who struggles to keep his identity a secret.
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Shadow Game

When Dr. Peter Whitney's top-secret experiment that enhances psychic abilities goes terribly wrong, resulting in a rash of brutal murders, his daughter Lily and Captain Ryland Miller, both of whom possess telekinetic powers, must join forces to stop a twisted madman bent on their destruction.
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The Pirates!: In an Adventure With Scientists, A Novel

After mistakenly attacking Charles Darwin's Beagle while searching for a large pirate treasure, the Pirate Captain, world's most inept scoundrel, joins forces with the fledgling young scientist to save his brother from the evil Bishop of Oxford, in an outrageously zany debut novel.
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The Sunday Philosophy Club: An Isabel Dalhousie Mystery

Isabel is fond of problems, and sometimes she becomes interested in problems that are, quite frankly, none of her business. This may be the case when Isabel sees a young man plunge to his death from the upper circle of a concert hall in Edinburgh. Despite the advice of her housekeeper, Grace, who has been raised in the values of traditional Edinburgh, and her niece, Cat, who, if you ask Isabel, is dating the wrong man, Isabel is determined to find the truth - if indeed there is one - behind the man's death. The resulting moral labyrinth might have stymied even Kant. And then there is the unsatisfactory turn of events in Cat's love life that must be attended to.
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44 Scotland Street

After taking a job at an Edinburgh art gallery, twenty-year-old Pat rents a room from her landlord, the handsome and cocky Bruce, at 44 Scotland Street, and soon discovers that she has also acquired some colorful new neighbors, including Domenica, an eccentric widow; Bertie, a child prodigy; and his overbearing mother, Irene.
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At Home in Mitford: The Mitford Years

Jan Karon was born in Lenoir, North Carolina, in 1937 ("A great year for the Packard automobile," she says). Her creative skills first came alive when her family moved to a farm. "On the farm there is time to muse and dream," she says. "I am endlessly grateful I was reared in the country. As a young girl I couldn't wait to get off that farm, to go to Hollywood or New York. But living in those confined, bucolic circumstances was one of the best things that ever happened to me."

Jan knew that she wanted to be a writer, and even wrote a novel at the age of ten. Her first real opportunity as a writer came at age eighteen when she took a job as a receptionist at an ad agency. She kept leaving her writing on her boss's desk until he noticed her ability. Soon she was launched on a forty-year career in advertising. She won assignments in New York and San Francisco, numerous awards, and finally an executive position with a national agency.

Recently she left advertising to write books, and moved to Blowing Rock, North Carolina, a tiny town of 1,800 perched at 5,000 feet in the Blue Ridge mountains. "I immediately responded to the culture of village life," says Jan. "And I must say the people welcomed me. I have never felt so at home."

Blowing Rock is the model for Mitford, and the similarities are strong. "None of the people in Mitford are actually based upon anyone in Blowing Rock," says Jan. "Yet, the spirit of my characters is found throughout this real-life village. You can walk into Sonny's Grill in Blowing Rock and find the same kind of guys who hang around Mitford's Main Street Grill."

Jan is quick to assert that there are Mitfords all over the country, those hundreds of towns where readers of Jan's books cherish their own cast of eccentric and beloved characters. Currently, one of Jan's chief delights is getting to meet those readers. "Some people finish writing and open a bottle of scotch or a box of chocolates," she says. "My reward is meeting my readers face-to-face. I think an author is something like a glorified bartender. My readers tell me all kinds of things about their lives, and I get these long, long letters. I answer every one, of course."

Jan has a daughter, Candace Freeland, who is a photojournalist and musician.
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Girl in Translation

Emigrating with her mother from Hong Kong to Brooklyn, Kimberly Chang begins a secret double life as an exceptional schoolgirl during the day and sweatshop worker at night, an existence also marked by a first crush and the pressure to save her family from poverty.
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