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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The World According to Garp

The World According to Garp is a comic and compassionate coming-of-age novel that established John Irving as one of the most imaginative writers of his generation. A worldwide bestseller since its publication in 1978, Irving's classic is filled with stories inside stories about the life and times of T. S. Garp, novelist and bastard son of Jenny Fields - a feminist leader ahead of her time. Beyond that, The World According to Garp virtually defies synopsis.
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A Widow for One Year

Chronicles the thirty-seven years in the life of Ruth Cole, a complex, abrasive woman born in the shadow of her siblings' deaths and her parents' adultery, who only finds love after motherhood and widowhood.
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Old Friends

By Tracy Kidder
"As in his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Soul of a New Machine ( LJ 8/81 ), House ( LJ 1/86), and the best-selling Among Schoolchildren ( LJ 1/90), Kidder reveals his extraordinary talent as a storyteller by taking the potentially unpalatable subject of life in a nursing home and making it into a highly readable, engrossing account. Through the eyes of roommates Lou and Joe, we experience daily life in the Linda Manor Nursing Home in Northampton, Massachusetts. Kidder displays an uncanny ability to reveal glimpses of the residents' former lives and their current hopes and fears without becoming sentimental or maudlin. This is a life that we all hope to avoid, both for ourselves and our loved ones; yet when we see it as it is portrayed in Old Friends it becomes less terrifying."  Check Our Catalog

Postville; A Clash Of Cultures In Heartland America

By Stephen G. Bloom
"Bloom's account of a vicious clash between the residents of a small, intensely Christian town and the group of Lubavitcher Jews who open a highly successful kosher slaughterhouse there is a model of sociological reportage and personal journalism. In 1987, after a Hasidic butcher from Brooklyn bought a slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, and began to relocate Jewish and immigrant workers to the area, the town began to change. While some residents were suspicious and anti-Semitic, most were happy to see the town rise above its previous financial destitution. But the Lubavitchers, who traditionally live and work within their own closely knit communities, were not interested in fitting into Postville, and many were dismissive of, or overtly hostile to, its original citizens. After the Lubavitchers started buying real estate and exerting greater influence on the town's finances, longtime Postville residents began to feel marginalized, yet their reactions caused the Jews to become more isolationist. The slaughterhouse also caused problems: workers were paid below minimum wage and were uninsured, women workers were sexually harassed and fighting among the (often illegal) immigrant workers escalated. Finally, the town took legal action to gain more control over the slaughterhouse. Bloom, a professor at the University of Iowa, writes cleanly and with great insight and temperance about these events. As a secular Jew, he also weaves in his own story as he tries to find some common ground with the Lubavitchers. His book proves an illuminating meditation on contemporary U.S. culture and what it means to be an American. "  (PW Reviews)   Check Our Catalog.

The Majic Bus; An American Odyssey

By David Brinkley
"Douglas Brinkley recounts his summer adventure in which a busload of students took to the road for six weeks. They had to read 12 books while visiting 30 states and ten national parks. On the trip, the students learned more than history, and Brinkley learned a great deal about teaching. His ode to great American road tales is a fun and compelling mix of Road Rules and David McCullough-ish stories."  (LJ Reviews)   Check Our Catalog

Blue Latitudes; Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before

By Tony Horowitz
"This salty, swashbuckling, high-seas adventure story from the Pulitzer Prize-winning Horwitz retraces the journeys of English maritime genius James Cook. That intrepid explorer, who mapped nearly a third of the planet during the 18th century, docked at every continent in the world, minus Antarctica. For the globe-trotting author, getting the surveyor's story includes doing nautical duty on the Endeavor, a replica of the listing coal ship Cook himself sailed on. Accompanied by his good-humored, hard-drinking Australian companion Roger Williamson, Horwitz puts in at exotic ports like Tahiti and Bora Bora, following in the captain's footsteps while navigating smoothly between memoir, humor and fact. This rousing yarn from the author of the best-selling book Confederates in the Attic is sure to become a travel-writing classic."  (BookPage Reviews)  Check Our Catalog