Great Railway Journeys of Europe ( Insight Guide )

This full-color guide inspires travelers to sample a range of different railway experiences. There are also features on the history and growth of rail travel, railway hotels, feats of engineering, the Channel Tunnel, and much more. (Check Catalog)

Ethan Allen: His Life and Times

For most Americans familiar with the Hero of Ticonderoga and founding father of Vermonts Revolutionary credentials, Ethan Allen symbolizes rugged American pioneering spirit and candid individualism. In this discerning account, prolific Revolution-era biographer Randall peels away the mythological facade and transports readers to a New England frontier torn by religious divisions and disputed land claims. Drawing on archives from both sides of the Atlantic, Randall convincingly portrays Allen as a character of Machiavellian morality occupying a nebulous position between self-aggrandizing land speculator and latter-day Robin Hood. An acknowledged deist (though admittedly unsure what that was), Allen proved to be a budding intellectual whose controversial Reason, the Only Oracle of Man (1784) predates Tom Paines Age of Reason. In addition to exploring Revolutionary tribunals, debates at the Catamount Tavern, and the exploits of the Green Mountain Boys, Randall discusses Allens lesser-known, harrowing experiences as a POW aboard a notorious British prison ship. Capably constructed and pleasingly told, Randalls hefty tome will definitely appeal to American Revolution enthusiasts and biography buffs. (Check Catalog)

Life

The long-awaited autobiography of the guitarist, songwriter, singer, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. Ladies and gentlemen: Keith Richards.
With The Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the songs that roused the world, and he lived the original rock and roll life.
Now, at last, the man himself tells his story of life in the crossfire hurricane. Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records, learning guitar and forming a band with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones. The Rolling Stones's first fame and the notorious drug busts that led to his enduring image as an outlaw folk hero. Creating immortal riffs like the ones in "Jumping Jack Flash" and "Honky Tonk Women." His relationship with Anita Pallenberg and the death of Brian Jones. Tax exile in France, wildfire tours of the U.S., isolation and addiction. Falling in love with Patti Hansen. Estrangement from Jagger and subsequent reconciliation. Marriage, family, solo albums and Xpensive Winos, and the road that goes on forever.
With his trademark disarming honesty, Keith Richard brings us the story of a life we have all longed to know more of, unfettered, fearless, and true. (Check Catalog)

The Best American Magazine Writing (2010)

"The Best American Magazine Writing 2010" proves that print journalism is as vital as ever, offering information, amusement, connection, and perspective to those who love to lose themselves in a good read. This year's selections, chosen from National Magazine Awards finalists and winners, include David Grann's article from the "New Yorker" on the execution of a possibly innocent man; Sheri Fink's report from the "New York Times Magazine" on the alleged euthanization of patients during Hurricane Katrina; and Fareed Zakaria's compelling take from "Newsweek" on Iran's weakening regime.
"The Best American Magazine Writing 2010" also includes absorbing profiles, arresting interviews, personal essays, and entrancing fiction. "Esquire"'s Mike Sager recounts a promising quarterback's shocking descent into drugs; "Vanity Fair"'s Bryan Burrough shares the confessions of the year's other major Ponzi schemer, and, from "McSweeney's Quarterly," Wells Tower weaves a transporting tale of elemental desire. "GQ"'s Tom Carson offers his critique of America's current vampire craze; Mitch Albom rediscovers Detroit's indomitable spirit in "Sports Illustrated"; and Garrison Keillor sings an ode to the homegrown joys of state fairs in "National Geographic." Additional contributors include Atul Gawande, Megan McArdle, and many others commenting on a range of issues, from health care and the national debt to war movies and the controversy over circumcision. Altogether the writing collected here proves the rich pleasures waiting in the best magazines. (Check Catalog)

Life Is a Highway: A Century of Great Automotive Writing

As a celebration of cars and car ownership, this collection hits all the high spots along the road. Requisite articles from "Road & Track" and "Car and Driver" are included, but so are excerpts from Stephen King's "Christine" and Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". One author writes in 1917 that the popularity of automobiles will expand the gene pool of rural citizens: instead of choosing mates within a five- to ten-mile radius, they may use the automobile to make longer journeys, thus decreasing intermarriage among relatives. P.J. O'Rourke is represented with an essay on winter driving, and Jay Leno, Rowan Atkinson, and pieces from "The Onion" go for the laughs. A profile on driver Phil Hill is touching, and an article about an electric car from 1915 makes the reader sigh with regret. (The absence of E.B. White's classic "Farewell, My Lovely!" is a disappointment.) VERDICT While lacking the big, glossy photographs that car enthusiasts love, this book will appeal to readers who enjoy a bit of history and literature tossed in with articles about their beloved Volvos and Ferraris.—Susan Belsky, Oshkosh P.L., WI Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information. (Check Catalog)

Kurt Vonnegut: Novels & Stories 1963-1973

Like Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) was a Midwestern everyman steeped in the rhythms of American speech whose anger at the way things are was matched only by his love for the best that we can be. His cunningly relaxed delivery was so original, so finely calibrated, and so profound an articulation of the Sixties' spirit that many critics overlooked the moral seriousness behind the standup-comic craftsmanship.
Capturing Vonnegut in pyrotechnic mid-career, this first volume of a projected three-volume edition gathers four of his most acclaimed novels. "Cat's Cradle "(1963) is a comedy of the end of the world (it ends with ice). "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" (1965) is the tale of a so-called fool, his money, and the lawyer who contrives to part them (it ends with fire). "Slaughterhouse-Five" (1969), Vonnegut's breakout book and one of the iconic masterpieces of twentieth-century American literature, is the tale of Billy Pilgrim, who, being unstuck in time, is doomed to continually relive both the firebombing of Dresden and his abduction by space aliens. And, in a text enhanced by the author's spirited line drawings, "Breakfast of Champions" (1973) describes the fateful meeting of "two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men," one of whom disastrously believes that everyone else is a robot. The volume is rounded out with three brilliant short stories and revealing autobiographical accounts of the bombing of Dresden. (Check Catalog)

Clark Howard's Living Large in Lean Times: 250+ Ways to Buy Smarter, Spend Smarter, and Save Money

Clark Howard is a media powerhouse and penny-pincher extraordinaire who knows a thing or two about money. A lifelong entrepreneur who is now the hugely popular host of a talk radio program and television show and the bestselling author of several books, Clark consistently delivers expert financial advice to his wide and devoted fan base.
"Living Large in Lean Times" is Clark's ultimate guide to saving money, covering everything from cell phones to student loans, coupon websites to mortgages, investing to electric bills, and beyond. In his candid and friendly next-door-neighbor manner, Clark shares the small, manageable steps everyone can follow to build a path towards independence and wealth. Chock-full of more than 250 invaluable tips, the book outlines how to:
*Locate missing and unclaimed money in your name
*Lower your student loan payment
*Find legitimate work-at-home opportunities
*Get unlimited texting and e-mailing for less than $10 per month
*Know what personal info not to post to social media sites
*Determine the best mortgage rate, and much, much more
As Clark demonstrates, there are myriad ways to reduce debt, buy smarter, and build a future. Follow his lead and he'll get you there. (Check Catalog)

Embassytown

Miéville (Kraken) adds to the sparse canon of linguistic SF with this deeply detailed story of the ways an alien language might affect not only thought patterns but ways of life. Avice Benner Cho returns to her backwater colony home of Embassytown so her linguist husband, Scile, can study the almost empathic, in-the-present language of the planet's natives, the Hosts. When a Host learns to lie, the resulting massive cultural earthquake in Host society is compounded by two new Ambassadors whose voices have a profound physiological effect on the Hosts. Miéville's brilliant storytelling shines most when Avice works through problems and solutions that develop from the Hosts' unique and convoluted linguistic evolution, and many of the most intriguing characters are the Hosts themselves. The result is a world masterfully wrecked and rebuilt. (Check Catalog)

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading

"Pleasure on a schedule" is how Sankovitch describes the plan detailed in her memoir. A married, stay-at-home mom with four sons, she decided to create calm in her life by sitting down, sitting still, and reading an entire book each day and completing a journal with her reaction to each book. Sankovitch knew she could read 70 pages an hour; she selected books no more than one inch thick. Other self-imposed rules dictated that she not read more than one book by any author. Nor could she read any book she had previously read. The book's title refers to Sankovitch's favorite author and the old chair she sat in to read each day. Beginning the project on her 46th birthday, Sankovitch entwines her comments about her reading selections with family stories including her parents surviving World War II in Europe, her upbringing in a tight-knit family of five who loved books and reading, and finally, her sister's death from bile-duct cancer. Sankovitch continues to write about her reading on her web site ReadAllDay.org as a way to encourage adults to read each day. VERDICT Sankovitch's frequent comments about unwashed laundry and the repetitive stories of baking Christmas cookies with her step-daughter may try the reader, but these are minor when considering her accomplishment and the appeal of her memoir. (Check Catalog)

The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother's Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times

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 womens lives and status at the time, the book makes the case that Eunices charisma and obsessive determination helped her overcome the usual rejection of women in the public sphere. Both Eunices struggle and the Shakers story fascinate equally while dispelling romanticized myths of utopian societies in the tumultuous postrevolutionary period. (Check Catalog)

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Science journalist Skloot makes a remarkable debut with this multilayered story about faith, science, journalism, and grace. It is also a tale of medical wonders and medical arrogance, racism, poverty and the bond that grows, sometimes painfully, between two very different womenSkloot and Deborah Lackssharing an obsession to learn about Deborahs mother, Henrietta, and her magical, immortal cells. Henrietta Lacks was a 31-year-old black mother of five in Baltimore when she died of cervical cancer in 1951. Without her knowledge, doctors treating her at Johns Hopkins took tissue samples from her cervix for research. They spawned the first viable, indeed miraculously productive, cell lineknown as HeLa. These cells have aided in medical discoveries from the polio vaccine to AIDS treatments. What Skloot so poignantly portrays is the devastating impact Henriettas death and the eventual importance of her cells had on her husband and children. Skloots portraits of Deborah, her father and brothers are so vibrant and immediate they recall Adrian Nicole LeBlancs "Random Family." Writing in plain, clear prose, Skloot avoids melodrama and makes no judgments. Letting people and events speak for themselves, Skloot tells a rich, resonant tale of modern science, the wonders it can perform and how easily it can exploit societys most vulnerable people. (Check Catalog)