Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

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"Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and funny, readers are drawn into a daughters complex yearning for her father. Apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned "fun home," the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books."  (Publisher Description)

Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama

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"There was a danger inherent in the bestselling microscopically examined autobiography of Bechdelas Fun Home, namely that further work from this highly impressive artist could disappear so far down the rabbit hole of her own mind that readers might never find their way back out. Her first book since that masterful 2006 chronicle of her closeted fatheras suicide narrowly avoids that fate, but is all the stronger for risking it. This Jungian acomic dramaa finds Bechdel investigating the quiet combat of another relationship: that of her distant, critical mother and her own tangled, self-defeating psyche. Bechdelas art has the same tightly observed aura of her earlier work, but with a deepening and loosening of style. The story, which sketches more of the authoras professional and personal life outside of her family, is spiderwebbed with anxiety and self-consciousness (aI was plagued... with a tendency to edit my thoughts before they even took shapea). Thereas a doubling-back quality, mixed with therapeutic interludes that avoid self-indulgence and are studded with references to creative mentors like Virginia Woolf (another obsessive who yet took daring creative leaps), analyst Donald Winnicott, and Alice Miller. Though perhaps not quite as perfectly composed as Fun Home, this is a fiercely honest work about the field of combat that is family."  (Publishers Weekly)

10 Things Employers Want You to Learn in College: The Skills You Need to Succeed (Revised)

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"A handy, straightforward guide that teaches students how to acquire marketable job skills and real-world know-how before they graduate--revised and updated for today's economic and academic landscapes.
Award-winning college professor and adviser Bill Coplin lays down the essential skills students need to survive and succeed in today's job market, based on his extensive interviews with employers, recruiters, HR specialists, and employed college grads. Going beyond test scores and GPAs, Coplin teaches students how to maximize their college experience by focusing on ten crucial skill groups: Work Ethic, Physical Performance, Speaking, Writing, Teamwork, Influencing People, Research, Number Crunching, Critical Thinking, and Problem Solving." 10 Things Employers Want You to Learn in College" gives students the tools they need to prepare during their undergraduate years to impress potential employers, land a higher-paying job, and start on the road to career security and satisfaction."  (Publisher Description)

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010

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By Charles Murrary
" Despite the subtitle, Murray's book is actually about class in America, not race. By zeroing in on troubling trends in white America, he keeps the focus on the country's increasing polarization along class lines, onthe growing isolation of the well-off from the poor, with each group developing radically different cultures, perspectives, and expectations from the other's. Murray provides historical context, showing that, before the 1960s, Americans of all races and classes had similar perspectives and expectations. Using census data for 1960 and 2000, Murray, coauthor of The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1994), shows increasing segregation of a college-educated elite living in SuperZips from those with little education, eking out a living in poor neighborhoods. Murray also shows strong divergence in education, employment, marriage, crime, and other indicators. Beyond statistics, Murray offers sketches of life lived in the upper class and the lower class and argues for the need to focus on what has made the U.S. exceptional beyond its wealth and military power, the ideals that have held a highly diverse nation together: religion, marriage, industriousness, and morality. Writing from a libertarian perspective, Murray offers a hopeful long view of elites, who have enormous influence on economic and social policy, coming to understand the peril of their disconnection from the rest of America.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)"  (Booklist)

The Poesten Kill: Waterfalls to Waterworks in the Capital District

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"The Poesten Kill" has sustained Rensselaer County communities for generations. Native Americans first gained sustenance from the stream's waters and hunted and gathered on its shores. Its wild places, large waterfalls and natural springs served as healthful inspiration to artists and adventurers. And during the nineteenth century, urban industrialists tapped its power to provide employment opportunities for Irish, German, French and Italian immigrants. John Warren paints a vivid picture of the kill, highlighting the force and wonder that have stirred naturalists and entrepreneurs for centuries."   (Publisher Description)

True Believers; A Novel

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By Kurt Andersen

"Cofounder of "Spy", former editor in chief of "New York" magazine, and cocreator and host of the award-winning Public Radio program "Studio 360", Andersen knows his way around the zeitgeist; just take a look at his two novels, "Turn of the Century" (which drew comparisons to "Bonfire of the Vanities") and the "New York Times" best-selling "Heyday". Here he returns with another cultural study, this one featuring an eminent sixtyish judge who withdraws from consideration for a Supreme Court seat because of events in her youth. Revelations about those events will tell us as much about the country as they do about the judge. With a six-city tour, an NPR campaign, a custom Facebook page, early pitches to Goodreads and LibraryThing, book club outreach, and even a thriller platform (that says something); this will be big."  (Library Journal)

"A Rich Spot of Earth": Thomas Jefferson's Revolutionary Garden at Monticello

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"Hatch (director, gardens & grounds, Monticello) offers a close look at all aspects of Thomas Jefferson's terraced vegetable garden at Monticello, both past and present. He divides the book into two parts. The first richly describes the garden's history in the context of Jefferson's worldview. To Jefferson, a garden had the potential to transform society. Monticello and Jefferson come alive as Hatch describes how Jefferson designed and managed the garden in which he cultivated over 330 varieties, including new plants like okra, sea kale, eggplants, and olive trees. Readers learn, for example, that Jefferson was successful at growing hops for brewing ale but continually failed at growing grapes for wine. Hatch also devotes a chapter to his own efforts to restore the garden. The second part of the book describes the origins and uses of Monticello vegetables, listed by common name, each with its own little narrative. Well documented and researched, the work also includes hundreds of color photographs and historical images. There is also an appendix listing sources for purchasing heirloom vegetables. VERDICT Foodies, garden geeks, and history enthusiasts will enjoy this well-written and visually appealing book."   (Library Journal)