In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic

Professor X, who embarks on teaching literature and composition evening classes at two colleges (one private, one community) as a supplement to his full-time job to avoid foreclosure, describes his time in academia in a slow-going memoir. Taking the reader through the minutiae of teaching how he found his job, what he said to his first class, his grading principles, how he meets plagiarism along the way, he tosses in how his marriage is going and what he thinks of the mortgage crisis. He sprinkles his account with vignettes of literary analysis and reports from professional and media education specialists. The subjects Professor X approaches are the critical ones facing the growth, spread, and direction of American higher education, but his treatment of them is sadly shallow and self-absorbed. A book-length version of a June 2008 Atlantic Monthly article that was much discussed (which he comments on) becomes essentially an extended grouse about the inadequacies of the students and the institutions they attend.(Check Catalog)

Is This Normal?

Is it normal to forget where you parked your car? Do we really shrink as we grow older? Does everyone experience lower libido as they age?
More than 78 million American adults are nearing the age when unexpected aches and pains, weight gains, sudden illnesses, and confusing mental changes begin to occur. As children, our questions about how our bodies will change are met with knowledge and patience--anything to make the transition as seamless as possible. But at 50 or 60, there's no one to help us figure out whether the changes we're experiencing are a cause for concern or just a normal part of aging.
"""Is This Normal?" is a guidebook that focuses on putting this generation at ease by answering their most common questions. From superficial concerns to everyday aches and pains to more serious medical problems, Dr. John Whyte, chief medical expert at Discovery Channel, cuts through the confusion and provides practical answers for the most common age-related health issues. In "Is This Normal?," he answers a broad range of questions, such as:
- How much weight gain is normal as we age--and why is it so hard to lose?
- Is it normal to need a pair of reading glasses just to decipher a restaurant menu?
- What are the signs of Alzheimer's versus normal memory loss?
With compassion, reassurance, and friendly guidance, Dr. Whyte provides cutting-edge medical advice for the effects of aging we face every day--from gray hair and wrinkles to cardiovascular health. "Is This Normal?" arms readers with the essential knowledge and preventive strategies they need stay healthy and vital for decades to come. (Check Catalog)

What Your Doctor Won't Tell You about Getting Older: An Insider's Survival Manual for Outsmarting the Health-Care System

Aging well frequently involves feeling your way blindly through a complex medical world: dealing with multiple doctors, facing baffling financial decisions, and figuring out whether you or a parent needs care outside the home. "What Your Doctor Won't Tell You About Getting Older" turns the lights on, illuminating potential pitfalls and showing a way around them. This book is an indispensible survival guide, gathering all the information you need to have but that too often doctors just don't give you. Writing with great experience and good humor, renowned geriatrician Mark Lachs explains how to choose your doctors, stay out of the emergency room, plan financially for retirement, outfit your house to stay safe, and, most important, how to have as many healthy years as possible. (Check Catalog)

Becoming Dr. Q: My Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to Brain Surgeon

Today he is known as Dr. Q, an internationally renowned neurosurgeon and neuroscientist who leads cutting-edge research to cure brain cancer. But not too long ago, he was Freddy, a nineteen-year-old undocumented migrant worker toiling in the tomato fields of central California. In this gripping memoir, Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa tells his amazing life story--from his impoverished childhood in the tiny village of Palaco, Mexico, to his harrowing border crossing and his transformation from illegal immigrant to American citizen and gifted student at the University of California at Berkeley and at Harvard Medical School. Packed with adventure and adversity--including a few terrifying brushes with death--"Becoming Dr. Q" is a testament to persistence, hard work, the power of hope and imagination, and the pursuit of excellence. It's also a story about the importance of family, of mentors, and of giving people a chance. (Check Catalog)

The Hypnotist

A "New York Times" Bestseller
In the frigid clime of Tumba, Sweden, Detective Inspector Joona Linna has been assigned to a gruesome triple homicide. The killer is still at large, and there's only one surviving witness---the boy whose family was killed before his eyes. With one hundred knife wounds on his body, the boy lies in a state of shock, scared into silence. Linna sees only one option: hypnotism. He enlists Dr. Erik Maria Bark to mesmerize the boy, hoping to discover the killer through his eyes. It's the sort of work that Bark has sworn he would never do again---ethically dubious and psychically scarring. When he breaks his promise and hypnotizes the victim, a long and terrifying chain of events begins to unfurl.  (Check Catalog)

Nightwoods

National Book Award recipient Fraziers third novel (after Thirteen Moons) turns around Luce, a beautiful and lonely young woman who has retreated to a vast abandoned lodge in the mountains of Appalachia. Traumatized by negligent parents (Mother a long-gone runaway. Father, a crazy-ass, violent lawman), Luce now lives off the land in relative contentment until her sister Lily is murdered, and Lilys deeply damaged twins, Dolores and Frank, are sent to live with her. We are briefly allowed to hope for happily-ever-after when an old flame of Luces, a thoughtful and kind man by the name of Stubblefield, reenters her life, but he is not the only newcomer to town. Unbeknownst to Luce, her sisters husband and killer, Bud, on the prowl for money he believes Lilys children stole from him, has arrived and will readily perform sudden, cold violence on anyone who stands in his way. Fraziers characters lack nuance (they are either very, very good or very, very bad) and his prose is often self-consciously folksy. But his great strength, as well as presenting us with a fully realized physical backdrop, is the tenderness with which he renders the relationships at the core of this book, creating a compelling meditation on violence and the possibility that human love can heal even the deepest wound. (Check Catalog)

The Language of Flowers

Diffenbaugh's affecting debut chronicles the first harrowing steps into adulthood taken by a deeply wounded soul who finds her only solace in an all-but-forgotten language. On her 18th birthday, Victoria Jones ages out of the foster care system, a random series of living arrangements around the San Francisco Bay Area the only home she's ever known. Unable to express herself with words, she relies on the Victorian language of flowers to communicate: dahlias for "dignity"; rhododendron for "beware." Released from care with almost nothing, Victoria becomes homeless, stealing food and sleeping in McKinley Square, in San Francisco, where she maintains a small garden. Her secret knowledge soon lands her a job selling flowers, where she meets Grant, a mystery man who not only speaks her language, but also holds a crucial key to her past. Though Victoria is wary of almost everyone, she opens to Grant, and he reconnects her with the only person who has ever mattered in her life. Diffenbaugh's narrator is a hardened survivor and wears her damage on her sleeve. Struggling against all and ultimately reborn, Victoria Jones is hard to love, but very easy to root for. (Check Catalog)