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Volume 17, Number 11 November 2007 Home | IBW Index

Table of Contents

Reviewer's Choice Fiction Shelf Fantasy/SciFi Shelf
Travel Shelf Science Shelf Military Shelf
Business Shelf Cookbook Shelf Railroading Shelf
Art Shelf Comix/Graphic Novel Shelf Gardening Shelf
Philosophy Shelf Archaeology Shelf American History Shelf
World History Shelf Literary Studies Shelf Social Issues Shelf
Music Shelf Christian Studies Shelf Poetry Shelf
International Studies Shelf Education Shelf Money/Finance Shelf
Parenting Shelf Biography Shelf Audiobook Shelf
Jobs/Careers Shelf Nautical Shelf Metaphysical Studies Shelf
Woodworking Shelf Self-Help Shelf Sports Shelf
Genealogy Shelf Hunting/Fishing Shelf Pets/Wildlife Shelf
Psychology Shelf Journalism Shelf Writing/Publishing Shelf
Library Science Shelf Library DVD Shelf Aviation Shelf
Theatre/Cinema Shelf Political Science Shelf Islamic Studies Shelf
Gaming Shelf Buddhist Studies Shelf Library CD Music Shelf
Architecture Shelf Needlecraft Shelf Judaic Studies Shelf
Health/Medicine Shelf Environmental Studies Shelf Animal Husbandry Shelf
Antiques/Collectibles Shelf Religion/Spirituality Shelf Native American Shelf
Mystery/Suspense Shelf    


Reviewer's Choice

The Great Tradition
Richard M. Gamble, editor
ISI Books
PO Box 4431, Wilmington, DE 19807-0431
9781933859255, $30.00 www.isibooks.org 1-800-526-7022

Historian Richard M. Gamble edits The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to be an Educated Human Being is an anthology of essays written by great figures throughout history concerning what it truly means to be educated. Since ancient times, the Great Tradition has described education as the hard work the human soul undergoes in order to better understand itself and its maker. Individual writings quote Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, and many other historical, literary, religious, and scientific figures concerning the goals and true value of education. Each selection is prefaced by a brief yet insightful commentary about the author's life and identity, as well as comments about the selection itself and why it was chosen. The result is a cohesive picture offering much-needed insights into the ever-evolving education system, its purpose and its needs, particularly in today's era of debate concerning public schools and the rise of homeschooling. Highly recommended, especially for public and college libraries.

A Great Day to Fight Fire: Mann Gulch, 1949
Mark Matthews
University of Oklahoma Press
2800 Venture Drive, Norman, OK 73069
9780806138572, $24.95 www.oupress.com

Mark Matthews has written about the Mann Gulch fire before, and avid readers of firefighting literature may readily recognize both his style and the events. But what makes A GREAT DAY TO FIGHT FIRE memorable is its different focus on the people who fought the fire, rather than just strategies and events. Chapters in A GREAT DAY TO FIGHT FIRE focuses on the victim's families and the personal impact of the fire upon firefighters, family members, survivors, and community members: as such it's an essential piece of information key to any collection strong in firefighting literature - and any general-interest library interested in true-life heroism.

Memory and Myth
David B. Sachsman, S. Kittrell Rushing, and Roy Morris Jr.
Purdue University Press
1207 South Campus Courts, Bldg. E, West Lafayette, IN 47907
9781557534408, $29.95 www.thepress.purdue.edu 1-800-933-9637

Memory and Myth: The Civil War in Fiction and Film from Uncle Tom's Cabin to Cold Mountain is an anthology of essays concerning fiction and cinema created about the American Civil War and events leading up to it, as well as the issue of human slavery. Writings include "Beyond 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'", "Of Saints and Sinners: Religion and the Civil War and Reconstruction Novel", "Hollywood Themes and Southern Myths: An Analysis of 'Gone with the Wind'", "Alex Haley's Roots: The Fiction of Fact" and much more. An index rounds out this scholarly and well-researched compilation, especially recommended for the insight it provides into the distortions that American popular culture impose upon history.

Kitchen Literacy
Ann Vileisis
Island Press
1718 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 300, Washington, DC 20009-1148
9781597261449, $26.95 www.islandpress.org 1-800-828-1302

Award-winning historian Ann Vileisis presents Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes from and Why We Need to Get It Back lives up to its title as a journey through the history of the simple act of making dinner. From eighteenth-century gardens and historic cookbooks to the rise of calculated advertising campaigns and the modern supermarket. As the distance between the creation of food and the table at which it was eaten grew, modern preparers gradually lost their understanding food's origins in exchange for believing advertiser's claims and government assurances. Today, most foods travel fifteen hundred miles before they are eaten. In this modern era of pesticide-drenched fruits, and meat from feedlots of fifty thousand animals, foodborne pathogens and water pollution loom as threats. A movement toward locally grown or raised food and organic fare offers a counterbalance, but now more than ever we need to know the basics about where food comes from in order to ensure optimal health for ourselves and our environment. A "must-read" for modern-day consumers in the post-family farm era.

No Bed Of Roses
Chris Kennedy
Tails Books
c/o Big Earth Publishing
145 North Commercial Street, Suite 100, Neenah, WI 54956
9781931599993, $18.95 www.bigearthpublishing.com 1-800-258-5830

"No Bed Of Roses: My Sideline View Of The Wisconsin Badgers' Return To Greatness" is the extraordinary memoir of Chris Kennedy, whose four years with the University of Wisconsin Badgers football team saw the evolution from mediocrity to Rose Bowl glory under the legendary college football coach Barry Alvarez. Kennedy candidly shares his behind-the-scenes accounts of his thrills and frustrations as a college athlete. A unique and fascinating perspective rarely available to Badger team fans, "No Bed Of Roses" is as informative as it is entertaining -- and very highly recommended for personal reading lists and every Wisconsin community library collection.

Game Day: Wisconsin Football
Athlon Sports
Triumph Books
542 South Dearborn Street, Suite 750, Chicago, IL 60605
9781600780158, $24.95 www.triumphbooks.com

Drawing from the photos and writings of award-winning authors and photographs at Athlon Sports, "Game Day: Wisconsin Football" showcases University of Wisconsin football teams in general, and what it means to be a Badger football fan in particular. Packed from cover to cover with entertaining and informative anecdotes of past and current players, the stories behind Wisconsin football rivalries and traditions, detailed histories of some of the greats players, coaches, teams, and moments in Wisconsin's collegiate football, lists of the most successful seasons, recaps of the most exciting games every played, as well as year-by-year team performance statistics. Profusely illustrated throughout in full color, "Game Day: Wisconsin Football" will be read with interest and appreciation by the legions of Badger fans -- and should be considered 'a must' for all Wisconsin school and community library collections.

Creating Family Harmony Through Tanka
Katsumi Okabe, Ph.D.
Noble House
c/o American Literary Press
8019 Belair Road, Suite 10, Baltimore, MD 21236
9781561679768, $19.95 www.americanliterarypress.com 1-800-873-2003

Professor Katsumi Okabe, Ph.D. presents Creating Family Harmony Through Tanka: An Appeal for Educational Reform in the 21st Century, an introduction to the "whole-personality" approach of ideas and methods designed to serve the individual, organization, or society as a whole. Offered as a means to reform and improve education, the "whole-personality" approach can be applied through tanka, a short form of Japanese poetry with five lines, that can be applied as a form of therapy as well as creative expression. Creating family harmony is a cornerstone of personal and cultural happiness, and Creating Family Harmony Through Tanka offers an invaluable methodology to improving human quality of life, as well as numerous sample tanka poems. "Guest": I put out / some cherry flowers / for the child who / invited a foreigner / over for sukiyaki // seeing / my child discuss / things / with a foreigner / reminds me of busy times.


The Fiction Shelf

The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
Amy Hempel
Scribner
c/o Simon and Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas, 14th fl., New York, NY 10020
9780743291637, $15.00 www.simonsays.com 1-800-223-2336

The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel is an award-winning anthology of Amy Hempel's complete work - an amalgamation of four previous collections of her stories ("Reasons to Live", "At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom", "Tumble Home", and "The Dog of the Marriage"), covering everything from marriage to minor disasters to moments of epiphany. A thought-provoking body of literature, offering tales that hinge upon heavily weighted choices and the uphill battle that is the human experience. Highly recommended. "In the Animal Shelter": Every time you see a beautiful woman, someone is tired of her, so the men say. And I know where they go, these women, with their tired beauty that someone doesn't want - these women who must live like the high Sierra white pine, there since before the birth of Christ, fed somehow by the alpine wind. They reach out to the animals, day after day smoothing fur inside a cage, saying, "How is Mama's baby? Is Mama's baby lonesome?"

Darkness Falls
Kyle Mills
Vanguard Press
c/o Perseus Books Group
Eleven Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142
Meryl L. Moss Media Relations (publicity)
155 Post Road East, Suite 8, Westport, CT 06880
9781593154592, $24.95 www.amazon.com

"Darkness Falls" is a riveting suspense novel by Kyle Mills with all the elements of a story that could have been ripped from today's newspaper headlines. Erin Neal is an expert in the use of genetically engineered bacteria for use in the cleanup of toxic spills. But the unexpected death of his girlfriend derailed him professionally and he took refuge in the isolation of the Arizona desert. Then Homeland Security came and found him. A catastrophic bioterrorist attack using a strain of crude-petroleum eating bacteria on Saudi Arabia's largest oil reserve threatens disaster for the world's fuel supplies. Tracking down the origins of this bacteria leads to Erin's confrontation with a homicidal environmentalist he had thought long gone. Clearly, nothing less that the destiny and fate of the industrialized world hangs in the balance as Erin seeks to halt the spread of this bioterrorist attack. Very highly recommended for both personal reading lists and community library contemporary fiction collections, "Darkness Falls" is a superbly crafted thriller played out against a backdrop of energy dependence and the possible consequences should every oil well in the world suddenly going dry.

The Floor Of The Sky
Pamela Carter Joern
Bison Books
c/o University of Nebraska Press
233 North 8th Street, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68588-0255
9780803276314, $16.95 www.nebraskapress.unl.edu 1-800-755-1105

Toby Jenkins is an aging widow on the verge of losing her family's ranch in Pamela Carter Joern's superbly crafted novel, "The Floor Of The Sky". When in the midst of her crises Toby's 16-year-old granddaughter Lila shows up for the summer pregnant, painful decisions about the future must be dealt with as Lila uncovers festering secrets about her grandmother's past. Discoveries that compel Toby to reconsider the ambiguous ties she holds to her embittered sister Gettie, her loyal ranch hand George, her not-so-sympathetic daughter Nola Jean, and to herself. "The Floor Of The Sky" is a true gem of the storyteller's art, written with great compassion, wit and wisdom about the human condition, family secrets, and the sweeping changes in a contemporary rural America. "The Floor Of The Sky" is a welcome and enthusiastically recommended addition to personal reading lists and community library collections.


The Fantasy/SciFi Shelf

Hurricane Moon
Alexis Glynn Latner
Pyr
c/o Prometheus Books
59 John Glenn Drive, Amherst, NY 14228-2197
9781591025450, $15.00 www.pyrsf.com

In the late 21st century an Earth affected by a series of crises launches a starship to find a new world - a ship containing a scientist, an astronaut, and a molecular biologist, each with his own agenda for discovery. But the starship's programming discovers not one but two worlds locked around each other - and a millennium of suspended animation takes its toll which requires an untrustworthy maverick to help save humanity in the face of an impossible romance and mystery. Fast-paced action lends an outstanding, gripping drama to this intense story.

Invasion of the Sea
Jules Verne
Wesleyan University Press
215 Long Lane, Middletown, CT 06459
9780819565587, $17.95 www.wesleyan.edu/wespress 1-800-421-1561

Invasion of the Sea is a science fiction literary classic by the famous author Jules Verne (1828-1905), perhaps best known for "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". Now available for the very first time in complete English translation, Invasion of the Sea is illustrated with the black-and-white woodcut prints that graced its original French printing, Invasion of the Sea chronicles a hypothetical French plan to construct a canal that would bring water to the Sahara Desert. Yet the local peoples resist such a plan, as such radical change would alter their way of life - Tuareg nomads and Islamic tribes initiate a war, and only a cataclysmic natural event can bring an end to the suffering. A vivid and exciting cautionary tale that has weathered the test of time, and stands as virtually prophetic in its description of tenaciously fierce militant Islam. Highly recommended as a worthy addition to literature and library collections.

The Ancient Treils
C.L. Dague
American Book Publishing
PO Box 65624, Salt Lake City, UT 84165
9781589824102, $22.00

The debut novel of Cindy L. Dague, The Ancient Treils is a fantastic saga in which the natural balance of life teeters dangerously. Winafir is thrust into the crossroads of destiny, guided by the Elements in a quest to return The Light Energy to Treil Forest before all is lost. His search will take him across kingdoms and even below the deathly Shadow Mountain. A sweeping, majestic saga about the effort to fight back against madness and decay, for the sake of survival, honor, and love. Highly recommended.

Dancing With Werewolves
Carole Nelson Douglas
Juno Books
c/o Wildside Press
9710 Traville Gateway Drive, #234, Rockville, MD 20850
9780809572038, $6.99 www.juno-books.com

There came the day when the world learned that such creatures as werewolves, vampires, witches, and other supernaturals were not the stuff of legend and folklore -- they were real! Thirteen years after that realization took place, television reporter Delilah Street (who used to cover the small-town bogeyman back in Kansas) is now working in fabulous Las Vegas -- a gaming mecca that is run be a werewolf mob. Delilah finds herself with a very hot guy, a big bad wolfhound, and holding back the very gates of Hell in "Dancing With Werewolves". This is a smartly written, plot driven, original novel that deftly combines the elements of fantasy, mystery, and romance to the well sated delight of the reader. "Dancing With Werewolves" is enthusiastically recommended and a welcome addition to personal reading lists and community library collections.


The Travel Shelf

Asia's Legendary Hotels: The Romance of Travel
William Warren and Jill Gocher
Periplus
c/o Tuttle Publishing
364 Innovation Drive, North Clarendon, VT 05759-9436
079460174X, $44.95 www.tuttlepublishing.com

Any art library strong in commercial architecture and design needs ASIA'S LEGENDARY HOTELS, a focus on the histories and presentations of some of Asia's most famous hotels, from Raffles in Singapore to the Ananda in the Himalayas. From the building of the structures to the famous people who occupied the buildings over the decades, ASIA'S LEGENDARY HOTELS also makes a fine coffee table addition for any who enjoy travel, and may even be considered for public libraries strong in travel pieces mixed with visual displays of structures.

Peter Pauper Press, Inc.
202 Mamaroneck Avenue, White Plains, NY 10601
www.peterpauper.com

Founded in 1928, Peter Pauper press is a family-owned publishing that has a well earned reputation for producing high quality books for an appreciative readership. Of special note is their line of pocket sized (4-4? wide x 5-3/4" high) travel guides called 'Little Black Travel Books'. Two of the newest additions to this remarkable series are "The Little Black Book of San Francisco" (9781593598679, $12.95) by Marlene Goldman, and "The Little Black Book of London" (9781593598860, $12.95) by Vesna Neskow. Both of these information packed travel guides feature illustrations by Kerren Barbas Steckler, and cartography by David Linroth. Both titles include full-color fold-out neighborhood maps, while featuring landmarks, museums, entertainments, hotels, transportation resources, and 'things to do'. If you are planning a visit to San Francisco, or preparing for a trip to London, begin with acquiring your own personal copy of "The Little Black Book Of San Francisco", or "The Little Black Book of London" respectively. Going somewhere else? Then visit the Peter Pauper Press website at www.peterpauper.com for a complete listing of their 'Little Black Travel Book' titles -- in terms of getting the most out of your trip, you'll be glad you did!

Cornwall & the Isles of Scilly
Rita Tregellas Pope
Hunter Publishing
130 Campus Drive, Edison, NJ 08818
9781843063100, $18.99 1-800-255-0343

Written by Cornish Bard and tapestry artist Rita Tregellas Pope, Cornwall & the Isles of Scilly is a high-quality guide for travelers and tourists seeking to experience the best of the best amid Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (located in Britain, also known as "The Land of King Arthur"). From the finest-tasting local foods and beverages, to recommendations of walks and car tours, suggestions for rainy days, "must-see" landmarks, annual events, and much more, Cornwall & the Isles of Scilly is an excellent guide for singles, couples, and families. Color photography on almost every page enhances this easy-to-use travel guide.

From The Vine
Sharon Kegerreis & Lorri Hathaway
Ann Arbor Media Group
2500 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104
9781587264603, $34.95 www.AnnArborMediaGroup.com 1-877-722-2264

When people think about trips to the 'wine country', Michigan does not readily come to mind. All that will change with "From The Vine: Exploring Michigan Wineries", a collaborative travel guide by Sharon Kegerries and Lorri hathaway who showcase fifty-one wine country destinations throughout the upper-Midwest state of Michigan. Organized by four designated 'wine trails' and 'beyond the trails', "From The Vine" includes anecdotal stories, features on artisans who handcraft chocolate and cheese, Old World grape stomping, cherry mead, hard cider, ice wine, and more. Profusely and beautiful illustrated throughout, "From The Vine" is enhanced with a useful glossary and a bibliography that travelers through Michigan's wine country will find of immense interest. Informed and informative, "From The Vine" is an entertaining and very highly recommended addition to personal reading lists for anyone traveling through Michigan whether as a day trip or part of an extended vacation. Needless to say, no Michigan college or community library should be without at least one copy of "From The Vine" in their collection!

Rain Shadow
Tom Domek
South Dakota State Historical Society Press
900 Governors Drive, Pierre, SC 57501-2217
9780974919553, $9.95 www.sdshspress.com

Tom Domek, the author of numerous books and articles on grasslands and state parks, presents Rain Shadow: A Traveler's Guide to the Buffalo Gap National Grassland, an easy-to-use resource for hikers, bikers, off-road vehicle users, rock hounds, canoeists, campers, and more to discovering the natural wonders of Buffalo Gap National Grassland. Black-and-white maps and photographs, as well as a short inset section of color plates, illustrate this tour of sites of interest, peppered with fascinating historical information, and guidelines for responsible recreation. The warm, in-depth description makes Rain Shadow ideal for armchair travelers as well as outdoorsmen. Enthusiastically recommended for anyone interested in seeing all Buffalo Gap National Grassland has to offer.

Rail-Trails: New England
Rails-to-Trails Conservancy
Wilderness Press
1200 Fifth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710-1306
9780899974491, $15.95 www.wildernesspress.com 1-800-443-7227

There are now more than 13,00 miles of open rail-trails across the country. The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy is an organization of more than 100,000 members and a leading advocate for trail and greenway 'recycling' of obsolete railroad corridors and rights of way. The official guidebook of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, "Rail-Trails: New England" is a thoroughly 'user friendly' guide to railroad related trails in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Profusely illustrated with maps, as well as black-and-white photographs, "Rail-Trails: New England" is the perfect planning guide for biking or hiking along pathways created from unused railroad corridors that have been converted to recreational use by the public. some rail-trails are paved and run through scenic parts of New England townships, others are unpaved paths through scenic countrysides. Enhanced with detailed maps for every rail-trail (plus driving directions to trailheads), "Rail-Trails: New England" also features icons indicating each trail's use, along with succinct descriptions written by truly knowledgeable and articulate rail-trail experts. If you are planning to avail yourself of the recreational and exercise opportunities of rail-trails anywhere in the New England region, then begin with a careful browse through the pages of "Rail-Trails: New England"!

After You Mr. Lear
Maldwin Drummond
Sheridan House Inc.
145 Palisade Street, Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522
9781574092554, $24.95 www.sheridanhouse.com 1-888-743-7425

Maldwin Drummond is a sailor and a farmer who got an idea. He cruised under sail with the specific goal of following in the wake of artist and nonsense poetry writer Edward Lear (1812-1888) The result is "After You Mr. Lear: In The Wake Of Edward Lear In Italy" which relates Maldwin Drummond's nautical and land-based adventures as a result of his unusual quest. Profusely illustrated with cartoons, paintings, photos, and maps, "After You Mr. Lear" is an intrinsically interested account of a modern-day cruise which was embarked upon as a voyage of discovery to the appreciation of armchair travelers and land-bound sailors. Drummond's deftly written accounts of leaving from the Isle of Wight aboard his yacht 'Gang Warily" and crossing the English Channel, then navigating the rivers and canals of France all the way to the Mediterranean, then sailing down the coast of Italy from the Rivera to Naples, then going inland to Campania, Basilicata, Sicily, and Calabria, will hold the reader's rapt attention from first page to last. "After You Mr. Lear" is a highly recommended addition to personal reading lists and community library collections.


The Science Shelf

The New Time Travelers
David Toomey
W.W. Norton
500 - 5th Avenue, New York NY 10110
9780393060133, $25.95 www.wwnorton.com

THE NEW TIME TRAVELERS: A JOURNEY TO THE FRONTIERS OF PHYSICS straddles the line between science fiction and science fact, offering both college-level science libraries and general-interest public lending libraries a lively survey of scientific inquiry based on a group of theoretical physicists at the California Institute of Technology who undertook a serious investigation of the possibilities of pastward time travel and its possibilities. Their inquiry tried to determine the viability of time travel: their results blends science and philosophy in a lively survey perfect for either casual reading or classroom debate.

Closer To Truth
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Praeger Publishers
88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
0275993892, $49.95 www.praeger.com

CLOSER TO TRUTH: SCIENCE, MEANING AND THE FUTURE explores the latest scientific research, philosophical thinking and considerations of the challenges facing mankind in the future, and is based on the PBS TV show of the same name. Specialists debate a range of social scientific and ethical questions, from how alternative medicine may be validated to how science supports political and social interests. In offering up a blend of debate and dialogue, CLOSER TO TRUTH supercedes similar titles and provides both college-level science holdings and general-interest collections with a powerful survey.

Biomechanics
Donald R. Peterson & Joseph D. Bronzino
CRC Press
c/o Taylor & Francis Group
6000 NW Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487
0849385342, $89.95 www.crcpress.com 1-800-272-7737

Compiled and co-edited by Donald R. Peterson (University of Connecticut Health Center, Biodynamics Laboratory, farming, Connecticut) and Joseph D. Bronzino (recipient of the Millennium Award from IEEE/EMBS in 2000 and the Gaddard Award from Worcester Polytechnic Institute for Professional Achievement in June 2004), "Biomechanics: Principles And Applications" is a collection of twenty informed and informative articles on various aspects of, and researches into, the science of biomechanics. The contributors address everything from applications on system-level aspects of the human body (the musculoskeletal system, auditory system, lymphatic system, the cardiovascular system), to biological sub-systems (tissues, cells, molecules). Drawn from the third edition of the "Biomedical Engineering Handbook", these seminal articles introduce current methods and strategies for modeling cellular mechanices, present topics in biofluid mechanics, feature more than 140 illustrations and 60 tables, and provide a number of useful equations to assist in modeling biomechanical behaviors. A volume of truly impressive scholarship, "Biomechanics: Principles And Applications" should be a core acquisition selection for every academic library reference collection on the subject, as well as on the supplemental reading lists for students of Biomechanical Engineering.


The Military Shelf

Men of Fire
Jack Hurst
Basic Books
387 Park Avenue South, New York NY 10016
0465031846, $27.95 www.basicbooks.com

MEN OF FIRE: GRANT, FORREST, AND THE CAMPAIGN THAT DECIDED THE CIVIL WAR is a 'must' for any detailed Civil War library: it surveys the two-week campaign which Grant led against four flawed Confederate generals and their subordinate Forrest, showing why this campaign changed the Civil War and how military interactions affect campaigns. MEN OF FIRE is packed with source material quotes and insights on battle strategies, problems, and issues, and it provides a top-notch read for any interested in Civil War history and underlying influences.

Rebel and the Rose
Wesley Millett and Gerald White
Cumberland House Publishing
431 Harding Industrial Drive, Nashville, TN 37211
9781581825831, $24.95 www.cumberlandhouse.com

In April 1865 the Civil War was over for most - but even after the Confederate government dissolved, one Jefferson Davis felt compelled to carry on the struggle, journeying best entrusted with all the remaining gold in the Confederate treasury: some, $86,000 in coins and bullion. It and its carriers disappeared - and their fate is revealed in THE REBEL AND THE ROSE: JAMES A. SEMPLE, JULIA GARDINER TYLER, AND THE LOST CONFEDERATE GOLD, which follows Davis' journeys and considers what happened to the gold. Both military and general-interest libraries will find it engrossing.

Armoured Operations of the Second World War
Juan Vazquez Garcia
AF Editions
C/Cromo P. 18-20 - Poligono Industrial San Cristobal
47012 Vallidad, Spain
9788496016729, $49.95 www.libromedia.com www.amazon.com

Specialty military libraries, especially those with a focus on World War II, need ARMOURED OPERATIONS: it charts all the major armored engagements of the war, offering color side panels of biographical information of leaders along with insights on different forces' strategies, attack plans, and events. It's an survey not to be missed: color photos, charts, and details provide all the depth and detail lacking in more general overviews of World War II battles, making its specific information perfect for a detailed World War II report.

Intelligence and National Security
J. Ransom Clark
Praeger Publishers
88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
9780275992989, $55.00 www.praeger.com

Joining others in the 'Contemporary Military, Strategic, and Security Issues' series is the excellent Intelligence and National Security: A Reference Handbook, which provides college-level and military collections with an excellent survey and analysis of what intelligence is and how it functions under the umbrella of American national security. From the initial creation of intelligence services and divisions within the US to the ways information is gathered and analyzed, INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY packs in a blend of history and military and social analysis, making it an excellent starting point for any discussion on the topic.

Reaping the Whirlwind
Nigel Cawthorne
David & Charles
c/o F&W Publications, Inc.
700 East State Street, Iola, WI 54990
9780715327449, $16.99 www.fwpublications.com 1-800-726-9966

Reaping the Whirlwind: The German and Japanese Experience of World War II offers insight into the experience of war from the perspective of German and Japanese soldiers and civilians. Drawn from diaries, letters, interrogation reports, interviews and personal memoirs, Reaping the Whirlwind speaks with the authentic voices of those who followed delusional and power-hungry leaders to their nations' ruin. A vividly unforgettable anthology of primary sources, recommended for World War II scholars and lay readers alike.

Cinderella Army
Terry Copp
University of Toronto Press
10 St. Mary Street, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M4Y 2W8
9780802039255, $45.00 www.utppublishing.com 1-800-565-9523

Department of History professor emeritus Terry Copp presents Cinderella Army: The Canadians in Northwest Europe 1944-1945, the follow-up to "Fields of Fire" and an in-depth examination of the operations carried out by the First Canadian Army during the last nine months of World War II. Continuing the argument in "Fields of Fire" that the achievement of Allied and Canadian armies has been underrated while the effectiveness of the German army has been decidedly exaggerated, Cinderella Army supports its proposal with research garnered from trips to the battlefields of France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany. With evidence of the battlefield terrain including maps and air photos, Cinderella Army reveals the challenging defensive positions that the Canadian soldiers had to overcome and illustrate just how impressive their achievements truly were. A welcome addition to Canadian military history shelves, along with the highly recommended "Fields of Fire".

Inferno
Joseph A. Springer
Zenith Books
c/o MBI Publishing Company
Galtier Plaza, Suite 200, 380 Jackson Street, St. Paul, MN 55101-3885
9780760329825, $24.95 www.mbipublishing.com 1-800-458-0454

Retired Aircraft Weapons Specialist of the United States Air Force Joseph A. Springer presents Inferno: The Epic Life and Death Struggle of the USS Franklin in World War II, the true story of the aircraft carrier USS Franklin (CV-13), known throughout the fleet as "Big Ben". One of twenty-four Essex-class fast carriers built during World War II and formed the backbone of the U.S. Navy during the war against Japan, Big Ben participated in island campaigns of the central and western Pacific, the Battle for Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, and strikes against Honshu and Kobe Harbor. Big Ben suffered casualties from the dreaded Japanese kamikaze, and was nearly sunk by a 250-kilogram bomb that set off a chain reaction of exploding aviation fuel and ordnance. Though Big Ben appeared mortally wounded and endured severe loss of life - a loss that would have been even greater if not for the heroism of the remaining crewmembers and the efforts of the USS Santa Fe to take the wounded to safety. A gripping true story of bravery and sacrifice, featuring the words of men who served aboard "Big Ben" as well as a handful of black-and-white photographs. A welcome addition to naval and World War II history shelves.

Charge!
Congressman Steve Israel, editor
Naval Institute Press
291 Wood Road, Annapolis, MD 21402
9781591143994, $32.95 www.navalinstitute.org 1-800-233-8764

U.S. Congressman Steve Israel has gathered together a collection of the most inspiring and influential military speeches in Charge! History's Greatest Military Speeches. From Moses' instructions to his people to march without him in Biblical times, to Queen Elizabeth I's support for her troops against the Spanish Armada, to Patrick Henry's "Liberty or Death" speech to Josef's Stalin call to "Defend Every Inch" in World War II to George W. Bush's rally of Americans after 9/11, each speech touches upon pivotal moments in history. Though a preponderance of the speeches are by Americans, an assortment of historic words from leaders of a variety of other origins including Napoleon Bonaparte, Pericles of Athens, and Giuseppe Garibaldi of Italy. A truly soul-stirring anthology, illustrated with black-and-white photographs of the notable speakers.

The Forgotten 500
Gregory A. Freeman
New American Library
375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014-3658
9780451222121, $23.95 www.penguin.com 1-800-847-5515

Award-winning writer and experienced journalist Gregory A. Freeman presents The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission in World War II, the story of Operation Halyard - a mission to rescue American airmen who were shot down in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia, and sheltered by Serbian villagers who risked their lives. To pull off Operation Halyard, the starving Americans in Yugoslavia had to construct a landing strip large enough for C-47 cargo planes without tools, without alerting the Germans, and without endangering the villagers. And the cargo planes that came to their rescue would have to traverse enemy airspace without being shot down. Extensively researched, The Forgotten 500 brings the daring true saga to life with compelling detail. A welcome addition to World War II shelves, sure to intrigue laymen and military historians alike.

PSI Spies
Jim Marrs
New Page Books
c/o Career Press Inc.
PO Box 687, Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417
Warwick Associates (publicity)
18340 Sonoma Highway, Sonoma, CA 95476
9781564149602, $15.99 www.newpagebooks.com 1-800-227-3371

'Remote Viewing' is the term used to describe a psychic or paranormal ability to see places and events far removed from the normal line of physical sight. This would such psychically gifted men and women the perfect reconnaissance and information gatherers on an enemy's operations. In short, it would make them the perfect spy. What is not generally known is that the Russians during the height of the Cold War tried to develop a remote viewing program. When the American military discovered this, they embarked on a similar program. Award-winning journalist Jim Marrs lays out the entire story of this little known aspect to the Cold War confrontation between the Russians and the Americans in "Psi Spies: The True Story Of America's Psychic Warfare Program". He reveals how the U.S. Army trained men and women to try to psychically access secrets of Soviet command centers, missile complexes, biological warfare centers -- even the Kremlin itself. Also included are the stories of how skilled remote viewers learned about the fate of the Mars Observer that was 'lost' as it entered orbit around Mars; gained knowledge of a series of mysteries (the most prominent of which was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy); and even applying remote viewing to the legendary Loch Ness Monster. Of special note are the tips on how the reader can develop remote viewing abilities themselves! "Psi Spies" is a deftly written, thoroughly fascinating, informed and informative reading recommended for anyone with an interest in Metaphysical Studies and 20th Century American Military History.


The Business Shelf

The Truth About Hiring The Best
Cathy Fyock
FT Press
c/o Pearson Technology Group
801 East 96th Street, #300, Indianapolis, IN 46240-3759
9780132381864, $18.99 www.fitpress.com

"The Truth About Hiring The Best" by employment strategist and consultant Cathy Fyock is organized into major sections dedicated to instructing human resource personnel and business managers on how to identify the best and most qualified candidates for hire; how to go about recruiting such employees; how to conduct the job interview; detailing the selection process in filling a vacancy; the use (and limitations) of panels, multiple interviews, background checks, tests, and other 'tools of the trade' in screening applicants and recruits; evaluating candidates and making effective offers of employment Showcasing fifty-three proven hiring principles, as well as numerous 'user friendly' techniques for recruiting the best employees as possible, "The Truth About Hiring The Best" should be considered as essential reading for anyone charged with the responsibility of recruiting and hiring employees for any local, regional, national, or international business.

Global Ambitions And Local Identities
Galit Ailon
Berghahn Books
150 Broadway, Suite 812, New York, NY 10038
1845451945, $60.00 www.berghahnbooks.com 1-800-540-8663

"Global Ambitions And Local Identities: An Israeli-American High-Tech Merger" by academician and organizational studies expert Galit Ailon (Lecturer at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Bar-Ilan University) is an articulate and informative study of a successful Israeli high-tech company's merger with an American competitor. Professor Ailon's research is based upon her considerable and in-depth fieldwork as she lays out the corporate realities underlying the statistics, balance sheets, and managerial prescriptions of the merger process. Of special note is the detailed account of everyday work life for those involved, and the debunking of myths often employed as arguments for (and against) globalization. The result is a superbly written descriptive analysis that is very strongly recommended, both as an acquisition to academic library collections in the fields of economics, business, politics, and anthropology, and also as an addition to the supplemental reading lists for students and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the process of contemporary multi-national corporate mergers.

Organization Change
W. Warner Burke
Sage Publications
2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320-2218
9781412926706, $46.95 www.sagepub.com 1-800-818-7243

Now in a completely updated and significantly expanded second edition, "Organization Change: Theory And Practice" by W. Warner Burke (Edward Lee Thorndike Professor of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he also serves as the Chair of the Department of Organization and Leadership) continues to be esteemed and recommended as a graduate school level text for university course work in the disciplines of industrial psychology, business administration, and organizational behavior. An invaluable resource for understanding and analyzing organizations be they corporate, governmental, or academic, this edition of "Organizational Change" is enhanced with a new chapter on 'Transformational Leadership' covering the fundamentals of leadership compared with management, transformational leadership, and the roles/responsibilities of the change leader. Also of note is the illuminating discussion on theories for understanding organization and change; as well as the evolutionary and revolutionary aspects of organization change. Professor Burke analytically discusses the nature of change and how organizational change is initiated by changing behavior, but not (as is commonly supposed) changes in mental sets or attributes. Enhanced with the inclusion of theoretical and illustrative models, as well as a model of meticulous and articulate scholarship, "Organizational Change" should be a part of every academic library reference collection and is especially recommended reading for students of the role of leadership in organizational evolution.

All The Tea In China
Jeremy Haft
Portfolio
c/o The Penguin Publishing Group
375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
SJ Miller Communications (publicity)
10 Turning Mill Lane, Randolph, MA 02368
9781591841593, $25.95 www.us.penguingroup.com 1-800-847-5515

There is a growing clamor for regulation (if not downright protectionism) with respect to goods bearing the 'Made in China' label. Each week that goes by sees more Chinese products from food to toys to tires being recalled from the American market. Things have gotten so bad that the Chinese government has threatened economic retaliation against the US for this embarrassing state of affairs. That's why Jeremy Haft's "All The Tea In China: How To Buy, Sell, And Make Money On The Mainland" is so timely. Haft (founder of Schinab Inc., a firm that helps American companies buy and sell goods on the mainland of china by leveraging a platform of over 8,000 Chinese factories) offers American businesses seven specific steps to manage a smooth and profitable import chain that consists of doing 'due diligence'; reaching out to a customs broker; setting up financing; setting up commercial, engineering and regulatory terms (in writing!; obtaining as many buying commitments as possible before importing; monitoring documentation, cash, and time flows; and shipping in a correct and timely manner. Simply stated, "All The Tea In China" should be considered mandatory reading for any corporate executive seeking to do business with China -- as well as government agency employees tasked with regulation and quality control of Chinese products.

Manager's Desktop Consultant
Louellen N. Essex & Mitchell E. Kusy
Davies-Black Publishing
1055 Joaquin Road, #200, Mountain View, CA 94043-1243
C.S. Lewis Company (publicity)
196 Van Dale Road, Woodstock, NY 12498
9780891062332, $18.95 www.daviesblack.com 1-800-624-1765

The collaborative work of Louellen N. Essex (a Fellow of the Carlson School of Management's Executive Education Center at the University of Minnesota) and Mitchell E. Kusy (a Fulbright Scholar for International Organization Development and distinguished visiting professor at the University of Auckland, New Zealand), "Manager's Desktop Consultant: Just-in-Time Solutions To The Top People Problems That Keep You Up At Night" focuses on the problem of how to deal effectively with peers who aren't 'team players'; what to do when staff members resist change; managing difficult bosses, and dealing with organizational politics. An effective 'real-world' instruction guide replete with proven strategies, applicable techniques, and practical tools for managing intra-corporate conflict, and drawing upon illustrative scenarios, the "Manager's Desktop Consultant" describes problem situations commonly encountered and then lays out the key action strategies whose application will result in conflict resolution and management success. A very strongly recommended addition to business management reading lists and reference shelves, "Manager's Desktop Consultant" is enhanced with an epilogue (Our Final Words of Advice), references for further reading, and an index.

The Future Of Management
Gary Hamel & Bill Breen
Harvard Business School Press
60 Harvard Way, Boston, MA 02163
9781422102503, $26.95 www.HBSPress.org 1-800-668-6780

A very strongly recommended addition to personal, professional, academic, and community library Business & Management reference collections, "The Future Of Management" by Gary Hamel (Visiting Professor of Strategic and International Management at the London Business School) was written with the assistance of Bill Breen (founding senior editor and senior projects editor of the business magazine 'Fast Company'), focuses on answering a set of questions tied to changing corporate agendas through management innovation. Through a process of analyzing management assumptions, traditions, processes and resources, corporate officers and institutional leaders can more readily adapt to changing market conditions, best utilize their company's human resources and talents, and create viable competitive advantages in volatile and technologically evolving industries. "The Future Of Management" uses real-world examples of such innovative and successful management innovators as Google, W. L. Gore, and Whole Foods. The core message, and one that should be carefully studied by MBA students and corporate officers alike, is that future corporate success will necessitate the creation of organizations that are as adaptable and innovative as possible -- and that, in turn, will require managers to utilize their company's human talent pool to help create those innovations and adaptations.


The Cookbook Shelf

Extreme Barbecue
Dan Huntley and Lisa Grace Leonicer
Chronicle Books
680 - 2nd Street, San Francisco CA 94107
0811853187, $18.95 www.chroniclebooks.com

EXTREME BARBECUE: SMOKIN' RIGS AND REAL GOOD RECIPES is a fun blend of unusual barbecue recipes and a visual focus on unusual or 'extreme' barbecue rigs, from a rig composed of sawhorses and a tin roof to a homemade cob oven. Whether you choose the rig route or the plain ole Weber, any library catering to patrons who 'que will love EXTREME BARBECUE: the blend of vignettes and notes from such adventurers melds well with recipes such as Caribbean Meat Loaf or Oysters in Thick Cream, creating a memorable, fine and unique 'que cookbook.

Yum!
Jeffrey Spear & Dara Bunjon
Cumberland House Publishing
431 Harding Industrial Park Drive, Nashville, TN 37211
9781581826166, $28.95 www.cumberlandpress.com 1-888-439-2665

An impressive collection of kitchen cook friendly, gourmet quality, nutritious and delicious recipes suitable for all dining occasions, "Yum!: Tasty Recipes From Culinary Greats" offers more than 100 dishes contributed by sixty of the best professional chefs in the culinary world who donated their recipes to food author Dara Bunjon and gourmet chef Jeffery Spear as a contribution to the American Kidney Foundation -- who receives the proceeds from the sales of this outstanding cookbook. Beautifully illustrated with color photography showing off not only the finished dishes but the chefs who created them (along with their brief biographies), "Yum!" truly lives up to its title with such offerings as: 'Nora Poullon's Carpaccio with Arugula, Shaved Parmesan & Mustard-Caper Sauce'; Caprial and John Pence's 'Pan-Fried Oysters with Ginger Creme Fraiche and Peppers'; Nick Malgieri's 'Gruyere and Bacton Tart'; Charlie Trotter's 'Cold-Poached Salmon with Hearts of Palm and Tamarind'; and Jennifer Bushman's 'Grilled Salmon Fillets with Lime Ginger Butter', just to name a few! If you only have room enough on your kitchen cookbook shelf for one more, make it "Yum!".

Recipe Of The Week: Cookies
Sally Sampson
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5773
9780471921905, $16.95 www.wiley.com 1-800-225-5945

A senior writer for 'Cooks Illustrated Magazine', Sally Sampson is the author of seven previous cookbooks and the co-author of six more. Now she has added another culinary title to her impressive list: "Recipe Of The Week: Cookies" showcasing fifty-two quick and easy recipes for turning out delicious cookies on a weekly basis all year long. Superbly illustrated with full color photography, this highly recommended and thoroughly 'kitchen cook friendly' collection of recipes ranges from Gingersnaps; Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies; Espresso Shortbread; and Orange Almond Cookies; to Jenny deBell's Snickerdoodles; Annie Fischel's Meringues; Coco Toffee Chunk Cookies; and Almond Coconut Macaroons. Especially recommended for dedicated cookie enthusiasts, "Recipe Of The Week: Cookies" will prove to be an especially popular addition to family and community library cookbook collections!

The Vegetarian Passport Cookbook
Linda Woolven
Fitzhenry & Whiteside
311 Washington Street, Brighton, MA 02135-3303
1550413317, $24.95 www.fitzhenry.ca

Canadian master herbalist, certified acupuncturist, and expert in the field of natural health, Linda Woolven has compiled the recipes and instructions for more than 350 superb vegetarian dishes that are healthy, delicious, easy to prepare, gourmet quality, and healthy. Drawn from more than fifteen different countries and regions around the world, the recipes range from snacks and breads, to dips and desserts, to salads and stews, to desserts and beverages. Of special note is the grain and bean chart, and the tips on fats. From Chinese White Bean Pate (Asia); Chilled Cucumber Soup (Morocco); Ziti Pasta (Italy); and Chickpea Loaf (North America); to Spicy Beans (Portugal); Double Stuffed Peppers (Peru); Cheese Souffle (France); and Scalloped Potato with Kale (England), "The Vegetarian Passport Cookbook: Simple Dishes From Around The World" is an impressive and recommended addition to the vegetarian cookbook shelf -- and ethnic regional cuisine collections as well.

The 4-Ingredient Diabetes Cookbook
Nancy S. Hughes
American Diabetes Association
1701 North Beauregard Street, Alexandria, VA 22311
9781580402781, $16.95 www.diabetes.org 1-800-342-2383

In "The 4-Ingredient Diabetes Cookbook" cookbook author, food consultant, and nutritionist Nancy S. Hughes has compiled simple and delicious recipes for entrees, side dishes and desserts using four ingredients (or less) that are especially suitable and suited to the dietary needs of diabetics. Quick and easy to prepare, the recipes range from Pineapple-Apricot Fizz; Lemony Asparagus Spear Salad; Peach Barbecued Chicken; and Chili Stuffed Potatoes; to Taco-Spiced Rice; Skillet Roasted Veggies; Zesty Beef Patties with Grilled Onions; and Frozen Chocolate Peanut Butter Layered Pie. Of special note are the 'Cook's Tips' that accompany each of the recipes. "The 4-Ingredient Diabetes Cookbook" is a welcome and very highly recommended addition to diabetes relevant cookbook collections.

Southern Living Busy Moms Weeknight Favorites
Elizabeth Taliaferro
Oxmoor House
c/o Leisure Arts Inc.
5701 Ranch Drive, Little Rock, AR 72223-9633
9780848731281, $24.95 www.leisurearts.com 1-800-643-8030

In "Southern Living Busy Moms Weeknight Favorites", Elizabeth Taliaferro has compiled 130 suppers suitable for family dinners. Each of these dinners is complete with a menu, a grocery list, nutrition information, and dependable, 'kitchen cook friendly' recipes. These easy-to-prepare dinners are especially notable for how quickly they can be put together making them ideal for time-stressed wives and mothers. Beautifully illustrated throughout with full-color photographs, the dishes range from Monte Cristo Sandwiches (Preparation time 10 minutes, cooking time 12 minutes); to Hearty Brunswick Stew (preparation time 5 minutes, cooking time 25 minutes); to Tuscan Pork Chops (preparation time 6 minutes, cooking time 11 minutes); to Bacon-Wrapped Chicken Thighs (preparation time 20 minutes, cooking time 60 minutes). Each one of these 130 suppers present palate pleasing, appetite satisfying, gourmet quality dishes that will grace any family table any night of the week.

Western National Parks' Lodges Cookbook
Kathleen Bryant
Northland Publishing
PO Box 1389, Flagstaff, AZ 86002
9780873589000, $24.95 www.northlandpub.com 1-800-346-3257

The national parks of the American west have had lodges and camping facilities in service to visitors from the very beginning of the national park movement. Some of these lodges are as memorable for their cuisine as they are for their scenery. Travel writer and food connoisseur Kathleen Brant has created a showcase compendium featuring some of the best of these lodges and what they have to offer the discerning gourmet in a collection of authentic recipes that are beautifully illustrated, simple to follow, and result in quality dishes that would grace any family dining occasion. Of special note are the anecdotal stories and histories of the lodges from which these recipes derive. From Roasted Granny Apple Bisque with Apple-Ginger Compote and Curry Creme Fraiche; Wassail Punch; Tuscan Pancetta Soup; and Grilled Artichokes; to Bourbon Buffalo Meatloaf; Watermelon, Tomato, and Feta Salad; Cinnamon-Dusted Pork Tenderloin with Raspberry Balsamic Sauce; and Salmon Rucko; "Western National Parks' Lodges Cookbook" offers unique dishes, making it a worth and recommended addition to any family or community library cookbook collection!

Sweety Pies
Patty Pinner
The Taunton Press
63 South Main Street, Newtown, CT 06470
9781561588480, $23.00 www.taunton.com 1-800-477-8727

Mouth-wateringly illustrated with showcase quality color photography, "Sweety Pies: an Uncommon Collection Of Womanish Observations, With Pie" is a compendium that combines outstanding recipes for a variety of impressive pies with anecdotal commentaries by Patty Pinner about the women with whom many of these recipes are associated. The recipes are arranged in chapters for Berry Pies; Cereal Pies; Cream & Custard Pies; Fruit Pies; Nut & Sweet Vegetable Pies; and Meringue Pies. Of special note is the beginning chapter dedicated to the culinary subject pie crusts. From Dexarae Triplett's Mixed Berry Pie; Carlean's Sweet Potato-Coconut Custard Pie; Sister Chestermae Hayes's Apple Butter Pie; and Benita's Any Flavor Cobbler; to Mayor Ham's Brown Sugar Peach Pie; Alberta Beasley's Decadent Pecan Pie; Mamma's Zucchini Cobbler; and Daddy's Mother's Blueberry Meringue Pie, "Sweety Pies" is a thoroughly 'kitchen cook friendly' and very highly recommended addition to any family or community library cookbook collection.

A Finnish Christmas Cookbook
Sargit Warringer & Liisa Krumsieg
North Star Press of St. Cloud
PO Box 451, St. Cloud, MN 56302-0451
0878391339, $14.95 www.northstarpress.com 1-888-820-1636

In "A Finnish Christmas Cookbook: Recipes And Traditions From The Old Country", long-time Wisconsin residents Sargit Warriner and Liisa Krumsieg have collaborated to compile and organize the recipes for a series of time-honored and Christmas season appropriate dishes from the culinary heritage of Finland that would grace any family meal or celebratory occasion. Also featured along with the ethnic cuisine, are the Christmas traditions of Finland. From Kotikalja (Homemade Beer); Suolattu lohi (Salted Salmon); Imelletetty perunalaatikko (Sweetened Potao Casserole); and Luumukiisseli (Prune Pudding); to Karinin voirinkilat (Karin's Butter Rings); Jouhatortut (Christmas Tarts); Sekahedelmakeitto (Mixed Fruit Soup); and Kola karamellit (Kola Candies), "A Finnish Christmas Cookbook" is a simply wonderful compendium of kitchen cook friendly recipes that even the most novice of family chefs can accomplish with ease. Of special note are the traditional menus described and offered, as well as a handy Recipe Index. "A Finnish Christmas Cookbook" is especially recommended for family and community multi-ethnic cookbook collections.

12 Steps to Raw Foods
Victoria Boutenko
North Atlantic Books
1435 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710
9781556436512, $16.95 1-800-788-3123

Though 12 Steps to Raw Foods: How to End Your Dependency on Cooked Food features plenty of recipes, its purpose is to be the antithesis of "cookbooks" per se - author and raw-food diet teacher Victoria Boutenko extols the benefits of raw foods and the disadvantages of cooked foods (notably that cooking often destroys nutrients) to the extent of describing a diet of cooked foods as a "dependency". Now in a revised and expanded edition, 12 Steps to Raw Foods is also a vegan food preparation book, eschewing all meat, milk, egg-based foods. The preponderance of 12 Steps to Raw Foods is devoted not to recipes, but to convincing the reader to switch to an entirely raw-food vegan diet, as well as tips, tricks, techniques for making the transition. The main segments are "Why Raw Food?", "Human Dependency on Cooked Food", "How to End Your Dependency on Cooked Food" and "Recipes". The first three segments are filled with tips, tricks, and techniques for dealing with cravings for cooked food, and the recipes range from raw green smoothies to gazpacho to nut or seed cheese, non-cooked vegan burgers, non-cooked vegan pizza, and much more. A "must" for anyone interested in exploring the health benefits of a raw-food vegan diet.


The Railroading Shelf

Railroads Across North America
Claude Wiatrowski
Voyageur Press
380 Jackson Street, Suite 200, St. Paul, MN 55101
9780760329764, $29.95 www.mbipublishing.com 1-800-458-0454

Train travel enthusiast and photographer Claude Wiatrowski is a member of the Colorado Midland Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society; the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society; The Colorado Railroad Museum; The Friends of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad; Friends of the East Broad Top; the Nevada Northern Railway Museum; the Pikes Peak Historical Street Railway Foundation; and the Lexington Group in Transportation History. He is therefore in a particularly knowledgeable position to create a profusely illustrated history of American railroads, and has done so with "Railroads Across North America: An Illustrated History", an amazingly informed and informative 256-page compendium of information and images ranges from the first steam-powered locomotives of the 1800s down to the high-speed commuter trains of today. Enhanced with a descriptive listing of historical societies and other railroad organizations, as well as a section devoted to preserved railways, museums and historic sites, ""Railroads Across North America" also includes a bibliography and a comprehensive index, making it an ideal and enthusiastically recommended addition to personal, academic, and community library railroading reference collections and supplemental reading lists.


The Art Shelf

Piero Lissoni
Daab Books, Editors
Daab Publishers
9783866540279, $24.95 www.daab-online.com www.amazon.com

Piero Lissoni could be one of the most prolific, yet understated, designers in Italy - his works abound there, but scarcely receive media attention. Yet his impact on international design is evident everywhere, making PIERO LISSONI an essential acquisition for any library strong in architectural design and modern architecture history - especially European architecture. Lissoni is both a designer and a graphic artist: his title is packed with color photos of the extent of his works, making it a key acquisition for any serious college-level art and architecture collection.

The Society Portrait From David To Warhol
Gabriel Badea-Paun
The Vendome Press
1334 York Avenue, New York, NY 10021
9780865651838, $75.00 www.amazon.com

Featuring two hundred full color photographic reproductions, "The Society Portrait From David To Warhol" by art historian Gabriel Badea-Paun showcases society portraits of the nineteenth and early twentieth century in terms of their images and iconography. An impressively diverse yet representative gallery of portraits dating from the early 1800s to the post-World War II era, many of these works of art were painted society portraits by artists for whom portraiture was a full-time occupation. The artist range from Jacque-Louis Davide (considered a master of Classicism); to Andy Warhol (the acknowledge and legendary guru of Pop Art); to Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingress 9known for his linear and rigorous portraits); to John Singer Sargent (who depicted the nobility and plutocracy associated with the Gilded Age); to Giovanni Boldini (noted for his renderings of literary and theatrical personalities). An impressive and seminal work, "The Society Portrait From David To Warhol" is a critically important and essential addition for personal, professional, and academic library History of Art reference collections and supplemental reading lists. Informed and informative, it is also very highly recommended and quite appropriate as a community library Memorial Fund acquisition.

Walter Baumhofer
John Gunnison
Adventure House
914 Laredo Road, Silver Spring, MD 20901
188693794X, $20.00 www.adventurehouse.com

In "Walter Baumhofer: Pulp Art Masters", John Gunnison showcases the pulp magazine artist who produced the first images for Doc Savage Magazine and a host of other publications in the 1920s and 1930s. His range of cover art included dramatic images for virtually all pulp magazine genres including gangsters, airmen, cowboys, soldiers, villains, and adventures. He is best remembered for his iconic characters such as Doc Save, The Man of Bronze. From his beginning work with the publishing firm of Street & Smith, to his last works done for Popular Publications, he raised the level of this specialized and commercial form of popular art to the level of fine art through his use of unified designs, color, and visual drama. This compendium of cover art images (each of which is noted as to its publication source and date) will prove to be a prized possession for pulp magazine art enthusiasts and a highly recommended addition to both academic and community library 20th Century American Art History reference collections.

Poussin
Christopher Wright
Chaucer Press
c/o International Publishers Marketing
22841 Quicksilver Drive, Dulles, VA 20166
9781904449584, $60.00 www.internationalpubmarket.com 1-800-758-3756

Considered to be the founder of seventeenth century French classical painting, Nicholas Poussin is esteemed as one of the most influential artists of his time. "Poussin" by art historian Christopher Wright is the analytical biography of this great artist's life and work. Superbly illustrated throughout in full color, Poussin's stylistic development from his experimental early pictures in Rome through the uncompromising works of his later years is laid out beautifully in chronological order. From his birth in 1594 to his death in 1665, "Poussin" is a truly definitive work, the result of years of meticulous and original research translated for the non-specialist general reader by a master historian. Simply stated, no academic or community library Art History collection can be considered definitive or comprehensive without the inclusion of Christopher Wright's "Poussin".

The Impressionists At Leisure
Pamela Todd
Thames & Hudson, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110-0017
9780500238394, $40.00 www.thamesandhudsonusa.com 1-800-233-4830

"The Impressionists At Leisure" by art historian Pamela Todd not only showcases a series of Impressionist paintings ranging from Renoir's picknickers in the countryside, to Degas' elegant race goers, to Morisot's opera enthusiasts, it also includes a broad and original selections of lesser known works, as well as excerpts from diaries and letters revealing the artist's own interests, passions, pleasers, and attitudes about their work and the subjects they chose to paint. From the bars and restaurants of Paris, to tranquil days on the river, to ice rinks, gardens, and seaside holidays, the images have become some of the most respected works in 19th and 20th century art history. Pamela Todd's articulate and informative text clearly documents the zest for life that characterized the Impressionist era painters. "The Impressionists At Leisure" is a seminal work that should be a part of every personal and academic Art History reference collection -- and would make an excellent choice as a community library Memorial Fund acquisition selection.

Mountains Of The Heart
Kameda Bosai
George Braziller, Inc.
171 Madison Avenue, Suite 1105, New York, NY 10016
9780807615874, $20.00 www.georgebraziller.com 1-800-233-4830

Kameda Bosai is a Japanese poet and master of the 'ehon' (art-book) literary and artistic tradition of his country. The poetry and paintings of Kameda Bosai as compiled in the pages of this superbly presented edition of "Mountains of The Heart" elegantly portray the relationship between human beings and their environment. This poet/artist depicts homes lost in the mists of immense foothills, small figures wandering through rolling valleys, the transience of roads and buildings with the permanence of their natural surroundings. This is a book to be browsed through with an inevitable appreciation for a master storyteller and keen observer whose ability to inspire through a brush stroke and inform through an image both verbal and visually is enduringly impressive. "Mountains Of The Heart" is strongly recommended for personal, academic, and community library Japanese Culture & Art collections and supplemental reading lists.


The Comix/Graphic Novel Shelf

Empowered: Volume 2
Adam Warren
Dark Horse Comics, Inc.
10956 SE Main Street, Milwaukie, OR 97222
9781593078164, $14.95 www.darkhorse.com

The second volume starring the barely clad exploits of an aspiring but less than impressive super heroine who calls herself 'Empowered', writer/artist Adam Warren continues to demonstrate a superb sense of wit, whimsey, and humor that ranges from slapstick to gallows. "Empowered" is a compilation of short (some very short) individual stories of our plucky gal whose powers depend on her skin-tight body suit, a garment that is easily torn (read shredded) resulting in the loss of her superpowers. The result is her almost inevitable capture and bondage by the bad guys (and gals). Humiliation is the result -- and not just from the bad guys! Her boy friend and ninja girlfriend are solidly behind her. Her super team mates somewhat less so. Readers who appreciate a manga style artwork, a wickedly clever short story, a lovely semi-clad female form of the buxom variety, and a rollicking fun read will not only enjoy this second volume of "Empowered", but will avidly seek out Volume 1, and line up at their favorite comic book shop awaiting the arrival of Volume 3!

The Best Of Mutts
Patrick McDonnell
Andrews & McMeel
4520 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64111
9780740768446, $24.95 www.andrewsmcmeel.com 1-800-851-8923

Patrick McDonnell's legendary comic strip showcasing the adventures and observations of Earl the dog and Mooch the cat entertained readers throughout its 300+ strip history. These two unlikely buddies were supported by a cast of memorable characters that included Shtinky Puddin', Sourpuss, and Guard Dog. Deftly embedded in this popular newspaper cartoon series were lessons on love, friendship, animal advocacy, and pet ownership. Now Andrews & McMeel have meticulously published "The Best Of Mutts" featuring McDonnel's own hand-picked favorites from the dailies and the Sunday strips over the past ten years. the cartoons are arranged into ten chapters, each of which is enhanced with an introduction by McDonnell. A welcome addition to any personal or community library collection, "The Best Of Mutts" will well serve to introduce a whole new generation to a superbly crafted series that is as popular today as when it first appeared so many years ago.

Kurohime 1
Masanori Ookamigumi Katakura
Viz Communications Inc.
295 Bay Street, San Francisco, CA 94133
9781421513669, $7.99 www.viz.com 1-800-394-3042

Kurohime volume 1 is the debut collection of a brand-new shonen (intended especially for boys and action-fans) manga by Japanese creator Masanori Ookamigumi Katakura. In his own words, Katakura has crammed Kurohime cover to cover with everything he loves, and it's all here: sexy women, blazing guns, gigantic summoned monsters, villains, heroes, and everything in between. Kurohime herself is a master of "witch bullets" with the power to call slavering fantastic beasts; her arrogance led her to confront the gods themselves, and they punished her with a curse that traps her in a near-powerless preteen body! Only by experiencing love can she break the curse - but love is a foreign emotion to the self-centered Kurohime. But when she crosses paths with a teenaged gunslinger she once rescued from death and inspired to pursue justice, her fleeting feelings of affection have the power to overcome the curse, if only momentarily! An episodic adventure blending fantasy and wild west themes, with a clean, smooth art style and excitement leaping off every page.

The Complete Peanuts 1965 to 1966
Charles Schulz
Fantagraphics Books
7563 Lake City Way, NE, Seattle, WA 98115
9781560977247, $28.95 www.fantagraphics.com 1-800-657-1100

The Complete Peanuts 1965 to 1966 continues Fantagraphics Books' laudable project of collecting and publishing all of Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" comic strips. This definitive edition features an introduction by Hal Hartley, and chronicles Charlie Brown's visit to summer camp, where he makes a new friend named Roy - who in turn introduces him to the audacious, enthusiastic, sandle-wearing young girl Peppermint Patty! Other sagas include Snoopy's exploits fighting the Red Baron, Charlie Brown's promotion to school safety patrol, and the Van Pelt family's move (as well as the surprising effect the impending loss of Lucy has on young Schroeder!) A true treasure, enjoyable cover to cover and a "must-have" for Peanuts collectors.


The Gardening Shelf

Fall Scaping
Nancy J. Ondra & Stephanie Cohen
Storey Books
210 Mass MoCA Way, North Adams, MA 01247
9781580176804, $22.95 www.storeybooks.com 1-800-827-8673

It past years, the fall season was considered as one of harvesting and getting flower beds and gardens cleaned up and ready for the winter. However the autumn of the year with its rainbow of foliage colors, visually attractive fruits, berries, and seedheads, and mild climatic conditions have changed the thinking of dedicated gardeners and landscapers as to what can be accomplished before the setting in of winter snows. This new concept of continuing to garden and brighten late-season landscapes is called 'fall scaping'. Now there is an illustrated instruction manual called "Fall Scaping: Extending Your Garden Season Into Autumn" which is a collaboration by horticultural experts Nancy J. Ondra and Stephanie Cohen featuring ten complete garden plans that combine flowers, trees, shrubs, ground covers, and grasses that are not only visually impressive in the fall, but designed to provide three-season appeal over a wide range of post-summer growing conditions. Of special note is a 'Fall Garden Care Primer' offers tips and techniques on planting, transplanting, staking, pruning, and maintaining gardens all year long. There is also cogent counsel on preparing plants for winter, as well as properly cleaning and storing gardening hand tools and power equipment. Thoroughly 'user friendly' and profusely illustrated by the full color photography of Rob Cardillo, "Fall Scaping" is very strongly recommended for any gardener with an interest in continuing to maximize their gardens during September, October, and November.

Complete Roses
Field Roebuck
Creative Homeowner
PO Box 38, Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458-0038
9781580113724, $16.95 www.creativehomeowner.com 1-800-631-7795

A beautifully illustrated 175-page compendium of information, instructions, and examples, Field Roebuck's "Complete Roses features one hundred gardener friendly species of roses that even the most novice horticulturalist can successfully grow by following the expert, step-by-step process for choosing, planting, and caring for the most popular flower in the country. Each rose is provided with a complete description of type, classification, and growing habits. Of special note are the tips for propagation and container planting, safe methods for pets and disease control, and best types of soil and fertilizers. With more than 280 color photos and illustrations, "Complete Roses" is a superbly organized and "user friendly" introduction, making it a particularly welcome addition for personal and community library gardening reference collections.

Mountain Wildflowers Of The Southern Rockies
Carolyn Dodson & William W. Dunmire
University of New Mexico Press
MSC04 2820
1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
9780826342447, $17.95 www.unmpress.com 1-800-249-7737

Mountain Wildflowers Of The Southern Rockies: Revealing Their Natural History" is the work of retired academician Carolyn Dodson (University of New Mexico General Library) and William W. Dunmire (Associate in Biology at the University of New Mexico). The result of this impressive collaboration is a superbly illustrated and enthusiastically recommended field guide to the principle wildflowers most commonly associated with Southern Rocky Mountain landscapes during the high country seasons ranging spring through to the end of fall. This mountain range runs from Taos, New Mexico to Casper Wyoming, and from Colorado Springs to Boulder on the east and west, to Grand Junction. Featuring 201 color photos, 58 line drawings, and a map, "Mountain Wildflowers Of The Southern Rockies" offers 192 pages of informed and informative information including each featured plant's physical description as a wildflower, the plants individual roles in human history, their relationship with birds and insects, their origins and family characteristics, as well as their evolutionary details. From western wallflower, columbine, larkspur, shooting star, and lupine, to water hemlock, primrose, flax, scarlet penstemon, and bluebells, the flowers showcased in this very highly recommended reference include the individual flower's Latin name. Featuring a glossary, suggested references, a selected bibliography, and an index, "Mountain Wildflowers Of The Southern Rockies" could well serve as a template for similar field guides for wildflowers in other sections of the country.

Complete Roses
Field Roebuck
Creative Homeowner
PO Box 38, Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458-0038
9781580113724, $16.95 www.creativehomeowner.com 1-800-631-7795

A beautifully illustrated 175-page compendium of information, instructions, and examples, Field Roebuck's "Complete Roses features one hundred gardener friendly species of roses that even the most novice horticulturalist can successfully grow by following the expert, step-by-step process for choosing, planting, and caring for the most popular flower in the country. Each rose is provided with a complete description of type, classification, and growing habits. Of special note are the tips for propagation and container planting, safe methods for pets and disease control, and best types of soil and fertilizers. With more than 280 color photos and illustrations, "Complete Roses" is a superbly organized and "user friendly" introduction, making it a particularly welcome addition for personal and community library gardening reference collections.


The Philosophy Shelf

101 Ethical Dilemmas, 2nd Edition
Martin Cohen
Routledge
270 Madison, New York NY 10016
9780415404006, $19.95 www.routledge.com

The second updated edition of the classic 101 Ethical Dilemmas provides both high school and college-level audiences an engaging discussion offering eleven new ethical dilemmas for consideration. The examples offer a range of dilemmas from a variety of fields, from business and legal conflicts to medical worlds, and consider issues of justice, ethics, and good practice. An important and easy, lively introduction to the field of ethics will prove solid classroom debate material and accessible to a range of newcomers to the topic, and lay readers.

Psyche: Inventions of the Other Volume 1
Jacques Derrida, author
Peggy Kamuf and Elizabeth Rottenberg, editors
Stanford University Press
1450 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto, CA 94304-1124
9780804747998, $24.95 www.sup.org

Psyche: Inventions of the Other Volume 1 is the first English-language publication of the essay collection that Professor of Humanities Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) originally published in two volumes in 1998 and 2003. The assembly of essays present Derrida's thinking on a wide assortment of topics including psychoanalysis, theater, translation, literature, representation, racism, and nuclear war. Also present are Derrida's engagement with the ideas of well-known thinkers and writers such as Barthes, Benjamin, de Man, Flaubert, Freud, Heidegger, Lacoue-Labarthe, Levinas, and Ponge. "Deliberate self-limitation gives psychoanalysis its only chance as a science. It isolates a context into which external randomness no longer penetrates. Biogenetics is not devoid of randomness and neither is the psyche, but the orders or the random sequences must not communicate or cross over within the same set, at least if one wants to distinguish between orders of calculable necessity. There must be no bastardizing or hybridization, no accidental grafts between these two generalities, genres, or genealogies. But one might ask the author of 'Leonardo,' how is one to eliminate the dice throws of bastardy? Is not the concept of sublimation, like that of the drive, precisely the concept of bastardy?" A highly analytical and thoughtful compendium of meticulous reasoning, and a welcome addition to philosophy shelves and college libraries.

Image And Paradigm In Plato's Sophist
David Ambuel
Parmenides Publishing
3753 Howard Hughes Parkway, Suite 200, Las Vegas, NV 89109
University of Chicago Press, distributor
1427 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637
9781930972049, $32.00 www.parmenides.com 1-800-621-2736

"Image And Paradigm In Plato's Sophist" by David Ambuel (Associate Professor of Philosophy and the Kurt F. Leidecker Chair of Asian Studies at Mary Washington College, Fredericksburg, Virginia) provides contemporary students and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the writings of Plato with a new translation of Plato's dialogue, the 'Sophist', along with a comprehensive and articulate commentary that quite reverse dominant trends in mainstream philosophical theories. Professor Ambuel demonstrates and documents that this late dialogue presented with his own unconventional, yet thoughtful and thought-provoking interpretation is a defense of Plato's metaphysics and not a radical departure from them. Lucid, insightful, reasoned, and iconoclastic, "Image And Paradigm In Plato's Sophist" is a welcome and enthusiastically recommended addition to academic library Philosophy reference collections and supplemental reading lists.


The Archaeology Shelf

Archaeology
Timothy Insoll
Duckworth
c/o International Publishers Marketing (IPM)
22841 Quicksilver Drive, Dulles, VA 20166
9780715634578, $22.00 www.ducknet.co.uk 1-800-758-3756

Part of the 'Duckworth Debates In Archaeology' series, "Archaeology: The Conceptual Challenge" by Timothy Insoll (Professor of Archaeology at the University of Manchester, England) addresses the central question as to whether or not the primary purpose of archaeology is to 'reconstruct a past in our own image, chained solely to our own unacknowledged emotional, intellectual, and philosophical traditions?'. Professor Insoll brings new insights and reasoned argument to fundamental concepts and assumptions ranging from the global to the local, including notions of time, age, and experience; textual, oral, visual, and digital culture; as well as nature, animals and the wild. Of special note is the chapter 'Conclusion' in which Professor Insoll deftly brings together his arguments and observations on the questions and issues that he has raised throughout this accessible written text that is recommended reading for both academics and non-specialist general readers with an interest in archaeological issues. Also very highly recommended and part of this same "Duckworth Debates In Archaeology' series is Tadhg O'Keeffe's "Archaeology and the Pan-European Romanesque" (9780715634349, $22.00).


The American History Shelf

Days On The Family Farm
Carrie A. Meyer
University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290, Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
9780816650330, $17.95 www.upress.umn.edu

"Days On The Family Farm: From The Golden Age Through The Great Depression" by Carrie A. Meyer (who grew up on an Illinois farm and went on to teach economics at George Mason University) is a memoir based history of life on a Midwestern farm from the beginning of the twentieth century to World War II as recorded in a daily chronicle kept by farm wife May Lyford Davis. The result is an entertaining and informative 'window into time' through which is revealed an American yesteryear when May and her husband Elmo experienced life on a farm through two decades of prosperity, the bleak years of the Great Depression, and the impact of two World Wars upon their Midwestern farming community of friends and neighbors. Articulate, detailed, personable, "Days On The Family Farm" is the story of a farmer's life marked by description of what was bought and sold, the evolution of farming practices and technologies from horse drawn plows to tractors, what was planted and harvested, temperatures and rainfall, births an deaths, even the impact of wind on the work of farming. Simply stated, "Days On The Family Farm" is an engaging and articulate read and a highly recommended addition to any personal or community library collection.

Creating Minnesota
Annette Atkins
Minnesota Historical Society Press
345 Kellogg Boulevard, West, St. Paul, MN 55102-1906
9780873515962, $27.95 www.mnhs.org/mhspress 1-800-647-7827

"Creating Minnesota: A History From The Inside Out" by Annette Atkins (Professor of History at Saint John's University and the College of Saint Benedict) is a superbly written history of how Minnesota evolved from a wilderness territory into a modern American state. In a model of accessible scholarship, Professor Atkins lays out Minnesota's achievement of statehood amidst the competing interests of indigenous natives, traders, farmers, townsmen, and politicians. There are illustrative and fascinating stories such as the family in St. Paul who managed to celebrate Christmas in 1898 with fruit that originated some 1,500 miles from their home. Professor Atkins also includes a photo essay of Minnesota communities as recorded by the cameras of local and itinerant photographers; the role of the railroads; even such culinary traditions as pan-fried walleye and walleye quesadillas. Very strongly recommended for personal, school, and community library American History collections in general, and Minnesota History shelves in particular, "Creating Minnesota" is an entertaining a read as it is informed and informative.

The End Of The Innocence
Lawrence R. Samuel
Syracuse University Press
1600 Jamesville Avenue, Syracuse, NY 13210
081560890X, $29.95 www.SyracuseUniversityPress.syr.edu 1-800-365-8929

With extensive footnotes, an extended bibliography, and occasionally illustrated with historic black-and-white photography, "The End Of The Innocence: The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair" by Lawrence R. Samuel is a descriptive analysis of the New York World's Fair that ran from April 1964 to October 1965 and was attended by approximately fifty-two million people. A seminal event of its decade, and reflective of the cultural climate in which it occurred, this World's Fair had a powerful and enduring impact on the nation which was, for the overwhelming majority of its visitors, was consistently positive, often inspirational, and occasionally transcendent. Held just five months after President John F. Kennedy's assassination, the World Fair was held in a time of turbulence that included American participation in the Vietnam War and an emerging counter-culture among the youth. But the Fair showcased the postwar American dream of an optimistic future. A work of meticulous scholarship combined with Samuel's narrative skill as a writer, "The End Of The Innocence" is especially recommended to the attention of students of American popular culture, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in 20th Century American history.

Popular Ideologies
Susan Smulyan
University of Pennsylvania Press
3905 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-4112
9780812240207, $35.00 www.upenn.edu/pennpress 1-800-537-5487

In "Popular Ideologies: Mass Culture At Mid-Century" by Susan Smulyan (Associate Professor of American Civilization at Brown University) provides an extended, comprehensive, and documented argument that American popular culture provided more than just escapism from the traumas of the 20th century that ranged from economic depression and racism, to cultural conflicts and global wars, it served as a way where the producers of the various and diverse elements of that popular culture sought to impose ideas of race, class, gender, and nationhood upon the consuming public -- and their responses to those efforts. From minstrel skits performed on vaudeville stages to women encountering new products like nylon stockings, to the Hollywood film industry, to disaffected Madison Avenue men writing best-selling novels, the various elements comprising and creating American popular culture, including leisure activities, were forms of mass communication shaping the dominant culture -- with these influences often having their social and political origins in American subcultures. And how, throughout the decades of the 20th century, these influences evolved from being the results of audience input to the expression of increasingly powerful institutions. The result is that in the beginning decade of the 21st century, disaffected individuals are turning to marginal forms ranging from Japanese anime to campus cultural shows to emancipate themselves from contemporary mass media, corporate America mainstream culture in ways similar to those experienced by earlier generations of "amateur minstrels, stocking buyers, movie-goers, as well as the authors and readers of popular novels. Informative and intrinsically fascinating reading, "Popular Ideologies" is an impressive work of seminal and meticulous scholarship that should be a part of every academic and community library 20th Century American History and American Popular Culture reference collection and supplemental reading list..


The World History Shelf

Death in the Pot
Morton Satin
Prometheus Books
59 John Glenn Drive, Amherst, NY 14228-2197
9781591025146, $24.00 www.prometheusbooks.com

DEATH IN THE POT: THE IMPACT OF FOOD POISONING ON HISTORY is an intriguing college-level survey of how food poisoning has affected history, whether the poisoning was intentional or unintentional. From an early 5th century Athens plague probably caused by contaminated cereals which led to their defeat in the Peloponnesian War to efforts to make modern food safer, this is a fine history packed with footnoted references and perfect for both college-level history and health collections alike.

The Corporation That Changed the World
Nick Robins
Pluto Press
c/o University of Michigan Press
839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104
0745325238, $24.95 www.plutobooks.com

The British East India Company is one of the world's most famous: founded in 1600, it began as an Asian spice trading company and ended up running Britain's Indian empire. Given its importance it's amazing to consider that The Corporation That Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational is actually the first coverage of the company to reveal its history and social record. College-level libraries strong in either world history or business will find this an intriguing discussion.

William F. Cody's Wyoming Empire
Robert E. Bonner
University of Oklahoma Press
2800 Venture Drive, Norman, OK
9780806138299, $32.95 www.oupress.com

Old West showman William 'Buffalo Bill' Cody was more than just a notorious outlaw: he was a land developer, town promoter, and showman. WILLIAM F. CODY'S WYOMING EMPIRE: THE BUFFALO BILL NOBODY KNOWS is a blend of history and biography especially suitable for college-level American history collections focusing on frontier times: it surveys his life, offers over twenty photos, and considers the reality behind the character. An engrossing, different portrait stands out from the crowd of books on Cody's life and career.

The Papers of Joseph Henry: January 1866 - May 1878
Marc Rothenberg, Editor
Science History Publications
c/o Watson Publishing
Box 1240, Sagamore Beach, MA 02562-1240
0881353906, $110.00 www.shpusa.com

The eleventh volume of this weighty college-level scholarly collection covers the years 1866 to 1878, when Henry emerged as a leader of American science and guided his creation, the Smithsonian Institution, in recovering from the Civil War. He also guided the newfound National Academy of Sciences and worked to convince his contemporary philanthropists to emulate James Smithson and fund original research. His papers reflect all of his efforts and are a key part of American history. The series has recently won the Eugene Ferguson Prize; volume twelve, a cumulative index, is forthcoming.

The World Map 1300-1492
Evelyn Edson
Johns Hopkins University Press
2715 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218
0801885892, $50.00 www.press.jhu.edu

THE WORLD MAP 1300-1492: THE PERSISTENCE OF TRADITION AND TRANSFORMATION is an excellent choice for any college-level collection strong in cartographic or world history: it investigates the state of maps before Columbus, beginning with a 1436 atlas of ten maps produced by Bianco and using maps of the 14th and 15th centuries to consider how missionaries and merchants changed the state and presentation of the world. Makers and users of maps struggled with both technological change and changing world views brought on by discover, and mapmakers often blended old and new worlds to reconcile tensions between opposing viewpoints. The result is a fine, unusual perspective of world history and cartographic influences.

The Roman Army
Pat Southern
Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4314
9780195328783, $24.95 www.oup.com 1-800-451-7556

Now available in an affordable paperback edition published by Oxford University Press, The Roman Army: A Social & Institutional History remains a vivid, scholarly, and astute portrayal of one of history's most famous fighting forces. Written by Roman history expert Pat Southern, The Roman Army covers types of units, organization of infantry and cavalry, recruitment of soldiers and officers, terms of service, discharge and pensions for veterans, military law, the employment of the army in peacetime and wartime, and particularly examines the day-to-day life of the common soldier in Rome's ranks. A handful of black-and-white photographs and illustrations are interspersed within this top-notch reference sure to fascinate historians, students, and lay readers alike.

Diamonds, Gold, and War
Martin Meredith
Public Affairs
250 West 57th Street, #1321, New York, NY 10107
9781586484736, $35.00 www.publicaffairsbooks.com 1-877-782-1234

Journalist, biographer, and historian Martin Meredith presents Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa, a thorough history of the Cape Colony in southern Africa from when the British took possession of it in 1806 to the founding of modern South Africa in 1910. The chronicle heats up in 1871, when diamonds were discovered in southern Africa - in tremendous quantities. A massive struggle between the British and the Boers for control of the region erupted. Meredith's narrative is heavily researched yet comes alive with colorful portrayals of personalities ranging from rakish prospector Cecil Rhodes (founder of the DeBeers company) who absconded with a fortune manipulating diamond and gold markets, to nationalists like Paul Kruger who fought tirelessly for their land and people, to native kings like Lobengula who were trapped amid the Europeans' struggle. A gripping chronicle of greed and destruction unleashed, and the repercussions for the nation of South Africa for the century to come, highly recommended for world history shelves.

The Medieval Marriage Scene
Sherry Roush and Cristelle L. Baskins, editors
Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies
Arizona State University, P.O. Box 874402, Tempe, AZ 85287-4402
9780866983433, $40.00 www.asu.edu/clas/acmrs 1-480-965-5900

The Medieval Marriage Scene: Prudence, Passion, Policy is an anthology of scholarly essays by twelve learned contributors discussing the fictive, artistic, legal, ethical, and economic aspects of the institution of marriage in Europe from roughly 500 to 1550. Individual writings include "Medieval Jewish Models of Marriage", "The Many Loves of Philip Augustus", "The Dilemma of the Widow of Property for Late Medieval London", and more concerning definitions of marriage, sexuality, and legislation of property and propriety alike. An index rounds out this thoughtful, well-researched and solidly presented compilation of insights into the historical context of marriage - a timely volume indeed even as the institution of marriage becomes an increasingly hot topic in the modern day.

Religion In The Age Of Shakespeare
Christopher Baker
Greenwood Publishing Group
88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
9780313336362, $75.00 www.greenwood.com 1-800-225-5800

Very highly recommended reading for both academics and non-specialist general readers, "Religion In The Age Of Shakespeare" by academician and historian Christopher Baker (Professor of English at Armstrong Atlantic State University) provides the reader with an informed and informative historical overview and analysis of the major religious contexts and themes as they are found in the mid-17th to early 18th century and reflected in the works of William Shakespeare. Profusely footnoted, the five chapters comprising this deftly written compendium include 'Background'; 'Religion in Shakespeare's World'; 'Religion in Shakespeare's Works'; 'Religion in Performance'; Scholarship & Criticism'. Enhanced with extensive pages of primary documents, an extended glossary, a four page bibliography, and a comprehensive index, "Religion In The Age Of Shakespeare" is a much appreciated contribution to the growing library of analytical research and history regarding 17th century in general, and the works of William Shakespeare in particular.

Corregidor in Peace and War
Charles M. Hubbard & Collis H. Davis, Jr.
University of Missouri Press
2910 LeMone Boulevard, Columbia, MO 65201
9780826217127, $39.95 www.umsystem.edu/upress 1-800-828-1894

Corregidor in Peace and War is the remarkable true history of Corregidor, a beautiful island located at the entrance of Manila Bay, and best known for its crucial role in the defense of the Philippines during World War II. Chronicling Corregidor's story from when Ferdinand Magellan claimed the Philippines for Spain to modern developments after World War II, Corregidor in Peace and War is peppered throughout with more than 150 illustrations, including an amazing gallery of black-and-white and color photography. Written to appeal to readers of all backgrounds, Corregidor in Peace and War is an absorbing contribution to Filipino history and deserves recognition for telling the oft-overlooked side of Corregidor's story.


The Literary Studies Shelf

Philip Roth: Zuckerman Bound 1979-1985
Philip Roth
The Library of America
14 East 60th Street, New York, NY 10022
9781598530117, $35.00 www.loa.org

Philip Roth: Zuckerman Bound 1979-1985 is the Library of America's fourth volume of Philip Roth's collected works. Presenting "The Ghost Writer", "Zuckerman Unbound", "The Anatomy Lesson", "The Prague Orgy", and "The Prague Orgy: A Television Adaptation" by Philip Roth, along with a chronology and extensive notes that help illuminate context and nuances of the text, Philip Roth: Zuckerman Bound 1979-1985 is the ideal edition for literature students, libraries, and casual readers alike. The particularly memorable title story, Zuckerman Bound, is set at the close of the sensational 60's and follows popular writer Zuckerman as he struggles to cope with the aftershock of literary celebrity. Highly recommended.

Multicultural and Ethnic Children's Literature in the United States
Donna L. Gilton
Scarecrow Press
4501 Forbes Boulevard., Suite 200, Lanham, MD 20706
9780810856721, $45.00 www.scarecrowpress.com 1-800-462-6420

Donna L. Gilton (Associate Professor of library and information studies, University of Rhode Island) presents Multicultural and Ethnic Children's Literature in the United States, an analysis of the history and characteristics of ethnic and multicultural children's literature in America, and associate materials published elsewhere. Specific cultures children's literature explored in depth include Pan-African, Latino/a, Native American, and Asian American children's literature. The story of multicultural children's literature from before 1940 to the modern day, and an astute observation of general trends in the field including mainstream responses to multiculturalism contribute to the heart and core of this thoughtful discussion.

The Realist Short Story Of The Powerful Glimpse
Kerry McSweeney
University of South Carolina Press
718 Devine Street, Columbia, SC 29208
9781570036958, $29.95 www.sc.edu/uscpress 1-800-768-2500

"The Realist Short Story Of The Powerful Glimpse: Chekhov To Carver" by Kerry McSweeny (Molson Professor of English at McGill University, Montreal, Canada) focuses the professor's analytical commentary on the published writings of five acknowledged masters of the short story format: Anton Chekov, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, and Raymond Carver. Professor McSweeny deftly argues the idea that realist short stories provide a tightly focused and dramatically powerful form that requires the author to a precisely crafted realism though distinctive literary strategies that transcend the writer's various generational, national, and cultural backgrounds. Professor McSweeney persuasively defends the effective short story has integrating three specific components: the entertainment value of the story; reader response to the story's emotional content; and the reader's reflective reaction to the conceptual or cognitive elements. Informed and informative, thoughtful and thought-provoking, "The Realist Short Story Of The Powerful Glimpse" is a seminal work of superb scholarship, and a welcome contribution to the literary analysis of the short story format in general, and the application of short story principles to the works of five gifted masters of this distinctive literary form in particular.

Sir Hugh Walpole and the United States
Elizabeth Steele
The Edwin Mellen Press
PO Box 450, Lewiston, NY 14092-0450
9780773455320, $109.95 www.edwinmellenpress.com 1-716-754-2788

Written by Dr. Elizabeth Steele (Professor Emerita of English, University of Toledo), Sir Hugh Walpole and the United States: A Novelist's View of 1919-1936 America is a scholarly examination of the themes and works of knighted English novelist Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole (1884-1941). Drawing upon Walpole's lectures, and especially focusing upon Walpole's view of America in the roaring twenties and the Great Depression, Sir Hugh Walpole and the United States features meticulous documentation in its analysis of Walpole's insights, and especially his visit to Hollywood. Appendices include two of Walpole's short stories, "The Tiger" and "The Exile", and two of Walpole's essays, "An Englishman's View of Modern America" and "Nobody Is Safe in Hollywood." A welcome addition to library and college literary studies shelves, offering a balanced insight into the workings of American society from the point of a view of an outsider who nevertheless formed a bond with the culture of a distant soil.


The Social Issues Shelf

World Population
Geoffrey Gilbert
ABC-CLIO
Box 1911, Santa Barbara, CA 93116-1911
1851099271, $55.00 www.abc-clio.com

The second updated edition of WORLD POPULATION adds to the 'Contemporary World Issues' and also stands well alone, packing in details on world population statistics, issues, and debates about changing populations, aging populations, and offering biographical sketches of scholars and researchers on the topic. Both high school and college-level collections strong in world social issues will find this an invaluable reference key to understanding and discussing some of the major issues associated with population trends and changes.

Energy Use Worldwide
Jaina L. Moan and Zachary A. Smith
ABC-CLIO
Box 1911, Santa Barbara, CA 93116-1911
9781851098903, $55.00 www.abc-clio.com

Part of the 'Contemporary World Issues' series but standing well on its own is a discussion of worldwide energy use and issues which is perfect for college-level collections and even some high school holdings strong in the science and social issues surrounding resource management. From historical surveys of major events and key issues and chronological charts to tables of statistics and supporting documents - even a listing of environmental agencies around the world - this is a key acquisition for any serious environmental studies program.

The Phenomenon of Torture
William F. Schulz, editor
University of Pennsylvania Press
3905 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-4112
9780812219821, $34.95 www.upenn.edu/pennpress 1-800-537-5487

The Phenomenon of Torture: Readings and Commentary is an anthology of essays by learned authors discussing the widespread human rights crime that is torture, practiced in more than one hundred countries - now including the United States. Why is something so cruel and brutal so entrenched? Can anyone become a torturer? Are certain societies more prone to use torture? Are there any circumstances under which torture is justified? How can torture be stopped, or at least reduced? The readings seek to better understand this hot-button issue, and cover the history, experience, and dynamics of torture, who the torturers are, and what experience has shown ultimately can bring an end to torture and healing to victims. A sober, astutely assembled compilation and a much-needed contribution to modern-day discussions of government policy.

Negotiating Identities in Modern Latin America
Hendrik Kraay
University of Calgary Press
2500 University Drive, N.W., Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4
9781552382295, $39.95 www.uofcpress.com 1-800-565-3770

Negotiating Identities in Modern Latin America is an anthology of essays by learned historians and anthropologists concerning the ways in which people define their membership in groups and the collective identity, as well as the obstacles posed by the difficulties involved in defining and maintaining that identity. Individual essays include "Playing with National Identity: Brazil in International Football, 1900-1925", "(Re)turning Home: Narratives of Bolivian Transnational Migrants", "Creating Identity Out of Place: An Indigenous Community in Argentina", and many more. A handful of black-and-white illustrations, notes for each essay, and an index round out this educated and scholarly assessment of Latin American social identity, recommended for anthropology and college library shelves.

Our Day to End Poverty
Shannon Daley-Harris and Jeffrey Keenan with Karen Speerstra
Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc.
235 Montgomery Street, Suite 650, San Francisco, CA 94104-2916
9781576754467, $14.95 www.bkconnection.com 1-800-929-2929

Our Day to End Poverty: 24 Ways You Can Make a Difference is a guide for readers of all walks of life to making a difference for the better at home and around the world. Using the 24-hour day as a framework, Our Day to End Poverty discusses 24 common daily activities and, in context, the things ordinary people can do to alleviate poverty during the course of their normal lives. From guidelines for charitable giving, to expanding access to the enormously successful microfinance programs, to "volunteer vacations" that enable one to travel with a purpose, to speaking up for social justice through writing letters to elected officials, Our Day to End Poverty offers a wealth of experience-tested strategies that truly make the world a better place to live in. Highly recommended.

How to Live a Low-Carbon Life
Chris Goodall
Stylus Publishing, Inc.
22883 Quicksilver Drive, Sterling, VA 20166-2012
9781844074266, $24.95 www.styluspub.com 1-800-232-0223

Chris Goodall (Telecommunications chair of software company Dynmark International) presents How to Live a Low-Carbon Life: The Individual's Guide to Stopping Climate Change, a guide for the socially responsible to reducing one's carbon emissions and therefore aid in preventing global catastrophe. Chapters cover how to calculate one's carbon dioxide emissions and reduce them to 3 tonnes a year or less, the amount that the Earth can sustainably absorb per person. From home heating to lighting, appliances, car travel, air travel, means of cancelling out emissions, and much more, How to Live a Low-Carbon Life is thoroughly easy to use. "Anyone looking for energy efficiency should concentrate the search on the smaller fridge freezers. Going from a 300 litre capacity machine to a 400 litre will typically add about 60kWh/year to electricity consumption, so it makes sense to try to buy a moderately sized appliance." Highly recommended.


The Music Shelf

Rock N Roll Wisdom
Barry A. Farber
Praeger Publishers
88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
0275991644, $44.95 www.praeger.com

Rock N Roll Wisdom: What Psychologically Astute Lyrics Teach About Life and Love considers rock and roll lyrics and their influences from and unusual vantage point: that of a psychologist who considers the interplays between lyrics and society. Rock lyrics here are used to understand the human psyche, with chapters drawing intriguing connections between Freud and rock star perspectives. College-level collections strong in either music or psychology will find this an intriguing, scholarly interplay between music and psychology.

Mel Bay's Complete Book of Guitar Chords, Scales And Arpeggios
William Bay
Mel Bay Publications
PO Box 66, Pacific, MO 63069
MB94792, $22.95 www.melbay.com 1-800-863-5229

Expertly compiled, organized, and presents by William Bay, "Mel Bay's Complete Book of Guitar Chords, Scales And Arpeggios" is a 298-page compendium of diagrams showing the aspiring guitar player how to produce just the right sounds from their instruments whether in practice or in performance. Each major and minor scale is presented in position on the guitar fingerboard with all scales being shown in diagram form, notation, and tablature. Of special not is the section on blues and rock scales. Thoroughly 'user friendly', "Mel Bay's Complete Book of Guitar Chords, Scales And Arpeggios" is provides an ideal text for self-instruction, and is very highly recommended as a curriculum supplement for mastering classic, rock, blues, and other forms of guitar music.

East Coast Books
PO Box 13142, Hauppauge, NY 11788
$10.95 each www.amazon.com

'Easy Classics' is an impressive series of inexpensive instructional sheet music books designed to teach piano students and performers to play classics created by some of the most recognizable composers of the 19th and 20th centuries. This five volume series is ably compiled and edited by Erika Feuchtner Macris and includes "Easy Classics: Beethoven for the Piano" (#77765); "Easy Classics: Mozart for the Piano" (#77775); "Easy Classics: Chopin for the Piano" (#77770); "Easy Classics: Bach for the Piano" (#77760); and a compilation volume, "Easy Classics: Piano Masters" (#77780) featuring works for the piano by Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, Handel, Mozart, and Schubert. The series is ideal and recommended for self-instruction, as well as for school music department curriculums.

Morrissey
Johnny Rogan
Music Sales Corporation
445 Bellvale Road, PO Box 572,Chester, NY 10918
9780952954057, $19.95 www.musicsales.com

Johnny Rogan, author of the best-selling biography "Morrissey & Marr: The Severed Alliance" presents Morrissey: The Albums, an in-depth study of Morrissey's musical work with the Smiths up through 2006 and "Ringleader of the Tormentors". Each of Smiths' and Morrissey's albums is discussed at length; Rogan explores the themes and context of the lyrics, the pathos of the music, references to each piece's performance and relative success, and much more. An in-depth analytical account especially ideal for music scholars and Morrissey connoisseurs.

Riot On Sunset Strip
Domenic Priore
Jawbone Press
1700 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710
9781906002046, $29.95 www.jawbonepress.com

In 1965 and 1966, the city of Los Angeles saw a sudden burst of rock groups playing in venues on the fabled Sunset Strip. These were bands that included such legendary outfits as The Byrds, The Doors, Love, The Seeds, The Turtles, The Mammas and the Papas, The Standells, and so many others. They appeared with the unexpected suddenness of a comet, then vanished just as swiftly. In "Riot On Sunset Strip: Rock 'n' Rolls Last Stand In Hollywood" writer, television producer, music and pop culture historian Domenic Priore provides an illustrated history of that remarkable time that saw a unique musical scene come into existence and the fall apart at the Monterey Pop festival as a kind of tragic finale to the fabled Summer of Love. Profusely illustrated, "Riot On Sunset Strip" is a fascinating read that is informed and informative, making it an ideal addition to personal, academic, and community library 20th Century American Music History reference collections and supplemental reading lists..

Down to the River
Sandra Louise Dyas
University of Iowa Press
100 Kuhl House, 119 West Park Road, Iowa City, IA 52242-1000
9780877459972, $29.95 www.uiowapress.org 1-800-621-2736

Photographer Sandra Dyas has been documenting Iowa City's music scene since 1987. Down to the River: Portraits of Iowa Musicians features sixty of her black-and-white photographs of musicians in and around the city, at live music venues and elsewhere. A brief forward by Chris Offutt and a very small amount of text by the photographer complement this gallery, but the pages are primarily devoted to the pictures themselves, capturing the intensity of music and performance in the moment. A companion audio CD with eighteen tracks of Iowa's greatest singers and songwriters (including Dave Moore, Greg Brown, Bo Ramsey, David Zollo, and Pieta Brown) is included in this stunning visual presentation.


The Christian Studies Shelf

Fat Proof Your Family
J. Ron Eaker, M.D.
Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55438
9780764204135, $14.99 www.bethanyhouse.com 1-800-328-6109

Practicing ob-gyn J. Ron Eaker, M.D. presents Fat Proof Your Family: God's Way to forming Healthy Habits for Life, a guide especially for Christians to maintaining not only one's own health, but also teaching positive eating habits to the whole family. Fat Proof Your Family is not a "quick-fix" book, but rather emphasizes the importance of making lifelong changes for the better. From the basics of nutrition, to the importance of setting an example for one's children through one's actions ("Do as I say... and as I do!") to the value of exercise and what the Bible has to say about healthy eating, Fat Proof Your Family features both sound medical and spiritual backing. "No fad diet, miracle drug, exercise machine, or surgical procedure can be as comprehensive a solution to fat-proofing your family as God's Owner's Manual... Bible study is one cog in the wheel of the healing triad of mind, body, and spirit. It addresses specific spiritual needs that are frequently ignored in the healing process." Highly recommended.

Old Testament Survey, 2nd edition
Paul R. House and Eric Mitchell
B&H Publishing Group
127 Ninth Avenue North, Nashville, TN 37234-0143
9780805440362, $39.99 www.bhpublishinggroup.com 1-800-251-3225

Now in a revised and updated second edition, Old Testament Survey is a textbook designed for Bible students. Written by professor of divinity Paul R. House and assistant professor of Old Testament and archaeology Eric Mitchell, Old Testament Survey focuses upon the literature and narrative of the Old Testament in its methodical overview, which walks the reader through the biblical stories as well as the motives and reactions of principle characters. Charts, illustrations, sixteen full-color maps, and an index round out this excellent Bible reading companion.

Light in the Dark Ages
Jon M. Sweeney
Paraclete Press
PO Box 1568, Orleans, MA 02653
9781557254764, $16.95 www.paracletepress.com

Light in the Dark Ages: The Friendship of Francis of Francis and Clare of Assisi is a spiritual biography of Francis and Clare of Assisi, written especially to help guide and enlighten fellow Christians in the modern day. Light in the Dark Ages reveals that the Middle Ages themselves were not necessarily innately dark - "dark ages" come whenever humanity forgets the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount. Light in the Dark Ages tells of Francis' calling by God, and how Clare joined him despite the vehement and violent objections of her family. Exploring the realities of the day, including the treatment of lepers in medieval society and corruption in the Church, Light in the Dark Ages follows the example of two deeply spiritual figures to the end of their lives, and asks profound questions: how should one view a young person who rejects family for spiritual reasons? Can men and women share a deep yet purely platonic friendship? Is their value in an intentional vow of poverty? Does placing absolute value on family ignore the words of Jesus Christ? A thought-provoking examination of what it truly meant for Francis and Clare to be followers of Jesus Christ, and what that means for followers of Christ today.

The Benedictine Tradition
Laura Swan, editor; Phyllis Zagano, series editor
The Liturgical Press
St. John's Abbey, PO Box 7500, Collegeville, MN 56321-7500
9780814619148, $15.95 www.litpress.org 1-800-858-5450

St. Benedict wrote his "little rule for beginners" in the sixth century, unwittingly becoming the genesis of a religious order of prayer, humility, and service that continues into the modern day. Across the centuries, Benedictines have dedicated themselves to God, practiced the Liturgy of the Hours and monastic life, and made contributions to chant, theology, and the preservation of spiritual works and scholarship. The Benedictine Tradition: Spirituality in History compiles writings of notable Benedictines throughout history; the essays reflect the power of faith and individual dedication to service, profound aspects that speak to the reader as strongly today as they did when first written. Highly recommended.

The Mass Is Never Ended
Gregory F. Ausustine Pierce
Ave Maria Press
PO Box 428, Notre Dame, IN 46556
9781594710698, $10.95 www.avemariapress.com 1-800-282-1865

Very highly recommended reading, especially for young adults seeking a meaningful reason to become active in their Catholic church and those older Catholics fearing that the Church has diminished commitments to social justice, "The Mass Is Never Ended: Rediscovering Our Mission To Transform The World" by Gregory F. Augustine Pierce (an experienced book editor, as well as the president and co-publisher of ACTA Publications), examines the Roman Catholic Mass with respect to its connection to the remaining 167 hours of the week. The purpose of this beautifully written and spiritually inspiring book is to encourage the reader to renew a dedication to the Christian mission of community and spirituality in the home, in the workplace, and in the community, thereby creating a continuing connection to God resulting in their enjoying richer and more fulfilling personal and professional lives.

44 Ways to Strengthen Your Marriage
Jerry Drace
Pelican Publishing Company
1000 Burmaster Street, Gretna, LA 70053-2246
9781589805057, $12.95 www.pelicanpub.com 1-800-843-1724

Written by Jerry Drace, who co-founded of Jerry Drace Evangelistic Association Inc. with his wife Becky, 44 Ways to Strengthen Your Marriage is a straightforward collection of insights toward building and maintaining a strong, healthy relationship with one's spouse. Though written expressly from a Christian perspective, 44 Ways to Strengthen Your Marriage offers advice useful to readers of all faiths, such as "Never Compare Your Spouse to Others", "Avoid Irritating Comments", "Be Responsible with Your Finances", and "Learn the Difference between Fact and Feeling". 44 Ways to Strengthen Your Marriage is also a consumable book, offering blank lines for the reader to write down his or her thoughts every few pages. Highly recommended.

And God Created Human
Jana Tether
Pleasant Word
c/o Winepress Publishing Group
PO Box 428, Enumclaw, WA 98022
9781414108520, $19.99 www.winepressgroup.com

Actress and cable show writer Jana Tether presents And God Created Human: A Collection of Scenes and Monologues, an anthology of brief theater-style scenes suitable for reading or performance that bring to life God's message of love, hope, and support in daily life. The subjects of these creative dramas range from insecurity and temptation to spiritual warfare, fear, and the joy of worship. Scripture verses and thought-provoking questions designed to stimulate discussions on how God's Word applies to the here and now round out this welcome resource for church libraries and Christian community theater.

Biotechnology and the Human Good
C. Ben Mitchell, Edmund D. Pellegrino, Jean Bethke Elshtain, John F. Kilner, & Scott B. Rae
Georgetown University Press
3240 Prospect Street, NW, Washington, DC 20007
9781589011380, $24.95 www.press.georgetown.edu 1-800-246-9606

Written by a team of five scientists and ethicists, Biotechnology and the Human Good is a discussion grounded in Judeo-Christian theism concerning modern leaps and bounds in biotechnology. While medical advances such as antibiotics, transfusions, and pacemakers have improved people's lives, the dark side of biotechnical advances reflects a reckless disdain for human life in the wake of greed. Though from a Christian perspective, Biotechnology and the Human Good is emphatically not antiscience, anti-industry, or anti-progress; instead, it questions how collective human good can most effectively be promoted without violating moral principles. Highly recommended.


The Poetry Shelf

In Line for the Exterminator
Jim Daniels
Wayne State University Press
The Leonard N. Simons Building
4809 Woodward Avenue, Detroit, MI 48201-1309
9780814333815, $17.95 http://wsupress.wayne.edu 1-800-978-7323

Award-winning poet and Professor of English Jim Daniels presents In Line for the Exterminator, an anthology of free-verse poetry that looks at postindustrial Detriot through weathered eyes. Daniels grew up near the Eight Mile Road boundary between Detriot and suburban Warren, Michigan; the poems of In Line for the Exterminator explores how ordinary citizens sustain human dignity in spite of economic and social upheaval, as well as the triple threat of drugs, guns, and crime. The character of Digger, portrayed in his search for a new future after retiring from his factory job, offers a personal viewpoint to the unfolding anthology, though other heroes from professional wrestler the Sheik to modern rapper Eminem also appear. A profound testimony to the spirit of an urban community. "Sunday Morning": A goldfinch bobs on a sunflower's head / picking out seeds behind Uncle Jimmy's Bar / where some guy got killed in a fight Friday night // before the Chinese restaurant next door / burned down. Investigations are taking place. / Details are sketched in chalk, erased by rain. / Graffiti codes indecipherable. // The sunflower, a volunteer from winter seeds, / gracefully allows itself to be picked apart, / gold blending into gold. Even the sparrows / are stunned by this yellow light.

Elegy
Mary Jo Bang
Graywolf Press
2402 University Avenue, Suite 203, Saint Paul, MN 55114
9781555974831, $20.00 www.graywolfpress.org 1-651-641-0077

The fifth collection of poetry by Professor of English Mary Jo Bang, Elegy uses free verse to communicate the loss of an only child in the prime of life. Eschewing self-pity, false comfort, or blame, Elegy burns with the power of heartbreak and the timelessness of memory. Highly recommended. "How Beautiful": A personal lens: glass bending rays / That gave one that day's news / Saying each and every day, // Just remember you are standing / On a planet that's evolving. / How beautiful, she thought, what distance does // For water, the view from above or afar. / In last night's dream, they were back again / At the beginning. She was a child // And he was a child. / A plane lit down and left her there. / Cold whitening the white sky whiter. // Then a scalpel cut her open for all the world / To be a sea.

Far Beyond Triage
Sarah Lantz
CALYX Books
PO Box B, Corvallis, OR 97339
9780934971911, $14.95 www.calyxpress.org 1-888-336-2665

CALYX is a non-profit press specializing in the publication of fine art and literature. Since its founding in 1976, CALYX has published the work of over 3,600 women authors and artists. Their latest book of poetry is "Far Beyond Triage" which admirably showcases the consistently impressive work of Sarah Lantz. This very highly recommended anthology of profoundly spiritual verse takes as its collective theme the penetrable boundary between the living world and the ethereal. Articulate, complex, thoughtful and thought-provoking, the poetry