The Emerald Mile: the epic story of the fastest ride in history through the heart of the Grand Canyon - Kevin Fedarko

Summary: The epic story of the fastest boat ride in history, on a hand-built dory named the "Emerald Mile," through the heart of the Grand Canyon on the Colorado river.

Kirkus Reviews

Man's indomitable need for adventure is the only thing more impressive than the awesome power of nature and the brilliance of technology described in this lovingly rendered retelling of one of the most remarkable events ever to occur inside the Grand Canyon. In 1983, at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, a confluence of unlikely events provided three unique characters with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become the fastest to ever race through that singular marvel in a rowboat. How these quirky "dory men" were able to surmount every obstacle thrown in their way and actually attempt this remarkable undertaking is breathtaking enough. But theirs is not the only tale being told. This is the story of the Grand Canyon itself, harkening all the way back to the days when a band of befuddled Conquistadors first stumbled upon its rim and failed to grasp its magnitude. It is also the story of the Glen Canyon Dam, that Herculean feat of human ingenuity that was constructed with the staggering imperative to harness the power of the Colorado River. Former Time staff writer Fedarko's extensive knowledge of both, coupled with his powers of description, are almost as impressive. Powerful and poetic passages put readers inside the adventurers' boats, even if they have only ever imagined the Grand Canyon or seen it in pictures. "Every mile or so, the walls opened and gave way to yet another side canyon filled with secret springs and waterfalls," he writes. "The air was alive with pink-and-lavender dragonflies that paused, twitchingly, on the shafts of their suspended oars." Each piece of the extensive back story is assembled as lyrically as the epoch-spanning walls of the canyon itself and as assuredly as the soaring concrete face of its dams. An epic-sized true-life adventure tale that appeals to both the heart and the head. Copyright Kirkus 2013 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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The wild trees - Richard Preston

The wild trees: a story of passion and daring - Preston, Richard

Summary:Takes a close-up look at the world's tallest trees, the coast redwoods that grow only in the coastal regions of California, and at the previously unknown ecosystem that the trees form high in the air in the forest canopy. - (Baker & Taylor)

Booklist Reviews
Preston's previous galvanizing best-sellers, including The Hot Zone (1994) and The Demon in the Freezer (2002), deal with catastrophic viruses and biological weapons. Here he turns to a more uplifting subject, the world's tallest trees. Writing with his signature clarity and drama, Preston profiles a trio of champions of the coast redwood, "the blue whales of the plant kingdom." Botanist Steve Sillett developed acrobatic techniques for reaching the crowns of redwoods more than 300 feet tall. There he discovered an unknown world, the teeming temperate forest canopy, which Preston describes as "coral reefs in the air." Maverick Michael Taylor has discovered redwood giants in nearly impenetrable wilderness areas. So important are his finds, the locations of these redwood groves, some 3,000 years old, are kept secret. Marie Antoine also answered the call of redwoods and married fellow scientist Sillett in an arboreal ceremony. As for Preston, not content to merely watch from the ground, he underwent tree-climbing training and has assisted Sillett and Antoine in their invaluable, gravity-defying work. Preston's hands-on perspective, suspenseful chronicling of the adventures of these vividly portrayed redwood experts, and glorious descriptions of the tall trees' splendor and ecological significance make for a transfixing read. ((Reviewed February 15, 2007)) Copyright 2007 Booklist Reviews.

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On the move: a life - Oliver Sacks

On the move: a life - Sacks, Oliver

Summary: When Oliver Sacks was twelve years old, a perceptive schoolmaster wrote in his report: "Sacks will go far, if he does not go too far." Sacks has never stopped going. From its opening pages on his youthful obsession with motorcycles and speed, On the Move is infused with his restless energy. As he recounts his experiences as a young neurologist in the early 1960s, first in California, where he struggled with drug addiction, and then in New York, where he discovered a long-forgotten illness in the back wards of a chronic hospital, we see how his engagement with patients comes to define his life. Sacks shows us that the same energy that drives his physical passions -- weight lifting and swimming -- also drives his cerebral passions. He writes about his love affairs, both romantic and intellectual; his guilt over leaving his family to come to America; his bond with his schizophrenic brother; and the writers and scientists -- Thom Gunn, A. R. Luria, W. H. Auden, Gerald M. Edelman, Francis Crick -- who influenced him.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Sacks characterizes himself primarily as a storyteller, the son of storytellers—mother and father both—rather than as a physician, the other identity he shares with both parents. He's melded those roles in a string of best-selling collections of case histories from his practice as a clinical neurologist. Anyone pleased by any of them will be enthralled with his own story, which he fills out with not just the personal reasons, such as making fascinating friends, but also the scientific ones, such as contributing to new conceptions of brain function, that make what he tells us worth telling. He also, perhaps all unawares, reveals himself as a restless achiever and a bit of a daredevil. If avidly reading historic medical literature from adolescence on seems entirely appropriate to a writing clinician, surely youthful passions for motorcycling and weightlifting (on early-'60s Muscle Beach, yet) are a bit surprising (when injuries quashed those pursuits, Sacks fell back on hard swimming and scuba diving). And if strong late friendships with the stars of brain research seem inevitable, others begun well before he was famous, such as with the poets W. H. Auden and Thom Gunn, attest the estheticism in him that is the mainspring of his 2007 best-seller, Musicophilia. That Sacks is homosexual barely glints among the other lights of his long, eventful life. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: That the author's previous books have been popular in libraries should more than suggest that most public librarians need to have this new one in their collection. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

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Eat, move, sleep - Tom Rath

Eat, move, sleep - Rath, Tom

Summary: #1 "New York Times" bestselling author Tom Rath delivers a book that will improve your health for years to come in three of interconnected areas: eating, moving, and sleeping.

PW Annex Reviews
Gallup senior scientist and prolific business author Rath (Strengthfinder 2.0) explores how diets, exercise regimens, and sleep choices influence our health. Rath, diagnosed at age 16 with a life-threatening genetic disorder, draws from personal experiences as well as research, asserting that "small decisions about how you eat, move and sleep each day count more than you think." He offers practical tips to make long-lasting behavior changes and, in an encouraging, conversational tone, urges readers to "forget fad diets, forever," "make inactivity your enemy," and "sleep longer to get more done." He also emphasizes the importance of incremental changes, ranging from ideas on "product placement" in the home, getting a device to track steps, and using smaller plates to combat overeating. Snappy titles like "Family style is making us fat," energize the short, punchy chapters and add levity to what could be daunting behavioral changes. While much of Rath's advice is common-sense, his willingness to share his personal struggles makes this an easy, persuasive read for those trying to correct self-sabotaging behavior or adopt a healthy lifestyle. (Oct.)

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Man's search for meaning - Frankl

Man's search for meaning - Frankl, Victor

Summary: Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning")-holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.

At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, Man's Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. A 1991 reader survey for the Library of Congress that asked readers to name a "book that made a difference in your life" found Man's Search for Meaning among the ten most influential books in America.

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Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Americanah - Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi

Summary: A young woman from Nigeria leaves behind her home and her first love to start a new life in America, only to find her dreams are not all she expected.




Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* To the women in the hair-braiding salon, Ifemelu seems to have everything a Nigerian immigrant in America could desire, but the culture shock, hardships, and racism she's endured have left her feeling like she has "cement in her soul." Smart, irreverent, and outspoken, she reluctantly left Nigeria on a college scholarship. Her aunty Uju, the pampered mistress of a general in Lagos, is now struggling on her own in the U.S., trying to secure her medical license. Ifemelu's discouraging job search brings on desperation and depression until a babysitting gig leads to a cashmere-and-champagne romance with a wealthy white man. Astonished at the labyrinthine racial strictures she's confronted with, Ifemelu, defining herself as a "Non-American Black," launches an audacious, provocative, and instantly popular blog in which she explores what she calls Racial Disorder Syndrome. Meanwhile, her abandoned true love, Obinze, is suffering his own cold miseries as an unwanted African in London. MacArthur fellow Adichie (The Thing around Your Neck, 2009) is a word-by-word virtuoso with a sure grasp of social conundrums in Nigeria, East Coast America, and England; an omnivorous eye for resonant detail; a gift for authentic characters; pyrotechnic wit; and deep humanitarianism. Americanah is a courageous, world-class novel about independence, integrity, community, and love and what it takes to become a "full human being."

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Behind the Beautiful Forevers - Katherine Boo

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity - Boo, Katherine

Summary: Profiles everyday life in the settlement of Annawadi as experienced by a Muslim teen, an ambitious rural mother, and a young scrap metal thief, illuminating how their efforts to build better lives are challenged by religious, caste, and economic tensions.



Kirkus Reviews
In her debut, Pulitzer Prize–winning New Yorker staff writer Boo creates an intimate, unforgettable portrait of India's urban poor. Mumbai's sparkling new airport and surrounding luxury hotels welcome visitors to the globalized, privatized, competitive India. Across the highway, on top of tons of garbage and next to a vast pool of sewage, lies the slum of Annawadi, one of many such places that house the millions of poor of Mumbai. For more than three years, Boo lived among and learned from the residents, observing their struggles and quarrels, listening to their dreams and despair, recording it all. She came away with a detailed portrait of individuals daring to aspire but too often denied a chance--their lives viewed as an embarrassment to the modernized wealthy. The author poignantly details these many lives: Abdul, a quiet buyer of recyclable trash who wished for nothing more than what he had; Zehrunisa, Abdul's mother, a Muslim matriarch among hostile Hindu neighbors; Asha, the ambitious slum leader who used her connections and body in a vain attempt to escape from Annawadi; Manju, her beautiful, intelligent daughter whose hopes laid in the new India of opportunity; Sunil, the master scavenger, a little boy who would not grow; Meena, who drank rat poison rather than become a teenage bride in a remote village; Kalu, the charming garbage thief who was murdered and left by the side of the road. Boo brilliantly brings to life the residents of Annawadi, allowing the reader to know them and admire the fierce intelligence that allows them to survive in a world not made for them. The best book yet written on India in the throes of a brutal transition

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Lost for Words - Edward St. Aubyn

Lost for Words - St. Aubyn, Edward

Summary: A frenzied competition for a major British literary award pits several colorful characters against one another and is complicated by an accidental entry, a scandal involving a judge, and a vengeful reject.




Library Journal Review
As literary awards go, there couldn't be a more unlikely collection of judges, authors, publishers, and publicists than the one assembled for the Elysian Prize, a fiction award standing in for the real-life Man Booker Prize. The committee, chaired by former MP Malcolm Craig and made up of a self-important group of writers, academics, and actors, set themselves the task of finding works of fiction with social relevance, geographic representation, and political correctness. With no intention of actually reading most of the cringe-worthy submissions, each member champions the one book he or she has glanced at, the most improbable of which is The Palace Cookbook, an assemblage of recipes and anecdotes from India submitted accidentally by a careless publisher instead of the serious novel that should have been sent. The fun begins when the delusional nephew of the cookbook author sets out for murderous revenge after his own self-published tome has been overlooked. VERDICT For anyone who wonders about the process of judging literary awards, this fast and funny lark from the author of the notable Patrick Melrose novels may shed some comedic light.

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My struggle - Karl Ove Knausgaard

My struggle. Book three, Boyhood - Knausgaard, Karl Ove

Summary: "A family of four--mother, father and two boys--move to the South Coast of Norway to a new house on a newly developed site. It is the early 1970s and the family's trajectory, upwardly mobile: the future seems limitless. In painstaking, sometimes self-lacerating detail, Knausgaard paints a world familiar to anyone who can recall the intensity and novelty of childhood experience, one in which children and adults lead parallel lives that never meet. Perhaps the most Proustian in the series, Book Three gives us Knausgaard's vivid, technicolor recollections of childhood, his emerging self-understanding, and the multilayered nature of time's passing, memory, and existence."--Amazon.com

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Between 2009 and 2011, Norwegian novelist Knausgaard published a six-volume series entitled Min Kamp ("My Struggle"), a chronicle of the narrator's life, from boyhood to fatherhood. Called a "confessional novel," the series garnered critical acclaim, numerous awards, record sales, and a great deal of controversy due to its intensely autobiographical nature (friends and family publicly denounced the books). Clocking in at nearly 500 pages apiece, the first two installments focus on Karl Ove's strained relationship with his dying father, an overbearing schoolteacher, and Karl's fledgling romance with Linda, who would become his second wife. In Book Three, Karl Ove recounts his boyhood years on Tromøy, an island in southern Norway, during the 1970s and 1980s. Young Ove's adventures are extraordinarily humdrum. He and his brother, Yngve, play sports, chase girls, and discover rock music, but the ever-present tension between the boys and their taskmaster father begins to illuminate the dysfunctional family depicted in Book One. Notable for his meticulous attention to the quotidian details of everyday life, Knausgaard's pared-down style and plainspoken narrator manage to propel these long books, concerned less with sustaining plot than with the accumulation of tiny intensities and candid disclosures, which makes for strangely engaging, compulsively page-turning prose. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

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The Caliph's House - Tahir Shah

The Caliph's House - Shah, Tahir

Summary: An English travel writer and author of Sorcerer's Apprentice describes his and his family's experiences after purchasing a rundown palace in the Moroccan city of Casablanca, as they work to renovate the house, exorcise the jinns--mischievous invisible spirits--haunting the structure, and cope with the house's human guardians. (Baker & Taylor)


Booklist Reviews
Afghan writer Shah uproots his family from the comforts of London and moves to Casablanca. There he purchases not just any house but the abandoned residence of the caliph. Undeterred by suicide bombers, jinns, and innumerable job applicants, Shah installs his family in the decrepit house and begins to restore its walls, its gardens, and its fountains. Reconstructing the house immerses Shah in Moroccan everyday life. He has to deal with plagues of rats, swarms of bees, and the ever-threatening prospect of organized crime. Shah's picture of Moroccan society, its deeply held Islamic faith, its primitive superstition, and its raucous economy makes for endlessly fascinating reading. Particularly telling is his encounter with the realities of Ramadan, which seems to bring out both the best and worst in people's characters. Shah is cautious not to judge a society different from Western expectations, and he never makes fun of the odd characters who pepper his narrative. Shah's own heritage as both Afghan and Briton blesses him with a unique and penetrating point of view.

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Super sad true love story - Gary Shteyngart

Super sad true love story - Shteyngart, Gary

Summary: A dark tale of America's dysfunctional coming years, and of the timeless and tender feelings that just might bring us back from the brink.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Credit Poles display your financial worth as you hurry by, clutching your äppärät, a diabolical gadget that monitors your biochemistry while streaming torrents of acronym-infested babble and rating the sex appeal of everyone in sight. New Yorker Lenny Abramov, the stubbornly romantic son of flinty Russian Jewish immigrants, works for Post-Human Services, a life-extension venture. He is madly in love with young, hip, and unhappy Eunice Park, who is far more concerned about online shopping and her dysfunctional Korean immigrant family. As Lenny records his feelings in an actual diary, and Eunice confides in her best friend via e-mails, their personal worries are amplified by aggressively raunchy, reductive, and judgmental social media and dwarfed by the Rupture, America's collapse into ineptness, chaos, and tyranny as China backs American currency, the war with Venezuela escalates, and poor people live in Central Park. All Lenny wants is to make Eunice happy, but everything undermines him, from his age––at 39 he's considered decrepit—to his taboo passion for books. Full-tilt and fulminating satirist Shteyngart (Absurdistan, 2006) is mordant, gleeful, and embracive as he funnels today's follies and atrocities into a devilishly hilarious, soul-shriveling, and all-too plausible vision of a ruthless and crass digital dystopia in which techno-addled humans are still humbled by love and death. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.

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The big burn - Timothy Egan

 The big burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the fire that saved America - Timothy Egan

Summary: Narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire of August, 1910, and Teddy Roosevelt's pioneering conservation efforts that helped turn public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, though it changed the mission of the forest service with consequences felt in the fires of today.


BookPage Reviews
The recent “Station Fire” in California’s Angeles National Forest, the worst in Los Angeles County history, burned more than 160,000 acres and killed two firefighters. In comparison, the 1910 Northern Rockies forest fire remembered in The Big Burn covered nearly 3.2 million acres in Washington, Idaho and Montana. At least 85 people were killed, most of them members of ill-trained firefighting crews. That blowout, the biggest wildfire in American history, devastated the economy of a booming timber and mining region. It traumatized the survivors—and as New York Times columnist Timothy Egan shows in The Big Burn, it set the course for U.S. forest conservation for the next hundred years, for good and ill. The national forests that burned were brand new, the product of President Theodore Roosevelt’s conservation crusade. Spurred on by fellow aristocrat Gifford Pinchot, the founding head of the National Forest Service, Roosevelt had worked at breakneck pace to protect millions of acres from logging, railroad and mine companies. But when Roosevelt left office, the land barons’ allies in his own party starved the Forest Service of resources, and forced out Pinchot. The scope of the disaster and the heroism of so many forest rangers turned public opinion in favor of conservation at a crucial moment. National forests were subsequently created throughout the country, and the Forest Service became a thriving agency. For his National Book Award-winning account of the Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time, Egan was able to interview survivors. For The Big Burn, he had to comb through Forest Service reports, memoirs and old newspapers. But he’s equally effective here in telling the story through individuals—the homesteaders, the fire crews of immigrants and drifters, the idealistic Ivy League grads who followed Pinchot’s siren call to the Forest Service. Egan is a gorgeous writer. His chapters on the “blowup,” when thousands fled burning towns and desperate fire crews burrowed in mine shafts or submerged in streams to escape the inferno, should become a classic account of an American Pompeii. Anne Bartlett is a journalist in Washington, D.C.

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What it's like to go to war - Karl Marlantes

What it's like to go to war - Marlantes, Karl

Summary: War is as old as humankind, but in the past, warriors were prepared for battle by ritual, religion and literature, which also helped bring them home. In this narrative, the author weaves accounts of his combat experiences with thoughtful analysis, self-examination, and his readings from Homer to the Mahabharata to Jung. He talks frankly about how he is haunted by the face of the young North Vietnamese soldier he killed at close quarters and how he finally finds a way to make peace with his past. He discusses the daily contradictions that warriors face in the grind of war, where each battle requires them to take life or spare life, and where they enter a state he likens to the fervor of religious ecstasy. He also underscores the need for returning veterans to be counseled properly.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* A Rhodes scholar who served as a marine lieutenant in Vietnam (he left Oxford to return to active duty), Marlantes seems to exemplify what we want in our military officers. Thoughtful and articulate, he is a student of history and philosophy; he recognizes the need for armies but believes nations should undertake more soul-searching before going to war. Above all, he feels that we need to do a better job preparing soldiers (he prefers the au courant "warriors") for war and also helping them heal, physically and mentally, from war. He interleaves harrowing scenes from his own experiences in combat with the lessons he learned and his hopes for their broader application. While his often Jungian perspective may strike some readers as idiosyncratic or hard to implement, his empathy is apparent, his emotions are affecting, and his goals are admirable. Both a training manual for would-be warriors and a caution to the politicians who would deploy them, this is also essential reading for civilians who seek to better understand the complicated costs of military action. By turns horrifying and soothing, visceral and deeply profound, it's a book you'll never forget—whether you agree with it or not. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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The bonobo and the atheist - F.B.M. de Waal

The bonobo and the atheist: in search of humanism among the primates - Waal, F.B.M. de

Summary: A renowned primatologist argues that ethical behavior witnessed in animals is the evolutionary and biological origin of human fairness and explains that morality has more to do with natural instincts than with religion.


Kirkus Reviews
Is morality a learned aspect of human nature, or is it innate? Are thinking and acting morally behaviors exclusive to humans? Drawing from decades of fieldwork and research, influential primatologist de Waal (The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society, 2010, etc.) explores the roots of empathy and altruism, concluding that neither religion (despite its historical influence) nor law (despite its ideological heft) is the root cause of the human inclination to act morally. Instead, the author argues, biology is responsible for our instinctual understanding of right and wrong. Weaving together poignant anecdotes of his work with bonobos, a great ape that was long overlooked as a close genetic relative of humans, and philosophical discussions on morality through the lens of religious history, the author makes a cogent argument that moral instinct must precede current civilizations and religions "by at least a hundred millennia." Examples abound of behavior by animals--not just bonobos, but also elephants, chimpanzees and mice--displaying social emotions like gratitude, facial recognition, an awareness of the permanence of death and a willingness to help each other even at personal detriment. De Waal also presents research that indicates a social culture marked by matriarchal hierarchies and sexual freedom, as well as a largely peaceful and conflict-avoiding ethos. This may suggest something altogether different about human participation in the evolution of religion and law than a thesis citing those entities as responsible for providing mankind with a moral center. The author avoids belaboring any one aspect of morality's applications, however, and instead provides an intimate and joyful series of proofs that the "ingredients of a moral society…come from within." A well-composed argument for the biological foundations of human morality. Copyright Kirkus 2013 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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The things they carried - Tim O'Brien

The things they carried - Tim O'Brien

Summary: An anniversary edition of a collection of interconnected fictional stories follows the members of an American platoon fighting in the Vietnam War, in a book that mirrors the author's own wartime experiences. This finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award has been banned for profanity and other strong language. - (Baker & Taylor)

BookList Review
"In the end. . .a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen." In Tim O'Brien's world, of course, a war story is all that--and more. The author of the National Book Award-winning Going After Cacciato offers us fiction in a unique form: a kind of "faction" presented as a collection of related stories that have the cumulative effect of a unified novel. The "things they carry"--literally--are prosaic things: amphetamines, M-16s, grenades, good-luck charms, Sterno cans, toilet paper, photographs, C-rations. But the men in O'Brien's platoon--Curt Lemon, Rat Kiley, Henry Dobbins, Kiowa, and the rest--also carry less tangible but more palpable things such as disease, confusion, hatred, love, regret, fear, what passes for courage; in short, the prototypical psychological profile of the youthful Vietnam vet. There are 22 pieces here in all, some of which were previously published in such diverse literary arenas as Playboy, Granta, GQ, and Esquire. The prose ranges from staccato soldierly thoughts to raw depictions of violent death to intense personal ruminations by the author that don't appear to be fictional at all. ("On the Rainy River," O'Brien's account of the time he almost fled to Canada after receiving his draft notice, is particularly moving.) Just when you thought there was nothing left to say about the Vietnam experience. . .there's plenty. ((Reviewed March 15, 1990)) -- Martin Brady

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Yards - Billy Goodnick

Yards: turn any outdoor space into the garden of your dreams - Goodnick, Billy

Summary: Nobody wants to spend time in a tired, underperforming yard. But how to achieve a low-cost, low-maintenance yard that's environmentally savvy as well as beautiful - a place that works for every need? Award-winning landscape architect and garden coach Billy Goodnick says, “Whether you're starting with bare ground or you're renovating an existing yard, you gotta have a plan.” With step-by-step, clear examples, he demystifies the planning process: from site analysis to lifestyle considerations to plant selection. It's all about training the eye to see the big picture first, so all the other pieces fall into place, leading to the outdoor environment of one's dreams. Full color photos throughout.- (Ingram Publishing Services)

"Billy Goodnick delivers the most laid-back, user-friendly, and entertaining garden advice you'll ever read. Invite him into your backyard--now!"
--Amy Stewart, New York Times bestselling author of Wicked Plants

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The food matters cookbook - Mark Bittman

The food matters cookbook - Bittman, Mark

Summary: This follow up to Mark Bittman's "NY Times" bestseller, "Food Matters: The Cookbook" offers around 450 recipes that will save your health and the planet.



Booklist Reviews
Two years ago, prolific cookbook author and newspaper columnist Bittman published a cogent injunction urging Americans to redirect their eating habits toward more environmentally friendly and agriculturally sustainable diets and away from sugary, meat-centric meals. Since that first volume offered only a few recipes, Bittman has come to the aid of cooks who need much more specific kitchen support. So he has engaged his formidable creativity to generate a cornucopia of recipes to inspire people to rethink what they prepare for meals. Bittman's innovative approach starts at the market with teaching shoppers to spot and buy seasonal, fresh vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. The book's hundreds of recipes give menu planners maximum flexibility in just about every category of cookery. Many appetizer and main-dish recipes call for some meat or seafood, but in controlled quantities. Bittman's visionary imagination sparkles on every page, and even cooks who may not wholly resonate with his planetary concerns will find themselves intrigued and inspired on virtually every page. Promise of weight loss as a side benefit adds additional incentive. Bittman eschews rigorously exacting nutritional tables in favor of empowering cooks to find healthy balances based on broad principles of disciplined, intelligent, aware, yet joyful consumption. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.

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The sense of an ending - Julian Barnes

The sense of an ending - Barnes, Julian

Summary: Follows a middle-aged man as he reflects on a past he thought was behind him, until he is presented with a legacy that forces him to reconsider different decisions, and to revise his place in the world.


Booklist Reviews
At once commanding and subtle, Barnes has created a refined novel intensely suspenseful in its emotional complexities and exemplary in its arresting tropes, rhythms, revelations, and musings on the puzzle of time and the mysteries of memory and desire. And how masterfully Barnes induces us, page by page, to revise our perceptions of and feelings toward his ensnared narrator. Cordially divorced and smugly retired, Tony is yanked out of complacency by a perplexing letter. The recently deceased mother of his disastrous first love has inexplicably bequeathed him the diary of a school friend of his who committed suicide. As Tony seeks an explanation, Barnes turns evocative motifs––the way Tony and his friends wore their watches with the faces on the inside of their wrists; the night Tony witnessed the Severn Bore, a powerful tidal surge that reverses the river's flow––into metaphors for how we distort the past and how oblivious we are to the pain of others. Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, Barnes' sublimely modulated and profoundly disquieting tale of delusion, loss, and remorse ends devastatingly with a crescendo twist. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Barnes is a British author Americans follow with high attention, and this novel secured him the Man Booker Prize. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

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A cast of killers - Sidney Kirkpatrick

A cast of killers - Kirkpatrick, Sidney

Summary: This account of the 1922 murder of film director William Desmond Taylor reveals the complete untold story--secretly solved by director King Vidor prior to his death in 1982--of one of the most famous crime mysteries in America - (Baker & Taylor)



Library Journal Reviews
In 1922, Hollywood film director William Desmond Taylor was murdered, and the crime was never officially solved. In 1967, the late director King Vidor decided to investigate the mystery in order to make a film about it. (No film resulted.) Kirkpatrick recounts the story of Vidor's sleuthing, which uncovered scandal, corruption, coverups, and, ultimately, Vidor believed, the identity of the killer. This is a well-researched book, breezily related, whose impact is lessened somewhat by digressions into Vidor's personal life. The combination of Hollywood and murder is likely to be popular. For most public libraries. Gregor A. Preston, Univ. of California Lib., Davis Copyright 1986 Cahners Business Information.

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The orphan master's son - Adam Johnson

The orphan master's son - Johnson, Adam

Summary: The son of an influential father who runs an orphan work camp, Pak Jun Do rises to prominence using instinctive talents and eventually becomes a professional kidnapper and romantic rival to Kim Jong Il.


Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Pak Jun Do lives with his father at a North Korean work camp for orphans. In a nation in which every citizen serves the state, orphans routinely get the most dangerous jobs. So it is for Jun Do, who becomes a "tunnel soldier," trained to fight in complete darkness in the tunnels beneath the DMZ. But he is reassigned as a kidnapper, snatching Japanese citizens with special skills, such as a particular opera singer or sushi chef. Failure as a kidnapper could lead directly to the prison mines. But in Johnson's fantastical, careening tale, Jun Do manages to impersonate Commander Ga, the country's greatest military hero, rival of Dear Leader Kim Jong Il and husband of Sun Moon, North Korea's only movie star. Informed by extensive research and travel to perhaps the most secretive nation on earth, Johnson has created a remarkable novel that encourages the willing suspension of disbelief. As Jun Do, speaking as Ga, puts it, "people have been trained to accept any reality presented to them." Johnson winningly employs different voices, with the propagandizing national radio station serving as a mad Greek chorus. Descriptions of everyday privations and barbarities are matter of fact, and Jun Do's love for Sun Moon reads like a fairy tale. Part adventure, part coming-of-age tale, and part romance, The Orphan Master's Son is a triumph on every level. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

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