The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 1: Religion - Publisher's Marketing: "Evangelical Protestant groups have dominated religious life in the South since the early nineteenth century. Even as the conservative Protestantism typically associated with the South has risen in social and political prominence throughout the United States in recent decades, however, religious culture in the South itself has grown increasingly diverse. The region has seen a surge of immigration from other parts of the United States as well as from Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East, bringing increased visibility to Catholicism, Islam, and Asian religions in the once solidly Protestant Christian South.

In this volume of "The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, contributors have revised entries from the original "Encyclopedia on topics ranging from religious broadcasting to snake handling and added new entries on such topics as Asian religions, Latino religion, New Age religion, Islam, Native American religion, and social activism. With the contributions of more than 60 authorities in the field--including Paul Harvey, Loyal Jones, Wayne Flynt, and Samuel F. Weber--this volume is an accessibly written, up-to-date reference to religious culture in the American South."

Call number: Reference F209 .N47 2006

Richard Pillsbury's introductory essay explores the evolution of geographic patterns of life within the region--agricultural practices, urban patterns, residential buildings, religious preferences, foodways, and language. The entries that follow address general topics of cultural geographic interest, such as Appalachia, exiles and expatriates, Latino and Jewish populations, migration patterns, and the profound Disneyfication of central Florida. Entries with a more concentrated focus examine major cities, such as Atlanta, New Orleans, and Memphis; the influence of black and white southern migrants on northern cities; and individual subregions, such as the Piedmont, Piney Woods, Tidewater, and Delta. Putting together the disparate pieces that make up the place called "the South," this volume sets the scene for the discussions in all the other volumes of "The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.""

Call number: Reference F209 .N47 2006

Charles Reagan Wilson's overview essay examines the evolution of southern history and the way our understanding of southern culture has unfolded over time and in response to a variety of events and social forces--not just as the opposite of the North but also in the larger context of the Atlantic World. Longer thematic essays cover major eras and events, such as early settlement, slave culture, Reconstruction, the New Deal, and the rise of the New South. Brief topical entries cover individuals--including figures from the Civil War, the civil rights movement, and twentieth-century politics--and organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Daughters of the Confederacy, and Citizens' Councils, among others. Together, these essays offer a sweeping reference to the rich history of the region."

Call number: Reference F209 .N47 2006

The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 4: Myth, Manners, and Memory - Publisher's Marketing: "This volume of "The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture" addresses the cultural, social, and intellectual terrain of myth, manners, and historical memory in the American South. Evaluating how a distinct southern identity has been created, recreated, and performed through memories that blur the line between fact and fiction, this volume paints a broad, multihued picture of the region seen through the lenses of belief and cultural practice."

Call number: Reference F209 .N47 2006

The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 5: Language - Publisher's Marketing: "The fifth volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture explores language and dialect in the South, including English, Native American languages, and other non-English languages spoken over time by the region's immigrant communities. The patchwork of English dialects is also fully presented, from African American English, Gullah, and Cajun English to the English spoken in Appalachia, the Ozarks, the Outer Banks, the Chesapeake Bay Islands, Charleston, and elsewhere. Topical entries discuss ongoing changes in the pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar of English in the increasingly mobile South, as well as naming patterns, storytelling, preaching styles, and politeness, all of which deal with ways language is woven into southern culture."

Call number: Reference F209 .N47 2006

The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 6:Ethnicity - Publisher's Marketing: "Moving beyond racial designations of "black," "white," and "Indian," this volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture complicates and enriches our understanding of "southernness" by demonstrating the extent to which it exists as a fabric of many cultures. This exploration of southern ethnicities examines the ways people "perform" their cultural identities through, among other things, dress, dance, and family tradition. Contributors identify 88 major ethnic groups that have lived in the South from the Mississippian Period (1000-1600 C.E.) to the present."

Call number: Reference F209 .N47 2006

* Information gathering and site planning
* Guide to process of Web writing
* Basic XHTML page construction and basic Cascading Style Sheet format
* Text tags and styles
* Using the styling Web images
* Using CSS color and background properties
* Using XHTML and CSS for site navigation
* Web site design
* CSS Web page layout
* Using multimedia on Web pages
* XML overview"

donation

Call number: TK5105.888 .B379 2007

Go! Technology in Action (3RD ed.)

Call number: QA76.5 .E92 2007

Call number: QA76.5 .E92 2007 CD-ROM

donation

Key Constitutional Concepts - Publisher's Marketing: "This documentary begins by introducing the Constitution and why it was created. These three 20-minute videos examine key constitutional concepts. The first explains why the nation's framers created the Constitution. The second describes the protection of individual rights by highlighting the Supreme Court case of Gideon v. Wainwright, affirming the right to an attorney. The last explores the separation of powers by examining the Supreme Court case of Youngstown v. Sawyer; a challenge to President Truman's decision to take over steel mills during the Korean War."

Call number: KF5130.S9 K3 2006 DVD

Our Constitution: A Conversation - Publisher's Marketing: "In this DVD, taped on June 5, 2005 at the Supreme Court, Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen Breyer answer questions on the Constitution from a group of high school students. They explain why we need a written Constitution, separation of powers, federalism, individual rights, and more."

Call number: KF5130.S9 O9 2005 DVD

Mandate: The President and the People - Publisher's Marketing: "Narrated by veteran CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl, Mandate examines the long and complex relationship between the presidency and public opinion. Leading historians, political scientists, and public figures offer insight into presidents and the presidency from George Washington through FDR."

Call number: KF5050.S9 M2 2006 DVD

Delivering Justice: Dialing for Dollars - Publisher's Marketing: "Telemarketing fraud costs Americans millions of dollars each year. And when it comes to phony investment "opportunities," older Americans are prime targets. This free, 15-minute DVD tells the story of such a scam and the lives that are ruined by criminals. The film provides tips on how to protect yourself from investment fraud and tells you what to do if you've been victimized. "Dialing for Dollars" is a High Noon film presented by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service."

Call number: HF 5415.1265 .D5 2004 DVD

Work-at-Home Scams: They Just Don't Pay - Publisher's Marketing: "Working at home has become attractive to many stay-at-home moms, college students, and retirees. While some jobs are legitimate, others just don't deliver on their promises. This free, short film tells the story of a new type of work-at-home scam and how a young mother gets caught up in it. It also provides tips on how you can avoid being duped by criminals and what to do if you've been victimized. This High Noon Film is presented by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service."

Call number: HV6697 .W67 2004 DVD

New Perspectives on Computer Concepts: Comprehensive with CDROM (9TH ed.)

Call number: QA76.5 .P3256 2007

donation

Database Systems: Design, Implementation, and Management, Fifth Edition - Publisher's Marketing: "Database Systems: Design, Implementation, and Management, Fifth Edition takes you clearly and effectively through the entire process of database development and implementation. The most comprehensive and detailed coverage of database basics is complemented with ample exercises and problems at the end of each chapter to encourage hands-on learning, and a two-chapter step-by-step running case. Because the Internet has become so firmly established as an extension of the everyday business data environment, this revised edition contains two new chapters, "Databases in Electronic Commerce" and "Web Database Development," that stress the need for solid planning and management in order to maximize the resources that the Internet provides."

Call number: QA76.9 .D26 R62 2002

donation

C How to Program with CDROM (5TH ed.) - Publisher's Marketing: "The Deitels' groundbreaking "How to Program" series offers unparalleled breadth and depth of programming concepts and intermediate-level topics for further study. The books in this series feature hundreds of complete, working programs with thousands of lines of code. Includes strong treatment of structured algorithm and program development in ANSI/ISO C with 150 working C programs. New chapters added for C99 and game programming with the Allegro C Library. Includes rich, 300-page treatment of object-oriented programming in C++. Presents each new concept in the context of a complete, working program, immediately followed by one or more windows showing the program' s input/output dialog. Enhances the "Live-Code Approach" with syntax coloring. Provides Helpful Programming Tips, all marked by icons: Good Programming Practices, Common Programming Errors, Error-Prevention Tips, Performance Tips, Portability Tips, Software Engineering Observations, Look and Feel Observations. A valuable reference for programmers and anyone interested in learning the C programming language."

Call number: QA76.73 .C15 D44 2007

Call number: QA76.73 .C15 D44 2007 CD-ROM

Go! with XHTML Comprehensive - Publisher's Marketing: "Designed for full-semester course on XHTML, Web design, Web programming, or for a computer applications course with a Web component. Teach the course YOU want in LESS TIME! The primary goal of the GO! Series, aside from teaching computer applications, is ease of implementation, with an approach that is based on clearly-defined projects for students."

Call number: QA76.76 .H94 D88 2007

Writing for the Web: A Practical Guide - Publisher's Marketing: "Taking a rhetorical approach," "Writing for the Web: A Practical Guide" "discusses how invention, arrangement, and purpose-driven content can make Web writers more authentic and effective. Written for a wide range of audiences, it introduces readers to sound Web writing principles and discusses how technologies, interfaces, and data are impacted by the choices the writer makes. Exercises, assignments, and case scenarios encourage readers to practice skills such as captioning photos, incorporating links and writing FAQ pages. Realistic projects help readers learn how to organize content, define writing purpose and craft clear messages that will be powerful enough to impact Web site visitors and their behavior. Focuses on planning and writing for audience-driven purposes and discusses the concepts of identity, content development and emotional appeal throughout. Offers a flexible organization that focuses on how to organize content, define writing purpose and craft clear messages that will be powerful enough to impact Web site visitors and their behavior. Asks writers to explore professional, creative, and experimental approaches to writing and understand how technologies, interfaces, information, ideas, and data are affected by the choices that writers make. Provides clear explanations of basic computer use and Internet infrastructure and helps everyone get up to speed on the vocabulary, concepts, and basic technology structures Web writers need to know. Anyone interested in Web writing."

Call number: TK5105.888 .J46 2007

Web Development: A Visual-Spatial Approach - Publisher's Marketing: "An excellent reference for, professionals and experienced designers, this text takes a holistic approach to web development. At the heart of the text is the belief that keeping the user’ s needs in mind during development process will create more effective sites. It addresses "planning," "structure, navigation, content, design," and "usability "while focusing on their interconnectedness within web development. Both traditional and contemporary theoretical approaches are discussed including rhetorical theory, visual-spatial thinking, and user-centered design. A number of real world examples including screen captures of actual sites, advice from practicing professionals and ready to use materials make this book a must-have for anyone interested in effective web development. Provides an overview of the web development process and planning phases. Covers the basics of document markup and publishing. Looks at critical factors in overall development relating to site structure; navigation systems; research & content development; visual design; interface design; and usability & accessibility. Includes examples of architectures, navigation, interface designs, usability tests, accessibility standards, and content development. Appropriate for advanced technical writing courses in Multimedia and Web Design. An excellent resource for anyone interested in developing effective websites."

Call number: TK5105.888 .B34 2007

Defying Dementia: Understanding and Preventing Alzheimer's and Related Disorders - Publisher's Marketing: "How do we motivate individuals to take action or change behavior in response to a possible threat that has not yet materialized? When the threat is dementia, argues longtime neurologist Robert Levine, it is an issue of considerable importance. The earlier the campaign is initiated to defeat this lurking foe, the greater the chances the combatant will emerge victorious. Written to encourage such defensive action, Levine's book is meant both as a guide and a reference to understanding and preventing dementia. It is intended for lay people interested in learning about dementia and the measures that can be taken to repel its onslaught, as well as for caregivers and family members of impaired patients. Defying Dementia is presented in two sections. First, Levine explains the various types of dementia, its increasing incidence and current treatments, and the treatments being tested and on the horizon. The role of physiology and fresh insights from the field of genetics are included. The second section focuses on methods that can be incorporated into a healthy lifestyle to help avoid dementia. Vignettes illustrate how dementia in its many forms can be recognized as it emerges. "With proper actions on our part, we can achieve mastery," Levine writes. "The transformation may not be easy, but recognizing the scourge that dementia is, and the way it devours the humanity of its victims, may inspire us to move ahead. Preparation is the key word; building solid defenses over time. And while any moment is worthwhile to begin this task, the earlier the better.""

Call number: RC521 .L48 2006

We often marvel at the incredible structures they built, not knowing exactly how it was done. The Great Pyramid's construction still remains a mystery to many people as far as the lifting of the stones to such great heights is concerned. To this day interesting theories abound, but no absolute proof, or a recreation of the true methods used, have ever been demonstrated. The authors openly state that their explanation of the Great Pyramid's construction is not the final answer and that many mysteries still remain, yet do a fascinating job in detailing how the huge stones were dressed and laid out.

Even though the ancient Egyptians did not have high speed drills, they still had used drills that were adequate enough to do such absolutely perfect work -- as depicted in a 5th Dynasty temple in Abusir (found later in the book). Many mysteries are cleared up in this incredibly detailed book, which includes over 250 sketches and pictures that back up the author's claims.

Any serious researcher into ancient Egyptian structures should not be without this book. It seems at first glance that many of the incredible monuments of Egypt were built and raised almost by magic. The structures are absolutely awe-inspiring, but the authors strip away much of the "magic" to reveal how hard work, creative ingenuity, and an advanced knowledge of mathematics and physics account for some of the amazing architectural feats performed in early Egypt. At the same time, when a mystery still remains for the authors, they do not hesitate in admitting it."

Call number: TH16 .C6 1999

The Great Wall: China Against the World, 1000 BC - AD 2000 - Publisher's Marketing: "A new and important history of the epic story of the Great Wall of China that guides the reader through the conquests and cataclysms of the Chinese empire, from the second millennium BC the present day. Over 2,200 years old and 4,300 miles long, the Great Wall of China has made an overwhelmingly confident physical statement about the country it spans: about China's age-old sense of being an advanced civilization anxious to draw a clear line between itself and the "barbarians" at its borders. But behind the wall's intimidating exterior -- and the myths that have clustered around it -- is a complex history that has both defined and undermined China. It is this history that Julia Lovell explores in her enthralling book. "The Great Wall" is an epic tale that stretches over two millennia as it follows the rise and fall of the great Chinese ruling dynasties. Full of astonishing details and extraordinary characters -- from emperors to engineers, statesmen to soldiers -- this is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand China's past, present, and future."

Call number: DS793.G67 L584 2006

Cadfael: Series 3 - Vendor's Marketing: "Based on Ellis Peter's CADFAEL series of novels, this popular television series (which airs as part of PBS' MYSTERY! lineup in the US) stars Derek Jacobi as the eponymous clergyman. It follows Cadfael, a monk who, in his youth, was a crusader, sailor, and adventurer, but who has now settled down at Shrewsbury Abbey as its resident gardener, botanist, and herbalist. However, from time to time, there are mysteries to be solved around the Abbey, forcing Cadfael to put his startling sleuthing skills into use. Includes the entire third season of the series: A RAVEN IN THE FOREGATE, A MORBID TASTE FOR BONES, and THE ROSE RENT."

Call number: PN1992.8 CadRave DVD

Call number: PN1992.8 CadRose DVD

Call number: PN1992.8 CadMorb DVD

Diary of a Mad Black Woman - The Play - Vendor's Marketing: "This dramatic production stars Tyler Perry (who also wrote the play and who has gone on to feature in a film adaptation) as the cross-dressing, strong-willed grandma Medea. Helen has just been thrown out by her wealthy, cheating husband after 18 years of marriage, and now must look to her mom and her sassy grandmother for help her on the path to self-discovery."

Call number: PN2220 .D537 2005 DVD

Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! / Horton Hears a Who! - Vendor's Marketing: "With the talents of Chuck Jones, Boris Karloff, and Dr. Seuss combined, there was almost no way this could be anything but an instant classic. Watched regularly every holiday season and beloved by children and cynical adults alike, this animated gem is just that and more. Boris Karloff narrates and stars as the odious Mr. Grinch, the sinister green monster who plots to steal all the Christmas presents in the town of Whoville. All goes well with his dastardly plan until little Cindy Loo Who (who was no more than two) gums up the works with her innocent Christmas spirit. Jones directed, with Karloff supplying the sweetly sinister narration and voice of the Grinch. The story is from the book by Dr. Seuss. Thurl Ravenscroft (of "Tony the Tiger" breakfast commercial fame) provides the memorable bass singing voice for the tune "You're a Mean One, Mister Grinch." Filled with close attention to comic detail, memorable characterizations, and delightful wordplay, this is essential holiday viewing for the whole family."

Call number: PN1997 HowTheGr DVD

Nova - Secrets Of Lost Empires II: Medieval Siege - Vendor's Marketing: "Experience the chaos of medieval battle and the architectural production of war know as Trebuchet and it's effects on the history and warfare of England. Narrated by Stacy Keach."

Call number: U873 .S43 2004 DVD

Frida - Vendor's Marketing: "Brilliant colors that bring Frida Kahlo's Mexico City to vibrant life combine with a captivating performance by Salma Hayek to make director Julie Taymor's FRIDA a fascinating film. Starting and ending with Frida on her deathbed, the film spans the famous painter's life from her teenage years to her death at the young age of 47. From start to finish, Frida is portrayed as a relentlessly energized, self-righteous, headstrong, asserted woman. She had liberal views and a socialist political stance. She was bisexual and promiscuous. She drank and abused painkillers, sang and danced, and fearlessly poured her pain and beauty into her paintings. At the age of 18, Frida was horribly injured in a bus accident. Though she learned to walk again, she lived her life in physical agony, enduring multiple surgeries, and eventually needing a wheelchair. Yet her condition did not stop her from having an exciting, tumultuous life as the wife of famed artist and womanizer Diego Rivera, who mentored her in her own work and encouraged her passions. While Frida's life is the main focus, her work is always present and the action of the film often fades into paintings and vice versa. However, the film only hints at the recognition and worldwide display that her painting received after her death. Taymor has created a lively and dramatically emotive film with FRIDA, capturing her endearing resiliency with color, music, and, of course, art."

Call number: PN1997 Frida DVD

Flags of Our Fathers - Vendor's Marketing: "Clint Eastwood's early-21st-century output has endeared him to Academy Awards voters, and he makes another bid for their attention with this tale of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima. Eastwood cuts back and forth between the battle that led to the flag being firmly planted in enemy soil, and the tour undertaken by three of the flag-planting Marines (played by Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, and Adam Beach) in the aftermath of World War II. The re-creation of Iwo Jima features impressive APOCALYPSE NOW-style battle scenes, the air full of thick plumes of smoke, zinging bullets, and pounding explosions. But the most interesting part of the movie comes as the three men are paraded in front of the American public, as they vacillate between embarrassment and anger at the public relations campaign they find themselves embroiled in, while also pleading with the public to help provide funds for the soldiers who are still at war. Eastwood uses a script co-written by CRASH director Paul Haggis and a source book written by James Bradley, the son of John "Doc" Bradley (played by Phillippe in the film), to tell this affecting tale. Tom Stern, who worked with Eastwood on MILLION DOLLAR BABY, employs his skills as a cinematographer once again, deftly coupling vast panoramic battle scenes with darkly contemplative moments between the touring soldiers. Fascinatingly, the director's next jaunt behind the lens was LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, which provided the Japanese perspective on this famous event."

Call number: PN1997 FlagsOf DVD

The Good Shepherd - Vendor's Marketing: "With THE GOOD SHEPHERD, Robert De Niro (A BRONX TALE) makes an ambitious return to the director’s chair. A labor of love for Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (FORREST GUMP), the film tells an epic, fictionalized account of how the Central Intelligence Agency was born. Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson, a reserved young man who graduated from Yale in the late 1930s. His membership in the exclusive, hidden Skull and Bones society led him away from poetry and into a relationship with the federal government, who recruited him to help them on several covert operations. Roth’s script alternates between Wilson’s gradual emergence as a genuine government operative in the early 1940s and the infamous Bay of Pigs conflict in the early 1960s. Along the way, he has a sweet romance with a pretty deaf girl (a sparkling Tammy Blanchard) and ends up marrying the woman he impregnates (Angelina Jolie) out of a strong sense of duty. Throughout the film, the emergence of a mysterious tape haunts Wilson, who is determined to uncover the truth behind a leak in his secret organization. Production designer Jeannine Claudia Oppewall (L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN) and costume designer Ann Roth (THE ENGLISH PATIENT, THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY) faithfully recreate these earlier periods in American history, while the imagery of Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson (J.F.K., THE AVIATOR) casts a warm, stately glow upon De Niro’s assembled cast of luminaries (including Alec Baldwin, Michael Gambon, William Hurt, Billy Crudup, and Joe Pesci)."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 GoodShep DVD

The Last King of Scotland - Vendor's Marketing: "Forest Whitaker delivers a ferociously commanding performance as bloodthirsty Ugandan president Idi Amin in Kevin MacDonald’s THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND. Adapted from the novel by Giles Foden, the film recounts Amin’s horrific reign through the eyes of a fictional character, Nick Garrigan (James McAvoy), a young doctor from Scotland who travels to Uganda hoping to do some good. Nick is more sanguine about new president Amin than is his counterpart Sarah Merrit (Gillian Armstrong), whose experience causes her to be skeptical of Amin’s bombastic declarations. After an automobile accident, Nick is called in to treat the president’s wounds. His authoritative behavior impresses Amin, who charms Nick into becoming his personal physician. Nick embraces his newfound life of luxury, but he is unable to grasp the reality of the situation. When he does finally realize the atrocities Amin is inflicting upon his people (and is also capable of inflicting on Nick), the terrified doctor tries to make a frantic escape before it's too late. MacDonald, director of the acclaimed documentaries ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER and TOUCHING THE VOID, makes a startlingly assured transition into fictional filmmaking with THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND. Working with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (THE CELEBRATION) and editor Justine Wright, MacDonald brings 1970s Uganda to pulsating life, perfectly recreating that tumultuous era. But ultimately the film belongs to Whitaker: as he shifts from charming to maniacal in the space of a short, unexpected breath, he infuses Amin with startling humanity."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 LastKing DVD

Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the Climate Crisis--and What We Can Do to Avert Disaster -

According to Gelbspan, a proper approach to climate change could solve many other problems in our social, political, and economic lives. It would dramatically reduce our reliance on oil, and with it our exposure to instability in the Middle East. It would create millions of jobs and raise living standards in poor countries whose populations are affected by climate-driven disease epidemics and whose borders are overrun by environmental refugees. It would also expand the global economy and lead to a far wealthier and more peaceful world. A passionate call-to-arms and a thoughtful roadmap for change, Boiling Point reveals what's at stake for our fragile planet."

Call number: QC981.8 .G56 G44 2005

The Out-Of-Sync Child - Publisher's Marketing: "NEWLY REVISED AND UPDATED
"The Out-of-Sync Child" broke new ground by identifying Sensory Processing Disorder, a common but frequently misdiagnosed problem in which the central nervous system misinterprets messages from the senses. This newly revised edition features additional information from recent research on vision and hearing deficits, motor skill problems, nutrition and picky eaters, ADHA, autism, and other related disorders."

Call number: RJ496.B7 K72 2005

Sensational Kids: Hope and Help for Children with Sensory Processing Disorder - Publisher's Marketing: "Imagine, for a moment, that you are a parent of a child with no visible disability, but whose experiences of everyday life present constant challenges. What may be typical activities for most people-eating, dressing, making friends, taking a spelling test, responding to a hug-are a struggle, often resulting in social, emotional, and academic problems.
This is the bewildering and largely uncharted world of Sensory Processing Disorder-a complex brain disorder affecting one in twenty children. These children experience sensations- taste, touch, sound, sight, smell, movement and body awareness-vastly differently from other children their ages.They may feel attacked by the slightest touch, fail to register bumps and bruises, or be unable to figure out where they are in space without constantly touching others. While SPD is more widely recognized than it once was, parents of these sensational children have been searching for ways to help their children navigate in the world. Dr. Lucy Miller, the best-known SPD researcher in the world, is that voice: warm, clear, and upbeat, Dr. Miller identifies the disorder and its four major subtypes, provides insight into assessment and diagnosis, and suggests treatment options and strategies, including the importance of occupational therapy and parental involvement. Portraits of five children illustrate the different ways in which SPD may manifest itself as well as how families cope, while offering hope and advice to parents on how to be the best possible advocates for their children.
Comprehensive and compassionate, "Sensational Children" is the book no parent, teacher, or caregiver of children with SPD should be without."

Call number: RJ496 .S44 M55 2006

Raising a Sensory Smart Child: The Definitive Handbook for Helping Your Child with Sensoryintegration Issues - Publisher's Marketing: "Children with Sensory Integration (SI) Dysfunction--a condition that does not allow the body to properly process sensations--often display delayed mother, speech, and social skills. Now as awareness of this condition reaches an all-time high, this comprehensive guidebook offers cutting-edge advice to parents of SI children. Written by an occupational therapist and a parent with a child with SI dysfunction, "Raising a Sensory Smart Child makes it easy for readers to recognize and understand their child's sensory issues and to find the best treatment for their child's needs."

Call number: HQ773.6 .B53 2005

How Proust Can Change Your Life - Publisher's Marketing: "Alain de Botton combines two unlikely genres--literary biography and self-help manual--in the hilarious and unexpectedly practical How Proust Can Change Your Life.
Who would have thought that Marcel Proust, one of the most important writers of our century, could provide us with such a rich source of insight into how best to live life? Proust understood that the essence and value of life was the sum of its everyday parts. As relevant today as they were at the turn of the century, Proust's life and work are transformed here into a no-nonsense guide to, among other things, enjoying your vacation, reviving a relationship, achieving original and uncliched articulation, being a good host, recognizing love, and understanding why you should never sleep with someone on a first date. It took de Botton to find the inspirational in Proust's essays, letters and fiction and, perhaps even more surprising, to draw out a vivid and clarifying portrait of the master from between the lines of his work.
Here is Proust as we have never seen or read him before: witty, intelligent, pragmatic. He might well change your life."

Call number: PQ2631 .R63 Z54917 1997

The Everglades was America's last frontier, a wild country long after the West was won. Grunwald chronicles how a series of visionaries tried to drain and "reclaim" it, and how Mother Nature refused to bend to their will; in the most harrowing tale, a 1928 hurricane drowned 2,500 people in the Everglades. But the Army Corps of Engineers finally tamed the beast with levees and canals, converting half the Everglades into sprawling suburbs and sugar plantations. And though the southern Everglades was preserved as a national park, it soon deteriorated into an ecological mess. The River of Grass stopped flowing, and 90 percent of its wading birds vanished.

Now America wants its swamp back. Grunwald shows how a new breed of visionaries transformed Everglades politics, producing the $8 billion rescue plan. That plan is already the blueprint for a new worldwide era of ecosystem restoration. And this book is a cautionary tale for that era. Through gripping narrative and dogged reporting, Grunwaldshows how the Everglades is still threatened by the same hubris, greed and well-intentioned folly that led to its decline."

Call number: F317.E9 G78 2007

Stories of Deliverence: Speaking with Men and Women Who Rescue Jews from the Holocaust - Publisher's Marketing: "When Marek Halter was five years old, he and his family fled from the Warsaw Ghetto with the help of two Polish Catholics. Fifty-three years later, now a distinguished French writer and social commentator, Halter returned to Warsaw, and from there went on a quest across Europe, seeking out and interviewing gentiles who had risked their own lives to save the lives of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. From his research with Holocaust survivors, Halter developed a list of "the Just" - those who, according to Jewish tradition, must exist in each generation in order to save the world from destruction. Halter's encounters with these heroes and with those they saved are described in a series of little stories, interspersed with his own memories and observations. These "just" men and women range from obscure peasants to such notables as former West German chancellor Willy Brandt, the post-Communist leader of Lithuania, and the present Pope. The material of this book also forms the subject of a film directed by Halter, Tzedek: The Righteous."

Call number: D804.65 .H3513 1998

Children with a Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe - Publisher's Marketing: "This powerful and moving book tells for the first time the history of the children who lived and died in the shadow of the Holocaust. Drawing on oral histories, archival records, letters and diaries, Dwork evokes and analyzes the feelings, activities, and perceptions of Jewish children in Nazi Europe. Illustrated."

Call number: D804.3 .D86 1991

Holocaust: A History - Publisher's Marketing: "Unrivaled in scope, "Holocaust" is a story of all Europe, of the vast sweep of events in which this great atrocity was rooted, from the Middle Ages to the modern era."

Call number: D804.3 .D87 2003

The Art of the Handwritten Note: A Guide to Reclaiming Civilized Communication - Publisher's Marketing: "When you receive the daily mail do you jump to open the handwritten envelopes first because you can't wait to see who has written and why? Or do you hold those letters aside to savor and enjoy after you are done sorting your bills and tossing the junk mail? Whatever your approach, you no doubt recognize the importance of the note that comes in a unique envelope with distinct handwriting and possibly a decoration or two. Indeed, in an age when even birthday greetings are sent by e-mail, the personal letter is appreciated more than ever before.
For those who enjoy writing notes, or those who value doing so but find themselves intimidated by the task, acclaimed calligrapher Margaret Shepherd has created both an epistolary tribute and rescue manual. Just as you cherish receiving personal mail, you can take pleasure in crafting correspondence. Love, gratitude, condolences, congratulations-for every emotion and occasion, a snippet of heartfelt prose is included, sure to loosen the most stymied letter writer.
Not only providing inspiration for the content of the missives, "The Art of the Handwritten Note gives thorough instruction in the specific details that give so many men and women the jitters when it comes to correspondence that can't (or shouldn't) be produced on a keyboard. From overcoming illegible penmanship to mastering the challenge of keeping straight margins, avoiding smeared ink, and choosing stationery that is appropriate but suits your style, this is a powerful little guide to conveying thoughts in an enduring-and noteworthy-way."

Call number: PE1483 .S425 2002

The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good - Publisher's Marketing: "An informed and excoriating attack on the tragic waste, futility, and hubris of the West's efforts to date to improve the lot of the so-called developing world, with constructive suggestions on how to move forward.
William Easterly's "The White Man's Burden" is about what its author calls the twin tragedies of global poverty. The first, of course, is that so many are seemingly fated to live horribly stunted, miserable lives and die such early deaths. The second is that after fifty years and more than $2.3 trillion in aid from the West to address the first tragedy, it has shockingly little to show for it. We'll never solve the first tragedy, Easterly argues, unless we figure out the second.
The ironies are many: We preach a gospel of freedom and individual accountability, yet we intrude in the inner workings of other countries through bloated aid bureaucracies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank that are accountable to no one for the effects of their prescriptions. We take credit for the economic success stories of the last fifty years, like South Korea and Taiwan, when in fact we deserve very little. However, we reject all accountability for pouring more than half a trillion dollars into Africa and other regions and trying one "big new idea" after another, to no avail. Most of the places in which we've meddled are in fact no better off or are even worse off than they were before. Could it be that we don't know as much as we think we do about the magic spells that will open the door to the road to wealth?
Absolutely, William Easterly thunders in this angry, irreverent, and important book. He contrasts two approaches: (1) the ineffective planners'approach to development-never able to marshal enough knowledge or motivation to get the overambitious plans implemented to attain the plan's arbitrary targets and (2) a more constructive searchers' approach-always on the lookout for piecemeal improvements to poor peoples' well-being, with a system to get more aid resources to those who find things that work. Once we shift power and money from planners to searchers, there's much we can do that's focused and pragmatic to improve the lot of millions, such as public health, sanitation, education, roads, and nutrition initiatives. We need to face our own history of ineptitude and learn our lessons, especially at a time when the question of our ability to "build democracy," to transplant the institutions of our civil society into foreign soil so that they take root, has become one of the most pressing we face."

Call number: HC59.7 .E22 2006

Wigfield: The Can-Do Town That Just May Not by Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello, and Stephen Colbert ; photographs by Todd Oldham - Publisher's Marketing: "A hilarious illustrated satire of a Lake Wobegon gone hideously wrong and the earnest reporter who hopes to save it from extinction Wigfield is a town in danger. Built directly in front of a massive dam, this bucolic hideaway will soon be flooded when the dam is torn down by the state government to restore the salmon run. Wigfield's only hope lies in the self-righteous, self-aggrandizing, self-involved "journalist" Russell Hokes, who arrives hoping to capture the quiet dignity of the disappearing American Small Town. However, Wigfield is neither quiet nor dignified. And as the date of Wigfield's destruction draws nearer, Hokes casts about like a cork in a typhoon desperate to find something about Wigfield worth documenting--or saving. Told through interviews with its many colorful residents, and accompanied by photos of the authors in character, Wigfield is a razor-sharp satire by three major talents."

Call number: PS3619 .E34 W5 2003

Air Pollution: Problems and Solutions - Publisher's Marketing: "Society has a profound impact on the progress and acceptance of new science--and vice versa. For instance, over the past five years, events indicate that citizens' views have helped change the locus of the research and development carried out by both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and by the Environmental Protection Agency. Likewise, citizen actions have influenced the direction of the activities of organizations such as the World Bank in their efforts to improve agriculture and living conditions in the developing nations of the world."

Call number: TD883 .K47 2006

The Politics of Air Pollution: Urban Growth, Ecological Modernization, and Symbolic Inclusion - Publisher's Marketing: "Who has been at the political forefront of clean air policy development in the United States? "In the Politics of Air Pollution, George A. Gonzalez argues that the answer is neither the federal governent, nor environmental groups, but rather locally oriented economic elites in conjuction with state and local governments. These local growth coalitions, composed of mostly large landholders, land developers, and the owners of regional media and utility firms, support clean air policies insofar as they contribute to the creation of a positive investment climate and, in turn, bring about greater profits through increased land values and an expanded local consumer base."

Call number: HC110.A4 G66 2005

Fresh Air for Life: How to Win Your Unseen War Against Indoor Air Pollution - Publisher's Marketing: "Urgent News for all of us who really care about our health, our family, and our home sweet home! The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ranked indoor air pollution among the top five most significant environmental dangers to the public. Their research concluded that indoor air can be two to ten times (and sometimes as much as 100 times!) more polluted than outside air. Dr. Somersall takes you through the "Concerns you can no Longer Ignore, the Consequences You can't Afford.""

Call number: RA577.5 .S67 2006

Inventing Pollution: Coal, Smoke and Culture in Britain since 1800 - Publisher's Marketing: "A far-reaching study, which looks at the origins of the very concept of pollution. Far from viewing coal smoke as pollution, most people of 19-century Britain viewed it as a valuable disinfectant. Inventing Pollution looks at the radically new understanding of pollution that emerged in the lat part of the century and gave way to new ways of thinking about the environment."

Call number: TD883.7 .G7 T48 2006

Compost - Publisher's Marketing: "The most practical book that all gardeners have been waiting for, this fun and informative guide shows how to make the best compost using ingredients that are easily found around the house."

Call number: TD796.5 .T46 2007

Arts and Crafts of Ancient China

Call number: TT101 .M67 2007

In this beautiful hardcover edition of "The Lady & Sons Just Desserts," Paula -- author, restaurateur, and Food Network star -- devotes her trademark southern charm to a tempting collection of more than 120 delightful recipes, guaranteed to indulge any sweet tooth. Whether you're baking for the holidays or an after-dinner treat, there are crowd-pleasers here for any occasion.

These are the classic down-home recipes that have made Paula beloved to her fans everywhere, from her signature Gooey Butter Cake and Key Lime Grits Pie to Pecan Shortbread Bars, Hidden Mint Cookies, and Iron Skillet Brownies. Whether you're whipping up an Old South Jelly Roll Cake for a weekday treat or baking the Apple Butter Pumpkin Pie or Christmas Nut Pie for a holiday celebration, these treats are as easy to create as they are to enjoy. The Basic 1-2-3-4 Cake -- in coconut (Jamie's favorite), caramel (Bobby's favorite), or chocolate -- makes a wonderful birthday surprise, and the Tennessee Banana-Black Walnut Cake with Caramel Frosting is a southern favorite sure to become one of yours as well. There is also a wide array of cookies, bars, and candy, including Savannah Cheesecake Cookies, Orange Brownies, Chocolate Brickle, and Creamy Caramels. Even the most time-pressed cook will find it a snap to create these from-scratch recipes, using Paula's tips for reliable convenience ingredients and time-tested shortcuts that will impress and delight family and friends.

Filled with warm baking memories and family stories, "The Lady & Sons Just Desserts" isalready a kitchen classic. There are also helpful baking tips for measuring ingredients, storing leftovers, and even cutting a few calories, as well as tasty flavor variations and unique serving suggestions throughout. So bring the folks together to create your own memorable meals and occasions and remember to save room for dessert!"

Call number: TX773 .D2966 2006

Is there a heaven?

Is there a true connection and communication between the living and the dead?

Allison DuBois invites us into her world where she delivers messages from our lost loved ones. She convinces us that those who have passed away are constantly with us, providing comfort, love, and support. They are as eager to reach us as we are to stay connected with them.

But the dead have a language of their own. They communicate through signs, dreams, songs, coincidences, and messages delivered in unexpected ways. Allison takes us on an odyssey of these signs — how to recognise them, how to read them, and how to interpret them. In these pages, you will meet people who have had both heartbreaking and heartwarming communication with the other side, providing comforting proof that our deceased loved ones stay with us and continue to share in the joys of our lives.

Contributor Bio: Allison DuBois
Allison DuBois' unique story, the inspiration for the hit international TV series "Medium", started during her senior year at an Arizona university while she was interning at the D.A.'s office. Soon after, researchers at the university validated her ability through a series of tests. Allison donates her time to missing persons and criminal cases for agencies across America."

Call number: BF1283 .D82 A3 2007

The World Doesn't End - Publisher's Marketing: "In this collection, winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize, Charles Simic puns, pulls pranks. He can be jazzy and streetwise. Or cloak himself in antiquity. Simic has new eyes, and in these wonderful poems and poems-in-prose he lets the reader see through them."

Call number: PS3569 .I4725 W67 1989a

The Art of Travel - Publisher's Marketing: "Any Baedeker will tell us "where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us "how and "why. With the same intelligence and insouciant charm he brought to How Proust Can Save Your Life," de Botton considers the pleasures of anticipation; the allure of the exotic, and the value of noticing everything from a seascape in Barbados to the takeoffs at Heathrow.
Even as de Botton takes the reader along on his own peregrinations, he also cites such distinguished fellow-travelers as Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Van Gogh, the biologist Alexander von Humboldt, and the 18th-century eccentric Xavier de Maistre, who catalogued the wonders of his bedroom. The Art of Travel is a wise and utterly original book. Don't leave home without it."

Call number: G151 .D4 2004

J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax

The Most Trusted Name in Tax

For over 70 years, more than 39 million Americans have trusted J.K. Lasser to help them save money at tax time

Now with USABLE FORMS ONLINE FREE ONLINE BONUSESAND TAX PREP GUIDANCE FOR ALL YOUR TAX NEEDS COVERS ALL 2006 TAX LAW CHANGES

Easy-to-Use Format Explains Complex Tax Laws

FILING TIPS and FILING INSTRUCTIONShelp you prepare your 2006 return

PLANNING REMINDERS highlight year-end tax strategies for 2006 and planning opportunities for 2007 and later years

CAUTIONS point out potential pitfalls toavoid and areas where you might expectIRS opposition

LAW ALERTS indicate recent changes in the tax law and pending legislation before Congress

COURT DECISIONS highlight key rulings from the Tax Court and other federal courts

IRS ALERTS highlight key rulings andannouncements from the IRS"

Call number: HJ4652 .J3 2007

Blizzard of One: Poems - Publisher's Marketing: "Strand's poems occupy a place that exists between abstraction and the sensuous particulars of experience. It is a place created by a voice that moves with unerring ease between the commonplace and the sublime. The poems are filled with "the weather of leavetaking," but they are also unexpectedly funny. The erasure of self and the depredations of time are seen as sources of sorrow, but also as grounds for celebration. This is one of the difficult truths these poems dramatize with stoicism and wit. The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Blizzard of One is an extraordinary book--the summation of the work of a lifetime by one of our very few true masters of the art of poetry."

Call number: PS3569 .T69 B57 2000

Wild Iris - Publisher's Marketing: "This collection of stunningly beautiful poems encompasses the natural, human, and spiritual realms, and is bound together by the universal themes of time and mortality. With clarity and sureness of craft, Gluck's poetry questions, explores, and finally celebrates the ordeal of being alive."

Call number: PS3557 .L8 W5 1992

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, as Jackie Robinson changed the face of baseball, a group of African-American businessmen -- twelve at its peak -- changed the face of American business by being among the first black Americans to work at professional jobs in Corporate America and to target black consumers as a distinct market.

The corporation was Pepsi-Cola, led by the charismatic and socially progressive Walter Mack, a visionary business leader. Though Mack was a guarded idealist, his consent for a campaign aimed at black consumers was primarily motivated by the pursuit of profits -- and the campaign succeeded, boosting Pepsi's earnings and market share. But America succeeded as well, as longstanding stereotypes were chipped away and African- Americans were recognized as both talented employees and valued customers. It was a significant step in our becoming a more inclusive society.

On one level, "The Real Pepsi Challenge," whose author is an editor and writer for "The Wall Street Journal," is a straightforward business book about the birth of niche marketing. But, as we quickly learn, it is a truly inspirational story, recalling a time when we as a nation first learned to see the strength of our diversity. It is far more than a history of marketing in America; it is a key chapter in the social history of our nation.

Until these men came along, typical advertisements depicted African-Americans as one-dimensionalcharacters: Aunt Jemimas and Uncle Bens. But thereafter, Pepsi-Cola took a different approach, portraying American blacks for what they were increasingly becoming -- accomplished middle-class citizens. While such portrayals seem commonplace to us today, they were revolutionary in their time, and the men who brought them into existence risked day-to-day professional indignities parallel to those that Jackie Robinson suffered for breaking baseball's color line. As they crossed the country in the course of their jobs, they faced the cruelty of American racial attitudes. Jim Crow laws often limited where they could eat and sleep while on the road, and they faced resistance even within their own company. Yet these men succeeded as businessmen, and all went on to success in other professions as well, including medicine, journalism, education, and international diplomacy.

Happily, six of these pioneers lived to tell their stories to the author. Their voices, full of pride, good humor, and sharp recollection, enrich these pages and give voice to the continuing American saga."

Call number: HD9349 .S634 P462 2007

This unique and important book combines a mine of information with a readable and engaging case study. The author was shocked and horrified when her son developed anorexia at the age of twelve. Having a research background, she naturally turned her attention to finding out as much as she could about how best to combat this terrifying illness. Her son is now fully recovered and has supported this book that not only describes their experiences, but also provides a practical guide on how to cope with male eating disorders.

A much needed resource for other parents in similar situations, the book will also be of interest to people working in health centres, clinics and hospitals. It will also be invaluable for youth support groups, teachers and sports coaching staff, who are often the first to be aware of concerns about eating disorders in young men."

Call number: RC552 .A5 L375 2006

Fit In!: The Unofficial Guide to Corporate Culture - Publisher's Marketing: "Every corporation is different -- and so are you. For job seekers and managers, FIT IN! The Unofficial Guide to Corporate Culture is your map to navigating the back doors and underground paths to corporate success. Now human identity expert Mark Williams has done the unthinkable and spilled the beans, identifying the "10 Fit Factors" that define a company's culture. "

Call number: HD58.7 .W545 2007

Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life - Publisher's Marketing: "A rising star of the Democratic Party tells the fascinating story of the ways his multicultural heritage and political education have shaped his dreams for America and given him vital lessons in the art of successful negotiating.

Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, may be the most charismatic figure in the Democratic Party today and one of its best natural politicians whose name isn't Bill Clinton. He is the man Colin Powell has called for advice, and the man George Stephanopoulos once called the Red Adair of diplomacy in homage to his ability to put out international fires. He has been nominated four times for the Nobel Peace Prize and is counted as one of our most knowledgeable politicians on Iraq and Saddam Hussein; on Afghanistan, the Taliban, and Al-Qaeda; on North Korea; on energy policy; on Latin American affairs; on domestic politics; and on Hispanic America.

Richardson's background as the son of an American businessman father and a Mexican mother has offered him an unusual starting point from which to seek a life in public service, but one of his most interesting roles has been that of global troubleshooter. What he has to say about how to negotiate to get what you want shows his true colors: He can be blunt, but charming; tough, but respectful; realistic, but hopeful. Through his work as a hostage negotiator sitting across the table from the likes of Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, and many others-as well as his toil on Capitol Hill, in the United Nations, and New Mexico's state government-he has learned the vital importance of preparation: know as much as possible about your adversary; test your partner's truthfulness; know how much you can concede; never lieand always be direct.

"Between Worlds" is the surprising story of one of our most seasoned and captivating national figures."

Call number: F801.4 .R53 A3 2005

Having inherited a city ravaged by crime and crippled in its ability to serve its citizens, Giuliani shows how he found that every aspect of his career up to that point-from clerking for the formidable judge who demanded excellence (and rewarded it with a lifetime of loyalty) to busting organized crime during his years as a federal attorney-shaped his thinking about leadership and prepared him for the daunting challenges ahead. Giuliani's successes in turn strengthened his conviction about the core qualities required to be an effective leader, no matter what the size of the organization, be it an international corporation or a baseball team.

In detailing his principles of leadership, Giuliani tells captivating stories that are personal as well as prescriptive: how he learned the importance of staying calm in the face of attack from his father's boxing lessons-as well as the need to stand up to bullies; how a love of reading was early instilled in him by his mother and grew into a determination to master new subjects, and not rely on only the word of experts; how, in his recent fight with prostate cancer, learning to make decisions at the right time and with the right information reflected decision-making on a larger scale.

Leadership, Giuliani writes, works both ways: it is a privilege, but it carries responsibilities-from imposing a structure suitable to an organization's purpose, to forming a team of people who bring out the best in each other, to taking the right, unexpected risks. A leader must develop strong beliefs, and be held accountable for the results-principles he illustrates with candor and courage throughout the pages of this important and timely book. He never knew that the qualities he describes would be put to the awful test of September 11, he says; but he never doubted that they would prevail."

Call number: HM1261 .G58 2004

Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit - Publisher's Marketing: "A passionate and lifelong defender of the environment, Vice President Al Gore describes in this classic best-selling book how human actions and decisions can endanger or safeguard the vulnerable ecosystem that sustains us all. The book's groundbreaking analysis helped place the environment on the national agenda, summoning politicians, the media, and the public to attention and action. The message remains just as urgent today as it did eight years ago: while much has been accomplished, we must meet a global environmental challenge that reaches into every aspect of our society.
In brave and unforgettable terms, Earth in the Balance probes the roots of the environmental crisis and offers a bold and forceful vision of a new, more sustainable path. Having provoked international discussion upon its original publication, it continues to confront us with profound challenges. Human civilization must change its course if we are to heal our ailing environment and preserve the earth's ecology for future generations.
Vice President Gore describes in a new foreword to this classic what we have achieved and what remains to be done, and issues a clarion call to begin the millennium with an "Environment Decade." It is time to reflect deeply on the fate of our planet and commit ourselves to its future."

Call number: GE170 .G67 2006

Courageously honest, downright inspiring, and just a little bit saucy, Paula shares the highs and lows of her life in the inimitable charming and irreverent style that you know from her television shows and personal appearances. She talks about long childhood summers spent in a bathing suit and roller skates and hard years living in the back of her father's gas station; a buzzing high school social life of sleepovers, parties, cheerleading, and boys; and a difficult marriage. The death of her beloved parents precipitated a debilitating agoraphobia that crippled her for years. But even when the going got tough, Paula never lost the good grace and sense of humor that would eventually help carry her to success and stardom. Of course, you can't get by on charm alone: as Paula has learned, you need plenty of willpower, hard work, and, above all, the love and support of family and friends to finance, sustain, and run a successful restaurant.

In each chapter, Paula shares new recipes: there's serious comfort food like her momma's Chocolate-Dippy Doughnuts, Courage Chili for when you know life's going toget tough, Sexy Oxtails for seducing that special someone, and the recipe for her new mother-in-law's Banana Nut Delight Cake that Paula finally got just right. And you'll love the never-before-seen photos of her family.

In this memoir, Paula Deen speaks as frankly and intimately as few women in the public eye have ever dared. Whether she's telling tales of good times or bad, her story is proof that the old-fashioned American dream is alive and kicking, and there still is such a thing as a real-life happy ending."

Call number: TX715.2 .S68 D438 2007

Paula Deen's Kitchen Classics: The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook and the Lady & Sons, Too! - Publisher's Marketing: "From one of the most frequently visited restaurants in Savannah, The Lady & Sons, comes this collection of down-home Southern family favorites. Paula H. Deen, the owner and proprietor, has created a friendly cookbook filled with hundreds of quick and easy recipes. Perfect for home entertaining, family picnics, or Sunday dinners, "The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook" completes any kitchen."

Call number: TX715.2 .S68 D48 2005

The Baby Book: Everything You Need to Know about Your Baby -- From Birth to Age Two - Publisher's Marketing: "After more than 10 years and a half-million copies sold, the classic "bible" for new parents is now revised and updated. Focusing on the essential needs of babies, the authors address the questions of greatest concerns to parents today, from diapering and daycare to midwifery and "birthing rooms.""

Call number: RJ61 .S44178 2003

Alive Together: New and Selected Poems - Publisher's Marketing: "In a collection that represents over thirty-five years of her writing life, this distinguished poet explores a wide range of subjects, which include her cultural and family history and reflect her fascination with music and the discoveries offered by language. In fact, her book is a testament to the miraculous power of language to interpret and transform our world. It is a testament that invites readers to share her vision of experiences we all have in common: sorrow, tenderness, desire, the revelations of art, and mortality - "the hard, dry smack of death against the glass." To this community Mueller presents moments after moment where the personal and public realms intersect, where lives ranging from her own to those of Mary Shelley and Anton Webern illuminate the ways in which history shapes our lives. In "Brendel Playing Schubert, " Mueller's breathtaking linguistic virtuosity reminds us how music can transport us out of ourselves and into "the nowhere where the enchanted live"; in "Midwinter Notes, " the crepuscular world, stripped of its veil, shines forth as a signal from some realm where the sense of things may be revealed. In the title piece Mueller brings a sense of enduring and unclouded wonder to a recognition of all those whose lives might have been our own."

Call number: PS3563.U35 A79 1996

How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter - Publisher's Marketing: "Attempting to demythologize the process of dying, Nuland explores how we shall die, each of us in a way that will be unique. Through particular stories of dying--of patients, and of his own family--he examines the seven most common roads to death: old age, cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer's, accidents, heart disease, and strokes, revealing the facets of death's multiplicity.
"It's impossible to read How We Die without realizing how earnestly we have avoided this most unavoidable of subjects, how we have protected ourselves by building a cultural wall of myths and lies. I don't know of any writer or scientist who has shown us the face of death as clearly, honestly and compassionately as Sherwin Nuland does here."--James Gleick"

Call number: BD444 .N85 1995

The Art of Aging: A Doctor's Prescription for Well-Being - Publisher's Marketing: "In his landmark book "How We Die," Sherwin B. Nuland profoundly altered our perception of the end of life. Now in "The Art of Aging," Dr. Nuland steps back to explore the impact of aging on our minds and bodies, strivings and relationships. Melding a scientist’ s passion for truth with a humanist’ s understanding of the heart and soul, Nuland has created a wise, frank, and inspiring book about the ultimate stage of life’ s journey.
The onset of aging can be so gradual that we are often surprised to find that one day it is fully upon us. The changes to the senses, appearance, reflexes, physical endurance, and sexual appetites are undeniable– and rarely welcome– and yet, as Nuland shows, getting older has its surprising blessings. Age concentrates not only the mind, but the body’ s energies, leading many to new sources of creativity, perception, and spiritual intensity. Growing old, Nuland teaches us, is not a disease but an art– and for those who practice it well, it can bring extraordinary rewards.
“I’ m taking the journey even while I describe it, ” writes Nuland, now in his mid-seventies and a veteran of nearly four decades of medical practice. Drawing on his own life and work, as well as the lives of friends both famous and not, Nuland portrays the astonishing variability of the aging experience. Faith and inner strength, the deepening of personal relationships, the realization that career does not define identity, the acceptance that some goals will remain unaccomplished– these are among the secrets of those who age well.
Will scientists one day fulfill the dream of eternal youth? Nuland examines thelatest research into extending life and the scientists who are pursuing it. But ultimately, what compels him most is what happens to the mind and spirit as life reaches its culminating decades. Reflecting the wisdom of a long lifetime, The Art of Aging is a work of luminous insight, unflinching candor, and profound compassion."

Call number: HQ1061 .N92 2007

What sets Bob apart from all the other experts who claim to have plans that work is that he admits that weight loss is difficult: seventeen years of watching people struggle to lose weight on a seemingly endless string of trendy crash diets, only to backslide and regain the pounds they've shed, have taught him that dropping pounds is not simply a numbers game. By acknowledging that it is not simple laziness but a complicated web of social rituals, cultural expectations, and habits that drives people to gain weight, Greene is able to attack the problem of weight loss realistically and offer not a short-lived, quick-fix formula, but a long-term program that accounts for the challenges and constraints of the real world.

Divided into three phases, "The Best Life Diet" gives you the tools you need to change your life. In each phase, you'll be asked to reexamine the decisions you make on a daily basis and gradually alter your habits to achieve lasting results. The book alsoincludes easy-to-follow meal plans that make it simple to meet your daily energy and nutrient requirements, whether you are on the run and breakfast means a quick smoothie or you have time to shop for fresh produce and make something special.

You'll watch the weight disappear as you learn to prepare festive and flavorful dishes like Fire-Roasted Tomato-Shrimp Veracruz, Chicken Sausage Jambalaya, or Flank Steak with Chimichurri Topping and indulge in desserts like Roasted Peaches with Ricotta and Almonds or Apple Rhubarb Walnut Crisp. And for each delicious recipe, there is a detailed nutritional analysis, so you know exactly what you are eating and how it fits into your personal eating plan.

Most important, Bob's plan doesn't end once you've lost the weight. Instead, it gives you the tools you need to make living your best life second nature, because for Greene, a diet is not something you go "on" or "off" but a set of guidelines that will help you claim the life you deserve."

Call number: RM222.2 .G7225 2006

The Human Stain - Publisher's Marketing: "Set in 1998, when ideological divisions are made manifest through public denunciations and rituals of purification, the newest novel by award-winning author Philip Roth concludes his eloquent trilogy of postwar American lives begun in "American Pastoral" and continued in "I Married a Communist"."

Call number: PS3568 .O855 H8 2001

Everyman - Publisher's Marketing: "Philip Roth's new novel is a candidly intimate yet universal story of loss, regret, and stoicism. The best-selling author of The Plot Against America now turns his attention from "one family's harrowing encounter with history" (New York Times) to one man's lifelong skirmish with mortality.
The fate of Roth's everyman is traced from his first shocking confrontation with death on the idyllic beaches of his childhood summers, through the family trials and professional achievements of his vigorous adulthood, and into his old age, when he is rended by observing the deterioration of his contemporaries and stalked by his own physical woes.
A successful commercial artist with a New York ad agency, he is the father of two sons from a first marriage who despise him and a daughter from a second marriage who adores him. He is the beloved brother of a good man whose physical well-being comes to arouse his bitter envy, and he is the lonely ex-husband of three very different women with whom he's made a mess of marriage. In the end he is a man who has become what he does not want to be.
The terrain of this powerful novel -- Roth's twenty-seventh book and the fifth to be published in the twenty-first century -- is the human body. Its subject is the common experience that terrifies us all.
Everyman takes its title from an anonymous fifteenth-century allegorical play, a classic of early English drama, whose theme is the summoning of the living to death."

Call number: PS3568 .O855 E94 2006

Operation Shylock: A Confession - Publisher's Marketing: "Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award
In Operation Shylock, Philip Roth meets a man who may or may not be Philip Roth. Because someone with that name has been touring Israel, promoting a bizarre reverse exodus of the Jews. Roth is intent on stopping him, even if that means impersonating his own impersonator. With suspense, philosophical speculation, and a cast of characters that includes Israeli intelligence agents, Palestinian exiles, and an enticing charter member of an organization called Anti-Semites Anonymous, Operation Shylock barrels across the frontier between fact and fiction, history and nightmare."

Call number: PS3568 .O855 O6 1994

The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks - Publisher's Marketing: "Since she began publishing her tight lyrics of Chicago's South Side in the 1940s, Gwendolyn Brooks took her place as one of the most influential American poets of the 20th century, distilling modernist style through the sounds and shapes of a variety of African-American forms and Idioms. Now Elizabeth Alexander, one of our leading experts on African-American literature and culture, presents a sweeping new selection of Brooks's poetry."

Call number: PS3503 .R7244 A6 2005

London Life in the Eighteenth Century - Publisher's Marketing: "From the disease-infected rookeries and teeming vice-ridden streets to the sweatshops, coffee houses and spacious parks, George's recreation of a capital city in a dirty, brutal -- but also elegant -- age has never been surpassed. Both a social history and an impeccably documented reference work, her book chronicles the change in social attitudes between 1700 and 1800, which left London cleaner, healthier and more ordered."

Call number: HN398.L7 G4 1985

Peter D. Kramer, himself a practicing psychiatrist and a leading national authority on mental health, offers a new take on this controversial figure, one both critical and sympathetic. He recognizes that although much of Freud's thought is now archaic, the discipline he invented has become an inescapable part of our culture, transforming the way we see ourselves. Freud was a myth-maker, a storyteller, a writer whose books will survive among the classics of our literature. The result of Kramer's inquiry is nothing less than a new standard history of Freud by a modern master of his thought."

Call number: BF109.F74 K73 2006

Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems - Publisher's Marketing: "An award-winning poet's testimony of the war in Vietnam."

Call number: PS3561 .O455 N46 1993

Practical Gods - Publisher's Marketing: "Practical Gods is the eighth collection by Carl Dennis, a critically acclaimed poet and winner of one of the prestigious Pulitzer and Ruth Lilly Poetry prizes. Carl Dennis has won acclaim for "wise, original, and often deeply moving" poems that "ease the reader out of accustomed modes of seeing and perceiving" (The New York Times). Many of the poems in this new book involve an attempt to enter into dialogue with pagan and biblical perspectives, to throw light on ordinary experience through metaphor borrowed from religious myth and to translate religious myth into secular terms. While making no claims to put us in touch with some ultimate reality, these clear, precise, sensitive poems help us to pay homage to the everyday household gods that are easy to ignore, the gods that sustain life and make it rewarding."

Call number: PS3554 .E535 P73 2001

Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning - Publisher's Marketing: "From world-renowned astrophysicist Sir Martin Rees, a timely, brisk, and alarming look at the way today's technology could spell the end of tomorrow. Bolstered by unassailable science and delivered in eloquent style, Our Final Hour's provocative argument that humanity has a mere 50-50 chance of surviving the next century has struck a chord with readers, reviewers, and opinion-makers everywhere. Rees's vision of our immediate future is both a work of stunning scientific originality and a humanistic clarion call on behalf of the future of life."

Call number: CB161 .R38 2004

Selected Poems - Publisher's Marketing: "The Selected Poems James Tate's Pulitzer Prize-winning collection and his first British publication, gathers work from nine previous books, from the Lost Pilot which was a Yale Younger Poets selection in 1967, through his 1986 collection Reckoner. He is a most agile poet in a precarious world. Life is alarming and absurd, but properly considered that absurdity reveals, often with laughter, the something else by which we live. The poems are about our world, our wrecked, vexed love for it. Tate has been described as a surrealist. If that is what he is, his surrealism issues in a vision of a world delivered back to itself by his unillusioned subversion and candor."

Call number: PS3570.A8 A6 1991

Repair: Poems - Publisher's Marketing: ""Repair "is body work in C. K. Williams's sensual poems, but it is also an imaginative treatment of the consternations that interrupt life's easy narrative. National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Williams keeps the self in repair despite love, death, social disorder, and the secrets that separate and join intimates. These forty poems experiment with form but maintain what Alan Williamson has heralded Williams for having so steadily developed from French influences: "the poetry of the sentence.""

Call number: PS3573 .I4483 R46 2000

Edited by preeminent Frost scholar Robert Faggen and annotated to help readers with the poet's more elusive references, the notebooks are also thoroughly cross-referenced, marking thematic connections within these and Frost's other writings, including his poetry, letters, and other prose. This is a major new addition to the canon of Robert Frost's writings."

Call number: PS3511 .R94 A6 2006

In this book, you'll learn how to use The Secret in every aspect of your life -- money, health, relationships, happiness, and in every interaction you have in the world. You'll begin to understand the hidden, untapped power that's within you, and this revelation can bring joy to every aspect of your life.

The Secret contains wisdom from modern-day teachers -- men and women who have used it to achieve health, wealth, and happiness. By applying the knowledge of The Secret, they bring to light compelling stories of eradicating disease, acquiring massive wealth, overcoming obstacles, and achieving what many would regard as impossible."

Call number: BF637.S8 B9 2006

The Middle East: A History

Call number: DS62 .F5 2004

Cry Havoc!: The Crooked Road to Civil War, 1861 - Publisher's Marketing: "A compelling re-creation of the eight crucial weeks preceding the Civil War
In early March 1861, civil war loomed. By late April, Americans had begun to kill their fellow citizens. "Cry Havoc!" recounts in riveting detail the events that divided the states and reveals how quirks of timing, character, and place all conspired to transform the nation into a battlefield. Nelson Lankford, author of "Richmond Burning," chronicles the eight critical weeks that began with Lincoln's inauguration through the explosion at Fort Sumter and the president's fateful response to it. Before Fort Sumter, the balance could have tipped in favor of a peaceful resolution. This book addresses the many mighthave-beens, both familiar and lesser known. What if Lincoln had delayed the proclamation calling for troops? Could wavering Unionists in the upper South have held the line? A must read for all who wish to understand the birth of the modern United States of America, "Cry Havoc!" probes the fateful series of events and analyzes each of the failed possibilities that hindsight affords."

Call number: E458.1 .L36 2007

Skulls to the Living, Bread to the Dead: The Day of the Dead in Mexico and Beyond - Publisher's Marketing: "Come the end of October, decorated breads, fanciful paper cutouts, plastic toys playing humorously on the theme of death, and sugar candy skulls and skeletons are evident everywhere throughout Mexico. Then, from October 31 through November 2, Mexicans clean, decorate, and maintain vigil over relatives' graves. Most of the activities and artistic displays connected with this holiday are folk elaborations entirely separate from liturgical requirements. The origin of these folk practices is a source of scholarly and popular debate. What is clear is that the holiday has come to symbolize Mexico and Mexican identity. Within Mexico, it is a key symbol of national identity; in the United States, it symbolizes ethnic identity. Less informed discussions of the Day of the Dead have simply reproduced the popular image of Mexicans as unafraid of death: jocular in confronting mortality or with an intimate relationship to death. This forms an integral part of most portrayals of Mexican national character. In Skulls to the Living, Bread to the Dead, we learn that the ultimate paradox is that the very holiday responsible for producing a stereotype of the stoic Mexican, longing for death, is actually a powerful affirmation of life and creativity. Brandes examines these themes and others bearing on the ethnographic content and symbolic meanings of this holiday. Beautifully illustrated with both black-and-white and color photographs, this book will be required reading for anyone interested in Mexican culture, art, and folklore as well as contemporary globalization and identity politics."

Call number: GT4995.A4 B73 2006

At our present level of understanding, some fifty years into the Space Age, the sheer volume of images and other data being returned to us from space has only increased our appetite for more and more detailed information about the planets, moons, asteroids, and comets of the Solar System. Taking a much-needed overview of how we now understand these "distant worlds" in our cosmic neighborhood, Bond not only celebrates the extraordinary successes of planetary exploration, but reaffirms an important truth: For seekers of knowledge, there will always be more to explore.

An astonishing saga of exploration.

In this much-needed overview of "where we stand today," Peter Bond describes the achievements of the astronomers, space scientists, and engineers who have made the exploration of our Solar System possible. A clearly written and compelling account of the Space Age, the book includes:

Dramatic accounts of the daring, resourcefulness, andferocious competitive zeal of renowned as well as almost-forgotten space pioneers.

Clear explanations of the precursors to modern astronomy, including how ancient natural philosophers and observers first took the measure of the heavens.

More than a hundred informative photographs, maps, simulated scenarios, and technical illustrations--many of them in full color.

Information-dense appendices on the physical properties of our Solar System, as well as a comprehensive list of 50 years of Solar System missions.

Organized into twelve chapters focused on the objects of our exploration (the individual planets, our Moon, the asteroids and comets), Bond??'s text shows how the great human enterprise of space exploration may on occasion have faltered or wandered off the path, but taken as a whole amounts to one of the great triumphs of human civilization."

Call number: QB500.262 .B6 2007

Poetry Speaks: Hear Great Poets Read Their Work from Tennyson to Plath with CD - Publisher's Marketing: " Combining the talents of great poets past and living, their words written and spoken, this collection features the authors themselves reading their poetry on audio CD. Contributors range from Alfred, Lord Tennyson to Sylvia Plath and Langston Hughes. Additional poems in print form allow the reader to further explore the poets' works."

Call number: PS323.5 .P58 2001

Call number: PS323.5 .P58 2001 CD

Black Zodiac: Poems - Publisher's Marketing: "Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award
"Black Zodiac" offers poems suffused with spiritual longing— lyrical meditations on faith, religion, heritage, and morality. The poems also explore aging and mortality with restless grace. Approaching his vast subjects by way of small moments, Wright magnifies details to reveal truths much larger than the quotidian happenings that engendered them. His is an astonishing, flexible, domestic-yet-universal verse. As the critic Helen Vendler has observed, Wright is a poet who "sounds like nobody else.""

Call number: PS3573 .R52 B47 1997

Different Hours: Poems - Publisher's Marketing: "In his 11th volume of poetry, Dunn explores the "different hours" not only of a life but also of the historical and philosophical landscape beyond the personal."

Call number: PS 3554 .U49 D54 2002

Moy Sand and Gravel - Publisher's Marketing: "Paul Muldoon's ninth collection of poems, his first since "Hay" (1998), finds him working a rich vein that extends from the rivery, apple-heavy County Armagh of the 1950s, in which he was brought up, to suburban New Jersey, on the banks of a canal dug by Irish navvies, where he now lives. Grounded, glistening, as gritty as they are graceful, these poems seem capable of taking in almost anything, and anybody, be it a Tuareg glimpsed on the Irish border, Bessie Smith, Marilyn Monroe, Queen Elizabeth I, a hunted hare, William Tell, William Butler Yeats, Sitting Bull, Ted Hughes, an otter, a fox, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Joscelyne, un unearthed pit pony, a loaf of bread, an outhouse, a killdeer, Oscar Wilde, or a flock of redknots. At the heart of the book is an elegy for a miscarried child, and that elegiac tone predominates, particularly in the elegant remaking of Yeats's "A Prayer for My Daughter" with which the book concludes, where a welter of traffic signs and slogans, along with the spirits of admen, hardware storekeepers, flimflammers, fixers, and other forebears, are borne along by a hurricane-swollen canal, and private grief coincides with some of the gravest matter of our age."

Call number: PR6063 .U367 M69 2002

Inspired by the sun-drenched foods and vibrant lifestyle of California's breathtakingly beautiful wine country, The Sonoma Diet is a surefire weight loss plan based on wholesome, satisfying, flavorful meals.

Here's the perfect answer for diet dropouts frustrated by low-carb and low-fat diets. Instead of depriving you of the balanced nourishment you need, The Sonoma Diet emphasizes readily available Power Foods (like whole grain breads and sweet berries) that deliver heart-protective nutrients with a minimum of calories. And you'll eat these foods in smart combinations that boost their health benefits, their flavor, and your weight loss success.

Best of all, The Sonoma Diet is designed for real people who live in the real world. No time-consuming calorie-counting at each meal. No need to keep track of any points. No measuring. No weighing. Just a great selection of flavorful, everyday foods, easy-to-follow diet instructions, and plenty of mouthwatering recipes.

Your days of struggling with those extra pounds are about to end. Welcome to The Sonoma Diet, where eating for weight loss and pleasure is a satisfying lifestyle."

Call number: RM222.2 .S66 2005

With its balanced, sane approach to eating, The Sonoma Diet is more than an eating plan-it's a healthy lifestyle you can live with. You can lose weight while enjoying a delicious balance of whole grains, protein, healthy fats and fresh produce, and The Sonoma Diet Cookbook shows you how. More than 150 flavorful recipes, from breakfast to dinner, are designed for Wave 1, 2, or 3, so it's easy to tell when each recipe is appropriate. There's even a pull-out guide, so it's easy to follow the diet even when you're on the go.'

Call number: RM222.2 .S661 2006

Philosophy Made Simple - Publisher's Marketing: "Revised and updated, this bestselling reference is a step-by-step guide through this sometimes abstract discipline. The philosophers/authors make their subject matter lively and comprehensible as they delve into such areas as Ethics, Political Philosophy, Metaphysics, and Logic."

Call number: BD21 .P6 1993

This book encourages readers to better understand the importance of valuing the ones you love through cooking and communing with food. Most importantly "Back to the Family" stresses the importance of recognizing old food traditions (family recipes, meals, memories, etc.) and the equal importance of creating new and healthier food traditions. More than 150 recipes and more than 140 photographs provide a wonderful evocative eating and reading experience."

Call number: TX715 .S651317 2007

The life and achievement of the great choreographer who both summed up everything that proceeded him in ballet, and extended the art form into radical yet inevitable new paths. Leaving Revolutionary Russia in 1924 (he was 20), he joined Serge Diaghilev’ s famous Ballets Russes, where he created his first enduring masterpiece, Apollo, cementing his lifelong collaboration with Stravinsky.
In 1933 he arrived in America to found a school and a company, but the company as we know it - The New York City Ballet - didn’ t emerge until 1948. Meanwhile, he made ballets wherever opportunity allowed, while choreographing Broadway shows (four for Rodgers and Hart), movies (The Goldwyn Follies), even the circus - a ballet for elephants with a score by Stravinsky. By the time of his death, in 1983, he had been recognized as a member of the triad of the greatest modern masters, alongside Picasso and Stravinsky.
Balanchine was married many times, always to outstanding ballerinas, but his truest muse always remained Terpsichore, the Muse of Dance."

Call number: GV1785 .B32 G68 2004

Athenian Red Figure Vases: The Archaic Period: A Handbook - Publisher's Marketing: "The red figure technique of vase painting was invented in Athens by about 530 BC at a time when the black figure technique was barely past its prime and when several other important studios of vase painting were flourishing in the Greek world, from the western colonies to Ionia."

Call number: NK4649 .B62 1985

Athenian Red Figure Vases: The Classical Period - Publisher's Marketing: "This volume is the successor to Athenian Red Figure vases: The Archaic period and it carries the survey of Athenian decorated pottery down to the time when painters finally abandoned the red figure technique, during the second half of the fourth century BC."

Call number: NK4649 .B625

Edmund Morris, the author of three bestselling presidential biographies and a lifelong devotee of Beethoven, brings the great composer to life as a man of astonishing complexity and overpowering intelligence. A gigantic, compulsively creative personality unable to tolerate constraints, he was not so much a social rebel as an astute manipulator of the most powerful and privileged aristocrats in Germany and Austria, at a time when their world was threatened by the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte.

But Beethoven's achievement rests in his immortal music. Struggling against progressive, incurable deafness (which he desperately tried to keep secret), he nonetheless produced towering masterpieces, such as his iconic Fifth and Ninth symphonies. With sensitivity and insight, Edmund Morris illuminates Beethoven's life, including his interactions with the women he privately lusted for but held at bay, and his work, whose grandeur and beauty were conceived "on the other side of silence.""

Call number: ML410.B4 M67 2005

Born in 1571 near Milan, Michelangelo Merisi (da Caravaggio) moved to Rome when he was twenty-one years old. He became a brilliant and successful artist, protected by the influential Cardinal del Monte and other patrons. But he was also a man of the streets who couldn't seem to free himself from its brawls and vendettas. In 1606 he fled Rome, apparently after killing another man in a dispute. He spent his last years in exile, in Naples, Malta, and Sicily, at once celebrated for his art and tormented by his enemies. Through it all, he produced masterpieces of astonishing complexity and power. Eventually he received a pardon from the Pope, only to die, in mysterious circumstances, on the way back to Rome in 1610.

Francine Prose presents the brief but tumultuous life of one of the greatest of all painters with passion and acute sensitivity."

Call number: ND623 .C26 P76 2005

The choices you make every day about food, nutrition, and health can have a major impact on your life. To find the most reliable nutrition information and positive advice for achieving optimal health, look no further— this comprehensive book from the American Dietetic Association explains everything you need to know about eating for health. It's packed with simple, practical tips and flexible guidelines to help you choose nutritious, flavorful, and convenient foods that suit your needs and lifestyle no matter what your age or stage of life.

This brand-new edition of the bestselling "American Dietetic Association Complete Food and Nutrition Guide" features: The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans from USDA and USHHS, providing the latest science-based advice on food choices and physical activity for your health, USDA's MyPyramid food guide, and the latest American Heart Association guidelines More ways to include fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and other nutrient-rich foods in your everyday meals and snacks Updated information on women's health and nutrition covering pregnancy to menopause The effective use of dietary supplements including herbals and other botanicals Food and lifestyle advice on preventing and managing health conditions (including metabolic syndrome, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease), on food-drug interactions, and on food allergies and intolerances (including gluten intolerance) The latest on food and water safety Help in making smart food choices in restaurants: fast-food, sit-down, and ethnic restaurants The latest on eating andhydration for peak performance More on managing body weight and a science-based look at popular weight-loss plans Quick, easy ways to blend nutrition with great taste for your family table

"American Dietetic Association Complete Food and Nutrition Guide" has received the National Health Information Award and the National Federation of Press Women Award, among others."

Call number: RA784 .D89 2006

In this book, Schoen situates the state's reproductive politics in a national and global context. Widening her focus to include birth control, sterilization, and abortion policies across the nation, she demonstrates how each method for limiting unwanted pregnancies had the potential both to expand and to limit women's reproductive choices. Such programs overwhelmingly targeted poor and nonwhite populations, yet they also extended a measure of reproductive control to poor women that was previously out of reach.

On an international level, the United States has influenced reproductive health policies by, for example, tying foreign aid to the recipients' compliance with U.S. notions about family planning. The availability of U.S.-funded family planning aid has proved to be a double-edged sword, offering unprecedented opportunities to poor women while subjecting foreign patients to medical experimentation that would be considered unacceptable at home.

Drawing on the voices of health and science professionals, civic benefactors, and the women themselves, Schoen's study allows deeper understandings of the modern welfare state and the lives of American women."

Call number: HQ766.5 .U5 S36 2005

In Cash for Your Trash, Carl A. Zimring provides a fascinating history of scrap recycling, from colonial times to the present. Moving beyond the environmental developments that have shaped modern recycling enterprises, Zimring offers a unique cultural and economic portrait of the private businesses that made large-scale recycling possible. Because it was particularly common for immigrants to own or operate a scrap business in the nineteenth century, the history of the industry reveals much about ethnic relationships and inequalities in American cities. Readers are introduced to the scrapworkers, brokers, and entrepreneurs who, like the materials they handled, were often marginalized.

Integrating findings from archival, industrial, and demographic records, Cash for Your Trash demonstrates that over the years recycling has served purposes far beyond environmental protection. Its history and evolution reveals notions of Americanism, the immigrant experience, and the development of small business in this country."

Call number: HD9975 .U52 Z56 2005

The Crafts and Culture of ... - Publisher's Marketing: "These Wonderful Hands-On Craft Projects Make This Series an Exciting Addition to Curriculum-Based Study of the Ancient World! Watch history leap off the page and into your students' imagination with Crafts of the Ancient World, a series that features exciting hands-on craft activities related to six fascinating cultures. These projects appear alongside comprehensive discussions of each ancient civilization's history and important cultural achievements. With the help of easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions and illustrations, readers will learn how to create replicas of intriguing objects--all from ordinary household materials."

The Crafts and Culture of the Ancient Egyptians Call number: TT61 .J68 2002

The Crafts and Culture of the Ancient Greeks Call number: TT78 .J68 2002

The Crafts and Culture of the Romans Call number: TT16 .J68 2002

The Crafts and Culture of the Aztecs Call number: TT28 .J68 2002

Arts and Crafts of Ancient Greece

Call number: TT75 .M67 2007

Arts and Crafts of Ancient Egypt

Call number: TT117 .M67 2007

Arts and Crafts of Ancient Rome

Call number: TT16 .M67 2006

Arts and Crafts of the Aztecs and Maya

Call number: TT28.M6 M67 2007

Arts and Crafts of the Native Americans

Call number: TT22 .M69 2007

Glass Throughout Time: History and Technology of Glassmaking from the Ancient World to the Present - Publisher's Marketing: "The history of glass and glassmaking is shown here through 400 works from ancient times to those created using the latest technology. Glass is the guiding motif of a journey through time, space, and the various cultures that have interpreted and used this material over the centuries. The volume gathers together both rarities and masterpieces of glass art from important public and private collections of antique, modern and contemporary glass, including works by Dale Chihuly and Sandy Skoglund. It studies in greater depth some themes which have emerged over the centuries: symbol and myth, nature and ten thematic rooms: from the Room of Water to the Room of Nature, the Room of Play to the Room of Geometry, the Room of Fragments to the Room of the Orient, the Room of the Body to the Room of the Sacred and Profane, and from the Room of Everyday Life to the Room of the Fantastic. The volume is completed by the Techniques and Materials Section, which follows the various steps in the glassmaking process, from the raw materials to the latest generation of technological glass products and ends by examining the relationship between glass and ecology."

Call number: NK5106 .G5413 2003

Stranger Than Fiction - Vendor's Marketing: "After ten years of painstaking work, novelist Karen Eiffel (Thompson) is nearing completion on her latest, and potentially finest, book. Her only remaining challenge is to figure out how to kill off her main character, Harold Crick. Little does she know that Harold Crick (Ferrell) is inexplicably alive-and-well in the real world, and suddenly aware of her words. The bewildered and hilariously resistant Harold hears what she has in mind and realizes he must find the author and persuade her to change her (and his) ending. An all-star cast headlines this wonderfully inventive new comedy."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 StrangerTh DVD

The Prestige - Vendor's Marketing: "British director Christopher Nolan's (BATMAN BEGINS) eclectic resume gains another interesting entry with THE PRESTIGE. The basic plot, which concerns the rivalry between two magicians in early 20th-century London, closely resembles a fellow 2006 movie--Edward Norton's THE ILLUSIONIST--and the two films are sure to be closely compared. In Nolan's film, Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale bring the characters of Robert Angier and Alfred Bordon to life. Robert and Alfred were young magician apprentices together, but became bitter rivals as their careers began to shape their adult lives and a terrible accident claimed the life of Robert's wife. In the subsequent years Robert has become wildly jealous of Alfred's superior talents, so in a last ditch attempt to steal some artistic ground he sends his assistant, Olivia (Scarlett Johansson), to infiltrate his rival's lair and steal the secret to a spectacular trick called "The Transported Man." Nolan's film twists and turns down a number of unexpected avenues as it flits back and forth between numerous time periods, creating a movie that needs to be watched as closely as the tricks his leading characters perform. Bale and Jackman perfectly execute their roles, winding up the tension to an unbearable degree as they willfully enter into some dangerously competitive patterns of behavior. Michael Caine makes his second appearance in a Nolan film, almost reprising his role of Alfred in BATMAN BEGINS by playing Cutter, Jackman's mentor; and Johansson pouts and flounces across the elaborate sets like a classic Hollywood screen siren. Stylistically, THE PRESTIGE is full of dark, gloomy colors and a palpable feeling of menace, which is an impeccable visual match for the viewer's growing unease as the protagonists push each other to increasingly ridiculous lengths. It's not an easy film to digest, but Nolan's movie offers intelligent and challenging fare that will likely reveal further cinematic magic on repeated viewings."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 Prestige DVD

The Illusionist - Vendor's Marketing: "In 1900 Vienna, a magician named Eisenheim the Illusionist is mystifying audiences with a remarkable magic act that is seemingly too good to believe. Chief Inspector Uhl, who is in the pocket of Crown Prince Leopold--and considers himself somewhat of an amateur conjurer--becomes obsessed with Eisenheim; Uhl is not only desperate to find out the secrets behind Eisenheim's tricks but also worried that the master magician might pose a threat to the crown prince's nefarious plans. In addition, Eisenheim is quickly growing close to Duchess Sophie von Teschen, his childhood love, who is engaged to Leopold. As Eisenheim's act becomes even more amazing--including apparently raising the spirits of the dead--he enrages the crown prince even further, leading to deception and murder. Edward Norton (FIGHT CLUB), who studied magic with Ricky Jay (THE SPANISH PRISONER) in preparing for the role, is terrific as Eisenheim, an enigmatic showman hiding a dark side. The excellent supporting cast features fine performances by Rufus Sewell (A KNIGHT'S TALE) as the evil, conniving Leopold; Jessica Biel (7TH HEAVEN) as the beautiful Sophie; and Paul Giamatti (SIDEWAYS) as the perceptive but bumbling Uhl. Written and directed by Neil Burger (INTERVIEW WITH THE ASSASSIN), THE ILLUSIONIST, which is based on a short story by Pulitzer Prizewinner Steven Millhauser, is a complex tale filled with mystery and awe. The compelling score was composed by minimalist musician Philip Glass and conducted by Michael Reisman."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 Illusioni DVD

The Departed - Vendor's Marketing: "Director Martin Scorsese returns to his trademark style with the violent, bruised, and bloody feature THE DEPARTED. Scorsese filched the basic storyline from Wai Keung Lau and Siu Fai Mak's masterful 2002 Hong Kong action film, INFERNAL AFFAIRS, which saw a policeman going undercover as a mob member and a mob member infiltrating the police force. Scorsese transfers the action to Boston, positioning Leonardo Di Caprio as undercover cop William Costigan and Matt Damon as undercover mobster Colin Sullivan. While Costigan and Sullivan get into plenty of nail-biting situations that almost reveal their true identities, Scorsese gradually unravels his strong supporting cast, including Jack Nicholson as Sullivan's mob boss, Frank Costello; Ray Winstone as Costello's meat-headed muscle; Mark Wahlberg as a hot-headed police sergeant; and Vera Farmiga as a love interest for both Damon and DiCaprio's characters. THE DEPARTED finds Scorsese generously dipping his toes back into waters that will be warmly familiar to his biggest fans. Rolling Stones songs pepper the soundtrack, recalling the remarkable "Jumpin' Jack Flash" sequence in MEAN STREETS; bullets and blood punctuate every key scene, bringing TAXI DRIVER's explosive finale to mind; and the mobster-themed storyline is a thrilling return to GOODFELLAS territory. Nicholson and Winstone provide acting master-classes every time they appear, neatly complementing the blossoming talents of DiCaprio, Damon, and Wahlberg, while further veteran support comes in small roles for Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin. Scorsese is often criticized for affording precious little screen time to female characters, and THE DEPARTED won't quell those dissenting voices, although Farmiga's character proves to be more than a match for DiCaprio and Damon's posturings. But Scorsese followers who balked at his diversions into documentary filmmaking (NO DIRECTION HOME) and period epics (THE AVIATOR) will be delighted to find raw male machismo puncturing the screen once again in this frenetic entry into his celebrated oeuvre."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 Departed DVD

Children of Men - Vendor's Marketing: "CHILDREN OF MEN is not a popcorn movie. With its almost relentlessly bleak perspective on the future, Alfonso Cuarón's film doesn't make for pleasant viewing. But it's an exhilarating experience because the picture is an amazing dystopian drama that lacks all the typical trappings of the genre. Set uncomfortably close to the present, it paints a frighteningly realistic picture of the future. In 2027, every woman on earth is infertile. With the loss of the ability to have children, the world has also lost hope. Clive Owen (CLOSER) plays Theo, an Englishman attempting to make a life in a hellish world. His estranged wife (Julianne Moore) convinces him to help transport a young woman to safety. When Theo learns that the woman is pregnant, their journey takes on a significance--and a danger--he never imagined. This is Cuarón's best film to date, a strong statement considering his wonderful HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN and Y TU MAMA TAMBIÉN. Filmed using a handheld camera, the action draws the audience close, making the horror that much more real. In addition to its remarkable car-chase scenes, the film features impressive acting. With his expressive face and voice, Owen gives a nuanced performance that ranks with the best of his career. As a reclusive hippie, Michael Caine shares a charming counterculture view of the crumbling world. Chiwetel Ejiofor (DIRTY PRETTY THINGS) brings gravitas to the role of a terrorist. Just when the film threatens to overwhelm with its sense of dread, small moments of comedy show through in Owen's wry sense of humor and Caine's perfect delivery. When the credits roll, CHILDREN OF MEN leaves the audience feeling shell-shocked, not only because of its brutal prophecy, but also because of its brilliance."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 ChildrenM DVD

Grey Gardens - Vendor's Marketing: "Out in East Hampton, behind a cloud of overgrown foliage and weeds, there is a large decaying mansion which is home to Edith Bouvier Beale and her grown-up daughter Little Edie. Big and Little Edie are the aunt and first cousin of Jacquelyn Kennedy Onassis, and this documentary is a portrait of their unusual life together. When Little Edie left New York, she left behind her dreams of stardom to take care of her aging mother, and together they developed a unique relationship, cloistered away in their fading glory. A stirring portrait by the pioneers of documentary filmmaking, the Maysles Brothers."

Call number: CT275 .B435 G7 1976 DVD

High School Boot Camp - Vendor's Marketing: "Director Chuck Braverman certainly got his hands dirty with this attempt to document the activities at a HIGH SCHOOL BOOT CAMP. Choosing the Eagle Academy in Belle Grade, Florida as his muse, Braverman follows a group of youths as they attempt to rescue their troubled lives from toppling further into a crime-strewn abyss. But to survive the rigors of the Boot Camp these kids will discover they have to leave their ego's at the door--a task some of them find hard to accomplish. As the tough regime kicks into action, it becomes clear exactly how harsh the training is, with Marine-style maneuvers introduced in an attempt to instill some discipline in the youthful miscreants. An emotionally-charged documentary, Braverman's film is a bold attempt to chronicle a facet of youth development that has rarely been seen on screen before."

Awards

Call number: U408.3 .H54 2004 DVD

BaadAsssss Cinema: A Bold Look at '70s Blaxploitation Films - Vendor's Marketing: "In this groundbreaking documentary from the Independent Film Channel, filmmaker Isaac Julien takes us back to the early 70s and the explosion of blaxploitation films, today one of America's most beloved cult genres, thoroughly exploring the films from their breakout casting and unforgettable soundtracks to the outrageous fashions and hilariously over-the top story lines that together helped the genre achieve it's revered cult status."

Call number: PN1995.9 .N4 B323 2002 DVD

Scared Straight! - Vendor's Marketing: "In 1972, documentary filmmaker Arnold Shapiro brought 17 juvenile delinquents to a maximum security prison in New Jersey to spend a day with some of the most dangerous and hardened criminals behind bars. These life-sentence inmates gave the wayward teens a shockingly realistic, no-holds-barred account of the brutality of daily prison life, powerfully documented by Shapiro in his Oscar and Emmy-award winning film SCARED STRAIGHT. This DVD revisits the important and influential documentary that altered the course of the participants' lives as well as those of millions of other troubled teens in high schools across the country. Also included is the updated feature SCARED STRAIGHT! 20 YEARS LATER, which examines the lasting effects of the program by following up on the teens and inmates two decades after the experience."

Awards

Call number: HV7431 .S27 2003 DVD

Gray's Anatomy - Vendor's Marketing: "Acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh films Spalding Gray’s monologue--originally written for the stage--with an energy that makes for an intriguing cinematic viewing experience. Opening with a succession of black-and-white interviews that details horrific incidents dealing with human eyeballs, Gray’s topic of discussion becomes readily apparent. Eventually, Gray admits that he himself experienced a near-traumatic episode when one of his eyes became blurry and unfocused. Terrified at the thought of surgery--which would have involved scraping his eyeball--Gray decided to search for another way to rid himself of his unfortunate condition. In a series of hysterical tales, Gray describes his attempts to find a nonsurgical cure for his affliction. These include calling a Christian Science hot line, flying to the Philippines to meet with a psychic surgeon, and traveling to Minnesota to partake in a Native American ceremony that aims to sweat the problem out of him. When Gray realizes that these approaches aren’t working, he must finally decide whether to place himself under the knife and risk losing his eye. As usual, Soderbergh’s keen vision adds a spark to the proceedings. His roaming camera emphasizes the dialogue in a way that the stage could never do, allowing Gray to do his thing and keep the laughs rolling."

Call number: PN1995.9 .C55 G72 1999 DVD

Dancing to New Orleans - Vendor's Marketing: "More than any other place, Louisiana--and in particular New Orleans--has been responsible for the development of one of the most rich and diverse musical legacies in America. From country to R&B, Zydeco to blues, Cajun to jazz, DANCING TO NEW ORLEANS examines how the region's people, land, and culture impacted Louisiana's unique musical heritage and nurtured completely new sounds like Dixieland jazz and Hank Williams' lonesome country blues. Includes interviews with and live performances from the contemporary artists and musicians who continue to preserve this musical legacy: Buckwheat Zydeco, BeauSoleil, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Big Jack Johnson, the Neville Brothers, and many more."

Call number: ML3477.7 .L8 D36 2003 DVD

The Thames Shakespeare Collection - Vendor's Marketing: "This collection of televised adaptations includes some of Shakespeare's finest works, all produced for British television. Among them are interpretations of MACBETH (with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench), KING LEAR, ROMEO & JULIET, and TWELFTH NIGHT (directed by Kenneth Branagh)."

King Lear - Call number: PR2819.A23 C33 1974 DVD

Romeo & Juliet - Call number: PR3093 .R65 1976 DVD

Twelfth Night - Call number: PR3093 .T84 1988 DVD

Macbeth - Call number: PR2823.A2 C283 1978 DVD

Jason and the Argonauts - Vendor's Marketing: "Greek mythology comes to life in this exciting film adaptation of the story of Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece. Ray Harryhausen's special effects in this picture are legendary, especially a sword fight between three live actors and seven skeletons. Loosely based on the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes (c. 250 B.C.)."

Call number: PN1997 JasonAnd DVD

Spartacus - Vendor's Marketing: "SPARTACUS, based on Howard Fast's popular novel, is Stanley Kubrick's glorious masterpiece about a slave uprising in Rome in 70 B.C. Kirk Douglas, who also served as executive producer, stars as the title character, a man born of a slave woman and a slave master who has known nothing but chains his entire life. After being forced to put on a gladiator show--that almost leads to his death--for wealthy Romans (including a marvelously conniving Laurence Olivier as the power-hungry Crassus), Spartacus leads a slave revolt across Italy that soon has thousands marching on Rome. Meanwhile, he has fallen in love with the beautiful Varinia (an effervescent Jean Simmons), pledging his life to her. Douglas assembled a fabulous all-star cast for the film; in addition to himself, Simmons, and Olivier, terrific performances are turned in by Charles Laughton as the curmudgeonly senator Gracchus, John Gavin as the young Julius Caesar, Tony Curtis as Antoninus (a "singer of songs," with all lines delivered in a beautifully thick New York accent), and especially Peter Ustinov, an Oscar winner for his portrayal of the businessman Batiatus, who always wants to know what's in it for him. Blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo's melodramatic script and Alex North's thrilling, soaring score add a majesty that helps make SPARTACUS one of the finest costume epics to ever come out of Hollywood."

Awards, American Film Institute honoree.

Call number: PN1997 Spartacus DVD

The Shining - Vendor's Marketing: "Opening with spectacular aerial shots of a beautiful, mountainous landscape, Stanley Kubrick's horror classic THE SHINING sucks the viewer into his frightening tale with quiet, relaxing visuals--but the ominous soundtrack warns that all is not right at the gorgeous Overlook Hotel. Based on Stephen King's best-selling novel, the film stars Jack Nicholson at his eyebrow-raising best in his portrayal of Jack Torrance, a Vermont schoolteacher working at the Overlook as a winter caretaker. The glorious early-20th century resort only operates in warm weather because the snowy roads deny access in the colder months, so Jack brings his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), with him, as well as his young son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), who possesses some unique psychic powers. As the Torrances settle in for the long, lonely months ahead, strange, unexplainable things start occurring in the hotel--and in every scene Jack seems to be growing a little more evil and dangerous.... Cinematographer John Alcott (who also worked on BARRY LYNDON and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE) allows his Steadicam to float eerily through the deserted halls and corridors of the hotel, creating a creepy air of tension as Jack plummets into madness. Kubrick's obsessive eye for detail is prevalent throughout; the famous scene where Danny rides his toy buggy through the hotel is remarkable for Alcott's gliding camerawork and the desolate sound of the wheels alternately scraping across the hardwood and carpeted floors. Nicholson and Duvall are outstanding throughout, with both actors running the full gamut of human emotions as the film races towards a thrilling conclusion. Supplemented by an oddball cast of dead twin girls, suicidal ax-murdering ghosts, Scatman Crothers as the hotel cook, and many other weird and wonderful figures, Kubrick's film is a pulse-racing treat that is among the best in his inimitable body of work."

Awards, American Film Institute honoree.

Call number: PN1997 Shining DVD

The Great Gatsby - Vendor's Marketing: "Jack Clayton's version of THE GREAT GATSBY was adapted for the screen by Francis Ford Coppola from F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 masterpiece about a handsome and enigmatic tycoon betrayed by the American Dream. Though self-made millionaire Jay Gatsby (Robert Redford) has been in love with the spoiled Daisy Buchanan (Mia Farrow) since his days as a poor boy in the Midwest, she's now married to a boorish philanderer (Bruce Dern) and seems more out of reach than ever. Gatsby's attempts to win Daisy back result in his tragic downfall, as witnessed and narrated by his neighbor and friend Nick Carraway (Sam Waterston). The result is a richly successful evocation of the Jazz Age and a tragic portrait of shallow lives ruined by wealth, brilliantly acted by Redford, Waterston, Dern, and the rest of the supporting cast."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 GreatGa DVD

American Splendor - Vendor's Marketing: "Harvey Pekar, the hilariously downtrodden Cleveland comic book artist, is the subject of AMERICAN SPLENDOR, titled after Pekar's autobiographical series. Played by actor Paul Giamatti, Pekar also appears as himself, giving the film a documentary feeling with many behind-the-scenes on-set shots. Directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini maintain this balance between the actors and the real-life characters--Pekar's wife Joyce and coworker Toby also appear on set as themselves--while crafting a funny, difficult, heartwarming tale that encapsulates Pekar's life, work, and uniquely bizarre perspectives. Pekar is a pessimistic file clerk with no hope of ever rising above his boring job, slobbish apartment, and bad attitude. Wonderfully set in his ways, Pekar's constant self-deprication is clearly a front for his prolific interests in music and art. When his friend Robert Crumb (James Urbaniak) gets his big break as a comic book artist, Pekar decides to try his hand at the craft. Though he can't illustrate, his stories are good, and Crumb agrees to help draw the pictures. Soon several artists are illustrating Pekar's American Splendor series, and the comic book's readership grows. The film continues through the events of Pekar's life--meeting wife Joyce Brabner, appearing on David Letterman, struggling with cancer, and adopting a daughter--always showing Pekar's no-frills approach to life. A creative and punchy film, AMERICAN SPLENDOR invites viewers into the odd world of Pekar and his comic-book antihero persona."

Awards, American Film Institute honoree.

Call number: PN1997 AmericanS DVD

Ali Rap - Vendor's Marketing: "ALI RAP is an ESPN production that pays warm tribute to former boxer Muhammad Ali, and is hosted by Public Enemy star Chuck D. During Ali's heyday he was known for his thoughtful speeches, so this production highlights some of the ways he used language to get his message across."

Call number: GV1132 .A44 A45 2006 DVD

American Movie - Vendor's Marketing: "Smith's film is a poignant commentary on what it takes to make an independent film. It also happens to be a genuinely hysterical, crowd-pleasing romp. Trying to get his masterpiece, NORTHWESTERN, off the ground, but failing miserably due to lack of funding and support, struggling Midwestern filmmaker Mark Borchardt instead turns his attention to COVEN, an abandoned 37-minute horror film that he began filming in 1990. His hopes are to sell enough copies of the video to enable him to clear his current debts and begin moving forward with his real baby, NORTHWESTERN. The painstaking effort to get COVEN in the can and onto the screen for the film's world premiere provides the greatest laughs in this undeniably entertaining documentary."

Awards

Call number: PN1995.9 .P7 A43 2000

Bird - Vendor's Marketing: "Charlie "Bird" Parker had been a hero of Clint Eastwood’s since childhood, and Eastwood, having been disappointed in such jazz biopics as YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN, really wanted to make a true jazz fan’s movie about the music. He cast Forest Whitaker as Parker, the legendary alto sax player, and Diane Venora as Chan, Parker’s wife. The film shows how Parker, a genius who changed the face of modern music, was hampered and eventually destroyed by his appetite for women, food, and drugs. The two leads do a great job giving a recognizable human face to the characters’ complex relationship. With wit and warmth, BIRD tells the story in direct and honest terms, avoiding all sentimentality. Eastwood’s love of Parker’s music comes across in the tremendous care that he and composer Lennie Niehaus took with reconstructing it, using Parker’s original solos. Eastwood and cinematographer Jack N. Green also patterned the dark, moody look of the film after old photos of musicians who used to appear in jazz magazines. Music lovers will be thrilled with the result, and movie lovers will find plenty to engage them in this moving tale of a great man battling his demons."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 Bird DVD

Being John Malkovich - Vendor's Marketing: "Original is far too understated a term to describe this picture, brought to you by the surreal, twisted minds of screenwriter Kaufman and actor-director Jonze. The story concerns a puppeteer, Craig Schwartz (Cusack), who discovers his office has a secret portal that leads directly into the brain of one of America's most popular actors, John Malkovich (Malkovich himself, in a hilariously self-mocking appearance). When the journey ends fifteen minutes later, the participant is spewed onto the side of the New Jersey Turnpike. Schwartz uses his discovery as a way to get closer to fellow co-worker Maxine (the always sexy Keener). Together, the pair form JM, INC., which allows ordinary citizens to join in on the fun for $200 a pop. But when Craig's wife Lotte (a homely Diaz), as Malkovich, is seduced by Maxine, things begin to unfurl at an even more outrageous pace. Sound confusing? Thanks to Jonze's grounded direction, it isn't. The result is one of the decade's most original films."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 BeingJo DVD

Casino Royale - Vendor's Marketing: "After a great deal of discussion--on the part of fans and producers alike--over Daniel Craig’s (THE MOTHER, MUNICH) suitability for the role of James Bond, he more than proves himself in this explosive revamping of the franchise. Under the direction of Martin Campbell (THE MASK OF ZORRO) and with Paul Haggis (CRASH) helping with the re-writes, this addition to the Bond canon manages to hold true to the essence of the stories--the villainous villains, the fabulous sets, the beautiful women, the fast-paced action--while updating the formula with subtlety and humanity. Trading in the Cold War era for a new, post-9-11 landscape, the tale unfolds in locations that span the globe, including the Bahamas, Venice, and the Czech Republic. It opens in Madagascar, where Bond pursues a guerilla bomb-maker in one of the most breathtaking chase scenes ever--and it all takes place on foot. Botching that assignment, Bond goes to Montenegro to square off against terrorist baddie Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelson), an international loan shark who gambles with the money of his equally dangerous clients. Beautiful British Treasury representative Vesper Lynd (Eva Green, THE DREAMERS) supplies Bond’s own funds, appearing on his arm in Montenegro, while M (Dame Judi Dench, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE) keeps a close watch on the action from headquarters. The extravagant poker game forms the center of the action, with Jeffrey Wright (SYRIANA, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE) putting in an intense appearance at the table; interrupting the game are assassination attempts, poisoning, and other dramatic events that keep the adrenaline pumping. The flirtation that unfolds between Bond and Vesper Lynd is only in keeping with the spy’s M.O. as a ladies’ man. What differs here, however, is what sets this Bond apart from the rest: the romance is taken seriously, and it exposes a vulnerability in Bond that he’s never shown before. This, however, only makes him the tougher, as Craig's Bond is darker, less campy, more brooding and mysterious, than his past incarnations ever were."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 CasinoRo DVD

A.I. Artificial Intelligence - Vendor's Marketing: "A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE is the story of David (Haley Joel Osment), the first mecha (a futuristic term for a mechanized human being) designed with the ability to love. A couple whose son is in a coma "adopts" David to help them recover from their loss. Naturally, things do not go as planned, and David is forced to leave the mother (Frances O’Connor) he's been "imprinted" to love, and make his way in the world. Traveling with Teddy, a hi-tech stuffed bear, David escapes the Flesh Fair, where angry humans destroy mechas to "purge artificiality," and unexpectedly befriends Gigolo Joe (Jude Law in a wry performance), a robot designed to pleasure women. Joe agrees to help David in his quest to become human. Director Stanley Kubrick originally developed A.I., at one point asking Spielberg to direct it. When Kubrick passed away, Spielberg took the reins. Using a treatment and thousands of drawings commissioned by Kubrick, Spielberg wrote his own screenplay (his first since 1979's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND). Osment, perhaps the only pre-teen actor who can effectively convey existential angst, gives a marvelous performance, helping Spielberg create a gorgeous futuristic fairy tale that questions the very nature of what we call life."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 AI DVD

The Iceman Cometh - Vendor's Marketing: "The acclaimed film actor Jason Robards (PARENTHOOD, MAGNOLIA) made the transition from up and coming theatre actor to bonified star after his critically acclaimed performance in the now legendary 1956 New York production of Eugene O'Neill's THE ICEMAN COMETH. Along with a star-studded cast which includes James Broderick, Myron McCormick, and Robert Redford, Robards brings new depth to O'Neill's masterpiece of battered lives and failed dreams in 1912 New York."

Call number: PS3529 .N5 I34 1960 DVD

Flushed Away - Vendor's Marketing: "This computer-animated feature, directed by David Bowers and Sam Fell, explores a whole new world under London. A pet mouse named Roddy St. James (voiced by Hugh Jackman) is pretty much spoiled rotten. His owners live in a chic Kensington apartment, and Roddy has everything he could possibly want--except friends and a family. Everything changes for Roddy when his owners go away for a few days and their flat is invaded by a common rat, Sid (Shane Richie). Determined to reclaim his apartment and boot out the intruder, Roddy tries to talk Sid into enjoying the apartment "Jacuzzi," which is actually the toilet. But Sid is smarter than he looks, and soon Roddy is traveling down the pipes out of his sheltered life into a world that he never knew existed. Emerged in Ratropolis and completely out of his element, Roddy is immediately caught up in an adventure. He meets Rita (Kate Winslet), a street-smart scavenger who travels the sewers by boat looking for riches that will help her care for her parents and multitude of siblings, and hires her to help him get above ground. But the villainous Toad (Ian McKellen) and his rodent henchmen, Spike (Andy Serkis) and Whitey (Bill Nighy), are constant problems. To make matters worse, the Toad is preparing to hatch an evil plot that promises to wipe out all the rats and mice dwelling underground, and he brings in his mercenary Parisian cousin Le Frog (Jean Reno) and his team to help get the job done. This comedy/adventure features first-class animation from the team that created WALLACE & GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT and is voiced by an all-star cast."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 FlushedA DVD

Terms of Endearment - Vendor's Marketing: "TERMS OF ENDEARMENT is a deeply observed drama about the intimate relationship between a mother and daughter, based on the novel by Larry McMurtry. Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger are at their absolute best, with terrific support from Jack Nicholson, Jeff Daniels, and John Lithgow."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 TermsOf DVD

Fight Club - Vendor's Marketing: "FIGHT CLUB is narrated by a lonely, unfulfilled young man (Edward Norton) who finds his only comfort in feigning terminal illness and attending disease support groups. Hopping from group to group, he encounters another pretender, or "tourist," the morose Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), who immediately gets under his skin. However, while returning from a business trip, he meets a more intriguing character--the subversive Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). They become fast friends, bonding over a mutual disgust for corporate consumer-culture hypocrisy. Eventually, the two start Fight Club, which convenes in a bar basement where angry men get to vent their frustrations in brutal, bare-knuckle bouts. Fight Club soon becomes the men's only real priority; when the club starts a cross-country expansion, things start getting really crazy. Like Tyler Durden himself, director David Fincher’s FIGHT CLUB, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, is startlingly aggressive and gleefully mischievous as it skewers the superficiality of American pop culture. Outstanding performances by Norton and Pitt are supported by a razor-sharp script and an arsenal of stunning visual effects that include computer animation and sleight-of-hand editing. One of the most unique films of the late 20th century, FIGHT CLUB is a pitch-black comedy of striking intensity."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 FightCl DVD

Bottle Rocket - Vendor's Marketing: "Three criminally aspiring friends bungle their way through a series of misadventures in this oddball comedy from Austin auteur Wes Anderson. Brothers Luke and Owen Wilson play best friends Anthony and Dignan, two good-hearted though confused misfits who, along with their friend Bob (Robert Musgrave), attempt to find purpose in their lives by starting criminal careers. Though they make rather unimpressive criminals, the three guys shine in their unwavering sense of honor, friendship, and loyalty. BOTTLE ROCKET is an endearing, funny, and unique comic gem, featuring James Caan's adept turn as the local crime boss."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 BottleRo DVD

Rushmore - Vendor's Marketing: "Director Wes Anderson's follow-up to the acclaimed BOTTLE ROCKET is a funny, warmhearted, and extremely sharp American response to the English "Angry Young Man" films of the 1960s, right down to its British Invasion soundtrack. Newcomer Jason Schwartzman creates a classic protagonist in Max Fischer, a sophomore at Rushmore Academy. He excels at every extracurricular activity in school, from theater to beekeeping. Gradewise, however, he's failing. He has few friends outside school save for wealthy but depressed industrialist Herman Blume (Bill Murray), father of obnoxious twin boys who also attend Rushmore. Enter Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams), a beautiful young widowed teacher at Rushmore Elementary. While Max is immediately smitten with Miss Cross, she finds comfort in the company of the emotionally frazzled Blume. But Max won't let Blume have Miss Cross without a fight. Anderson and cowriter Owen Wilson have created a script brimming with oddball humor at the surface, but at its core lies just enough realistic pain and disappointment to create an all-too-rare bittersweet edge, striking a subtle balance that few films ever achieve, and finally giving national treasure Bill Murray the chance to shine like never before. As director, Anderson displays his exceptional talents with careful choices in color palette, effective use of slow motion to comedic effect, and, most important, a brilliant selection of offbeat songs that are integral to the story. Easily one of the finest comedies since THE GRADUATE, RUSHMORE is a monument to brilliant filmmaking."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 Rushmore DVD

Royal Tenenbaums - Vendor's Marketing: "In their youth, the Tenenbaums--an eccentric New York family--were extraordinary. They were all geniuses. Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) was a successful litigator. His wife Etheline (Angelica Huston) raised their children to be ambitious, entrepreneurial, and creative--then published an acclaimed book about her child-rearing techniques. Adopted daughter Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) was a gifted playwright. Son Chas (Ben Stiller) was a masterful businessman with a taste for real estate. And the other son, Richie (Luke Wilson), was a natural tennis champ. However, when Royal packed up his life and left his wife and his family in a cloud of betrayal, everything fell apart. Twenty years later, the Tenenbaums are a dejected and alienated bunch, each having found that their early successes did not carry over into adulthood. When washed-up Royal learns that his distant wife Etheline, who has become an archaeologist, may remarry, he feigns illness as an excuse to reunite with his estranged family. From Wes Anderson, director of RUSHMORE, this film is full of quirky comedy that will have audiences reeling and reflecting simultaneously. The brilliant script is impeccable with choppy, intentionally awkward language delivered with dry wit by the well-appointed (almost too good to be true) cast. Dramatic sets are emphasized by the film's masterful orchestration of scene changes and chapter separations. The photography beautifully captures a faded, vintage 1980s New York. And the eclectic soundtrack features much-loved tunes by Nico, The Velvet Underground, The Clash, and the Vince Guaraldi Trio."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 RoyalTe DVD

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser - Vendor's Marketing: "(Also Known As: Every Man for Himself and God Against All, Also Known As: Mystery of Kaspar Hauser, Also Known As: Jeder Fur Sich Und Gott Gegen Alle)

Director Werner Herzog (AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD; FITZCARRALDO) approaches the true story of famous wild child Kaspar Hauser as a metaphor, continuing his cinematic investigations into human consciousness and civilization. In 1828, Kaspar was found in the town square of Nuremberg, Germany, hardly able to speak or walk, having been kept in solitary confinement by unknown forces for his entire life. As Kaspar is taken in by the locals, his integration into society and the curiosity posed by his mysterious and possibly dangerous origins start to pull at the carefully kept seams of civilization. In Kaspar, Herzog creates an idealized and unspoiled perspective through which to see both the ridiculous and the sublime aspects of humanity and nature as well as the interaction between the two that results in civilization. Breathtaking and eerie images of natural landscapes are juxtaposed with the intricate artifice of Kaspar’s indoctrination into the language, thought, religion, and culture of 19th-century Germany. Bruno S. (Stroszek in Herzog’s film of the same name) gives an astonishing performance as the haunting man-child Kaspar, stumbling, literally and figuratively, through his newfound environment, giving human and emotional life to the enigma of Kaspar Hauser."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 Enigma DVD

Dead Man - Vendor's Marketing: "In bringing his distinct vision to the Western genre, writer-director Jim Jarmusch has created a quasi-mystical avant-garde drama that remains a deeply spiritual viewing experience. After losing his parents and fiancée, a Cleveland accountant named William Blake (a remarkable Johnny Depp) spends all his money and takes a train to the frontier town of Machine in order to work at a factory. Upon arriving in Machine, he is denied his expected job and finds himself a fugitive after murdering a man in self-defense. Wounded and helpless, Blake is befriended by Nobody (Gary Farmer), a wandering Native American who considers him to be a ghostly manifestation of the famous poet. Nobody aids Blake in his flight from three bumbling bounty hunters, preparing him for his final journey--a return to the world of the spirits. Jarmusch once again employs the beautifully contrasted black-and-white photography of Robby Müller, which sets a poetic, dreamy mood. He also fades in and out of scenes in order to better reflect Blake’s dazed, weak mental state. Adding an even greater depth to the film is Neil Young’s haunting score, which completes the overall effect. DEAD MAN stands firmly as a timeless work of art whose impact only increases upon subsequent viewings."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 DeadMan DVD

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai - Vendor's Marketing: "Eastern and Western cultures and philosophies intersect in this comic drama from acclaimed director Jim Jarmusch. Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker) is a silent modern-day warrior who lives on a rooftop shack. He spends his days breeding pigeons and playing chess in the park with his best friend, Raymond (Isaach de Bankolé), a French-speaking ice-cream man. At night he goes to work as a hit man, performing his tasks stealthily and invisibly, abiding by the codes established by HAGAKURE: THE BOOK OF THE SAMURAI, an 18th-century text. One night, while on his latest hit, Ghost Dog encounters a mob boss's beautiful daughter, Louise (Tricia Vessey). Although Ghost Dog leaves her unharmed, her father nonetheless orders Ghost Dog’s execution, to the dismay of Louie (John Tormey), his loyal retainer. As the mobsters struggle to locate the mysteriously untraceable Ghost Dog, he must find a way to protect himself while remaining loyal to Louie and the ancient codes that define him as an individual. Jarmusch successfully tackles a variety of genres with GHOST DOG, including mob movies and spiritual samurai films. Fusing all of this with the RZA’s thumping, atmospheric score, GHOST DOG remains another lighthearted, entertaining addition to Jarmusch’s impressive filmography."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 GhostD DVD

Sleeper - Vendor's Marketing: "The sci-fi satire SLEEPER is often hailed as the best of Woody Allen's early comedies, which relied mostly on slapstick and quick verbal asides, but still had more than their share of comic intelligence. SLEEPER tells the tale of Miles Monroe (Allen), who is accidentally cryogenically frozen following a minor operation. Released 200 years later, in 2173, Miles blunders his way through a bizarre future, featuring plenty of props and situations for Allen to mine for laughs. Eventually he meets vapid, hedonistic "poet" Luna Schlosser (Diane Keaton), with whom he eventually joins a rebel group opposed to the oppressive government. As in his earlier BANANAS and LOVE AND DEATH, Allen's character stumbles into a revolutionary plot, revealing the anti-authoritarianism that will appear again and again in his films. Loosely based on H.G. Wells' novel WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES, the film features a strong parodic bent, particularly of the type of science fiction that was being written and filmed when it was made in 1973. Oppressive, faceless governments and the technological dominance over human life (altering even the most fundamental natural actions, such as sex) are the main tropes Allen skewers, as well as playing off the futuristic production design of films like A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and THX-1138. However, SLEEPER was still considered a strong work of science fiction, winning both the prestigious Hugo and Nebula Awards, which are given to the finest works in the genre."

Awards, American Film Institute honoree.

Call number: PN1997 Sleeper DVD

Crimes and Misdemeanors - Vendor's Marketing: "CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS is Woody Allen's most mature, most profound film. Martin Landau plays Judah Rosenthal, a successful ophthalmologist having an affair with Dolores (Anjelica Huston), who is threatening to reveal their relationship unless Judah commits to her and leaves his wife. He admits his sin to Ben (Sam Waterston), a friend, a patient, and a learned rabbi who is losing his eyesight but not his faith. Judah turns to his brother Jack, who is connected to the mob and can make Dolores disappear. Allen plays Cliff Stern, a documentary filmmaker who accepts an assignment to film his pompous, successful brother-in-law, Lester (Alan Alda), a comedy star; both Cliff and Lester fall for Hallie Reed (Mia Farrow), a producer involved in the documentary. Allen the director brings all the characters together in a fabulous mix of comedy and drama, deceit and delight. CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS is a marvel of complexity, with fascinating, well-written characters; deep, complicated relationships; and thought-provoking examinations of religion, infidelity, morality, murder, comedy, and tragedy."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 CrimesA DVD

Edward Scissorhands - Vendor's Marketing: "In Tim Burton's EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, a suburban fairy tale with incredibly imaginative sets, an Avon lady, Peg Boggs (Dianne Wiest), discovers the half-finished experiment--a man/monster named Edward (Johnny Depp)--of a mad scientist (played magically by Vincent Price) living in the neighborhood's old abandoned castle. The scientist died before replacing the shy man's large shears with real hands. When Peg attempts to bring Edward into her suburban world, to live among her skeptical family (husband Alan Arkin and daughter Winona Ryder) and gossipy neighbors, his hands--dangerous yet capable of creating things of great beauty--make for some awkward, funny, and poignant situations: Edward as a topiary gardener, Edward as a cutting-edge hair stylist. EDWARD SCISSORHANDS is a story about tolerance, difference, and creativity as much as it is a story of a young man's coming of age (the young man in question is, of course, a monster). In the ironically surreal world of Edward's suburban community, he must try to find his place in it, and in the world at large."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 EdwardSc DVD

Brian's Song - Vendor's Marketing: "Brian's Song is the Emmy Award-winning true story that chronicles the special relationship between two Chicago Bears football players--Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers--and Piccolo's heroic fight against cancer."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 BriansSo DVD

Carrie - Vendor's Marketing: "Brian De Palma's commercial breakout, based on a novel by Stephen King, helped launch a whole slew of teen-based horror films, and Carrie the blood-spattered prom queen has taken her throne in the pantheon of modern American myth. High school girls played by Amy Irving (in her film debut), P.J. Soles, and Nancy Allen plot to avenge themselves on ostracized fellow student and budding telekinetic Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) after they get in trouble for pelting her with tampons. When they get popular boy Tommy Ross (William Katz) to be her date for the prom, the stage is set for some heart-rending cruelty and fiery retribution. De Palma expertly uses split screens, slow motion, color filters, and tracking shots to imbue the proceedings with a haunting, allegorical elegance. Piper Laurie plays Carrie’s mentally ill, devoutly Christian mom; she’s brilliant, as is Spacek."

Awards, American Film Institute honoree.

Call number: PN1997 Carrie DVD

King Kong - Vendor's Marketing: "Despite his origins as a low-budget filmmaker with a taste for the unsavory side of life, Peter Jackson has turned into an "event" filmmaker--someone who can conjure up a movie on a scale unlike anything we've seen before. KING KONG is his sprawling, epic remake of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's 1933 movie of the same name, and it is as big as the gorilla that runs riot through Jackson's rendering of Depression-era New York. Keeping the simple yet effective plot intact--a film crew travels to the mysterious Skull Island, picks up Kong, and brings him back to New York City--Jackson expands on this basic premise by drawing on the jaw-dropping talents of his special effects team to satisfy his thirst for the grand spectacle. The movie posits Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow, the starry-eyed blonde beauty whom Kong falls for; Jack Black as Carl Denham, a low-rent Orson Welles look-alike who drags the crew to the island to make his movie; and Adrian Brody as Jack Driscoll, a hack playwright who battles Kong both physically and for Darrow's heart. As the men struggle against Kong and the lumbering dinosaurs of Skull Island, Andy Serkis, who made the character of Gollum so believable in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, steps in to form the facial features of the mighty gorilla, lending a real emotional sucker-punch to the scenes between Darrow and Kong. But it's the final third of the movie where Jackson really delivers; his 1930s New York is stunning, and when Kong breaks free from his shackles and stampedes on a lovelorn trek through the city, then iconically climbs the Empire State Building with his sweetheart, it's impossible to not be swept away by the sheer beauty and sadness of the moment. While its three-hour length may prove daunting to some, the payoff in Jackson’s KING KONG is ultimately worth it, proving once again that he is a director of breathtaking vision."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 KingKo 2006 DVD

Life Is Beautiful - Vendor's Marketing: "Conjuring keys and hats out of thin air, Guido (Roberto Benigni), a clever Jewish-Italian waiter, successfully courts Dora (Nicoletta Braschi), a beautiful local woman, in Fascist pre-WWII Italy. His life, however, is turned upside down a few years later when he, Dora, and their young son, Giosué (Giorgio Cantarini), are sent to a Nazi concentration camp. Refusing to give up hope, Guido tries to protect his son's innocence by pretending that their imprisonment is just an elaborate game, with the grand prize being a tank. For years the box-office champ in Italy and the country's most beloved slapstick comic, the Chaplinesque Benigni took a huge risk with LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. Many people worried that the film would be as offensive as plopping a cartoon character in Auschwitz. (A similar work--THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED, a Jerry Lewis film about a comedian in a concentration camp--turned out to be a disaster two decades earlier.) Although LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL did provoke some controversy, many people found the film to be a poignant, tragicomic story that profoundly reaffirmed the humanity of concentration camp victims. The film became the highest grossing foreign language film in the U.S. and established Benigni as an international star."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 LifeIsBe DVD

Nixon - Vendor's Marketing: "Using a nonchronological narrative style à la CITIZEN KANE (from which he quotes), director Oliver Stone explores former president Richard Nixon's strict Quaker upbringing, his nascent political strivings in law school, and his strangely self-effacing courtship of his wife, Pat (played by Joan Allen). The contradictions in his character are revealed early, in the vicious campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas and the oddly masochistic Checkers speech. His defeat at the hands of the hated and envied John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election, followed by the loss of the 1962 California gubernatorial race, seem to signal the end of his career. Yet, although wholly lacking in charisma, Nixon remains a brilliant political operator, seizing the opportunity provided by the backlash against the antiwar movement to take the presidency in 1968. It is only when safely in office, running far ahead in the polls for the 1972 presidential election, that his growing paranoia comes to full flower, triggering the Watergate scandal. Surprisingly, Stone evinces considerable compassion as he gives us a Nixon of tragic stature and nearly Shakespearean dimension in this powerfully moving film. The star-studded cast, including Ed Harris and James Woods, complements Hopkins's extraordinary performance."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 Nixon DVD

Natural Born Killers - Vendor's Marketing: "Oliver Stone's over-the-top satire on America's worshipful fascination with tabloid criminals stars Woody Harrelson as Mickey Knox and Juliette Lewis as girlfriend-wife Mallory Wilson. Commencing with the dual murder of Mallory's sexually abusive father (Rodney Dangerfield) and grossly negligent mother (Edie McClurg), the anomic couple take off on a three-week killing spree across the country, telling everyone who they are so that they get the credit for their crimes. The media are immediately enthralled with the couple, especially Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.), the bloodthirsty host of a tabloid TV show who follows their every move. By the time they're finally arrested, they've become such huge media stars that the cops treat them more like celebrities than criminals. Even the maniacal limelight-hogging warden of the Batongaville State Prison, Dwight McClusky (Tommy Lee Jones), is in awe. Stone pulls out all the stops in the prison riot, as the unwitting Gale becomes an unwilling participant in his own broadcast of the event. Again the director switches from film to video, from color to black and white, from sitcom parody to newsreel parody, and from one film stock to another, hoping to jar the audience out of its complacency with visual hyperbole."

"This radical video detonates with the world premier of the uncut film version of Natural Born Killers, and then ignites with over 60 minutes of never-before-seen footage, a new exclusive Oliver Stone interview, the lost scenes with Ashley Judd and Denis Leary, and Stone's explosive alternate ending. Also includes a bonus documentary, taking you behind-the-scenes on the making of Natural Born Killers."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 NaturalBo DVD

JFK - Vendor's Marketing: "Covers the period from 1963 to 1968; Produced and released in 1991. Oliver Stone's self-proclaimed "countermyth," JFK mocks the doubtful veracity of the Warren Commission's findings on the Kennedy assassination and summarizes some of the myriad theories that have been proposed in its contest. Focusing on the investigation by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) into the activities of the FBI and other government agencies as well as their attempted cover-ups, Stone weaves fact and speculation into a compelling argument for the reopening of the case files. Garrison begins to investigate local links to the assassination, including Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones), David Ferrie (Joe Pesci), Guy Bannister (Ed Asner), Perry Russo (Kevin Bacon), and Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman). When the accounts of Ferrie, Russo, and others almost invariably diverge from the FBI versions of events, Garrison begins to suspect a cover-up. Widening his net, he interviews many of the original assassination witnesses and again finds little that coincides with the government's record. Combining interviews with an analysis of the physical evidence, Garrison's team posits the existence of a conspiracy to kill the president. A mysterious Col. X (Donald Sutherland) implies the orchestration of the conspiracy at the highest levels of government, and Garrison is ready to go to trial. Stone deploys video, different film stocks shot at varying speeds, and a dizzying style of montage while harnessing the talents of a large and extraordinary cast to create a film of undeniable power and excitement."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 JFK DVD

Born on the Fourth of July - Vendor's Marketing: "Set in the years between 1956 and 1976; Produced and released in 1989. One of the best films made about the devastating impact of the Vietnam War on the body politic, BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY is superbly executed by director Oliver Stone, who evokes what may be Tom Cruise's best performance as Vietnam vet Ron Kovic. Before the war starts, Kovic is a normal American kid, going to school, hanging out with his friends, and bagging groceries for pocket money. But as the Vietnam conflict begins to impact the lives of everyone around him, the patriotic teenager decides to enlist. Although his father (Raymond J. Berry) is not happy with his decision, his mother (Caroline Kava) could hardly be more enthusiastic. Once in combat, Kovic becomes disillusioned with his commanding officer (John Getz) who dismisses the fact that Kovic accidentally shot one of their own men in combat. Shortly thereafter, Kovic is paralyzed from the chest down by a bullet in the spine. He must begin a lengthy and excruciatingly painful rehabilitation, which includes a period in the shockingly negligent Bronx Veteran's Hospital. He finally returns to his hometown, now a confused, embittered, and alienated man. His family is also unsettled, unsure about how to deal with this very changed person. After a dissipated spree with other disabled vets like Charlie (Willem Dafoe), Kovic begins talking to antiwar activists like Donna (Kyra Sedgwick) and starts to reevaluate his thinking. In sum, BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY is a deeply moving true account of the effects of war on its survivors."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 BornOn DVD

U-Turn - Vendor's Marketing: "Oliver Stone shelved his social conscience while making this vicious nest-of-vipers noir. Sean Penn stars as Bobby Cooper, a gambler on the run who is forced to lay up in a desolate Arizona whistlestop with car trouble. Desperate and broke, he receives an offer from the middle-aged Jake McKenna (Nick Nolte) to kill his beautiful young wife, Grace (Jennifer Lopez). Initially reluctant, he's finally forced to contemplate the deal. But the fun doesn't really begin until Grace hires Bobby to kill Jake. The film is based on the modern noir novel STRAY DOGS by John Ridley."

Call number: PN1997 Uturn DVD

Stealing Beauty - Vendor's Marketing: "When 19-year-old Lucy Harmon (Liv Tyler) arrives in Tuscany, wondering about her mother (a recent suicide) and still nursing a crush on Niccolo, the local playboy she met on a visit four years earlier, everyone sits up and takes notice--especially director Bernardo Bertolucci, who trains his camera on the ingenue with understandable enthusiasm. The Graysons, who own the artists' colony and villa where Lucy's mother once wrote poetry, take the young girl in, and their guests enjoy the infusion of youth. Perhaps most deeply affected is Alex Parrish (Jeremy Irons), a terminally ill writer who finds Lucy charming and vital. Before such attentions, Lucy's interest in Niccolo (who turns out to be a jerk) quickly fades, replaced by an unexpected mystery regarding the identity of her father and a possible new love. And in a further attempt to understand her mother, Lucy writes light little poems as well. (Bertolucci has her words appear on the screen as she scribbles.) In fact, everything seems light in lush and lovely in Tuscany, which provides a gorgeous setting for the gifted ensemble to play out their intrigues."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 StealingBe DVD

The Sheltering Sky - Vendor's Marketing: "Port and Kit Moresby (John Malkovich and Debra Winger) are American artists and self-styled "travelers" (as opposed to tourists) exploring Saharan Africa. Their 10-year marriage is strained enough to be threatened by the presence of their boorish companion, Tunner (Campbell Scott), who has designs on Kit. The couple's restlessness, along with a kind of fascination with their own estrangement, keeps them moving further away from civilization and from infidelity. Port grows ill, however, and Kit finds herself alone in the desert, cut off from everything she knows. Director Bernardo Bertolucci and director of photography Vittorio Storaro fabulously capture the forbidding beauty of the Saharan locations, as well as Malkovich's brooding self-assurance and Winger's artless sexuality. The color schemes of red and blue serve the story of lovers who live on different emotional planes. Paul Bowles, the expatriate author whose semiautobiographical novel is the basis for the film, comments on the action as a narrator and one-man chorus. He warns Kit, and the viewer, that life is far more finite than one habitually imagines, and that the chance to put things right will not wait forever."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 Shelteri DVD

The Crying Game - Vendor's Marketing: "This highly original film put screenwriter-director Neil Jordan on the international map. The story begins at a carnival in Ireland with British soldier Jody (Forest Whitaker) kidnapped by IRA terrorists Jude (Miranda Richardson) and Fergus (Stephen Rea). Fergus is assigned to guard Jody, and they become friends. After the kidnapping goes horribly wrong, Fergus escapes to London to track down Jody's girlfriend, Dil (Jaye Davidson), to fulfill a promise to Jody and ends up falling in love with her. The only problem--well, it's not the only problem--is Jude has also come to London with news that the IRA is after Fergus and has a dangerous new mission in mind. A sensation during its original release for its controversial plot development, THE CRYING GAME went on to win several awards and remains a tender and thrilling viewing experience. Jordan's script bristles with wit and intelligence, and the plentiful symbolic imagery shows the hand of a true artist. Ian Wilson's photography beautifully captures the various locales of London and rural Ireland. Boy George sings the title song, and the rest of the memorable score is by Anne Dudley."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 CryingG DVD

Saturday Night Fever - Vendor's Marketing: "Director John Badham's hit film propelled John Travolta to stardom, made white polyester suits an instant fashion craze, and garnered praise for its portrayal of blue-collar life. Nineteen-year-old Brooklyn native Tony Manero (Travolta) lives for Saturday nights at the local disco, where he's king of the club, thanks to his stylish moves on the dance floor. But outside of the club, things don't look so rosy. At home, Tony fights constantly with his father and has to compete with his family's starry-eyed view of his older brother, a priest. Nor can he find satisfaction at his dead-end job at a paint store. However, things begin to change when he spies Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney) in the disco and starts training with her for the club's dance competition. Stephanie dreams of the world beyond Brooklyn, and her plans to move to the big city just over the bridge soon change Tony's life forever. This portrait of young Brooklyn natives struggling to escape their sheltered lives for freedom and adventure in the big city of Manhattan defined a generation of disco dancers and 1970s youths rebelling against the more traditional expectations of their parents. Set to the popular dance music of the Bee Gees, this instant cinematic sensation revealed the fashions and aspirations of an underground culture to the world."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 SaturdayN DVD

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan - Vendor's Marketing: "Sacha Baron Cohen brings his Borat character to the big screen with this feature length adaptation of his American exploits. Fans of DA ALI G SHOW will already be familiar with the devilishly simple Borat formula, in which the heavily mustachioed TV host from Kazakhstan dupes a number of unwitting citizens into revealing their deepest prejudices, and this movie takes that premise, stirs in a little narrative structure, and serves a side-splitting 84-minute mirth-fest. The action begins with Borat traveling to America alongside his producer Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian). After a hotel room viewing of BAYWATCH Borat decides he must travel to California to woo Pamela Anderson, so he and the long-suffering Azamat take a cross-country road trip in an ice cream van, encountering some funny, disturbing, and deeply strange individuals along the way. SEINFELD producer Larry Charles lends his directing talents to BORAT, and he gets the balance between the loosely threaded plot and Borat’s encounters with real Americans exactly right. At times the movie threatens to topple over into glorious anarchy, with each situation escalating to ridiculous (and ridiculously funny) extremes, but Charles knows exactly when to put the brakes on and progress to Borat’s next encounter--although the police are called at the tail-end of one memorable sequence. Keen-eyed viewers will notice some repetition from the TV show, with Borat once again going to a rodeo and again taking etiquette lessons, but it’s almost as if Cohen treats each of these set-pieces as a comedic "bit" he is working on, gradually adding further delirium every time he goes back for another shot. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell who, if any, of BORAT’s participants are actors, but it matters little when the material is this gut-wrenchingly funny, and it’s testament to Cohen’s talents that he’s managed to take a marginal supporting character from his TV show and turned him into a genuine cultural phenomenon."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 Borat DVD

Yoga for Inflexible People - Vendor's Marketing: "While yoga's benefits have long been known, many people who are inflexible are unable to stretch certain muscles properly. Instructor Judi Rice directs this video toward these very people with 35 perfect beginner and intermediate programs. Flexibility will improve with this interactive video."

Call number: RA781.7 .Y6323 2002 DVD

Fast Times at Ridgemont High - Vendor's Marketing: "Nascent filmmaker and then-Rolling Stone journalist Cameron Crowe went undercover in a southern California high school to document the hilarious hijinx of teens in the 1980s. Director Amy Heckerling turned his book into a classic teen comedy--equal parts sex, stoners, sensitivity, and satire. Many of the young cast--most notably, Sean Penn and Jennifer Jason Leigh--went on to Hollywood fame. A milestone in '80s teen flicks."

Awards, American Film institute honoree

Call number: PN1997 FastTime DVD

A Love Song for Bobby Long - Vendor's Marketing: "When her mother dies unexpectantly, a young woman returns home to New Orleans ready to claim her childhood home. Upon arriving at the house, she discovers that two of her mother's friends are still living in it. Unable to force them out, the daughter begins to form a bond with the men as they talk about her mother." Based on the novel by "Off Magazine Street" by Ronald Everett Capps.

Call number: PN1997 LoveSong DVD

The Interpreter - Vendor's Marketing: "Director Sidney Pollack's diverse career sees him returning to familiar ground with THE INTERPRETER. Crafted from the same mould that saw Pollack produce the superlative political thriller THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (1975), Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn star in a film riddled with subterfuge, recriminations, and deadly secrets. Kidman plays Silvia Broome, an interpreter who works at the UN in New York City. One night, while collecting a bag she has left behind in the building, Silvia overhears a whispered conversation in which an assassination attempt on a redoubtable African leader, named Zuwanie (Earl Cameron), is planned during his future visit to the UN. Secret service agent Tobin Keller (Penn) is assigned to provide security for Zuwanie on the forthcoming trip, and conducts an investigation when Silvia explains what she has heard. He quickly discovers that Silvia has a lengthy, troubled past as a citizen from the same country as Zuwanie, and immediately doubts her story. A series of frantic, fast-paced set pieces ensue, with Pollack beautifully capturing the architectural wonder of the UN, and staging some breathtaking scenes all over the city. Much has been made of THE INTERPRETER'S status as the first film to be shot inside the UN, and it's to Pollack's credit that he wasn't overawed by such a prospect. Making full use of the building, the director highlights the hustle and bustle of a typical day at the UN, while also shooting eerily silent late night scenes among the famous halls and corridors. As Pollack piles on the tension, Penn and Kidman deliver exemplary performances alongside a prodigious supporting cast, who do justice to an intelligently written plot designed to keep viewers guessing right up until the final moments of the film."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 Interprete DVD

West Side Story - Vendor's Marketing: "Considered one of the most popular musicals of all time, WEST SIDE STORY earned director Robert Wise an Oscar for Best Director as well as nine other Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Realistically portrayed characters and their surroundings and expert editing complementing innovative dance sequences mark this highly stylized modern-day Romeo and Juliet tale. The stage is set in New York’s Upper West Side in the 1950s, where the area’s slums are plagued by racial tensions acted on by two rival gangs: the Puerto Rican Sharks and the Caucasian Jets. In the middle of this mess is young, innocent Maria (Natalie Wood), a Puerto Rican seamstress whose brother, Bernardo (George Chakiris), is the leader of the Sharks. Despite the warnings of Anita (Rita Moreno), Bernardo's fiery girlfriend, Maria falls in love with a young, hopeful Polish boy, Tony (Richard Beymer), who used to belong to the Jets, now headed by Riff (Russ Tamblyn). When Tony, on Maria’s urging, tries to stop a rumble between the gangs, tragedy ensues, marking their dedicated love affair with violence and desperation. The infectious, lyrical landmark score by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim help round out one of the greatest musical experiences ever captured on film."

Awards

Call number: PN1997 WestSide DVD

Call number: PN1997 .W45 2003 (screenplay)

Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality - Publisher's Marketing: ""A thoughtful, in places chilling, account of the way entertainment values have hollowed out American life." --"The New York Times Book Review"

From one of America's most original cultural critics and the author of Winchell, the story of how our bottomless appetite for novelty, gossip, glamour, and melodrama has turned everything of importance-from news and politics to religion and high culture-into one vast public entertainment.
Neal Gabler calls them "lifies," those blockbusters written in the medium of life that dominate the media and the national conversation for weeks, months, even years: the death of Princess Diana, the trial of O.J. Simpson, Kenneth Starr vs. William Jefferson Clinton. Real Life as Entertainment is hardly a new phenomenon, but the movies, and now the new information technologies, have so accelerated it that it is now the reigning popular art form. How this came to pass, and just what it means for our culture and our personal lives, is the subject of this witty, concerned, and sometimes eye-opening book."

Call number: PN1995.9 .S6 G23

Where the Germs Are: A Scientific Safari - Publisher's Marketing: "A guided tour through the strange and sometimes dangerous microscopic world

Germs are everywhere--in our intestines and on our skin as well as on kitchen counters, public toilets, doorknobs, and just about everything else. Why are there so many microorganisms? Which ones are dangerous? And how can we avoid the ones that will make us sick? This entertaining and informative book provides the answers. Profiling a rogue's gallery of harmful germs--from the influenza virus, salmonella, and herpes to hepatitis, tuberculosis, and HIV--as well as helpful microbes (we actually need E. Coli and other bacteria for proper digestion), the book reveals how different germs interact with the human body and what happens when they do."

Call number: QR46 .B27 2003

Wellsprings: A Natural History of Bottled Spring Waters - Publisher's Marketing: "Bottled water is a part of everyday life for millions of Americans. Per capita consumption in the United States now tops fifteen gallons per year with sales over $5 billion in 2002. Even as fuel prices climb, many people are still willing to pay more for a gallon of bottled water than they are for the equivalent in gasoline. At the same time, bottled water has become a symbol of refined taste and a healthy lifestyle. But despite its growing popularity, many people cannot quite put their finger on just why they prefer bottled water to the much less expensive tap variety. Some have a vague notion that bottled water is "healthier," some prefer the convenience and more consistent taste and others are simply content to follow the trend. The fact is, most people know very little about the natural beverage that they drink and enjoy. It is reasonable to wonder, therefore, just what differentiates bottled water from other water? Is it really better or healthier than tap water? Why is it that different brands seem to have subtle variations in taste? As Francis H. Chapelle reveals in this delightful and informative volume, a complex story of geology, hydrology, and history lies behind every, bottle of spring water. The book chronicles the history of the bottled water industry in America from its beginnings in Europe hundreds of years ago to the present day. Subsequent chapters describe the chemical characteristics that make some, waters desirable and provide an overview of the geologic circumstances that produce them. Wellsprings explains, how these geologic conditions vary throughout the country and how this affects the kinds and quality of bottled water industry uses this natural history, together with the perceived health benefits of spring waters, to market their products. Accessibly written and well illustrated, Wellsprings is both a revealing account and a user's guide to natural springs waters. Regardless of your drinking preference, this timely exploration will make your next drink of water refreshingly informed."

Call number: TD223 .C434 2005

Can we sense what's happening to loved ones thousands of miles away? Why are we sometimes certain of a caller's identity the instant the phone rings? Do intuitive hunches contain information about future events? Is it possible to perceive without the use of the ordinary senses?

Many people believe that such "psychic phenomena" are rare talents or divine gifts. Others don't believe they exist at all. But the latest scientific research shows that these phenomena are both real and widespread, and are an unavoidable consequence of the interconnected, entangled physical reality we live in.

Albert Einstein called entanglement "spooky action at a distance" -- the way two objects remain connected through time and space, without communicating in any conventional way, long after their initial interaction has taken place. Could a similar entanglement of minds explain our apparent psychic abilities? Dean Radin, senior scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, believes it might.

In this illuminating book, Radin shows how we know that psychic phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis are real, based on scientific evidence from thousands of controlled lab tests. Radin surveys the origins of this research and explores, among many topics, the collective premonitions of 9/11. He reveals the physical reality behind our uncanny telepathic experiences and intuitive hunches, and he debunks the skeptical myths surrounding them. "Entangled Minds" sets the stage for a rational, scientific understanding of psychic experience."

Call number: BF1040 .R33 2006

The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (Revised) (2ND ed.) - Publisher's Marketing: " A classic work that has revolutionized thinking throughout the Western world about the nature of the psychiatric profession and the moral implications of its practices. "Bold and often brilliant."-- "Science" "Bold and often brilliant." "--Science"

"It is no exaggeration to state that Szasz's work raises major social issues which deserve the attention of policy makers and indeed of all informed and socially conscious Americans...Quite probably he has done more than any other man to alert the American public to the potential dangers of an excessively psychiatrized society."--Edwin M. Schur, "Atlantic""

Call number: RC437.5 .S9 1974

Using Cline's own telegrams, letters, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the science of hurricanes, Erik Larson builds a chronicle of one man's heroic struggle and fatal miscalculation in the face of a storm of unimaginable magnitude. Thrilling, powerful, and unrelentingly suspenseful, Isaac's Storm is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets the uncontrollable force of nature."

Call number: F394.G2 L37 2000b

How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Sex, Virtue, and the Way We Live Now - Publisher's Marketing: " The passion of the pro-life movement extends beyond abortion opposition to an overarching desire to end contraceptive use and to restrict sex to procreation only, argues Page, director of a national pro-choice organization. In contrast, by supporting women's ability to control their reproductive lives, the pro-choice movement has helped to improve life for American women across a broad range of social and economic issues. She details the corrosive influence of pro-life politics on science, including lobbying to prevent FDA approval of an emergency contraceptive pill to be sold over the counter. The pro-life movement has political “muscle that extends across the globe,” harming efforts to reduce family size in developing nations and to encourage advancement of women. Page outlines the threats to the Roe decision and the privacy rights that also protect all aspects of sexuality, from contraception to homosexuality. This is a well-researched and thoughtful look at the politics behind reproductive issues and the implications for all Americans, whatever their position on abortion."

Call number: HQ767.5 .U5 P334 2006

Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus - Publisher's Marketing: "Telling the story of the greatest sailor of them all, "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" is a vivid and definitive biography of Columbus that details all of his voyages that, for better or worse, changed the world. 50 drawings, maps & charts; 4 fold-outs."

Call number: E111 .M86 1991b

Life in the Ancient Near East, 3100-332 B.C.E. - Publisher's Marketing: "In this sweeping overview of life in the ancient Near East, Daniel Snell surveys the history of the region from the invention of writing five thousand years ago to Alexander the Great's conquest in 332 B.C.E. The book is the first comprehensive history of the social and economic conditions affecting ordinary people and of the relations between governments and peoples in ancient Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. To set Near East developments in a broader context, the author also provides brief contrasting views of India, China, Greece, and Etruscan Italy. Snell organizes his book chronologically in time spans of about five hundred years and considers broad continuities. Drawing on the latest scholarship in many fields and in many languages, he sets forth a detailed picture of what is known about the demography, social groups, family, women, labor, land and animal management, crafts, trade, money, and government of the ancient Near East. For general readers with an interest in historical events that have influenced the development of Europe and the Middle East, for specialists seeking a broader understanding of early periods of Middle Eastern history, and for anyone with an interest in the Bible, this book offers a fascinating tour of life in ancient Western Asia."

Call number: DS62.23 .S65 1997

The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe CA. 1200 B.C. - Publisher's Marketing: "The Bronze Age came to a close early in the twelfth century B.C. with one of the worst calamities in history: over a period of several decades, destruction descended upon key cities throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, bringing to an end the Levantine, Hittite, Trojan, and Mycenaean kingdoms and plunging some lands into a dark age that would last more than four hundred years. In his attempt to account for this destruction, Robert Drews rejects the traditional explanations - earthquakes, migrations, drought, systems collapse - and proposes a military one instead. Combining fascinating archaeological facts with vivid descriptions of military tactics, Drews presents the transition from chariot to infantry warfare as the primary cause of the Great Kingdoms' downfall. Late in the thirteenth century B.C. the barbarians who until then had been little cause for concern to the Great Kingdoms, and who had served the kings as mercenary "runners" in support of the chariots, awoke to the fact that en masse they could destroy a chariot army. There followed an orgy of slaughter, looting, and destruction. From the ashes arose the city-states of Greece and the tribal confederacy of Israel, communities that depended on massed formations of infantrymen. In making these arguments, the author uses textual and archaeological evidence to reconstruct what actually happened in the Bronze Age chariot battles, as well as the combat that characterized the Catastrophe."

Call number: GN778.3 .A1 D7

Corporate Culture: Illuminating the Black Hole - Publisher's Marketing: "No subject is more important to the success of today's business organization than Corporate Culture. After so many years of failed fads and fix-its, such as business-process reengineering, outsourcing, downsizing, flawed go-for-growth strategies, and outrageous cases of corporate lawlessness, Dr. Jerry Want brings clarity and direction to the one subject that is most critical to the success and very survival of today's corporation- corporate culture. "Corporate Culture: Illuminating the Black Hole "is the definitive source of knowledge for understanding and building the new type of business culture that is required in this age of radical business change. Through dozens of real-life examples drawn from his many years of consulting and corporate experience, and unique tools such as the proprietary Hierarchy of Corporate cultures ranging from Predatory through Bureaucratic to high-performing New Age cultures, Dr. Want shows concretely and clearly how a company's culture permeates everything it does, and how to revitalize the culture in order to grow and perform to maximum capability. Case studies show how corporate culture has contributed to the success of such companies as Nucor, Harley-Davidson, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, and Cisco Systems, among others. The book also examines how flawed corporate cultures have contributed to the failure or near failure of former industry leaders such as SmithKline, Motorola, Arthur Andersen, Xerox, and Polaroid, among others."

Call number: HD58.7 .W327 2007

Organization Theory: Tension and Change - Publisher's Marketing: ""Organization Theory: Tension and Change" provides the most current and concise analysis of the development and evolution of organizational theories, forms, and practices, from the rise of the factory system to the emergence of the virtual global organization. Using a wide variety of examples and applications from private- and public-sector organizations, the text emphasizes the tensions, contradictions, and paradoxes inherent in all organizational arrangements. In addition to the classic themes such as scientific management, human relations, rational bureaucratic models, and environmental models, the book explores emerging organizational forms based on lean and flexible production, post-bureaucracy, alliancess, and networks, virtual organization and information technologies, corporate cultures, learning organizations, transnational commodity chains, and post-modernism."

Call number: HD31 .J243 2001

Emotional Bridges to Puerto Rico: Migration, Return Migration, and the Struggles of Incorporation - Publisher's Marketing: "Emotional Bridges to Puerto Rico is about Puerto Ricans' struggles of incorporation into U.S. society, and the conditions under which members of the Puerto Rican middle-class move back and forth between the mainland and island. The book illustrates how structures of inequalities based on race, class, and gender affect Puerto Ricans' subjective assessments of incorporation. Issues regarding the racialization of Puerto Ricans in the U.S. reveal that in spite of structural incorporation, Puerto Ricans do not feel like they fully belong in mainland society. These experiences carry implications for future migration and settlement decisions."

Call number: E184.P85 A73 2007

America's Colony: The Political and Cultural Conflict Between the United States and Puerto Rico - Publisher's Marketing: "Provides a new and needed approach to understanding the development and current status of Puerto Rico."-CHOICE

The precise legal nature of the relationship between the United States and the people of Puerto Rico was not explicitly determined in 1898 when the Treaty of Paris transferred sovereignty over Puerto Rico from Spain to the United States. Since then, many court cases, beginning in 1901, have been instrumental in defining this delicate relationship.While the legislation has clearly established the non-existence of Puerto Rican nationhood and lack of independent Puerto Rican citizenship, the debate over Puerto Rico's status continues to this day.Malavet offers a critique of Puerto Rico's current status as well as of its treatment by the U.S. legal and political systems. Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States, and Puerto Ricans living on this geographically separate island are subject to the United States's legal and political authority. They are the largest group of U.S. citizens currently living under territorial status. Malavet argues that the Puerto Rican cultural nation experiences U.S. imperialism, which compromises both the island's sovereignty and Puerto Ricans' citizenship rights. He analyzes the three alternatives to Puerto Rico's continued territorial status, examining the challenges manifest in each possibility, as well as illuminating what he believes to be the best course of action."

Call number: F1975 .M23 2004

Restoring Growth in Puerto Rico: Overview and Policy Options - Publisher's Marketing: "As a territory of the United States, Puerto Rico enjoys the benefits of key U.S. legal, monetary, security, and tariff systems, and its residents are U.S. citizens. In the decades following World War II, Puerto Rico emerged as one of the worlds fastest-growing economies. From 1950 to 1970 per capita income nearly doubled as a percentage of the U.S. average, making the island the richest economy in Latin America. Since the mid-1970s, however, labor force attachment has declined, economic growth has slowed, and the islands living standards have fallen further behind those on the mainland. Today more than half of all Puerto Rican children live below the U.S. poverty level. Why did Puerto Ricos economic progress stall? And more important, what can be done to restore growth? A number of overlapping concerns— labor supply and demand, entrepreneurship, the fiscal situation, financial markets, and trade— are at the heart of its economic difficulties. This is a companion volume to "Restoring Growth: The Economy of Puerto Rico" (Brookings, 2006), in which economists from Puerto Rico and the United States examine the islands economy and propose strategies for sustainable growth. This monograph summarizes the analyses published in that volume and presents a set of policy recommendations to increase employment, improve education, upgrade infrastructure, and fix government finances.

Contributors include James Alm (Georgia State University), Barry P. Bosworth and Gary Burtless (Brookings Institution), Susan M. Collins (Brookings Institution and Georgetown University), Steven J. Davis (University of Chicago), Mara E. Enchautegui, Juan Lara, Luis A. Rivera- Batiz, and Orlando Sotomayor(University of Puerto Rico), Richard B. Freeman and Robert Z. Lawrence (Harvard University), Helen F. Ladd (Duke University), Rita Maldonado-Bear and Ingo Walter (New York University), Francisco L. Rivera-Batiz (Columbia University), and Miguel A. Soto-Class (Center for the New Economy)."

Call number: HC154.5 .R43 2006

The Economy of Puerto Rico - Publisher's Marketing: "A non-incorporated territory of the United States, Puerto Rico operates under U.S. legal, monetary, security and tariff systems. Despite sharing in these and other key U.S. institutions, Puerto Rico has experienced economic stagnation and large scale unemployment since the 1970s. The islands living standards are low by U.S. standards, with a per capita income only half that of Mississippi, the poorest state. While many studies have analyzed the fiscal implications of Puerto Ricos political relationship with the United States, little research has focused broadly on the islands economic experience or assessed its growth prospects. In this innovative new book, economists from U.S. and Puerto Rican institutions address a range of major policy issues affecting the islands economic development. To frame the current situation, the contributors begin by assessing Puerto Ricos past experience with various growth policies. They then analyze several reforms and new initiatives in labor, education, entrepreneurship, fiscal policy, migration, trade, and financing development, which they incorporate into a proposed strategy for jumpstarting Puerto Rican economic growth.

Contributors include Gary Burtless (Brookings Institution); Orlando Sotomayor, Luis Rivera-Batiz, Ramn Cao, Maria Enchautegui, Jos Joaqun Villamil, Eileen Segarra, Marins Aponte, and Juan Lara (University of Puerto Rico); Richard Freeman and Robert Lawrence (Harvard University); Helen Ladd (Duke University); Francisco Rivera-Batiz (Columbia University); Steven Davis and Bruce Meyer (University of Chicago); James Alm (Georgia State University); Ingo Walter, Rita Maldonado-Bear, and William Baumol (New York University); Belinda Reyes(University of California, Merced); Alan Krueger (Princeton University); Carlos Santiago (University of Wisconsin); David Audretsch (Indiana University); Ronald Fisher (Michigan State University); Fuat Andic (UN Advisor); Arturo Estrella (NY Federal Reserve); James Hanson and Daniel Lederman (World Bank); James Dietz (University of California, Fullerton); and Katherine Terrell (University of Michigan)."

Call number: HC154.5 .E275 2006

Puerto Rico Under Colonial Rule: Political Persecution and the Quest for Human Rights - Publisher's Marketing: "Puerto Rico, one of the last and most populated colonial territories in the world, occupies a relatively unique position. Its lengthly interaction with the United States has resulted in the long-term acquisition of expanded legal rights and relative political stability. At the same time, that interaction has simultaneously seen political intolerance and the denial of basic rights, particularly toward those who have challenged colonialism. In "Puerto Rico under Colonial Rule, academics and intellectuals from the fields of political science, history, sociology, and law examine three themes: evidence of state-sponsored political persecution in the twentieth century, contemporary issues, and the case of Vieques."

Call number: JC599.P9 P84 2006

Living in Mexico - Publisher's Marketing: "Living in Mexico gives advice on how to feel at home, make friends, and enjoy everyday life in the country of Mexico and provides a brief introduction to the culture for all travelers whether venturing abroad for study, pleasure, or business."

Call number: F1216 .F369 2005

The Plain Truth about Living in Mexico: The Expatriate's Guide to Moving, Retiring, or Just Hanging Out - Publisher's Marketing: "Expatriates Doug and Cindi Bower have successfully expatriated to Mexico, learning through trial and error how to do it from the conception of the initial idea to driving up to their new home in another country. Now the potential expatriate can benefit from their more than three years of pre-expat research to their more than two years of actually living in Mexico. They explain: How to begin the process of deciding whether Mexico is for you. How to evaluate locations and costs for expatriation. How to avoid being stereotyped as an Ugly American. How to find and set up your new home. Ways to cure culture shock before arriving in Mexico. How to master Spanish before moving. How safe Mexico really is. The benefits of cheap living, travel, and medical care. The modern technology available in Mexico. and much more! The Plain Truth about Living in Mexico answers the potential expatriate's questions by leading them through the process from the beginning to the end. In this comprehensive guide, you will learn not only how-to expatriate but will learn what to expect, in daily life, before coming to Mexico."

Call number: F1216 .B68 2005

Florida Almanac (2007-2008) - Publisher's Marketing: "A first-rate activities guide, reference manual, atlas, directory, and history book, the Florida Almanac contains useful information on everything from government in 1875 to the state's biggest squash to hurricane survival tips."

Call number: Reference - F 311 .F65

I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence - Publisher's Marketing: "America's most delightfully unconventional hostess provides jackpot recipes and solid advice laced with her blisteringly funny take on entertaining--plus four-color photos and enlightening sidebars on everything it takes to pull off a party with extraordinary flair."

Call number: GV1471 .S39 2006

In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India - Publisher's Marketing: "India remains a mystery to many Americans, even as it is poised to become the world’ s third largest economy within a generation, outstripping Japan. It will surpass China in population by 2032 and will have more English speakers than the United States by 2050. In "In Spite of the Gods," Edward Luce, a journalist who covered India for many years, makes brilliant sense of India and its rise to global power. Already a number-one bestseller in India, his book is" "sure to be acknowledged for years as the definitive introduction to modern India.
"In Spite of the Gods" illuminates a land of many contradictions. The booming tech sector we read so much about in the West, Luce points out, employs no more than one million of India’ s 1.1 billion people. Only 35 million people, in fact, have formal enough jobs to pay taxes, while three-quarters of the country lives in extreme deprivation in India’ s 600,000 villages. Yet amid all these extremes exists the world’ s largest experiment in representative democracy— and a largely successful one, despite bureaucracies riddled with horrifying corruption.
Luce shows that India is an economic rival to the U.S. in an entirely different sense than China is. There is nothing in India like the manufacturing capacity of China, despite the huge potential labor force. An inept system of public education leaves most Indians illiterate and unskilled. Yet at the other extreme, the middle class produces ten times as many engineering students a year as the United States. Notwithstanding its future as a major competitor in a globalized economy, American. leaders have been" "encouraging India’ s rise, even welcoming itinto the nuclear energy club, hoping to balance China’ s influence in Asia.
Above all, "In Spite of the Gods "is an enlightening study of the forces shaping India as it tries to balance the stubborn traditions of the past with an unevenly modernizing present. Deeply informed by scholarship and history, leavened by humor and rich in anecdote, it shows that India has huge opportunities as well as tremendous challenges that make the future “hers to lose.”"

Call number: HC435.3 .L83 2007