Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Nonfiction of Choice

Today's topic was a very broad one and we all had a great time with it. I happen to be very lucky in that everyone in my department prefers to read something different. Everyone pitches in to help when we get the "what's good" question. Nonfiction is always a tough topic for me reader's advisory-wise so I was doubly glad that such a large group showed up, many with more than one book to share!

The instinct to collect is almost as old as humanity itself and can be one of the most driving forces of an individual’s personality. Collectors spend long hours searching for desired items, attending auctions, rummaging shops, corresponding with other collectors, and bargaining with dealers. And for some, if they cannot afford to purchase an item, theft---or worse---is always an option. The Man Who Loved Books Too Much is the story of John Gilkey, an example of collector’s mania in one of its most acute forms. Gilkey has a passion for rare and antiquarian books and steals what he cannot afford to buy. Some thieves steal for the monetary value of an item, fencing it at the first opportunity, but Gilkey keeps his acquisitions. Even now the authorities have not been able to determine the full extent of his secret book stash; they only know that over a period of roughly four years, Gilkey stole around $100,000 worth of collectible and antiquarian books, some of which have never been recovered. Gilkey regards his jail terms for theft as mere interludes in which he can plan the next step by which he can acquire more books. Parallel to Gilkey’s story is that of Ken Sanders, a rare book dealer who, when he became aware of Gilkey’s thefts, set out to hunt him down and bring him to justice---a frustrating endeavor, since the police are not often inclined to regard book theft with the same seriousness as the theft of other high-value items. Sanders persisted, however, and ultimately sent Gilkey to jail . . . for a short term. As Bartlett notes in her conclusion, “Not long before this book went to press, Sanders, nominally retired ‘bibliodick,’ had nevertheless alerted colleagues of Gilkey’s most recent theft: stealing a book from a Canadian dealer. Gilkey was not arrested. The story never ends.” Bartlett’s take on this story is a suspenseful narrative that book lovers will stay up all night to finish and is highly recommended.
– Mary Anne Ellis, Central

With a light touch and comic flair, Leary recounts the five months in London surrounding her son Jack's birth (they had to wait until Jack was more developed to travel back to the U.S.). Forgoing the gory medical details, Leary focuses on her life in and around the hospital and her naiveté about childbirth and parenting. Her cultural observations are especially droll, as Leary sorts out that "tea" is actually a meal and tries to prove that Americans aren't stupid.

The best recipes yet from America's most trusted weight-loss program-now updated with Weight Watchers Momentum Program

Facebook: The Missing Manual
Social Networking is growing by leaps and bounds. Facebook is one the social networking sites that has really taken off. It is estimated that more than 50 million people are Facebook users. Facebook: The missing manual is your authoritative guide to getting started, signing up, connecting with old friends and classmates and basically unlocking everything that Facebook has to offer. Filled with color illustrations and simple instructions, this book makes it easy to break into the Facebook world.
--Andrei

60 Things God Said About Sex by Lester Frank Sumrall
God spoke the world into existence but He made man with His own hands. Human beings are sexual creatures and their bodies were specifically designed by God to be a perfect fit when the two become one during sex. In this book the late pastor Lester Sumrall (1913-1996) speaks candidly about sex within the marriage relationship. He speaks of the sexual dos and don’ts of marriage as well as some sexual taboos such as: incest, bestiality and gay and lesbian relationships. He states that God understands the human need and drive for sex. Within the marriage covenant relationship, sex is beautiful and should be practiced often. When God told man to be fruitful and multiply He is saying to the married couple to have sex. It becomes a sin when they do not. Sumrall states that the marriage relationship is the closest example on earth of the relationship that Christ has with His bride the Church. Filled with plenty of Bible scripture to drive home its point this book is great.
--Andrei

The ecstatic, spiritual poetry of thirteenth-century Sufi mystic Rumi has enchanted the world, and doubtless its appeal is due to its unique blend of beauty, insight, wit, daring and depth. Coleman Barks, through his musical and magical translations, has been instrumental in bringing this exquisite literature to a remarkably wide range of literary and spiritual readers, lovers, and seekers. With the addition of over eighty never-before-published poems and a new introduction by Barks, The Essential Rumi is clearly the definitive collection of Rumi's delightful poetry.
-Leslie West, Vestavia Hills

Freelance journalist
Abbott's vibrant first book probes the titillating milieu of the posh, world-famous Everleigh Club brothel that operated from 1900 to 1911 on Chicago's Near South Side. The madams, Ada and Minna Everleigh, were sisters whose shifting identities had them as traveling actors, Edgar Allan Poe's relatives, Kentucky debutantes fleeing violent husbands and daughters of a once-wealthy Virginia lawyer crushed by the Civil War. While lesser whorehouses specialized in deflowering virgins, beatings and bondage, the Everleighs spoiled their whores with couture gowns, gourmet meals and extraordinary salaries. The bordello—which boasted three stringed orchestras and a room of 1,000 mirrors—attracted such patrons as Theodore Dreiser, John Barrymore and Prussian Prince Henry. But the successful cathouse was implicated in the 1905 shooting of department store heir Marshall Field Jr. and inevitably became the target of rivals and reformers alike. Madam Vic Shaw tried to frame the Everleighs for a millionaire playboy's drug overdose, Rev. Ernest Bell preached nightly outside the club and ambitious Chicago state's attorney Clifford Roe built his career on the promise of obliterating white slavery. With colorful characters, this is an entertaining, well-researched slice of Windy City history.
-Leslie West, Vestavia Hills

Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story by C. David Heymann
Americans have long been fascinated by the rumored love affair between Jackie Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. With Bobby and Jackie they will finally get more than a glimpse of their emotional and romantic connection. An open secret for decades among family insiders, their affair began as a result of their shared grief over the assassination of the president in 1963 and lasted until Bobby began his run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968. Bobby Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy supposedly came together after JFK's assassination, first as a means to express their grief, then as a means to express their passion. Camelot insiders, including Bobby's wife Ethel, knew the affair was going on, but everyone knew that it would never go anywhere—because it was the 1960s, because they were Catholic and divorce was what it was, because Bobby couldn't risk a marital scandal if he hoped to take office someday. Readers will gain behind-closed-doors access to Bobby and Jackie's liaison, from late-night trysts at Jackie's Fifth Avenue apartment to fervent embraces at the Kennedy estate in Palm Beach. They will also learn more about the deep friendship that grew out of the couple's shared tragedies, their family loyalty, and their overflowing ambition. It was "perhaps the most normal relationship either one ever had," Truman Capote observed. "In retrospect, it seems hard to believe that it happened, but it did." Poignant, illuminating, and enormously entertaining, Bobby and Jackie is a glorious account of a legendary romance.
- Leslie West, Vestavia Hills

Hollywood in the 1920s sparkled with talent, confidence, and opportunity. Enter Irving Thalberg of Brooklyn, who survived childhood illness to run Universal Pictures at twenty; and co-found Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at twenty-four. Known as Hollywood's "Boy Wonder," Thalberg created movie classics, but died tragically at thirty-seven. His place in the pantheon should have been assured, yet his films were not reissued for thirty years, spurring critics to question his legend and diminish his achievements. In this definitive biography, illustrated with rare photographs, Vieira sets the record straight, using unpublished production files, financial records, and cor-respondence to confirm the genius of Thalberg's methods. In addition, this is the first Thalberg biography to utilize both his recorded conversations and the unpublished memoirs of his wife, Norma Shearer. Irving Thalberg is a compelling narrative of power and idealism, revealing for the first time the human being behind the legend. This book is a fine account of a great visionary, Irving Thalberg who in life never sought public acknowledgement, but created a lasting legacy that has delighted movie fans for generations.
- Leslie West, Vestavia Hills

Nicknamed the “Boy Wonder,” Irving G.Thalberg was running Universal Pictures at the age of twenty, and he co-founded Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at twenty-four. Between 1924 and 1936, he supervised 400 memorable movies, making stars of Lon Chaney, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, John Gilbert, and Greta Garbo. By the time of his death at thirty-seven, Thalberg had lifted film to the level of fine art. In this groundbreaking coffee table version of the 2009 Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince , Vieira provides this a treasure trove of unseen images to vividly recount the making of Ben-Hur,The Big Parade, Tarzan the Ape Man, Grand Hotel, Mutiny on the Bounty, A Night at the Opera, The Good Earth, the unlikely Freaks, and scores of other classics. Hollywood Dreams Made Real is a fresh portrait of the prime architect of the studio system and an enchanting tour of the magical world he created.
-Leslie West, Vestavia Hills

Dada was a movement of artists, writers, poets, and thinkers rebelling against the Great War, any other movement, and itself. In The Posthuman Dada Guide, Andrei Codrescu ponders the beginnings of the movement and its infiltration of daily life through a hypothetical game of chess between Tristan Tzara and Lenin. This is not done in any roundabout way that I can sum up for you. I will only say that if you like literary, philosophical, contemplative essays, give it a whirl! For example, one of Tristan Tzara’s favorite poetic methods was the cutup: to take a newspaper/magazine article or a page from a book, cut out the individual words and put them in a hat, then write the words down in the order he drew them out. At Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, Tzara’s madcap players would pick two members to read two different poems at the same time while someone played loud, discordant music. I love these guys! I would love to have been one of them. I like things that are out of sync with the world around them, and that certainly describes Dada. I bought a copy to add to my personal collection!
-Holley Wesley, Emmet O’Neal Library

The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keef
Snakehead begins in 1993 when a couple of National Park Police officers on a graveyard shift patrol discover a ship that has run aground just off the Rockaway Peninsula in New York. The ship, Golden Venture, is fully loaded with skeletal, malnourished Chinese illegal immigrants, many of whom have drowned in their attempts to make it to shore. The officers call in for backup and the media circus begins. The actual story Keefe tells begins much earlier, with the discovery of gold in northern California in 1848 and the coming onslaught of railroad construction not long afterward. Keefe gives a brief but fascinating history of the Chinese in the United States leading up to the immigration of Sister Ping to the U.S. in 1981. She came to this country to work as a domestic and soon ran several flourishing businesses which allowed her to bring her family to the U.S. as well. The family business, smuggling people, flourished as well. In 1960 there were 236,000 Chinese in America. By 1990, there were 1.6 million Chinese in the country. Sister Ping was flying in immigrants by the plane load at $30,000 or more per passenger. When the INS cracked down on the flights, she began to bring them by boat and that is where Sister Ping's story merges with that of the Golden Venture and its unfortunate passengers. What they went through, and continue to go through, is truly heartbreaking. Keefe researched mountains of court and police interview transcripts as well as conducting untold numbers of interviews with everyone he could track down. There are extensive notes in the back as well as an index. I was excited to learn that a documentary (it is also called Golden Venture) had been made spotlighting the plight of the passengers of the Golden Venture and I look forward to watching it very soon.
- Holley Wesley, Emmet O’Neal Library

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
The world without us is apparently going to be a wild and crazy place. Things I took away from this book: New York City is apparently only 30 minutes and a few broken pumps with no repairs in sight from beginning to sink back into the swamp it arose from. Keep working guys! Our pets won’t last much longer than we do, except for the cats, which are in turn wiping out the songbird population.
Chernobyl is home to wildlife again. Empty swimming pools can really stink. The world’s oceans are full of tiny specks of plastic. FULL. There is a group advocating for voluntary human extinction, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. So, if you don’t want to hear about waste disposal, global warming, climatic cycles, food shortages, forest/wildlife habitat destruction, general woe, don’t bother with the book. If you do, don’t complain to me. I like to read and be aware of all possibilities. So should we all.
- Holley Wesley, Emmet O’Neal Library

In the tradition of Michael Pollan, Joan Gussow, and Verlyn Klinkenborg’s The Rural Life, This Common Ground is an inspirational evocation of a life lived close to the earth, written by the head farmer at one of the country’s first community-supported farms.

"It's hard to imagine a better time to publish a book that advocates moderation, balance and integrity in the business world. In this wise meditation, Bogle, the folk-hero creator of the first index mutual fund and founder of the Vanguard Mutual Fund Group, deplores ‘our worship of wealth and the growing corruption of our professional ethics but ultimately the subversion of our character and values.’ Directly in his sights: CEOs and hedge-fund managers who draw ‘obscene’ compensation. At this time of plunging portfolios, it is a relief to be told that ‘enough’ is within reach." (TIME Magazine)

Publishers Weekly
“Barry tells a poignant story of her gradual discovery of the shapes in flowers in a vase, snowflakes falling, even the folds in coats hanging on a peg…. Recommended for all readers who cheer stories with a triumph over seemingly insuperable odds.”

Home Tonight follows the path of Henri Nouwen’s spiritual homecoming. More than three years prior to writing his great classic, The Return of the Prodigal Son, Nouwen suffered a personal breakdown followed by a time of healing solitude when he encountered Rembrandt’s famous painting. Within his solitude he reflected on and identified with the parable’s characters and experienced profound and inspiring life lessons.

Through more than two hundred stunning black-and-white photographs pulled from the pages of The Boston Globe and its extensive archives, Ted Kennedy: Scenes from an Epic Life provides a gorgeous visual account of Ted's incredible journey from his joyous birth to the tragic announcement of his battle with brain cancer, including highlights from his childhood in New York, Hyannis Port, and London; his days at Harvard and in the Senate; and his roles as devoted brother, husband, father, uncle, and grandfather.

Apparently fearing their market's reaching the saturation point, the latest iteration of Freedman and Barnouin's bestselling Skinny Bitch series goes after another demographic entirely-men-but without altering the strident, withering approach they've perfected in Skinny Bitch and its follow-ups. Those happy to take the scorn with the solution are invited to "strap on a pair...and get ripped." Much of the strict Skinny Girl regimen is translated directly: sugar, simple carbs, meat and dairy are out; fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains and whole wheat are in. The authors also discuss evidence for and against soy, the male epidemic of hypertension and heart disease, and the failings of government health-monitoring departments (like the USDA and FDA).
"From bittersweet to laugh-out-loud hilarious, the essays in this collection all sparkle with charm, style, and wit. No doubt about it, if you grew up reading Judy Blume, you will love this book."-- Sarah Mlynowski, author of Bras & Broomsticks and Girls' Night In

Occasions to Savor: Our Meals, Menus, and Memories by the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority
From Publishers Weekly
The sisters of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority include some of America’s most accomplished African-American women, but their festive volume feels more like a compilation of family recipes than it does a professional cookbook. Unafraid of building a meal around canned soups or vegetables, the sisters offer dozens of down-home ideas, several of which can be accomplished in half an hour or less. Charming personal narratives are threaded throughout, along with loving profiles of Delta Sigma Thetas who have made their mark on the world
Down Home with the Neely's: A Southern Family Cookbook by Patrick Neely, Gina Neely, and Paula Disbrowe
Husband-and-wife television personalities with their own Tennessee chain of barbecue joints, the Neelys unveil their first cookbook, full of 120 recipes that pull back the curtain on their award-winning seasonings, sauce, and fixings. Emphasizing their personal story and family recipes, this cookbook is brimming with down-home personality and dishes that are "simple, stylish, and not too fussy." Family stories, wise sourcing tips and plenty of commentary from Pat and Gina make this a warm, welcome addition to any cooking library's Southern shelf.

Baseball Hall of Famer Willie Mays is one of baseball's endearing greats, a tremendously talented and charismatic center fielder who hit 660 career home runs, collected 3,283 hits, knocked in 1,903 runs, won 12 Gold Glove Awards and appeared in 24 All-Star games. But before Mays was the "Say Hey Kid", he was just a boy. Willie's Boys is the story of his remarkable 1948 rookie season with the Negro American League's Birmingham Black Barons, who took a risk on a raw but gifted 16-year-old and gave him the experience, confidence, and connections to escape Birmingham's segregation, navigate baseball's institutional racism, and sign with the New York Giants. Willie's Boys offers a character-rich narrative of the apprenticeship Mays had at the hands of a diverse group of savvy veterans who taught him the ways of the game and the world.

With great power, passion and at a thrilling, breakneck pace, Swanson (Lincoln's Assassins: Their Trial and Execution) conjures up an exhausted yet jubilant nation ruptured by grief, stunned by tragedy and hell-bent on revenge. For 12 days, assisted by family and some women smitten by his legendary physical beauty, Booth relied on smarts, stealth and luck to elude the best detectives, military officers and local police the federal government could muster. Taking the reader into the action, the story is shot through with breathless, vivid, even gory detail. With a deft, probing style and no small amount of swagger, Swanson, a member of the Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, has crafted pure narrative pleasure, sure to satisfy the casual reader and Civil War aficionado alike.

This is a beautiful book. The photographer/author shows the Cove in its majesty and wonder in all four seasons. In Cades Cove: Window to a Secret World we see the wildlife, trees, flowers and historic buildings of this spot in the Smoky Mountains National Park. The author tells about some of the hundreds of people who lived in the Cove until the National Parks preserved the area for us to visit. I cannot begin to tell you what a marvelous book this is. You must see it for yourself. Go to www.BillLea.com for examples of this photographer's work. Then borrow the book. Cades Cove: Window to a Secret World.leaves one with a feeling of awe which is brought back when viewing these colorful and well composed photos. Visit the people who lived there as you read their stories- stories of friendship, kinship, loyalty and love for each other and the land.
– Beth Hutcheson, Homewwod

From Publishers Weekly
In a widely reported incident in 2006, Laura Van Ryn and Whitney Cerak, students at an evangelical college in Indiana, and their families were victims of a ghastly mistake: the wrong girl was identified as the survivor of a car crash that claimed multiple lives. Only after five weeks, when the girl emerged from a coma, was the error discovered. The families and the survivor, Whitney, record their experiences in this heavily Christian account.
Simply Chocolate: Sixty, Nutty, Creamy Creations by the editors of Southern Living
Satisfy all of your chocolate cravings with this mouthwatering collection of the best-of-the-best recipes from the chocolate experts at Southern Living magazine. Our food staff chose these recipes from thousands of chocolate recipes that we've published over the years. Take your pick from a tempting variety: extravagant chocolate cakes, chocolate bars that take only 10 minutes to make, ooey-gooey candies, and more.

All review material not provided by librarians has been pulled from www.amazon.com.

There are several good professional resources available in the county for nonfiction reader's advisory:




Nonfiction Reader's Advisory edited by Robert Burgin


*What is your favorite nonfiction title of all time? What nonfiction has captured your interest lately?*

Happy reading (and advising!)
Holley
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