Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable Newer Books

Youth Department Issues Invitation for Next Tuesday. Here' an upcoming treat. The Crawfordsville Library Youth Service staff announces its "Incredible Dinosaur Show" Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at 6:45 p.m. in the Donnelley Rooms on the lower level of the library. The FamilyTimeEntertainment 45-minute program educates preschoolers through 4th graders, and offers amusement with lots of children participating in the magic and silly stories. Registration is not necessary.

New library books can furnish enormous encouragement about specific problems. Chronic fatigue syndrome and related illnesses often not understood are presented to help sufferers in "Encounters with the Invisible" by Dorothy Wall. The "troubled teen industry" is analyzed for better treatment by Maia Szalavitz in "Help at Any Cost". Laurie LeComer's "A Parent's Guide to Developmental Delays" is designed to recognize and cope with delays in speech, movement, and learning.

In her memoir "The Fortune Teller's Kiss" Brenda Serotte's bout with polio becomes a combination of heartbreak and hilarity about growing up a Sephardic Jew among Ashkenazi neighbors in the Bronx. "Guinea Pig Scientists" by Leslie Dendy recalls bold self-experimenters in science and medicine. "Win the War Within" by Floyd Chilton is about an eating plan that's clinically proven to fight inflammation, the hidden cause of weight gain and chronic disease. Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma", 400 pages of considerations, also makes us think about what we should eat. "Another Day in the Frontal Lobe" is Katrina Firlik's commentary about her days as a brain surgeon. On the first page of "Please Understand Me II" David Keirsey writes "The point of this second book is that people differ from each other, and that no amount of getting after them is going to change them." It studies temperament, character, and intelligence, in other words - personality.

Stories of ten goddesses in different countries fill "Changing Woman and Her Sisters" retold by Katrin Tchana and illustrated by Trina Hyman. "Honor: A History" studies cultural honor, east and west, its decline 1914-1975, and the post-honor society, as James Bowman shows it inseparable from the story of mankind. "Solidarity for Sale" by Robert Fitch analyzes the American labor movement's failures but shows that they are not our national destiny. "Flavor of the Month" by Joel Best explains why smart people fall for fads and identifies the features of our culture that foster them. "Doc Holliday" by Gary Roberts tells the life of the paradoxical gunfighter of the Old West, (gunslinger as dentist, hero and gambling alcoholic) an enigma of life on the late 19th century frontier.

"John Paul Jones" by Evan Thomas is a penetrating biography of the sailor/hero Father of the American Navy. "It's Your Ship" is Naval Commander Michael Abrashoff's offer of top-down change for anyone trying to navigate today's uncertain business seas. The Department of the Army has issued the "U.S. Army Reconnaissance and Surveillance Handbook" designed for the military buff or even the active serviceman.

"They Called Me Mayer July" is Mayer and Barbara Kirshenblatt's colorful painted memories of a Jewish childhood in Poland before the Holocaust. Jawson Elliot's "Mirrors of the Unseen" reviews his journeys in Iran through fabled cities and remote corners, a "different" Iran.