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Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable Newer Books

A new project about old local schools needs your help. The Crawfordsville Library reference staff will display memorabilia of former county high schools in April. Since many schools were consolidated in the early 1970s, the project's aim is to preserve their histories along with material about staffs and students. The schools involved were Alamo, Bowers, Breaks, Coal Creek Central, Darlington, Ladoga, Linden, Mace, New Market, New Richmond, New Ross, Smartsburg, Waveland, Waynetown, and Wingate. There will always be interest in these earlier educational places. Have you any memorabilia, pictures, or items that you'd be willing to allow to be copied, scanned, or borrowed? Especially sought are yearbooks, photos, commencement programs, and sports memorabilia. Will you bring your treasures to the second floor reference desk? The staff will appreciate this help. There are also questionnaires there where you can write your memories and thus document them for our local history collection. Thank you.

History always attracts many readers. Peter Ackroyd's biography called "Thames" looks like a charming group of short, lively chapters connecting the river with its towns, personages and residences, bridges and docks, locks and weirs along its 215-mile run. "The Lost History of Christianity" is Philip Jenkins' study of the thousand-year golden age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia "and how it died". "We need to recover those memories, to restore that history...the chain of memory is resurrection."

The official biography of "The Queen Mother" by William Shawcross "is as well, a singular history of Britain in the twentieth century." DK Books has issued "War" from ancient Egypt to Iraq credited to editorial consultant Saul David, "with all its momentous, world-changing impact and extraordinary human stories." "Imperial" contains William T. Vollmann's photos of the Mexican-American border, its people and their struggles during its three great empires. "A Country of Vast Designs" by Robert Merry is about President Polk, the Mexican War, and the conquest of the American continent. In "The American Civil War" military history, John Keegan considers "its lingering conundrums: the continuation of fighting for four years between such vastly mismatched sides" and all the effects that have eluded earlier historiography. "The Remains of Company D" by James Nelson follows this part of the US First Division in World War II from enlistment to combat at Cantigny, Soisson, and the Meuse-Argonne and those battles' effects. Nicholas Weber's "The Bauhaus Group" is a study of the six masters of modernism in art during the 1920s and 1930s in Germany, (closed by the Gestapo).

"When Everything Changed" is the amazing journey of American women from 1960 to the present, presented by Gail Collins. She says change began when most had to get their husbands' permission to apply for a credit card.

Skipping on to today, here is nonfiction that serves our latest needs. "Facebook me!" is a guide to having fun with your friends and promoting your projects. Wei-Meng Lee helps us get "Windows 7: Up and Running". "Super Freakonomics" is Steven Levitt's book about global cooling and all the other crises of today; it challenges the way we think, exploring the "hidden side of everything". "The Tyranny of E-Mail" is John Freeman's look at the history of correspondence through the ages. "Highest Duty" is US Airways Captain Chesley Sullenberger's discussion about his search for what really matters.

Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable Newer Books

Seeking some new entertainment? At the Crawfordsville Library, DVDs are very popular. Here are some new arrivals: "Bolt" (Walt Disney), "Couples Retreat" (Vince Vaughn), "Year One" (Jack Black), "Angels & Demons"(Tom Hanks), "Public Enemies" (Johnny Depp), "The Taking of Pelham 123" (Denzel Washington), "Appaloosa" (Viggo Mortensen), "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (Brad Pitt), "The Secret Life of Bees" (Queen Latifah), and "Zombieland" (Woody Harrelson).

James Patterson's new book "The Murder of King Tut" is a nonfiction thriller reopening that "ultimate" cold case. Mitch Albom's "Have a Little Faith" is a true story about a definition of the word "church".

Iris Johansen's "Blood Game" is an Eve Duncan forensic thriller about a Georgia senator's murdered daughter. "The Scarpetta Factor" by Patricia Cornwell poses a huge challenge for the senior forensic analyst at CNN. "Nine Dragons" by Michael Connelly finds a LAPD detective involved in the murder of a store owner whose motto is "Happy is the man who finds refuge in himself". Danielle Steel's "Southern Lights" offers a D.A. in Manhattan assigned to protect her own threatened daughter from a hardened criminal. In Anne Rice’s “Angel Time”, a seraph teaches a contract killer how to learn salvation from 13th century England. Two families awaken to find their little girls missing in "The Weight of Silence" by Heather Gudenkauf; the answer comes from unspoken family secrets.

In Dorothea Frank's "Return to Sullivan's Island" a new college graduate learns how her loyal family and friends can help her adjustment to a serious change in life experience. "Secrets She Left Behind" by Diane Chamberlain also deals with struggles to be healed after a family crisis. "Beach Trip" by Cathy Holton tells how much rich experience comes from a reunion of four friends that begins at a lavish North Carolina setting.

New fiction is located on the "New Books" shelves east of the library entrance outside the reading room. "Generosity" by Richard Powers explores the happiness of a young Algerian woman in a Chicago creative writing class who is a refugee from perpetual terror. "Shades of Blue" by Karen Kingsbury finds a contented fiance suddenly disturbed that he has left his first love. "Half Broke Horses" is a true-life novel by Jeannette Walls about her own grandmother who began helping her father break horses at age five and went on to run a vast ranch in Arizona, raising two children, one of whom is Jeannette's mother who was portrayed in "The Glass Castle".

"Transition" by Iain Banks is science fiction suspended between the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers. "Dracula the Un-Dead" by Dacre Stoker is the sequel to the original classic "that will resonate with readers of the original as well as modern fans." "Hard Rain Falling" by Don Carpenter follows the tough adventures of an orphaned teenager living off his wits in the worst area of Portland, Oregon. Robert Hicks' "A Separate Country" is a post-Civil War novel set in New Orleans and based on the love story of Confederate general John Bell Hood and his wife, Anna Marie. "True Blue" by David Baldacci shows a successful D.C. cop attempting to redeem her status after two years in prison.