Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable Newer Books

The Crawfordsville Library is developing unique and exciting plans for this year's summer programs. The theme is "Readopoly". Youth activities featuring weekly prizes, crafts, story times, and family game nights begin June 1st and conclude on July 13th. The climax will be a performance showing "The Bubble Truck". The adult reading program challenge will open June 14th and wind up on August 31st.

New cookbooks include appealing pictures. "Soup" by Diane Worthington promotes Williams Sonoma dishes. "Butter Sugar Flour Eggs" is the title of Gale Gand's collection of "whimsical irresistible desserts". "The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook" by Nancy Jenkins advocates vegetables, fruits, nuts, cereals, olive oil, fish, and some wine. "The Ultimate Tea Diet" to burn fat and lose pounds fast and forever, comes from Mark "Dr. Tea" Ukra, and he says, "Tea reduces your appetite and stimulates your metabolism." "Eat Carbs, Lose Weight" by Denise Austin is a 4-week plan. The authorized biography "Alice Waters & Chez Panisse" by Thomas McNamee tells the story of her restaurant's fresh food revolution in Berkeley, CA that spread across the nation.

In the spring, plants attract our attention. "The New Terrarium" by Tovah Martin is about creating beautiful displays in all kinds of containers. "Making More Plants" promotes the science, art, and joy of propagation, as Kenneth Druse shows with colorful photographs.

"Amazing Awaits" is the official publication of the United States Olympic Committee about Team USA at the games of the XXIX Olympiad at Beijing in 2008 with color photographs of the venues and events, along with each participant's statistics. "Universal Studios Monsters: A Legacy of Horror" by Michael Mallory covers the filming of movies from the 1920s through the 1950s, including biographies of major personalities, interviews with surviving actors and studio employees, and many behind-the-scenes photos.

"The Poison King" by Adrienne Mayor is the life and legend of Rome's deadliest enemy Mithradates who knew how to foil assassination attempts and eliminate rivals as a military genius who seized Greece and what is now Turkey in 88 B.C. "The Strong Horse" by Lee Smith tells about power, politics, and the clash of Arab civilizations today.

Robert Ferrell's "Five Days in October" is the World War I story of the Lost Battalion of 500 men of the 77th Division entrapped for a week in October, 1918 by German forces at a ravine in the Argonne Forest; the facts are known as the most poignant incident of the American part in the war, and its biggest newspaper story. In "The 250th Field Artillery Men Remember World War II" Ruby Gwin reviews what she calls a "Tradition of Caring" written with a lump in her throat. Eric Blehm's "The Only Thing Worth Dying For" tells how 11 Green Berets forged a new Afghanistan through uncommon bravery and terrible sacrifice. Barbara Demick's "Nothing to Envy" tells about ordinary lives in North Korea as citizens realize their government has betrayed them. Last is Kati Marton's "Enemies of the People" a true life thriller exposing the cruel mechanics of the Communist Terror State in Budapest; (she wrote "The Great Escape").

The translated (from Spanish) "The Angel's Game" by Carlos Zafon is a novel about obsession in a house in Spain, as a young writer finds material about the mysterious death of a previous owner. Lydie Salvayre's "Portrait of the Writer as A Domesticated Animal" is also a translation (from French) about the biographer of an egotistic fast-food magnate.