Library News and Notable New Books

It's time for the Crawfordsville Library's Adult Summer Reading Kickoff. This year readers will be moving around a big "Readopoly" board and playing for choice weekly prize packages which include books and special prizes from local contributors. Sign ups begin June 14th at the Circulation Desk. Earliest signers get a special bonus prize.

Local prize contributors are Arthur's, Athens Nutrition and Smoothies, Caldwell's Sew and Vac, Creekside Lodge, Bindings and Grindings, China Inn, Family Video, Friends of the Library, heathcliff, The Iron Gate, Joey's, La Rose on Main, Little Mexico, McDonalds, Milligan's, Taylor Lanes, and Vanity Theater. Their support is very much appreciated.

New books feature celebrities and their pictures. "The Genius and the Goddess" by Jeffrey Meyers presents an intimate portrait of the ultimate tragedy of Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller's short marriage. "This Time Together" by Carol Burnett is subtitled "laughter and reflection" telling the story of her rise in show business and the people she's met along the way. She adds anecdotes from the hilarious to the heartbreaking. "Paul and Me" is A. E. Hotchner's tale of his 53 years of adventures and misadventures with his pal, Paul Newman, including starting Newman's Own as a prank. "Star" by Peter Biskind tells how Warren Beatty seduced America as one of the most ambitious and successful stars in Hollywood. Four short books by Hollywood-story writer David Thomson are "Ingrid Bergman", "Humphrey Bogart", "Bette Davis", and "Gary Cooper". "Tiger Woods Syndrome" by Bruns and Richards analyzes why men prowl and how to not become the prey. It begins with a quiz for the reader then offers information about different kinds of people and guides for their successful pursuits of relationships.

In "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness" Mitt Romney asserts that American strength is essential - not just for our own well-being, but for the world's. He proposes solutions to restore economic vitality, create good jobs, reduce out-of-control spending, improve education, and rebuild the military. Harry Markopolos' "No One Would Listen" is the financial thriller showing his attempts to warn the government, the industry, and the financial press that the largest and most successful hedge fund was a total fraud. An uplifting story of her mother, determined to die on her own terms, and the family who has to learn to let her go, is the composition by daughter Zoe Fitzgerald Carter called "Imperfect Endings".

Another adventure is Christopher Heaney's "Cradle of Gold" about Hiram Bingham, a real-life Indiana Jones, and the search for Machu Picchu. The lingering question today is "Who owns Inca history?" How about "Black Sun" by Geoffrey Wolff about Harry Crosby who was the godson of J. P. Morgan and center of the wild life of the Lost Generation in Paris. Crosby directed the Black Sun Press, which published James Joyce among others. In 1929 he shot his girlfriend, the recent bride of another man, and then himself.

Switching to creatures great and small, "Cranes" is Janice Hughes' natural history of a bird in crisis, another book in this list with beautiful pictures. Philip Hoare's "The Whale" has won the BBC Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction. Inspired by Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick", Hoare explores the troubled history of man and whale at New Bedford, Nantucket, and the Azores. He wants to know why these animals still exert such a powerful hold on our imagination.