Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

Do You Remember the Photographer Nellie Coutant? - Crawfordsville Library reference librarian Jodie Wilson is researching Nellie Coutant, an amateur photographer from Crawfordsville, active especially from 1900-1915. Her works were published in many photography magazines of her day, and her pictures were critically acclaimed in newspapers such as the Washington Post. Her photographs were sold locally, and for many years she was a secretary at the Supreme Tribe of Ben Hur. Please contact Jodie (362-2242, extension 117) if you have any information about Nellie Coutant, or have any photographs taken by her. Thanks!

Four new cookbooks draw the eye as well as the tummy. Ideas in Lourdes Castro's "Simply Mexican" look enticing, like Chile-Smothered Shrimp Skewers, Creamy Chicken Chipotle Salad, Tortilla Soup, and other simple but colorful fare. "Tacos" by Mark Miller offers 72 authentic recipes for simple combinations like bacon and eggs and different meats with vegetables. "Martha Stewart's Dinner at Home" contains 52 quick meals to cook for family and friends, arranged by the four seasons. "Julia's Kitchen Wisdom" holds essential techniques and recipes from Julia Child's lifetime of cooking that represent her forty years of collaboration with colleagues and friends. This doesn't go into complicated subjects like French puff pastry. Instead it’s a mini aid for general home cookery aimed at those who are tolerably familiar with culinary language.

New guide books include the 2011 edition of "What Color is Your Parachute?" the popular manual for job-hunters and career-changers. "Handspinning" (twisting fiber into thread) by Judith McCuin teaches two-page lessons and shows all the products involved. The "2011 Novel & Short Story Writer's Market" has a thousand listings to help sell fiction, and offers a free online subscription. Cesar Millan's "A Member of the Family" is a new guide to living with a happy, healthy dog.

New Mobil travel guides are "Southern Great Lakes" and "Great Plains" with lists of resorts, inns, good food, sightseeing, where to go and what to see and do.

The Annie Casey Foundation "2010 Kids Count" data book contains statistics of children's situations in our fifty states, and trends in health and family care. "Broke, USA" tells how the working poor became big business, from pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. Gary Rivlin writes about our Great Crash of 2008 when these kinds of businesses expanded and grew, taking advantage of an era of deregulation to devise high-priced products to sell to the credit-hungry working poor.

The story of the awful Mann Gulch fire of 1949 in the Montana wilderness filled Norman Maclean's last fourteen years of study so he could record twelve Smokejumpers' deaths in "Young Men & Fire" when only three of the United States Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters survived. "Voices from the Vietnam War" by Xiaobing Li is made up of stories from American, Asian, and Russian veterans. Oral histories from 22 individuals representing multiple political beliefs and perspectives focus on personal combat experiences, offering a deep understanding of America's longest war with nearly 1.5 million military casualties and more than 4 million civilian casualties.

Here are requested novels newly placed on the main floor shelves. James Patterson and Swedish writer Liza Marklund's "The Postcard Killers" is called the scariest vacation thriller ever written. An NYPD detective tours Europe's great cities, all the while seeing each historic site through the eyes of his daughter's killer. His daughter and her boyfriend were killed in Rome, and since that event more touring couples have been found dead in other cities. So the detective teams up with a Swedish reporter to predict where the next victims will be.

Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

A New Book Features Maurine Watkins - This article could focus on one new book, Douglas Perry's "The Girls of Murder City" about fame, lust, and the beautiful killers who inspired the play "Chicago". Much of the text tells about one of our local authors whose name is inscribed on the outside of our library's Washington Street façade.

Perry's book depicts Chicago during 1924 with frequent deaths in the Second City, the gangland capital of the world, where a pair of murders attracted special attention. To Maurine Watkins, "a minister's daughter from tiny Crawfordsville, Indiana, big-city life offered unimagined excitement," and "within weeks of starting at the Chicago Tribune she found herself embroiled in two scandalous, sex-fueled murder cases." Perry lists Maurine as his first "Character": aspiring playwright-blonde, comely and chic: a pleasant way to be." Her play "Chicago" opened at the Music Box Theatre in New York on December 30th, 1926, and from then on, fame followed Maurine's work, and "Chicago" won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2002

Ben Macintyre's "Operation Mincemeat" is a World War II thriller about how a dead man and a bizarre plan fooled the Nazis into thinking that Allied forces were planning to attack southern Europe in Greece or Sardinia, rather than Sicily, as the Nazis had assumed, and the Allies ultimately chose. "Helluva Town" is Richard Goldstein's story of New York City during World War II, capturing the youthful electricity of wartime, and the important role New York played in the national war effort.

"Veil of Night" by Linda Howard hints that a "bridezilla" bride with tantrums is brutally murdered and everyone involved with the ceremony is accusing one another of doing the deed (the large-print version is also available). Sandra Brown's "Tough Customer" is a search for a stalker threatening to kill a private investigator's daughter. "Death on the D-List" is a Halley Dean mystery by Nancy Grace; this time the prosecutor faces a group of waning T.V. celebrities being "knocked off" one by one. Thrill writer Robin Cook's medical examiner faces a dangerous puzzle involving organized crime and start-up biotech companies' espionage in "Cure". "Fly Away Home" by Jennifer Weiner is a blend of heartbreak and hilarity showing a family with multiple social crises.

On to some special inspirational books, "One More Theory about Happiness" by Paul Guest explains his wonderful and successful life after being paralyzed at the age of 12. Bruce Feiler's eleventh book "The Council of Dads" is an unselfish concept to help his children (and all children). Jancee Dunn's "Why is my Mother Getting a Tattoo?" is about coming to grips with getting older, and analyzing people's "developed opinions".

John Wooden's "Coach Wooden's Pyramid of Success" is his unique and invaluable guide to life showing key values and building blocks leading from confidence to faith. Christopher McDougall's "Born to Run" features a hidden tribe, the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico's Copper Canyons, who run hundreds of miles without rest and have uncanny health and serenity.

In "Ferraris for All" Daniel Ben-Ami argues that the whole of humanity should have access to the best the world has to offer, that economic growth helps everyone everywhere on the social ladder, when in some quarters prosperity is accused of encouraging greed, and widening social inequalities.

In "The Titanic Awards" Doug Lansky celebrates the worst of travel: the worst airline food, dirtiest beach, rudest waiters, most overrated attractions and worst drivers.