Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

The Library is Keeping Children Busy - Children's Librarian Karen Record reports that in the first week of its First Annual Winter Reading Program, the Youth Services Department at the Crawfordsville Library has signed up 79 children, toddlers through 5th graders. The goal is to read 14 books, winning prizes on the way, and building a snowman part-by-part on the three huge posters which offer each participant display space. Come any time through January to participate. Library hours are 9-9 Mondays through Thursdays, 9-5 Fridays and Saturdays, Sundays 1-5.

New books take us back to our American leaders. In "There I Grew Up: Remembering Abraham Lincoln's Indiana Youth" President Lincoln's skills are revealed through the words of those who knew him. This Indiana Historical Society Press book comes from William Bartelt from his years of experience with the Lincoln Boyhood Memorial and service as Vice Chair of the Indiana Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

Ron Chernow's "Washington: A Life" has "a breadth and depth matched by no other one-volume life" of our First President, Chernow sees his "fraught relationship with his crusty mother, his youthful infatuation with the married Sally Fairfax, and his often conflicted feelings toward his adopted children and grandchildren". But Chernow also respects his political genius to inspire people, which was so important in shaping the new nation.

How about reading "Pops" a biography of Louis Armstrong, by author and Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout? Publishers Weekly says the "portrait reminds us why we fell in love with Armstrong's music in the first place." "Condoleezza Rice" is the former Secretary of State's autobiography of her extraordinary, ordinary family, with memories addressed to young people. "Hollywood's Original Rat Pack" by Stephen Jordan gives us a view of the group that included John and Lionel Barrymore, Errol Flynn, W. C. Fields, Anthony Quinn, Ben Hecht, John Carradine and Burgess Meredith. They became known as the Bundy Drive Boys for their individuality, uniqueness, sentimentality, and carefree and reckless activities as Tinseltown's original troublemakers.

A far earlier individual who wrote free-roaming explorations of his thoughts unlike anything written before, perhaps because of his bizarre upbringing and travels, is a study of French literary giant Michel Eyquem de Montaigne in Sara Bakewell's "How to Live". There's also Marlo Thomas' "Growing up Laughing", her autobiography as daughter of TV and nightclub star Danny Thomas, and as actress-comedienne wife of Phil Donahue.

Then there's serious stuff with brilliant thoughts about the universe in Stephen Hawking's "The Grand Design". "Kubrick's Hope" is Julian Rice's study of Stanley Kubrick's optimism given in his film "2001", and whose "Eyes Wide Shut" questioned the world of logic.

Other kinds of books begin here. Gregory Benford and editors of Popular Mechanics have made the entertaining "The Wonderful Future That Never Was" a book about flying cars, mail delivery by parachute, and other predictions from the past.

"The Warmth of Other Suns" is Isabel Wilkerson's epic story of one of America's great migrations, this time the story of black citizens who from 1915 to 1970 fled the South for northern and western cities in search of a better life. She writes of general experiences and of certain individuals' thriving through their courageous and sustained work ethic.