Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

Henry Kissinger's new book "On China" tells about the country he has known intimately for decades, and whose modern relations with the West he helped shape. His conversations with Chinese leaders over the past forty years introduce his ideas on the consequences of the global balance of power in our present century. He illuminates the inner workings of Chinese diplomacy during the Sino-Soviet alliance, the Korean War, Richard Nixon's trip to Beijing, and three crises in the Taiwan Strait.

History is offered in A. J. Langguth’s "Driven West” describing four of the most turbulent decades in the growth of our nation, namely Andrew Jackson's presidency, the Cherokees' Trail of Tears, the Mexican War, and the Civil War itself; later history comes in James Hornfischer's story of the U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal in World War II called “Neptune’s Inferno.” American soldier of fortune “Homer Lea” became a world-renowned military leader, according to Lawrence Kaplan, who followed his life story from being part of the Restore the Emperor movement in San Francisco to serving as trusted advisor to Sun Yet-Sen during the Chinese republican revolution that overthrew the Manchu dynasty and ushered in the creation of the Republic of China.

"I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works" by Nick Bilton tells why our world, work, and brains are being disrupted by immediacy that trumps quality and quantity, how the news media influence us, how new gadgets impact us, how selfishness figures in, and how people want experiences instead of content. In "The Master Switch" Tim Wu writes about the rise and fall of information empires, noting that since American industries like the telephone have eventually been taken captive by some monopoly or cartel, could the Internet come to that too? He says this is a war we dare not tune out. "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin reports on a year she spent trying to do "things that really matter"; improving her life, what she found out is charming to read. The life of Cab Calloway, the happy entertainer (who was one of the highest earning African American bandleaders who honed his gifts of scat singing) is told in "Hi-de-ho" (his famous call) by Alyn Shipton.

In "America's Four Gods" Paul Froese says that 95% of Americans believe in God, that the nation's greatest rifts are not between atheists and believers or between those of different faiths, instead they are about differing beliefs about God. Mike Huckabee, Arkansas governor, now Fox News Channel talk show host, offers "A Simple Government" with "twelve things we really need from Washington (and a trillion that we don't!")

John Szwed's "Alan Lomax" follows the man who recorded the world of folk music and brought it to America's people, and describes how he produced concerts and ballad operas that daringly featured both black and white singers in order to establish the richness of the folk song as the foundation for a new pop culture.

Three mysteries beckon. John Sandford's "Bad Blood" follows Virgil Flowers as he investigates a death in a grain elevator bin in Minnesota. J.D. Robb's "Indulgence in Death" begins because NYPD Lieutenant Eve Dallas' Irish vacation is disrupted when a limousine driver is found dead in a car booked by a security company executive. "The Hidden" by Bill Pronzini tells of random murders committed by the Coastline Killer in northern California. "Dropped Dead Stitch" is a knitting mystery that includes two recipes by Maggie Sefton. The story takes place in Colorado, when friends retreat to the Poudre Canyon to relax with a recent attack victim, and find the criminal there.

Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

New Commentaries, Advice, Knitting Projects, Stories - This week’s article about the Crawfordsville Library offers various kinds of reading for midsummer leisure.

"Crossing with the Virgin: Stories from the Migrant Trail" by Kathryn Ferguson tells about the courageous journeys of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and about U.S. citizens who are erasing those borders with acts of mercy and defiance. Deborah Lipstadt's "The Eichmann Trial" presents and analyzes perspectives of Holocaust survivors’ tales when Adolf Eichmann was tried in Jerusalem by an Israeli court after finally being arrested in Argentina in 1960. The Scripture is communicated and "God's truth glows" in D. A. Carson's "Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus."

Steven Sack’s "The Employee Rights Handbook" has effective legal strategies to protect one's job from interview to pink slip. "Working for Yourself" from Nolo is about law and taxes for independent contractors, freelancers, and consultants. "101 Things I Learned in Fashion School" by Alfredo Cabrera presents every aspect of the industry: trends, design, costs, production, marketing, pricing, and more, in short paragraphs on separate pages. "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming" by Mike Brown is a humorous look at the phenomenon when he discovered a planet slightly bigger than Pluto, resulting in a whole new category of "dwarf planets."

The first of six novels is David Abbott's "The Upright Piano Player" about all the ways in which life tests us, no matter how carefully we've constructed our own little safeguards; the main character is a successful man facing retirement. Rosamund Lupton's "Sister" is a compelling tale of a sibling going wherever necessary to prove that her sis was not a suicide as everyone else had concluded. Dale Cramer's "Paradise Valley" is an Amish tale recalling 1921 when a new law in Ohio forced a family to the wilds of Mexico where the government wouldn't interfere with their way of life or take away their children.

"The Sentry" is a Joe Pike novel from Robert Crais about whether gangs can be trusted; the writing tackles grand themes with defined believable characters in his championship crime series. Laura Childs' Cackleberry Club mystery called "Bedeviled Eggs" (recipes included) finds three widows opening their café at the same time as two murders cause them to investigate and “serve” justice. The plot of "The Raising" by Laura Kasischke starts with the car-accident death of an outstanding college coed.

Here are four colorful new knitting books. Jean Adel's "Knitted Critters for Kids to Wear" teaches 40 animal-themed accessories. "The Knitter's Year" features 52 make-in-a-week projects, both quick gifts and seasonal knits by Debbie Bliss. "Mason-Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines" begins with rule number one: "Knitting is spoze to be fun. Of course, the longer we knit, the more the definition of fun expands." This book boasts new and clever ideas to read about, whether or not you actually are a knitter. "Haiku Knits" from Tanya Alpert contains direction for 25 "serenely beautiful patterns inspired by Japanese design". These are examples of high-fashion wearable art. "Continuous Cables" is Melissa Leapman's "exploration of knitted cabled knots, rings, swirls, and curlicues" in 20 designs plus an all-original stitch dictionary. These four will entertain you for a whole evening before you settle on one pattern. "The Knitting Diaries" is a book of three new stories, "The Twenty-First Wish" by Debbie Macomber, "Coming Unraveled” by Susan Mallery, and "Return to Summer Island" by Christina Skye, each one with a pattern to knit.

Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

Librarians Process New Fiction Requests - Jean Auel's "The Land of Painted Caves" brings her ice-age epic Earth's Children series to a conclusion when people are learning to work and live together in a daily life challenged by the hunt for food, surviving long journeys, and developing healing skills. Ben Kane's "The Road to Rome" recreates the Forgotten Legion of 48 B.C; you'll meet Romulus' twin sister Fabviola and read about important events happening on the Ides of March. "Nightshade" by P.C. Doherty visits 1304 A.D. in January when a very dangerous mission features an ornate cross stolen from the Templars during the Crusades. "The Law of Angels" by Cassandra Clark brings medieval Europe alive during year 1385 in York, England. Large print versions of these three stories are also available.

"Though Not Dead" by Dana Stabenow is a Kate Shugak novel (for those who might have read her other 17 in the series). The map of Alaska's largest National Park will help readers follow Kate as she hunts for a murdered man's father, a hunt that helps explain major historical events in Alaska's history. "Mystery" by Jonathan Kellerman is an Alex Delaware piece; this time we're in Los Angeles where Alex finds himself drawn into a twisting, shadowy whodunit as a hotel in Beverly Hills is closing, and it’s "last" gathering includes a "striking young woman" who, we find, dies two days later.

Michael Connelly's "The Fifth Witness" is a new story in his Lincoln Lawyer series; a criminal defense lawyer accepts a client accused of killing the banker she blames for trying to take away her home, so suspense builds immediately. We also have a new Rita Mae Brown/ Sneaky Pie (cat) Brown mystery called "Hiss of Death" in which pet accomplices aid in the solution of the 19th murder, this time in a hospital.

But we're not done with mysteries. Erin Brockovich offers a debut thriller "Rock Bottom" in a new series featuring environmental plots (surprise!) this time mountaintop removal mining.

"The Silver Boat" by Luanne Rice is about three sisters meeting to say good-bye to the family beach home on Martha's Vineyard. "I'll Walk Alone" is Mary Higgins Clark's look at identity theft in Manhattan. A quilted frontispiece decorates Susan Wiggs' "The Goodbye Quilt" story, which tells how mother/daughter closeness needs not cease when the daughter is grown.

Danielle Steel's "44 Charles Street" shows a magical transformation in a turn-of-the-century house in Manhattan's West Village where strangers become roommates, roommates become friends, and friends become a family. "The Sixth Man" by David Baldacci features defense attorneys challenged when it looks like their subject killed a lawyer helping his case. The highest levels of government are involved in "A Heartbeat Away". Michael Palmer's plot involves a virus inserted in the Capitol Building on the night of the President's State of the Union address. "On Borrowed Time", David Rosenfelt's story of an ordinary man trapped in a nightmare after his fiancée disappears. "Quicksilver" is book two in the Looking Glass Trilogy by Amanda Quick in which a Victorian "glass-reader" and a psychic investigator play a deadly game of cat-and-mouse as a killer plots to trap them.
Carol Edgarian's "Three Stages of Amazement" studies two divergent couples in San Francisco, one at the top of the hill as Silicon Valley titans the other, "below", estranged from these relatives and struggling.

Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

It's convenient to learn about upcoming events at home by visiting the Crawfordsville District Public Library website at www.cdpl.lib.in.us. Meeting rooms can be reserved at www.cdpl.lib.in.us/meetingrooms/rooms.html, and books can be renewed by emailing circ@cdpl.lib.in.us.

There are many library books that speak to ideas and theories. For instance, "The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry)" by Siva Vaidhyanathan explains how we have embraced "information" and exposes the dark side, raising red flags about issues of intellectual property; he proposes the construction of an Internet ecosystem designed to benefit the whole world and keep one company from falling into the "evil" it has pledged to avoid (its much-quoted motto, "Don't be evil"). "Turn & Jump" by Howard Mansfield refers to Thomas Edison before whom light and fire were thought to be one and the same. This book takes time and place, and shows how they, too, were once inseparable (before the railroads brought about the creation of time zones in 1883) and onward. Rob Bell's "Love Wins" is a book about heaven, hell, and the fate of every person who ever lived and the book's aim is to offer a richer, grander, and more spiritually satisfying way to understanding heaven, hell, God, Jesus, salvation, and repentance. John Gray's "The Immortalization Commission" takes a look at humankind's dangerous striving toward a scientific version of immortality.

Here are new history books. Francis Fukuyama's "The Origins of Political Order" from pre-human times to the French Revolution brings fresh insights into the origins of democratic societies. "1861: The Civil War Awakening" by Adam Goodheart says inside the cover, "As the United States marks the 150th anniversary of our defining national drama, '1861' presents a gripping and original account of how the Civil War began". He sees how the period inspired a new generation to do the unthinkable in the name of an ideal. "Wait for Me!" is Deborah Mitford's memoir as the Duchess of Devonshire who had tea with Adolf Hitler, inherited vast estates, and brought a great house back to life in the 1960s' age of splendor.

Garrison Keillor's "Good Poems, American Places" is a new collection of poetry he's compiled about specific locations like Barbara Hamby's "Ode to Hardware Stores", W. S. Merwin's "227 Waverly Place", Howard Nemerov's "To His Piano." "She Walks in Beauty: A Woman's Journey through Poems" is a group of selections chosen by and introduced by Caroline Kennedy. She commemorates her challenges and joys of being a woman in sections celebrating the important elements of life's journey.

Next: manuals. "100 Questions & Answers about Hip Replacement" from Stuart Fischer; "Long Term Care: How to Plan & Pay for It" by J. L. Matthews; "The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide"; "The Guinness World Records 2011"; "Social Networking Spaces: From Facebook to Twitter and Everything In Between" by Todd Kelsey; and "The Mayo Clinic Diet".

Wynonna Judd's first novel "Restless Heart" follows a girl seeking fame as a performing singer who has to pay the price but does reconnect with what matters most. "Room" by Emma Donoghue shows us the happy world of a child with make-believe roommates in his bedroom, as opposed to his mother's misery at being stuck there and knowing he can't be contained much longer. "Sing You Home" the story accompanied by a CD by Jodi Picoult has the theme "For better or for worse, music is the language of memory. It is also the language of love."