Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

There are many new commentaries. John Stossel says “NO They Can’t: Why Government Fails – But Individuals Succeed”. “Ripley’s Believe It or Not! (8), Strikingly True” and “Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Special Edition 2012” come from Ripley Entertainment, Inc. “Talking Back to Facebook” by James Steyer is “the common sense guide to raising kids in the digital age”. “iDisorder” is Larry Rosen’s treatise about understanding our obsession with technology and overcoming its hold on us. Stedman Graham has written “Identity: Your Passport to Success”. The Reader’s Digest has issued “How to Do Just About Anything”. Jonah Goldberg’s “The Tyranny of Cliches” questions “progress”.

New nonfiction also offers enticing destinations. Retired Head of the Field Services Section of the Indiana Geological Survey Samuel Frushour’s “A Guide to Caves and Karst of Indiana” (karst being a landscape characterized by sinkholes, sinking streams, springs, cave entrances etc.) analyzes the features of places generally southward from Putnam County to the Ohio River. Some locations are Marengo Cave in Crawford County, Squire Boone Caverns in Harrison County, and Little Wyandotte Cave, Crawford County. “The Lonely Planet Guide to the Philippines” and “Frommer’s Nashville & Memphis” highlight other destinations.

Activities are “Cutting-Edge Cycling” by Allen Hunter as well as “Complete Triathlon Guide” compiled by Triathlon’s national governing body USA.

Next are autobiographies. “Agatha Christie” (with a CD) is the Queen of Mystery’s memoir started in 1950 and finished 15 years later when she was 75 years old. She remembers Victorian England, her volunteer work during World War II, and the inspiration for her two most famous characters, Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple. Nikki Haley, Governor of South Carolina has written “Can’t Is Not an Option: My American Story”. Diane Keaton’s “Then Again” “does away with the star’s ‘me’ and replaces it with a daughter’s ‘I’”. Kevin Mitnick’s “Ghost in the Wires” tells about his adventures as the world’s most wanted hacker.

Biographies begin with Douglas Brinkley’s “Cronkite”. Mark Kurlansky’s “Birdseye”, the story of Clarence Birdseye’s development of freezing to preserve foods, his electric sunlamp, an improved incandescent light bulb, a harpoon gun to tag finback whales, and a way to make paper from leftover pulp are still in use today. “Dwight Yoakam”, virtuosic vocalist, superb writer, and live performer “too country for rock, too rock for country” identifies influences described by his biographer Don McLeese. An earlier subject by H. W. Brands is “The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr”, described as a man before his time and a proponent of equality between the sexes.