Fall Semester Acquisitions...so far

The list below details recent acquisitions to the library collection. Many of these books and/or videos were requested by specific faculty, so if you have needs or suggestions for materials to support your classroom teaching, please let me know.

Biography

1. Beethoven : his life & music / Jeremy Siepmann. Summary: Jeremy Siepmann draws an accessible portrait of the turbulent, troubled but determined figure of Beethoven, regarded by many as the greatest composer who ever lived. And with the words comes the music: two CDs of carefully chosen pieces covering all the different genres in which Beethoven made his mark. Readers also gain access to an exclusive website that offers the musical works in full, the music of Beethoven's contemporaries, new essays and more. This revolutionary biography utilizes traditional and new media to provide a uniquely rounded portrait of the composer himself.
2. Jane Goodall : the woman who redefined man / Dale Peterson. Summary: When Louis Leakey first heard about Jane Goodall's discovery that chimps fashion and use tools, he sent her a telegram: "Now we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as human." But when Goodall first presented her discoveries at a scientific conference, she was ridiculed by the powerful chairman, who warned one of his distinguished colleagues not to be misled by her "glamour." She was too young, too blond, too pretty to be a serious scientist, and worse yet, she still had virtually no formal scientific training. She had been a secretarial school graduate whom Leakey had sent out to study chimps only when he couldn't find anyone better qualified to take the job. And he couldn't tell her what to do once she was in the field -- nobody could -- because no one before had made such an intensive and long-term study of wild apes. Dale Peterson shows clearly and convincingly how truly remarkable Goodall's accomplishments were and how unlikely it is that anyone else could have duplicated them. Peterson details not only how Jane Goodall revolutionized the study of primates, our closest relatives, but how she helped set radically new standards and a new intellectual style in the study of animal behavior. And he reveals the very private quest that led to another sharp turn in her life, from scientist to activist.
3. Mozart : his life & music / Jeremy Siepmann. Summary: In this lively and accessible biography, Jeremy Siepmann reminds us of a remarkable natural talent who was, however, all too human. Read the text and listen to two CDs containing a carefully chosen cross-section of Mozart's music. Readers also gain access to an exclusive website that offers the musical works in full, the music of Mozart's father, a detailed timeline and more. This revolutionary biography utilizes traditional and new media to provide a uniquely rounded portrait of the composer himself.
4. Shakespeare / Michael Wood. In this absorbing historical detective story, acclaimed broadcaster and historian Michael Wood takes an entirely fresh approach to the Bard's life, vividly re-creating the turbulent times through which he lived and painting a more convincing and complete portrait of the artist than has ever before been thought possible. Drawing on an extensive range of sources, Wood takes us back into the staterooms and back alleys of Elizabethan England. Marked by murderous plots and government-sponsored terror, religious divisions and rebellious movements, the Spanish Armada and the colonization of the Americas, the dramatic world in which Shakespeare moved is here conjured up like never before. We enter the lodgings where he wrote his greatest plays and meet the real-life characters who inspired his work: doctors, landladies, musicians, foreigners, and members of London's contemporary black population. With 130 illustrations, full-color and black-and-white, Shakespeare is a book to enjoy on many levels-as both a world-class work of historical investigation and a fascinating yet informative visual feast. Filled with fresh discoveries, Michael Wood's pathbreaking work gloriously reinstates the image of William Shakespeare as a thinking artist, a man who held up a mirror to his age, but who was also, as his friend Ben Jonson said, "not of an age, but for all time."
5. Unbowed : a memoir / Wangari Maathai. Summary: Hugely charismatic, humble, and possessed of preternatural luminosity of spirit, Wangari Maathai, the winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and a single mother of three, recounts her extraordinary life as a political activist, feminist, and environmentalist in Kenya. Born in a rural village in 1940, Wangari Maathai was already an iconoclast as a child, determined to get an education even though most girls were uneducated. We see her studying with Catholic missionaries, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the United States, and becoming the first woman both to earn a PhD in East and Central Africa and to head a university department in Kenya. We witness her numerous run-ins with the brutal Moi government. She makes clear the political and personal reasons that compelled her, in 1977, to establish the Green Belt Movement, which spread from Kenya across Africa and which helps restore indigenous forests while assisting rural women by paying them to plant trees in their villages. We see how Maathai’s extraordinary courage and determination helped transform Kenya's government into the democracy in which she now serves as assistant minister for the environment and as a member of Parliament. And we are with her as she accepts the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded in recognition of her "contribution to sustainable development, human rights, and peace." In Unbowed, Wangari Maathai offers an inspiriting message of hope and prosperity through self-sufficiency.
   

Nonfiction

1. The 9/11 report : a graphic adaptation / by Sid Jacobsen and Ernie Colón ; [with a foreword by Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton]. Summary: On December 5, 2005, the 9/11 Commission issued its final report card on the government's fulfillment of the recommendations issued in July 2004: one A, twelve Bs, nine Cs, twelve Ds, three Fs, and four incompletes. Here is stunning evidence that Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón, with more than sixty years of experience in the comic-book industry between them, were right: far, far too few Americans have read, grasped, and demanded action on the Commission's investigation into the events of that tragic day and the lessons America must learn. Using every skill and storytelling method Jacobson and Colón have learned over the decades, they have produced the most accessible version of the 9/11 Report. Jacobson's text frequently follows word for word the original report, faithfully captures its investigative thoroughness, and covers its entire scope, even including the Commission's final report card. Colón's stunning artwork powerfully conveys the facts, insights, and urgency of the original. Published on the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States, an event that has left no aspect of American foreign or domestic policy untouched, The 9/11 Report puts at every American's fingertips the most defining event of the century.
2. The ancestor’s tale : a pilgrimage to the dawn of evolution / Richard Dawkins. Summary: The renowned biologist and thinker Richard Dawkins presents his most expansive work yet: a comprehensive look at evolution, ranging from the latest developments in the field to his own provocative views. Loosely based on the form of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dawkins's Tale takes us modern humans back through four billion years of life on our planet. As the pilgrimage progresses, we join with other organisms at the forty "rendezvous points" where we find a common ancestor. The band of pilgrims swells into a vast crowd as we join first with other primates, then with other mammals, and so on back to the first primordial organism. Dawkins's brilliant, inventive approach allows us to view the connections between ourselves and all other life in a bracingly novel way. It also lets him shed bright new light on the most compelling aspects of evolutionary history and theory: sexual selection, speciation, convergent evolution, extinction, genetics, plate tectonics, geographical dispersal, and more. The Ancestor's Tale is at once a far-reaching survey of the latest, best thinking on biology and a fascinating history of life on Earth. Here Dawkins shows us how remarkable we are, how astonishing our history, and how intimate our relationship with the rest of the living world.
3. The buried mirror : reflections on Spain and the New World / Carlos Fuentes. Summary: From the mysterious cave drawings at Altamira to the explosive graffiti on the walls of East Los Angeles, images in Spain and the Americas speak to us of the astonishing richness and vitality of Spanish culture. Carlos Fuentes, an internationally renowned novelist and diplomat, provides a unique history of the forces that have created this remarkable culture.
4. Evolution : the triumph of an idea / Carl Zimmer. Summary: Charles Darwin's Origin of Species was beautifully written, staunchly defended, and defiantly radical. Yet it emerged long before paleontologists and geologists worked out the chronology of life on Earth, and long before biologists uncovered the molecules that underlie heredity and natural selection. Carl Zimmer's Evolution presents a rich and up-to-date view of evolution that explores the far-reaching implications of Darwin's theory and emphasizes its power, significance, and relevance to our lives today. Filled with rich narrative, award-winning science writing, and the most current information on topics ranging from Darwinian medicine and sexual selection to the origins of language, evolutionary psychology, and the controversies surrounding creationism, Evolution tells in riveting detail the story of a remarkable scientific journey, from the emergence to the triumph of an idea.
5. Evolution vs. creationism : an introduction / Eugenie C. Scott ; foreword by Niles Eldredge. Summary: Almost eighty years after the Scopes trial, the debate over the teaching of evolution continues to rage. There is no easy resolution--it is a complex topic with profound scientific, religious, educational, and legal implications. How can a student or parent understand this issue, which is such a vital part of education? Evolution vs. Creationism provides a badly needed, comprehensive, and balanced survey. Written by one of the leading advocates for the teaching of evolution in the United states, this accessible resource provides an introduction to the many facets of the current debate--the scientific evidence for evolution, the legal and educational basis for its teaching, and the various religious points of view--as well as a concise history of the evolution-creationism controversy. Each of the four sections of Evolution vs. Creationism provides a resource that will assist the reader in better understanding these issues. The first section addresses the nature of how evolution works as part of the scientific enterprise, as well as a summary of the relationship between religious beliefs and science. A section on the history of the controversy provides a handy synopsis of the lengthy struggles, from before Darwin to the present day, between advocates of creationism and the proponents of evolution. A collection of primary source documents addressing cosmology, law, education, and religious issues from all sides of the debate constitute the third section. The book concludes with a selection of resources for further information for those who wish to study the topic in more depth.
6. Fermat’s enigma : the epic quest to solve the world’s greatest mathematical problem / Simon Singh ; foreword by John Lynch. Summary: Compelling, dramatic, and entirely accessible, "Fermat's Enigma" is a mesmerizing tale of heartbreak and mastery, and one that will forever change the reader's feelings about mathematics. Simon Singh co-produced an award-winning documentary film on Fermat's Last Theorem that aired on PBS's "Nova" series.
7. Guns, germs, and steel : the fates of human societies / Jared Diamond. Summary: Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Yet his survey is binocular: one eye has the rather distant vision of the evolutionary biologist, while the other eye--and his heart--belongs to the people of New Guinea, where he has done field work for more than 30 years.
8. Modern Latin America / Thomas E. Skidmore, Peter H. Smith. Summary: Thoroughly updated and revised, the sixth edition includes a new chapter on Colombia and increased coverage of women and gender. The book also examines such topics as: the impact of 9/11 on U.S.-Latin American relations; drug trafficking; women's roles in Latin American society and politics; and the fragility and uncertainty of democracy in Latin America.
9. Nickel and dimed : on (not) getting by in America / Barbara Ehrenreich. Summary: This exposé puts human flesh on the bones of such abstractions as "living wage" and "affordable housing." Ehrenreich worked, for a month at a time, at "unskilled" jobs -- as a waitress and chambermaid in Florida, a housecleaner and nursing-home aide in Maine, a Wal-Mart clerk in Minnesota -- to report on how people survive on wages of six or seven dollars an hour. In an easy, conversational style, she brings us the daily life of the working poor and shows that their diligence and good nature cannot earn them a place to live -- a social worker advised Ehrenreich to move to a shelter -- or medical or dental care or, in some cases, enough to eat. In her last chapter, Ehrenreich suggests that the working poor are "the major philanthropists of our society," sacrificing their families, their health, their privacy, and their leisure so that the rest of us can live more cheaply and conveniently.
10. A photographer’s life : 1990-2005 / Annie Leibovitz. Summary: Presents a collection of photographs taken by American photographer Annie Leibovitz between 1990 and 2005, including portraits, candids, and some nude shots of family, friends, political figures, and celebrities, and landscapes from around the world.
11. Redemption : the last battle of the Civil War / Nicholas Lemann. Summary: Lemann opens his extraordinary new book with a riveting account of Easter 1873 in Colfax, Louisiana, where a white militia attacked the black community and massacred hundreds. For the next few years, white Southern Democrats waged a campaign of political terrorism aiming to overturn the 14th and 15th Amendments and challenge President Grant's support for the emergent structures of black political power.
12. Theories of childhood : an introduction to Dewey, Montessori, Erickson, Piaget & Vygotsky / by Carol Garhart Mooney. Summary: A look at the ideas of five educational theorists in relation to early childhood care. An easy-to-learn overview of the theorist opens each chapter. The author then distills the theorists' work to reveal how it relates to child care and children.
13. This is your brain on music : how an essential human obsession made us who we are : the science of a human obsession / Daniel J. Levitin. Summary: Presents the psychological effects music has on people, investigating its role in human evolution, its effects on emotions, and how musical preferences and expertise are formed.
14. What evolution is / Ernst Mayr. Summary: At once a spirited defense of Darwinian explanations of biology and an elegant primer on evolution for the general reader, "What Evolution Is" poses the questions at the heart of evolutionary theory and considers how improved understanding of evolution has affected the viewpoints and values of modern man.
    

Fiction

1. An abundance of Katherines / John Green. Summary: Having been recently dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine, recent high school graduate and former child prodigy Colin sets off on a road trip with his best friend to try to find some new direction in life while also trying to create a mathematical formula to explain his relationships.
2. After this / Alice McDermott. Summary: Alice McDermott's powerful novel is a vivid portrait of an American family in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Witty, compassionate, and wry, it captures the social, political, and spiritual upheavals of those decades through the experiences of a middle-class couple, their four children, and the changing worlds in which they live. While Michael and Annie Keane taste the alternately intoxicating and bitter first fruits of the sexual revolution, their older, more tentative brother, Jacob, lags behind, until he finds himself on the way to Vietnam. Meanwhile, Clare, the youngest child of their aging parents, seeks to maintain an almost saintly innocence. After This, alive with the passions and tragedies of a determining era in our history, portrays the clash of traditional, faith-bound life and modern freedom, while also capturing, with McDermott's inimitable understanding and grace, the joy, sorrow, anger, and love that underpin, and undermine, what it is to be a family.
3. Alphabet of dreams / Susan Fletcher. Summary: Fourteen-year-old Mitra, of royal Persian lineage, and her five-year-old brother Babak, whose dreams foretell the future, flee for their lives in the company of the magus Melchoir and two other Zoroastrian priests, traveling through Persia as they follow star signs leading to a newly-born king in Bethlehem. Includes historical notes.
4. Black powder war / Naomi Novik. Summary: Captain Will Laurence and his dragon, Temeraire, are waylaid by a mysterious envoy bearing urgent orders for Britain that send them to the Ottoman Empire, where they must escort three valuable dragon eggs back to England.
5. Black swan green : a novel / David Mitchell. Summary: From award-winning writer Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new. "Black Swan Green" tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen lake; of "nightcreeping" through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran Lps, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons.
6. The book of lost things / John Connolly. Summary: High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother. He is angry and alone, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness, and as he takes refuge in his imagination, he finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a land that is a strange reflection of his own world, populated by heroes and monsters, and ruled over by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book... The Book of Lost Things. In the tradition of C.S. Lewis and Gregory Maguire's "Wicked," bestselling author Connolly ("The Black Angel") offers a creative coming-of-age story about one boy's journey into adulthood by combining dramatic themes with edge-of-your-seat suspense and a fantastical imagination.
7. The catcher in the rye / J. D. Salinger. Summary: The influential and widely acclaimed story details the two days in the life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield after he has been expelled from prep school. Confused and disillusioned, he searches for truth and rails against the "phoniness" of the adult world. He ends up exhausted and emotionally ill, in a psychiatrist's office. After he recovers from his breakdown, Holden relates his experiences to the reader.
8. Every visible thing / Lisa Carey. Summary: Five years after their oldest son, Hugh, disappeared, the members of the Furey family try to move on with their lives, with his mother losing herself in a new career, his father leaving behind his faith, and his two siblings, Owen and Lena, trying to come to terms with the loss of their brother and their own adolescent crises.
9. Everything is illuminated : a novel / Jonathan Safran Foer. Summary: With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man - also named Jonathan Safran Foer - sets out to find the woman who might or might not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war, an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past. As their adventure unfolds, Jonathan imagines the history of his grandfather's village, conjuring a magical fable of startling symmetries that unite generations across time. Lit by passion, fear, guilt, memory, and hope, the characters in Everything Is Illuminated mine the black holes of history. As the search moves back in time, the fantastical history moves forward, until reality collides with fiction in a heart-stopping scene of extraordinary power. An arresting blend of high comedy and great tragedy, this is a story about searching for people and places that no longer exist, for the hidden truths that haunt every family, and for the delicate but necessary tales that link past and future. Exuberant and wise, hysterically funny and deeply moving, Everything is Illuminated is an astonishing debut.
10. Frankenstein, or, The modern Prometheus : the 1818 text in three volumes / by Mary Shelley ; illustrated by Barry Moser and with an afterword by Joyce Carol Oates. Summary: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one of the masterpieces of nineteenth-century Gothicism. While staying in the Swiss Alps in 1816 with her lover Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and others, Mary, then eighteen, began to concoct the story of Dr. Victor Frankenstein and the monster he brings to life by electricity. Written in a time of great personal tragedy, it is a subversive and morbid story warning against the dehumanization of art and the corrupting influence of science. Packed with allusions and literary references, it is also one of the best thrillers ever written. Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus was an instant bestseller on publication in 1818. The prototype of the science fiction novel, it has spawned countless imitations and adaptations but retains its original power. The California edition of the Pennyroyal Press Frankenstein unites the dark side of Barry Moser's art with the classic 1818 text of Mary Shelley's tale of moral transfiguration. In a vivid sequence of woodcuts, the reader witnesses the birth of the "monster" as Moser shapes him from darkness and gives him a form simultaneously ghastly in its malice and transfixing in its suffering.
11. Giraffe / J.M. Ledgard. Summary: In 1975, on the eve of May Day, secret police dressed in chemical warfare suits sealed off a zoo in a small Czechoslovakian town and ordered the destruction of the largest captive herd of giraffes in the world. This apparently senseless massacre lies at the heart of J. M. Ledgard's haunting first novel, which recounts the story of the giraffes from their capture in Africa to their deaths far away behind the Iron Curtain. At once vivid and unearthly, Giraffe is an unforgettable story about strangeness, about creatures that are alien and silent, about captivity, and finally about Czechoslovakia, a middling totalitarian state and its population of sleepwalkers.
12. His Majesty's Dragon / by Naomi Novik. Summary: This first adventure of a new fantasy series introduces the remarkable dragon Temeraire and his heroic captain, Will Laurence, who are thrust into the world of the Aerial Corps, offering aerial support to the British during the Napoleonic Wars.
13. The historian : a novel / Elizabeth Kostova. Summary: In this smart retelling of the Dracula story, a young girl's discovery of a mysterious book, blank save for a sinister woodcut of a dragon, impels her father to divulge, reluctantly, details of his vampire-hunting days back in grad school. Halfway through his tale, which is told over several sessions in various atmospheric European locations, he vanishes. His daughter's quest to find him is interwoven with letters that reveal the past in full. Kostova's knowledge of occult arcana is impressive, and she packages her erudition in a graceful narrative that only occasionally lapses into melodrama. The structure--a story within a letter within a flashback--is an innovative complication, but it is soon shaken off by the swift-moving plot. Kostova never strays far from the conventions of the genre, and her historical thriller feels somewhat indebted to best-sellers of the recent past; there are Christian heresies, scholarly sleuths, and a malaprop-prone Eastern European guide.
14. Jackal in the garden : an encounter with Bihzad / by Deborah Ellis. Summary: Little is known about the fifteenth-century Persian painter Bihzad--we only know that he worked in what is now Afghanistan and Iran, and that he was the first artist to sign his works. Jackal in the Garden imagines Bihzad as an astoundingly gifted dreamer and contrasts him with a strong female protagonist, Anubis, a girl born disfigured into the harem of her vicious father. She must fight for survival--and her struggle leads her to Bihzad and the artists' colony he leads. Both philosophers, they find common ground. Yet their different attitudes offer a sharp, unusual commentary on life, survival, and art.
15. Jimmy Corrigan : the smartest kid on earth / Chris Ware. Summary: Ware's graphically inventive, wonderfully realized novel-in-comics follows the sad fortunes of four generations of phlegmatic, defeated men while touching on themes of abandonment, social isolation and despair within the sweeping depiction of Chicago's urban transformation over the course of a century. Ware uses Chicago's World's Colombian Exposition of 1893, the great world's fair that signaled America's march into 20th-century modernity, as a symbolic anchor to the city's development and to the narrative arc of a melancholic family as haplessly connected as are Chicago's random sprawl of streets and neighborhoods. In 1893, nine-year-old Jimmy Corrigan is abandoned atop a magnificent fair building by his sullen, brutish father ("I just stood there, watching the sky and the people below, waiting for him to return. Of course he never did"). Nearly a century later, another Jimmy Corrigan -- the absurdly ineffectual, friendless grandson of that abandoned child -- receives a letter from his own long-absent, feckless father, blithely and inexplicably requesting him to come and visit. Ware's surprisingly touching story recounts their strange and pathetically funny reunion, invoking the emotional legacy of the great-grandfather's original act of desertion while presenting a succession of Corrigan men far more comfortable fantasizing about life than living it. The book is wonderfully illustrated in full color, and Ware's spare, iconic drawing style can render vivid architectural complexity or movingly capture the stark despondency of an unloved child.
16. Keturah and Lord Death / Martine Leavitt. Summary: When Lord Death comes to claim sixteen-year-old Keturah while she is lost in the King’s Forest, she charms him with her story and is granted a twenty-four hour reprieve in which to seek her one true love.
17. The last town on earth : a novel / Thomas Mullen. Summary: Set against the backdrop of one of the most virulent epidemics that America ever experienced -- the 1918 flu epidemic -- Thomas Mullen's powerful, sweeping first novel is a tale of morality in a time of upheaval.
18. Lisey’s story : a novel / Stephen King. Summary: Lisey Debusher Landon lost her husband, Scott, two years ago, after a twenty-five-year marriage of the most profound and sometimes frightening intimacy. Scott was an award-winning, bestselling novelist and a very complicated man. Early in their relationship, before they married, Lisey had to learn from him about books and blood and bools. Later, she understood that there was a place Scott went -- a place that both terrified and healed him, that could eat him alive or give him the ideas he needed in order to live. Now it's Lisey's turn to face Scott's demons, Lisey's turn to go to Boo'ya Moon. What begins as a widow's effort to sort through the papers of her celebrated husband becomes a nearly fatal journey into the darkness he inhabited. Perhaps King's most personal and powerful novel, Lisey's Story is about the wellsprings of creativity, the temptations of madness, and the secret language of love
19. Side effects / Amy Goldman Koss. Summary: As if it doesn't suck enough to have cancer, practically every time you pick up books or see movies where characters get sick, you know they'll be dead by the last scene. In reality, kids get all kinds of cancers, go through unspeakable torture and painful treatments, but walk away fine in the end. From the acclaimed author of The Girls and Poison Ivy, Side Effects is about the pain, fear, and unlikely comedy of 15-year-old Izzy's journey, told in her own powerful and authentic voice. It is Izzy's story--screams and all.
20. The syringa tree : a novel / Pamela Gien. Summary: Young Elizabeth Grace, the privileged daughter of a part-Jewish doctor and his wife in South Africa in the 1960s, learns firsthand about the cruelties of apartheid when her beloved Xhosa nanny, Salamina, is forced to carry permission papers to enter white areas, and must hide her newborn baby from authorities.
21. Throne of jade / Naomi Novik. Summary: Captain Will Laurence and his noble dragon Temeraire battle against Bonaparte's invading forces. When China discovers that their rare gift, meant for Napoleon, is now in the hands of the British forces, they demand the return of the dragon.
22. Wait for me / An Na. Summary: As her senior year in high school approaches, Mina yearns to find her own path in life but working at the family business, taking care of her little sister, and dealing with her mother’s impossible expectations are as stifling as the southern California heat, until she falls in love with a man who offers a way out.
    

Reference

1. Africana : the encyclopedia of the African and African American experience / editors, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.-- 2nd ed. Summary: More than 4,000 articles cover prominent individuals, events, trends, places, political movements, art forms, business and trade, religion, ethnic groups, organizations and countries on both sides of the Atlantic. African American history and culture in the present-day United States receive a strong emphasis, but African American history and culture throughout the rest of the Americas and their origins in African istelf have an equally strong presence. The articles that make up Africana cover subjects ranging from affirmative action to zydeco and span over four million years from the earlies-known hominids , to Sean "Diddy" Combs. With entries ranging from the African ethnic groups to members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Africana, Second Edition, conveys the history and scope of cultural expression of people of African descent with unprecedented depth.
2. The encyclopedia of popular music / compiled & edited by Colin Larkin. Summary: Edited and largely written by Colin Larkin, this exhaustive, meticulous, and authoritative biographical encyclopedia includes information on a broad range of popular music genre from the 1900s to the present day; including rock, pop, jazz, folk, blues, heavy metal, techno, R & B, reggae, and hip-hop. Each entry includes key dates and locations for the artist, critical discographies, record labels and release dates. In addition, the Encyclopedia contains a complete name index, an index of song titles, and extensive bibliographies by artist and subject.
3. The essential rock discography / Martin C. Strong. Summary: Organized alphabetically, each entry features a complete discography that details every record released, full track listings for each album, B-sides for each single, expanded biographies and band histories, catalogue ordering numbers, top U.S. and U.K. chart positions, issuing labels, and recommendations of must-have recordings. From the Stone Roses to the Rolling Stones, Steeleye Span to Steely Dan, ABBA to AC/DC, The Popes to The Pogues, Green on Red to Deacon Blue, Heaven 17 to Richard Hell, Buffalo Tom to the Cowboy Junkies -- The Great Rock Discography contains everything you need to know about everyone you need to know about. It is an endless and indispensable source of information and entertainment for anyone interested in popular music.
4. MLA handbook for writers of research papers / Joseph Gibaldi.-- 6th ed. Summary: A style manual for preparing research papers. Includes information on citing electronic publications.
5. A new reference grammar of modern Spanish / John Butt & Carmen Benjamin.-- 4th ed. Summary: Recognized internationally as the most authoritative and comprehensive guide to contemporary Spanish for English speakers, A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish is an accessible, jargon-free guide to the forms and structures of Spanish as it is currently spoken and written. Examples from contemporary sources from throughout the Spanish-speaking world are used to illustrate grammatical points. Levels of usage--formal, familiar, colloquial, and popular--are indicated, and regional differences in usage are highlighted. This edition has been updated and revised to include the latest findings of the Royal Spanish Academy.
   

Professional

1. A challenge to change : the language learning continuum : strategies for more effective language instruction & lessons learned from the articulation and achievement project / Claire W. Jackson, executive editor. Summary: This book presents a descriptive model that offers a flexible and practical approach to student achievement which sets high standards, is performance-based, and identifies the performance characteristics of each stage of language learning. The volume includes essays on standards and assessments and the Language Learning Continuum, plus appendices of sample writings, activities, and assessments.
2. College knowledge : what it really takes for students to succeed and what we can do to get them ready / David T. Conley. Summary: Contains a comprehensive overview on how students can improve their preparedness for college by taking steps in secondary school, providing research based insights and practices with advice for designing the correct course of study.
3. Learning to question - to wonder - to learn / by Jamie McKenzie. Summary: Presents a guide to practical classroom strategies for improving the questioning ability of young students, providing suggestions for encouraging them to explore, invent, and discover.
   

Video

1. All quiet on the western front [DVD] Summary: In this realistic depiction of the lives of ordinary German soldiers Paul Baumer and his school chums are encouraged to enlist by their bombastic, slogan-chanting teacher, but they quickly learn that actual war is more gore than glory, as they crawl through mud, huddle in trenches, suffer the ordeal of frenzied hand-to-hand combat and dodge screaming shells during World War I.
2. An American tail & Fievel goes West [DVD] Summary: In An American Tail, a Russian mouse lands in New York in the 1880s, only to be separated from his family. The courageous little mouse braves the strange new world in a thrilling adventure to find his family. Summary: In Fievel Goes West, the fun continues when Fievel joins forces with famed lawdog Wylie Burp to thwart a plot to transform unsuspecting settlers into mouseburgers.
3. Beowulf & Grendel [DVD] Summary: Adapted from the Anglo-Saxon epic poem, Beowulf, Beowulf & Grendel is a medieval adventure that tells the blood-soaked tale of a Norse warrior's battle against the great and murderous troll, Grendel. Heads will roll in this provocative take on the first major work of English literature. Out of allegiance to the King Hrothgar, the much respected Lord of the Danes, Beowulf leads a troop of warriors across the sea to rid a village of the marauding monster. The monster, Grendel, is not a creature of mythic powers, but one of flesh and blood - immense flesh and raging blood, driven by a vengeance from being wronged, while Beowulf, a victorious soldier in his own right, has become increasingly troubled by the hero-myth rising up around his exploits. Beowulf's willingness to kill on behalf of Hrothgar wavers when it becomes clear that the King is more responsible for the troll's rampages than was first apparent. As a soldier, Beowulf is unaccustomed to hesitating. His relationship with the mesmerizing witch, Selma, creates deeper confusion. Swinging his sword at a great, stinking beast is no longer such a simple act. The story is set in barbarous Northern Europe where the reign of the many-gods is giving way to one - the southern invader, Christ. Beowulf is a man caught between sides in this great shift, his simple code transforming and falling apart before his eyes. Building toward an inevitable and terrible battle, this is a tale where vengeance, loyalty and mercy powerfully entwine. A story of blood and beer and sweat, Beowulf & Grendel strips away the mask of the hero-myth, leaving a raw and tangled tale that rings true through the centuries.
4. Dante and the divine comedy [DVD] Summary: An introduction to The Divine Comedy, with interpretation and analysis by scholars, dramatized sequences, contemporary images and works by artists inspired by Dante's work.
5. Fahrenheit 9/11 [DVD] Summary: Michael Moore's view on what happened to the United States on and after September 11, and how the Bush Administration used the tragic event to push forward its agenda for unjust war with Iraq.
6. The fog of war : eleven lessons from the life of Robert S. McNamara [DVD] Summary: The story of America as seen through the eyes of the former Secretary of Defense, under President Kennedy and President Johnson, Robert S. McNamara. McNamara was one of the most controversial and influential political figures of the 20th century. Now, he offers a candid and intimate journey through some of the most seminal events in contemporary American history. He offers new and often surprising insights into the 1945 bombing of Tokyo, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the effects of the Vietnam War.
7. Great women artists. Georgia O'Keeffe [DVD] Summary: This documentary portrays the legendary painter as she candidly reveals her warmth, humor, and practical wisdom. For the first time on camera, O'Keeffe openly discusses her work and inspirations taken from the haunting mountain deserts of New Mexico.
8. Guns, germs, and steel [DVD] Summary: An epic detective story that offers a gripping expose on why the world is so unequal. Professor Jared Diamond traveled the globe for over 30 years trying to answer this question. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book. Why did Eurasians conquer, displace, or decimate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the reverse? Diamond dismantles racially based theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for history's broadest patterns.
9. Henry V [DVD] Summary: Young King Henry of England asserts a hereditary claim to the throne of France, gathering an army and embarking on a course that will lead to one of England's greatest battlefield triumphs and forever change the face of Europe. This production is by Kenneth Branagh.
10. In search of Shakespeare [DVD] Summary: Hosted by Michael Wood, this four-part history series explores the life of the world's greatest writer. Mixing travel, adventure, interviews and specially shot sequences with the Royal Shakespeare Company on the road, the series sets the life of Shakespeare in the turbulent times in which he lived--a time of surveillance, militarism and foreign wars. The Bard lived through the Spanish Armada, the Gunpowder Plot and the colonization of the New World, and saw firsthand England's Cultural Revolution, which led the English people into a new Protestant future.
11. Leonard Bernstein's Candide [DVD] Summary: Leonard Bernstein's brilliant comic operetta is based on the classic Voltaire tale of an innocent young man's journey through a life filled with colorful characters and unexpected life lessons.
12. Michelagníolo : self portrait [VHS] Summary: Academy Award winning director Robert Snyder's Michelagníolo : self portrait overflows with splendid color images of all of Michelangelo's major works. This is an "autobiography" drawn from Michelangelo's letters, diaries, poems, and testimony of his contemporary biographers, Condivi and Vasari. The film is poignantly higlighted with passages from Dante's "Divine Comedy," and the soaring music of Claudio Monteverdi's "Vespro della Beata Vergine" of 1610. It is a dramatic, gripping story told in his own words.
13. The proof [VHS tape] Summary: Eureka! For Princeton math whiz Andrew Wiles, tackling an equation is like groping around in a dark mansion, finding the light switch, and suddenly seeing, with utter clarity, where you are. But in Wiles' case, the mathematical challenge of his childhood--proving Fermat’s Last Theorem, a famous enigma that had stumped experts for three centuries--would take eight years of seclusion. With Wiles' apparent success came the triumphant glare of publicity . . . until a disappointing discovery forced him back undercover to retrace the steps of his difficult quest. Follow a fascinating tale of obsession, secrecy, brilliance, and the camaradarie of kindred souls. Enter a rarefied world inhabited by the world’s foremost mathematical minds, where the joy of finding an absolute solution is giddily contagious--whether that proof is entirely your own or a bridge linking others mathematicians' conjectures. With the help of computer animation, see complex mathematical concepts, such as elliptical curves and modular forms, pictured in beautiful 3-D symmetry. And hear Wiles himself describe the "incredible revelation" that finally led him--and three centuries of mathematicians--out of the dark. "Fermat’s Last Theorem has been reponsible for so much," marvels a colleague. "What will we find to take its place?"
14. Shattered Glass [DVD] Summary: Based on the true story of Stephen Glass, a staff writer for the well respected current events and policy magazine 'The new republic'. He was also a freelance writer featured in 'Rolling Stone', 'Harper's Bazaar' and 'George'. By the mid 1990's, Glass' articles had turned him into one of the most sought-after young journalists in Washington. That is until a new managing editor was hired and Glass's pieces came under greater scrutiny, revealing completely fabricated stories. Special features includes an interview with the real Stephen Glass on the TV program 60 Minutes.
15. Thomas Jefferson [DVD] Summary: Examines the life of Thomas Jefferson, discussing his role in early America as author of the Declaration of Independence, president, expansionist, and ambassador, and explores the controversy over his ownership of slaves.
16. To kill a mockingbird [DVD] Summary: Gregory Peck plays a southern lawyer who defends a black man accused of rape in this film version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The way in which it captures a time, a place, and above all, a mood, makes this film a masterpiece.
    

Sound Recordings (CDs)

1. Macbeth [sound recording] / William Shakespeare. Summary: Macbeth's ambition unleashes a cycle of violence. Prompted by the supernatural prophecy of three witches, Macbeth kills King Duncan and assumes his throne. Macbeth plunges further into murder and moral decay to keep the crown on his head. While his wife crumbles away in guilt and madness, Macbeth fights to prevent the rest of the prophecy from coming true.
2. Othello [sound recording] / William Shakespeare. Summary: Shakespeare's most domestic tragedy is a complex journey through jealousy, self-doubt, inadequacies, and societal acceptance. Passed over for military promotion, Iago, perhaps Shakespeare's most nefarious character, manipulates Othello's downfall, culminating in the murder of his beloved wife, Desdemona, and Othello's subsequent suicide. Under David Timson's stewardship as director, the story is beautifully and simply told, embellished only with intermittent brassy flourishes of classical music and a dramatic echo effect and throbbing heart beat to underscore Othello's chaotic descent and rage. While the entire cast is excellent, the trio of Quarshie (Othello), Lesser (Iago), and Fielding (Desdemona) are outstanding.