Here are summaries of the latest additions to the library collection. Some of these have been selected by faculty, some by my assessments of curricular holes, and some because they are recent winners of various literary awards.
Non-fiction:
- The Age of Lincoln by Orville Vernon Burton / Summary: In a remarkable reappraisal of
- The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by A.T. Mahan / Summary: An unabridged republication of the 1894 work which traces the history and strategies of naval warfare throughout the world, and argues that despite changes in weaponry, certain principles of naval strategy remain the same.
- Leviathan : the History of Whaling in America by Eric Jay Dolin / Summary: "To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme," Herman Melville proclaimed, and this absorbing history demonstrates that few things can capture the sheer danger and desperation of men on the deep sea as dramatically as whaling. Eric Jay Dolin begins his vivid narrative with Captain John Smith's botched whaling expedition to the
- An Ocean of Air : Why the Wind Blows and Other Mysteries of the Atmosphere / Gabrielle Walker / Summary: We spend our lives surrounded by air, hardly even noticing it. It’s the most miraculous substance on earth, yet responsible for our food, our weather, our water, and our ability to hear. In fact, we live at the bottom of an ocean of air. In this exuberant book, gifted science writer Gabrielle Walker peels back the layers of our atmosphere with the stories of the people who uncovered its secrets:
- A flamboyant Renaissance Italian discovers how heavy our air really is: for example, the air filling Carnegie Hall weighs seventy thousand pounds;
- A one-eyed barnstorming pilot finds a set of winds that constantly blow five miles above our heads;
- An impoverished American farmer figures out why hurricanes move in a circle by carving equations with his pitchfork on a barn door;
- A well-meaning inventor nearly destroys the ozone layer;
- A reclusive mathematical genius predicts, thirty years before he’s proved right, that the sky contains a layer of floating metal fed by the glowing tails of shooting stars.
- Sacco and Vanzetti : the Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind by Bruce Watson / Summary: When the Commonwealth of Massachusetts electrocuted Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti on
- The Singing Neanderthals : the Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body by Steven Mithen / Summary: The propensity to make music is the most mysterious, wonderful, and neglected feature of humankind: this is where Steven Mithen began, drawing together strands from archaeology, anthropology, psychology, neuroscience -- and, of course, musicology -- to explain why we are so compelled to make and hear music. But music could not be explained without addressing language, and could not be accounted for without understanding the evolution of the human body and mind. Thus Mithen arrived at the wildly ambitious project that unfolds in this book: an exploration of music as a fundamental aspect of the human condition, encoded into the human genome during the evolutionary history of our species. Music is the language of emotion, common wisdom tells us. In The Singing Neanderthals, Mithen introduces us to the science that might support such popular notions. With equal parts scientific rigor and charm, he marshals current evidence about social organization, tool and weapon technologies, hunting and scavenging strategies, habits and brain capacity of all our hominid ancestors, from australopithecines to Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthals to Homo sapiens - and comes up with a scenario for a shared musical and linguistic heritage. Along the way he weaves a tapestry of cognitive and expressive worlds -- alive with vocalized sound, communal mimicry, sexual display, and rhythmic movement -- of various species.
- The War : an Intimate History, 1941-1945 by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns / Summary: Enriched by maps and hundreds of photographs, the companion volume to the PBS series, "The War" is the story of World War II captured in the hearts, minds, words, and deeds of those who made history at its most essential level: on the battlefields and on the home front.
Reference:
- Slavery in the United States : a Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia / Junius P. Rodriguez, editor / Summary: A comprehensive, A to Z resource that covers the social, economical, and political conditions associated with the institution of slavery in America, with over 300 entries, essays, official documents and writings, photographs, and first-person accounts.
Fiction:
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy / Summary: A father and his son walk alone through burned
- A Thousand Splendid Suns / Khaled Hosseini / Summary: A novel set against the three decades of Afghanistan's history shaped by Soviet occupation, civil war, and the Taliban, which tells the stories of two women, Mariam and Laila, who grow close despite their nineteen-year age difference and initial rivalry as they suffer at the hand of a common enemy: their abusive husband.
Videos (
- Amistad [
- Homicide, Life on the Street. Season 6 [six DVDs] / Summary: Day to day, the officers of the Baltimore Police Department Homicide Division face one of the United States worst crime rates, not to mention the pressures of their own personal lives. Some days, justice isn't just blind, it flat-out just doesn't exist.
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest [
- The Perfect Pearl [VHS] / Summary: For centuries, man has risked both life and life savings to possess the pearl's beauty. Pure and perfect, glowing and dazzling, a pearl is actually a mistake formed when an oyster reacts to an irritant lodged in its shell. Go back to the late 18th century to meet Kokichi Mikimoto, who developed a technique for culturing pearls that's still used today. Travel to a Japanese oyster hatchery to see how technology is advancing pearl cultivation. Watch divers search for the immense pearls found in the world's largest oyster, the Pinctada maxima. See a strand of
- REDS [
- The War [six DVDs] / Summary: The Ken Burns’ documentary THE WAR explores the history and horror of World War II from an American perspective by following the fortunes of so-called ordinary men and women who became caught up in one of the greatest cataclysms in human history. This epic film focuses on the stories of citizens from four American towns taking the viewer through their personal and harrowing journeys, painting vivid portraits of how the war dramatically altered their lives.
- Worried Sick [
