Selected Recent History and Social Studies Acquisitions

• Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall by Eve LaPlante – Sewall (1652–1730) was an English-born American jurist who presided over the 1692 witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts. Nineteen innocent men and women were hanged, and one man was pressed to death with large stones, the result of trumped-up charges of witchcraft. Some suspects were strangers to Sewall, but others were his friends. For several years, he struggled with a growing sense of shame and remorse and later assumed in public the blame for the executions. He spent much of the remainder of his life trying to restore himself in the eyes of God. Sewall wrote prodigiously and left behind extensive diaries, poems, essays, books, annotated almanacs, ledgers, and letters. His diary, covering the years from 1672 to 1729, was first published in the nineteenth century and is still in print. LaPlante also chronicles the man's later life—Sewall became the author of America's first antislavery tract and published an essay affirming the equality of the sexes. A fascinating account of the man and of daily life in colonial America.
• The Photographer: Into War-torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders by Emmanuel Guibert – In 1986, photographer Didier Lefèvre documented a seasoned Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) team en route to a region in the way of the insurgents’ war with the Soviet army supporting Afghanistan’s then-Marxist government. This wedding of his photos and Guibert’s European-realist comics records his arduous, frightening round trip from Normandy, where his mother lived. During the succeeding 20 years, Lefèvre lost the diary of his return trip but not his photographs. Scandalously few were published at the time, but they profit considerably by appearing in bulk and in this context; they put us near-palpably into their setting. What at first appears to be a very rough visual continuum, constantly jump-cutting from drawings to photos and back, quickly becomes suspenseful. Verbal development comes in the speech-balloons and captions of the drawings; no printing invades the photos, which become the powerful payoffs of the verbiage, at least until Lefèvre’s return trip, in which, his film and his health running out, he nearly perished. He took very few pictures then, and here Guibert rises to the challenge of maintaining the scary impetus of Lefèvre’s adventure. Perhaps no medium other than this one could convey so tangibly what it is to deliver “human services” in a war zone in one of the least geographically hospitable, most beautiful places on earth. A magnificent achievement. -- starred review, Booklist
• American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham – It's no surprise that the editor of Newsweek can write a well-researched, well-written, and entertaining book on American history. What stands out about reviews of American Lion, however, is how often critics—even professional historians—said they learned something new about the seventh president. A few reviewers were not so impressed with Meacham's scholarly synthesis, especially regarding Jackson's unwavering approval of slavery, his removal of Native Americans despite the objections of the Supreme Court, and his vindictive qualities. But even these reviewers praised Meacham's ability to tell Jackson's story without resorting to the cliches of high school history textbooks.
• One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War by Michael Dobbs – “One Minute to Midnight is nothing less than a tour de force, a dramatic, nail-biting page-turner that is also an important work of scholarship. Michael Dobbs combines the skills of an experienced investigative journalist, a talented writer and an intelligent historical analyst. His research is stunning. No other history of the Cuban missile crisis matches this achievement.” –Martin Sherwin, coauthor of American Prometheus
• Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner – Forget your image of an economist as a crusty professor worried about fluctuating interest rates: Levitt focuses his attention on more intimate real-world issues, like whether reading to your baby will make her a better student. Recognition by fellow economists as one of the best young minds in his field led to a profile in the New York Times, written by Dubner, and that original article serves as a broad outline for an expanded look at Levitt's search for the hidden incentives behind all sorts of behavior. There isn't really a grand theory of everything here, except perhaps the suggestion that self-styled experts have a vested interest in promoting conventional wisdom even when it's wrong. Instead, Dubner and Levitt deconstruct everything from the organizational structure of drug-dealing gangs to baby-naming patterns. While some chapters might seem frivolous, others touch on more serious issues, including a detailed look at Levitt's controversial linkage between the legalization of abortion and a reduced crime rate two decades later. Underlying all these research subjects is a belief that complex phenomena can be understood if we find the right perspective. -- starred review, Publishers Weekly
• The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan – The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Timothy Egan’s critically acclaimed account rescues this iconic chapter of American history from the shadows in a tour de force of historical reportage. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, Egan does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes, “the stoic, long-suffering men and women whose lives he opens up with urgency and respect.” – New York Times

Selected Recent Science & Math Acquisitions

• Tree: A Life Story by David Suzuki and Wayne Grady – "Only God can make a tree," wrote Joyce Kilmer in one of the most celebrated of poems. In Tree: A Life Story, authors David Suzuki and Wayne Grady extend that celebration in a "biography" of this extraordinary — and extraordinarily important — organism. A story that spans a millennium and includes a cast of millions but focuses on a single tree, a Douglas fir, Tree describes in poetic detail the organism's modest origins that begin with a dramatic burst of millions of microscopic grains of pollen. The authors recount the amazing characteristics of the species, how they reproduce and how they receive from and offer nourishment to generations of other plants and animals. The tree's pivotal role in making life possible for the creatures around it — including human beings — is lovingly explored. The richly detailed text and Robert Bateman's original art pay tribute to this ubiquitous organism that is too often taken for granted.
• The Fly in the Cathedral: How a Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the International Race to Split the Atom by Brian Cathcart – Cathcart (Test of Greatness: Britain's Struggle for the Atom Bomb), a former reporter for Reuters, presents a superb account of the genesis of nuclear physics in the first third of the 20th century. Although the centerpiece of his story is the experiment performed on April 14, 1932, by John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, in which an atom of lithium was split into two alpha particles (they would win a Nobel prize for this 19 years later), Cathcart fully describes the experiment's scientific and social context. Through crisp prose, interesting analogies and ample insight, he makes the basics of nuclear physics accessible while demonstrating the passion scientists have for their work. Cockcroft and Walton both worked under Nobel laureate Ernest Rutherford at the prestigious Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University at a time when precious little was known about the nucleus at the center of every atom. The race to understand the inner workings of the nucleus and to split an atom into its component parts was an international one, including labs in Germany, Denmark, Russia and the United States. The great progress that was made in a short time was all the more amazing given that labs had limited budgets and virtually all equipment first had to be conceptualized and then made from scratch. Cathcart instills in the reader a sense of excitement as the nuclear age unfolds around the world.
• Edison: A Life of Invention by Paul Israel – Edison's name is on 1,093 U.S. patents--more than any other person's. It is a measure of his renown that his surname alone suffices for the title of this book. Israel, managing editor of the Rutgers University edition of Edison's papers, has explored thoroughly the five million pages of documents housed at the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange, N.J., and so he is well positioned to discuss the eminent inventor's achievements. That he does with care and clarity. The well-known inventions--the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, the kinetoscope for motion pictures, the carbon transmitter for telephones--are all here in detail, and so are the lesser-known ones as well as some Edisonian projects that did not succeed. Israel also paints a clear portrait of the man. One learns, among other things, of Edison's difficult relationships with his children, his indifference to his appearance and his singular notions about diet. (In his last years, when he was suffering from stomach trouble, "he consumed nothing more than a pint of milk every three hours.") Edison may well have been the "Inventor of the age," as he was orotundly described in the Grand Prize that he won at the Universal Exposition of 1878 in Paris, but he was in addition a complex and intriguing human being.
• The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston – Chronicles the reaction of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) to the September 11 attacks and the October 2001 anthrax attacks, focusing on USAMRIID's top virologist, Peter Jahrling, and his work to combat the possible development of a superpox virus by terrorists worldwide.
• Judgment Day - Intelligent Design on Trial [videorecording] – "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial captures the turmoil that tore apart the community of Dover, Pennsylvania, in a landmark battle over the teaching of evolution in public schools. In 2004, the Dover school board ordered science teachers to read a statement to high school biology students about an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution called intelligent design--the idea that life is too complex to have evolved naturally and so must have been designed by an intelligent agent. The teachers refused to comply, and both parents and teachers filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the school board of violating the constitutional separation of church and state. ... Featuring trial reenactments based on court transcripts and interviews with key participants and expert scientists, this program presents the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District."
• Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart by Ian Ayres – Why would a casino try and stop you from losing? How can a mathematical formula find your future spouse? Would you know if a statistical analysis blackballed you from a job you wanted? Today, number crunching affects your life in ways you might never imagine. In this lively and groundbreaking new book, economist Ian Ayres shows how today's best and brightest organizations are analyzing massive databases at lightning speed to provide greater insights into human behavior. They are the Super Crunchers. From Internet sites like Google and Amazon that know your tastes better than you do, to a physician's diagnosis and your child's education, to boardrooms and government agencies, this new breed of decision makers are calling the shots. And they are delivering staggeringly accurate results. How can a football coach evaluate a player without ever seeing him play? Want to know whether the price of an airline ticket will go up or down before you buy? How can a formula outpredict wine experts in determining the best vintages? Super crunchers have the answers. In this brave new world of equation versus expertise, Ayres shows us the benefits and risks, who loses and who wins, and how super crunching can be used to help, not manipulate us.