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Showing posts from May, 2011

Book of the Week (May 23, 2011)

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Looking for an audiobook for your summer travels?  Stop by the Library's lobby and check out one of our new titles - possibly this Swedish mystery, that is the last of the Kurt Wallander series: The Troubled Man By Henning Mankell Publisher's Description :  HÃ¥kan von Enke is a troubled man. At a birthday party, he confides to Swedish police detective Kurt Wallender the story of a 1980 incident that involved an unidentified submarine illegally entering Swedish waters when he was a naval admiral. When von Enke goes missing soon after, Wallander investigates even though it’s not his case; von Enke is his daughter’s future father-in-law. Robin Sachs is terrific at voicing the gloomy Wallander (also a troubled man) as he faces his demons of old age, memory loss, diabetes, and lost loves. Sachs is untroubled by the Swedish names and locations, and he rolls through them without hesitation or unnecessary showiness. He also creates distinctive character voices with authentic accents for

Book of the Week (May 16, 2011)

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Congrats to the Pointers baseball team on their WIAC championship and NCAA tourney berth!  Ready for some more baseball?  Check the library's new book shelf for some recent titles  including: The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican town of San Pedro de Macoris By Mark Kurlansky Call number:  GV 863.29 .D65 K87 2010 New York Times Sunday Book Review Publisher's Description:   The intriguing, inspiring history of one small, impoverished area in the Dominican Republic that has produced a staggering number of Major League Baseball talent, from an award-winning, bestselling author. In the town of San Pedro in the Dominican Republic, baseball is not just a way of life. It's the way of life. By the year 2008, seventy-nine boys and men from San Pedro have gone on to play in the Major Leagues-that means one in six Dominican Republicans who have played in the Majors have come from one tiny, impoverished region. Manny Alexander, Sammy Sosa, Tony Fernandez, and legions of

Book of the Week (May 9, 2011)

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On the New Book Shelf in the Library's Lobby: Triumph of the City: How our Greatest Invention Makes us Richer, Smarter, Greenier, Healthier, and Happier By Edward Glaeser Call Number:  HT 361 G53 2011 Publisher's Description:  A pioneering urban economist offers fascinating, even inspiring proof that the city is humanity's greatest invention and our best hope for the future. America is an urban nation. More than two thirds of us live on the 3 percent of land that contains our cities. Yet cities get a bad rap: they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, crime ridden, expensive, environmentally unfriendly... Or are they?  As Edward Glaeser proves in this myth-shattering book, cities are actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in cultural and economic terms) places to live. New Yorkers, for instance, live longer than other Americans; heart disease and cancer rates are lower in Gotham than in the nation as a whole. More than half of America's income is earned in twenty-two

Book of the Week (May 2, 2011)

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The Looming Tower:  Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 By Lawrence Wright Call Number:  HV 6432.7 .W75 2006 A Pulitzer Prize winner, National Book Award finalist, and a Time , Newsweek , Washington Post, Chicago Tribune , and New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year Publisher's Description:  A sweeping narrative history of the events leading to 9/11, a groundbreaking look at the people and ideas, the terrorist plans and the Western intelligence failures that culminated in the assault on America. Lawrence Wright’s remarkable book is based on five years of research and hundreds of interviews that he conducted in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, England, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States. The Looming Tower achieves an unprecedented level of intimacy and insight by telling the story through the interweaving lives of four men: the two leaders of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri; the FBI’s counterterrorism chief, John O’Neill; and the for