| Volume 1 |
January 2006 |
Issue 6 |
New Books
| Coming Soon | Obituaries
| Awards
Book 'em looks at selected books that are on, or have
recently been, on the New Book display, as well as other news in the
world of books. A complete list of books (and other materials)
cataloged in the past month may be found at http://hiraml.hiram.edu/ftlist.
Book 'em is published monthly from August through May. Please
direct any comments to the editor, David Everett.
Welcome back. I hope everybody had a good holiday
break. The library staff has been busy and we've got lots of new
books. And don't forget to check out Hiram
Reads!, as well.
So, let's get to it.
New Books
Fiction
A Long Long Way
(NY: Viking, 2005 - call
number F B2798l), the latest from Irish novelist and playwright
Sebastian Barry, is set in World War I Ireland.
Su Tong's My Life as Emperor
(NY: Hyperion, 2005 - call
number F Su10W) is a story of power and corruption in China,
originally published in Chinese in 1992.
Half Broken Things
(NY: Delacorte, 2005 - call
number F J790h) won a Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger Award
for author Morag Joss.
Clare Clarke's The Great
Stink (Orlando, FL:
Harcourt, 2005 - call
number F C5474g) is a first novel of "corruption and murder
beneath the streets of Victorian London."
Non-Fiction
This month's non-fiction again features a book on Food.
Food in Medieval Times
(Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2004 - call
number 641.30094 Ada) by Meiltta Weiss Adamson looks at food in
everyday life in medieval Europe. The book looks at what foods
were commonly available and looks at cuisines by region. It even
includes some recipes!
Outsourcing of jobs is the topic of two new books. In Outsourcing
America: What's Behind our National Crisis and How We Can Reclaim
American Jobs (NY: AMACOM, 2005 - call
number 331.12 Hir), Ron Hira and Anil Hira look at reasons companies
outsource jobs, what the effect of that outsourcing is on educational
and career trends, and how policies can be designed to deal with the
negative effects of outsourcing. Best-selling consultant Edward
Yourdon explains how to understand and meet the challenge of outsourcing
in Outsource: Competing in the Global
Productivity Race (Boston: Prentice-Hall/PTR, 2005 - call
number 65804058 You).
As usual, Biographies are well represented. This month we
feature First Man: The Life of Neil A.
Armstrong (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2005 - call
number 629.450092 Arm-H), the authorized biography of Ohio native
and first man on the moon Neil Armstrong. Author James R. Hansen
is a former NASA historian and currently teaches history at Auburn
University. Jeremy Bernstein looks at one of the key scientists in
the development of the atomic bomb in Oppenheimer:
Portrait of an Enigma (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004 - call
number 530.092 Opp-B).
Allen Guttman covers Sports History from ancient Egypt to the
present in Sports: The First Five Millennia
(Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004 - call
number 796.09 Gut). The chapters on winter sports and the
modern Olympic games seem especially appropriate with the 2006 Winter
Games set to take place next month in Torino, Italy.
Asian history is represented by Eyewitnesses
to Massacre: American Missionaries Bear Witness to Japanese Atrocities
in Nanjing (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2001 - call
number 951.042 Eye), edited by Zhang Kaiyuan, which provides
first-person accounts from American missionaries in Nanjing. When
first noted in the November issue of Book 'em in the
"Coming Soon" column, a Hiram connection was noted. The
connection? The first "testimony" is from Hiram graduate
and Rhodes Scholar Miner Searle Bates, the son of Miner Lee Bates, a
president of Hiram College.
Two books in accounting, Robert R. Moeller's Sarbanes-Oxley
and the New Internal Auditing Rules (NY: Wiley, 2004 - call
number 346.73063 Moe) and Scott Green's Manager's
Guide to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act: Improving Internal Control to Prevent
Fraud (NY: Wiley, 2004 - call
number 658.473 Gre) deal with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act passed by
Congress to tighten auditing rules in light of recent scandals.
Two other books are not easily classified. Just
War Theory: A Reappraisal (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005 -
call
number 172.42 Jus), edited by Mark Evans, is a collection of essays
looking at just war theory, the criticisms of the theory, and its
adequacy in light of contemporary warfare. Physicist Eric B. Baum
gives a computational explanation of the human thought process in
What is Though? (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2004 - call
number 128.2 Bau).
Juvenile
In Babar's World Tour (NY:
Abrams, 2005 - call
number JF B8359b), Laurent de Brunhoff sends the famous elephant and
his family to a number of different countries where they learn a bit
about each country and a phrase or two of its language.
Runny Babbit: A Billy Sook
(NY: HarperCollins, 2005 - call
number J 811.54 Sil 2005) is a series of poems that exchange the
first letters of words (Runny Babbit rather than Bunny Rabbit) by the
late Playboy cartoonist, country song writer, and children's author Shel
Silverstein.
Coming Soon (the following
books are on order or in process)
Saving Fish from Drowning is the latest novel from Amy Tan.
William Howland Kenney looks at how jazz spread up the Mississippi River
from New Orleans in Jazz on the River. If you are a big
jazz fan, you'll want to catch the Friends of the Library program on
Sunday, February 12 at 2:00 p.m. when Gregory Reese will speak on the
jazz scene in Cleveland.
Gang of One: Memoirs of a Red Guard is Fan Shen's account of
growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution.
The subtitle says it all in John Yoo's The Powers of War and Peace :
The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11.
Welch Suggs looks at the successes and failures of Title IX in A
Place on the Team : The Triumph and Tragedy of Title IX.
Innocent Merriment: A Celebration of the Ohio Light Opera by
Charles H. Parson is a season by season history of the Wooster, Ohio
based company.
Andrew Rudalevige looks at the return of the imperial presidency in The
New Imperial Presidency : Renewing Presidential Power after Watergate.
Obituaries
Tory Dent on December 30 at age 47. Dent, a poet and
essayist, published three volumes of poetry. The best known is
probably HIV, Mon Amour, which looked at her fight with HIV.
Rona Jaffe on December 30 at age 74. A writer of
best-selling novels, Jaffe is probably best known for The Best of
Everything.
William W. Howells on December 20 at age 97. A grandson of
William Dean Howells, William W. Howells was a physical anthropologist
who published books such as Mankind so Far and Getting Here:
The Story of Human Evolution.
Marjorie Kellogg on December 19 at age 83. Kellogg is best
known for her novel Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon.
Rodney Whitaker on December 14 at age 74. Whitaker wrote
under several pen names, but is probably best known for books such as The
Eiger Sanction, written under the name Trevanian.
Margaret Hodges on December 13 at age 94. A writer of books
for children, Hodges often took familiar tales and re-told them for
children. Among her many books were Saint
George and the Dragon: A Golden Legend and Gulliver
in Lilliput.
Awards
The five category winners of the Whitbread Book of the Year prize
have been announced. One of the five will be named book of the
year on January 24. The five winners are:
Novel - Ali Smith for The
Accidental
First Novel - Tash Aw for The
Harmony Silk Factory
Biography - Hilary Spurling for Matisse
the Master
Poetry - Christopher Logue for Cold
Calls
Children's Book - Kate Thompson for The
New Policeman
For more information, go to http://www.whitbread-bookawards.co.uk/
The three winners of the Nestle Children's Book Prize
have been announced. This British award has helped launch the
careers of a number of authors, including J.K Rowling. The winners
this year are:
Under 5 age group - Oliver Jeffers for Lost
and Found
6 to 8 age group - Nick Butterworth for The
Whisperer
9 to 11 age group - Sally Gardner for I,
Coriander
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