Since Halloween brings out the kid in everyone, why not enjoy a spooky and captivating novel like Ghost Ship by Dietlof Reiche. Reiche weaves a tale of how life as normal for a sleepy New England town was interrupted by the appearance of a long-lost ship, the Storm Goddess . Ghosts, curses, and pirates makes this book a fun weekend read. Ghost Ship is apart of Vairo's growing juvenile collection of novels and poetry that can be enjoyed by any child at heart.
(Vairo Library Curr Coll PZ7.R26347Gh 2005)
If you want to keep up with the upcoming election, a useful and objective site is PBS Online Newshour site http://www.pbs.org/newshour/vote2006/index.html
The current headline posting is about races in the Philadelphia suburbs which are "too close to call." If is always important to vote, but it is clear that in this election your vote could make the difference. Vote.
Nation-building: beyond Afghanistan and Iraq, edited by Francis Fukuyama, is a collection of papers from a conference sponsored by Johns Hopkins University in April 2004. It looks at the history of U. S. efforts in this area, and tries to identify mistakes and lessons learned. It can be argued that some of our blunders in nation-building can be traced to Civil War reconstrutction efforts. It is also interesting to look at the analyses of our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq with the benefit of two years worth of hindsight since these papers were presented.
(Vairo Library JZ6300.N38 2006)
University of Virginia's George Michael has written a chilling book, The Enemy of My Enemy: the Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right. Michael asserts the extremist interests of Neo-Nazis and radical Islamists are converging and finding connections via the internet. He looks at the historical antecedents of this association in Europe during the 30s and 40s and brings it up to date. While propaganda is the current focus of their efforts, it is a movement that bears close scrutiny in case their ties move beyond rhetoric.
(Vairo Library HV6432.M52 2006)
Nobody there is that doesn't love a dinosaur; didn't somebody say something like that? Well dinosaur lovers will want to seek out our new acquisiton, Dinosaur Provincial Park, a spectacular ancient ecosystem revealed. The Park in Alberta, Canada is home to thousands of dinosaur fossils, and this book describes all these findings, along with the living plant and animal life currently in the Park. It is a collaborative effort of the researchers working in the Park in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of its discovery. The book has loads of diagrams, tables, data and footnotes supplemented by additional data on a cd. To find everything you always wanted to know about dinosaurs, begin here.
(Vairo Library QE734.D56 2005)
Take a break from reading about murder rates in Philadelphia, and look at this book by Steven Conn, Metropolitan Philadelphia: Living with the Presence of the Past. Conn examines how the past impacts the present in Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs. Despite the impact of deindustrialization, Conn finds, "The city is, it goes almost without saying, much, much more than the sum of its countable parts. When we start to look at those more elusive things - like ethinic diversity and racial integration, like intellectual ferment and cultural vitality - Philadelphia during the last generation looks remarkable indeed, while the suburbs seem to lag well behind." (p. 252) Conn argues "Philadelphia needs a healthy region in order to survive, and its suburbs need a healthy city in order to prosper... The stakes for thinking regionally are high indeed." (p.11) His use of history to help us understand the regional mandate for the future makes interesting and entertaining reading for local residents, as well as student in sociology, education, American studies and history.
(Vairo Library F158.3.C66 2006)
The current issue of Columbia Journalism Review has an excellent article by Eric Umansky, "Failures of Imagination." It tells the story behind the New York Times delay in publishing the investigative report of Carlotta Gale on torture of detainees in U.S. terrorist prisons. The story was originally reported on page 14 of the paper. While the focus is on the NYT, the article reports the reluctance of other news outlets in handling this story, and other reports dealing with the war on terror. This article offers a lot to think about for those both on the left and right.
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2006/5/Umansky.asp
At a time when religion is dominating the news worldwide, a new book by Noah Feldman, Divided by God: America's Church-State Problem and What We Should Do About It, focuses on its role in American society and government. He traces the church-state dilemma throughout our history, and identifies periods when the tensions it creates are particularly high. He calls for secularists and evangelicals of all faiths to work together to respect role religion plays in our society, without demanding government compliance with specific tenets of faith.
(Vairo Library BR516.F43 2005)