New Books, Films, Databases, and other Resources: July 2013

Kindness needs no words in this soaring tale that is ideal for gift-giving. When a little boy’s prized toy airplane lands on a rooftop, he makes several rescue attempts before devising an unexpected solution. Rendered in sepia tones and exemplifying a touching message, this wordless story is gracefully open to interpretation, containing a seed of wisdom for every reader.

"Two friends try to outdo each other on the basketball court in an out-of-this-world game of H.O.R.S.E"

While the rest of the class makes birthday cards for the principal, Stanley struggles with his words and letters.

After living in an Catholic orphanage for nearly four years, a naive Jewish boy runs away and embarks on a journey across Nazi-occupied Poland to find his parents.

After - The Nazis took my parents I was scared. After - They killed my best friend I was angry. After - They ruined my thirteenth birthday I was determined to get to the forest, to join forces with Gabriek and Yuli, to be a family, to defeat the Nazis after all

A critically acclaimed nonfiction author pieces together the story of the "Titanic" and that fateful April night in 1912, drawing on the voices of survivors and archival photographs.

Callie loves theater. And while she would totally try out for her middle school's production of Moon Over Mississippi, she's a terrible singer. Instead she's the set designer for the stage crew, and this year she's determined to create a set worthy of Broadway on a middle-school budget. But how can she, when she doesn't know much about carpentry, ticket sales are down, and the crew members are having trouble working together? Not to mention the onstage AND offstage drama that comes once the actors are chosen, and when two cute brothers enter the picture, things get even crazier!

When Sonia's father loses his job and she must move from her small, supportive private school to a public middle school, the half-Jewish half-Indian sixth-grader experiences culture shock as she tries to navigate the school's unfamiliar social scene, and after her father is diagnosed with clinical depression, she finds herself becoming even more confused about herself and her family.

Chu is a little panda with a big sneeze. When Chu sneezes, bad things happen. Will Chu sneeze today?

In the 1930s most girls were happy playing with dolls. But one girl, Betty Skelton, liked playing with airplanes, watching them fly around outside, and even flying airplanes herself! She lived for an adventure-in the air, the water, and on land-and nothing could stop her, especially not being a girl. When Betty Skelton was young there weren't many women flying airplanes or racing cars, but she wouldn't let that stop her. She was always ready to take on a challenge, and she loved to have fun. Betty rode motorcycles, raced cars, jumped out of planes, and flew jets, helicopters, gliders, and blimps. And by the time she was an adult, Betty was known in the press as the First Lady of Firsts!

Teddy isn't excited about Cousin Irv's visit. Cousin Irv is too weird. He steals Teddy's pillow, eats Teddy's food, and even plays with Teddy's action figures. Not to mention that Cousin Irv is from MARS. What will Teddy's friends say? But it turns out that everyone at school loves Cousin Irv. Not only is he from a different planet, he can vaporize things! Maybe cousins from Mars aren't so bad after all...

In 1910, Orville and Wilbur Wright opened the first American civilian flight school in Montgomery, Alabama. Author Julie Hedgepeth Williams chronicles the short life of this flight school as seen mainly through the eyes of the Alabama press, whose reporting and sometimes misreporting "reflected the misconceptions, hopes, dreams, and fears about aviation in 1910, painting a picture of a time when flight was untested, unsteady, and unavailable to most people."

Gerhard Richter is widely seen as one of the most important painters at work in the world. Born in Dresden, Germany, in 1932, he left for the West in 1961, settling in Dusseldorf, where he held his first exhibition in 1963. This title covers his entire oeuvre, including photo-paintings, abstracts, land and seascapes, portraits, and more

In 2010, pioneering sociologist Catherine Hakim shocked the world with a provocative new theory: In addition to the three recognized personal assets (economic, cultural, and social capital), each individual has a fourth asset--erotic capital--; that he or she can, and should, use to advance within society. In this bold and controversial book, Hakim explores the applications and significance of erotic capital, challenging the disapproval meted out to women and men who use sex appeal to get ahead in life. Social scientists have paid little serious attention to these modes of personal empowerment, despite overwhelming evidence of their importance. In Erotic Capital, Hakim marshals a trove of research to show that rather than degrading those who employ it, erotic capital represents a powerful and potentially equalizing tool—one that we scorn only to our own detriment.

In syndicated editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes' first book, she takes on the important and complex issues of the day, distilling their essence and expressing her sense of humor and her sense of justice-and injustice. The book begins with an extensive interview, and each cartoon is accompanied by commentary

"Eleanor Roosevelt once asked, 'Where do human rights begin? In small places, close to home, so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination.' As the Chair of the United Nations commission drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Eleanor Roosevelt worked tirelessly from 1946 to 1948.... Through Volume 1 of the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, we honor her work, her legacy, her timeless values and ideals, and her commitment to imagining a better future for all people. As you read through this volume, I hope her words will be a call to action."

A collection of letters that tantalizes questions about the role of Christianity and the church in an increasingly secular world. It provides a fresh perspective on religious and secular life in the postwar era.

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Editors Ilya Kaminsky and Katherine Towler have gathered conversations with nineteen of America's leading poets, reflecting upon their diverse experiences with spirituality and the craft of writing. Bringing together poets who are Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, Native American, Wiccan, agnostic, and otherwise, this book offers frank and thoughtful consideration of themes too often polarized and politicized in our society. Participants include Li-Young Lee, Jane Hirshfield, Carolyn Forché, Gerald Stern, Christian Wiman, Joy Harjo, and Gregory Orr, and others, all wrestling with difficult questions of human existence and the sources of art.

At most church weddings, the person presiding over the ritual is not a priest or a pastor, but the wedding planner, followed by the photographer, the florist, and the caterer. And in this day and age, more wedding theology is supplied by Modern Bridemagazine or reality television than by any of the Christian treatises on holy matrimony. Indeed, church weddings have strayed long and far from distinctly Christian aspirations. The costumes and gestures might still be right, but the intentions are hardly religious. Why then, asks noted gay commentator Mark D. Jordan, are so many churches vehemently opposed to blessing same-sex unions? In this incisive work, Jordan shows how carefully selected ideals of Christian marriage have come to dominate recent debates over same-sex unions. Opponents of gay marriage, he reveals, too often confuse simplified ideals of matrimony with historical facts. They suppose, for instance, that there has been a stable Christian tradition of marriage across millennia, when in reality Christians have quarreled among themselves for centuries about even the most basic elements of marital theology, authorizing experiments like polygamy and divorce.

This one-stop reference book on the vital relationship between Scripture and ethics offers needed orientation and perspective for students, pastors, and scholars. Written to respond to the movement among biblical scholars and ethicists to recover the Bible for moral formation, it is the best reference work available on the intersection of these two fields. The volume shows how Christian Scripture and Christian ethics are necessarily intertwined and offers up-to-date treatment of five hundred biblical, traditional, and contemporary topics, ranging from adultery, bioethics, and Colossians to vegetarianism, work, and Zephaniah. The stellar ecumenical list of contributors consists of more than two hundred leading scholars from the fields of biblical studies and ethics, including Darrell Bock, David Gushee, Amy Laura Hall, Daniel Harrington, Dennis Olson, Christine Pohl, Glen Stassen, and Max Stackhouse.

The intention for publishing The Jewish Annotated New Testament, according to its editors, Amy-Jill Levine and Mark Zvi Brettler is to recognize the growing understanding between Jewish and Christian traditions, and to help further that understanding.

Life for emerging adults is vastly different today than it was for their counterparts even a generation ago. Young people are waiting longer to marry, to have children, and to choose a career direction. As a result, they enjoy more freedom, opportunities, and personal growth than ever before. But the transition to adulthood is also more complex, disjointed, and confusing. Even-handed, engagingly written, and based on comprehensive research,Lost in Transition brings much needed attention to the darker side of the transition to adulthood.

Covers the influence of natural selection on behaviour -- an animal's struggle to survive and reproduce by exploiting and competing for resources, avoiding predators, selecting mates and caring for offspring, and how animal societies reflect both cooperation and conflict among individuals.

Makes the powerful case that the conventional understandings of Jesus and the origins of Christianity are wrong: that Jesus' core teachings were not a break from Jewish beliefs and that Jesus was embraced by many Jews as the Messiah of the ancient Jewish texts.

Towards a Jewish-Christian-Muslim Theology delineates the ways that Christianity, Islam, and the Jewish tradition have moved towards each another over the centuries and points to new pathways for contemporary theological work. * Explores the development of the three Abrahamic traditions, brilliantly showing the way in which they have struggled with similar issues over the centuries * Shows how the approach of each tradition can be used comparatively by the other traditions to illuminate and develop their own thinking * Written by a renowned writer in philosophical theology, widely acclaimed for his comparative thinking on Jewish and Islamic theology * A very timely book which moves forward the discussion at a period of intense inter-religious dialogue

When is wartime? On the surface, it is a period of time in which a society is at war. But we now live in what President Obama has called "an age without surrender ceremonies," as the Administration announced an "end to conflict in Iraq," even though conflict on the ground is ongoing. It is no longer easy to distinguish between wartime and peacetime. In this inventive meditation on war, time, and the law, Mary Dudziak argues that wartime is not as discrete a time period as we like to think. Instead, America has been engaged in some form of ongoing overseas armed conflict for over a century. Meanwhile policy makers and the American public continue to view wars as exceptional events that eventually give way to normal peace times. This has two consequences. First, because war is thought to be exceptional, "wartime" remains a shorthand argument justifying extreme actions like torture and detention without trial. Second, ongoing warfare is enabled by the inattention of the American people. More disconnected than ever from the wars their nation is fighting, public disengagement leaves us without political restraints on the exercise of American war powers.

"Modern historians revisit and reconsider the Civil War from Lincoln's election to the Emancipation Proclamation."

Frances argues that the new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders threatens to destroy what is considered normal and that grief, sorrow, stress, disappointment, and other feelings are part of life, not a psychiatric disease.

Most readers know Truman Capote as the author of Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood; or they remember his notorious social life and wild and witty public appearances. But he was also the author of superb short tales that were as elegant as they were heartfelt, as grotesque as they were compassionate. Now, on the occasion of what would have been his eightieth birthday, the Modern Library presents the first collection that includes all of Capote's short fiction;a volume that confirms his status as one of the masters of this form.

A beautifully wrought new novel about marriage and family from the acclaimed author of Autobiography of My Mother. In See Now Then, the brilliant and evocative new novel from Jamaica Kincaid-her first in ten years-a marriage is revealed in all its joys and agonies. This piercing examination of the manifold ways in which the passing of time operates on the human consciousness unfolds gracefully, and Kincaid inhabits each of her characters-a mother, a father, and their two children, living in a small village in New England-as they move, in their own minds, between the present, the past, and the future: for, as she writes, "the present will be now then and the past is now then and the future will be a now then." Her characters, constrained by the world, despair in their domestic situations. But their minds wander, trying to make linear sense of what is, in fact, nonlinear. See Now Then is Kincaid's attempt to make clear what is unclear, and to make unclear what we assumed was clear: that is, the beginning, the middle, and the end.

For the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, here is a collection of writings that charts our nation’s long, heroic confrontation with its most poisonous evil. It’s an inspiring moral and political struggle whose evolution parallels the story of America itself. To advance their cause, the opponents of slavery employed every available literary form: fiction and poetry, essay and autobiography, sermons, pamphlets, speeches, hymns, plays, even children’s literature. This is the first anthology to take the full measure of a body of writing that spans nearly two centuries and, exceptionally for its time, embraced writers black and white, male and female.

Before winning international fame, Vonnegut was a master of the drugstore paperback and the popular short story. This authoritative collection of his brilliant early work display his matchless talent for hilarious invention and caustic social criticism.

Presents a collection of four novels, four short stories, and other writings, including a speech and letters.

This second volume of The Letters of Samuel Beckett opens with the War years, when it was often impossible or too dangerous to correspond. The surge of letters beginning in 1945, and their variety, are matched by the outpouring and the range of Beckett's published work. Primarily written in French and later translated by the author, the work includes stories, a series of novels (Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable), essays and plays - most notably Waiting for Godot. The letters chronicle a passionately committed but little known writer evolving into a figure of international reputation, and his response to such fame. The volume provides detailed introductions which discuss Beckett's situation during the War and his crucial move into the French language, as well as translations of the letters, explanatory notes, year-by-year chronologies, profiles of correspondents and other contextual information.