New Books, Films, Databases, and other Resources: January 2011

Frank Sikora has used the court records, FBI reports, oral interviews, and newspaper accounts to weave a story of spellbinding proportions. A reporter by profession, Sikora tells this story compellingly, explaining why the civil rights movement had to be successful and how Birmingham had to change.

Cline provides the first comprehensive, illustrated history of Alabama's railroad system. Alabama Railroads is the first extensive history of the state's railway system, from the chartering of the Tuscumbia Railway Company in January 1830, to the maturity of the system in the latter half of the 20th century, when Amtrak assumed control of the nation's passenger service.

Documents the author's traditional childhood north of the Arctic Circle, his decision to pursue an education in the continental U.S., and his successful lobbying efforts that convinced the government to allocate land and monetary resources to Alaska's natives in compensation for incursions on their way of life.

Heart of a Small Town is Robin McDonald's paean to a time when small rural communities all over this country bustled with life. Concentrating on Alabama, he draws his subjects from those areas of the state that have been bypassed by major highways and left somewhat deserted. Places like Verbena, Mentone, Burnt Corn, Newbern, Epes, and Enterprise; places in the Black Belt, in Wiregrass Country, in the Piedmont. There he records common objects--screen doors, broken sidewalks, storefront displays, neon signs, rusting pickup trucks, kudzu-covered walls, and church windows--with an uncommon sensitivity. Matched with quotations from writing that grew out of these places, the images take on an unusually vibrant life. Robin McDonald's photographs are animated and enriched by the lyrical quotations borrowed from southern writers, some less well known, like Augusta Evans Wilson and Viola Goode Liddell, and some well known, like Truman Capote, Zelda Fitzgerald, James Agee, Vicki Covington, and Rick Bragg. They echo with the hopes and joys and the struggles and grief of folks who have called these places home.

t was a time when Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders rallied black youth and adults to march for their civil rights, a time when the Ku Klux Klan was active in cities and throughout the countryside of the Deep South, employing 19th-century tactics to intimidate blacks to stay “in their place.” It was also the year that the worst act of terrorism in the entire civil rights movement occurred just as Birmingham, Alabama, was coming under close national scrutiny.....

A fascinating and rare collection of Civil War letters.

Alabama Railroads is the first extensive history of the state's railway system, from the chartering of the Tuscumbia Railway Company in January 1830, to the maturity of the system in the latter half of the 20th century, when Amtrak assumed control of the nation's passenger service....

Documents the author's traditional childhood north of the Arctic Circle, his decision to pursue an education in the continental U.S., and his successful lobbying efforts that convinced the government to allocate land and monetary resources to Alaska's natives in compensation for incursions on their way of life.

A riveting look at one of the most colorful, dangerous, and peculiar places in America’s historical landscape: the strange, wonderful, and mysterious Mississippi River of the nineteenth century.

A prizewinning "New York Times" correspondent chronicles a remarkable chain of events that begins with the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s, continues with the attacks of 9/11, and moves on to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Part memoir, part history,Russia and the Arabsreveals the past half-century in the Middle East from a viewpoint seldom seen by Westerners. Yevgeny Primakov, formerly the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Foreign Minister, and Prime Minister of Russia, exposes how key political events unfolded through the personal interactions and rivalries among notable leaders from Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin to Anwar Sadat and Saddam Hussein, whom he knew personally. He shows how the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars developed, exposes Russiars"s previously unknown role in the 1991 Gulf War, and assesses Russiars"s Middle East policies alongside those of other foreign players, including the United States. The authorrs"s first-hand accounts of behind-the-scenes encounters and his insights into what really drove the regionrs"s key events makeRussia and the Arabsan essential read for everyone interested in world affairs.

Shares narrative analyses comparing the lives of three royal matriarchs and their daughters, in a collection of illustrative histories that illuminates the disparities between Queen Isabella and Catherine of Aragon, Empress Maria Theresa and Marie Antoinette, and Queen Victoria and the Empress Frederick. By the author of Born to Rule. 20,000 first printing.

A visually arresting survey of Alabama's wetland environments highlights the plants and animals that make this region unique and makes a case for preserving these areas against human encroachment.

A visually stunning portrait of Alabama’s precious and majestic forests.

How Trees Die is a revealing volume that that shows how, although not as readily apparent as other forms of domestication, our ancient and intimate relationship with trees has caused their lives to be inseparably entwined with ours, and that the death of a tree is just as important to our understanding of the environment - and its future - as how it lives.

....Planting Nature details the history of tree planting in the United States and the rise of popular sentiment around trees, including the development of the Arbor Day holiday and tree-planting groups such as the National Arbor Day Foundation and American Forests. Drawing from internal papers, government publications, advertisements, and archival documents, Cohen illustrates how organizations promote tree planting as a way of shifting attention away from the causes of environmental problems to their symptoms, masking business-as-usual agendas. Ultimately, Planting Nature challenges the relationships between a "green" public, the organizations that promote their causes, and the "powers that be," providing a cautionary tale of cooperation and deception that cuts across the political spectrum.

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring antagonized some of the most powerful interests in the nation--including the farm block and the agricultural chemical industry--and helped launch the modern environmental movement. In Gentle Subversive, Mark Hamilton Lytle offers a compact life of Carson, illuminating the road that lead to this vastly influential book. Lytle explores the evolution of Carson's ideas about nature, her love for the sea, her career as a biologist, and above all her emergence as a writer of extraordinary moral and ecological vision. ....

Edited and introduced by Bill Bryson, with original contributions from "a glittering array of scientific writing talent" (Sunday Observer) including Richard Dawkins, Margaret Atwood, Richard Holmes, Martin Rees, Richard Fortey, Steve Jones, James Gleick, and Neal Stephenson, among others, this incomparable book tells the spectacular story of science and the international Royal Society, from 1660 to the present. Seeing Further is also gorgeously illustrated with photographs, documents, and treasures from the Society's exclusive archives.

President George W. Bush describes the critical decisions of his presidency and personal life. Decision Points is the extraordinary memoir of America’s 43rd president. Shattering the conventions of political autobiography, George W. Bush offers a strikingly candid journey through the defining decisions of his life. ....

The US's political discourse and foreign policy in recent years has been based on the assumption that Osama bin Laden is still alive. George W. Bush promised as president that he would get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" and has been widely criticized for failing to do so. The US's present military escalation in Afghanistan is said to be necessary to "get Osama bin Laden." The news media regularly announce the appearance of new "messages from bin Laden." But what if he died in December 2001-the last time a message was intercepted? In this book, David Ray Griffin examines evidence for the claim-made by everyone from former CIA agent Robert Baer to Oliver North-that bin Laden is surely no longer with us. His meticulous analysis supports above all one simple and urgent conclusion: if Osama bin Laden is dead, the US should not be using its troops and treasure to hunt him down.

1944: Norm Bussel finds himself bailing out of a burning B-17 bomber only months after his twentieth birthday. Touching down in a field outside Berlin, Norm was immediately seized by local farmhands, who were in the process of lynching him when a passing German soldier put a stop to the execution. For the next year, Norm would struggle to survive at the hands of the Nazis as a prisoner of war. The rage and emotional turmoil he suffered during that year of suffering would follow him home, denying him the peace and stability he longed for. This is one soldier's searing and honest story of his battle with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The most up-to-date and comprehensive paperback dictionary of economics available, A Dictionary of Economics provides comprehensive definitions of over 2,500 economic terms. It covers all aspects of economic theory--from microeconomics to public finance and international trade, organizations, and institutions. Clear and jargon-free definitions provide an indispensable source of reference for students of economics and related fields, as well as for anyone who comes into contact with the vocabulary of economics. Up-to-date entries on topics such as e-commerce and the Euro have been added. Mathematical and statistical terms widely used in economics, as well as words from related areas such as business and finance, are widely covered.

With the same dazzling imagination and love of language that have made Salman Rushdie one of the great storytellers of our time, Luka and the Fire of Life revisits the magic-infused, intricate world he first brought to life in the modern classic Haroun and the Sea of Stories. This breathtaking new novel centers on Luka, Haroun's younger brother, who must save his father from certain doom. For Rashid Khalifa, the legendary storyteller of Kahani, has fallen into deep sleep from which no one can wake him. To keep his father from slipping away entirely, Luka must travel to the Magic World and steal the ever-burning Fire of Life. Thus begins a quest replete with unlikely creatures, strange alliances, and seemingly insurmountable challenges as Luka and an assortment of enchanted companions race through peril after peril, pass through the land of the Badly Behaved Gods, and reach the Fire itself, where Luka's fate, and that of his father, will be decided. Filled with mischievous wordplay and delving into themes as universal as the power of filial love and the meaning of mortality, Luka and the Fire of Life is a book of wonders for all ages.

With selections grown from the fertile imaginations of the twentieth century's most remarkable authors, editor and writer Michele Slung has assembled an enchanting and evocative anthology the word itself comes from the Greek terms for flower and to gather of short stories about gardens and all that grow in them.

"I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger . . ." writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up "1922," the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King. For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness. In "Big Driver," a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Violated and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself. "Fair Extension," the shortest of these tales, is perhaps the nastiest and certainly the funniest. Making a deal with the devil not only saves Dave Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment. When her husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his business trips, Darcy Anderson looks for batteries in the garage. Her toe knocks up against a box under a worktable and she discovers the stranger inside her husband. It's a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitively ends a good marriage. Like Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight, which generated such enduring films asThe Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me, Full Dark, No Stars proves Stephen King a master of the long story form.

...The anthology covers 200 years of literature in all genres, from the 1700s to the present. With 500 entries from 315 different authors, it includes writing by Aboriginal authors from the early colonial period to the present, up to work from contemporary authors of international renown, including Kate Grenville, Peter Carey, David Malouf, Les Murray, and Shirley Hazzard. With biographical details about the authors of the works selected, an introductory essay, major essays setting the works in their historical context, and suggestions for further reading, The Literature of Australia offers readers of all kinds a window into the myriad ways of being Australian.

The first collection by a striking new voice in the American theater.

Ever since its first publication, this book - with its subsequent revised and augmented editions - has been considered a classic of its kind, and that reputation has become worldwide. As a discussion of problems of making art today it has been widely influential not only among artists but among writers and musicians. It has also been seen as the most revealing portrait that exists of one of the most singular artistic personalities of our time. Bacon's obsessive thinking about how to remake the human form in pain finds unique expression in his encounters with the distinguished art writer David Sylvester over a period of twenty-five years. In these masterfully and creatively reconstructed interviews, Sylvester has provided unparalleled access to the thought, work, and life of one of the creative geniuses of our century. With Bacon's recent death, no other work will ever match this achievement.

Billions of dollars have been hastily poured into the global banking system in a frantic attempt at financial stabilization. So why has it not been possible to bring the same forces to bear in addressing world poverty and environmental crisis?In this take-no-prisoners analysis, Slavoj Zizek frames the moral failures of the modern world in terms of the epoch-making events of the first decade of this century. What he finds is the old one-two punch of history: the jab of tragedy, the right hook of farce. In the attacks of 9/11 and the global credit crunch, liberalism dies twice: as a political doctrine and as an economic theory.First as Tragedy, Then as Farce is a call for the Left to reinvent itself in the light of our desperate historical situation. The time for liberal, moralistic blackmail is over.

* A leading theologian's analysis of the root problems behind climate change * Proposes a relational, eco-friendly notion of what it is to be human

This new book—inspired by four classic, award-winning books—reveals the how and why behind some of the most fascinating and enduring structures humankind has ever created....

In this sparkling version of a classic tale, Red Hen finds a recipe for a Simply Splendid Cake and asks her friends the cat, the rat, and the frog to help with the preparations. But it seems as though her friends want no part in the cake until it’s ready to eat. Will they decide to pitch in, or let Red Hen do all of the hard work?

Clarence B. Moore (1852-1936), a wealthy Philadelphia socialite, paper company heir, and photographer, made the archaeology of the Southeast his passion. Beginning in the 1870s, Moore systematically explored prehistoric sites along the major waterways of the region, from the Ohio River south to Florida and as far west as Texas, publishing his findings, at his own expense, with the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.....

This book contains facsimile reprints of two classic works by Moore and a new introduction by a leading authority on this archaeological site.

When Clarence Bloomfield Moore cruised the rivers of Florida in search of prehistoric artifacts a century ago, he laid the groundwork for archaeological investigations to follow. This volume reflects Moore's fieldwork along the northwest Florida coast, the most archaeologically rich area of the state, as well as up the Apalachicola River to the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers in Alabama and Georgia.....

This volume provides an invaluable collection of Moore's pioneering archaeological investigations along Alabama's waterways.

This richly illustrated, oversized volume presents original material from Moore's northernmost expeditions conducted in the early 1900s as he surveyed areas of potential archaeological interest in the southeastern United States.

Following an introduction that overviews and updates research on sites reported by Moore in west Florida, this volume reproduces and discusses 13 of his archaeological papers. The first three describe his work in central and northeast Florida, and the rest deal with his work in west peninsular Florida. They provide all of his archaeological data on the region's mounds and prehistoric canals.

Clarence B. Moore (1852-1936), a wealthy Philadelphia socialite, paper company heir, and photographer made the archaeology of the Southeast his passion beginning in the 1870s. This volume collects 17 of Moore's publications on East Florida, originally published between 1892 and 1903. These invaluable and copiously illustrated works document the results of Moore's numerous archaeological expeditions along Florida's eastern coastline from the Georgia border to Lake Okeechobee and focus primarily on sites along the St. Johns River and its tributaries.

The greatest story ever told; the rise and fall of civilizations, empires, kings, despots, prophets and disciples; tales of love, betrayal, revenge, war, and disaster, the most fundamental and eternal myths and fables of Judeo-Christian society; the end of the world -the Bible has all of these. And now acclaimed mystery author Anne Perry has culled together an extraordinary list of writers—from Sharyn McCrumb, Carole Nelson Douglas, Robert Barnard, Marcia Talley, Susan Moody and Peter Lovesey to Sharan Newman, Nancy Pickard, Reginald Hill, Gillian Linscott, Simon Brett, and Peter Robinson—to contribute all new mystery and crime stories inspired by and based on these most ancient of biblical tales. From Sampson and Delilah to David and Goliath; from Mount Sinai to the Last Supper, Thou Shalt Not Kill explores the stories of the bible as chilling expressions of the most basic instincts found in the Good Book. With fifteen unique and inspired twists on the traditional mystery story, Thou Shalt Not Kill is an inimitable edition to any library.

"The book opens with a brief overview of anti-dance sentiment from around the fourth century to the present day. The waltz, perhaps the most beloved and most maligned social dance to come out of this period. It then explores the Charleston, the Tango, and Ragtime dances such as the Turkey Trot, Grizzly Bear, and Bunny Hug"--Provided by publisher.

The preeminent work by one of France’s most celebrated young comics artists, The Rabbi’s Cat tells the wholly unique story of a rabbi, his daughter, and their talking cat–a philosopher brimming with scathing humor and surprising tenderness.