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

From bestselling historian H. W. Brands, a sweeping chronicle of how a few wealthy businessmen reshaped America from a land of small farmers and small businessmen into an industrial giant.

The first book to explore the immense cultural contributions of one of America's wealthiest and most influential families: the Rockefellers.

A piercing and vital look at how capitalism is consuming U.S. society. An apt sequel to Benjamin R. Barber's best-selling Jihad vs. McWorld, Consumed offers a wrenching portrait of how adult consumers are infantilized in a global economy that overproduces goods and targets children as consumers in a market where there are never enough shoppers. Driven by a frantic imperative to sell, consumer capitalism specializes today in the manufacture not of goods but of needs. This provocative culmination of Barber's lifelong study of democracy and capitalism shows how the infantilist ethos deprives society of responsible citizens and displaces public goods with private commodities......

Welcome back to high school. Is it different? In some schools the pecking order hasn't changed, only the names; in others ranking is gone, but clique boundaries are even more rigid. From the lunchroom to the prom, students are obsessed with who sits together, who goes together, what people are wearing and driving. But in addition new kinds of relationships, anxieties, and conflicts have emerged. .....

Using innovative graphics and creative typography to help demystify hard-to-grasp concepts for those new to philosophy, The Philosophy Bookcuts through the haze of misunderstanding, untangles knotty theories, and sheds light on abstract concepts. Aimed at anyone with a general interest in how our social, political, and ethical ideas are formed, as well as students of philosophy and politics, The Philosophy Book breathes new life to a subject that is often regarded as esoteric and academic.

...In this groundbreaking new account of the marriage, Hazel Rowley describes the remarkable courage and lack of convention—private and public—that kept FDR and Eleanor together. She reveals a partnership that was both supportive and daring. Franklin, especially, knew what he owed to Eleanor, who was not so much behind the scenes as heavily engaged in them. Their relationship was the product of FDR and Eleanor’s conscious efforts—a partnership that they created according to their own ambitions and needs....

Nearly five hundred years after her violent death, Anne Boleyn, second wife to Henry VIII, remains one of the world's most fascinating, controversial, and tragic heroines. Now acclaimed historian and bestselling author Alison Weir has drawn on myriad sources from the Tudor era to give us the first book that examines, in unprecedented depth, the gripping, dark, and chilling story of Anne Boleyn's final days.

The bestselling author of "Mayflower" sheds new light on one of the iconic stories of the American West, reminding readers that the Battle of the Little Bighorn was also, even in victory, the last stand for the Sioux and Cheyenne Indian nations.

In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.

In Civil War Humor, author Cameron C. Nickels examines the various forms of comedic popular artifacts produced in America from 1861 to 1865 and looks at how wartime humor was created, disseminated, and received by both sides of the conflict. Broadsides, newspaper journalism, sheet music covers, lithographs, political cartoons, light verse, printed envelopes, comic valentines, humor magazines, and penny dreadfuls---from and for the Union and the Confederacy---are analyzed at length.

For the first time, HRH The Prince of Wales shares his views on how our most pressing modern challenges—from climate change to poverty—are rooted in mankind's disharmony with nature, presenting a compelling case that the solution lies in our ability to regain a balance with the world around us With its holistic approach, this provocative and well-reasoned book takes the discussion of sustainability and climate change in a new direction. Prince Charles shows how the solutions to problems like climate change lie not only in technology but in our ability to change the way we view the modern world.

Prior to 1966, if artists wanted to create works larger than their studios or metalworking abilities allowed, they had to turn to industrial manufacturers, usually steel fabricators or boat builders, who, not surprisingly, were often unable to accommodate the creative process of making art. The opening that spring of Lippincott, Inc. changed that and the direction of American art in the process......

It's 1985 and 29-year-old family man Anthony Papa is the owner of a failing radio repair business. Offered $500 to deliver an envelope for an acquaintance, the desperate Papa agrees, unaware of the cocaine inside or the sting operation that awaits. Though it's his first criminal offense, New York drugs laws dictate a mandatory 15-year-to-life prison term. Papa's life is ruined. His wife leaves, he can't see his daughter, and he's consumed by regret and thoughts of suicide until discovering painting - a pursuit that sustains him and gradually inspires him to fight for justice. When his self-portrait is exhibited at the Whitney Museum in 1994, a burst of public sympathy catches the attention of the governor and leads to Papa's eventual release just three years short of the full sentence. A riveting story featuring a 16-page signature with color photos and reproductions of Anthony Papa's art, 15 To Life is also an important social critique of America's draconian drug laws and a clarion call for reform.

This collection of sixty-eight full-color reproductions is the first book to focus solely on Roy Lichtenstein's masterful Pop Art posters dating from 1960 to 1997

A little boy named Clemente learns about his namesake, the great baseball player Roberto Clemente, in this joyful picture book biography. Born in Puerto Rico, Roberto Clemente was the first Latin American player to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and the only player for whom the five-year initiation period was waived. Known not only for his exceptional baseball skills but also for his extensive charity work in Latin America, Clemente was well-loved during his eighteen years playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He died in a plane crash while bringing aid supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. Willie Perdomo's rhythmic text and Bryan Collier's energetic art combine to tell the amazing story of one of baseball's greats.

After his recapture at the end of ALABAMA MOON, gutsy 14-year-old Hal Mitchell is sentenced to live at Hellenweiler, an institution that is more like a jail than the boys' home it's supposed to be. Hal could walk out in just a few months if he keeps out of trouble. But in a place like Hellenweiler, the more he tries to avoid the gangs and their violence, the stronger Hal's fellow inmates try to make him fail.

A series of paintings chronicles the journey of African Americans who, like the artist's family, left the rural South in the early twentieth century to find a better life in the industrial North.

This stunning guide to the international sport of soccer features full-color photographs of players in action, soccer uniforms, equipment, and memorabilia to present a unique picture of the game and the people who play it. Includes a CD of clip art. Full color.

Stephen Sondheim has won seven Tonys, an Academy Award, seven Grammys, a Pulitzer Prize and the Kennedy Center Honors. His career has spanned more than half a century, his lyrics have become synonymous with musical theater and popular culture, and in Finishing the Hat - ;titled after perhaps his most autobiographical song, from Sunday in the Park with George - Sondheim has not only collected his lyrics for the first time, he is giving readers a rare personal look into his life as well as his remarkable productions...

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis never wrote a memoir, but she told her life story and revealed herself in intimate ways through the nearly 100 books she brought into print during the last two decades of her life as an editor at Viking and at Doubleday. Based on archives and interviews with Jackie's authors, colleagues, and friends, Reading Jackie mines this significant period of her life to reveal both the serious and the mischievous woman underneath the glamorous public image....

Lucas McCarty lives in the Mississippi Delta. He is the only white congregant in the African-American Trinity House of Prayer Holiness church. Lucas is bereft of the ability to speak due to cerebral palsy, yet he sings there in the church choir. Thus is the subject of Year of Our Lord, a portrait of courage, acceptance and grace, rendered in the lyrical prose of T.R. Pearson and the haunting photographs of Langdon Clay. Year of Our Lord is a visual journey, exploring one of the poorest parts of the American South, a place that economic progress has left behind. And it is a spiritual journey, a revelation of a community that has replaced the hope for earthly prosperity with an abundance of faith in God and the life beyond. The Deltażs is a culture that can look upon Lucas and say, żGod donżt make mistakes.ż It is a place that in the face of abject poverty can proclaim, life offers żtoo much joy!ż Year of Our Lord, then, is an opportunity to see into anotherżs world, and to embrace the best of it.

Sister Helen Prejean was a little-known Roman Catholic nun from Louisiana when in 1993, her first book Dead Man Walking, challenged the way we look at the death penalty in America. It became a #1 New York Times bestseller and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Now in The Death of Innocents, she takes us to the new moral edge of the debate on capital punishment: What if we’re killing the wrong man?

For more than a century, photography has revealed truths, exposed lies, advanced the public discourse, and inspired people to demand change. Socially conscious pioneers with cameras transformed the world—and that legacy lives on in this eye-opening, thought-provoking, and (we hope) action-inducing book. L....

Drawing on interviews with friends and family, as well as teammates and opponents, "New York Times"-bestselling author Leavy delivers the definitive account of one of the biggest talents and most tragic figures ever to play baseball.

Christians in the Movies traces the arc of the portrayal in film of Christians from 1905 to the present. For most of the first six decades, the portrayals were favorable and even reverential. By contrast, from 1970 on, Christians_and especially Catholics_have often been treated with hostility and sometimes outright ridicule. This book explores the shift through in-depth reviews and commentaries on over 100 important films, as well as briefer discussions of 75 additional films with Christian themes or characters.

Real-life bank robbers, twisted serial killers, and pulp novels have all helped shape the world of crime cinema. From Kiss Me Deadly, Bonnie & Clyde and Psycho, to The Godfather and L.A. Confidential, Max Decharne uncovers the little-known stories behind each of these classic films and more. Thanks to Hollywood, failed bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are forever fixed in popular imagination. Middle-aged Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein is now forever embodied in Anthony Perkin's unforgettable portrayal of Norman Bates in Hitchcock's Psycho. The true-life origins of these films are now revealed in Max Décharné's revelatory volume--the stories perhaps more fascinating than even their Hollywood representations.

This is the long-awaited biography of one of the twentieth century's greatest playwrights, Arthur Miller, whose postwar decade of work earned him international critical and popular acclaim. Christopher Bigsby's gripping, meticulously researched biography examines his refusal to name names before the notorious House on Un-American Activities Committee, offers new insights into Miller's marriage to Marilyn Monroe, and sheds new light on how their relationship informed Miller's subsequent great plays.

In Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman, Toril Moi shows how Simone de Beauvoir became the leading feminist thinker and emblematic intellectual woman of the twentieth century. Blending biography with literary criticism, feminist theory, and historical and social analysis, this book provides a completely original analysis of Beauvoir's education and formation as an intellectual....