New Books, Films, Databases, and other Resources: New films July 2011

From "the great storyteller of modern Russian historians" comes the definitive account of the Crimean War, a forgotten war that shaped the modern age. Figes reconstructs the first full conflagration of modernity, a global industrialized struggle fought with unusual ferocity and incompetence.

Portrays the ambitious, brave, and arrogant English family that gave the world Winston Churchill, describing generations of ancestors who were reckless womanizers but also triumphant military leaders all saddled with the upkeep of the family palace, Blenheim.

A stunning account of Julia Child's early life as an OSS agent in the Far East.

Mother and son give us an extraordinary view of the private life of a man both loved and feared by his family.

A cultural history of witch-hunting, from the Romans through McCarthy. The term witch-hunt is used today to describe everything from political scandals to school board shake-ups. But its origins are far from trivial. Long before the Salem witch trials, women and men were rounded up by neighbors, accused of committing horrific crimes using supernatural powers, scrutinized by priests and juries, and promptly executed. The belief in witchcraft--and the deep fear of evil it instilled in communities--led to a cycle of accusation, anger, and purging that has occurred repeatedly in the West for centuries.

Jim Garrison's book presents the most powerful detailed case yet made that President Kennedy's assassination was the product of a conspiracy, and that the plotters and key operators came not from the Mob, but the CIA. I think there was a conspiracy. There's kind of collective amnesia about the whole thing. The Warren Commission construed its mission to be restoring equilibrium. No one really wanted to know. It goes back to the late sixties, the Garrison case. Remember he had this elaborate conspiracy theory? The stones that were turned over! Fantastic characters kept emerging.

Offers an intimate portrait of the American woman for whom a British King gave up his throne, and the glamour, rumor, and secrets associated with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

An overview of the history and relations of Egypt and Western Asia from the Paleolithic period to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.

From a World War II veteran and longtime journalist, a shocking expose, based on decades of passionate research, that will be the last-and most revolutionary-chapter in the story of Pearl Harbor.

Of the millions of words written about September 11, 2001, most were told from the outside looking in. "New York Times" reporters Dwyer and Flynn have taken the opposite and far more revealing-approach, capturing the little-known stories of the nearly 12,000 ordinary people who took extraordinary steps to save themselves and others. They tell the dramatic and moving account of the struggle for life inside the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, when every minute counted. At 8:46 AM on September 11, 2001, 14,000 people were inside the twin towers -- reading e-mails, making trades, eating croissants at Windows on the World. Over the next 102 minutes, each would become part of a drama for the ages, one witnessed only by the people who lived it -- until now. "New York Times" reporters Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn rely on hundreds of interviews; thousands of pages of oral histories; and phone, e-mail, and emergency radio transcripts. They cross a bridge of voices to go inside the infernos, seeing cataclysm and heroism, one person at a time, to tell the affecting, authoritative saga of the men and women -- the 12,000 who escaped and the 2,749 who perished -- who made 102 minutes count as never before.

This volume in the Seven-Day Scholar series brings to life significant moments in our nation's heroic tragedy, the Civil War, and coincides with its 150th anniversary. The book is organized into fifty-two chapters, corresponding to the weeks in a year; and each week has a theme--what ignited the war, Antietam, soldiers' food and drink, the 54th Massachusetts, the Gettysburg Address, Vicksburg, medical care, Lincoln's assassination, why the North won, and many more. Each chapter includes seven related narrative entries, one for every day of the week. These one-page entries, which read like historical fiction, bring to life crucial political decisions, unforgettable people, key battlefield moments, scholarly debates, and struggles on the home front

Looks at many of the famous heretics in history--from Martin Luther to John Calvin to the Libyan cleric Arius--and argues that heresy actually helped strengthen the Christian church into the powerful force it is today.

The author invites readers to witness the exploration on religion that he undertook after being diagnosed with an aggressive, and likely fatal, form of cancer.

According to the authors, both business journalists, no one has put all the pieces of the financial crisis together. This title explores the motivations of everyone from CEOs and politicians to anonymous lenders, borrowers and Wall Street traders. It goes back more than twenty years to reveal, how Wall Street, the mortgage industry, and the government conspired to change the way Americans bought their homes, creating a perfect storm. The authors take us inside elusive institutions such as Goldman Sachs, AIG, and Fannie Mae, to reveal who changed the game and why

Chronicles how America's Progressive Era war on smallpox sparked one of the twentieth century's leading civil liberties battles, describing the views and tactics of anti-vaccine advocates who feared an increasingly large government.

In this book the author recounts the story of the Faulkners of Mississippi, whose legacy includes pioneers, noble and ignoble war veterans, three never convicted murderers, the builder of the first railroad in north Mississippi, the founding president of a bank, an FBI agent, four pilots (all brothers), and a Nobel prize winner arguably the most important American novelist of the twentieth century. She also reveals wonderfully entertaining and intimate stories and anecdotes about her family, in particular her uncle William or Pappy with whom she shared colorful, sometimes utterly frank, sometimes whimsical, conversations and experiences. This memoir explores the close relationship between Dean's uncle and her father, Dean Swift Faulkner, a barnstormer killed at age twenty eight during an air show four months before she was born. It was William who gave his youngest brother an airplane, and after Dean's tragic death, William helped to raise his niece. He paid for her education, gave her away when she was married, and maintained a unique relationship with her throughout his life. From the 1920s to the early civil rights era, from Faulkner's winning of the Nobel Prize in Literature to his death in 1962, this work explores the changing culture and society of Oxford, Mississippi, while offering a rare glimpse of a notoriously private family and an indelible portrait of a national treasure

The Green Studies Reader is a comprehensive selection of critical texts addressing the connection between ecology, culture and literature. It offers a guide to the field of ecocriticism and material on green issues.

This catalogue accompanies an exhibition organized by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, curated by Roger Benjamin and coordinated by Andrew C. Weislogel, associate curator and master teacher at the Johnson Museum.

The astonishing story of Barack Obama's Kenyan roots, "The Obamas" is the product of dozens of interviews with Obama's African relatives, presented by the first person to trace Obama's family history back 400 years and 23 generations.

From a Pulitzer Prize winner and the bestselling author of "The Working Poor" comes an impassioned, incisive look at the violations of civil liberties in the United States that have accelerated over the past decade--and their direct impact on our lives.

David Eisenhower delivers a warm, personal recollection of the retirement years of his grandfather, Dwight D. Eisenhower, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where they lived.

This biography by the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author recounts the last decade of Theodore Roosevelt's amazing life.

The Massachusetts senator who was elected to succeed the late Edward Kennedy recounts the story of his neglect- and abuse-marked childhood, military and career successes, and unexpected entry into politics.

Francis Fukuyama examines the paths that different societies have taken to reach their current forms of political order.

"It was a technological crisis in an alien realm: a blown-out oil well in mile-deep water in the Gulf of Mexico. For the engineers who had to kill the well, this was like Apollo 13, a crisis no one saw coming, and one of untold danger and challenge. A suspense story, a mystery, a technological thriller: This is Joel Achenbach's groundbreaking account of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and what came after. The tragic explosion on the huge drilling rig in April 2010 killed eleven men and triggered an environmental disaster. As a gusher of crude surged into the Gulf's waters, BP engineers and government scientists--awkwardly teamed in Houston--raced to devise ways to plug the Macondo well. Achenbach, a veteran reporter for The Washington Post and acclaimed science writer for National Geographic, moves beyond the blame game to tell the gripping story of what it was like, behind the scenes, moment by moment, in the struggle to kill Macondo.

Relates the full, twenty-seven-year story behind the abduction and murder of Adam Walsh, the six-year-old son of "America's Most Wanted" host John Walsh, as well as the decades-long search for the boy's elusive killer.

Describes how the author's three-month service as a volunteer at the Little Princes Orphanage in war-torn Nepal became a commitment for advocacy and reform when he discovered that many of his young charges were victims rescued from human traffickers.

Cookbook author Jessica B. Harris has spent much of her life researching the food and foodways of the African Diaspora. High on the Hog is the culmination of years of her work, and the result is an engaging history of African American cuisine. Harris takes the reader on a harrowing journey from Africa across the Atlantic to America, tracking the trials that the people and the food have undergone along the way. From chitlins and ham hocks to fried chicken and vegan soul, Harris celebrates the delicious and restorative foods of the African American experience and details how each came to form such an important part of African American culture, history, and identity. Although the story of African cuisine in America begins with slavery, High on the Hog ultimately chronicles a history of triumph and survival

Primatologist Richard Wrangham argues that "cooking" created the human race because the habit of eating cooked rather than raw food permitted the digestive tract to shrink and the human brain to grow, helped structure human society, and created the male-female division of labor

Here is the real inside story--not the one about the Stieg Larsson phenomenon, but rather the love story of a man and a woman whose lives came to be guided by politics and love, coffee and activism, writing and friendship. Only one person knows that story well enough to tell it with authority. Eva and Stieg shared everything, starting when they were both eighteen until his untimely death 32 years later. Here, Eva accepts the daunting challenge of telling the story of their shared life, steeped in love and sharpened in the struggle for justice and human rights. She chooses to tell it in short, spare, lyrical chapters, like snapshots, the inside account of how he wrote, why he wrote, who the sources were for Lisbeth and his other characters--graciously answering Stieg's readers' most pressing questions--and at the same time telling us about love and loss, death, betrayal, and the mistreatment of women.--From publisher description.

Traces the life and career of the gifted athlete, tracing his achievements playing with the Negro Leagues and Brooklyn Dodgers before the accident that rendered him a quadriplegic and pioneer in rehabilitative physical therapy.

Details the tragic story of Cho-Cho-San, a Japanese geisha, who, after marrying an American Navy Lieutenant, is destroyed by her husband's betrayal when he returns, after leaving her for three years, with his new American wife.

A detailed history of the Parthenon exploring its construction and restoration.

A young woman, Psyche, searches for her lost love and questions her true self in a modern retelling of Greek myths.

Examines how the ancient Egyptians prepared for the afterlife, covering such topics as entombment, mummification, funeral messages in hieroglyphics, and measures taken to thwart tomb raiders, presented in a pyramid-shaped book, with some pictures under flaps.

After being interrogated for days by the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco, California, seventeen-year-old Marcus, released into what is now a police state, decides to use his expertise in computer hacking to set things right.

Determined to fend for herself in a world where only men have real freedom, headstrong Helen, who will be called queen of Sparta and Helen of Troy one day, learns to fight, hunt, and ride horses while disguised as a boy, and goes on an adventure around the Mediterranean world.

The island of Ithaka is overrun with uncouth suitors demanding that Penelope choose a new husband, as she patiently awaits the return of Odysseus from the Trojan War.

Nuttagwon, daughter of a minor Pamunkey chief, is still a girl when Pocahontas's vision of peace between their people and the newly-arrived English colonists bonds the two in a lifelong friendship as they work together to make the vision a reality.

As she tries to stay alive after being left on an iceberg in the Antarctic, sixteen-year-old Vicky recalls the series of events that brought her to the bottom of the world and involved her in a dangerous mystery.

Vicky Austin's camping trip becomes most interesting when she meets a new boy at the campsite.