New Books, Films, Databases, and other Resources: March 2012

Using a "tough love approach" to pursuing a career in the visual arts, Jackie Battenfield expands on her classes and workshops to provide a comprehensive guide for both emerging and mid-career artists. Providing real-life examples, illustrations, and step-by-step exercises, Battenfield offers readily applicable advice on all aspects of the job. Along with tips on planning and assessment, she presents strategies for self-management, including marketing, online promotion, building professional relationships, grant writing, and portfolio development.

Draws on newly available primary sources to present an in-depth, accessible profile that offers revisionist assessments of the influential artist's turbulent life and genius works.

"Through scholarly essays and sumptuous reproductions, this catalogue examines the obsessive themes of beauty, love, and classical art. The photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's relationships to sculpture - namely, the study of the human body - and the elongated, elaborate forms of Mannerist art illuminates the underlying classicism evident in the clarity and sensual potency of all his subjects, as well as their explosive energy

Part detective story, part philosophical meditation, Believing Is Seeing is a highly original exploration of photography and perception from one of America's most provocative observers

Frank Lloyd Wright's Wisconsin estate, Taliesin, gave rise to a fascinating and provocative cultural experiment: the Taliesin Fellowship, an extraordinary architectural colony where Wright trained hundreds of devoted apprentices, while using them as the de facto architectural practice where all of his late masterpieces--Fallingwater, Johnson Wax, the Guggenheim Museum--were born. This book draws on hundreds interviews and countless documents from the Wright archives to create a portrait of Taliesin and the three mercurial figures at its center: Wright, his imperious wife Olgivanna Hinzenberg, and her spiritual master, the Greek-Armenian mystic Georgi Gurdjieff. The authors reveal how the idealistic community became a kind of fiefdom, where young apprentices were both inspired and manipulated by the architect and his wife. They trace the war of wills between Wright and Olgivanna, in which organic architecture was pitted against esoteric spiritualism in a struggle for the soul of Taliesin. They chronicle Wright's perennial battles with clients, bankers, and the government, which suspected him of both communist and fascist sympathies. And they tell the stories of Wright's devoted apprentices--many of them gay men--who found an uncertain refuge in the architect's Wisconsin and Arizona compounds, and who helped the master realize his dreamlike architectural visions, often at great personal cost

A monograph on the self-taught artist Bill Traylor's striking drawings, which reveal the witty vitality of his vision

Aspecies nearing extinction, a tribe losing the last traces of an accumulation of centuries of knowledge, a tract of forest virtually untouched since prehistoric times facing the first incursions of humans--how can we begin to assess the cost of the increasing disappearance of so much of our natural and cultural legacy? While these losses occasionally garner headlines, the pressures on earth's remaining wildlands

Increased emphasis on gene activity, signal transduction and the emphasis on the roles of paracrine factors in development. This undergraduate textbook synthesizes the organismal, cellular, and evolutionary aspects of animal development. The seventh edition adds a chapter on the medical implications of developmental biology. The CD-ROM contains 140 videos and 300 labeled photographs that walk through the life cycle of model organisms.

The book focuses on geological history as the critical factor in determining the present biodiversity and landscapes of Amazonia. The different driving mechanisms for landscape evolution are explored by reviewing the history of the Amazonian Craton, the associated sedimentary basins, and the role of mountain uplift and climate change.

This lavishly produced deluxe publication reveals never-before seen botanical masterpieces from one of history's great scientists and researchers

Assuming little prior knowledge, Biogeography explains the relationships between geographic variation in biodiversity and the geological, ecological, and evolutionary processes that shape it. The Fourth Edition builds on the strengths of previous ones, illustrating ideas with examples of plants and animals across aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.

Collects 100 tropical butterflies and moths that represent the diversity in photographs which document a variety of shapes, colors, and markings, accompanied by species accounts and images of the corresponding caterpillar

Every bright monarch butterfly or striking luna moth started out in a far subtler form of nature's mosaic, a humble caterpillar. This title features over 100 photographs of caterpillars that document a variety of shapes, colors, and cryptic markings among these species, revealing life histories as diverse as their forms

The periodic table of the elements is a crowning scientific achievement, but it's also a treasure trove of passion, adventure, obsession, and betrayal. These tales follow carbon, neon, silicon, gold, and all the elements in the table as they play out their parts in human history. The usual suspects are here, like Marie Curie (and her radioactive journey to the discovery of polonium and radium) and William Shockley (who is credited, not exactly justly, with the discovery of the silicon transistor)--but the more obscure characters provide some of the best stories, like Paul Emile François Lecoq de Boisbaudran, whose discovery of gallium, a metal with a low melting point, gives this book its title: a spoon made of gallium will melt in a cup of tea

Winner of the 2001 Disney teacher of the year award, Ron Clark presents fifty-five rules for everyday life that help students rise to their potential.

Two years after being released from Camp Green Lake, Armpit is trying hard to keep his life on track, but when his old pal X-Ray shows up with a plan to make some easy money scalping concert tickets, Armpit reluctantly goes along.

Presents an overview of education in America. This book provides commentary on educational history, philosophy, and governance, while giving attention to critical topics such as the changing federal role in educational finance.

Raised by parents so intentionally isolated that they speak their own hybrid dialect, abused youth Marjorie witnesses her parents' submission to a sadistic cult leader before she is rescued by another abuse survivor who teaches her stoneworking skills.

Having left Nazi-occupied Vienna a year ago, thirteen-year-old Jewish refugee Stephie Steiner adapts to life in the cultured Swedish city of Göteborg, where she attends school, falls in love, and worries about her parents who were not allowed to emigrate.

In small-town Australia, teens Jasper and Charlie form an unlikely friendship when one asks the other to help him cover up a murder until they can prove who is responsible.

Enduring a hardscrabble existence as the children of alcoholic and absent parents, four siblings from a coastal Mississippi town prepare their meager stores for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina while struggling with such challenges as a teen pregnancy and a dying litter of prize pups.

Sixteen-year-old Min Green writes a letter to Ed Slaterton in which she breaks up with him, documenting their relationship and how items in the accompanying box, from bottle caps to a cookbook, foretell the end.

When a school bus accident leaves sixteen-year-old Jessica an amputee, she returns to school with a prosthetic limb and her track team finds a wonderful way to help rekindle her dream of running again.

Having lost his mother and his hearing in a short time, twelve-year-old Ben leaves his Minnesota home in 1977 to seek the father he never knew in New York City, and meets there Rose, who is also longing for something missing from her life. Ben's story is told in words; Rose's in pictures.

A modern love story told through a series of dictionary-style entries is a sequence of intimate windows into the large and small events that shape the course of a romantic relationship.

Along with her best friend, the fourteen-year-old narrator navigates a 1970s American girlhood, including challenges from popular girls and the first hints of womanhood.

"For her graduation from high school in 1920, Frankie Pratt receives a scrapbook and her father's old Corona typewriter. Despite Frankie's dreams of becoming a writer, she must forgo a college scholarship to help her widowed mother. But when a mysterious Captain James sweeps her off her feet, her mother finds a way to protect Frankie from the less-than-noble intentions of her unsuitable beau. Through a kaleidoscopic array of vintage postcards, letters, magazine ads, ticket stubs, catalog pages, fabric swatches, candy wrappers, fashion spreads, menus, and more, we meet and follow Frankie on her journey in search of success and love.

When eighteen-year-old best friends Evan and Davis of Madison, Wisconsin, join a community center group called "chasers" to gain acceptance and knowledge of gay history, there may be fatal consequences.

In 1936 Berlin, fourteen-year-old Karl Stern, considered Jewish despite a non-religious upbringing, learns to box from the legendary Max Schmeling while struggling with the realities of the Holocaust.

Retells four classic Grimm's Brothers fairy tales, including "Tom Thumb," "The Fisherman and His Wife," and "Hans in Luck."

A cumulative tale of a farm maiden who, aided by a group of animals, prepares "Arroz con Leche," or rice pudding. Includes recipe and glossary of the Spanish words that are woven throughout the text.

"In the nineteen fifties and early sixties, Birmingham, Alabama, became known as Bombingham. At the center of this violent time in the fight for civil rights, and standing at opposite ends, were Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth and Eugene "Bull' Connor. From his pulpit, Shuttlesworth agitated for racial equality, while Commissioner Connor fought for the status quo. Relying on court documents, police and FBI reports, newspapers, interviews, and photographs, author Larry Dane Brimner first covers each man's life and then brings them together to show how their confrontation brought about significant change to the southern city

Marisol McDonald, a biracial, nonconformist, soccer-playing pirate-princess with brown skin and red hair, celebrates her uniqueness.

Marisol McDonald no combina. Es pelirroja y morena; su ropa es de varios colores; juega a los piratas futbolistas; y le gusta ser única.

A family silently crawls along the ground. They run barefoot through unlit woods, sleep beneath bushes, take shelter in a kind stranger's home. Where are they heading? They are heading for Freedom by way of the Underground Railroad

A wordless picture book showing the fun a dog has with her ball, and what happens when it is lost.

Gerald the elephant tells his best friend Piggie a long, crazy story about how he broke his trunk.

Asher Machnik is a teenage boy cursed with a beautiful androgynous face. Guys punch him, girls slag him and by high school he's developed an intense fear of being touched. Art remains his only escape from an otherwise emotionally empty life. Eulalie Mason is the lonely, tough-talking dyke from school who befriends Ash. The only one to see and accept all of his sides as a loner, a fellow artist and a best friend, she's starting to wonder if Ash is ever going to see all of her ... a + e 4EVER is a graphic novel set in that ambiguous crossroads where love and friendship, boy and girl, straight and gay meet. It goes where few books have ventured, into genderqueer life, where affections aren't black and white.

A child explores the ordinary life of his extraordinary great-grandfather, as expressed in his topiary garden.

"Born to Romanian Jewish immigrants in 1911, Hammerin' Hank Greenberg succeeded in 'America's Favorite Pastime' while battling Anti-Semitism both on and off the field"

With a singing voice that can shake an auditorium, Judy should be the star of Darcy Academy, the local performing arts high school. So why is a girl this promising hiding out in a seedy motel room on the edge of town? A scathingly funny and moving book about dreams and reality, at once light on its feet and profound.

In 1928 in Massena, New York, Jewish sixteen-year-old Jack Pool, in love with his Christian neighbor, is accused of killling her little sister for a blood sacrifice.

For more than a decade starting in 1920, millions of regular Americans ignored the law of the land. Parents became bootleggers, kids smuggled illegal alcohol, and outlaws became celebrities. It wasn't supposed to be that way, of course. When Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the sale and manufacture of alcohol in the United States, supporters believed it would create a better, stronger nation. Instead it began an era of lawlessness, when famous gangsters like Al Capone rose to fame, and many reconsidered their concept of right and wrong. This is the story of those years in American history-- the story of prohibition

An introduction to the life of Benedict Arnold that highlights not only the traitorous actions that made him legendary, but also his heroic involvement in the American Revolution.

In the historic town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, twelve-year-old Jack Gantos spends the summer of 1962 grounded for various offenses until he is assigned to help an elderly neighbor with a most unusual chore involving the newly dead, molten wax, twisted promises, Girl Scout cookies, underage driving, lessons from history, typewriting, and countless bloody noses.

A fearful sixteen-year-old princess discovers her heroic destiny after being married off to the king of a neighboring country in turmoil and pursued by enemies seething with dark magic.

In 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother, and brother are pulled from their Lithuanian home by Soviet guards and sent to Siberia, where her father is sentenced to death in a prison camp while she fights for her life, vowing to honor her family and the thousands like hers by burying her story in a jar on Lithuanian soil. Based on the author's family, includes a historical note.

When the six-year war between the Uplanders and Downlanders is over and Cam returns home to his village, questions dog him, from how he lost an arm to why he was the only one of his fellow soldiers to survive, such that he must leave until his own suspicions are resolved.

Twelve-year-old Foster McFee and her mother escape from her mother's abusive boyfriend and end up in the small town of Culpepper, West Virginia, where they use their strengths and challenge themselves to build a new life, with the help of the friends they make there.

Quebrado has been a slave on captain Bernadino de Talavera's pirate ship for years, but when a hurricane sinks the ship and kills most of the crew, Quebrado escapes to safety and finds acceptance and refuge in a nearby village.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, and The Romanovs returns with another masterpiece of narrative biography, the extraordinary story of an obscure young German princess who traveled to Russia at fourteen and rose to become one of the most remarkable, powerful, and captivating women in history.........

Draws on eyewitness accounts and primary sources to describe the first months of World War II in the Pacific, after the U.S. Navy suffered the worst defeat in its history at Pearl Harbor.

Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a trading route to China, and his unexpected landfall in the Americas, is a watershed event in world history. Yet Columbus made three more voyages within the span of only a decade, each designed to demonstrate that he could sail to China within a matter of weeks and convert those he found there to Christianity. These later voyages were even more adventurous, violent, and ambiguous, but they revealed Columbus's uncanny sense of the sea, his mingled brilliance and delusion, and his superb navigational skills. In all these exploits he almost never lost a sailor. By their conclusion, however, Columbus was broken in body and spirit. If the first voyage illustrates the rewards of exploration, the latter voyages illustrate the tragic costs, political, moral, and economic. In this book the author re-creates each of these adventures as well as the historical background of Columbus's celebrated, controversial career.

Alexander the Great, perhaps the most commanding leader in history, united his empire and his army by the titanic force of his will. His death at the age of 32 spelled the end of that unity. The story of his conquests is known to many readers, but the saga of the empire's collapse remains virtually untold. Alexander bequeathed his power, legend has it, "to the strongest," leaving behind a mentally damaged half brother and a posthumously born son as his only heirs, who quickly became pawns fought over by the Macedonian generals. Meanwhile, Alexander's former secretary, Eumenes, a man full of tricks and connivances, became the determining factor in the precarious fortunes of the royal family. Classicist James Romm tells the story of the men who followed Alexander and found themselves incapable of preserving his empire--a world formerly united, now ripped apart into a nightmare of warring nation-states struggling for domination, the template of our own times

"From the author of 1491--the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas--a deeply engaging new history that explores the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed totally different suites of plants and animals. Columbus's voyages brought them back together--and marked the beginning of an extraordinary exchange of flora and fauna between Eurasia and the Americas. As Charles Mann shows, this global ecological tumult--the "Columbian Exchange"--underlies much of subsequent human history. Presenting the latest generation of research by scientists, Mann shows how the creation of this worldwide network of exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Manila and Mexico City-- where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted--the center of the world. In 1493, Charles Mann gives us an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination"

Englund examines the history of World War I through the experiences of the average man and woman-- not only the tragedy and horror but also the absurdity and even, at times, the beauty. In a brilliant mosaic of perspectives that moves between the home front and the front lines, he reconstructs the feelings, impressions, experiences, and shifting spirits of twenty particular people, allowing them to speak not only for themselves but also for all those who were in some way shaped by the war, but whose voices have been forgotten, rejected, or simply remained unheard

In this powerful new work, drawing on countless primary sources, acclaimed historian Hugh Howard presents a gripping account of the War of 1812 as James and Dolley Madison experienced it.

In the course of 1865 the war grows ever more deadly, the home front is stripped to fill the armies, and the economy is crippled by debt and inflation, while the stubborn survival of the Confederacy seriously undermines support for Lincoln's war. In the end, it seems that Lincoln's early critics, who played such a pivotal role in the beginning of the series, are proven correct. Victory did require massive bloodshed and complete conquest of the South. It also required decades of occupation to cement the achievements of 1865, and the ultimate failure of Lincoln's political heirs to carry through with that occupation squandered the most commendable of those achievements, making it ultimately a tarnished victory.

In telling the true story of the SEALs whose talents, skills, experiences, and exceptional sacrifices led to one of the greatest victories in the War on Terror, Mark Owen honors the men who risk everything for our country, and he leaves readers with a deep understanding of the warriors who keep America safe.

Waging a fierce competition for which they have trained since childhood, circus magicians Celia and Marco unexpectedly fall in love with each other and share a fantastical romance that manifests in fateful ways.

Presents fifty traditional nursery rhymes in comic book format, with illustrations by well-known cartoonists.

"Britain, the welfare state and nuclear pollution"-

An autobiographical narrative with emphasis on the importance of water.

"Shortly before he died, Plenty Coups, the last great Chief of the Crow Nation, told his story - up to a certain point. "When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground," he said, "and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened." It is precisely this point - that of a people faced with the end of their way of life - that prompts the philosophical and ethical inquiry pursued in Radical Hope. In Jonathan Lear's view, Plenty Coups's story raises a profound ethical question that transcends his time and challenges us all: how should one face the possibility that one's culture might collapse?"

A history of the slanderous phrase "acting white" demonstrates the backlash against successful, well-mannered, or well-educated African Americans while tracing the history of the insult's usage from "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to Bill Cosby's controversial NAACP speech in 2004.

This is Hal Holbrook's affecting memoir of growing up behind disguises, and his lifelong search for himself. Abandoned by his mother and father when he was two, Holbrook and his two sisters each commenced their separate journeys of survival. Raised by his powerful grandfather until his death when Holbrook was twelve, he spent his childhood at boarding schools, visiting his father in an insane asylum, and hoping his mother would surface in Hollywood. As World War II engulfed Europe, Holbrook began acting almost by accident. Thereafter, through war, marriage, and the work of honing his craft, his fear of insanity and his fearlessness in the face of risk were channeled into his discovery that the riskiest path of all--success as an actor--would be his birthright. And how he achieved it--the cost to his wife and children and to his own conscience--is the dark side of his eventual fame.

Because of improvements in communication technologies, the West has become aware of horrific examples of ongoing discrimination and violence against individual women in developing countries. This title addresses topics like the status of women in developing countries; their access to education, health care, and the political process; and, more.

" The captivating story of an ordinary bartender who's changing the world through clean water. Doc Hendley never set out to be a hero. In 2004, Hendley-a small- town bartender- launched a series of wine-tasting events to raise funds for clean-water projects and to bring awareness to the world's freshwater crisis. .....

On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran and captured dozens of American hostages, sparking a 444-day ordeal and a quake in global politics still reverberating today. But there is a little-known drama connected to the crisis: six Americans escaped. And a top-level CIA officer named Antonio Mendez devised an ingenious yet incredibly risky plan to rescue them before they were detected. Disguising himself as a Hollywood producer, and supported by a cast of expert forgers, deep cover CIA operatives, foreign agents, and Hollywood special effects artists, Mendez traveled to Tehran under the guise of scouting locations for a fake science fiction film calledArgo. While pretending to find the perfect film backdrops, Mendez and a colleague succeeded in contacting the escapees, and smuggling them out of Iran.

As thirteen-year-old Madison tries to figure out how she died and ended up in Hell, she learns how to manipulate the corrupt system of demons and bodily fluids.

Allegedly found in the ruins of a bombed-out dog kennel in France during World War I, then brought to Los Angeles by Lee Duncan, the soldier who found and trained him, by 1927 Rin Tin Tin had become Hollywood's number one box-office star. Susan Orlean's book--about the dog and the legend--is a poignant exploration of the enduring bond between humans and animals. It is also a richly textured history of twentieth-century entertainment and entrepreneurship. It spans ninety years and explores everything from the shift in status of dogs from working farmhands to beloved family members, from the birth of obedience training to the evolution of dog breeding, from the rise of Hollywood to the past and present of dogs in war

As she plans a party for her son and daughter, Rehana Haque's life will be transformed in a story of one family caught in the middle of the 1971 Bangladesh War of Independence, as they face changes and decisions that will have a profound impact on their lives.

An anthology of short stories by a poet and dramatist who considered his prose fiction "the important writing." The collection represents the seeds of creation for his later works in which he looked at the tragicomic plight of man. The titles range from Assumption, published in a magazine when Beckett was 23, to Stirrings Still, written when he was 82.

Snow in August is based on the life of Huineng (AD 633-713), the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism in Tang Dynasty China. Packed with the myriad sights and sounds of both the Eastern and Western theatrical traditions, the play exudes wonder and mysticism. The many koan cases and the story of Huineng's enlightenment afford the audience fascinating vignettes of Gao's vision of life and existence -- an awareness of the Void and the need for a personal peace with oneself

Awakening after a decade of unconsciousness, former Tiananmen Square protester Dai Wei learns that his mother had sold one of his kidneys to finance his care, and that the China he knew has undergone radical change

Recounts the life of Frank Lloyd Wright as told through the experiences of the four women who loved him: the Montenegrin beauty Olgivanna Milanoff; the passionate Southern belle Maud Miriam Noel; the spirited Mamah Cheney, tragically killed; and his young first wife, Kitty Tobin.

Describes how the trailblazing, post-war gay literary figures, including Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Allen Ginsberg, paved the way for newer generations, including Armistead Maupin, Edmund White, and Edward Albee.

Presents a collection of short stories judged to be the best in America and Canada for 2010, along with essays by three distinguished writers on their favorite pieces, and commentary from the twenty prize winners.

Traces the lives of 10 Americans who played significant roles in the country's westward expansion.

"In his unmistakable voice and with an insider's eye on history, former Vice President Dick Cheney tells the story of his life and the nearly four decades he has spent at the center of American politics and power

An acclaimed historian and "New York Times"-bestselling author offers a revelatory look at how Roger Williams shaped the nature of religion, political power, and individual rights in America.

"The French writer and philosopher Simone Weil (1906-1943) devoted her life to a search for God - while avoiding membership in organized religion. She had a startling intellect, the social conscience of a grassroots labor organizer, and the certainty and humility of a mystic. And she persistently carried out her spiritual search in the company of the poor and oppressed." "Robert Coles's intriguing study of Weil - who has been called both saint and madwoman - details her short, eventful life, showing why she had a profound spiritual influence on so many others, among them T.S. Eliot, Flannery O'Connor, Adrienne Rich, and Albert Camus.

Socrates is often called the father of philosophy. Yet he left no writings, so what we know of his life and ideas comes from the works of his contemporaries. Socrates taught--and strove to embody--that how each of us chooses to live and die has great meaning. By constantly examining one's life and actions, a philosophy of ethics is born. As Plutarch observed, "He was the first person to demonstrate that life is open to philosophy at all times, in every part, among all kinds of people, and in every experience and activity." In this biography, historian Paul Johnson situates Socrates in the life of fifth-century B.C. Athens, and his wide range of acquaintances, from the local grocer to the leading politicians, dramatists, and scholars. By studying his life and times, we benefit from his philosophy, for as Cicero said, "Socrates was the first to call Philosophy down from the skies ... and introduce her into people's homes, and force her to investigate ordinary life, ethics, good and evil."