Book+Spotlight

=NPR's Morning Edition's List - Handpicked by Independent Booksellers=

=15 Summer Reads Handpicked By Indie Booksellers = by [|SUSAN STAMBERG]

=== [|Listen to the Story]  === [|Morning Edition] [7 min 21 sec]
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Harriet Russell text size [|A] [|A] [|A] May 25, 2012 Booksellers know how important a good story is — one that reaches out, pulls you in and keeps you reading late into the warm summer night. As readers seek out recommendations for their summer travels, booksellers are scouring their shelves for the stories that shine. For some suggestions, we turn again to our go-to independent booksellers: Lucia Silva, the book buyer at [|Portrait of a Bookstore] in Studio City, Calif; Daniel Goldin of [|Boswell Book Co.] in Milwaukee; and Rona Brinlee of The BookMark in Neptune Beach, Fla. They've selected stories about con artists, grade-school spies, refugees and ranchers. Also: an inquiry into what makes a book a best-seller, and an exploration of why stories make us human.

LUCIA SILVA, PORTRAIT OF A BOOKSTORE
 === [|I Saw A Peacock With A Fiery Tail] === by [|Jonathan Yamakami] and [|Ramsingh Urveti] • Hardcover, 1 v. (unpaged) > This very visual incarnation of a well-known folk poem from 17th century England is a stunning reminder of why people keep making real-live books. In its unpunctuated form, the poem is a series of nonsensical images. But with a little mental cunning and reading-aloud, the reader can add the punctuation and phrasing that will reveal its meaning. Jonathan Yamakami's die-cut pages and Ramsingh Urveti's shape-shifting illustrations reveal the key to decode this "trick verse" by encouraging the alternate readings. Adults and children will delight in turning the pages back and forth as they discover the "trick." Visually delicious and beautifully made, //I Saw a Peacock With a Fiery Tail// is a testament to the vitality of two art forms that just won't answer to their death knells: poetry and the book.  === [|The Mark Inside] ===

A Perfect Swindle, A Cunning Revenge, And A Small History Of The Big Con
by [|Amy Reading] • Hardcover, 290 pages > Anyone who loved //Devil in the White City// for its rigorous scholarship and social history disguised as an irresistible page-turner will thrill at //The Mark Inside//. This is the true story of Texas rancher J. Frank Norfleet, who in 1919 lost his fortune (twice!) in an elaborate con. He spent the next four years of his life on a wild caper to find the con men who swindled him, donning disguises and posing as a mark in cities and towns across the country in an attempt to con the con men and bring them to justice. Along the way Amy Reading illuminates the speculative impulse at the heart of America's nascent financial system and shows how con artistry has always been right at home in American culture, from the ingratiating thief who purloined Benjamin Franklin's candlesticks right down to Bernie Madoff.  === [|The Storytelling Animal] ===

How Stories Make Us Human
by [|Jonathan Gottschall] • Hardcover, 248 pages > Most of us think of books as places we go to get away from our real lives. But think about //The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo//, //The Hunger Games// or //The Kite Runner// — these best-sellers hardly portray worlds anyone would want to escape to. In fact, they represent the darkest extremes of emotional and physical experience. Jonathan Gottschall argues that this is precisely why we love stories, and why our storytelling impulse is key to our evolution and survival. He uses the latest research from evolutionary biologists, psychologists and neuroscientists to show how stories allow human beings to experiment with emotions and strategies for survival. These experiments we conduct in the world of fiction are risk-free, and they help us with the challenges we face in our actual lives, whether we're escaping from lions, forging partnerships, raising children or surviving tragedy. But the storytelling impulse has a dark side. The part of the mind that blossoms in childhood play and daydreams is also the part that makes propaganda and conspiracy theories — and the nightmares we continue to write while we sleep. 

 [|Hole In My Life]
by [|Jack Gantos] • Paperback, 199 pages > Some of you may know Jack Gantos as the winner of the 2012 Newbery Medal or as the author of the beloved children's picture book //Rotten Ralph// and the Joey Pigza series. So you might //not// know that when Gantos was 19, he went to federal prison for smuggling 2,000 pounds of hashish on a sailboat from the Virgin Islands to New York City. This is Gantos' memoir of those years, the story of a smart, passionate kid who makes the ultimate mistake and then makes his way out. The book is a page-turner even though we know what happens in the end (Gantos gets caught, serves his prison sentence and goes on to become a wildly successful writer of award-winning books for children), and Gantos tells it straight, refusing to glamorize or wax preachy. His recreation of his youthful self is an impressive feat of narration that will feel authentic to even the most cynical teens and endear any adult who remembers being invincible.  === [|Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?] === by [|Jeanette Winterson] • Hardcover, 230 pages > What happens when one of the finest novelists of our time doesn't know the beginning of her own life story? Adopted six weeks after she was born, Jeanette Winterson was raised by a woman who claimed "[t]he devil led [her] to the wrong crib," kept a revolver next to the Pledge, and unwittingly gave her daughter the title of this memoir. In her journey through madness and finding her beginnings, Winterson offers readers much more than the satisfaction of voyeuristic curiosity that marks so many train-wreck memoirs. Instead, //Why Be Happy//becomes an unexpected road map through some of our largest life questions — What is the meaning of happiness? How do we learn about love? What is the purpose of poetry? Why keep living? — all the while redefining the very ideas of memory and autobiography. Through it all, Winterson remains the impeccable wordsmith and irresistible storyteller that make her one of the most admired novelists writing today, and one of my favorites.

 [|Absolution]
by [|Patrick Flanery] • Hardcover, 388 pages > If you look up "absolution" in the dictionary, you'll find it defined as "a freeing from blame or guilt." In this debut novel, Clare Wald, a celebrated South African writer, holds herself responsible for the deaths of her sister and her daughter, both victims of a repressive government. The question is: Who can grant her the absolution she seeks? Although she agrees to have her story written, Wald admits that since she lies for a living, eliciting the truth from her is not an easy task. In a game of parrying and thrusting, Wald and her appointed biographer dance around the questions that must be asked to understand her life. One is afraid to ask and the other equally afraid to answer. Set in 1990s South Africa,//Absolution// is defined by the place and time in history and is fraught with complex relationships and the surprises they often engender. 

 [|The Book Of Jonas]
by [|Stephen Dau] • Hardcover, 258 pages > Stephen Dau's debut novel is the story of Jonas, a 15-year-old Muslim boy from an unnamed war-torn country who comes to the United States after losing everything. As Jonas' story unfolds, his relationship with an American soldier is revealed as pivotal, and the secrets they share increasingly haunt him. In his new home, Jonas encounters well-intended people who want to help him but don't know what that means and meets refugees from other countries. He finds a girlfriend and succeeds academically. Over time, though, his past becomes too big to ignore, and his life starts a downward spiral. This is not so much the story of a refugee trying to fit in, but rather, the story of a boy confronted with the horrors of war and the decisions he makes in order to find peace. 

 [|A Good American]
by [|Alex George] • Hardcover, 387 pages > The tile of this debut novel says it all. A young couple, Jette and Frederick, leave their homes and families in Germany and come to America in the early 1900s. As the story evolves, the two discover what it takes to be "a good American." The diner Frederick opens becomes the focal point of many lives in their small town in the middle of America, and Frederick is the patriarch not only of this small microcosm of the town, but also of an expanding family. Peripheral inhabitants include a music teacher eager to teach her young male students about more than just how to play the piano, a minister who believes he's witnessed a holy event, and scores of others, some poignantly drawn, others offering comic relief, and all contributing to this saga. Families grow, people make their ways in life, and life offers its challenges. Throughout the progression of these normal lives, members of each generation must confront what it means to be good Americans as they find their way and discover who they are. 

 [|The Healing]
by [|Jonathan Odell] • Hardcover, 340 pages > Just as The Help took on segregation in the 1960s, //The Healing// takes on slavery in the 1860s. The healing in this novel comes from Polly Shine, a midwife and healer bought by the master of a Mississippi plantation to cure slaves dying from disease. But Polly brings more than medicinal knowledge to the slaves; she also brings hope, and hope's a dangerous thing on a plantation. She singles out one slave in particular, Granada, as a gifted healer and introduces her to the idea of Freedomland. Freedomland is not a place; it's the ability to say "yes" or "no," and to choose. But to Granada it's a concept that's hard to understand, and the choice between what she knows — and perceives as being "taken care of" — and an unknown way of life is daunting. It's in retelling the story of Polly Shine some 75 years later that Granada finally understands what Polly was trying to tell her.  === [|Hit Lit] ===

Cracking The Code Of The Twentieth Century's Biggest Bestsellers
by [|James W. Hall] • Paperback, 294 pages > Award-winning Florida mystery author James W. Hall identifies the 12 traits shared by 12 mega-best-selling novels. When Hall talks about best-sellers, he's talking about best-sellers "on steroids," meaning those books like //Gone With the Wind// and //To Kill a Mockingbird// that have sold tens of millions of copies each. Some important characteristics may not seem so surprising. For example, the books need to be exciting and "sex sells." Others may seem less apparent. All of the books Hall considered contemplate an American Paradise — whether it's actually America for the Russian submarine defector in Clancy's //Hunt for Red October// or the idyllic summer beach in //Jaws//. All have heroes and all offer access to a part of society not readily available to the reader, ranging from the secret societies of the //The Da Vinci Code// to the mob families of //The Godfather//. While all of these best-sellers share these traits, including them does not guarantee a hit novel. There's always that missing ingredient, which in this case may just be passion. Then again, paying attention to Hall's list couldn't hurt. 

A Novel About The Creation
by [|Alan Lightman] • Hardcover, 214 pages > Alan Lightman, the author of the best-selling book //Einstein's Dreams//, once again showcases his training as a theoretical physicist as well as his skill as a writer. Mr g is God, the Creator. He lives in the Void with his aunt and uncle and creates universes to fill his eternal time. In creating his latest universe, he begins by introducing basic principles of physics, including causality and relativity. First he invents time because space can't exist without it. Then he introduces atoms that can tick and measure time and thus allow for a past and a future. Then, of course, there's the question of what to put in the space. Should the objects be animate or inanimate? Should they have a soul? And should Mr g interfere if things don't go well? To heat up Mr g's internal debates, there's Belhor, a Satan-like figure of equal intelligence who engages Mr g in serious intellectual conversations, keeping Mr g on his guard. What at first appears to be a whimsical story of the creation of the universe winds its way through thought-provoking questions with humor and sound science principles.

 [|Coral Glynn]
by [|Peter Cameron] • Hardcover, 210 pages > In an English village in the 1950s, a young nurse named Coral Glynn takes as her charge an elderly dying woman with a war-disabled son. The son is drawn to Coral and, not long after his mother dies, proposes to Coral. It is an unlikely union of two complex and damaged characters. One day, Coral spots two children in the woods playing some sort of game that verges on bondage. She tries to warn them against it, but in the end, walks away. The "game" turns horribly wrong and Coral is implicated in the crime. > Peter Cameron pays homage to the wonderful British writers of that period, from Elizabeth Taylor to Barbara Pym, who wrote period drawing-room novels that presaged the upheavals in gender, race and class of the 1960s. This is no sly copy, however. Cameron's simultaneously somber and comic voice shines throughout in this quiet but glorious novel. 

<span style="color: #111111; font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;"> [|Boleto]
by [|Alyson Hagy] • Hardcover, 251 pages > In //Boleto////,// young Will Testerman has had enough of working on his family's cash-strapped Wyoming ranch. He's ready to make his own way in the world — and he's going to do it by raising horses. So Will chances everything on a beautiful filly named Tic. Like many of the great writers of the West, Alyson Hagy's writing is spare and eloquent. Structurally the three parts of this novel are too well integrated to be considered connected stories, but the term novel doesn't accurately describe it. I like to think of //Boleto// as a triptych, the literary equivalent of three paintings on connected panels. The sweep of the story is reminiscent of artwork, and its solemnity has a nearly religious intensity. 

<span style="color: #111111; font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;"> [|Glaciers]
by [|Alexis M. Smith] • Paperback, 174 pages > A postcard found at a thrift shop, a lunch with a colleague, a party — all moments in the life of Isabel, a young woman who repairs books in a Portland, Ore., library basement. The story itself feels like a series of postcards, jumping back and forth from the small moments of her day to her childhood in Alaska, to the found postcard that hints at an Amsterdam romance. In a sense, //Glaciers// is a bookend to Paul Harding's //Tinkers//, another story with a fractured structure, about an old man contemplating the past at the end of his life. Isabel is similarly obsessed with the past, but we know she's at a beginning rather than at an end. And if that isn't enough, one can glory in its Ulyssesian structure, as the whole plot takes place, more or less, in a single day. 

<span style="color: #111111; font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;"> [|The Cheerleaders Of Doom]
by [|Michael Buckley] and [|Ethen Beavers] • Hardcover, 245 pages > It isn't easy being a nerdy kid ... if only there were some secret organization that turned nerds' weaknesses into superpowers using nanotechnology. That's the premise of NERDS, a series about grade-school spies who must work together to save the world (at least once per volume). A kid with braces turns his wires into super tools. A kid who has ADHD has the ability to move //super// fast. In //The Cheerleaders of Doom// installment, a former student has created a machine that allows people to jump through alternate realities, and Matilda Choi, an asthmatic known as "Wheezer" (her inhaler helps her fly) must infiltrate cheerleading camp to expose the plot. I love this series, a superb blend of silliness and character-building. Like a top-notch kids' cartoon, it has a whole other layer of jokes just for the adults. 

<span style="color: #111111; font-family: Georgia,'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;"> [|The Collective]
by [|Don Lee] • Hardcover, 352 pages > In this sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious novel, protagonist Eric Cho contemplates the life of Joshua Yoon, the Korean novelist with whom he, along with provocative visual artist Jessica Tsai, once formed the 3AC or Asian American Artists Collective. What may have led Joshua to commit suicide (or was it?) by running into the path of an oncoming car? Lee explores themes of identity he's contemplated in the past — the allure of the cultural bond, the bristle of the stereotype — but this time through the lens of the college novel. With the pump already primed by recent successes from Jeffrey Eugenides and Chad Harbach, I'm hoping that folks will be ready for this addition to the collegiate canon. = = = = =Our Spotlight Book -=

__ [|50 Most Influential Books of the Last 50 (or so) Years] __
In compiling the books on this list, the editors at SuperScholar have tried to provide a window into the culture of the last 50 years. Ideally, if you read every book on this list, you will know how we got to where we are today. Not all the books on this list are “great.” The criterion for inclusion was not greatness but INFLUENCE. All the books on this list have been // enormously influential //. The books we chose required some hard choices. Because influence tends to be measured in years rather than months, it’s much easier to put older books (published in the 60s and 70s) on such a list than more recent books (published in the last decade). Older books have had more time to prove themselves. Selecting the more recent books required more guesswork, betting on which would prove influential in the long run. We also tried to keep a balance between books that everyone buys and hardly anyone reads versus books that, though not widely bought and read, are deeply transformative. The Grateful Dead and Frank Zappa never sold as many records as some of the “one-hit wonders,” but their music has transformed the industry. Influence and popularity sometimes don’t go together. We’ve tried to reflect this in our list.
 * 1. Chinua Achebe’s // Things Fall Apart // ** (1958), as the most widely read book in contemporary African literature, focuses on the clash of colonialism, Christianity, and native African culture.

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 * 2. Douglas Adams’ // The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy // ** (1979) reinvented the science fiction genre, making it at once sociologically incisive as well as funny.

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 * 3. Robert Atkins’ // Dr Atkins’s New Diet Revolution // ** (1992, last edition 2002) launched the low-carbohydrate diet revolution, variants of which continue to be seen in numerous other diet programs.

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 * 4. Richard Dawkins’s // The God Delusion // ** (2006), drawing on his background as an evolutionary theorist to elevate science at the expense of religion, propelled the neo-atheist movement.

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 * 5. Allan Bloom’s // The Closing of the American Mind // ** (1987) set the tone for the questioning of political correctness and the reassertion of a “canon” of Western civilization.

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 * 6. Dan Brown’s // The Da Vinci Code // ** (2003), an entertaining thriller, has been enormously influential in getting people to think that Jesus is not who Christians say he is and that Christianity is all a conspiracy.

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** 7. Dee Brown’s // Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee // ** (1970) transformed the way we view native Americans as they lost their land, lives, and dignity to expanding white social and military pressures.

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 * 8. Rachel Carson’s // Silent Spring // ** (1962) more than any other book helped launch the environmental movement.

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 * 9. Noam Chomsky’s // Syntactic Structures // ** (1957), laying out his ideas of transformational grammar, revolutionized the field of linguistics and at the same time dethroned behaviorism in psychology.

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 * 10. Stephen Covey’s // Seven Habits of Highly Successful People // ** (1989) set the standard for books on leadership and effectiveness in business.

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 * 11. Michael Behe’s // Darwin’s Black Box // ** (1996), though roundly rejected by the scientific community, epitomizes the challenge of so-called intelligent design to evolutionary theory and has spawned an enormous literature, both pro and con.

[__ [|Amazon Link] __] – [__ [|Wikipedia Link] __]

** 12. Jared Diamond’s // Guns, Germs, and Steel // ** (1997), in employing evolutionary determinism as a lens for understanding human history, reignited grand history making in the spirit Spengler and Toynbee.

[__ [|Amazon Link] __] – [__ [|Wikipedia Link] __]
 * 13. Umberto Eco’s // The Name of the Rose // ** (1980) examines, in the context of a mystery at a medieval monastery, the key themes of premodernity, modernity and postmodernity.

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 * 14. Victor Frankl’s // Man’s Search for Meaning // ** (1962) provides a particularly effective answer to totalitarian attempts to crush the human spirit, showing how humanity can overcome horror and futility through finding meaning and purpose.

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 * 15. Betty Friedan’s // The Feminine Mystique // ** (1963), in giving expression to the discontent women felt in being confined to the role of homemaker, helped galvanize the women’s movement.

[__ [|Amazon Link] __] – [__ [|Wikipedia Link] __]
 * 16. Milton Friedman’s // Capitalism and Freedom // ** (1962) argued that capitalism constitutes a necessary condition for political liberties and thus paved the way for the conservative economics of the Reagan years.

[__ [|Amazon Link] __] – [__ [|Wikipedia Link] __]
 * 17. Daniel Goleman’s // Emotional Intelligence // **(1995) showed clearly how skills in dealing with and reading emotions can be even more important than the cognitive skills that are usually cited as the official reason for career advancement.

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** 18. Jane Goodall’s // In the Shadow of Man // ** (1971), in relating her experiences with chimpanzees in the wild, underscored the deep connection between humans and the rest of the animal world.

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 * 19. John Gray’s // Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus // ** (1992), in highlighting and elevating the differences between men and women in their relationships, challenged the contention that gender differences are socially constructed.

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 * 20. Alex Haley’s // Roots // ** (1976), by personalizing the tragic history of American slavery through the story of Kunta Kinte, provided a poignant challenge to racism in America.

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 * 21. Stephen Hawking’s // A Brief History of Time // ** (1988, updated and expanded 1998), by one of the age’s great physicists, attempts to answer the big questions of existence, not least how the universe got here.

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 * 22. Joseph Heller’s // Catch-22 // ** (1961) etched into public consciousness a deep skepticism of bureaucracies, which in the book are portrayed as self-serving and soul-destroying.

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 * 23. Thomas Kuhn’s // The Structure of Scientific Revolutions // ** (1962, last edition 1978) changed our view of science from a fully rational enterprise to one fraught with bias and irrational elements.

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** 24. Harold Kushner’s // When Bad Things Happen to Good People // ** (1981) transformed people’s view of God, exonerating God of evil by making him less than all-powerful.

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 * 25. Harper Lee’s // To Kill a Mockingbird // ** (1960) served as prelude to the civil rights advances of the 1960s by portraying race relations from a fresh vantage—the vantage of an innocent child untainted by surrounding racism and bigotry.

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 * 26. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s// One Hundred Years of Solitude // ** (1967), as an example magical realism, epitomizes the renaissance in Latin American literature.

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 * 27. Alasdair McIntyre’s // After Virtue // ** (1981, last edition 2007) is one of the 20 th century’s most important works of moral philosophy, critiquing the rationalism and irrationalism that pervade modern moral discourse.

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 * 28. Toni Morrison’s novel // Beloved // ** (1987) provides a profound and moving reflection on the impact of American slavery.

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 * 29. Abdul Rahman Munif’s // Cities of Salt // **(1984-89) is a quintet of novels in Arabic focusing on the psychological, sociological, and economic impact on the Middle East of oil.

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** 30. Ralph Nader’s // Unsafe at Any Speed // **> (1965), attacking car industry’s lax safety standards, not only improved the safety of cars but also mainstreamed consumer protection (we take such protections for granted now).

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 * 31. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks’ // The 9/11 Commission Report // ** (2004), though not the final statement on the 9/11 disaster, encapsulated the broader threat of terrorism in the new millennium.

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 * 32. Roger Penrose’s // The Emperor’s New Mind // ** (1988) provides a sweeping view of 20 th century’s scientific advances while at the same time challenging the reductionism prevalent among many scientists.

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 * 33 **. ** Ayn Rand’s // Atlas Shrugged // ** (1957) has become a key inspiration for conservative economics in challenging entitlements and promoting unimpeded markets.

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 * 34. John Rawls’ // A Theory of Justice // ** (1971, last edition 1999) is the most significant effort to date to resolve the problem of distributive justice and has formed the backdrop for public policy debates.

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 * 35. J. K. Rowling’s // Harry Potter Series // ** (seven volumes, 1997-2007), loved by children, panned by many literary critics, has nonetheless set the standard for contemporary children’s literature.

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 * 36. Salman Rushdie’s // The Satanic Verses // ** (1988), which led Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a death edict (// fatwa //) against Rushdie, underscored the clash between Islamic fundamentalism and Western civilization.

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** 37. Carl Sagan’s // Cosmos // ** (1980), based on his wildly popular PBS series by the same name, inspired widespread interest in science while promoting the idea that nothing beyond the cosmos exists.

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 * 38. Eric Schlosser’s // Fast Food Nation // ** (2001) details the massive impact that the U.S. fast food industry has had on people’s diets not just in the U.S. but also across the globe.

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 * 39. Amartya Sen’s // Resources, Values and Development // ** (1984, last edition 1997) develops an approach to economics that, instead of focusing on utility maximization, attempts to alleviate human suffering by redressing the poverty that results from economic mismanagement.

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 * 40. B. F. Skinner’s // Beyond Freedom and Dignity // ** (1971) attacked free will and moral autonomy in an effort to justify the use of scientific (behavioral) methods in improving society.

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 * 41. Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s // The Gulag Archipelago // ** (in three volumes, 1974-78) relentlessly exposed the totalitarian oppression of the former Soviet Union and, more than any other book, was responsible for its government’s subsequent dissolution.

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 * 42. Hernando de Soto’s // The Mystery of Capitalism // ** (2000) argues that the absence of legal infrastructure, especially as it relates to property, is the key reason that capitalism fails when it does fail.

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 * 43. Benjamin Spock’s // The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care // ** (1946, last edition 2004) sold 50 million copies and revolutionized how Americans raise their children.

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** 44. Nassim Taleb’s // The Black Swan // ** (2007, last edition 2010) provides the most trenchant critique to date of the financial and monetary backdrop to the current economic crisis.

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 * 45. Mao Tse-tung’s **** // The Little Red Book // **, aka ** // Quotations From Chairman Mao // **(1966) was required reading throughout China and epitomized his political and social philosophy.

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 * 46. Rick Warren’s // The Purpose Driven Life // ** (2002), though addressed to the American evangelical culture, has crossed boundaries and even led to Warren giving the invocation at President Obama’s inauguration.

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 * 47. James D. Watson’s // The Double Helix // ** (1969), in presenting a personal account of his discovery, with Francis Crick, of the structure of DNA, not only recounted one of the 20 th century’s greatest scientific discoveries but also showed how science, as a human enterprise, really works.

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 * 48. E. O. Wilson’s // Sociobiology // ** (1975) challenged the idea that cultural evolution can be decoupled from biological evolution, thus engendering the fields of evolutionary psychology and evolutionary ethics.

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 * 49. Malcolm X’s // The Autobiography of Malcolm X // ** (1965), written posthumously by Alex Haley from interviews, portrays a complex activist for human rights at a complex time in American history.

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 * 50. Muhammad Yunus’ // Banker to the Poor // ** (1999, last edition 2007) lays out how “micro-lending” made it possible to provide credit to the poor, thereby offering a viable way to significantly diminish world poverty.

[__ [|Amazon Link] __] – [__ [|Wikipedia Link] __] This is a new book that the library recently acquired. It is a really good read that has many twists that are unexpected. The two main characters, sisters who haven't always been close, are very well drawn and you really feel with them and for them. I have included the summary of the book found on goodreads.com because I thought that they did a very nice job of it. If you'd like to see what more people had to say about the book, click on the cover image to be taken to the web site. == = =

"//The Sweetness of Salt//
by <span style="color: #666600; font-family: georgia,serif; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none;">[|Cecilia Galante] <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,Verdana,sans-serif;"> 3.66 · <span style="color: #215625; font-family: arial,verdana,helvetica,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[| rating details] · <span style="color: #215625; font-family: arial,verdana,helvetica,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|207 ratings] · <span style="color: #215625; font-family: arial,verdana,helvetica,sans-serif; text-decoration: none;">[|59 reviews]  <span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px;"> Julia just graduated as her high school valedictorian, has a full ride to college in the fall and a coveted summer internship clerking for a federal judge. But when her older sister, Sophie, shows up at the graduation determined to reveal some long buried secrets, Julia's carefully constructed plans come to a halt. Instead of the summer she had painstakingly laid out, Julia follows Sophie back to Vermont, where Sophie is opening a bakery—and struggling with some secrets of her own. What follows is a summer of revelations—some heartwarming, some heartbreaking, and all slowly pointing Julia toward a new understanding of both herself and of the sister she never really knew. "

The first book I put into the spotlight has to be my favorite book of all time - //To Kill a Mockingbird// by Harper Lee.



The only novel ever published by Harper Lee, //To Kill a Mockingbird// won the Pulitzer Prize. Set in Maycomb, Alabama during the depression, the novel presents two parallel stories. The first is the coming-of-age story of Scout Finch (the narrator), her brother Jem, and their friend Dill. The children are intrigued by a reclusive neighbor, Boo Radley, and the rumors that surround him. They spend a momentous summer trying to get Boo to come out of the house and learning a lot about life from Scout and Jem's father, Atticus.

The other story follows Atticus Finch who has been tasked with defending Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman. As the trial approaches and plays out, Atticus has the difficult task of explaining the real world to his children while challenging the status quo in the courtroom.

//To Kill a Mockingbird w//as made into an excellent movie starring Gregory Peck in his Oscar winning portrayal as Atticus Finch. The American Film Institute created a list of the top 100 heroes and villains in film. They chose Atticus Finch as the #1 hero. While I love the movie, it is no replacement for reading this book. The movie (as all movies made from great novels do) leaves out some characters and stories. Reading the book gives you a fuller picture of all of the characters and the events. One of the reasons I love this book so much is because of the character of Atticus Finch. He is my #1 hero too. I admire his wisdom, his moral courage, his steadfast character, and his compassion.

So why did Harper Lee write only one book? Some say she was uncomfortable with the fame and attention she found after the book's publication and the movie's release. I think I agree with novelist Mark Childress who once said that Haper Lee had written the best book every written and never saw a need to write another. But, oh how I wish she had!

Check out these sites about Harper Lee and her wonderful novel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YklUzAYs9Vg&feature=fvst

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fXOGbUpRro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_98W3IQCx8