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We've Got a Job: The 1963 Birmingham Children's March
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Cynthia Levinson
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Peachtree Publishers (2012, Feb 1st).
Pages: 176
We ve Got a Job tells the little-known story of the 4,000 black elementary-, middle-, and high school students who voluntarily went to jail in Birmingham, Alalama, between May 2 and May 11, 1963. Fulfilling Mahatma Gandhi s and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. s precept to fill the jails, they succeeded where adults had failed in desegregating one of the most racially violent cities in America. Focusing on four of the original participants who have participated in extensive interviews, We ve Got a Job recounts the astonishing events before, during, and after the Children s March. more
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The Taste of Tomorrow: Dispatches from the Future of Food
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Josh Schonwald
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Harper (2012, Apr 10th).
Pages: 304
A fascinating look at the people, trends, and technologies transforming the food of today and tomorrow In The Taste of Tomorrow, journalist Josh Schonwald sets out on a journey to investigate the future of food. His quest takes him across the country and into farms and labs around the globe. From Alice Waters' microfarm to a Pentagon facility that has quietly shaped American supermarkets, The Taste of Tomorrow is a rare, behind-the-scenes glimpse at what we eat today—and what we'll be eating tomorrow. Schonwald introduces us to a motley group of mad scientists, entrepreneurs, renegade farmers, and food engineers who are revolutionizing the food we eat. We meet the Harvard-trained pedia-trician who wants to change the way humans raise fish; a New York chef who believes he's found the next great ethnic cuisine; a lawyer-turned-nanotechnologist who believes he can solve human nutritional needs without using food. more
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Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms: The Story of the Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Richard Fortey
Format: Deckle Edge]
Publisher: Knopf (2012, Apr 10th).
Pages: 352
From one of the world’s leading natural scientists and the acclaimed author of Trilobite!, Life: A Natural History of Four Billion Years of Life on Earth and Dry Storeroom No. 1 comes a fascinating chronicle of life’s history told not through the fossil record but through the stories of organisms that have survived, almost unchanged, throughout time. Evolution, it seems, has not completely obliterated its tracks as more advanced organisms have evolved; the history of life on earth is far older—and odder—than many of us realize. Scattered across the globe, these remarkable plants and animals continue to mark seminal events in geological time. From a moonlit beach in Delaware, where the hardy horseshoe crab shuffles its way to a frenzy of mass mating just as it did 450 million years ago, to the dense rainforests of New Zealand, where the elusive, unprepossessing velvet worm has burrowed deep into rotting timber since before the breakup of the ancient supercontinent, to a stretch of Australian coastline with stromatolite formations that bear witness to the Precambrian dawn, the existence of these survivors offers us a tantalizing glimpse of pivotal points in evolutionary history. more
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Write On, Mercy!: The Secret Life of Mercy Otis Warren
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Alexandra Wallner
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Calkins Creek Books (2012, Mar 1st).
Pages: 40
Growing up on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Mercy Otis Warren was fortunate to go to school with her brother. When she married Patriot James Warren, Mercy wrote in secret—poetry, plays, and about the events of her time. She wrote of the people she knew, including George Washington and John and Abigail Adams. It wasn’t until Mercy was older that her literary life became known, with the publication of her three-volume history of the American Revolution. This is the first picture-book biography of an intrepid woman chronicler. more
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Deadly Valentines: The Story of Capone's Henchman "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn and Louise Rolfe, His Blonde Alibi
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Jeffrey Gusfield
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Chicago Review Press (2012, Apr 1st).
Pages: 368
Almost before the gunsmoke from the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre cleared, Chicago police had a suspect: Jack McGurn. They just couldn’t find him. McGurn, whose real name was Vincent Gebardi, was Al Capone’s chief assassin, a baby-faced Sicilian immigrant and professional killer of professional killers. But two weeks after the murders, police found McGurn and his paramour, Louise May Rolfe, holed up downtown at the Stevens Hotel. Both claimed they were in bed on the morning of the famous shootings, a titillating alibi that grabbed the public’s attention and never let go.Deadly Valentines tells one of the most outrageous stories of the 1920s, a twin biography of a couple who defined the extremes and excesses of the Prohibition era in America. more
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Fatal Colours: Towton 1461-England's Most Brutal Battle
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: George Goodwin
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (2012, Mar 29th).
Pages: 288
The tumultuous reign of Henry VI and its climax in the carnage of Towton—the bloodiest battle fought on English soil.The battle of Towton in 1461 was unique in its ferocity and brutality, as the armies of two kings of England engaged with murderous weaponry and in appalling conditions to conclude the first War of the Roses. Variously described as the largest, longest, and bloodiest battle on English soil, Towton was fought with little chance of escape and none of surrender. Yet, as if too ghastly to contemplate, the battle itself and the turbulent reign of Henry VI were neglected for centuries. Combining medieval sources and modern scholarship, George Goodwin colorfully re-creates the atmosphere of fifteenth-century England. From the death of the great Henry V and his baby son’s inheritance first of England and then of France, Goodwin chronicles the vicious infighting at home in response to the vicissitudes of the Hundred Years War abroad. more
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River in Ruin: The Story of the Carmel River
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Ray A. March
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Bison Books (2012, Apr 1st).
Pages: 208
The thin ribbon of the Carmel River is just thirty-six miles long and no wider in most places than a child can throw a stone. It is the primary water supply for the ever-burgeoning presence of tourists, agriculture, and industry on California’s Monterey Peninsula. It is also one of the top ten endangered rivers in North America. The river’s story, which dramatically unfolds in this book, is an epic tale of exploitation, development, and often unwitting degradation reaching back to the first appearance of Europeans on the pristine peninsula.River in Ruin is a precise weaving of water history—local and larger—and a natural, social, and environmental narrative of the Carmel River. Ray A. March traces the river’s misuse from 1879 and details how ever more successful promotions of Monterey demanded more and more water, leading to one dam after another. more
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Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Madeleine Albright
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Harper (2012, Apr 24th).
Pages: 352
“A remarkable story of adventure and passion, tragedy and courage set against the backdrop of occupied Czechoslovakia and World War II.” —Václav HavelFrom former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright comes a moving and thoughtful memoir of her formative years in Czechoslovakia during the tumult of Nazi occupation, World War II, fascism, and the onset of the Cold War. An intensely personal journey into the past that offers vital lessons for the future, Prague Winter combines the intimacy of an autobiography with the drama of an exciting and well-told story—all underpinned by the gravity and intelligence of a serious work of history. The result is a highly readable and incisive work filled with tragedy and triumph, a resonant narrative informed by Albright’s remarkable life experience and her characteristic candor in speaking hard truths. more
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City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Gary Krist
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Crown (2012, Apr 17th).
Pages: 368
The masterfully told story of 12 volatile days in the life of Chicago, when an aviation disaster, a race riot, a crippling transit strike, and a sensational child murder roiled a city already on the brink of collapse. When 1919 began, the city of Chicago seemed on the verge of transformation. Modernizers had an audacious, expensive plan to turn the city from a brawling, unglamorous place into "the Metropolis of the World." But just as the dream seemed within reach, pandemonium broke loose--the city's highest ambitions suddenly under attack by the same unbridled energies that had given birth to them in the first place. It began on a balmy Monday afternoon when a blimp in flames crashed through the roof of a busy downtown bank, incinerating those inside. more
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Soldier Dogs
Author/Actors/Director/etc.: Maria Goodavage
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Dutton Adult (2012, Mar 15th).
Pages:
A leading reporter offers a tour of military working dogs' extraordinary training, heroic accomplishments, and the lasting impacts they have on those who work with them. People all over the world have been riveted by the story of Cairo, the Belgian Malinois who was a part of the Navy SEAL team that led the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound. A dog's natural intelligence, physical abilities, and pure loyalty contribute more to our military efforts than ever before. You don't have to be a dog lover to be fascinated by the idea that a dog-the cousin of that furry guy begging for scraps under your table-could be one of the heroes who helped execute the most vital and high-tech military mission of the new millennium.Now Maria Goodavage, editor and featured writer for one of the world's most widely read dog blogs, tells heartwarming stories of modern soldier dogs and the amazing bonds that develop between them and their handlers. more
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