The life you can save : acting now to end world poverty

by Peter Singer. Part plea, part manifesto, part handbook, this short and surprisingly compelling book sets out to answer two difficult questions: why people in affluent countries should donate money to fight global poverty and how much each should give.... Singer doesnt ask readers to choose between asceticism and self-indulgence; his solution can be found in the middle, and it is reasonable and rewarding for all. --Publishers Weekly (Check Catalog)

Lowboy

by John Wray. Will Heller, aka Lowboy, is a brilliant but troubled 16-year-old paranoid schizophrenic in New York City. Recently escaped from a mental hospital and obsessed with the notion that the world is about to be destroyed by global warming, he boards the subway one morning seeking to save the world in the only way he believes it can be—by having sex with a woman. Wray presents a powerful and vivid portrait of Will's mental state, believably entering into his apocalyptic vision of the world. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

Darwin's sacred cause : how a hatred of slavery shaped Darwin's views on human evolution

by Adrian J. Desmond. Drawing from a wealth of documentary sources from the era, they explore how the Enlightenment's scientific objectivity coexisted with colonial racism and how Darwin uniquely honed his science according to a set of values that he hoped could provide a transcendent vision of a "great human family," as presented in The Descent of Man. Well researched, likely to be controversial (some will call it revisionist history), this book provides another enlightening glimpse into a life of seemingly infinite complexity.-- Library Journal (Check Catalog)

Corsair : a novel of the Oregon files

by Clive Cussler. Subduing a band of Somali pirates is just the warmup for Juan Cabrillo and the valiant crew of the supership Oregon in the rousing sixth Oregon Files thriller from bestseller Cussler and Du Brul (after Plague Ship). Cabrillo's main mission is to locate U.S. Secretary of State Fiona Katamora, who's been kidnapped en route to important international peace talks in Libya. Katamora's abductor, the terrorist Al-Jama, wishes to disrupt the talks. It is only through conflict that we are truly the beings that Allah intended, Al-Jama asserts. (Check catalog)

The canal builders : making America's empire at the Panama Canal

by Julie Greene. Canal Builders is more than a footnote. Greene, a labor historian (Univ. of Maryland, College Park; Pure and Simple Politics: The American Federation of Labor and Political Activism, 1881–1917) is well qualified to tell the story, from the bottom up, of the canal's construction. She interweaves newly unearthed documentary records in a social history linked to the emerging "American empire" and its Bull Moose Progressives, racial segregation, and labor movements. An exceptional writer, Greene has produced a narrative that ranges from the canal's inception up to the current political situation regarding Panama and the United States. --Library Journal (Check catalog)

Very Valentine : a novel

by Adriana Trigiani. In Trigiani's (Big Stone Gap; Rococo) launch of a new trilogy, 33-year-old Valentine attempts to save her family's custom shoe business while dealing with family and relationship dramas set against the backdrop of New York City and Italy. If she's going to realize her dream of becoming a master shoemaker, Valentine must come up with a plan to rescue the financially troubled family wedding shoe business and prevent her brother from selling the building (located in Greenwich Village and worth millions) for a quick profit. -- Library Journal(Check catalog)

Grown up digital : how the Net generation is changing your world

by Don Tapscott. "Chances are you know a person between the ages of 11 and 30. You've seen them doing five things at once: texting friends, downloading music, uploading videos, watching a movie on a two-inch screen, and doing who-knows-what on Facebook or MySpace. They're the first generation to have literally grown up digital -and they're part of a global cultural phenomenon that's here to stay." (Check catalog)

Emotional freedom : liberate yourself from negative emotions and transform your life

by Judith Orloff. Psychiatrist and best-selling author Orloff (Positive Energy; Dr. Orloff's Guide to Intuitive Healing) successfully combines spirituality and intuition with traditional medicine. In Part 1, Orloff presents four components of emotion—biology, energy, spirituality, and psychology—and provides a 20-question assessment to highlight individuals' strengths and weaknesses. She addresses the use of dreams in making life changes and teaches the reader how to meditate. Orloff divides Part 2 into seven chapters, each devoted to a difficult negative emotion. (Check Catalog)

We'll always have Paris : stories

by Ray Bradbury. A nostalgic collection of stories by the celebrated author finds humor and tenderness in unexpected encounters. A few of these brief tales deliver the trademark Bradbury chill, such as The Reincarnate, in which a newly dead man harbors the doomed hope of rejoining the living. Or the creepy Fly Away Home, which sends to Mars rocket men who re-create buildings from their hometowns to keep from going mad. Other stories are sentimental character studies, such as Massinello Pietro, about a flamboyant man who keeps a menagerie that the neighborhood and the police see as a public nuisance, or Pietà Summer, an affecting boyhood memory about a sleep-deprived 13-year-old who's excited about the two circuses coming to town. (Check Catalog)

The lost city of Z : a tale of deadly obsession in the Amazon

by David Grann. Grann, a staff writer at The New Yorker, gives a gripping, detailed account of the fate of English explorer Percy Fawcett. Fawcett disappeared into the jungles of Brazil in 1925 with his son and his son's best friend. It was not the first time that Fawcett had plunged into Amazonia or confronted pestilence and natives not keen on receiving trespassers. Colonel Fawcett was a soldier, sometime spy, and expert surveyor and explorer who helped define the border between Bolivia and Brazil. But he was primarily obsessed with finding a rumored great city in the jungles of South America, which he simply called Z partly because it did not have a name and partly to throw off others who were looking for it. (Check Catalog)

Murder in the Latin Quarter

by Cara Black. Aimée Leduc is waiting for an important client when a Haitian woman enters and announces that she is Aimée's half-sister. Quel choc! Aimée agrees to meet her at a café but misses her, then follows a trail that leads to a dead man surrounded by a circle of salt. And so Black launches Aimée's ninth mystery (Murder in the Rue de Paradis), and it's every bit as good as the preceding eight. Library Journal, 2009. (Check Catalog)

Career renegade : how to make a great living doing what you love

by Jonathan Fields. For all the corporate drones who feel drained and devalued by their jobs and long to pursue their passions, Fields, a high-powered attorney turned successful entrepreneur, offers a motivational and practical guide to starting your own business. The author tells his own story of corporate disillusionment and physical deterioration (capped by a stress-exacerbated heart attack, which he interpreted as his body literally rejecting his career) to a new life as a fitness entrepreneur. Fields moves beyond self-help rhetoric to proffer helpful, no-nonsense steps for aspiring business owners, acknowledging that career renegades must not only identify their own secret passion but must also translate it into a profitable and sustainable enterprise. (Check Catalog)