New Books - April 2009

PZ7 .S97255 HOU 2008

The House in the Night
Swanson, Susan Marie

Publishers Weekly Review:

Starred Review. Using only a few graceful words per page to illuminate the dark, this bedtime gem shines its light clearly on things that matter a home filled with books, art, music and ever-present love. Krommes's (The Lamp, the Ice, and a Boat Called Fish) astonishing illustrations are so closely intertwined with the meticulous text that neither can be isolated without a loss of meaning. The book begins, intriguingly, Here is the key to the house./ In the house burns a light./ In that light rests a bed./ On that bed waits a book. That book takes the child reader up into the skies and back home again, to sleep (dark in the song, song in the bird, / bird in the book, book on the bed). Krommes's black-and-white scratchboard illustrations are as delicate and elegant as snowflakes, and she uses a single color, a marigold, to bring warmth to both home and stars. This volume's artful simplicity, homely wisdom and quiet tone demonstrate the interconnected beauty and order of the world in a way that both children and adults will treasure. Ages 3 6. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

New Books - April 2009

RC455.4 .B5 A429 2000
Change Your Brain, Change Your Life : The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, Obsessiveness, Anger, and Impulsiveness
Amen, Daniel G.

• From the Publisher:
  

"In this breakthrough bestseller, you'll see scientific evidence that your anxiety, depression, anger, obsessiveness, or impulsiveness could be related to how specific structures in your brain work. You're not stuck with the brain you're born with. Here are just a few of neuropsychiatrist Dr. Daniel Amen's surprising--and effective--"brain prescriptions" that can help heal your brain and change your life.

• "To Quell Anxiety and Panic: Use simple breathing techniques to immediately calm inner turmoil"
• "To Fight Depression: Learn how to kill ANTs (automatic negative thoughts)
• "To Curb Anger: Follow the Amen anti-anger diet and learn the nutrients that calm rage"
• "To Conquer Impulsiveness and Learn to Focus: Develop total focus with the "One-Page Miracle"
• "To Stop Obsessive Worrying: Follow the "get unstuck" writing exercise and learn other problem-solving exercises"

New Books - April 2009

PN2055 .H64 2008
Acting and How to be Good At It
Hoffman, Basil

Summary:

In Acting and How to Be Good at It, actor and acting coach Basil Hoffman has written a compelling, practical analysis of the actor's craft. His unique questions-and-answers approach covers every aspect of professional acting, with behind-the-scenes anecdotes from his own experience and from the careers of the greatest actors, directors and writers of stage and screen. This is a valuable textbook, not only for actors but for anyone who wants to gain a better appreciation of the actor's work in an easily understandable and entertaining format. Book jacket. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

New Books - April 2009

Baseball season is here! San Diego Padres' opening day was Monday April 6th!

Most Americans and probably all baseball fans have heard of Jackie Robinson! But did you know that he was a star in the 'Negro Leagues' before joining the Brooklyn Dodgers? We are the Ship: the Story of Negro League Baseball by California artist Kadir Nelson is a brief history of Negro League baseball. Written for children and young adults the book is very easy to read. Kadir's detailed writing and beautiful illustrations, however, also make it informative and enjoyable for all audiences. The title is from a quote by Rube Foster, owner of the Chicago American Giants: "We are the ship, all else the sea."
To read more about the league visit Negro League Baseball Players Association website.

In our increasingly environmentally conscious world those living in the Southwest areas of the United States have special concerns about access to water.



The October 2004 issue of JAWRA (Journal of the American Water Resources Association) includes a reference by E. George Robison to the 1st edition of David Carle's work as " ... the type of book you would hope to see in every welcome basket for every lawmaker coming to Sacramento for the first time. California, with its diversity in climate, natural water wonders, and massive expenditures on water based infrastructures deserves such a book. Anyone living in or interested in California should reach such a book." Even Escondido students who aren't in taking a Water Technology course will want to browse the 2009 updated edition of Carle's work Introduction to Water in California in order to learn about water issues that impact Californians.

Also new this month is Celebrity Culture in the United States, Vol. 80, No.1 in the H. W. Wilson series The Reference Shelf.

In the opening essay of Celebrity Culture in the United States, Amy Henderson traces an evolutionary line from P.T. Barnum to the contestants on American Idol, illustrating an essential feature of celebrity culture. Americans once worshiped their heroes as a means of establishing a national character and identity, but in the mid-nineteenth century, Barnum created spectacles and celebrities out of not much more than sheer bravado. Americans moved from idolizing politicians and war heroes to worshiping athletes and entertainers, and ultimately, to admiring celebrities not for any aspect of their character, but simply for their ability to be famous. This collection is an insightful examination of America's fascination with celebrity. Twenty-four articles are divided into four sections: "The Cult of Celebrity" ... "Celebrity Activism and American Politics" ... "The Price of Fame" and ... "The Democratization of Celebrity".

— from a review by Doug Achterman of Gale Cengage Learning

To learn more about celebrity culture visit this 2001 annotated online bibliography developed by David Blake's English students at The College of New Jersey.

While there are books written from various perspectives on how illegal aliens impact US culture, this newest title offers something unique.

Immigration and Crime: Race, Ethnicity and Violence is a 2006 publication that includes a chapter on San Diego. The essay Immigration and Asian homicide patterns in urban and suburban San Diego (pages 90-116) is written by Matthew T. Lee and Ramiro Martinez Jr. Several other essays in the collection are written by faculty from the University of California, Irvine. You can preview the chapter through the Google Books program, but be forewarned the system limits the number of pages you can read and how many times you can access the site.
You can

Women's History Month 2009 - Women Taking the Lead to Save our Planet

As established by the National Women's History Project, this year's theme is Women Taking the Lead to Save our Planet.

HERstory of environmental activism includes 'unknowns', historical figures and many contemporaries. To help our History majors and students in courses linked to the Campus Explorations theme Environment and Sustainable Living: Global Crises and Solutions the Escondido Center Library decided to profile a few women environmentalists on the EJA blog.

Elva Yañez

The 2008 winner of the Planning and Conservation League's (PCL) Environmental Justice Advocate of the Year award, Elva Yanez became an environmental activist by just doing her job. As Director of the Audubon Center's Debs Park in East L.A. from 2005-2008 Yañez focused on creating parks for people, running them and campaigning for environmental legislation. She used her extensive experience with coalition building, community organizing, and public policy to help lay “… a foundation of inclusiveness with a constituency [Hispanic Americans] the [Audubon] society had all but ignored in the past.” In 2008, she organized Los Angeles area leaders and residents to advocate on behalf of a bill to improve transparency in the environmental review process, leading local workshops and bringing teams of activists to lobby in Sacramento.

Currently Yañez works as a Project Director for the California Community Foundation (CCF) El Monte Community Building Initiative (CBI). The Initiative is a 10-year pilot project to revitalize targeted neighborhoods through improvements to the physical and social services environment anchored by resident engagement and leadership development.

Adapted using information the PCL archive, a Dec 30 2007 L.A. Times article and the CCF staff biographies page.

Lois Gibbs

In the spring of 1978, a 27 year-old housewife named Lois Gibbs discovered that her child was attending an elementary school built on a 20,000 ton, toxic-chemical dump in Niagara Falls, New York. Desperate to do something about it, she organized her neighbors into the Love Canal Homeowners Association, struggling for more than 2 years to gain funding for the relocation for the Love Canal families. Opposing the group’s efforts were the chemical manufacturer, Occidental Petroleum, as well as local, state and federal government officials. Two years later President Jimmy Carter delivered an Emergency Declaration which moved 900 families from this hazardous area. The 'Love Canal' relocation was a landmark victory for a grassroots environmental rights groups in the United States.

In 1981, Lois created the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, (CHEJ) (formerly Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste), an organization that has assisted over 10,000 grassroots groups with organizing, technical, and general information nationwide. Among the many awards she received are the 1990 Goldman Environmental Prize, the world's largest prize honoring grassroots environmentalists. Ms. Mills was also a 2003 nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Adapted from the CHEJ biography page for Ms. Gibbs

Wangari Muta Maathai

Dr. Maathai was born in Nyeri, Kenya (Africa) in 1940 and in 1971 she became the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree. She went on to teach veterinary anatomy at the University of Nairobi, her alma mater.

In 1976 while serving on the National Council of Women she introduced the idea of planting trees and continued to develop it into a broad-based, grassroots organization whose main focus is the planting of trees with women groups in order to conserve the environment and improve their quality of life. Through this Green Belt Movement she has assisted women in planting more than 20 million trees on their farms and on schools and church compounds. In 1986, the Movement established a Pan African Green Belt Network which has since helped 40+ other African countries to successfully adopt this approach to conservation.

Adapted from the official Nobel Peace Prize biography.

Mary Walton
One of the pioneers in the fight against pollution, especially in large cities, was the independent inventor Mary Walton. While biographical information about her is not readily available we know she invented developed and patented several devices that solved environmental hazards created by the transportation developments of the Industrial Revolution
As early as 1879, Walton developed a method for minimizing the environmental hazards of the smoke that up until then was pouring unchecked from factories all over the country. Walton's system (patent #221,880) deflected the emissions being produced into water tanks, where the pollutants were retained and then flushed into the city sewage system.
A resident of Manhattan, NY Walton set up a model railroad track in her basement to test solutions to the noise problems for the elevated train systems pioneered in her city. She developed, tested and patented a sound-dampening apparatus. Walton later sold the rights to New York City's Metropolitan Railroad.

Adapted from a Lemelson-MIT Program November 1996 Inventor of the Week article.

New Books - February 2009

F549 .E2 B37 2008
Never Been a Time: The 1917 Race Riot that Sparked the Civil Rights Movement
Barnes, Harper, 1937-

From the Publisher:
The dramatic and first popular account of one of the deadliest racial confrontations in the 20th century—in East St. Louis in the summer of 1917—which paved the way for the civil rights movement.

In the 1910s, half a million African Americans moved from the impoverished rural South to booming industrial cities of the North in search of jobs and freedom from Jim Crow laws. But Northern whites responded with rage, attacking blacks in the streets and laying waste to black neighborhoods in a horrific series of deadly race riots that broke out in dozens of cities across the nation, including Philadelphia, Chicago, Tulsa, Houston, and Washington, D.C. In East St. Louis, Illinois, corrupt city officials and industrialists had openly courted Southern blacks, luring them North to replace striking white laborers. This tinderbox erupted on July 2, 1917 into what would become one of the bloodiest American riots of the World War era. Its impact was enormous. “There has never been a time when the riot was not alive in the oral tradition,” remarks Professor Eugene Redmond. Indeed, prominent blacks like W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Josephine Baker were forever influenced by it.

Celebrated St. Louis journalist Harper Barnes has written the first full account of this dramatic turning point in American history, decisively placing it in the continuum of racial tensions flowing from Reconstruction and as a catalyst of civil rights action in the decades to come. Drawing from accounts and sources never before utilized, Harper Barnes has crafted a compelling and definitive story that enshrines the riot as an historical rallying cry for all who deplore racialviolence.

New Books - February 2009

TR465 .H445 2008
Scrapbooks: An American History
Helfand, Jessica

From the Publisher:
Combining pictures, words, and a wealth of personal ephemera, scrapbook makers preserve on the pages of their books a moment, a day, or a lifetime. Highly subjective and rich in emotional content, the scrapbook is a unique and often quirky form of expression in which a person gathers and arranges meaningful materials to create a personal narrative. This lavishly illustrated book is the first to focus attention on the history of American scrapbooks—their origins, their makers, their diverse forms, the reasons for their popularity, and their place in American culture.

Jessica Helfand, a graphic designer and scrapbook collector, examines the evolution of scrapbooks from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present, concentrating on the first half of the twentieth century. She includes color photographs from more than two hundred scrapbooks, some made by private individuals and others by the famous, including Zelda Fitzgerald, Lillian Hellman, Anne Sexton, Hilda Doolittle, and Carl Van Vechten. Scrapbooks, while generally made by amateurs, represent a striking and authoritative form of visual autobiography, Helfand finds, and when viewed collectively they offer a unique perspective on the changing pulses of American cultural life.

Published with assistance from Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund