|
|
|
The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains by Clayton Page AldernThe climate crisis and the chaos it has created are changing us in countless ways, some obvious, others subtle. Aldern, a journalist with training in neuroscience, considers the adverse effects of extreme weather and worsening pollution on our emotions, decision-making ability, behavior, and cognition. Global warming particularly burdens the brain. Rising outdoor temperatures ratchet up irritability and impulsivity, aggression and acts of violence, lack of focus and forgetfulness. Climate change increases the incidence of some illnesses (including the ravages of "brain-eating" amoeba). As the planet warms, the range of disease-carrying mosquitoes (vectors for Zika virus and malaria) and ticks (Lyme disease) expands. PTSD in the aftermath of hurricanes, wildfires, and severe flooding is not uncommon. Parts of the discussion are self-evident ("Our brains don't work as well when it's hot out"). Banalities sometimes pop up ("Earth is hurting, and empathy means hurting with it"). Aldern doesn't fully address human hardiness or specific measures to mitigate damage to brain health by violent weather and battered environments, but he does satisfactorily convey the significance of neurological and psychological problems associated with climate change.
|
|
|
All You Need Is Love is a groundbreaking oral history of the one of the most enduring musical acts of all time. The material is comprised of intimate interviews with Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, their families, friends and business associates that were conducted by Beatles intimate Peter Brown and author Steven Gaines in 1980-1981 during the preparation of their international bestseller, The Love You Make, which spent four months on the New York Times bestseller list in 1983 and remains the biggest selling biography worldwide about the BeatlesOnly a small portion of the contents of these transcribed interviews have ever been revealed. The interviews are unique and candid. The information, stories, and experiences, and the authority of the people who relate to them, have historic value. No collection like this can ever be assembled again.In addition to interviews with Paul, Yoko, Ringo and George, Brown and Gaines also include interviews from ex-wives Cynthia Lennon, Pattie Harrison Clapton, and Maureen Starkey, as well as the major social and business figures of the Beatles' inner circle. Among other sought-after information the interviews contribute definitively as to why the Beatles broke up.
|
|
|
A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks by David J. L. GibbinsBest-selling novelist Gibbins (Inquisition, 2018) returns to his passion for archeology in this examination of 12 sunken vessels ranging from a Bronze Age wreck off England’s Dover coast to a WWII merchant ship sunk off the coast of Ireland. Each of these dozen shipwrecks in some way reflects the state of the world at the time the ships went down. The Bronze Age wreck’s cargo shows that international trade flourished even in prehistoric times; copper cargo from the Uluburun shipwreck found off Turkey’s shore gives similar evidence of thriving commerce in the eastern Mediterranean. A sunken vessel from the sixth century CE held marble columns clearly intended for a Byzantine church. The remains of Henry VIII’s renowned flagship, Mary Rose, tells much about Tudor seamanship and England’s nascent ability to colonize so much of the world. As Gibbins notes, none of this history would be available today save for the invention of scuba technology, allowing underwater archeology to flourish. Gibbins’ remarkable research will grant both maritime and general historians a deeper perspective on how our world developed.
|
|
|
Chamber Divers: The Untold Story of the D-day Scientists Who Changed Special Operations Forever by Rachel LanceIn this bracing history of an obscure but significant aspect of the D-Day landing, Lance (In the Waves, 2020) combines a staggering amount of research with an array of compelling personalities to tell an unforgettable story. In prose both gripping and erudite, she takes readers back to the disastrous attempted 1942 Allied amphibious landing in Dieppe, France (terming this a "massacre" would not be an exaggeration). She then reveals the story of the scientists whose work transformed how such landings would be conducted going forward, contributing enormously to the later, crucial, success at Normandy. The groundbreaking development of breathing apparatus would be critical to the so-called Allied “human minesweepers” who cleared underwater obstacles. Beginning with the maverick, sometimes outrageous, polymath J. B. S. Haldane, whose father had spent decades studying respiratory physiology and instituted the use of canaries in coal mines, Lance introduces the brilliant and eclectic men and women (many of them German Jewish refugees) who experimented on themselves in a race to develop critical technology. Poring over declassified documents, teasing out family stories, and tirelessly tracking down every clue, Lance gifts readers with a big, brash history that will have broad appeal.
|
|
|
Never Leave the Dogs Behind: A Memoir by Brianna MadiaThe author of Nowhere for Very Long returns with a tale about how solitude and dogs can heal wounds. Madia moved to the desert outside Moab, Utah, in May 2020, fleeing from the pain of leaving her husband and a vicious barrage of online harassment. She writes, “A handful of people would make dozens and dozens of anonymous accounts to send what amounted to hundreds of messages” berating her for the breakup and even the accident that almost killed their dog. “People claimed to know things about me, about my life,” she continues. “Even if they knew nothing, the internet still provided them the perfect place to pretend they did.” She responded by taking refuge in a used van with a vista of “the smoldering ashes of all the bridges I’d burned while I, myself, had been on fire.” As in her previous memoir, Madia recounts in raw detail her depression, mania, guilt, anger, and struggle to survive, emotionally and physically. She was not really alone, however. Besides two pet pythons, she lived with four rambunctious dogs. “Sometimes,” she admits, “I forgot I wasn’t a dog until other people were around.” Her life felt chaotic: “I was drinking myself to sleep, starving myself to a silhouette, and living in a relative state of squalor simply because it felt like that’s what I deserved.” Blaming herself for her husband’s alcoholism and the failure of their marriage “had become a form of survival. If everything was my fault, that meant I had some sort of control over it…that meant I could make sense of it, fix it, never let it happen again.” Gradually, Madia came to see that she could take care of herself and become someone “who could learn to forgive herself for those times when she didn’t know how.” An intimate memoir of shattering pain.
|
|
|
The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters by Susan PageIn the annals of broadcast journalism, Barbara Walters is legendary. Acclaimed for her monumental “gets,” Walters interviewed a veritable who’s who of twentieth-century politicians and celebrities, amassing a master class trove of spirited and probing interrogatories that famously reduced her subjects to tears. In an era when the business of broadcast news was a firmly established old boys club, Walters took a battering ram to those clubhouse doors when, in 1976, she became co-anchor of ABC Nightly News. Not only was her position unprecedented, her million-dollar annual salary was record-shattering. Walters had toiled for decades in the trenches as a PR operative, low-level news writer, and participant in puff pieces on morning television; peers questioned her worthiness. Her career was forged during the days of second-wave feminism, and Walters was a highly visible target for the industry’s and the nation’s entrenched misogyny. Beyond the professional battles, her personal life suffered as well, through multiple marriages and a fractured relationship with her adopted daughter. Page, the Washington bureau chief for USA Today, presents an impeccably researched and deeply sourced biography and a respectful and balanced portrait of this groundbreaking icon of American journalism.
|
|
|
The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: Their Stories Are Better Than the Bestsellers by James PattersonNot to spoil the secret promised in the title, but what unites all of the booksellers and librarians interviewed for this book is a love of books and reading and other people who love books and reading. Patterson and Eversmann include such luminaries as Judy Blume, who quit writing after 50 years and opened a bookstore in Key West, and a bookstore owner in Rehoboth, Delaware, who regularly rubs elbows with the Bidens. Several themes emerge: subjects grew up loving reading (there are a few mentions of favorite reads, like the Lord of the Rings series and even James Patterson); they love the community-hub aspect of where they work; and they relish a book-search challenge, like "the cover is blue." What they don't enjoy are challenges to books, with several entries devoted to those who are fighting for intellectual freedom, like the librarian in Texas who was fired for not taking down a pride display. With its bite-sized chapters, this collection of profiles doesn't go into much depth, but it will appeal to readers looking for some quick, bookish inspiration.
|
|
|
Our Fight: A Memoir by Ronda RouseyAn inspirational memoir by the mixed martial arts legend. Rousey (b. 1987) was touted as an overnight success when she came onto the MMA scene. However, she notes, “‘overnight’ is what they call it when no one has been paying attention to the decades of time and effort you put into perfecting a craft.” That success endured for a few years but came tumbling down with a fight in 2015, when, owing to what she describes as neurological issues, she was finally defeated. Blending bravado with self-awareness, she writes, “I was perfect. Until I wasn’t.” The defeat haunts Rousey’s narrative, as she writes about how the loss was devastating enough that she contemplated suicide: “Physical pain I could deal with but the entire world I had created for myself crashing around me was too much to bear.” Then came a comeback, of sorts, when she signed with Vince McMahon’s WWE extravaganza and its heavily scripted matches, departures from which McMahon did not tolerate, as when Rousey refused to call herself “the women’s champion,” preferring simply “the champion.” McMahon’s characteristic response: “Get out of here with that woke bullshit.” Recent accusations against McMahon have led to his being distanced from his own organization, and Rousey is timely in corroborating many of the allegations. McMahon emerges as a decidedly unsympathetic character, more so than any scripted in-the-ring villain. Still, Rousey acknowledges that WWE will roll on without much wokeness entering the picture. Knowing that she couldn’t change the organization, she changed her life by walking away—and recognizing that she was fortunate to have the resources and family support to do so while many other fighters are “forced to keep going until their body falls apart.” Fight fans not shocked by revelations of both malfeasance and artful choreography will take to this well-crafted memoir.
|
|
|
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman RushdieFrom internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring-and surviving-an attempt on his life thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him. Speaking out for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, about the traumatic events of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie answers violence with art, and reminds us of the power of words to make sense of the unthinkable. Knife is a gripping, intimate, and ultimately life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art-and finding the strength to stand up again.
|
|
|
The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by Hampton SidesThe best-selling Sides (On Desperate Ground, 2018) tackles the somewhat controversial topic of contact between European explorers and Indigenous peoples through the life and exploits of the great British navigator and cartographer James Cook in this adventure of the high seas. Cook set sail from London in July 1776 with the objectives of returning a Polynesian man to his home islands after an extended stay in England and exploring the Pacific coast of North America in search of the fabled Northwest Passage. Sides has an impressive knack for immersing the reader in the realities of seafaring, from the miseries of vermin, disease, and accidental deaths to the need for supplies and repairs on Cook’s vessels—all expertly contrasted with the exhilaration of reaching new and different locales. Sides proceeds objectively, describing the voyage as it was while also providing an historical context and current scholarly arguments surrounding the effects of European exploration. Beautifully written and impeccably researched, The Wide Wide Sea will delight readers new to the topic as well as those versed in earlier looks at James Cook and his milieu.
|
|
|
|
Centerville Library 111 W. Spring Valley Rd Centerville, OH 45458 (937) 433-8091
|
Woodbourne Library 6060 Far Hills Ave Centerville, OH 45459 (937) 435-3700
|
Creativity Commons 895 Miamisburg Centerville Rd
Centerville, OH 45459 (937) 610-4425
|
|
|
|