Inyo County Free Library - New Acquisitions
September 2016 - October 2016
These are books and media new to the library and cataloged by the Inyo County Free Library.
Additional information about each title can be found in the catalog (click on the title). For older acquisition lists choose from Select another list. To request any of these titles please contact your local library branch.
Non-Fiction | Computer science, information & general worksPhilosophy & psychologyReligionSocial sciencesLanguageScienceTechnologyArts & recreationLiteratureHistory & geography |
By Balakian, Peter Publishing Date: [2015] Classification: 800 Call Number: 811.54 BAL "A sequel of sorts to "Ziggurat," published in the Phoenix Poets series in 2010, the title poem from "Ozone Journal" recounts the memory of the speaker's excavating the bones of Armenian genocide victims in the Syrian desert with a TV journalist crew in 2009. The speaker "dreams back," as it were, to the 1980s, when, as a young man in his thirties and caring for a young daughter after a recent divorce, he is having to juggle both personal and cultural/historical complexities living as a single parent in Manhattan. The poems create a montage that has the feel of history as lived experience, with the speaker struggling with the nature of memory as the poems move constantly back and forth to the Syrian desert, the dissolution of his marriage, visits and conversations with a cousin dying of AIDS, and encounters with famous jazz producers at Columbia Records to discuss music. In this book, Peter Balakian aims at the bigger picture of humanity's history of atrocity and trauma, but through short vignettes grounded in everyday situations, and in particular times and places"--Publisher's info. |
Dogfight: the 2012 presidential campaign in verse By Trillin, Calvin Publishing Date: c2012 Classification: 800 Call Number: 811.54 TRI In his latest laugh-out-loud book of political verse, Calvin Trillin provides a riotous depiction of the 2012 presidential election campaign.-- |
By Ensler, Eve Publishing Date: c2001 Classification: 800 Call Number: 812.54 ENS A poignant and hilarious tour of the last frontier, the ultimate forbidden zone, The vagina monologues is a celebration of female sexuality in all its complexity and mystery. Hailed as the bible for a new generation of women, it has been performed in cities all across America and at hundreds of college campuses, and has inspired a dynamic grassroots movement--V-Day--to stop violence against women. Witty and irreverent, compassionate and wise, Eve Ensler's Obie Award-winning masterpiece gives voice to real women's deepest fantasies and fears, guaranteeing that no one who reads it will ever look at a woman's body, or think of sex, in quite the same way again. |
Politically correct holiday stories: for an enlightened yuletide season By Garner, James Finn Publishing Date: [1995] Classification: 800 Call Number: 813.54 GAR Retells traditional holiday tales from a politically correct point of view, eliminating gender and social biases. |
By McCaig, Donald Publishing Date: c1992 Classification: 800 Call Number: 813.54 MCC A National Public Radio commentator on rural life in America comments on his own lifestyle and the nature of rural democracy as he describes the experiences he and his wife have had since they bought an unworked farm in western Virginia. - (Baker & Taylor) |
By Rankine, Claudia Publishing Date: [2014] Classification: 800 Call Number: 814.6 RAN "Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV--everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named 'post-race' society"--From publisher's description. |
Charlotte Perkins Gilman: a biography By Davis, Cynthia J. Publishing Date: 2010 Classification: 800 Call Number: 818.409 DAV "Charlotte Perkins Gilman offers the definitive account of this controversial writer and activist's long and eventful life. Charlotte Anna Perkins Stetson Gilman (1860-1935) launched her career as a lecturer, author, and reformer with the story for which she is best-known today, "The Yellow Wallpaper." She was hailed as the "brains" of the US women's movement, whose focus she sought to broaden from suffrage to economics. Her most influential sociological work criticized the competitive individualism of capitalists and Social Darwinists, and touted altruistic service as the prerequisite to both social progress and human evolution." "By 1900, Gilman had become an international celebrity, but had already faced a scandal over her divorce and "abandonment" of her child. As the years passed, her audience shrunk and grew more hostile, and she increasingly positioned herself in opposition to the society that in an earlier, more idealistic period she had seen as the better part of the self. In her final years, she unflinchingly faced breast cancer, her second husband's sudden death, and finally, her own carefully planned suicide - she "preferred chloroform to cancer" and cared little for a single life when its usefulness was over." "Charlotte Perkins Gilman presents new insights into the life of a remarkable woman whose public solutions often belied her private anxieties. It aims to recapture the drama and complexity of Gilman's life while presenting a comprehensive scholarly portrait." --Book Jacket. |
The Keats brothers: the life of John and George By Gigante, Denise Publishing Date: 2011 Classification: 800 Call Number: 821.7 GIG John and George Keats--Man of Genius and Man of Power--embodied sibling forms of Romanticism. George's emigration to the U.S. frontier created an abysm of loneliness and alienation in John that would inspire his most plangent and sublime poetry. Gigante's account places John's life in a transatlantic context that has eluded his previous biographers. |
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are dead By Stoppard, Tom Publishing Date: c1967 Classification: 800 Call Number: 822.914 STO "Hamlet" as told from the worm's-eye view of the bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in Shakespeare's play. |
Telling times: writing and living, 1954-2008 By Gordimer, Nadine Publishing Date: 2010 Classification: 800 Call Number: 828.914 GOR A comprehensive collection of the author's nonfiction works ranges from reports on the 1976 Soweto uprising and observations of Zimbabe at the dawn of independence to portraits of such figures as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. |
By Winchester, Simon Publishing Date: [2015] Classification: 900 Call Number: 909 WIN The New York Times best-selling author of The Men Who United the States traces the geological history of the Pacific Ocean to assess its relationship with humans and indelible role in the modern world. |
Notes on the death of culture: essays on spectacle and society By Vargas Llosa, Mario Publishing Date: 2015 Classification: 900 Call Number: 909.82 VAR "A provocative essay collection that finds the Nobel laureate taking on the decline of intellectual life In the past, culture was a kind of vital consciousness that constantly rejuvenated and revivified everyday reality. Now it is largely a mechanism of distraction and entertainment. Notes on the Death of Culture is an examination and indictment of this transformation--penned by none other than Mario Vargas Llosa, who is not only one of our finest novelists but one of the keenest social critics at work today. Taking his cues from T. S. Eliot--whose essay "Notes Toward a Definition of Culture" is a touchstone precisely because the culture Eliot aimed to describe has since vanished--Vargas Llosa traces a decline whose ill effects have only just begun to be felt. He mourns, in particular, the figure of the intellectual: for most of the twentieth century, men and women of letters drove political, aesthetic, and moral conversations; today they have all but disappeared from public debate. But Vargas Llosa stubbornly refuses to fade into the background. He is not content to merely sign a petition; he will not bite his tongue. A necessary gadfly, the Nobel laureate Vargas Llosa, here vividly translated by John King, provides a tough but essential critique of our time and culture"-- |
The Arctic grail: the quest for the North West Passage and the North Pole, 1818-1909 By Berton, Pierre Publishing Date: 2000 Classification: 900 Call Number: 910 BER Author of many books relating to places and historical periods, Berton describes the dozens of expeditions mounted and hundreds of men lost trying to find the fabled Passage and Pole before Robert Peary reached the Pole in 1909. He draws on primary documents including hand-written journals, ship logs, and private diaries. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) - (Book News) |
The life of Captain James Cook By Beaglehole, J. C. Publishing Date: [1974] Classification: 900 Call Number: 910.924 BEA An authority on Pacific exploration analyzes the major influences on Cook's character and assesses his role and achievements as an explorer and seaman - (Baker & Taylor) |
By Hawkes, Jacquetta Publishing Date: 1963 Classification: 900 Call Number: 913.082 HAW Vol. 1. About archaeology. The old stone age and the evolution of man. The new stone age and the beginning of farming. Mesopotamia and Palestine. The Egyptian world.-- vol. 2. Asia Minor, Greece and Italy: the classical world and its background. India, China and elsewhere. Britain and Europe. America. |
Nepal: the kingdom in the Himalayas By Hagen, Toni Publishing Date: 1971, c1961 Classification: 900 Call Number: 915.49 HAG Translation of Nepal. Originally published: Bern : Kümmerly & Frey, 1960. |
By Thubron, Colin Publishing Date: 1975 Classification: 900 Call Number: 915.64 THU The people, their history and the beauty of an island on the brink of tragedy. In this book, the author intertwines myth, history and personal anecdote in a quest from which the characters and places, architecture and landscape all spring vividly to the reader's eye. |
By Thubron, Colin Publishing Date: 1994 Classification: 900 Call Number: 915.8042 THU Covering the vast miles between the ruined caravan cities of Turmenia to the beautiful and treacherous Pamir and Tien Shan mountains, a portrait of China explores its oppressed past, recent liberation, and hopeful future. National ad/promo. - (Baker & Taylor) |
By Matthiessen, Peter Publishing Date: 1972 Classification: 900 Call Number: 916.76 MAT Peter Matthiessen exquisitely combines nature and travel writing to portray the sights, scenes, and people he observed firsthand in several trips over the course of a dozen years. From the daily lives of wild herdsmen and the drama of predator kills to the field biologists investigating wild creatures and the anthropologists seeking humanity's origins in the rift valley, The Tree Where Man Was Born is a classic of journalistic observation. |
Publishing Date: 2009 Classification: 900 Call Number: 930.1 A professional field guide and practical companion to archaeology features how-to photographic sequences of field surveys and step-by-step excavations, profiles of archaeological pioneers, and information on handling and recording finds and dating artefacts. - (Baker & Taylor) |