Inyo County Free Library - New Acquisitions
July 2023 - August 2023
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 |
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The merry recluse: a life in essays By Knapp, Caroline Publishing Date: 2004 Classification: 800 Call Number: 814 KNA From the best'selling author of Drinking: A Love Story and Appetites: Why Women Want comes this unforgettable collection spanning fifteen years of observations on modern culture and women's lives. Caroline Knapp's readers are known not just for their number, but for their intense connection to her work. Knapp connected so well in part because of the intense focus she brought to her subjects. Now, with The Merry Recluse: A Life in Essays, Knapp shows us that her vision through a wider lens is as brilliant as through a narrow one. These essays paint the fullest picture of this wonderful writer that we've yet seen, but they are also a full portrait of a writing life, showing how the same themes can engage''and expand''a writer over a lifetime. Knapp, who died in 2002, was considered one of the country's more intelligent and graceful voices in memoirs. This collection also shows her to be a witty, provocative observer of the world around her. - (Random House, Inc.) |
By Thoreau, Henry David Publishing Date: 2009 Classification: 800 Call Number: 818.303 THO Henry David Thoreaus Journal was his lifes work: the daily practice of writing that accompanied his daily walks, the workshop where he developed his books and essays, and a project in its own rightone of the most intensive explorations ever made of the everyday environment, the revolving seasons, and the changing self. It is a treasure trove of some of the finest prose in English and, for those acquainted with it, its prismatic pages exercise a hypnotic fascination. Yet at roughly seven thousand pages, or two million words, it remains Thoreaus least-known work. |
By Solnit, Rebecca Publishing Date: [2021] Classification: 800 Call Number: 828.912 SOL Shortly before he went off to fight against fascism in Spain in 1936, George Orwell planted roses. Today, those rosebushes are still thriving. Solnit presents a neglected side of Orwell, who took enormous pleasure in the natural world and found great meaning and value in it. She explores the roses in various contexts, perspectives, and meanings, following the contours of Orwell's life and tracking how deeply enmeshed the love of nature is in all his writing--Adapted from jacket |
By Ernaux, Annie Publishing Date: [2022] Classification: 800 Call Number: 843.914 ERN "Getting Lost is the diary Annie Ernaux kept during the year and a half she had a secret love affair with a younger, married man, a Russian diplomat. Her novel, Simple Passion, was based on this affair, but here her writing is immediate, unfiltered. In these diaries it is 1989 and Annie is divorced with two grown sons, living outside of Paris and nearing fifty. Her lover escapes the city to see her there and Ernaux seems to survive only in expectation of these encounters, saying "his desire for me is the only thing I can be sure of." She cannot write, she trudges distractedly through her various other commitments in the world, she awaits his next call; she lives only to feel desire and for the next rendezvous. When he is gone and the desire has faded, she feels that she is a step closer to death. Lauded for her spare prose, Ernaux here removes all artifice, her writing pared down to its most naked and vulnerable. Getting Lost is as strong a book as any that she has written, a haunting, desperate view of strong and successful woman who seduces a man only to lose herself in love and desire"-- |
The road less traveled: the secret battle to end the Great War, 1916-1917 By Zelikow, Philip Publishing Date: 2021 Classification: 900 Call Number: 940.312 ZEL "During a pivotal few months in the middle of the First World War all sides--Germany, Britain, and America--believed the war could be concluded. Peace at the end of 1916 would have saved millions of lives and changed the course of history utterly. Two years into the most terrible conflict the world had ever known, the warring powers faced a crisis. There were no good military options. Money, men, and supplies were running short on all sides. The German chancellor secretly sought President Woodrow Wilson's mediation to end the war, just as British ministers and France's president also concluded that the time was right. The Road Less Traveled describes how tantalizingly close these far-sighted statesmen came to ending the war, saving millions of lives, and avoiding the total war that dimmed hopes for a better world. Theirs was a secret battle that is only now becoming fully understood, a story of civic courage, awful responsibility, and how some leaders rose to the occasion while others shrank from it or chased other ambitions. "Peace is on the floor waiting to be picked up!" pleaded the German ambassador to the United States. This book explains both the strategies and fumbles of people facing a great crossroads of history. The Road Less Traveled reveals one of the last great mysteries of the Great War: that it simply never should have lasted so long or cost so much"-- |
By Wukovits, John F. Publishing Date: [2013] Classification: 900 Call Number: 940.5425 WUK The story of the Battle of Samar and the sacrifice of the USS Samuel B. Roberts documents how the destroyer and its small unit confronted formidable Japanese forces to secure the region for MacArthur's transports inside Leyte Gulf, in an account that also describes the harrowing three days endured in the sea by the ship's survivors. |
By Nicolson, Nigel Publishing Date: 1998 Classification: 900 Call Number: 941.085 NIC In his memoir, British writer, publisher and politician Nigel Nicolson (1917-2004), "unravels the many strings of his utterly unusual and diverse experiences, painting a vivid portrait of a truly fascinating life." Nicolson shares his childhood in the heart of Bloomsbury as the son of Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West. Nicolson obligingly offers up details of his parents' marriage, including both parents' multiple bisexual affairs. He details his publishing career with an account of the publishing house he founded with partner George Weidenfeld and the books they championed. Readers who know him primarily as a war historian will enjoy his reminiscences of his experiences in North Africa and Italy during World War II. Rounding out his life, he was a Member of Parliament in the 1950s. Finally, he describes his home and the world famous gardens he created there. |
Nella Last's peace: the post-war diaries of Housewife, 49 By Last, Nella Publishing Date: 2008 Classification: 900 Call Number: 941.0854 LAS Picking up where 'Nella Last's War' left off, this moving and often comic diary tells the story of her post-war struggles and describes what ordinary people felt during those years of privation, hope and rebuilding - and whether 'peace' really meant 'peace' for everyone. |
Nella Last in the 1950s: further diaries of Housewife, 49 By Last, Nella Publishing Date: 2010 Classification: 900 Call Number: 941.0855 LAS This volume sees Nella, now in her 60s, writing about the 1950s and revealing more about life with her increasingly troublesome husband. She offers a moving and humorous insight into the experiences of ordinary people at a time that shaped the society we live in today. |
By Kavanagh, Julie Publishing Date: 2021 Classification: 900 Call Number: 941.7081 KAV "One sunlit evening, May 6, 1882, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke, Chief Secretary and Undersecretary for Ireland, were ambushed and stabbed to death while strolling through Phoenix Park in Dublin. The murders were funded by American supporters of Irish independence and carried out by the Invincibles, a militant faction of republicans armed with specially-made surgeon's blades. They ended what should have been a turning point in Anglo-Irish relations. A new spirit of goodwill had been burgeoning between British Prime Minister William Gladstone and Ireland's leader Charles Stewart Parnell, with both men forging in secret a pact to achieve peace and independence in Ireland-with the newly appointed Cavendish, Gladstone's protégé, to play an instrumental role in helping to do so. The impact of the Phoenix Park murders was so cataclysmic that it destroyed the pact, almost brought down the government, and set in motion repercussions that would last long into the twentieth century. In a story that spans Donegal, Dublin, London, Paris, New York, Cannes, and Cape Town, Julie Kavanagh thrillingly traces the crucial events that came before and after the murders. From the adulterous affair that caused Parnell's downfall; to Queen Victoria's prurient obsession with the assassinations; and the investigation spearheaded by Superintendent John Mallon, also known as the "Irish Sherlock Holmes," culminating in the eventual betrayal and clandestine escape of leading Invincible James Carey and his murder on the high seas, The Irish Assassins brings us intimately into this fascinating story that shaped Irish politics and engulfed an Empire. This is an unputdownable book from one of our most "compulsively readable" (Guardian) writers"-- |
Stealing God's thunder: Benjamin Franklin's lightning rod and the invention of America By Dray, Philip Publishing Date: 2005 Classification: 900 Call Number: 973.3092 DRA A biography of Benjamin Franklin viewed through the lens of his scientific inquiry and its ramifications for American democracy. Today we think of Franklin as a founder of American independence who also dabbled in science. But in Franklin's day it was otherwise--long before he was an eminent statesman, he was famous for his revolutionary scientific work, especially his experiments with lightning and electricity. Pulitzer Prize finalist Dray uses the evolution of Franklin's scientific curiosity and empirical thinking as a metaphor for America's struggle to establish its fundamental values. Set against the backdrop of the Enlightenment and America's pursuit of political equality for all, the book recounts how Franklin unlocked one of the greatest natural mysteries of his day.--From publisher description. |
Memoirs of General W.T. Sherman By Sherman, William T. Publishing Date: [1990] Classification: 900 Call Number: 973.7092 SHE Hailed as a prophet of modern war and condemned as a harbinger of modern barbarism, Sherman is the most controversial general of the Civil War. "War is cruelty, you cannot refine it," he wrote in fury to the Confederate mayor of Atlanta, and his memoir is filled with dozens of such wartime exchanges and a fascinating, eerie account of the famous march through the Carolinas. |
The last campaign: Sherman, Geronimo, and the War for America By Brands, H. W. Publishing Date: [2022] Classification: 900 Call Number: 973.8 BRA "Bestselling historian and Pulitzer-prize finalist H. W. Brands follows the lives and battles of General William Tecumseh Sherman and Apache warrior Geronimo to tell the story of the Indian Wars and the final fight for control of the American continent"-- |
By Hsu, Hua Publishing Date: [2022] Classification: 900 Call Number: 979.467 HSU "From the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art. In the eyes of 18-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken-with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity-is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, a first-generation Taiwanese American who has a 'zine and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn't seem to have a place for either of them. But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become best friends, a friendship built of late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives along the California coast, and the textbook successes and humiliations of everyday college life. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking, not even three years after the day they first meet. Determined to hold on to all that was left of his best friend-his memories-Hua turned to writing. Stay True is the book he's been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging."--Provided by publisher |
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