The Town That Food Saved; How One Community Found Vitality In Local Food

By Ben Hewitt
"A microscopic burg in northern Vermont may just be the epicenter of a new food movement, a scenario that alternately amuses, enthuses, and enrages its 3,200 residents. With a hardscrabble reputation left over from its heyday as a mining metropolis, Hardwick has had to rely on a can-do/can-do-without stoicism before, though the current economic downturn is certainly testing its mettle. Enter a group of young, energetic agribusinessmen—agripreneurs is Hewitt's newly minted term—whose vision for a revolutionary farm-to-table locavore movement aimed at turning Hardwick's, and possibly the nation's, food crisis around has captured national media attention and garnered local skepticism. The irony plays out in Hewitt's beguiling profiles of the players at the heart and on the periphery of dovetailing associations; from the charismatic media darling who produces heirloom seeds to the craggy erstwhile hippie couple who offer a mobile slaughtering service. Adroitly balancing professional neutrality with personal commitment, Hewitt engagingly examines this paradigm shift in the way a community feeds its citizens."  (Booklist Reviews)
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Dangerous Ground; America'a Failed Arms Control Policy, From FDR to Obama

By Scott Ritter
"In Dangerous Ground, Ritter chronicles his visits to the hot zones of the twenty-first century—Asia, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union. He introduces us to the arms dealers, the corrupt government officials, and intelligence operatives who are making the world an unsafe place to live. These encounters underline Ritter’s core thesis—that arms control will be the issue of the twenty-first century."  (Publisher Description)
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Journal Of The Plague Year; An Inside Chronicle Of Eliot Spitzer's Short And Tragic Reign

By Lloyd Constantine
"Journal of the Plague Year is an intimate account of 61 hours, from the moment on March 9, 2008, when Lloyd Constantine, senior advisor to Spitzer, received a phone call from Spitzer revealing facts the entire world would learn the next morning, until Spitzer’s March 12 news conference. It is also an inside account of the 16 tumultuous months of Spitzer’s administration that preceded the resignation."  (Publisher Content)
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Bag Lady Papers; The Priceless Experience Of Losing It All

By Alexandra Penney
"A victim of Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme, mom and former Self magazine editor-in-chief Penney ...hyperventilates her way through this intriguing memoir of putting it back together. Finding herself almost entirely without money, Penney faces the unexpected need to retrench with a daunting sense of paranoia; brought up by aloof parents, Penney lived for a long time with a chronic, seemingly irrational fear of becoming a destitute bag lady. As a "Person of Reduced Circumstances", Penney bolsters herself with chin-up wisdom ("unless you've been mummified, you have choices and alternatives") and bravely vows to apply her own nail polish while eulogizing her days as an expensively-dressed editrix at Conde Nast. While she ponders lists labeled "money can still buy" and "money can't buy," a collection of well-heeled and influential friends encourage her with quotes from Emerson, invitations to the Caribbean and tax advice. With considerations like, "Is it worse to have had money and lost it? Or is it worse to never have had money at all?" Penney can be an (admittedly) unsympathetic protagonist, but her struggle is genuine, her charm expansive and surprising, and her strength winning. (PW Annex Reviews)
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Superbug; The Fatal Menace of MRSA

By Maryn McKenna
A gripping account of one of the most devastating infectious agents on the planet.MRSA, short for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, was once considered the exclusive bane of hospitalized patients, who were already weakened by disease or surgery, and hence prey to any infectious organism able to survive and adapt to the array of disease-fighting drugs used in health-care settings. Methicillin is an antibiotic that was first hailed as the successor to penicillin, designed to dispatch the bugs that had grown resistant to the first antibiotic. And so it did—until the bugs outwitted it. In time, strains of MRSA appeared not only in sick patients, but also in healthy people who had never been near a hospital....McKenna suggests that vaccines might be the answer, but it seems a distant hope and too late for the patients whose heartbreaking stories she tells.A meticulously researched, frightening report on a deadly pathogen. (Kirkus Reviews)
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The Untold War: Inside The Hearts, Minds, and Souls Of Our Soldiers

By Nancy Sherman
"At a time when suicide rates among veterans is increasing sharply, this empathic examination of "the moral weight that soldiers carry on their shoulders" is essential reading. Sherman, a philosopher, ethicist, and psychoanalyst at Georgetown University, conducted extensive interviews with around 40 soldiers, in various stages of their careers, veterans of both the Iraq War and earlier conflicts. Through nuanced exploration of their powerful stories, Sherman makes the familiar case that soldiering becomes an identity not easily left behind when one returns to civilian life. The challenge is finding a moral self able to sustain the sensibilities of both the civilian and the warrior. That is difficult in cultures where the experiences of war and peace are divergent. The central desire and need for a soldier is to be strong. Anger, fear, revenge, guilt—these are also standard issue. How do men judge themselves, or contemplate being judged, for what they do and see? Experiencing war, Sherman says, requires compartmentalization, displacement, deferral until "soldiers find the safety and trust needed to express personal doubts and torments." Sherman perceptively and accurately concludes that this cannot be "a private burden banned... from families and communities.""  (PW Reviews)
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Crisis And Command; The History Of Executive Power From George Washinton To George W. Bush

By John Yoo
"In this contentious study, Berkeley law prof and former Justice Department official Yoo reprises the brief for expansive presidential power that made him one of the Bush administration's most controversial aides. He focuses on a handful of presidents,  Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR who, he argues, extended executive authority in novel ways to surmount crises without letting an inherently slow, disorganized, corrupt, and pusillanimous Congress get in the way......His analysis culminates in a defense of Bush administration policies on warrantless wiretapping, "coercive interrogation," enemy combatants, and Iraq, and a denunciation of Obama's deviations from them. Yoo's chronicle cogently fits in Bush's initiatives with previous presidential arrogations of power. But his tacit premise that the open-ended, ill-defined "war on terror" compares to previous crises like the Civil War and requires similarly drastic responses will be strongly disputed by civil libertarians." (PW Reviews)
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The Death and Life of the Great American School System; How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education

By Diane Ravitch
"As an education historian and former assistant secretary of education, Ravitch has witnessed the trends in public education over the past 40 years and has herself swung from public-school advocate to market-driven accountability and choice supporter back to public-school advocate. With passion and insight, she analyzes research and draws on interviews with educators, philanthropists, and business executives to question the current direction of reform of public education....Ravitch analyzes the impact of choice on public schools, attempts to quantify quality teaching, and describes the data wars with advocates for charter and traditional public schools. Ravitch also critiques the continued reliance on a corporate model for school reform and the continued failure of such efforts to emphasize curriculum. Conceding that there is no single solution, Ravitch concludes by advocating for strong educational values and revival of strong neighborhood public schools. For readers on all sides of the school-reform debate, this is a very important book."  (Booklist Reviews)
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Courage and Consequence; My Life As A Conservative In The Fight

By Karl Rove
"The media-savvy political strategist defines "compassionate conservatism," defends himself against accusations levied by his opponents and corrects many myths about him, in a behind-the-scenes account that details the Bush presidency and gives insights into what it takes to win an election."  (Publisher Content)
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The Watchers; The Rise Of America's Surveillance State

By Shane Harris
"In 1983, following a terrorist attack on U.S. Marines in Beirut, John Poindexter, a national security advisor, lamented that better surveillance and analysis could have prevented the attack. That lament resounded again on 9/11 when the "watchers"—information technologists working for the nation's intelligence and national security services—fretted that ongoing debates about privacy versus national security continued to hamper their incredible capabilities. Between those attacks and even since then, Poindexter has worked tirelessly, in and out of government, with a band of "warrior geeks" to develop a Total Information Awareness system that can track potential terrorists. The problem is that the system also sweeps innocent U.S. citizens into its net, collecting data from phone calls and e-mails. Harris chronicles the rise and fall and revival of Poindexter (made infamous by his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal) and others, and the inherent contradictions of protecting American liberty by spying on U.S. citizens. He details the electronic tracking systems, the internecine conflicts between spy agencies, the complex of laws and regulations, and the political machinations that have resulted in the secret funding of this controversial operation. Harris sifts through a confusing array of acronyms, fascinating characters, and chilling operations to offer an absorbing look at modern spying technology and how it impacts average Americans."  (Booklist Reviews)
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