To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War

By John Gibler
"Gibler (Mexico Unconquered) documents Mexico's drug war, its enormous profits and grievous human costs, in taut prose and harrowing detail. As the demand for recreational drugs spikes in the U.S., money from the drug trade has become Mexico's largest source of income. Gibler's front-line reportage coupled with first-rate analysis gives an uncommonly vivid and nuanced picture of a society riddled and enervated by corruption, shootouts, and raids, where murder is the "most popular method of conflict resolution." Since 2006, 34,000 Mexicans have been killed; "death is a part of the overhead, a business expense," observes Gibler. Even the hired killers, often impoverished teenagers who are paid about a week, are executed by the very people who hire them, after their "job" is done. At great personal risk, the author unearths stories the mainstream media doesn'tor is too afraidto cover, and gives voice to those who have been silenced or whose stories have been forgottenmurdered journalists in Reynosa, students slain in the streets, and even a man who was killed because, tired of finding dead bodies outside his house, he had hung a sign reading "Prohibited: Littering and Dumping Corpses."  (Publisher's Weekly)  Check Our Catalog

Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men

By Mara Hvistendahl

"A hard-hitting, eye-opening study that not only paints a dire future of a world without girls but traces the West's role in propagating sex selection.
In her debut, Beijing-based Science correspondent Hvistendahl delves deeply into the causes of the vanishing of girls in Asia and Eastern Europe and looks beyond the traditional explanation of infanticide and abandonment. In fact, girls are simply not being born—demographers calculate that 163 million potential girls have been eliminated in Asia alone through ultrasound and abortion, the technological advancements of the West. A natural sex ratio at birth is 100 girls to 105 boys--nature compensates for the fact that more boys tend to die young due to dangerous behavior, wars, exhaustion, etc. Even a slight deviation from this natural balance toward boys can have enormous repercussions in a society, leaving a surplus of males unable to find mates, introducing instability, violence and the possibility of extinction. Astoundingly, the sex ratio in China is 121 boys to girls, in India 112. The skewed gender imbalance has also swept Vietnam, the Caucasus and the Balkans—all developing countries where the status of women is supposed to have improved as the countries got richer. Yet traditional beliefs—boys take care of their parents and the ancestral graves, girls need a large dowry for marriage and are a burden—are deeply ingrained in these societies, even still among Asian immigrants in America, whose sex ratio is also skewed toward boys. By the mid-1980s, the high-quality second trimester ultrasound arrived; despite laws passed proscribing its use in sex selection in China, India and elsewhere, doctors capitulated to patients' needs—and money. Western doomsayers and scientists set up the alarm by the late 1960s about world overpopulation, and naively (or sinisterly, as the author hints) endorsed sex selection even then as an effective form of birth control, setting the groundwork for future crisis.
Hvistendahl's important, even-handed exposé considers all sides of the argument and deserves careful attention and study." (Kirkus Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the Twenty-First Century

By Alex Prud'homme
"Prud'homme, a journalist and the coauthor with Julia Child of My Life in France, examines crucial issues concerning the world's finite supply of fresh waterpollution, water quantity (drought and flood), waste, and governance. Focusing on the U.S., he explores how water scarcity, population growth, and environmental degradation are forcing the country to a moment of reckoning on a scale not seen since the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972. And he notes how woefully obsolete laws designed to protect drinking supplies in the 1970s are becoming, when hundreds of untested new chemicals enter U.S. waterways every year, and the majority of water pollution now comes from unregulated storm-water runoff, where insecticides, fertilizers, paint, and motor oil are washed into the water supply. Prud'homme offers ample and eloquent warnings of a looming water crisis: intersex fish in Chesapeake Bay, the poisoning of water wells in Wisconsin from agricultural runoff, Lake Mead's record-low waterline in Nevada, decaying dams and levees. Prud'homme's eloquence and local focus will help this book rise to the top of the recent flood of water-themed books including Elixir by Brian Fagan and The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman."  (Publishers Weekly)  Check Our Catalog

Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam

By JM Berger
"Investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Berger (Triple Cross) lifts the veil on the phenomenon of American jihadists in this timely and chilling examination. While most Americans were shocked when John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban" and a U.S. citizen, was captured in Afghanistan in 2001, American citizens had been joining the international jihad for decadesBerger argues that at least 1,400 Americans have taken part in military jihad over the past 30 years. While most activity has taken place abroad, American jihadists also have struck at homethe 2009 Fort Hood, Tex., massacre, for example. Berger fears "it is likely that the American jihadist movement will succeed in a spectacular attack on home soil," and believes that knowing "why Americans take up the banner of jihad is the first step" will help to counter this problem. Drawing on detailed case studies of individual American jihadists, the author concludes that they are a diverse group and their "path to radicalization begins with a rock-solid belief that Muslims are a victim class." Berger's exposé painstakingly lays out the scope and character of the American jihadist movement and points the way to a national debate."  (Publishers Weekly)  Check Our Catalog

Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America (Revised)

By Juan Gonzalez
"A sweeping history of the Latino experience in the United States- thoroughly revised and updated.
The first new edition in ten years of this important study of Latinos in U.S. history, "Harvest of Empire" spans five centuries-from the first New World colonies to the first decade of the new millennium. Latinos are now the largest minority group in the United States, and their impact on American popular culture-from food to entertainment to literature-is greater than ever. Featuring family portraits of real- life immigrant Latino pioneers, as well as accounts of the events and conditions that compelled them to leave their homelands, Harvest of Empire is required reading for anyone wishing to understand the history and legacy of this increasingly influential group."  (Publisher Description)   Check Our Catalog

The End of Anger : A New Generation's Take on Race and Rage

By Ellis Cose
"Cose (The Rage of the Privileged Class), columnist and contributing editor at Newsweek, explores the newfound sense of optimism among African-Americans who in the last few years have astounded pollsters with their sanguinity despite being disproportionately targeted for predatory loans and hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis. Cose attributes the increase of black optimism to three factors: Barack Obamas election; "generational evolution," which sees each successive generation harboring fewer racial prejudices, suggesting that African-Americans could be facing less racism than their parents did; and the related rise of racial equality. Interviewing M.B.A.s from Harvard, dropouts with a criminal record, as well as representatives from three successive generations spanning 70 years and their white counterparts, Cose provides a paradoxical portrait of race in America, where educated, privileged blacks are optimistic about their future, but for blacks at the lower end of the economic spectrum, equality remains as elusive as ever. One in 12 African-American men are behind bars and the unemployment rate keeps rising even though it is improving for other racesa dilemma not lost on an up-and-coming generation who are trying to tackle these problems at a grassroots level. Although the data and interviews want a stronger authorial voice linking them together, Coses treatment, which matches statistics to analysis, is a refreshing, readable, and comprehensive look at race in 21st-century America."  (Publishers Weekly)  Check Our Catalog

The Post-American World: Release 2.0 (Updated, Expanded)

By Fareed Zakaria
"Zakaria updates his best-selling earlier vision of world economics and politics, which foresaw the decline of American dominance but reassured us that with that decline came the rise of the rest of the world. Many of the earlier books predictions having been borne out sooner than expected, Zakaria examines new threats to Americas image and influence abroad that are posed by a global financial crisis that has hurt mostly the U.S. and Europe. He examines trends in politics, economics, and technology that have contributed to the rising of underdeveloped nations and continue to push their advancement as many move from anti-American to post-American views of the world and their places in it. Zakaria particularly attends to the promise of India and China, rising economies with huge populations and struggling cultural cocktails, which maintain some traditions while adapting to modernism. He contrasts government-ordered expansion in China with the messiness of Indian entrepreneurship. He parallels the current American moment and the history of Britains rise, world dominance, and decline while America ascended, despite which Britain has remained a major power because it chose to adapt to geopolitical change rather than fight it. Zakaria sees a similar future for the U.S. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Fareed Zakarias initial title about Americas shifting influence in world politics became a blockbusting international best-seller; here he revises and expands upon that work "  (Booklist)  Check Our Catalog