Nonfiction

A number of new political biographies and memoirs have been released this spring and we have them ready for you to check out and enjoy. Learn about such diverse and famous figures as Hugo Chavez, Mary Robinson (the former President of Ireland,) Hillary Clinton, and Winston Churchill.

Comandante: Hugo Chavez’s Venezuala by Rory Carroll

Everybody Matters: My Life Giving Voice by Mary Robinson

The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power by Kim Ghattas

Are you a gamer?  Whether you enjoy old school classics videogames or more modern fare, we’ve got a selection of documentaries that will interest you!

Do you feel you have something to say and just need to get it out? Why not start a blog? The Nonfiction Department has books that can help get you started.

Have you ever wondered what the authors that you like are reading? Which books do they treasure and which ones helped to shape them into the authors they are now? In The Book That Changed My Life edited by Diane Osen, you can read about different award-winning authors and the books that shaped them. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and two-time National Book Award winner David McCullough talks about two books that changed his life as a boy and a young man. Alice McDermott, another National Book Award winner, discusses the impact that reading Wuthering Heights had on her, and how it inspired her interest in both the storyteller and storytelling. James Carroll tells us about some of the books that had life-changing potential.

Spring is in the air and it is a great time to clean up, clean out and get organized. Some people are naturals at this, but if you’re like me you may need a little help to get started. The Nonfiction Department has a lot of books on this subject. If you want to browse the shelves you can find organizing and de-cluttering books in the 640.43, 648.8 and Home Decorating 648.8 number.

Here are some of the books that have helped me conquer my clutter enemy.

• The Organized Home from the editors of Real Simple
• Unclutter Your Life in One Week by Erin Rooney Doland
• The Clutter Clinic by Romaine Lowery
• The Life Laundry by Dawna Walter
• Restoring Order to Your Home by Vicki Norris

While perusing the shelves in the Sciences today I came across Parallax: The Race to Measure the Cosmos by Alan Hirschfield, and I am adding it to my reading list pronto. The story traces the path to solving astronomy’s greatest challenge: measuring the distance to a star. The quest begins with the ancient Greeks , and the story promises excitement and intrigue with kidnappings, dramatic rescue, swordplay, madness and even some old-fashioned bitter rivalry. It looks irresistible! Come check it out, and for other scientific capers like this one, peruse the shelves around 523.8 in the Nonfiction Department and you won’t be disappointed.

Oliver Sacks’ newest book, Hallucinations, examines the historical and cultural role of the hallucination in a very approachable, yet thoroughly scientific manner. Instead of hallucinations belonging only in the sphere of the insane, Dr. Sacks examines how many people experience visual hallucinations, auditory hallucinations and even hallucinatory smells in their daily life and often fear the stigma associated with such behavior.

Did you know the Circus is coming to town in January? Read Ringlingville USA: The Stupendous Story of Seven Siblings and Their Stunning Circus Success, an engaging chronicle woven together from newspaper accounts, oral histories, and never before published records of the Ringling family. Find out how the seven brothers Ringling journeyed from immigrant poverty to become kings of the circus world, one fifty-cent ticket at a time.

The Nonfiction Department has recently added some great new books on Chinese history. Check out these titles on China’s long history:

• Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War by Stephen R. Platt
• The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in Chinaby David J. Sibley
• China’s Wings: War, Intrigue, Romance, and Adventure in the Middle Kingdom During the Golden Age of Flight by Gregory Crouch
• Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China by Ezra F. Vogel
• Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750 by Odd Arne Westad

A new acquisition to our adult nonfiction collection, Still Life: Inside the Antarctic Huts of Scott and Shackleton with photography by Jane Ussher and essays by Nigel Watson of the Antarctic Heritage Trust, is a beautiful and haunting memorial to those first doomed explorers of the South Pole. Bound in rough canvas with coloring reminiscent of the century old material still slowly decaying in situ in Antarctica from the original expeditions, the detailed photographs within are intimate investigations of what life was like for these adventurous, and often heroic, men. The climate and isolation of these modest huts in Antarctica has left intact and untouched many artifacts of this time period. Jars and tins of food stores sit unopened. Hams still hang in muslin bags.

To understand Stieg's work, I said, one had to know who he really was.--pg. 185

I picked up this book yearning to learn more about the author who died before his novel legacy was even published. That fact in itself intrigued me; I just really wanted to learn more about Stieg Larsson's life from an unbiased source. With this relatively short biography, you get the straight facts--no beating around the bush, just the candid and honest facts--from the one constant presence in his life: Eva Gabrielsson.

Please join us this Tuesday, Sept 20th at 7 pm, on the Plaza at the Hoover Public Library for an evening with River Jordan.

Her latest work is a nonfiction book titled, Praying for Strangers: An Adventure of the Human Spirit.

The stories behind this work are the culmination of a New Year’s resolution during a dark time. As 2008 wound to a close, Jordan learned that her two sons were to be deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq after the New Year. As she worked to manage her own emotions and plan the “perfect” family holiday, she felt called to pray for a stranger every single day.

Join us to hear the stories of strangers and the powerful impact this one resolution had on the author's life.

Sales and signings to follow.

A Singular Woman, the biography of President Obama's mother reads like a travel book. This book takes the reader from Ann Dunham's early childhood in Kansas, teen years on Mercer Island in Washington state, college at the University of Hawaii and anthropological field work in Indonesia. This is a fascinating look at the woman who President Obama says "was the single constant in my life."