Book Talk

July 2007 Update

In New York City at the turn of the century a square mile of midtown Manhattan was known as Satan’s Circus. Murder was commonplace, so it was a surprise when someone was charged with ordering a killing, especially when that person was Charley Becker of the NYPD. Tammany boss Big Tim Sullivan, Theodore Roosevelt, and writer Stephen Crane all make appearances in Satan’s Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York’s Trial of the Century by Mike Dash.

The founding myth of the People’s Republic of China is the Long March. Two hundred thousand communists and soldiers were forced to flee to the north; only one in five survived. Those returned, under Mao, to create the China that flourishes today. Sun Shuyun interviewed surviving members of the march and visited obscure archives to write The Long March: the History of Communist China’s Founding Myth.

In 1943, Hitler sent German troops under SS General Karl Wolff into Italy on a special mission, to kidnap Pope Pius XII and assassinate the Curia. Sensing that Germany might be losing the war, and looking out for his own future, Wolff had other plans. Read A Special Mission: Hitler’s Secret Plot to Seize the Vatican and Kidnap Pope Pius XII by Dan Kurzman.

Downhill speed skier, CIA agent, father, entrepreneur and inventor, Mike May had been blind since the age of three. When an operation to restore his vision was developed, he didn’t hesitate even though the surgery was full of risks. All he knew was that it would change his life. Read Crashing Through: a True Story of Risk, Adventure, and the Man who Dared to See by Robert Kurson.

Tall people live longer than short, exercising when you have a cold has no effect, good or bad, sitting up straight is not good for your back and, sorry, bald men are not more virile. All those old wives tales are verified or exploded in Never Shower in a Thunderstorm: Surprising Facts and Misleading Myths about our Health by Anahad O’Connor.

Fiction

One evening in 1984 three children did not return home for dinner. The Dublin police found one child, clinging to a tree in terror and unable to recall a single detail of that afternoon. Twenty Years later, that boy, now a detective on the Dublin murder squad finds himself investigating an eerily similar case in In the Woods by Jana French.

Michael Ondaatje’s (The English Patient) newest is Divisadero.  In the 1970s a father and his teenage daughters make their home in Northern California. It is there that violence splits the family and changes their world.

A new entry in the Men at War series by W.E.B. Griffin is The Double Agents. The Office of Strategic Services has the daunting task of convincing Hitler and his Generals that the allied invasion will take place somewhere other than the beaches of Normandy

The Blood of Flowers, by Anita Amirrezvani is set in Persia during the seventeenth century. The act of designing carpets, men’s work, casts her into an unbearable situation: a marriage contract that is renewable monthly.

What is the allure of shoes? In Shoe Addicts Anonymous by Beth Harbison, four shoe addicts (size 71/2) meet weekly to trade shoes. In the process they exchange the stories of their lives and form friendships that help them through life’s rough spots

In These Boots Weren’t Made for Walking by Melody Carlson, Cassidy Cantrell has high expectations from her stylish new boots and her career. Unfortunately, her boots are not the best for pounding the pavement in search of a new job. 

High-powered news producer Jamie Whitfield hires a male nanny to provide a role model for her struggling son, a job neglected by her Master of the Universe husband. But manny Peter Bailey is so cool and competent Jamie is in danger of being swept off her feet. Holly Peterson introduces readers to the lives of the rich and glitzy in The Manny.

Virginia Cooper
Adult Services Librarian