MARCH/APRIL 2012 RECENT ACQUISITIONS LIST
D – History.General and Old World
Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs
For over a quarter century, Iran has been one of America's chief nemeses. Ever since Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah in 1979, the relationship between the two nations has been antagonistic: revolutionary guards chanting against the Great Satan, Bush fulminating against the Axis of Evil, Iranian support for Hezbollah, and President Ahmadinejad blaming the U.S. for the world's ills.
The unending war of words suggests an intractable divide between Iran and the West, one that may very well lead to a shooting war in the near future. But as Ray Takeyh shows in this accessible and authoritative history of Iran's relations with the world since the revolution, behind the famous personalities and extremist slogans is a nation that is far more pragmatic--and complex--than many in the West have been led to believe. Takeyh explodes many of our simplistic myths of Iran as an intransigently Islamist foe of the West.
Takeyh shows that Iran's often paradoxical policies are in reality a series of compromises between the hardliners and the moderates, often with wild oscillations between pragmatism and ideological dogmatism. The U.S.'s task, Takeyh argues, is to find strategies that address Iran's objectionable behavior without demonizing this key player in an increasingly vital and volatile region.
DS 318.83 .T36 2011
A Critical Introduction to Mao edited by Timothy Cheek
Mao Zedong's political career spanned more than half a century. The ideas he championed transformed one of the largest nations on earth and inspired revolutionary movements across the world. Even today Mao lives on in China, where he is regarded by many as a near-mythical figure, and in the West, where a burgeoning literature continues to debate his memory.
In this book, leading scholars from different generations and around the world offer a critical evaluation of the life and legacy of China's most famous--some would say infamous--son.
The book brings the scholarship on Mao up to date, and its alternative perspectives equip readers to assess for themselves the nature of this mercurial figure and his significance in modern Chinese history.
DS 778 .M3 C74 2010
H – Social Sciences
Lost Boy by Brent W. Jeffs with Maria Szalavitz
In the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), girls can become valuable property as plural wives, but boys are expendable, even a liability. In this powerful and heartbreaking account, former FLDS member Brent Jeffs reveals both the terror and the love he experienced growing up on his prophet’s compound—and the harsh exile existence that so many boys face once they have been expelled by the sect.
Brent Jeffs is the nephew of Warren Jeffs, the imprisoned leader of the FLDS. The son of a prominent family in the church, Brent could have grown up to have multiple wives of his own and significant power in the 10,000-strong community. But he knew that behind the group’s pious public image—women in chaste dresses carrying babies on their hips—lay a much darker reality. So he walked away, and was the first to file a sexual-abuse lawsuit against his uncle. Now Brent shares his story and that of many other young men who have become “lost boys” when they leave the FLDS, either by choice or by expulsion.
Brent experienced firsthand the absolute power that church leaders wield—the kind of power that corrupts and perverts those who will do anything to maintain it. Once young men no longer belong to the church, they are cast out into a world for which they are utterly unprepared. More often than not, they succumb to the temptations of alcohol and other drugs.
Tragically, Brent lost two of his brothers in this struggle, one to suicide, the other to overdose. In this book he shows that lost boys can triumph and that abuse and trauma can be overcome, and he hopes that readers will be inspired to help former FLDS members find their way in the world.
HQ 994 .J44 2009
J – Political Science
Inside WikiLeaks by Daniel Domscheit-Berg
In an eye-opening account, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, the former spokesman of WikiLeaks, reveals never-disclosed details about the inner workings of the increasingly controversial organization that has struck fear into governments and business organizations worldwide and prompted the Pentagon to convene a 120-man task force.
Under the pseudonym Daniel Schmitt, Domscheit-Berg was the effective No. 2 at WikiLeaks and the organization’s most public face, after Julian Assange. In this book, he reveals the evolution, finances, and inner tensions of the whistleblower organization, beginning with his first meeting with Assange in December 2007. He also describes what led to his September 2010 withdrawal from WikiLeaks, including his disenchantment with the organization’s lack of transparency, its abandonment of political neutrality, and Assange’s increasing concentration of power. What has been made public so far about WikiLeaks is only a small fraction of the truth.
With Domscheit-Berg’s insider knowledge, he is uniquely able to tell the full story. A computer scientist who worked in IT security prior to devoting himself full-time to WikiLeaks, he remains committed to freedom of information on the Internet. Along with other former WikiLeaks peoples, he helped develop a more transparent secret-sharing website called OpenLeaks.
JF 1525 .W45 D66 2011
K – Law
Bad Medicine by John Reilly
Early in his career, Judge John Reilly did everything by the book. His jurisdiction included a First Nations community plagued by suicide, addiction, poverty, violence and corruption. He steadily handed out prison sentences with little regard for long-term consequences and even less knowledge as to why crime was so rampant on the reserve in the first place.
In an unprecedented move that pitted him against his superiors, the legal system he was part of, and one of Canada s best-known Indian chiefs, the Reverend Dr. Chief John Snow, Judge Reilly ordered an investigation into the tragic and corrupt conditions on the reserve. A flurry of media attention ensued. Some labelled him a racist; others thought he should be removed from his post, claiming he had lost his objectivity. But many on the Stoney Reserve hailed him a hero as he attempted to uncover the dark challenges and difficult history many First Nations communities face.
Judge Reilly shows us why harsher punishments for offenders don t necessarily make our societies safer, why the white justice system is failing First Nations communities, why jail time is not the cure-all answer some think it to be, and how corruption continues to plague tribal leadership.
KE 416 .R45 A3 2010
M – Music and Books on Music
Thriller: the Musical Life of Michael Jackson by Nelson George
From legendary hip-hop and R&B journalist Nelson George, Thriller is the definitive chronicle of the bestselling album of all time. George explores how the album changed the world in 1982, when Michael Jackson was king of the charts, breaking down the color barrier on MTV and heralding in the age of video.
This incisive and revealing examination of the making and meaning of Thriller not only illuminates the brilliant creative process and work ethic of Jackson and producer Quincy Jones, but also explores the larger context of the music, life, and seismic impact the King of Pop has had for more than three generations
ML 420 J175 G42 2010
N – Fine Arts
Real Presence: In Search of the Earliest Icons by Sister Wendy Beckett
In Encounters with God Sister Wendy Beckett, a contemplative nun and beloved art commentator, traveled to remote churches and monasteries to view the earliest icons of Mary.
In Real Presence she resumes this journey to see additional early icons of Jesus and the saints, icons that are among the few to survive the wholesale destruction of icons in the early eighth century. In contrast with the familiar and magnificent icons of later history, these early icons have a haunting simplicity and unfamiliar spiritual power. They come to us from a time closer to that of Christ, when faith was still alive with wonder and possibilities, and these images, a vehicle for prayer, can truly convey his real presence.
N8189 .B9 B43 2010
P – Language and Literature
Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson
Christine wakes up every morning in an unfamiliar bed with an unfamiliar man.
She looks in the mirror and sees an unfamiliar, middle-aged face. And every morning, the man she has woken up with must explain that he is Ben, he is her husband, she is forty-seven years old, and a terrible accident two decades earlier decimated her ability to form new memories.
But it’s the phone call from a Dr. Nash, a neurologist who claims to be working with Christine without her husband’s knowledge, which directs her to her journal, hidden in the back of her closet. For the past few weeks, Christine has been recording her daily activities -- tearful mornings with Ben, sessions with Dr. Nash, flashes of scenes from her former life -- and rereading past entries, relearning the facts of her life as retold by the husband she is completely dependent upon. As the entries build up, Christine asks many questions. What was life like before the accident? Why did she and Ben never have a child? What has happened to Christine’s best friend? And what exactly was the horrific accident that caused such a profound loss of memory?
Every day, Christine must begin again the reconstruction of her past. And the closer she gets to the truth, the more unbelievable it seems.
PR 6123 A884 B44 2011
PS 8000 – Canadian Literature
Into the Heart of the Country by Pauline Holdstock
Set in eighteenth-century Churchill, this compelling new novel takes the reader deep into unexplored territory. Appearing only fleetingly in the historical record of the Hudson’ s Bay Company are the Native women who lived at the company’ s Prince of Wales Fort and served as “ country wives” to the European traders -- and whose survival was bound, for better or worse, to the fortunes of those men.
Across more than two centuries, the mixed-blood woman Mary Norton, daughter of Governor Moses and personal favourite of the explorer Samuel Hearne, speaks to us from her dreams. As the story of her liaison with Hearne unfolds, we move toward its tragic consequences. When their small society is torn apart by a French attack on the fort, Mary and the other women find themselves and their children abandoned by their British masters. Now -- in one of history’s cruel ironies -- they must fend for themselves in the harsh country from which their own ancestors sprang.
Unflinching, powerful and rich in moral ambiguity, this haunting novel explores a tragic meeting of cultures that still reverberates in the present day.
PS 8565 O622 I58 2011
Q – Science
Steve Jobs
by Walter Isaacson
Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.
Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.
QA 76.2 J63 I83 2011
R – Medicine
Health Care in Saskatchewan: An Analytical Profile
In Health Care in Saskatchewan, the authors explain how health services are organized, financed and delivered in the province. Throughout, Saskatchewan is systematically compared to other provinces in terms of services, spending and outcomes.
Marchildon and O'Fee carefully analyze the provincial health system so that health professionals, policy-makers, managers and students get an integrated view of health care in Saskatchewan.
RA 395 .C3 M367 2007
S – Agriculture
Managed Annihilation: An Unnatural History of the Newfoundland Cod Collapse
The commercial cod fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador was once the most successful in the world. When it collapsed in 1992–causing the largest single-day layoff in Canadian history and irrevocable ecological damage--fishermen, scholars, and scientists pointed to failures in management such as uncontrolled harvesting and not taking fishermen's concerns into account as likely culprits.
Examining the history of commercial cod fisheries in Newfoundland and Labrador from the mid-nineteenth century to the aftermath of the cod moratorium, Managed Annihilation makes the case that the idea of natural resource management was itself the problem. The collapse occurred when the fisheries were ostensibly managed by the state, and the fishery has still not recovered nearly twenty years later.
Although the collapse of northern cod raised doubts among policy-makers about their ability to understand, predict, and control nature, their ultimate goal of control through management has not wavered--it has simply been transferred from wild fish to fishermen and domesticated cod.
SH 224 .N7 B38 2010
T – Technology
Burning Down the House: Fighting Fires and Losing Myself
Thousands of boys dream of becoming firefighters. Some get the chance, and for some of those, the dream becomes a nightmare.
Burning Down the House is the story of Wangersky’s eight-year career as a volunteer firefighter, an experience that wound up reaching into every facet of his life and changed the way he saw the world forever. Written in vibrant, luminous prose, the book traces his years from rookie to veteran firefighter and the toll it took on his personal life. Offering a rare glimpse into physical dangers and psychological costs of trying to save strangers’ lives, Wangersky paints a harrowing and sometimes heartbreakingly vivid portrait of the fires, medical calls, and automobile accidents that are the standard fare of the profession.
Burning Down the House is an insightful insider’s account of the perilous world of firefighting and an unforgettable memoir of how, in finding his passion, Wangersky lost himself.
TH 9118 .W35 A3 2008
