National Book Award Winners for 2014

On November 19th, the National Book Foundation presented the winners of the National Book Award for 2014.  Ursula Le Guin received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters for her impact on American literature. Check out her remarks regarding book publishing in America which everyone is talking about!

Other winners that you may request from the library include:

Fiction

Redeployment by Phil Klay





Nonfiction

Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos





Poetry

Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Gluck




 Start the New Year off with the winners and finalists of the National Book Award on your reading list!   SH

Amazon's Best Books of 2014

This week, Amazon.com released its list of the best 100 books of the year.  You can view the winners in a number of different categories, including Audiobooks, Cookbooks & Food Writing, and Gift Picks.

The list also features the best children's book by age, holiday books by theme, and a few celebrity favorites.

The number one pick of the year was Everything I Never Told You, a novel by Celeste Ng.

Everything I Never Told You
By Celeste Ng

Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart.

Other books on Amazon's list include:

The Innovators By Walter Isaacson

The Slanted Door: Modern Vietnamese Food By Charles Phan

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace By Jeff Hobbs

All the Light We Cannot SeeBy Anthony Doerr

Great news for those starting small businesses, looking for jobs, and investors--RefUSA!

We love it when an online resource meets many needs and RefUSA is one of them!

ReferenceUSA is the perfect resource for anyone doing research on:

• starting a small business
• looking for a job
• investing.

With its ability to make lists of companies from a 24 million business database or find information on a particular company—including sales volume, demographics, employee numbers, competitors’ reports, company tree—you are ahead of the crowd and on the road to success in pursuing answers.

You get the picture! So take a tour of what ReferenceUSA has to offer you with your library card or sign up for a class in Jackie’s Room on Tuesday, November 18th from 2-3 pm!

SH

Popular Military History

Popular Selections from the Robert J. Hinchliffe Military History Collection.

The following list is based on recent library circulations.


1.The Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter


At the same time Adolf Hitler was attempting to take over the western world, his armies were methodically seeking and hoarding the finest art treasures in Europe. The Fuehrer had begun cataloguing the art he planned to collect as well as the art he would destroy: "degenerate" works he despised. In a race against time, behind enemy lines, the Momuments Men, risked their lives scouring Europe to prevent the destruction of thousands of years of culture.



2. Nazi Science by Mark Walker
 
In this book, Mark Walker examines the impact of Hitler's regime on science and, ultimately, on the pursuit of the German atomic bomb. Why did German nuclear physicists like Heisenberg and Weizsacker collaborate with the Nazis?  How close were the Nazis to getting their own atomic bomb? What does this say about the role of science in the modern world?

3. Elephant Company by Vicki Croke

The remarkable story of James Howard "Billy" Williams, whose uncanny rapport with the world's largest land animals transformed him from a carefree young man into the charismatic war hero known as Elephant Bill. Elephant Bill's exploits would earn him top military honors and the praise of famed Field Marshal Sir William Slim. Part biography, part war epic, and part wildlife adventure, Elephant Company is an inspirational narrative that illuminates a little-known chapter in the annals of wartime heroism.

 

4. The Price of Glory by Alistair Horne
 
 The battle of Verdun lasted ten months. It was a battle in which at least 700,000 men fell, along a front of fifteen miles. Its aim was less to defeat the enemy than bleed him to death and a battleground whose once fertile terrain is even now a haunted wilderness. Alistair Horne's classic work, shows that Verdun is a key to understanding the First World War to the minds of those who waged it, the traditions that bound them and the world that gave them the opportunity.

5. A World Undone by G. J. Meyer

 The First World War is one of history's greatest tragedies. In this remarkable and intimate account, author G. J. Meyer draws on exhaustive research to bring to life the story of how the Great War reduced Europe's mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of the world we live in today. The First World War is one of history's greatest tragedies. Meyer brings to life the story of how the Great War reduced Europe's mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of the world we live in today.
 

 
6. A Great and Glorious Adventure by Gordon Corrigan
 
In this captivating new history of a conflict that raged for over a century, Gordon Corrigan reveals the horrors of battle and the machinations of power that have shaped a millennium of Anglo-French relations.The Hundred Years War was fought between 1337 and 1453 over English claims to both the throne of France by right of inheritance and large parts of the country that had been at one time Norman or, later, English. Corrigan writes a gripping narrative of the great battles and personalities of the period - Edward III, The Black Prince, Henry V, and Joan of Arc among them.

Tyson