BOOK SPOTLIGHT: Science of the Magical

Science of the Magical: From the Holy Grail to Love Potions to Superpowers

by Matt Kaplan

From a noted science journalist, this engaging scientific inquiry provides a definitive look into the elements of mystical places and magical objects, from the philosopher's stone, to love potions, to the oracles, from ancient history, mythology, and contemporary culture. 

Can migrations of birds foretell our future? Do phases of the moon hold sway over our lives? Are there sacred springs that cure the ill? What is the best way to brew a love potion? How do we create mutant humans who regenerate like Wolverine? 

Matt Kaplan plumbs the rich, lively, and surprising history of the magical objects, places, and rituals that infuse ancient and contemporary myth. Ranging across cultures and time periods, Kaplan points out that there is often much more to these enduring magical narratives than mere fantasy.

Informative and entertaining, Science of the Magical explores our world through the compelling scope of natural and human history and cutting-edge science.

Tyson

BOOK SPOTLIGHT: The Secret of Our Success

The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

by Joseph Henrich 

Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. 

On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals?

 This book shows that the secret of our success lies not in our innate intelligence, but in our collective brains, on the ability of human groups to socially interconnect and learn from one another over generations. Drawing insights from lost European explorers, clever chimpanzees, mobile hunter-gatherers, neuro-scientific findings, ancient bones, and the human genome, Joseph Henrich demonstrates how our collective brains have propelled our species' genetic evolution and shaped our biology.

Henrich shows how our genetics and biology are inextricably interwoven with cultural evolution, and how culture-gene interactions launched our species on an extraordinary evolutionary trajectory. 

 

Tyson

BOOK SPOTLIGHT: The Witches: Salem 1692

The Witches: Salem 1692

by Stacy Schiff


The Pulitzer Prize winning author of Cleopatra, unpacks the mystery of the Salem Witch Trials. 

It began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister's daughter began to scream and convulse. It ended less than a year later, but not before 19 men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death. 

The panic spread quickly, involving the most educated men and prominent politicians in the colony. Neighbors accused neighbors, parents and children each other. Aside from suffrage, the Salem Witch Trials represent the only moment when women played the central role in American history. 

In curious ways, the trials would shape the future republic. As psychologically thrilling as it is historically seminal, The Witches is Stacy Schiff's account of this fantastical story. The first great American mystery unveiled fully for the first time by one of our most acclaimed historians. A fascinating narrative of one of the most infamous trials in American history.

Tyson

       Stacy Schiff Interview 

What's New in Mystery and Fiction for October

Wondering what's coming out in mystery and fiction for October?  Here are a few titles:

Woman Who Walked in Sunshine:  No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

All the Stars in the Heavens by Adriana Trigiani


City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg

BOOK SPOTLIGHT: HISTORY'S PEOPLE

History's People: Personalities and the Past
 
by Margaret MacMillan
In History's People internationally acclaimed historian Margaret MacMillan, author of Paris 1919, gives her own personal selection of figures of the past. 

She selects the women and men, some famous and some little-known, who stand out for her. Some have changed the course of history and even directed the currents of their times. Others are memorable for being risk-takers, adventurers, or observers. 

She looks at the concept of leadership through Bismarck and the unification of Germany; William Lyon MacKenzie King and the preservation of the Canadian Federation; Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the bringing of a unified United States into the Second World War. 

She also notes how leaders can make huge and often destructive mistakes, as in the cases of Hitler, Stalin, and Thatcher. Richard Nixon and Samuel de Champlain are examples of daring risk-takers who stubbornly went their own ways, often in defiance of their own societies. 

Then there are the dreamers, explorers, and adventurers, individuals like Fanny Parkes and Elizabeth Simcoe who manage to defy or ignore the constraints of their own societies. 

Finally, there are the observers, such as Babur, the first Mughal emperor of India, and Victor Klemperer, a Holocaust survivor, who kept the notes and diaries that bring the past to life.
 

Tyson

 

BOOK SPOTLIGHT: BLACK FLAGS

Black Flags: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Islamic State
 
by Joby Warrick


In a thrilling dramatic narrative, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Joby Warrick traces how the strain of militant Islam behind ISIS first arose in a remote Jordanian prison and spread with the unwitting aid of two American presidents.

When the government of Jordan granted amnesty to a group of political prisoners in 1999, it little realized that among them was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a terrorist mastermind and soon the architect of an Islamist movement bent on dominating the Middle East. Joby Warrick shows how the zeal of this one man and the strategic mistakes of Presidents Bush and Obama led to the banner of ISIS being raised over huge swaths of Syria and Iraq. 

Zarqawi began by directing terror attacks from a base in northern Iraq, but it was the American invasion in 2003 that catapulted him to the head of a vast insurgency. By falsely identifying him as the link between Saddam and bin Laden, U.S. officials inadvertently spurred like-minded radicals to rally to his cause. Their wave of brutal beheadings and suicide bombings persisted until American and Jordanian intelligence discovered clues that led to a lethal airstrike on Zarqawi's hideout in 2006. 

His movement, however, endured. First calling themselves al-Qaeda in Iraq, then Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, his followers sought refuge in unstable, ungoverned pockets on the Iraq-Syria border. When the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, and as the U.S. largely stood by, ISIS seized its chance to pursue Zarqawi's dream of an ultra-conservative Islamic caliphate. 

Drawing on unique high-level access to CIA and Jordanian sources, Warrick weaves gripping, moment-by-moment operational details with the perspectives of diplomats and spies, generals and heads of state, many of whom foresaw a menace worse than al Qaeda and tried desperately to stop it. Black Flags is a brilliant and definitive history that reveals the long arc of today's most dangerous extremist threat. 

Tyson

Joby Warrick on MSNBC

Book Spotlight: Operation Long Jump

 Operation Long Jump: Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Greatest Assassination Plot in History

by Bill Yenne

In the middle of World War II, Nazi military intelligence discovered a seemingly easy way to win the war for Adolf Hitler. The three heads of the Allied forces, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Josef Stalin, were planning to meet in Tehran in October, 1943. 

Under Hitler's personal direction, the Nazis launched "Operation Long Jump," an intricate plan to track the Allied leaders in Tehran and assassinate all three men at the same time. "I suppose it would make a pretty good haul if they could get all three of us," Roosevelt later said. 

Historian Bill Yenne retells the incredible, globe-spanning story of the most ambitious assassination plot ever thwarted in Operation Long Jump.

Tyson

 

 

BOOK SPOTLIGHT: GENGHIS KHAN

Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy

by Frank McLynn 
 
Mongol leader Genghis Khan was by far the greatest conqueror the world has ever known. His empire stretched from the Pacific Ocean to central Europe, including all of China, the Middle East, and Russia.

So how did an illiterate nomad rise to such colossal power and subdue most of the known world, eclipsing Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon? Credited by some with paving the way for the Renaissance, condemned by others for being the most heinous murderer in history, who was Genghis Khan? 

His actual name was Temujin, and the story of his success is that of the Mongol people: a loose collection of fractious tribes who tended livestock, considered bathing taboo, and possessed an unparalleled genius for horseback warfare. United under Genghis, a strategist of astonishing cunning and versatility, they could dominate any sedentary society they chose. 

Combining fast-paced accounts of battles with rich cultural background and the latest scholarship, Frank McLynn brings vividly to life the strange world of the Mongols. The most accurate and absorbing account yet of one of the most powerful men ever to have lived.

Frank McLynn has written an informative general account of Genghis Khan and his times.  An ambitious task given the lack of reliable sources however, McLynn pulls it of with an intriguing look into Mongol society.

Tyson

 

MOVIE SPOTLIGHT - Love Is Strange

When George (Alfred Molina) loses his job teaching music at a Roman Catholic school because of his sexuality, his husband Ben (John Lithgow) and he can no longer afford their mortgage, must sell their co-op, and move in with family.  Director Ira Sachs' unsentimental and graceful portrayal of family dynamics, well meaning but somewhat clueless relatives and George and Ben, the "old married couple", is one of intimacy, tragedy and resilience.

Come to the Wellesley Friday Morning Book/Movie Group this Friday, September 18 at 10AM to join in our discussion of the movie. Copies of the movie are available at the Reference Desk on the 2nd floor.

BOOK SPOTLIGHT: FALL OF THE OTTOMANS

The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

by Eugene Rogan

In 1914 the Ottoman Empire was depleted of men and resources after years of war against Balkan nationalist and Italian forces. But in the aftermath of the assassination in Sarajevo, the powers of Europe were sliding inexorably toward war, and not even the Middle East could escape the vast and enduring consequences of one of the most destructive conflicts in human history. 

The Great War spelled the end of the Ottomans, unleashing powerful forces that

would forever change the face of the Middle East. In The Fall of the Ottomans , award-winning historian Eugene Rogan brings the First World War and its immediate aftermath in the Middle East to vivid life, uncovering the often ignored story of the region's crucial role in the conflict.

Bolstered by German money, arms, and military advisers, the Ottomans took on the Russian, British, and French forces, and tried to provoke Jihad against the Allies in their Muslim colonies. Unlike the static killing fields of the Western Front, the war in the Middle East was fast-moving and unpredictable, with the Turks inflicting decisive defeats on the Entente in Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and Gaza before the tide of battle turned in the Allies' favor. The great cities of Baghdad, Jerusalem, and, finally, Damascus fell to invading armies before the Ottomans agreed to an armistice in 1918. 

The postwar settlement led to the partition of Ottoman lands between the victorious powers, and laid the groundwork for the ongoing conflicts that continue to plague the modern Arab world. A sweeping narrative of battles and political intrigue from Gallipoli to Arabia, The Fall of the Ottomans is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the Great War and the making of the modern Middle East.

Tyson

BOOK SPOTLIGHT: DRAGON HEART

Dragon Heart

by Cecelia Holland
 
   Where the Cape of the Winds juts into the endless sea, there is Castle Ocean, and therein dwells the royal family that has ruled it from time immemorial. But there is an Empire growing in the east, and its forces have reached the castle. 

King Reymarro is dead in battle, and by the new treaty, Queen Marioza must marry one of the Emperor's brothers. She loathes the idea, and has already killed the first brother, but a second arrives, escorted by more soldiers. While Marioza delays, her youngest son, Jeon, goes on a journey in search of his mute twin, Tirza, who needs to be present for the wedding. 

As Jeon and Tirza return by sea, their ship is attacked by a shocking and powerful dragon, red as blood and big as the ship. Thrown into the water, Tirza clings to the dragon, and after an underwater journey, finds herself alone with the creature in an inland sea pool. Surprisingly, she is able to talk to the beast, and understand it.

Cecelia Holland is a distinguished writer of historical fiction. Many of her books take place during the middle ages, including her first book, the Firedrake about William the conqueror. Holland incorporates her knowledge of medieval times and uses it in her world building. Her abbots, princesses, and  knights act as their medieval counterparts might have.

Dragon Heart is full of political plotting, violence, destruction, and death, by a seasoned author known for her character building and attention to historical detail.

Tyson

epic violence, intense battle, deep love

BOOK SPOTLIGHT: ZERO NIGHT

Zero Night: The Untold Story of World War Two's Greatest Escape
 
by Mark Felton 

On August 30, 1942 - 'Zero Night' - 40 Allied officers staged the most audacious mass escape of World War II. Months of meticulous planning and secret training hung in the balance during three minutes of mayhem as the officers boldly stormed the huge double fences at Oflag Prison. 

Employing wooden ladders and bridges previously disguised as bookshelves, the highly coordinated effort succeeded and set 36 men free into the German countryside. Later known as the 'Warburg Wire Job', fellow prisoner and fighter ace Douglas Bader once described the attempt as 'the most brilliant escape conception of this war'. 

The first author to tackle this remarkable story in detail, historian Mark Felton brilliantly evokes the suspense of the escape and the adventures of those escapees who managed to elude the Germans, as well as the courage of the civilians who risked their lives to help them in enemy territory. Told with a novelist's eye for drama and detail, this rip-roaring adventure is all the more thrilling because it really happened. 

Tyson

What's New in Fiction and Mystery for September?

Wondering what's coming out in fiction and mystery for September?  Here are a few titles:

The Last Midwife by Sandra Dallas
It's 1880 and Gracy Brookens is the only midwife in a small mining town in Colorado.

Come Rain or Come Shine by Jan Karon
Dooley Kavanagh, Father Tim's adopted son, has graduated from veterinary school and is planning his wedding.

After You by JoJo Moyes
The sequel to the best-seller Me Before You.

The Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny
The latest book in the Chief Inspector Gamache series.

maf

BOOK SPOTLIGHT: TERMS OF ENLISTMENT

Terms of Enlistment
 
by Marko Kloos
The year is 2108, and the North American Commonwealth has a population problum. For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements, where you're restricted to 2,000 calories of badly flavored soy every day. 

You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world, or you can join the service. With the colony lottery a pipe dream, Andrew chooses to enlist in the armed forces for a shot at real food, a retirement bonus, and maybe a ticket off Earth.

But as he starts a career of supposed privilege, he soon learns that the good food and decent health care come at a steep price...and that the settled galaxy holds far greater dangers than military bureaucrats or the gangs that rule the slums. 

The debut novel from Marko Kloos, Terms of Enlistment is an entertaining  military SF in the tradition of Robert Heinlein, Joe Haldeman, and John Scalzi. 

Tyson

BOOK SPOTLIGHT: HUMANKIND

Humankind: How Biology and Geography Shape Human Diversity

by Alexander Harcourt
Where did the human species originate? why are tropical peoples much more diverse than those at polar latitudes, and why can only Japanese peoples digest seaweed? In Humankind, U. C. Davis professor Alexander Harcourt answers these questions and more, as he explains how the expansion of the human species around the globe and our interaction with our environment explains much about why humans differ from one region of the world to another, not only biologically, but culturally.

What effects have other species had on the distribution of humans around the world, and we, in turn, on their distribution? And how have human populations affected each other's geography, even existence? For the first time in a single book, Alexander Harcourt brings these topics together to help us understand why we are, what we are, where we are. 

It turns out that when one looks at humanity's expansion around the world, and in the biological explanations for our geographic diversity, we humans are often just another primate, just another species. Humanity's distribution around the world and the type of organism we are today has been shaped by the same biogeographical forces that shape other species.

The story behind the nature and distribution of humans around the world.

Tyson

 

Spotlight on award winning foreign films

Come browse our large collection of award winning new and classic foreign films in the Media Room on the first floor of the main library.  Films circulate for three weeks and may be reserved at the Reference Desk on the second floor.

BOOK SPOTLIGHT: AURORA

Aurora
by Kim Stanley Robinson 

 A major new novel from one of science fiction's masters the multiple award winner (Mars trilogy and 2312) Kim Stanley Robinson.


AURORA tells the incredible story of our first voyage beyond the solar system. A multigenerational starship left Earth generations ago. Now as it begins to decelerate toward its destination an engineer begins to suspect potentially disastrous changes to the ship and its population.

Brilliantly imagined and beautifully told, it is the work of a writer at the height of his powers. This story features science and technology along with big ideas and a sophisticated society. We call the genre Hard SF, not because its hard to read but, because it uses science and technology in realistic ways to move the plot.

Will the ship make it to their new home? Will the people on the starship bare any resemblance to the earthlings who launched the ship?

Tyson

BOOK SPOTLIGHT: Time Salvager

Time Salvager
by Wesley Chu

Time Salvager is a fast paced time travel adventure from Wesley Chu, the award-winning author of
The Lives of Tao. 

In a future when Earth is a toxic, abandoned world and humanity has spread into the outer solar system to survive, the tightly controlled use of time travel holds the key maintaining a fragile existence among the other planets and their moons.

 James Griffin-Mars is a chronman, a convicted criminal recruited for his unique psychological makeup to undertake the most dangerous job there is: missions into Earth's past to recover resources and treasure without altering the timeline. 

Most chronmennever reach old age, and James is reaching his breaking point. On a final mission that is to secure his retirement, James meets an intriguing woman from a previous century, scientist Elise Kim, who is fated to die during the destruction of an oceanic rig. Against his training and his common sense, James brings her back to the future with him, saving her life, but turning them both into fugitives. Remaining free means losing themselves in the wild and poisonous wastes of Earth, and discovering what hope may yet remain for humanity's home world.

Lots of action, the book focus is more on the manhunt thriller than time travel, a good beach read.

Tyson

 

 

 

Wellesley Friday Morning Book/Movie Group

Friday, July 17th

Arnold Room (second floor)

10 AM to 11 AM

All are welcome to come and join in the discussion!   In July, we will discuss Jeanette Walls' The Glass Castle, a memoir which won numerous awards and remained on the NY Times bestseller list for more than six years. At times astonishing and sad, Walls' story is one of resilience and triumph over impossible odds.

Jeanette Walls graduated form Barnard College and was a journalist in New York. She is the author of The Silver Star and Half Broke Horses, named one of the ten best books of 2009 by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. Walls lives in rural Virginia with her husband, the writer, John Taylor. 

If Kennedy Lived...Book Discussion July 23

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy campaigning in Dallas, was shot by an assassin while riding in his presidential motorcade. His car—a Lincoln Continental—was equipped with a plexiglass bubble top in case of rain. But what had started off as a rainy day, had cleared up by the time the motorcade was ready to go. Lee Harvey Oswald had an unobstructed view of the president as he peered through the scope of his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. But what if the rain hadn’t stopped…?

What if Pres. Kennedy survived the assassination attempt and went on to win a second term as president? What would have US involvement in Vietnam have looked like? How would the Civil Rights Movement have fared? Would the Cold War have progressed any differently? Would the sixties have been the sixties?

In Jeff If Kennedy Lived, Jeff Greenfield imagines this alternate scenario. His decades as journalist and political analyst gives him an insider’s view of Washington politics—the inspired programs and the seedy deal-making. He makes much use of imagined (but plausible) dialog mixed with actual quotations (many times repositioned in time) to write a very readable “history” of JFK’s second term.

If you stay alert, you’ll be rewarded with some fun cameo appearances bearing historical twists and wits. An easy one to spot is the young Hillary Clinton, at a Goldwater rally, marveling at the candidate’s speech and wondering if she will ever get the chance to give a speech. Maybe a little harder is Yippies co-founder Jerry Rubin ruminating about the “under-30s.” 

On July 23^rd  at 10am, the Non-Fiction Book Discussion Group will talk about If Kennedy Lived. Come and share your thoughts about Greenfield’s take on Kennedy’s potential. (And, as you read the book, make note of the author’s historical in-jokes and we’ll share them at the discussion.)

If Kennedy Lived is available at the Reference Desk.