Facebook  Twitter  Pinterest  Flickr  Google+  YouTube  Instagram

New Books- and New Libraries

Written on: December 14th, 2009 in Blog Posts

Great books in the Sunday reviews, and big news for the Delaware Library Catalog this week- first, the books:

An outstanding new biography of Abigail Adams by Woody Holton describes Adams as an early promoter of women’s rights- far beyond her well know admonition to her husband to “remember the ladies”. Adams denounced the subordinate status of women often, and vehemently, in her letters to John- all the while managing his American household and estates with intelligence and skill. Holton notes that her final act of liberation toward the end of her life was to write and file her will, with the full knowledge that as property of her husband, any of her documented wishes were futile and unenforceable as legal instruments. If you were wondering if the world needed another biography of a founding mother you may wish to rethink your position.

Richard Ellis documents the challenges faced by animals living in the arctic environment as climate change alters their habitat, in On Thin Ice. It’s a “timely, passionate and comprehensive survey of polar bear history, lore, biology and politics” which suggests that climate change may be the challenge that this animal will not survive.

In current crime fiction, Joseph Wambaugh’s new novel Hollywood Moon brings more of his anecdotal, old-school vignettes of cops on the beat- his stories are still fresh after an almost 40-year writing career. Stan Jones’ Village of the Ghost Bears is a “sturdy murder plot” set in the remote frontier wildernesses of Alaska. P.D. James most recent offering is a slim non-fiction work Talking About Detective Fiction, in which she discusses her high literary style, and praises current writers in the genre for their continuing efforts in “unpretentious celebrations of reason and order in our increasingly complex and disorderly world”.

(more…)