new nonfiction, 5.9.08

City of Widows, Haifa Zangana
Zangana, a former political prisoner of the Ba'ath regime, presents the first comprehensive history of women in modern Iraq through the U.S. occupation. She contradicts the passive role shown by Western media and presents a forceful critique of attempts to hijack the initiatives of Iraqi women.

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One Helluva Ride: how NASCAR swept the nation, Liz Clarke
From its raw beginnings on Southern dirt tracks, NASCAR smacked of a slightly depraved spectacle, as if nothing but trouble could come from the unbridled locomotion of a V8 engine. By the time NASCAR roared into the twenty-first century, it had grown into a billion-dollar sports and marketing colossus, its races attended by hundreds of thousands of fans on any given weekend from mid-February through mid-November, watched on television by the second-largest viewing audience in sports, and bankrolled by the marketing largesse of the Fortune 500’s elite.


Fight Global Warming Now, Bill McKibben
Hurricane Katrina. A rapidly disappearing Arctic. The warmest winter on the East Coast in recorded history. The leading scientist at NASA warns that we have only ten years to reverse climate change; the British government’s report on global warming estimates that the financial impact will be greater than the Great Depression and both world wars—combined. Bill McKibben, the author of the first major book on global warming, The End of Nature, warns that it’s no longer time to debate global warming, it’s time to fight it.



The House that Love Built, Bettie Youngs
After pursuing their lifelong belief that every person deserves a "simple, decent place to live," Linda and Millard Fuller found themselves locked out of the Habitat for Humanity organization that they founded. Pending legal action forced them to remain silent. Now in The House That Love Built, the true story is told of how a dedicated, charismatic leader, who attracted people like President Jimmy Carter to his cause and raised millions of dollars, was wrongly accused of sexual misconduct and pushed aside by a Board with a new agenda for Habitat. Millard and Linda Fuller's story inspires entrepreneurial spirit, starting a business from a simple idea, and Christian spirit-sacrificing material success for making the world a better place. America's largest non-profit foundation Habitat for Humanity includes 1700 affiliates and two million people: during 30 years, hundreds of thousands of volunteers, donors and activists together built 200,000 homes.

American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China, Matthew Polly
Growing up a ninety-pound weakling tormented by bullies in the schoolyards of Kansas, young Matthew Polly dreamed of one day journeying to the Shaolin Temple in China to become the toughest fighter in the world, like Caine in his favorite 1970s TV series, Kung Fu, While in college, Matthew decided the time had come to pursue this quixotic dream before it was too late. Much to the dismay of his parents, he dropped out of Princeton to spend two years training with the legendary sect of monks who invented kung fu and Zen Buddhism. Expecting to find an isolated citadel populated by supernatural ascetics that he'd seen in countless badly dubbed chop-socky flicks, Matthew instead discovered a tacky tourist trap run by Communist party hacks. But the dedicated monks still trained in the rigorous age-old fighting forms-some even practicing the iron kung fu discipline, in which intensive training can make various body parts virtually indestructible. As Matthew grew in his knowledge of China and kung fu skill, he would come to represent the Temple in challenge matches and international competitions, and ultimately the monks would accept their new American initiate as close to one of their own as any Westerner had ever become.


College financing information for teens : tips for a successful financial life including facts about planning, saving, and paying for post-secondary education, with information about college savings plans, scholarships, grants, loans, military service, and more




Windows Vista Plain & Simple, Jerry Joyce
This no-nonsense guide helps you learn the easy way to navigate this new operating system with numbered steps and concise, straightforward language that show the most expedient ways to learn a new skill or solve a problem. You'll discover how to perform everyday tasks and answer your own questions quickly--learning the essentials for customizing your desktop, setting up a home network, managing digital media, publishing files to the Web, and more.