Preview Shelf -- CDPL Offers A Variety of Summer Reading

The Crawfordsville District Public Library will be closed on July 4th. Here are two interesting books of poetry. Richard Wilbur, once our country's Poet Laureate, who has written five children's books and numerous works of prose and translations, now has his name on his 17th collection called "Collected Poems 1943-2004". Ginger Andrews, winner of the Nicholas Roerich Prize has a book of poems called "An Honest Answer". "Battlefield of the Mind" by Joyce Meyer helps destroy negative thoughts in order to achieve freedom and peace. "Love Smart: Find the One You Want, Fix the One You Got" is Phil McGraw's treatise that everyone deserves a committed relationship, and that it is within everyone's control to have it. "Bad Childhood, Good Life" by Laura Schlessinger shows how to blossom and thrive in spite of an unhappy childhood. Stephanie Staal discusses living with the legacy of parents' divorce in "The Love They Lost". "Speaking of Divorce" by Roberta Beyer shows how to talk with kids and help them cope. Constance Ahrons' "We're Still Family" is the result of a two-decade landmark study about what grown children have to say about their parents' divorce. "You Don't Have to Take It Anymore" by Steven Stosny tells how to turn resentful, angry, or emotionally abusive relationships into compassionate, loving situations."Lucky Science" by Royston and Jeanie Roberts offers discoveries with experiments like "What do Silly Putty, Velcro, a three-million-year-old woman named Lucy, and corn flakes have in common?" Colin Sargent's novel "Museum of Human Beings" is about the Lewis and Clark friend Sacagawea's son, Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, his education at court to be a European-touring concert pianist, and his return to the American wilderness. "Deadly Night" by Heather Graham is the first "chapter" in the Flynn Brothers Trilogy about a New Orleans plantation they inherited in 1863, to be followed by "Deadly Harvest" and "Deadly Gift". Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel's new novel "A Mad Desire to Dance" shows a life shaped by the worst horrors of the 20th century and one man's attempt to reclaim happiness. As a stringer in liberated Europe writing among the ruins of London, Warsaw, Paris, Prague, and Madrid after World War II, Paula Fox offers "The Coldest Winter". Jonathan Kaplan's nonfiction “Contact Wounds” tells of his self-discovery and survival, and the making of a career devoted to saving people caught in the crossfire of war as a surgeon in Angola, taking charge of a combat-zone hospital, and in Baghdad treating civilian casualties amid gunfights for control of hospitals. "The Shia Revival" by Vali Nasr studies how conflicts within Islam will shape the future. "Mahammad" by Eliot Weinberger is an essay derived from the Quran, from sections of non-Quranic writings known collectively as the Hadith, and from other early writings. In "From Baghdad, With Love" by Lt. Col. Jay Kopelman, a U. S. Marine reports things learned by the military in their search work, even finding a pitiful little dog and caring for it. "Fiasco" by Thomas Ricks tackles the American military's tragic experience in Iraq. "Warlord" by U. S. Marine Ilario Pantano recounts his courageous military career and courtroom success proving that he killed two Iraqi insurgents in self-defense. "Mere Christianity" is C. S. Lewis' series of radio lectures addressing the central issues of Christianity in 1943 England, when all hope was threatened by the inhumanity of war. In "Lockout" Michele Wucker writes her ideas why America keeps getting immigration wrong when our prosperity depends on getting it right.