by Neely Tucker
New York: Crown Publishers, 2004
HV 875.5 T83 2004

"Foreign correspondent Neely Tucker and his wife, Vita, arrived in Zimbabwe in 1997. After witnessing firsthand the devastating consequences of AIDS on the population, especially the children, the couple started volunteering at an orphanage that was desperately underfunded and short-staffed. One afternoon, a critically ill infant was brought to the orphanage from a village outside the city. She'd been left to die in a field on the day she was born, abandoned in the tall brown grass that covers the highlands of Zimbabwe in the dry season. After a near-death hospital stay, and under strict doctor?s orders, the ailing child was entrusted to the care of Tucker and Vita. Within weeks Chipo, the girl-child whose name means gift, would come to mean everything to them. "

"It was billed as the greatest event in the history of pair skating: three of the best teams of all time battling for Olympic gold on one night in Salt Lake City. Technical ability was approximately equal. It was the artistic merit score that would decide the gold medal -- the second mark... In a down-to-the-wire nail-biter, the difference between gold and silver came down to the vote of a single judge. Hours later, a bombshell: the confession of a French judge unleashed a worldwide debate—and ultimately produced an unprecedented duplicate gold medal."

by Cory Doctorow
New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2004
PS 3604 O27 E23 2004

Lone Star Nation: How a Ragged Army of Volunteers Won the Battle for Texas Independence - and Changed America

by H.W. Brands
New York: Doubleday, 2004
F 390 B833 2004

"Lone Star Nation is the gripping story of Texas's precarious journey to statehood, from its early colonization in the 1820s to the shocking massacres of Texas loyalists at the Alamo and Goliad by the Mexican army, from its rough-and-tumble years as a land overrun by Comanche to its day of liberation as an upstart Republic... By turns bloody and heroic, tragic and triumphant, this richly peopled, sprawling history of one of our greatest states reads like the most compelling fiction, and further secures H. W. Brands's position as one of the premier American historians writing today."

Saboteurs: The Nazi Raid on America

by Michael Dobbs
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004
D 753.3 D63 2004

"Shortly after America's entry into World War II, Adolf Hitler ordered an extensive sabotage campaign against the United States to disrupt the production of tanks and airplanes and blow up bridges and railroads. Eight German saboteurs were dispatched across the Atlantic by U-boat, one team landing in Amagansett, Long Island, the other near Jacksonville, Florida. They brought with them enough money and explosives for a two-year operation and traveled inland to explore potential targets. The full story of this audacious endeavor is a remarkable account of a terrorist threat against America."

Referred Pain and Other Stories

by Lynne Sharon Schwartz
New York: Counterpoint, 2004
PS 3569 C567 R44 2004

The Anxieties of Affluence: Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 1939-1979

"This book charts the reactions of prominent American writers to the unprecedented prosperity of the decades following World War II. It begins with an examination of Lewis Mumford's wartime call for 'democratic' consumption and concludes with an analysis of the origins of President Jimmy Carter's 'malaise' speech of 1979. Between these bookends, Daniel Horowitz documents a broad range of competing views, each in its own way reflective of a deep-seated ambivalence toward consumer culture—a persistent but shifting tension between a commitment to self-restraint and the pursuit of personal satisfaction through the acquisition of commercial goods and experiences."

"'This book is for believers and non-believers alike. It is not a book about whether one should believe in Jesus, but about how Americans have believed in and portrayed him.' — from the Introduction. Jesus in America is a comprehensive exploration of the vital role that the figure of Jesus has played throughout American history. Written by one of our most distinguished historians, Richard Wightman Fox, this book provides a brilliant cultural history of Jesus in America from its origins to today, demonstrating how Jesus is the most influential symbolic figure in our history."