A Hole in the Universe

by Mary McGarry Morris
New York: Viking, 2004
PS 3563 O874454 H65 2004

"After twenty-five years in prison for a senseless juvenile murder, Gordon Loomis returns to a changed world. His old neighborhood is blighted by drug dealers and neglected property. His brother Dennis, a successful oral surgeon, tries to help but is torn by his own fears and failings. Gordon's persistent visitor, the flamboyant Delores Dufault, yearns to be part of his new life, but he is as afraid of relationships as he is of being sent back to jail."

The Cute and the Cool: Wondrous Innocence and Modern American Children's Culture

by Gary S. Cross
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004
HQ 783 C74 2004

"The cute child—spunky, yet dependent, naughty but nice—is largely a 20th-century invention. In this book, Gary Cross examines how that look emerged in American popular culture and how the cute turned into the cool, seemingly its opposite, in stories and games. Cross shows how adults have created the ideal of the innocent childhood and have used this to project adult needs and frustrations rather than concerns about protecting and nurturing the young—and how the images, goods, and rituals of childhood have been co-opted by the commercial world. "
— quote from Oxford University Press Webpage

Peter Jackson: From Prince of Splatter to Lord of the Rings

by Ian Pryor
New York: St. Martin's Press, 2004
PN 1998.3 J26 P78 2004

"This fascinating look at the now celebrated director tells of the inspiration that have led to the making of the three world-famous Lord of the Rings films - and the six other films that preceded them. This unauthorized biography traces the journey of a young movie fanatic, from Sunday afternoons spent fooling around with a camera, through low-budget cult movies, to control of the most ambitious film project ever, on what is probably the best-loved fantasy novel ever written."

Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World

by Marie C. Wilson
New York: Viking, 2004
HD 57.7 W544 2004

"Insightful and inspiring, Closing the Leadership Gap is a call to action to increase the presence of women in powerful leadership positions in our country—in politics as well as business. Marie C. Wilson, a leading women's advocate and founder of the White House Project, argues that even as our nation sits on a world spinning with crises, we have barely begun to tap our most critical resource—women."

The Dew Breaker

"...[A] deeply moving work of fiction that explores the world of a 'dew breaker'—a torturer—a man whose brutal crimes in the country of his birth lie hidden beneath his new American reality.We meet him late in his life. He is a quiet man, a husband and father, a hardworking barber, a kindly landlord to the men who live in a basement apartment in his home. He is a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, recognizable by the terrifying scar on his face. As the book unfolds, moving seamlessly between Haiti in the 1960s and New York City today, we enter the lives of those around him: his devoted wife and rebellious daughter; his sometimes unsuspecting, sometimes apprehensive neighbors, tenants, and clients. And we meet some of his victims."

Stranger In the Village of the Sick: A Memoir of Cancer, Sorcery, and Healing

All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half Century of Brown v. Board of Education

"A riveting personal history of the twisted legacy of Brown v. Board of Education and its sweeping effect on American society by one of the country's finest legal scholars. On an otherwise uneventful Monday afternoon on May 17, 1954, in the sixteenth month of Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidency, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the doctrine of 'separate but equal' no longer had a place in America... Finally, the nation's highest court had agreed that segregation was inherently unequal, that legalized racial inequality could no longer be tolerated."

Grace Notes: The Waking of a Woman's Voice

"What happens when a trained singer who grew up in a 'house of vowels' finds that her voice is not her own? What happens when a woman loses the Mormon faith of her childhood and abandons the rituals she's always known? What does a woman, already married for thirteen years by her early thirties, do when she realizes she's been 'lying for years'? How does a woman sing, with grace, from the heart? In the spirit of Mary Catherine Bateson's Composing a Life and Kathleen Norris's Cloister Walk, Heidi Hart's memoir traces her search for an opening to her heart's path."

Borderlines: A Memoir

"When Caroline Kraus leaves behind her sheltered, upper-middle-class home in St. Louis for San Francisco following the death of her mother, she is searching for clarity and a fresh perspective to help her escape her mother's ghost. Instead, in a dreamlike city of beatnik bookstores and coffeehouses, she meets Jane. Bewitching and free-spirited, Jane offers Caroline the warmth, intuitive understanding, and female companionship she craves, and soon the two women are inseparable. But gradually, Caroline discovers that behind the intensity that makes the friendship so intoxicating lies a dangerous, symbiotic stranglehold."

The Fourth R: Conflicts Over Religion in America's Public Schools

"Contrary to popular belief, God has certainly not been kicked out of the public schools. What is banned is state-sponsored prayer, not the religious speech of the students themselves. But as news stories, political speeches, and lawsuits amply demonstrate, this approach has by no means resolved the long-standing debate over religion in public education. While some people challenge the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, with its reference to 'one nation under God,' others view school shootings and the terrorism of 9/11 as evidence that organized prayer must once again become part of the official school day."

Malibu Diary: Notes From an Urban Refugee

"In 1986, Penelope O'Malley moved to Malibu, at that time a small community of oddballs and cantankerous isolationists, hoping to find peaceful exile from Los Angeles and a life that had become too frantic and confused. She knew little then of the landscape that she hoped would inspire her—who owned it, what manner of flora and fauna it might support—and she wasn't much interested. Nor did she give much thought to the people who would become her neighbors. As it turned out, her life on this urban-wildland frontier was very different from what she had planned."