Adult Non-Fiction
New adult non-fiction books
Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt
In this lively and informative volume, Vanderbilt (Survival City) investigates how human nature has shaped traffic, and vice versa, finally answering drivers' most familiar and frustrating questions: why does the other lane always seem faster? why do added lanes seem to intensify congestion? whatever happened to signaling for turns? He interviews traffic reporters, engineers, psychologists studying human-machine interactions and radical Dutch urban planners who design intersections with no pavement markings, traffic signs or signals. Backed by an impressive array of psychological, sociological, historical, anecdotal and economic research, the author's presentation is always engaging and often sobering: his findings reveal how little attention drivers pay to the road and how frequently they misjudge crucial information. Sections on commuting distances and the amount of driving done by women versus men (guess who runs more household errands?) feel fresh and timely. Referring to traffic as an environment that has become so familiar we no longer see it and a secret window onto the soul of a place, Vanderbilt heightens awareness of an institution and its attendant behaviors that are all too often taken for granted. (Aug.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Green: Your Place in the New Energy Revolution by Jane S. Hoffman
According to the authors of this optimistic assessment of the global energy crisis, the current gluttonous dependence on nonrenewable fossil fuels is merely an ecologically ruinous interlude between energy ages. In the authors' decidedly long view, mankind survived for centuries without much need for oil, coal and natural gas although humans were using all three in limited fashion as early as 3000 B.C., petroleum was first pumped from a well in Pennsylvania only in 1859 and can do so again. The Hoffmans argue that as technology improves efficiencies, solar fields, wind farms, geothermal drilling and biomass crops will replace fossil fuels as energy sources, a process driven as much by economic self-interest as by pressure for a more sane environmental future. They dismiss both the hydrogen economy and corn-based ethanol as unfeasible energy sources, but suggest that an African weed, jatropha, has the potential to turn that poverty-stricken continent into the Saudi Arabia of biofuel. Accessible and surprisingly entertaining, this informed overview of available paths to relatively pollution-free energy resources is a level-headed primer on the world to come. (July) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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The Baby Food Bible: a Complete Guide to Feeding Your Child, from Infancy On by Eileen Behan
Dietician and mother of two, Behan (Eat Well, Lose Weight, While Breastfeeding) covers all the bases in her latest work. Concerned with child obesity, Behan believes parents can protect their children by taking on an approach to eating and feeding... that promotes optimal health and strong family relations. In order to do this, Behan argues, parents must first establish and protect family mealtime, and introduce children to a variety of truly good food. The author explains, very specifically, how parents can achieve this. She discusses how and when to introduce solids and includes charts of specific foods and amounts to feed per day. An alphabetical Superior Foods list gives readers tips on how to buy, store and prepare over 100 fruits, vegetables, proteins, grains, etc. She then explains how to make homemade baby food and suggests combos such as sweet potato and banana puree and, later, offers her favorite recipes (basics like roast chicken and beef stew) for when children begin to eat table food (after age one). Also included are practical tips on how to promote healthy eating, such as turning the television off at mealtimes and watering down juice to limit sugar and calories, and effectively teaching table manners. This is an excellent, comprehensive guide worthy of all parents' collections. (July) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown: the Sea Venture Castaways and the Fate of America by Lorri Glover
Few history tales pack the excitement of Virginia's founding. Most accounts start with the 1607 Jamestown landing. But like Kieran Doherty in 2007's Sea Venture, historians Glover (Southern Sons) and Smith (Inside the Great House) focus on the desperate endeavors to rescue the colony from disaster after its first year. It's a rip-snortin' story of shipwreck, intrigue, horror, courage, risk, luck and will, and the authors milk it for all it's worth. Whether the wreck of the Sea Venture on Bermuda and its recovery as part of the fleet sent to save Jamestown was more important to the fate of America than the original 1607 settlement is open to question. That aside, the authors let the story unfold in all its inherent complexity, tragedy and suspense. Glover and Smith focus on the tale's human elements and its often harrowing, sometimes inspirational events with appropriate verve. The authors have brought the drama in the Chesapeake alive in all its gripping detail. (Aug.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Woman of Rome: a Life of Elsa Morante by Lily Tuck
Starred Review. Novelist Elsa Morante and the city she symbolized come alive in this warm, sprightly literary biography. Novelist Tuck (The News from Paraguay) surveys Morante's life: her troubled relationship with an unstable mother; her salad days writing magazine pieces along with having to occasionally resort to prostitution to make a living; World War II, when she and husband, Alberto Moravia, both half-Jewish, hid out from Fascist persecution in a mountain village; her postwar dolce vita immersed in friendships, affairs and dinner-table debates with Rome's glitterati. Morante emerges as a complex, vibrant character difficult, mercurial and fiercely (often rudely) devoted to truth-telling, but also kindhearted and charismatic. Tuck ties the biographical details and analyses of her subject's dreams and handwriting to sympathetic but critical analyses of Morante's protean works, which include the hothouse melodrama of House of Liars, the darkly beguiling Huckleberry Finn fable of Arturo's Island and the pitiless meditation on force and corruption of her bestselling History. Tuck sets the life in a colorful evocation of Morante's milieu, enlivened by her own youthful reminiscences of Italy's postwar film scene, that makes the book a love letter to Rome as well as to her subject. Photos. (July 29) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot by Anna R. Beer
Starred Review. Four hundred years after John Milton's birth, biographer and Oxford lecturer Beer (Bess: The Life of Lady Ralegh, Wife to Sir Walter) presents a loving tribute, a portrait of the poet in all his humanity. Drawing on newly available archives, Beer elegantly chronicles Milton's life from his precocious childhood (he read Greek and Latin when he was five) to his embattled support of Cromwell and his mature religious and political writings. Beer points out that Milton wasn't a one-note writer, but excelled in producing religious pamphlets (The Reason of Church Government), treatises on education and divorce (Areopagitica and The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce) and epic poetry (Paradise Lost). Although the specifics of Milton's three marriages are well known, Beer reveals the details of a little-discussed aspect of the poet's life: his passionate, and perhaps homoerotic, friendship with Charles Diodati. Planting Milton firmly in his time, one of political and religious upheaval, Beer's splendid biography portrays Milton (d. 1674) as both a radical and a traditionalist who drew on classical and Christian sources to contend again and again for freedom from tyranny and oppression. B&w illus. (Aug.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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