Here are this week’s new book releases.

Cooking

The Food Stylist’s Handbook (Denise Vivaldo)

Renowned food stylist Denise Vivaldo shares her tips and secrets in this latest book, The Food Stylist’s Handbook. It doesn’t matter if it’s for food blogs, tv, books, movies or ads, this book will help food stylists or photographers or those who want to be to plate, tweak and arrange the food to look like a work of art.

Business

The Art Of Public Strategy (Geoff Mulgan)

A former head of policy for the UK prime minister, Geoff Mulgan discusses public strategies and its effects in The Art Of Public Strategy. He further discusses how strategies take shape and how different factors, including money and people, are needed to mobilize and achieve important goals. It also includes common mistakes and how to avoid them. Anyone involved in public organizations will benefit from this book.

Biography

A Journey: My Political Life (Tony Blair)

Tony Blair is one of the most popular politicians in the world today. As a Labour Party leader, he became an influential part of British politics. In A Journey, Tony Blair shares his political experiences starting from his first years in office to Princess Diana’s death to the war in Iraq. He gives us the good and bad of being a leader and what he has to look forward to.

Fiction

Temple Of My Familiar (Alice Walker)

A follow-up to The Color Purple and first published in 1990, Temple Of My Familiar follows the stories of interrelated characters of African descent, from African tribes to the mixed bloods of Latin America, and its emergence and contribution to the African-American life in America.

History

Naked In Da Nang: A Forward Air Controller In Vietnam (Mike Jackson, Tara Dixon-Engel)

Forward air controllers (FACs) were regarded by many of their naval and air force brothers as either insane, suicidal or both. Author Mike Jackson capitalizes on the absurd reactions and experiences he had during his time.

For many Americans, the standard meal is cheap, tasty, and fast. Many people go out to eat (fast food or sit down), order take-out, or grab something from the freezer. In Food, Inc. filmmaker Robert Kenner examines the costs of putting convenience and value  over nutrition and environmental impact.

Food Inc. It’s the movie that has gotten people to stop eating certain foods and to start eating healthier. Some people simply gawk and gasp at how unhealthy the food processing world is and continue to live their lives, but for others, it is a life changing experience. Food, Inc. reveals surprising , and shocking, truths about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here. Food, Inc. lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry and exposes the highly mechanized process that has been hidden from the average American consumer. Who is allowing this secret to be hidden from the typical consumer? Well, it is done with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Appalling huh?

If you have not seen it already, Food Inc.is definitely a documentary that you want to look into.

What also is available is Food Inc.: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer-And What You Can Do About It. This book was created to be a companion to the movie, and it does an amazing job at taking the movie one step further. Through a series of challenging essays by leading experts and thinkers, this book will continue to exploit the food industry and to encourage people to change the world by changing how they support the food industry. It consists of 25 essays on topics ranging from biofuels, to agribusiness, to nutrition, to so-called “frankenfoods,” to pesticides and hormones, and global hunger. All of the essays are written by experts. One author included in the book is Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation (2006)!

If you have already seen the movie and you would like to learn more, I would highly suggest looking into ordering this companion book to Food Inc.

Here is a rundown of this week’s newest book releases.

Self-Improvement

More Time For You (Rosemary Tator, Alesia Latson)

Rosemary Tator and Alesia Latson have been in the business of teaching their clients how to handle their stress to become effective leaders. In More Time For You, they will share their secrets and teach you how to handle stress so you become one, too. The book shows how to make better and faster decisions according topriorities and how to handle distractions and interruptions, among others.

History

King Philip’s War: Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance and the End of Indian Sovereignty (Daniel R. Mandell)

Daniel Mandell explores the colonial expansion of Indian sovereignty for decades and how it affected their society. He also reveals the shifting relationships of and between the Natives and colonists. King Philip’s War is a great account about the war that greatly affected Native-Anglo relations and the United States of America.

Fiction

Motion To Suppress (Perri O’Shaughnessy)

Nina Reilly, a lawyer from San Francisco, has just left her husband and her old job and relocated to a simpler life in Lake Tahoe. To start her new life, she decides to help out a friend, Misty Patterson, divorce her abusive husband. But when the husband turns up murdered, Nina’s case quickly changes to a murder case. And there are big, blank spots in Misty’s memory, making it harder for Nina to defend her. Will they be able to bring back Misty’s memory and find the identity of the real killer before it’s too late?

Business

Traders, Guns and Money (Satyajit Das)

A finance expert, Satyajit Das shows us, in Traders, Guns and Money, an exposé on the culture, games and deceptions played out every day in trading rooms with other people’s money. From an insider’s view, the book gives us a lowdown on the business of trading and marketing derivatives.

Nonfiction

Portraits and Persons (Cynthia Freeland)

Cynthia Freeland, a leading philosopher of art, discusses and answers fascinating and fundamental questions on art and the art form in Portraits and Persons. A widely published Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston, Freeland answers through philosophy how the art form is made.

Don’t forget to check these books out on your next book shopping trip!

In college I studied English literature; this, of course, meant I was subject to vast amounts of literary criticism.  Reading some of this material made the prospect of having my legs waxed with duct tape sound appealing.  During this time I also developed my undying love for music and began to listen with more intent and analysis than was probably healthy.  I always wished there was a way to bridge the two, then I graduated and those dreams took a backseat.

This past spring I discovered the 33 1/3 series at a conference and my dream became a reality.  There are people out there more neurotic about music than myself; I just had the decency to not commit it to paper.  These authors/critics/musicians take classic albums and synthesize them the way W.H. Auden compared literary sea creatures in The Enchafed Flood.  Writers will submit ideas about albums for approval and then batches are printed each year.

The series refers to the revolutions per minute a standard vinyl LP makes on a turntable; this series is for the truly diehard album fan.  No two books are written alike and each writer takes a different approach.  Some give song by song analysis, others use interviews with bands, some give personal accounts of how the album changed their life, others use it as a chance to shed light on a piece of work long forgotten.  Whatever the case, if one of your favorite albums is on this list, chances are you’ll enjoy the reading.

Here is a sampling of artists: Dusty Springfield, Elvis Costello, Jeff Buckley, The Kinks, R.E.M., DJ Shadow, James Brown, Radiohead, Joy Division, Abba, Prince, The Band, Stevie Wonde, Joni Mitchell, Beastie Boys, Captain Beefheart, Slayer, Elliot Smith, Tom Waits and a host of others; they are up to 74.  These are not easy to find printed by Continuum Press, and range from $8.95 – $12.95.

Here are this week’s newest releases.

Fiction

Red Queen (Philippa Gregory)

Red Queen is a fictional account of Margaret Beaufort, future queen of Scotland, from the time she was an innocent nine-year-old, full of grand dreams of her own, to an unloved wife and widow at 13, and a mother at 14, determined to give her son everything, even if it could cost her her life.

Business

Mentor Leader (Tony Dungy)

“Your only job is to help your players be better.” Tony Dungy heard this from one of his earlier mentors and has been his guiding principle ever since. This simple principle has led to his success as a leader and coach in the NFL. Dungy shares the seven keys of mentoring leaderships and how it’s effective.

History

War (Sebastian Junger)

Sebastian Junger recounts his experiences as a single platoon in a 15-month tour of duty in the most dangerous outpost in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. He gives breathtaking insights about war and its truth and the fear, honor, and trust shared among the troops on an everyday basis.

Nonfiction

Women In Politics: Outsides and Insiders (Lois Duke Whitaker)

Using a feminist theoretical framework, Women In Politics discusses and analyzes gender differences in the political world.

Here is a line-up of the newest releases.

Entertainment

Sliding Into Home (Kendra Wilkinson)

We all know Kendra Wilkinson as one of Hugh Hefner’s three girlfriends and one of the stars of The Girls Next Door. In Sliding Into Home, Kendra talks about growing up without a father, messing up and how she recovered to  graduate from high school. She also talks about life with her husband, NFL star Hank Baskett and their newborn son, and their secret relationship while she was still living in the Playboy Mansion.Learn more about Kendra in this riveting and entertaining biography.

Mystery

Star Island (Carl Hiaasen)

In Star Island, twenty-two-year-old Cherry Pye has been living a rock star life since she was fourteen, including the drugs and alcohol. Ann DeLusia is Cherry Pye’s stand-in or “undercover stunt double”, who fills in for Cherry Pye whenever she’s too wasted. And it is also Ann DeLusia who gets kidnapped by an obssessed paparazzo. Now, Cherry Pye’s entourage must rescue Ann before the public and Cherry Pye finds out about her.

Business

Mojo: How To Get It, How To Keep It, How To Get It Back If You Lose It (Marshall Goldsmith)

“Mojo is the moment when we do something that’s purposeful, powerful, and positive and the rest of the world recognizes it. This book is about the moment—and how we can create it in our lives, maintain it, and recapture it when we need it.”

This Mojo toolkit enumerates fourteen practical tool to achieve both happiness and meaning in business and in life.

Children’s Fiction

My Little People School Bus (Doris Tomaselli, Carolyn Bracken)

This little playbook explores early learning concepts by transforming the little people school bus. The book teaches about shapes, colors, counting and opposites. Recommended for infants and preschool children.

Fiction

One Day (David Nicholls)

Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley have just met in 1988, and they must go their separate ways after tomorrow, their college graduation, but they cannot stop thinking about each other. They begin to lead separate lives but they find themselves still attracted to each other and they strike up a unique relationship.

Non Fiction

97 Orchard (Jane Ziegelman)

Jane Ziegelman takes us into a journey of five families around the turn of the century living in 97 Orchard St. New York. Germans, Italians, Russians and other immigrants used food to adjust better to life in New York. Pretty soon, their American neighbors begin to seek them and welcome them into their land.

What’s left to say when the subtitle is the plot?

Well, maybe something in the way of explanation. Author Daniel Asa Rose gets a call from his cousin Larry for the first time in years. Larry’s on the waiting list for a kidney transplant, but it could take ten years. So he’s decided to try to get one in China, where it can be much quicker. Of course, the transplant there will also be illegal, but that doesn’t bother Larry. He wants his cousin there because he’s an “old China hand”, though Dan’s last visit was 25 years ago and included some time in jail.

How does the mail-order bride come into it? Larry doesn’t feel that the kidney, much as he needs it, is enough to justify the trip to China. So he’s found a Chinese fiancée online — maybe a better term is “email-order bride”.  She turns out to be “kind of a clean freak” ;  when Dan first meets her, she’s scrubbing the hotel bathroom and he mistakes her for the maid. The engagement is off and on a few times.

Dan gets right to work,  asking everyone he meets if they know of a pre-loved kidney. (“The street sweepers are pretty much in agreement that there are no kidneys to be had, but I still have a few construction workers on the case.”)

Just before time runs out and they’re about to move on to the Philippines, they’re given the name of Dr. X, who might be able to “make the authorities look the other way”. This is only the beginning.

Whatever you think of the ethics of medical tourism, you’ll enjoy Daniel Rose’s funny dialogue, vivid impressions of China, and unsentimental concern for his often difficult cousin.

The full title of the book is The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She’ll Go to Become President. As cumbersome and ungainly as that title is, it accurately conveys both the content and the style of the book.

Maybe it was the Clinton fatigue, but I had no interest in reading this book when it first came out in 2005.  Nor did I want to read or hear any more dirt about any of the candidates during the last election cycle.  So only last month did I finally pick up a copy of The Truth About Hillary on the recommendation of a friend.

I’m going to try to keep this review politically neutral and restrict my comments to the writing and not the veracity of the claims made therein.  If you’re interested in my political leanings and general philosophical outlook, check out our sister site at Camp Campaign.

The Truth About Hillary was written by Edward Klein, a former NY Times Magazine editor.  As a former editor himself, I would have thought he’d find someone good to edit his own book.  Sadly, this book contain several typos and grammatical errors that reeked of amateur hour.

The book was roundly criticized for not bringing anything new or original to the table.  With that point, I soundly disagree.  There was a lot that I didn’t know about Hillary and Bill Clinton in The Truth About Hillary.  Maybe if you’re a political junkie who was tuned into CNN or Fox News 8 hours a day, you would have heard all the allegations and details that were in the book, but I hadn’t.

For example, did you know that Hillary Rodham started her teen years as a “Goldwater Girl” and a staunch Conservative?  Or that it was her youth pastor who turned her to the liberal side?  Aside from the interesting biographical information, The Truth About Hillary contains a lot of sordid detail about Bill’s womanizing which, if the book is to believed, was even worse than we all imagined it to be.

Now that she is out of the spotlight (inasmuch as being Secretary of State of the most powerful nation in the world can be considered “out of the spotlight”), The Truth About Hillary makes an interesting but unspectacular read without the political baggage it carried when it first came out.

Warrior Girls—sounds pretty intense huh? Well, don’t judge a book by its title; this book is not about girls who are literally warriors or fighters. However, they do fight their own type of battles. Warrior Girls is a book about protecting girls against the injury epidemic in sports. Written by Michael Sokolove, Warrior Girls addresses a story that every girl who is involved in sports and their parents should be told.

In this book Sokolove addresses the injury epidemic that has managed to skyrocket over the past years. The numbers have been drastically increasing since the 1970s when Title 9 was put into place and because it has become more acceptable for women to become involved in sports. In Warrior Girls, he describes the clear relationships between the way that girls put stress on their bodies and how their bodies react to the pressure. And yes, it has to do with the way their bodies are: young female athletes tear their ACLS at rates as high as 8 times more than the males in their sports area. This is because their center of gravity is above the hips. While a male’s center of gravity is near his chest, a female’s center of gravity causes five times the amount of their body weight to be put on their knees. Quick lateral movements are direct sources of injury for females and it is due to their center of gravity.

Michael Sokolove does a fantastic job keeping us updated with the most recent research on females and their sports injuries. He does this by telling stories, brings in facts, and even brings his readers onto the practice field of Anson Dorrance (University of North Carolina).

In Warrior Girls he is able to teach his readers about how girls can train better and smarter to decrease their risk of injury. He shows clear passion about this subject and truly shows that he cares about preventing injuries in females that could have lifelong consequences.

It is definitely a book that I wish I had read while I starting to get into sports, but thankfully I’ve been injury free thus far.

Travel

Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places (Bill Streever)

Bill Streevers is not one to shy away from any challenge and adventure. He ventures out in a year-long adventure to the world’s coldest places – all 40-below cold. In July, he’s dressing down to take a dip in a 35-degree Arctic swimming hole. In September, he’s using his tools to dig the planet’s ancient ice ages. And in October, he’s exploring the hibernation habits of different animals, including humans, wood frogs and bears. He will visit where no other normally visits and he will take the challenge no one normally takes.

Business

Outliers: The Story of Success (Malcolm Gladwell)

Malcolm Gladwell is back with a new success book and this time he shares the success secrets of the high achievers. It’s not enough to find out what they are like, but we have to determine where they came from and how they use it to their advantage. Their culture, family and upbringing contributed to their high-achieving personality and success.

Fiction

Safe Haven (Nicholas Sparks)

Katie arrives mysteriously in the town of Southport in North Carolina. Nobody knows anything about her and she doesn’t talk about her past. She refuses to tie herself to the small town and form relationships but she can’t help it with Alex and Jo. Alex is a widower with two kids and a store. Jo is Katie’s neighbor, single and plainspoken. Katie lets down her guard with them and allows them to know more about her, but a dark secret continues to plague her and now she must choose to stay safe or risk it all for love.

Cooking

Cake Pops (Angie Dudley)

Famous food blogger Bakerella, aka Angie Dudley, shares with foodies her secrets to making cake pops! Cake Pops are cute little cakes on a stick, and Martha Stewart even featured Dudley on her show because she loved the Cake Pops so much. In her book, Cake Pops, Dudley will show us how to recreate these cute cakes in our own home with tips on presentation, decorating, coloring and melting chocolate, and a lot more.

Biography

Coming Back Stronger (Drew Brees)

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees suffered a potentially career-ending shoulder injury and NFL coaches wondered, will he be able to come back to play football again? This is the story of how Drew Brees came back to football and how he inspired the city of New Orleans to come back and come back stronger than before.

All of these books are coming out in July. Jot them down in your book list so you don’t forget them on your next book shopping trip.