New Books

August is often the month for traveling before the frenzy of back to school starts. In centuries past the Vikings roamed to many lands, and each village remained intact with most of the livestock safe in the barns or pastures. The Vikings: facts and fictions might have some answers about the missing sheep. Perhaps the crafty cattle know something and you can read all about it in The Secret Life of Cows. Hold the bucket, Bessie, because it's not a stretch to say that there might be Milk!: a 10,000-year food fracas involved.

Once the Vikings had settled down, a new threat was on the horizon. That's right -- pirates! Black Flags, Blue Waters: the epic history of America's most notorious pirates contains a treasure chest full of history.  Many ships ended up at the bottom of the ocean but at least one landed in Virginia. Marooned: Jamestown, shipwreck, and a new history of America's origin explores the former settlement in depth.

It is a common notion that Each Journey Begins with a Single Step.  Raising a child from infancy to adulthood is a job for...Superdads. These fathers balance work and family but they're not alone in the parent trap. Wild Moms: motherhood in the animal kingdom might have something to say about The Design of Childhood and how the material world shapes independent kids.

So, you've returned from the family vacation, grateful for no encounters with Vikings or pirates, but exhausted and sunburned. Your children are not showing as much independence as you would like.  You wonder if a balanced diet includes only goldfish crackers and Sugar: the world corrupted. A doubt has lodged in your brain, that food choices are not completely your own.  Read all about it in Marion Nestle's Unsavory Truth: how food companies skew the science of what we eat.

Putting aside food worries, you can relax and fear not, weary parents, because What School Could Be is not just a fairy tale where lunches pack themselves. Teachers have ideas about teaching and learning but you can also find and apply strategies from the science of learning in A Guide to Effective Studying and Learning. Once your children have shouldered their way past the competition (because let's face it, school is a competitive sport these days) they can explore 8 Steps to Paying Less for College.  Now what was that whole thing about each journey beginning with a single step?  Sometimes math opens a door to The Lives of the Surrealists and other times math leads to A Good Cry: what we learn from tears and laughter.

Looking to the future, once your children are launched into adulthood and on their own, they might want to read up on The Myth of Capitalism. And speaking of myth (were we?) Jessup Library has acquired Joseph Campbell's very famous book, The Power of Myth. If the power of myth seems too mysterious perhaps something more concrete will appeal, such as The Curse of Cash. Wouldn't we all like to be cursed with cash?  Especially since The Cash Ceiling: why only the rich run for office and what we can do about it assumes that people want to run for office.  Most people would probably just take the money and run. And on that note, Jessup Library would like to encourage you to explore all of our books, old as well as new.  Reader, Come Home: the reading brain in a digital world is a good place to start.