New Library Books in Theology

Title God With Us: Divine Condescension and the Attributes of God
Author K. Scott Oliphint
Publisher Crossway
Call Number BT103.O39 2012
Synopsis from Publisher

For the Christian mind seeking to understand the nature of God, one fundamental paradox poses a philosophical stumbling block: how can God be both a wholly independent, eternal being yet also an interactive force in the temporal plane of creation? The desire to harmonize God's actions and his attributes has challenged laymen and scholars through the ages. In God With Us, K. Scott Oliphint finds an answer in the person of Jesus Christ incarnate-the manifestation of God and the cornerstone of creation. Where other theological efforts view the study of Jesus as simply one branch of a systematic approach, Oliphint puts a primary focus on the understanding of the Son of God as both the quintessential revelation of God's character and the explanation of how he relates to us. This book leads the reader to think biblically about who God is and how he in his eminence can condescend to us in our finite surroundings. Oliphint's unique approach to the attributes of God will appeal to anyone desiring a biblical perspective on God's nature, whether for academic reasons or personal advancement.

Title The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards: Text, Context, and Application
Author Steven M. Studebaker & Robert W. Caldwell III
Publisher Ashgate
Call Number BT109.S748 2011
Synopsis from Publisher

While Jonathan Edwards scholars have increasingly recognized the central role that the Trinity played in his thought, no work brings together Edwards' central texts on the Trinity and interprets and applies them to contemporary theological issues.This book reveals how the doctrine of the Trinity transformed Edwards' ministry and how the Trinity can inform current evangelical thought, life, and ministry. Key primary texts, interpretation, and application of Edwards' trinitarian theology are all presented here. Part one features Edwards' chief trinitarian writings and provides an in-depth analysis on his doctrine. Part two sets Edwards' trinitarianism in historical context. Part three demonstrates how Edwards employed the Trinity in his sermons, in spiritual formation, and in other areas of doctrine.

 

Title The Way of Jesus: To Repair and Renew the World
Author Bruce Chilton
Publisher Abingson
Call Number BT205.C49 2010
Synopsis from Publisher
The way of Jesus means that despite our tears and scars, we can become vessels of divine light. A young man loses his wife while their babyescapes without injury. In abject grief he reaches out to a friend for solace. Whatwords of comfort are even possible? How can Jesus repair and renew these lives inthis world Author Bruce Chilton begins in the everyday. Heshows how following Jesus not only repairs shattered lives, but renews them. Whileno broken life is ever simply reassembled and although there is no magic going backto the pristine, repair and renewal will empower us to truly live and love again. But our path requires something from us--mindful practice of Jesus' teachings aboutthe soul, spirit, kingdom, insight, forgiveness, mercy, and glory.

Title Christian Peace and Nonviolence: A Documentary History
Author Michael G. Long, Ed.
Publisher Orbis
Call Number BT735.4.C443 2011
Synopsis from Publisher
From the Sermon on the Mount to the twenty-first century, this comprehensive reader recounts the Christian message of peace and nonviolence. Through testimony by the confessors and martyrs of the early church, the voices of medieval figures like St. Benedict and St. Francis, as well as Erasmus, Lollards, Anabaptists, and Quakers abolitionists, Christian Peace and Nonviolence presents a coherent story in which the peace message of Jesus is restored to central place. Later sections highlight many of the great prophets of modern times, including Tolstoy, Dorothy Day, A.J. Muste, Thomas Merton, Daniel Berrigan, and Oscar Romero. Their challenge remains timely and urgent. As John Haynes Holmes observed, "If war is right then Christianity is false, a lie." Christian Peace and Nonviolence is not only intellectually compelling but also inspirational. It is more than a reference work. It is a witness

Title The Age of Doubt: Tracing the Roots of Our Religious Uncertainty
Author Christopher Lane
Publisher Yale
Call Number  BT771.3.L35 2011
Synopsis from Publisher

The Victorian era was the first great “Age of Doubt” and a critical moment in the history of Western ideas. Leading nineteenth-century intellectuals battled the Church and struggled to absorb radical scientific discoveries that upended everything the Bible had taught them about the world. In The Age of Doubt, distinguished scholar Christopher Lane tells the fascinating story of a society under strain as virtually all aspects of life changed abruptly.
In deft portraits of scientific, literary, and intellectual icons who challenged the prevailing religious orthodoxy, from Robert Chambers and Anne Brontë to Charles Darwin and Thomas H. Huxley, Lane demonstrates how they and other Victorians succeeded in turning doubt from a religious sin into an ethical necessity.
The dramatic adjustment of Victorian society has echoes today as technology, science, and religion grapple with moral issues that seemed unimaginable even a decade ago. Yet the Victorians’ crisis of faith generated a far more searching engagement with religious belief than the “new atheism” that has evolved today. More profoundly than any generation before them, the Victorians came to view doubt as inseparable from belief, thought, and debate, as well as a much-needed antidote to fanaticism and unbridled certainty. By contrast, a look at today’s extremes—from the biblical literalists behind the Creation Museum to the dogmatic rigidity of Richard Dawkins’s atheism—highlights our modern-day inability to embrace doubt.

New Library Books in Education

Title Feel-Bad Education : And Other Contrarian Essays on Children and Schooling
Author Alfie Kohn
Publisher Beacon
Call Number LA217.2.K64 2011
Synopsis from Publisher
Arguing that our schools are currently in the grip of a “cult of rigor”—a confusion of harder with better that threatens to banish both joy and meaningful intellectual inquiry from our classrooms—Alfie Kohn issues a stirring call to rethink our priorities and reconsider our practices.

Kohn’s latest wide-ranging collection of writings will add to his reputation as one of the most incisive thinkers in the field, who questions the assumptions too often taken for granted in discussions about education and human behavior.
Title Does God Make a Difference?  Taking Religion Seriously in our Schools and Universities
Author Warren A. Nord
Publisher Oxford
Call NumberLB1027.N67 2010
Synopsis from Publisher
In this provocative book Warren A. Nord argues that public schools and universities leave the vast majority of students religiously illiterate. Such education is not religiously neutral, a matter of constitutional importance; indeed, it borders on secular indoctrination when measured against the requirements of a good liberal education and the demands of critical thinking.

Title Schools for All Kinds of Minds: Boosting Student Success by Embracing Learning Variation
Author Mary-Deen Barringer
Publisher Jossey-Bass
Call Number LB1051.B2494
Synopsis from Publisher
This book shows how schools can--and must--develop expertise in "learning variation" (understanding how different kinds of minds learn) and apply this knowledge to classroom instruction in order to address the chronic learning challenges and achievement gap faced by millions of students. Barringer shows how using what we know about learning variation with a focus on discovering learning strengths, not just deficits, can help schools create plans for success for those students who often find it elusive. The book specifically addresses how school leaders can incorporate this knowledge into instructional practice and school-level policy through various professional development strategies.  

Title Tyranny of the Textbook: An Insider Exposes how Educational Materials Undermine Reforms
Author Beverlee Jobrack
Publisher Rowman & Littlefield
Call Number  LB3047.J64 2012
Synopsis from Publisher
Educational reforms and standards have been a topic of public debate for decades, with the latest go-round being the State Common Core Curriculum Standards. But time and again those reforms have failed, and each set of standards, no matter how new and different, has had little impact on improving student achievement. Why? The textbooks. Textbooks sell based on design and superficial features, not because they are based on the latest research on how children learn and how well they promote student achievement. In Tyranny of the Textbook,

New Library Books in Business and Economics

Title Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
Author Richare P. Rumelt
Publisher Crown Business
Call Number HD30.28.R854 2011
Synopsis from Publisher
Developing and implementing a strategy is the central task of a leader, whether the CEO at a Fortune 100 company, an entrepreneur, a church pastor, the head of a school, or a government official. Richard Rumelt shows that there has been a growing and unfortunate tendency to equate Mom-and-apple-pie values, fluffy packages of buzzwords, motivational slogans, and financial goals with “strategy.” He debunks these elements of “bad strategy” and awakens an understanding of the power of a “good strategy.”

Title Real Leadership: How Spiritual Values Give Leadership Meaning
Author Gilbert W. Fairholm
Publisher Praeger
Call Number HD57.7.F3523 2011
Synopsis fro Publisher

Aperson's values are the most powerful factor defining his or her actions; everyone has a value system or a spiritual component that triggers their behaviour. Our personal values are a more powerful force upon individual action than corporate policy, procedures, tradition or peer pressure. Since the work environment is where the typical worker will spend the most time - more than at home with family, with friends, or at church - it is reasonable that workers will have spiritual demands as well as eco Real Leadership argues that values-based (i.e. spiritual-leadership) is the only way to do leadership in today's globalized, multi-differentiated world. The author traces the development of real leadership through five generations of theory, then builds a strong case for the values leadership strategy because of its ability to unify workersż and because it allows them to find personal meaning in the workplace task at hand. Details correct at time of going to print and subject to change without notice nomic needs from their work lives. Unfortunately, this is a task managers are not prepared to meet

 

Title Corporate culture: The Ultimate Strategic Asset
Author Eric G. Flamholtz & Yvonne Randle
Publisher /Stanford
Call Number HD58.7.F585 2011
Synopsis from publisher
Organizational culture is a quiet, but driving, influence on our perception of a company, whether as a consumer or as an employee. For instance, we know Southwest Airlines as laid back and friendly. We think of Google as innovative. To almost every well-known company we can assign a character. It is now well recognized that corporate culture has a significant impact on organizational health and performance. Yet, the concept of corporate culture and culture management is too often tantalizingly elusive.

Title More Than a Numbers Game: A Brief History of Accounting
Author Thomas A. King
PublisherWiley
Call Number HF5616.U5 K53 2006
Synopsis from Publisher
The world certainly suffers no shortage of accounting texts. The many out there help readers prepare, audit, interpret and explain corporate financial statements. What has been missing is a book offering context and discussion for divisive issues such as taxes, debt, options, and earnings volatility. King addresses the why of accounting instead of the how, providing practitioners and students with a highly readable history of U.S. corporate accounting. More Than a Numbers Game: A Brief History of Accounting was inspired by Arthur Levitt's landmark 1998 speech delivered at New York University. The Securities and Exchange Commission chairman described the too-little challenged custom of earnings management and presaged the breakdown in the US corporate accounting three years later.
Somehow, over a one-hundred year period, accounting morphed from a tool used by American railroad managers to communicate with absent British investors into an enabler of corporate fraud. How this happened makes for a good business story. This book is not another description of accounting scandals. Instead it offers a history of ideas.


Title The Accountant's guide to the Universe: Heaven and Hell by the Numbers
Author Craig Hovey
Publisher St. Martin's Press
Call Number HF5636.H68 2010
Synopsis from Publisher

This is an entertaining book on accounting written for a general audience. It opens with a wild premise: Heaven and Hell have been outsourced to a giant company in a distant galaxy and they are now in charge of determining who goes where after death. The entire universe is scoured for an objective system that can be adapted to the task, and it is found, in the form of accounting, in the least civilized backwater of the universe, Earth! The book is also a morality tale. It demonstrates how financial scandals (a la Bernie Madoff and many others) can be pulled off with "creative accounting," and how much a person adds or subtracts from the universe by their actions. Written for anybody who has taken an accounting class, practices it for a living, or is simply interested in seeing how a system designed to record finances can also be used to judge the entire universe will be enlightened by this book.

New Library Books in Art

Title Bernini: His Life and His Rome
Author Franco Mormando
Publisher University of Chicago Press
Call NumberNB623.B5 M57 2011
Synopsis from Publisher
Sculptor, architect, painter, playwright, and scenographer, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) was the last of the great universal artistic geniuses of early modern Italy, placed by both contemporaries and posterity in the same exalted company as Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo. And his artistic vision remains palpably present today, through the countless statues, fountains, and buildings that transformed Rome into the Baroque theater that continues to enthrall tourists.

Title Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter A life
Author Patrica Albers
Publisher Alfred A. Knopf
Call Number ND237.M53 A85 2011
Synopsis excerpts from Publisher
“Gee, Joan, if only you were French and male and dead.” —New York art dealer to Joan Mitchell, the 1950s
Joan Mitchell is the first full-scale biography of the abstract expressionist painter who came of age in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s; a portrait of an outrageous artist and her struggling artist world, painters making their way in the second part of America’s twentieth century.

Title Caravaggio and His Followers in Rome
Author David Franklin and Sebastian Schutze
Publisher Yale
Call Number ND623.C265 A4 2011
Synopsis from publisher
The Italian artist Caravaggio (1571-1610) had a profound impact on a wide range of baroque painters of Italian, French, Dutch, Flemish, and Spanish origin who resided in Rome either during his lifetime or immediately afterward. This captivating book illustrates the notion of "Caravaggism," showcasing 65 works by Peter Paul Rubens and other important artists of the period who drew inspiration from Caravaggio. Also depicted are Caravaggio canvases that fully exhibit his distinctive style, along with ones that had a particularly discernible impact on other practitioners.

Title Modigliani
Author Meryle Secrest
Publisher Alfred A. Knopf
Call NumberND623.M67 S43 2011
Synopsis from Publisher
Amedeo (“Beloved of God”) Modigliani was considered to be the quintessential bohemian artist, his legend almost as infamous as Van Gogh’s. In Modigliani’s time, his work was seen as an oddity: contemporary with the Cubists but not part of their movement. His work was a link between such portraitists as Whistler, Sargent, and Toulouse-Lautrec and that of the Art Deco painters of the 1920s as well as the new approaches of Gauguin, Cézanne, and Picasso.

New Library Books in Literature

The Synopsis is removed to accommodate more titles.

Title The Oxford Handbook of Children's Literature
Author Julia L. Mickenberg & Lynne Vallone, Eds.
Publisher Oxford
Call Number PR990.O94 2011

Title Beowulf: And Other Old English Poems
Author Craig Williamson, Ed.
Publisher University of Pennsylvania
Call Number PR1583.W55 2011

Title Verdi's Shakespeare: Men of the Theater
Author Garry Wills
Publisher  Viking
Call Number PR2880.V4 W56 2011

Title Chesterton: The Nightmare Goodness of God
Author Ralphg C. Wood
Publisher Baylor University Press
Call Number PR4453.C4 Z885 2011

Title Dickens: His Parables, and His Reader
Author Linda M. Lewis
Publisher University of Missouri
Call Number PR4592.B5 L49 2011

Title T.S. Eliot in Context
Author Jason Harding, Ed.
Publisher Cambridge
Call Number PS3509.L43 Z87256 2011

Title Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961
Author Paul Hendrickson
Publisher Alfred A. Knopf
Call Number PS3515.Z628 2011

Title The Achievement of Wendell Berry: The Hard History of Love
Author: Fritz Oehlschlager
Publisher University of Kentucky
Call Number:  PS3552.E75 Z79 2011

Title Higher Gossip: Essays and Criticism
Author John Updike
Publisher Knopf
Call Number PS3571.P4 A6 2011

Five New Library Books in Church History

Title: The Unintended Reformation: How a Religiouis Revolution Secularized Society
Author Brad S. Gregory
Publisher Harvard
Call Number BL2747.8.G74 2012
Synopsis from Publisher
In a work that is as much about the present as the past, Brad Gregory identifies the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation and traces the way it shaped the modern condition over the course of the following five centuries. A hyperpluralism of religious and secular beliefs, an absence of any substantive common good, the triumph of capitalism and its driver, consumerism—all these, Gregory argues, were long-term effects of a movement that marked the end of more than a millennium during which Christianity provided a framework for shared intellectual, social, and moral life in the West.

Title:  The Second Disestablishment: Church and State in Nineteenth-Century America
Author Steven K. Green
Publisher Oxford
Call Number BR516.G65 2010
Synopsis from Publisher

Debates over the proper relationship between church and state in America tend to focus either on the founding period or the twentieth century. Left undiscussed is the long period between the ratification of the Constitution and the 1947 Supreme Court ruling inEverson v. Board of Education,which mandated that the Establishment Clause applied to state and local governments. Steven Green illuminates this neglected period, arguing that during the 19th century there was a "second disestablishment." By the early 1800s, formal political disestablishment was the rule at the national level, and almost universal among the states. Yet the United States remained a Christian nation, and Protestant beliefs and values dominated American culture and institutions. Evangelical Protestantism rose to cultural dominance through moral reform societies and behavioral laws that were undergirded by a maxim that Christianity formed part of the law. Simultaneously, law became secularized, religious pluralism increased, and the Protestant-oriented public education system was transformed. This latter impulse set the stage for the constitutional disestablishment of the twentieth century. The Second Disestablishmentexamines competing ideologies: of evangelical Protestants who sought to create a "Christian nation," and of those who advocated broader notions of separation of church and state. Green shows that the second disestablishment is the missing link between the Establishment Clause and the modern Supreme Court's church-state decisions.

Title: The Virgin of Chartres: Making History through Liturgy and the Arts
Author Margot E. Fassler
Publisher Yale
Call Number BR848.C47 2010
Synopsis from Publisher

Medieval Christians knew the past primarily through what they saw and heard. History was reenacted every year in ritual observances particular to each place and region and rooted in the legends of local saints.This richly illustrated book explores the layers of history found in the cult of the Virgin of Chartres as it developed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Focusing on the major relic of Chartres Cathedral, the Virgin’s gown, and the Feast of Mary's Nativity, Margot Fassler employs a wide range of historical evidence including local histories, letters, obituaries, chants, liturgical sources, and reports of miracles, leading to a detailed reading of the cathedral's west façade. This interdisciplinary volume will prove invaluable to historians who work in religion, politics, music, and art but will also serve as a guidebook for all interested in the history of Chartres Cathedral.

Title: Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China
Author Lian Xi
Publisher Yale
Call Number BR 1288.L55 2010
Synopsis from publisher
This book is the first to address the history and future of homegrown, mass Chinese Christianity. Drawing on a large collection of fresh sources—including contemporaneous accounts, diaries, memoirs, archival material, and interviews—Lian Xi traces the transformation of Protestant Christianity in twentieth-century China from a small, beleaguered “missionary” church buffeted by antiforeignism to an indigenous popular religion energized by nationalism and millenarianism. Lian shows that, with a current membership that rivals that of the Chinese Communist Party, and the ability to galvanize China’s millions into apocalyptic convulsion and messianic exuberance, the popular Christian movement channels the aspirations and the discontent of the masses and will play an important role in shaping the country’s future

Title: From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism
Author D.G. Hart
Publisher Eerdmans
Call Number BR 1642.U5 H3745 2011
Synopsis from Publisher
 From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin provides an iconoclastic new history of the entrance of evangelical Christians into national American politics. Examining the key players of the Religious Right Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Chuck Colson, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, and many others D. G. Hart argues that evangelicalism is (and always has been) a bad fit with classic political conservatism.

New Library Books in Science and Medicine

In order to show more new books, the synopsis section has been removed. 

Title: The Philosophical Breakfast Club: Four Remarkable Friends Who Transformed Science and Changed the World
Author Laura J. Snyder
Publisher Broadway Books
Call Number Q141.S5635 2011

Title: The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos
Author John D. Barrow
Publisher Norton
Call Number QB981.B2796 2011

Title: The Quantum Story: A History in 40 moments
Author Jim Baggott
Publisher Oxford
Call Number QC173.98.B34 2011

Title: Roald Hoffmann on the Philosophy, Art, and Science of Chemistry
Author Jeffrey Kovac & Michael Weisberg, Eds.
Publisher Oxford
Call Number QD6 .H64 2012

Title: Pox: An American History
Author Michael Willrich
Publisher Penguin Press
Call Number RA644.S6 W55 2011

Title: Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America
Author Sara Dubow
Publisher Oxford
Call Number RG600.D33 2011

New Library Books in Philosophy and Psychology

In the interest of providing more new books here, the synopsis for each book. will not be in this post

Title: The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life
Author  Bettany Hughes
Publisher Knopf
Call Number:B316.H84 2011

Title: The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy v.1
Author Robert Pasnau, ed.
Publisher Cambridge
Call Number: B721.C355 2010 v.1

Title: Love: A History
Author Simon May
Publisher Yale
Call Number: BD436.M375 2011

Title: boredom: a lively history
Author Peter Toohey
Publisher Yale
Call Number: BF575.B67 T66 2011

Title: The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life
Author Robert Trivers
Publisher Basic Books
Call Number: BF697.5.S426 2011

Title: Becoming Who We Are: Temperament and Personality in Development
Author Mary K. Rothbart
Publisher Guilford
Call Number: BF723.T53 R68 2011

New library Books in Music

Title Unmasking Ravel: New Perspectives on the Music
Author Peter Kaminsky, Ed.
Publisher University of Rochester
Call Number ML410.R23 U56 2011
Synopsis from the publisher

Unmasking Ravel: New Perspectives on the Music fills a unique place in Ravel studies by combining critical interpretation and analytical focus. From the premiere of his works up to the present, Ravel has been associated with masks and the related notions of artifice and imposture. This has led scholars to perceive a lack of depth in his music and, consequently, to discourage investigation of his musical language. This volume balances and interweaves these modes of inquiry. Part 1, "Orientations and Influences," illuminates the sometimes contradictory aesthetic, biographical, and literary strands comprising Ravel's artistry and our understanding of it. Part 2, "Analytical Case Studies," engages representative works from Ravel's major genres using a variety of methodologies, focusing on structural process and his complex relation to stylistic convention. Part 3, "Interdisciplinary Studies," integrates musical analysis and art criticism, semiotics, and psychoanalysis in creating novel methodologies. Contributors include prominent scholars of Ravel's and fin-de-siècle music: Elliott Antokoletz, Gurminder Bhogal, Sigrun B. Heinzelmann, Volker Helbing, Steven Huebner, Peter Kaminsky, Barbara Kelly, David Korevaar, Daphne Leong, Michael Puri, and Lauri Suurpää. Peter Kaminsky is Professor of music at the University of Connecticut, Storrs.

Title The Performance of 16th Century Music
Author Anne Smith
Publisher Oxford
Call Number ML457.S65 2011
Excerpt of Synopsis from the publisher
Most modern performers, trained on the performance practices of the Classical and Romantic periods, come to the music of the Renaissance with well-honed but anachronistic ideas. Fundamental differences between 16th-century repertoire and that of later epochs thus tend to be overlooked-yet it is just these differences which can make a performance truly stunning.

Title Buena Vista in the Club: Rap Reggaeton, and Revolution in Havana
Author Geoffrey Baker
Publisher Duke
Call Number ML3531.B35 2011
Synopsis from the publisher:

In Buena Vista in the Club, Geoffrey Baker traces the trajectory of the Havana hip hop scene from the late 1980s to the present and analyzes its partial eclipse by reggaetón. While Cuban officials initially rejected rap as “the music of the enemy,” leading figures in the hip hop scene soon convinced certain cultural institutions to accept and then promote rap as part of Cuba’s national culture. Culminating in the creation of the state-run Cuban Rap Agency, this process of “nationalization” drew on the shared ideological roots of hip hop and the Cuban nation and the historical connections between Cubans and African Americans. At the same time, young Havana rappers used hip hop, the music of urban inequality par excellence, to critique the rapid changes occurring in Havana since the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union fell, its subsidy of Cuba ceased, and a tourism-based economy emerged. Baker considers the explosion of reggaetón in the early 2000s as a reflection of the “new materialism” that accompanied the influx of foreign consumer goods and cultural priorities into “sociocapitalist” Havana. Exploring the transnational dimensions of Cuba’s urban music, he examines how foreigners supported and documented Havana’s growing hip hop scene starting in the late 1990s and represented it in print and on film and CD. He argues that the discursive framing of Cuban rap played a crucial part in its success.

Title Evenings at the Opera : An Exploration of the Basic Repertoire
Author Jeffrey Langford
Publisher Amadeus Press
Call Number MT95.L354 2011
Synopsis from the publisher

Evenings at the Opera: An Exploration of the Basic Repertoire is a collection of essays based on Jeffery Langford's lectures at the Manhattan School of Music and inspired by his pre-performance talks at the Metropolitan Opera Guild. It presents a unique view of the stylistic development of nearly 200 years of opera history (from Mozart to Britten), with special attention to the question of how the genre's competing components of action, music, and text combine to make effective music drama. Taking a thematic (rather than a purely historical) approach to this exploration of selected works from the standard repertoire, Langford engages the reader in the fundamental question of how the shifting aesthetics of opera from one composer to another, one country to another, and one era to another have resulted in vastly different solutions to the problem of how to make a dramma per musica (drama in music), as the Italian inventors of opera first called it. Going beyond mere plot synopsis, he guides the reader through analysis of specific issues of musical form, style, and technique to shed new light on the perennial question of "how opera (sometimes) works."

New Books in Literature

Title: The American
Author Henry James
PublisherW.W. Norton
Call Number PS2116.A6  1978
Synopsis
As part of the Norton Critical Editions, this book contains the authoritative text with backgrounds and sources and criticism of the American. 

Title Edith Wharton
Author Hermione Lee
Publisher Vintage
Call Number PS3545.H16 Z695 2008
Synopsis from publisher:
 Biographer Lee gives us a new Edith Wharton--tough, startlingly modern, as brilliant and complex as her fiction. Born in 1862, Wharton escaped the suffocating fate of the well-born female, traveled adventurously in Europe and eventually settled in France. She developed a forceful literary professionalism and thrived in a luminous society that included Bernard Berenson, Aldous Huxley and most famously Henry James, who here emerges more as peer than as master. Wharton's life was fed by nonliterary enthusiasms as well: houses and gardens, relief efforts during the Great War, and the culture of the Old World, which she never tired of absorbing. Yet intimacy eluded her: unhappily married and childless, her one brush with passion came and went in midlife, an affair intimately recounted here. Lee interweaves Wharton's life with the evolution of her writing, the full scope of which shows her to be far more daring than her stereotype as lapidarian chronicler of the Gilded Age.--From publisher description.

Title: To Die For : A Novel of Anne Boleyn
Author : Sandra Byrd
Publisher Howard Books
Call Number PS3552.Y678 T6 2011
Synopsis

To Die For, is the story of Meg Wyatt, pledged forever as the best friend to Anne Boleyn since their childhoods on neighboring manors in Kent. When Anne’s star begins to ascend, of course she takes her best friend Meg along for the ride. Life in the court of Henry VIII is thrilling at first, but as Anne’s favor rises and falls, so does Meg’s. And though she’s pledged her loyalty to Anne no matter what the test, Meg just might lose her greatest love—and her own life—because of it.  Meg's childhood flirtation with a boy on a neighboring estate turns to true love early on. When he is called to follow the Lord and be a priest she turns her back on both the man and his God. Slowly, though, both woo her back through the heady times of the English reformation. In the midst of it, Meg finds her place in history, her own calling to the Lord that she must follow, too, with consequences of her own. Each character in the book is tested to figure out what love really means, and what, in this life, is worth dying for.
Though much of Meg’s story is fictionalized, it is drawn from known facts. The Wyatt family and the Boleyn family were neighbors and friends, and perhaps even distant cousins. Meg’s brother, Thomas Wyatt, wooed Anne Boleyn and ultimately came very close to the axe blade for it. Two Wyatt sisters attended Anne at her death, and at her death, she gave one of them her jeweled prayer book—Meg.

Title Wicked : The life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Author Gregory Maguire
Publisher: Harper
Call Number PS3563.A3535 W5 2007
Synopsis
"It's not easy being green."

New Library Books in Education

Title: Wasting Minds: Why Our Education System is Failing and What We Can Do About It.
Author: Ronald A. Wolk
Publisher: Alexandria, VA. ASCD
Call Number:LA217.2.W65 2011
Synopsis from Google Books:
Renowned education journalist Ronald A. Wolk the founder and former editor of Education Week and Teacher Magazine skewers the conventional wisdom of the day about education reform and illuminates a way forward to higher student achievement

Title:Transformative Curriculum Leadership
Author: James G. Henderson & Rosemary Gonik
Publisher: Upper Saddle River, NJ Prentice-Hall
Call Number: LB1570.H45 2007
Synopsis from publisher:

From a leading curriculum scholar, in collaboration with a progressive school curriculum leader, comes a unique synthesis of the leading theories in the discipline of curriculum studies and a powerful model of curriculum problem solving centered in constructivist learning and democratic understanding. Grounded in extensive professional experiences, this text advances a type of curriculum problem-solving leadership consistent with the ideals of a democratic society.

Title: The Challenge of School Reform: A Journalist's Education in the Classroom
Author: David S. Awbrey
Publisher:New York: Rowman & Littlefield
Call Number:LB1623.5.A95 2011
Table of Contents:
Why Teach?, Why Pipkin? -- Imagining History -- Teaching Charlemagne -- A Monk's Education --
Generation Global -- Class Matters -- Faith in History -- Courting Middle Schoolers
-- Medieval Visions -- Miseducated Educators --The Hell of Denial --The Stalled Crusade
-- People of History -- What the Teacher Learned

Title:The Education Mayor: Improving America's Schools
Author: Kennety Wong; Francis X. Shen; dorothea Anagnostopoulos; Stacey Rutledge
Publisher:Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press
Call Number:LB2805.E282 2007
Synopsis from publisher:

In 2002 the No Child Left Behind Act rocked America's schools with new initiatives for results-based accountability. But years before NCLB was signed, a new movement was already under way by mayors to take control of city schools from school boards and integrate the management of public education with the overall governing of the city. The Education Mayor is a critical look at mayoral control of urban school districts, beginning with Boston's schools in 1992 and examining more than 100 school districts in 40 states. The authors seek to answer four central questions: What does school governance look like under mayoral leadership? How does mayoral control affect school and student performance? What are the key factors for success or failure of integrated governance? How does mayoral control effect practical changes in schools and classrooms? The results of their examination indicate that, although mayoral control of schools may not be appropriate for every district, it can successfully emphasize accountability across the education system, providing more leverage for each school district to strengthen its educational infrastructure and improve student performance. Based on extensive quantitative data as well as case studies, this analytical study provides a balanced look at America's education reform. As the first multidistrict empirical examination and most comprehensive overall evaluation of mayoral school reform, The Education Mayor is a must-read for academics, policymakers, educational administrators, and civic and political leaders concerned about public education.

I want to alert you to a new set of videos from TED, TED-Ed: Lessons Worth Sharing http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDEducation which includes a variety of TED talks about different topics of interest to educators and learners.

New History Books in the B. Thomas Golisano Library

Title: The Templars: the History & the Myth
Author: Michael Haag
Publisher: Harper
Call Number: CR4743.H32 2009
Synopsis from the Publisher:
The first history of the legendary knights since the Vatican momentously released the records of their trial and exoneration

Title: Paris in the Middle Ages
Author: Simone Roux
Publisher:University of Pennsylvania
Call Number: DC707.R67513 2009
Synopsis from the Publisher:
Paris in the Middle Ages was home to royalty, mountebanks, Knights Templar, merchants, prostitutes, and canons. Bursting outward from the encompassing wall, it was Europe's largest, most cosmopolitan city. Simone Roux chronicles the lives of Parisians over the course of a dozen generations as Paris grew from a military stronghold after the Battle of Bouvines in 1214 to a city recovering from the Black Death of the 1390s.

Title: Prokopios: The Secret History with Related Texts
Author: Anthony Kaldellis (Ed. and Trans.)
Publisher: Hackett Publishing Co.
Call Number: DF572.P813 2010
Table of Contents:
Glossary of offices and administrative terms
Genealogy of the family of Justinian
Genealogy of the family of Theodora
Map of the eastern Mediterranean in the reign of Justinian
Map of the environs of Constantinople in the reign of Justinian
Map of Constantinople
A guide to the main sources
A guide to scholarship in English
The secret history

Title: The Great Brain Suck and Other American Epiphanies
Author: Eugene Halton
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Call Number: E196.1.H225 2008
Table of contents:
The great brain suck; Out of the fifties;Interlude : go man go; The hunter-gatherers' world's fair;Life, literature, and sociology in turn-of-the century Chicago; Communicating democracy : or shine, perishing republic;Lem's master's voice ;An American epiphany in Nashville;The house on Mount Misery ;The art and craft of home ;Europiphanies; The last days of Lewis Mumford ;Teleparodies ;His one leg.

New Library Books in Christian Ministry

Title: When the Minister is a Woman
Author: Debra E. Harmon & Barbara J. Rhodes
Publisher: Chalice Press
Call Number: BV676.H37 2008
Synopsis from publisher:

Two experienced women pastors share their ministry experiences and those of many female colleagues in order to encourage fledgling women ministers and seminary students on their pathways to local church ministry. Debra Harmon and Barbara Rhodes describe the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful in ministry to help women develop realistic expectations as they enter their first church assignments. With humor and energy the authors look back through their experiences of seeking a position, accepting a call, negotiating equitable salary and benefit packages, accepting the lack of acceptance of some parishioners, finding their particular strengths in ministry, and working within the local church and the local community to extend God's kingdom. Despite all the barriers met and opposition faced, Harmon and Rhodes come out with a tone of joy and enthusiasm for ministry.

Title: Fusion: Turning First-Time Guests into Fully-Engaged Members of Your Church
Author: Nelson Searcy
Publisher: Regal
Call Number: BV820.S43 2007
Synopsis from publisher:

Creating an envrironment  that both embraces our newcomers and excites them enough to return does not happen by chance.  We must be prepared to be effective stewards of those God brings us.  And why shouldn't the Church be the epitome of service at its best, as modeled by the greatest server of all time? Built on The Journey Church of the City's Assimilation Seminar, Fusion embodies a step-by-step, biblically-grounded, tetsted and proven plan for establishing a relationship with necomers that ultimately prompts them to become fully developing members of our congregations.  This innovative, practical guide is full of how-to information, testimonials from the recently assimilated and from participating church leaders, examples of the assimilation materials used and check points to make sure the reader is on track. Engaging, informative and immediately applicable, here is help for setting newcomers ont eh path toward true life transformation and spiritual maturity.

Title: A Light to the Nations: The Missional Church and the Biblical Story
Author: Michael W. Goheen
Publisher: Baker Academic
Call Number: BV2073.G58 2011
Synopsis from publisher
There is a growing body of literature about the missional church, but the word missional is often defined in competing ways with little attempt to ground it deeply in Scripture. Michael Goheen, a dynamic speaker and the coauthor of two popular texts on the biblical narrative, unpacks the missional identity of the church by tracing the role God's people are called to play in the biblical story. Goheen shows that the church's identity can be understood only when its role is articulated in the context of the whole biblical story--not just the New Testament, but the Old Testament as well. He also explores practical outworkings and implications, offering field-tested suggestions for contemporary churches


Title: The Way of Goodness and Holiness: A Spirituality for Pastoral Ministers
Author: Richard M. Gula
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Call Number: BX1920.G86 2011
Synopsis from publisher:

How do ministers, whether lay or ordained, form their spiritual life? What practices do they need to foster in order to become good and to be holy in their service? To answer these questions, Richard Gula invites readers to think along with him about the kind of minister they want to be: "If we don't know where we want to go," he writes, "we will easily end up somewhere else." Gula then presents a variety of virtuesincluding gratitude, self-care, humor, and courageand explains how developing these qualities is essential for a ministers moral and spiritual life. By grounding a spirituality for pastoral ministry in the virtues, Gula provides a way for ministers to bridge the gap between who they are and who they hope to become in imitation of Christ Jesus.

New Books at B. Thomas Golisano Library

Title: Thomas Aquinas and the Philosophy of Punishment
Author: Peter Karl Koritansky
Publisher Catholic University of America
Call Number B765.T54 K63 2010
Table of Contents:
Introduction: modern philosophies of punishment and the return to Aquinas
The problem with the utilitarian theory of punishment
The problem with modern retributivism
Foundations of the Thomistic theory of punishment
The moral basis of punishment: Aquinas's retributivism
Beyond retribution: punishing criminals in political society
Capital punishment, evangelium vitae, and the Thomistic theory of punishment
Conclusion: Thomas Aquinas and modern theories of punishment.

Title: The Recursive Mind: The Origins of Human Language, Thought, and Civilization
Author: Michael C. Corballis
Publisher Princeton
Call Number  BF701.C665 2011
Synopsis from publisher:
The Recursive Mind challenges the commonly held notion that language is what makes us uniquely human. In this compelling book, Michael Corballis argues that what distinguishes us in the animal kingdom is our capacity for recursion: the ability to embed our thoughts within other thoughts. "I think, therefore I am," is an example of recursive thought, because the thinker has inserted himself into his thought. Recursion enables us to conceive of our own minds and the minds of others. It also gives us the power of mental "time travel"--the ability to insert past experiences, or imagined future ones, into present consciousness.

Title: Vygotsky in Perspective
Author: Ronald Miller
Publisher Cambridge
Call Number BF109.V95 M55 2011
Synopsis from publisher:

"Lev Vygotsky has acquired the status of one of the grand masters in psychology. Following the English translation and publication of his Collected Works there has been a new wave of interest in Vygotsky accompanied by a burgeoning of secondary literature. Ronald Miller argues that Vygotsky is increasingly being 'read' and understood through secondary sources and that scholars have claimed Vygotsky as the foundational figure for their own theories, eliminating his most distinctive contributions and distorting his theories. Miller peels away the accumulated layers of commentary to provide a clearer understanding of how Vygotsky built and developed his arguments. In an in-depth analysis of the last three chapters of Vygotsky's book Thinking and Speech, Miller provides a critical interpretation of the core theoretical concepts that constitute Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory, including the development of concepts, mediation, the zone of proximal development, conscious awareness, inner speech, word meaning and consciousness"--

Title: The Ends of Life: Roads to Fulfilment in Early Modern England
Author: Keith Thomas
Publisher Oxford
Call Number BJ1547.T56 2010
Synopsis from publisher:

Hailed as "immediately and universally recognized as indispensable" (TLS) and "compellingly readable, richly researched, fascinatingly detailed, delightfully written" (LRB), here is a masterful exploration of the ways in which people sought to lead fulfilling lives, illuminating the central values of early modern England, while casting incidental light on some of the perennial problems of human existence. Keith Thomas, one of the foremost historians of our time, sheds light on the origins of the modern ideal of human fulfillment and explores the many obstacles to its realization, looking at work, wealth, possessions, friendship, family, and sociability. The book looks at the cult of military prowess, the pursuit of honor and reputation, the nature of religious belief, and the desire to be posthumously remembered. The Ends of Life offers a fresh approach to the history of early modern England, providing modern readers with much food for thought on the problem of how we should live and what goals in life we should pursue.

New Library books in Health and Health Technology

Title Living Well and Dying Faithfully: Christian Practice for End-of-life Care
Author: Eds. John Swinton & Ricyard Payne
Publisher: Eerdmans
Call Number: R726.L556 2009
Synopsis:

Living Well and Dying Faithfully explores how Christian practices - love, prayer, lament, compassion, and so on - can contribute to the process of dying well. Working on the premise that one dies the way one lives, the book is unique in its constructive dialogue between theology and medicine as offering two complementary modes of care. Book jacket.

Title Obesity: Opposing Viewpoints
Author:
Publisher: Greenhaven
Call Number: RA645.O23 O22 2011
Synopsis:
Part of a research series which presents two divergent views on various aspects of chosen topics, this book updates earlier Viewpoints (2008) about Obesity issues such as the seriousness of the problem, the causes, who should be responsible for solving obesity, and the solutions offered.

Title Kids, Sports, and Concussion: A Guide for Coaches and Parents
Author: William Paul Meehan III, MD
Publisher: Praeger
Call Number: RC1218.C45 M44 2011
Synopsis from publisher:

Written by an expert physician, Kids, Sports, and Concussion: A Guide for Coaches and Parents offers a thorough understanding of concussive brain injury, its symptoms, its potential long-term effects, and the current prevention options. Equally important, it provides insights into how this injury is treated and what parents and athletes can do to facilitate recovery. In addition to explaining in simple, clear, and complete terms what a concussion is and how it can alter the brain function of children and youths, this guide discusses new technologies and equipment that may help prevent concussion. It looks at the incidence of concussion in football, hockey, cheerleading, skiing and snowboarding, soccer, basketball, and equestrian sports, and it explores related issues, such as the movement to have soccer and rugby players wear helmets. A final chapter focuses on emerging research designed to facilitate better treatments and on safety measures, including testing for a genetic predisposition to concussion.

 

Title biology is technology: The promise, pereil, and new business of engineering life
Author: Robert H. Carlson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Call Number: TP248.2.C37 2010
Synopsis from publisher:
Technology is a process and a body of knowledge as much as a collection of artifacts. Biology is no different—and we are just beginning to comprehend the challenges inherent in the next stage of biology as a human technology. It is this critical moment, with its wide-ranging implications, that Robert Carlson considers in Biology Is Technology. He offers a uniquely informed perspective on the endeavors that contribute to current progress in this area—the science of biological systems and the technology used to manipulate them.

New Books in Science and Mathematics

Title:  Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World.
Author: Lisa Randall
Publisher: Harper Collins
Call Number: Q175.5.R365 2011
Synopsis from publisher:
The latest developments in physics have the potential to radically revise our understanding of the world: its makeup, its evolution, and the fundamental forces that drive its operation. Knocking on Heaven’s Door is an exhilarating and accessible overview of these developments and an impassioned argument for the significance of science.

The most sweeping and exciting science book in years, Knocking on Heaven’s Door makes clear the biggest scientific questions we face and reveals how answering them could ultimately tell us who we are and where we came from.

Title: Kiss my Math: Showing Pre-Algebra Who's Boss
Author: Danica McKellar
Publisher: Plume
Call Number: QA152.3.M354 2009
Synopsis from publisher:
In her New York Times bestselling books, actress and math genius Danica McKellar shatters the math nerd stereotype and gives girls the tools to ace middle-school math in her unique, just-us-girls style. Now, in her second book, Kiss My Math, McKellar empowers a new crop of girlsseventh to ninth gradersto tackle the next level of mathematics: pre-algebra

Title: The Mathematics of Life
Author: Ian Stewart
Publisher: Basic Books
Call Number:QA323.5.S742 2011b
Synopsis from publisher:

Biologists have long dismissed mathematics as being unable to meaningfully contribute to our understanding of living beings. Within the past ten years, however, mathematicians have proven that they hold the key to unlocking the mysteries of our world--and ourselves. In The Mathematics of Life, Ian Stewart provides a fascinating overview of the vital but little-recognized role mathematics has played in pulling back the curtain on the hidden complexities of the natural world--and how its contribution will be even more vital in the years ahead. In his characteristically clear and entertaining fashion, Stewart explains how mathematicians and biologists have come to work together on some of the most difficult scientific problems that the human race has ever tackled, including the nature and origin of life itself.

Title: Means to an End: Apoptosis and Other Cell Death Mechanisms
Author: Douglas R. Green
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
Call Number: QH671.G74 2011
Synopsis:
The table of contents indicates the discussion of the life and death of cells and the application to cancer/

New books in Communication Arts and Literature

Title:The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
Author: Stephen Greenblatt
Publisher:W.W. Norton
Call Number: PA6484.G69 2011
Synopsis from publisher:

In this book the author transports readers to the dawn of the Renaissance and chronicles the life of an intrepid book lover who rescued the Roman philosophical text On the Nature of Things from certain oblivion. In this work he has crafted both a work ofhistory and a story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it. Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius, a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions. The copying and translation of this ancient book, the greatest discovery of the greatest book-hunter of his age, fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare and even Thomas Jefferson.

Title: Can Journalism Be Saved? Rediscovering America's Appetite for News
Author: Rachel Davis Mersey
Publisher: Praeger
Call Number: PN4867.2.M47 2010
Synopsis from publisher:

By some measures, it would seem that print journalism is dying. Journalism recently suffered one of its worst circulation declines in years: a drop of more than ten percent in the a six month period ending September 30, 2009. The Rocky Mountain News in Denver, CO, closed its doors in 2009after it dominated the AP awards in 2008, and was lauded for an investigative expose on unfair treatment of former nuclear workers. Even the New York Times and the Washington Post are experiencing financial trouble. But print advertising revenue still trumps online advertising revenue ten-fold. Is there hope yet for traditional journalism? This book reviews the complicated challenge facing journalism, tracing its 19th-century community-oriented origins and documenting the vast expansion of the news business via blogs and other Internet-enabled outlets, user-generated content, and news-like alternatives. The author argues that a radical shift in mindsetstriving to meet each individual's demands for what he wants to knowwill be necessary to save journalism.

Title: Charles Dickens in Context
Author: Sally Ledger and Holly Furneaux, eds.
Publisher: Cambridge
Call Number: PR4588.C3597 2011
Synopsis from publisher:
Charles Dickens, a man so representative of his age as to have become considered synonymous with it, demands to be read in context. This book illuminates the worlds - social, political, economic and artistic - in which Dickens worked. Dickens's professional life encompassed work as a novelist, journalist, editor, public reader and passionate advocate of social reform

Title: Colonialism in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart
Author:
Publisher: Greenhaven Press
Call Number:PR9387.9.A3 T523975 2010
Synopsisfrom publisher:

Great literary works resonate with readers not only because of well-developed characters and plots, but also because they often reflect important social themes. The Social Issues in Literature series brings together the disciplines of sociology and literature in a unique format designed to support cross-curricular studies. Each volume explores a work of literature through the lens of the major social issue reflected in it, and features carefully-selected content representing a variety of perspectives. All volumes in the series contain biographical and critical information about the author; secondary excerpts offering both historical and contemporary views of the highlighted social issue; a timeline of the author's life; a For Further Reading section of other works on the issue; and a detailed subject index. Book jacket.