By Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger with Jeffrey Zaslow
HarperCollins ©2009 | Hardcover 340pgs
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Russ Imamura
Rarely do I read autobiographies of contemporary people. I find many of these writings are usually shallow stories of egotistical movie stars, sports figures, politicians or tele-evangelists. These books hardly ever leave me with any lasting worthwhile impressions.
However, after seeing Captain “Sully” Sullenberger on television earlier this year being interviewed by many people about his courageous handling of the Airbus plane on the icy Hudson River, I was immediately impressed by this human being. The qualities exuded by this person as he spoke were very genuine, upright, and commanding. When his book was published I had to get it right away to find out more about him.
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By Tami Hoag
Dutton Adult | 432pgs
Release Date: December 29, 2009
Tami Hoag takes readers on an intense hunt for a serial killer in her latest thriller, Deeper Than the Dead. The story opens in 1984, when three children stumble upon a partially buried corpse in the woods. The female victim’s eyes and mouth have been glued shut, and Detective Tony Mendez quickly recognizes this as the work of a serial murderer. In this time, DNA matching and internet searches are still the stuff of science fiction. But, Mendez hopes to use the most cutting edge techniques available to catch the killer, and reaches out to the FBI’s newly formed criminal profiling unit for help. They soon zero in on a suspect, and enlist the assistance of school teacher Anne Navarro to learn more about the man and his young son. If their suspicions are true, and this pillar of the community really is a cold-blooded killer, the affluent town of Oak Knoll, CA will be rocked to its foundations.
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By Terry Teachout
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | 496pgs
Release Date: December 2, 2009
In this new biography of jazz legend Louis Armstrong, Wall Street Journal columnist Terry Teachout mines a trove of previously unpublished material to show the complexity of Armstrong’s character. The narrative voice of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong reverberates with warmth and soul, echoing the core of Satchmo’s music. Teachout gained access to hundreds of Armstrong’s private recordings of backstage and late-night conversations, made mostly during the last half of the musician’s life. His inner strength and sheer love of music shine through in these personal exchanges, and are the foundation of his ability to overcome the racial tensions of the times. “Faced with the terrible realities of the time and place into which he had been born,” Teachout writes, “he didn’t repine, but returned love for hatred and sought salvation in work.”
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After 50 years of writing mystery novels, author P.D. James knows a thing or two about crafting a well-written plot. In her new non-fiction book, Talking About Detective Fiction, James discusses the history of the mystery genre and the construct of a good crime novel. “There must be a central mystery,” she explains, “and one that by the end of the book is solved satisfactorily and logically, not by good luck or intuition, but by intelligent deduction from clues honestly if deceptively presented.” James focuses primarily on British authors, and her opinions of some of the genre’s icons are surprising and amusing. Agatha Christie, she posits, “hasn’t in my view had a profound influence on the later development of the detective story.” Though James does offer this backhanded compliment to mystery legend: “Perhaps her greatest strength was that she never overstepped the limits of her talent.” James also prefers Dr. Watson over Sherlock Holmes, finding his character more genuine and relatable, though she does raise some questions about the coziness of their household.
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Several blogs have published their lists of the best book cover designs of 2009. Here is a round-up of the standouts: This year, The Book Design Review asked employees of three independent book stores to contribute to their Favorite Covers list. The three part post showcases the selections of staff from WORD in Brooklyn, NY, RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth, NH, and The Book Table in Oak Park, IL. The design styles, like the books’ subject matter, vary greatly. But there are some stellar examples of good design, particularly The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa and Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Readers can vote for their own favorite design in the on-line polls. The Book Cover Archive takes the list one step further with their Top Ten of Covers of the ’00s post. Two covers were chosen to represent each year in the decade, among them, memorable designs for A Shortcut Through Time by George Johnson and The Murder by John Steinbeck.
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By Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
Atria | 320pgs
Release Date: December 15, 2009
Nanny Returns, the much-anticipated sequel to the The Nanny Diaries, picks up twelve years after the original hit novel left off. Nan and her husband, “Harvard Hottie” Ryan, have returned to New York after a long period of living abroad to begin a new life. Amid the chaos of starting a business, renovating their home and adjusting to a new position at a pretentious private school, Nan re-connects with Grayer X, and his younger brother Stilton. To placate their feelings of abandonment at her departure over a decade ago, she vows to help the boys through their parents’ nasty divorce. As she is again sucked into the X family’s vicious society of privilege and power, she witnesses the damage that this life has done to the boys. These realizations, along with Ryan’s push to start a family, make Nan question whether or not she has the stomach for motherhood.
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Nearly 200 years after her death, Jane Austen remains one of the world’s best-loved authors. Much has been written about her work and life, and for decades it was widely accepted that she died from Addison’s disease, a rare disorder in which the adrenal gland does not produce enough hormones. However, CNN reports that social scientist Katherine White disputes the diagnosis and theorizes that Austen died of tuberculosis. An article for the British Medical Journal published in 1964, was the first to suggest Austen had Addison’s disease. White, who also suffers from the disease, recently read the article and felt the author’s symptoms did not add up. Sufferers often experience painful headaches and verbal difficulties. But in a letter to a friend written just two months before hear death, Austen states: “My head was always clear, and I had scarcely any pain.” Though this is only anectodal evidence from two centuries ago, endocrinology expert Kenneth Burman agrees there is some merit to White’s theory, due to the wide spread of tuberculosis during the author’s lifetime. Though he warns: “Retrospective diagnosis is very speculative. It’s unknowable with certainty.”
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Last year, close friends and business partners, Tom Matlack and James Houghton, engaged in several deep discussions about the true meaning of manhood. From those discussions, The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood was born. The new book features 31 essays by men from all walks of life, and portrays a wide spectrum of the male experience, from heartbreak to redemption. A 53-minute film documentary, of the same name, has also been released. “We really wanted to spark a national conversation on what it means to be a man, and to help the 30 million boys and girls in our country who don’t have a father,” states Tom Matlack in an interview with L.A. Times’ Jacket Copy. The goal for this project is to help men realize they are not alone. Many feel they have to struggle with emotional issues and societal pressures in silence. Matlack and Houghton hope the men’s real-life stories will be relatable in a non-threatening way. “By getting to know them and reading their stories, I’m better for it. Our hope is that the people who read the book feel the same way,” explains Matlack.
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By Greg Mortenson
Viking Adult | 448pgs
Release Date: December 1, 2009
Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan is Greg Mortenson’s touching follow-up to the bestselling Three Cups of Tea, and details his dogged efforts to fulfill his promise to build a school in the Wakhan Corridor. The Corridor, situated in a desolate part of northeastern Afghanistan, is home to the Kirghiz, and receives little government support for health or education. Mortenson and the international staff of his Central Asia Institute (CAI), affectionately called the “Dirty Dozen”, choose the village of Bozai Gumbaz as the site for the school, and work with local leaders to obtain building materials and labor for construction. The CAI must overcome threats of Taliban violence, an earthquake, ingrained opposition to educating girls, and even Mortenson’s own 8-day abduction, in order to finish the school and give the village children an opportunity for a better life.
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New York Public Library logos old (left) and new (right).
The New York Public Library has updated its brand identity for the digital age. The new logo, a bolder more streamlined version of a lion profile inside a circle, is designed to work both on-line and in print. The simple shapes and smooth curves, along with a new color pallet, allow the mark to be used in a variety of sizes and resolutions without losing any detail. Kievit, a new sans-serif typeface, was chosen to compliment the logo with its contemporary look. The re-design, the first in over 25 years, was done in-house by the library’s creative team, and is based on the stone lions that adorn the main library steps. “It’s primarily based on Fortitude [the northern lion], but it’s a combination of both,” explains Marc Blaustein, art director for the library system. “The angle is Fortitude, but some of the features are inspired by Patience.”
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