By Dan Ariely
Harper | 352pgs
Release Date: June 1, 2010

Summary:
Duke Professor Dan Ariely further explores behavioral economics, and draws some interesting conclusions on human behavior in The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home, his follow-up to the bestselling Predictably Irrational. This time the focus is on the positive, and sometimes negative effects, that irrationality has on our personal and professional lives. Using his own creative experiments, he studies behavior influenced by the IKEA effect – the act of building something instills a sense of ownership that causes us to overvalue the object, and analyzes why huge monetary bonuses can actually be detrimental to job performance. (Hmm, maybe this book should be required reading on Wall Street?) Ariely uses the data from these experiments and his own experience recovering from a painful accident in his youth, to suggest solutions in overcoming negative behavior as individuals, and as a society. Yes, we may be irrational. But, that’s not all bad.
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Chandra Levy's remains were found in Rock Creek Park, about a year after she disappeared.

When Washington intern, Chandra Levy, went missing on May 1, 2001, the news of her disappearance and revelations of an illicit affair with California congressman Gary Condit churned up a media circus. Police and press instantly seized on Condit as a likely suspect, but with the attacks on September 11 several months later, media interest waned and the police investigation stalled. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz launched a fresh journalistic investigation into the disappearance in 2007, and uncovered several key errors in the handling of the case. A book chronicling their discoveries, Finding Chandra: A True Washington Murder Mystery (Scribner, 287pgs) was released this month, and is based on their series of articles published in 2008 by The Washington Post.
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Laura Ingalls Wilder

A couple of years ago, author Wendy McClure made an impromptu revisit of a childhood favorite: the Little House series of books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. In an interview with Knee-Jerk, McClure discusses her re-discovery of the classic childrens’ series and the work that they inspired. “…I was always kind of afraid to go back and reread them, because I feared that they wouldn’t be as good as I remembered,” she explains. “I think I wanted to re-immerse myself and see where it went…I was reading the books and loving them and started telling everyone I knew, ‘It’d be fun to see these places and write a book about it sometime’.” Supportive prodding from a friend in the publishing industry prompted McClure to write The Wilder Life (set to be released in early 2011), a travelogue of sorts, about the author’s experiences visiting historical sites related to the books. “I liked the idea of seeing all these places I felt I knew so well but had never actually been to.”
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When writer Justin Halpern moved back into his parents’ house after the breakup of his relationship, he took what might have been a depressing situation and turned it into a comedic goldmine. In August of last year, Halpern began tweeting the foul-mouthed witticisms spouted by his father, Samuel, on topics as varied as Pringles flavors and raising children. His Twitter feed (shitmydadsays) quickly became a web sensation, now boasts over a million followers, and has recently been turned into a book. Sh*t My Dad Says, which hit stores earlier this month and is now on the New York Times Bestsellers List, expands on the 140-character tweets and includes a few short essays about Halpern’s childhood and his relationship with his father. In a blog post for Powell’s Books, Halpern acknowledges his father’s input and support while writing the book. “Despite his editorializing, reviewing my manuscript with him was a great experience. I was reliving my childhood, and he was reliving that time in our lives, too, except through my eyes.”
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By Evan Thomas
Little, Brown and Company | 480pgs
Release Date: April 27, 2010

The unexplained explosion of the USS Maine, near the coast of Cuba on February 15, 1898, put the gears of war in motion and inflamed relations between the United States and Spain. Evan Thomas examines the confluence of events that triggered the Spanish-American War, and studies the characters of the key players in the U.S’s push to battle, in his new book The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898. Though the cause of the explosion was never determined, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge whipped the public into a war mongering frenzy with the help of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst and his yellow journalism. Hearst’s outlandish accusations in his New York Journal that the USS Maine was destroyed by Spain’s “secret infernal machine” (WMDs anyone?) helped Roosevelt and Lodge convince a compliant President McKinley, and the country as a whole, that war was the answer. Thomas theorizes that the men’s hawkish behavior stemmed from the shame of their fathers’ lack of participation in the Civil War, and the inherited sense of Anglo-Saxon superiority of the upper class.
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By Herman Wouk
Little, Brown and Company | 192pgs
Release Date: April 5, 2010

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Herman Wouk endeavors to integrate the disciplines of faith and science in his latest book The Language God Talks: On Science and Religion. Reflecting on his own experiences, fictional writings and friendships with scientific luminaries during his 94 years of life, Wouk theorizes how religion and science can work together to answer life’s major questions about the purpose of humanity and the value of belief in a higher power. During his research into the history of the atomic bomb for the books The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, the author became acquainted with many leading scientists, including Steven Weinberg, Murray Gell-Mann, and Freeman Dyson. But, it was his friendship with Nobel laureate Richard Feynman that inspired Wouk and helped to re-affirm his faith.
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Camellia sinensis

The British Empire enjoyed incredible power and influence during the 19th century, and though its control extended around the globe, it was the lack of control of a small plant that caused a serious issue. The plant in question, Camellia sinensis, used to make tea, was in serious demand by 1800 as the “cuppa” became a British institution. The problem was that China controlled the world’s tea production, and was no longer interested in trading opium for tea as they had in the past. Beginning in 1850, British entrepreneurs sought to develop tea growing in India, the Asian country under the empire’s control, and employed Scotsman Robert Fortune to steal China’s tea making secrets. Sarah Rose writes about this industrial intrigue in the new book For All the Tea In China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History (Viking Adult, 272pgs). The author calls this endeavor to wrest control of the tea trade the “greatest single act of corporate espionage in history.”
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By Brooke Newman
Harmony | 320pgs
Release Date: March 30, 2010

Brooke Newman recounts the true story of the unusual, yet enduring friendship between her father, James and his African-American housekeeper Jenniemae, in Jenniemae & James: A Memoir in Black and White. James Newman was a brilliant and distinguished mathematician, well known for defining the “googol” (google) concept in math and authoring the important work The World of Mathematics. In contrast, Jenniemae Harrington was a poor, uneducated, heavy-set woman, who though deeply religious, loved to play the lottery with numbers that came to her in dreams. During the ’40′s and ’50′s, the unlikely pair bonded through their sharp minds and shared love of numbers. As racial tensions rose throughout the country, planting the seeds for the Civil Rights Movement, household tensions grew due to James’ infidelities and his wife’s emotional problems. Through it all, Jenniemae became a steady, loving force in the home. This bi-racial friendship may have been outside the cultural norm of the time, yet it blossomed into a wellspring of calm, caring and loyalty for Jenniemae, James, and his family.
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Portrait of René Descartes by Frans Hals

When Erik-Jan Bos, a scholar at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, conducted a recent Google search for documents referencing philosopher René Descartes, he made an extraordinary discovery. A letter written by Descartes in 1641, and later stolen from the Institut de France, had been buried in the archives of Haverford College for over a century. Its theft was documented in the 1880′s, when Count Guglielmo Libri, a mathematics professor and administrator for France’s public libraries, pilfered thousands of valuable letters and documents. He then fled to England to avoid prosecution and sold the pieces off to various buyers. The letter came into the possession of the Pennsylvania college as part of a large collection of correspondence and ephemera, signed by notable political and literary figures, donated by the widow of Haverford alumni Charles Roberts, class of 1864. It is likely that Roberts purchased the letter from a dealer, and did not know it was stolen. Read more…

By Annie Leonard
Free Press | 352pgs
Release Date: March 9, 2010

Environmentalist Annie Leonard continues the conversation on over-consumption started in her internet documentary The Story of Stuff in her new book The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-and a Vision for Change. Expanding on the material in the film, Leonard discusses the five stages of consumer goods: extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal, and how these stages are damaging the environment and lowering the quality of life. Through in-depth research and first hand experience visiting landfills and factories throughout the world, the author illustrates how natural resources are being depleted and how the toxic by-products of manufacturing material goods are ruining people’s health. The never-ending quest for more “stuff” forces many people to work more, enjoy life less, and fill garbage pits with discarded junk. In the face of this consumption crisis, Leonard suggests a shift in societal values towards emotional well-being, rather than material gain, re-adjusting the work-life balance, and introducing strict legislation world-wide to stop the environmental erosion.
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