These books examine the executive branch and its power throughout U.S. history.

The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power
By Gene Healy
The Bush years have given rise to fears of a resurgent Imperial Presidency, but Healy argues the problem cannot be solved simply by bringing a new administration to power. Combining historical scholarship, legal analysis, and cultural commentary, The Cult of the Presidency argues that the office of chief executive needs to be reined in, with its powers checked by Congress and the courts. Only then will we begin to return the presidency to its proper constitutional role.

Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy
By Charlie Savage
Savage investigates how the Bush-Cheney administration has seized vast, unprecedented powers for the presidency. He argues that such imperialism stands to permanently alter the constitutional balance of American democracy.

The 33rd president of the United States and a native of Missouri, Harry S. Truman also served as an officer during World War I, a U.S. Senator, and Vice President. These books include general biographies of Truman and works that examine his presidency, as well as his memoirs, letters, and speeches.

Biographies | Memoirs, letters & speeches | Truman’s presidency

Biographies

Truman
By David McCullough
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this monumental biography depicts an extraordinary president, Harry Truman – the man who brought the country solidly into the 20th century. Drawing from archival materials and extensive interviews, McCullough chronicles Truman's life, but it is Truman's emergence as a decisive and confident president that forms the heart of this book.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Recently, Harper Collins announced that it will publish two of Michael Crichton’s unfinished novels. Prior to that, the upcoming publication of an unfinished David Foster Wallace novel made the news. Even thirty years after the death of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, his son has announced that Nabokov’s unfinished The Original of Laura will be published in 2009 – disregarding Nabokov’s wishes to have it burned after his death.

Stephen Moss at The Guardian writes, “Leave unfinished works alone - let their authors rest in peace.” What do you think?

Have you ever read an unfinished novel? These books were all incomplete when the authors died.

Prime minister of Britain, a soldier, writer, and politician, Winston Churchill has had hundreds of books written about him. This selection includes ten books about Churchill published in the last few years.

Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England
By Lynne Olson
Olson presents a riveting history of the daring politicians who challenged the disastrous policies of the British government on the eve of World War II, describing in dramatic detail the public unrest that erupted as people realized how ill prepared the nation was to confront Hitler.

Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Dire Warning
By John Lukacs
A bestselling historian considers Churchill's first speech before Parliament after he became Prime Minister – a speech that transformed both Churchill and the nation he had come to lead.

Common Grounds book group gathered on a snowy Saturday to wander the halls of Tobias Wolff’s debut novel, Old School. Christa and Michael both liked the selection and wished more readers had braved the weather to discuss it.

From astronauts to engineers and other space pioneers, these ten biographies help tell the story of the Space Race.

The Right Stuff
By Tom Wolfe
The first Americans in space--Yeager, Conrad, Grissom, and Glenn--battle the Russians for control of the heavens and put their lives on the line to demonstrate a quality beyond courage, in this classic by Wolfe.

Promised the Moon: The Untold Story of the First Women in the Space Race
By Stephanie Nolen
A female world-record-setting pilot, Jerrie Cobb was recruited in 1959 to take the astronaut tests. She excelled, so the doctor who supervised the selection of NASA's Mercury astronauts recruited additional female pilots. Twelve performed exceptionally. Stephanie Nolen tracked down eleven of the surviving "Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainees" and learned the story of those early days of the space race and the disappointment when, in 1961, the women were grounded.

Are you working 24/7 because you can’t unplug from your mobile phone or the Internet? Technology has blurred the lines between work and home, affecting everything from how we use our time to how we relate to one another. These books examine technology’s impact on our society, culture, and economy.

Elsewhere, U.S.A.: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms, and Economic Anxiety
By Dalton Conley
The division between work and home has been all but demolished, replaced by a weightless, wireless economy that encourages work at the expense of leisure. Conley, a preeminent social scientist, provides an X-ray view of the nation's new social reality.

In this current school year, more than 6,200 Teach for America corps members are teaching in America's neediest communities, reaching approximately 400,000 students. These books discuss the Teach for America experience and model or examine urban education in general.

Teach for America | Urban education

Teach for America

One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach For America and What I Learned Along the Way
By Wendy Kopp
Not just a personal memoir, this is a blueprint for a new civil rights movement that demands educational access and opportunity for all American children.

I imagine this book award slipped by you: the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year. Sponsored by The Bookseller magazine, anyone can nominate a book title for this prize and votes by the public are tallied online. It has nothing to do with content and everything to do with, well, title oddity.

The Bookseller recently announced the 2008 winnerThe 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-miligram Containers of Fromage Frais – which beat out Baboon Metaphysics, Strip and Knit with Style, and Curbside Consultation of the Colon, among others.

So, in the spirit of the Diagram Prize, here are a few titles published in 2009 that I thought might be worthy of this illustrious award. Which one would you vote for? Or suggest another title in a comment below!

Nuclear Jellyfish book jacket

Forbidden Bread: A Memoir by Erica Johnson-Debeljak

The novels in these series mix up the genres with a blend of fantasy and mystery.

Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher
Meet Harry Dresden, a professional wizard and investigator with a consulting practice in modern-day Chicago. Dresden’s profession offers him little money, lots of mockery, the suspicion of his magical colleagues, and plenty of danger.

Pick up a book by award-winning author Sandra Cisneros or discover a novel that you might like if you enjoy Cisneros’ work in this recommended book list. Cisneros visits the Library on April 16, 2009, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the publication of her classic The House on Mango Street

Books by Sandra Cisneros
If you like Sandra Cisneros, try one of these novels…

Books by Sandra Cisneros

The House on Mango Street book jacket

The House on Mango Street
By Sandra Cisneros
In a series of vignettes stunning for their eloquence, this is the story of Esperanza Cordero, a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago with all its hard realities of life. She captures her thoughts and emotions in poems and stories in order to rise above the hopelessness and create a space for herself.

Amelia Earhart

Get to know the pioneering aviatrix Amelia Earhart in these books about her life and career or pick up a novel centered on her mysterious disappearance.

Biographies | Books by Amelia Earhart | Amelia Earhart in fiction

Biographies

Amelia Earhart: A Biography
By Doris L. Rich
She died mysteriously before she was forty. Yet in the last decade of her life Amelia Earhart soared from obscurity to fame as the best-known female aviator in the world. Rich's exhaustively researched biography downplays the "What Happened to Amelia Earhart?" myth by disclosing who Earhart really was – a woman of three centuries, born in the 19th, pioneering in the 20th, and advocating ideals and dreams relevant to the 21st.

New Orleans, Photo by Jan Kronsell

These ten nonfiction books explore the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and examine recent concepts in urban planning.

New Orleans | Urban planning

New Orleans

What is a City?: Rethinking the Urban after Hurricane Katrina
Edited by Phil Steinberg and Rob Shields
Dr. Jacob Wagner contributed to this collection of articles that examines the question, “What is a city?” Authors include urban planners, architects, policymakers, and geographers across many disciplines.

Learn all about Sacagawea (sometimes spelled Sacajawea), the Shoshone woman who accompanied Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their famous expedition, or Lewis and Clark in these books at the library.

Sacagawea | Lewis & Clark | The Lewis & Clark Trail

Sacagawea

Veterans and their families write about their experiences with the military, especially in Iraq, in these books at the Library.

Recent military memoirs

Eyes on the Horizon: Serving on the Frontlines of National Security
By General Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell
General Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2001-2005, sets the record straight about the planning and execution of the Iraq War, and offers new ideas for tightening America's national security.

American Soldier
By Tommy Franks with Malcom McConnell
General Franks retraces his journey from a boyhood in Oklahoma and Texas through his heroic tour of duty as Commander-in-Chief of the United States Central Command.

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