Video Games
Playaways
New Acquisitions
New Audio-Visual Acquisitions (now includes CDs)
Readers' Advisory
Atrium Displays
Web Sites of Interest

VIDEO GAMES

The Library now has video games to lend! We have games for the following platforms: PlayStation2, PlayStation3, XBOX360 and Wii. Games are available in the Children's Room and the Adult Department. Games may only be borrowed on Adult cards, by Baldwin residents. The loan period is 7 days-games may not be renewed. Adult titles include Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PS2, PS3, XBOX360 and Wii), Halo 3, The Lord of the Rings Conquest (XBOX360), Madden NFL 09 (XBOX360), Mario Part 8 (Wii). Children's titles include Lego Star Wars (XBOX360), Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (Wii) and Lego Indiana Jones (Wii).

PLAYAWAYS

The Baldwin Public Library is proud to announce the addition of Playaways, the newest technology in audiobooks, to our collection. Playaway is the simplest way to listen to an audio book on the go. It comes preloaded with one book on it. No cassettes or CDs. No downloads. Simply plug in earphones or a car adaptor to Playaway’s universal jack and enjoy! And at a mere 2” x 3 ¼”, the Playaway is the ultimate in lightweight portability. Playaways may be borrowed for 28 days. Look for this new collection of best-selling titles in the Audio Books area. Read more about them here.

NEW ACQUISITIONS

CHECK HERE FOR NEW NON-FICTION ACQUISITIONS OF SPECIAL INTEREST
(THESE TITLES ARE LOCATED IN THE NEW BOOK GALLERY)

Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York
by William Grimes (394.1209 G)

In Appetite City, the former New York Times restaurant critic William Grimes leads us on a grand historical tour of New York’s dining culture. Beginning with the era when simple chophouses and oyster bars dominated the culinary scene, he charts the city’s transformation into the world restaurant capital it is today. Enhancing his tale with more than one hundred photographs, rare menus, menu cards, and other curios and illustrations (many never before seen), Grimes vividly describes the dining styles, dishes, and restaurants succeeding one another in an unfolding historical panorama: the deluxe ice cream parlors of the 1850s, the boisterous beef-and-beans joints along Newspaper Row in the 1890s, the assembly-line experiment of the Automat, and the surging multicultural city of today. By encompassing renowned establishments such as Delmonico’s and Le Pavillon as well as the Bowery restaurants where a meal cost a penny, he reveals the ways in which the restaurant scene mirrored the larger forces shaping New York, giving us a deliciously original account of the history of America’s greatest city.

Source: Book jacket description

All Hopped Up and Ready to Go: Music from the Streets
of New York 1927-77
by Tony Fletcher (781.6409 F)

A penetrating and entertaining exploration of New York’s music scene from
Cubop through folk, punk, and hip-hop. Author Tony Fletcher gives us an incisive history of New York’s seminal music scenes and their vast contributions to our culture. With great attention to the colorful characters behind the sounds, from trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie to Tito Puente, Bob Dylan, and the Ramones, he takes us through bebop, the Latin music scene, the folk revival, glitter music, disco, punk, and hip-hop as they emerged from the neighborhood streets of Harlem, the East and West Village, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens. All the while, Fletcher goes well beyond the history of the music to explain just what it was about these distinctive New York sounds that took the entire nation by storm.

Source: Amazon.com description

Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives
by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler (302.3 C)

--Happiness is contagious.

--Your future spouse is likely to be your friend's friend.

--Your friends' friends' friends can make you fat - or thin.

These are just a few of the authors' startling findings. In Connected, they present intriguing new evidence that our real-life social networks shape virtually every aspect of our lives. How we feel, whom we marry, whether we fall ill, how much money we make, and whether we vote--everything hinges on what others around us are doing, thinking and feeling. Connected explains why emotions are contagious, how health behaviors spread, why the rich get richer, and more.

Source: Book jacket description

In CHEAP We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue
by Lauren Weber (332.024 W)

Cheap suit. Cheap date. Cheap shot. It's a dirty word, an epithet laden with negative meanings. It is also the story of Lauren Weber's life. As a child, she resented her father for keeping the heat at 50 degrees through the frigid New England winters and rarely using his car's turn signals-to keep them from burning out. But as an adult, when she found herself walking 30 blocks to save $2 on subway fare, she realized she had turned into him.

In this lively treatise on the virtues of being cheap, Weber explores provocative questions about Americans' conflicted relationship with consumption and frugality. Why do we ridicule people who save money? Where's the boundary between thrift and miserliness? Is thrift a virtue or a vice during a recession? And was it common sense or obsessive-compulsive disorder that made her father ration the family's toilet paper?

In answering these questions, In Cheap We Trust offers a colorful ride through the history of frugality in the United States. Readers will learn the stories behind Ben Franklin and his famous maxims, Hetty Green (named "the world's greatest miser" by the Guinness Book of Records) and the stereotyping of Jewish and Chinese immigrants as cheap. Weber also explores contemporary expressions and dilemmas of thrift. From Dumpster-diving to economist John Maynard Keynes's "Paradox of Thrift" to today's recession-driven enthusiasm for frugal living, In Cheap We Trust teases out the meanings of cheapness and examines the wisdom and pleasures of not spending every last penny.

Source: Book description

Rowing the Atlantic: Lessons Learned on the Open Ocean
by Roz Savage (B Savage S)

Stuck in a corporate job rut and faced with an unraveling marriage at the age of thirty-six, Roz Savage sat down one night and wrote two versions of her own obituary -- the one that she wanted and the one she was heading for. They were very different. She realized that if she carried on as she was, she wasn't going to end up with the life she wanted. So she turned her back on an eleven-year career as a management consultant to reinvent herself as a woman of adventure. She invested her life's savings in an ocean rowboat and became the first solo woman ever to enter the Atlantic Rowing Race.

Stroke by stroke, Savage discovers there is so much more to life than a fancy sports car and a power-suit job. Flashing back to key moments from her life before rowing, she describes the bolt from the blue that first inspired her to row across oceans and how this crazy idea evolved from a dream into a tendinitis-inducing reality. And finally, Savage discovers in the rough waters of the Atlantic the kind of happiness we all hope to find.

Source: Product description

The Murder of King Tut: The Plot to Kill the Child King -
A Nonfiction Thriller
by James Patterson and Martin Dugard (932.014 P)

Thrust onto Egypt's most powerful throne at the age of nine, King Tut's reign was fiercely debated from the outset. Behind the palace's veil of prosperity, bitter rivalries and jealousy flourished among the Boy King's most trusted advisors, and after only nine years, King Tut suddenly perished, his name purged from Egyptian history. To this day, his death remains shrouded in controversy.

Enchanted by the ruler's tragic story and hoping to unlock the answers to the 3,000 year-old mystery, Howard Carter made it his life's mission to uncover the pharaoh's hidden tomb. He began his search in 1907, but encountered countless setbacks and dead-ends before he finally, uncovered the long-lost crypt.

Now, in The Murder of King Tut, James Patterson and Martin Dugard dig through stacks of evidence--X-rays, Carter's files, forensic clues, and stories told through the ages--to arrive at their own account of King Tut's life and death. The result is an exhilarating true crime tale of intrigue, passion, and betrayal that casts fresh light on the oldest mystery of all.

Source: Book description

The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe
by Douglas Rogers (B Rogers)

Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Douglas Rogers is the son of white farmers living through that country’s long and tense transition from postcolonial rule. He escaped the dull future mapped out for him by his parents for one of adventure and excitement in Europe and the United States. But when Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe launched his violent program to reclaim white-owned land and Rogers’s parents were caught in the cross fire, everything changed. Lyn and Ros, the owners of Drifters–-a famous game farm and backpacker lodge in the eastern mountains that was one of the most popular budget resorts in the country–-found their home and resort under siege, their friends and neighbors expelled, and their lives in danger. But instead of leaving, as their son pleads with them to do, they haul out a shotgun and decide to stay.

On returning to the country of his birth, Rogers finds his once orderly and progressive home transformed into something resembling a Marx Brothers romp crossed with Heart of Darkness: pot has supplanted maize in the fields; hookers have replaced college kids as guests; and soldiers, spies, and teenage diamond dealers guzzle beer at the bar. And yet, in spite of it all, Rogers’s parents–with the help of friends, farmworkers, lodge guests, and residents --among them black political dissidents and white refugee farmers–-continue to hold on. But can they survive to the end?

Source: Book description