Video Games
Vacation Loans
Playways
New Acquisitions
Readers' Advisory
New Audio-Visual Acquisitions (now includes CDs)
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).

VACATION LOANS

All Baldwin residents whose library cards are in good standing may participate in the Library's vacation loan program beginning June 22. In keeping with the leisurely pace of summer, all young adult and adult non-special books may be borrowed for a vacation loan period until September 14. New books, items in high demand, and school assignment/reading list titles are not included. Now is a great time to read all those terrific books that you meant to get to all year. For more information, please call the Circulation Desk at 223-6228.

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)

The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food--Before the
National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation's Food Was Seasonal
by Mark Kurlansky (394.1209 F)

Just what we need in hard times, recipes for booya, mullet salad, Georgia possum and taters, kush, and Montana fried beaver tail. Kurlansky, the author of best-selling books about salt, cod, and oysters, discovered these gems in a two-foot-high stack of the "raw, unedited manuscripts" for an inspired but never completed WPA endeavor titled America Eats. As he explains in his invigorating introduction, the Federal Writers’ Project sent starving writers of all stripes across the country to gather information about "American cookery and the part it has played in national life." The results are vivid and playful dispatches from pre-interstate, pre-fast-food America, when food was local and cuisine regional. Fun, illuminating, and provocative, this historic reclamation appears while we’re in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the one Franklin D. Roosevelt fought with his job-creating stimulus package and while we’re grappling with a plague of unsafe food and environmental woes associated with industrial agriculture. But don’t despair. Whip up Ethel’s Depression Cake, and throw a bailout party.

Source: Booklist

The Teeth May Smile but the Heart Does Not Forget: Murder and Memory in Uganda
by Andrew Rice (967.6104 R)

From Rwanda to Sierra Leone, African countries recovering from tyranny and
war are facing an impossible dilemma: to overlook past atrocities for the sake of peace or to seek catharsis through tribunals and truth commissions. Uganda chose the path of forgetting: after Idi Amin’s reign was overthrown, the new government opted for amnesty for his henchmen rather than prolonged conflict.

Ugandans tried to bury their history, but reminders of the truth were never far from view. A stray clue to the 1972 disappearance of Eliphaz Laki led his son to a shallow grave—and then to three executioners, among them Amin’s chief of staff. Laki’s discovery resulted in a trial that gave voice to a nation’s past: as lawyers argued, tribes clashed, and Laki pressed for justice, the trial offered Ugandans a promise of the reckoning they had been so long denied.

For four years, Andrew Rice followed the trial, crossing Uganda to investigate Amin’s legacy and the limits of reconciliation. At once a mystery, a historical accounting, and a portrait of modern Africa, The Teeth May Smile But the Heart Does Not Forget is above all an exploration of how—and whether—the past can be laid to rest.

Source: Amazon.com book description

After Many a Summer: The Passing of the Giants and Dodgers and a Golden Age in New York Baseball
by Robert E. Murphy (796.3576 M)

For New Yorkers—especially Brooklynites—1957 will always be the year that
lives in infamy. It was when the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants
delivered a one-two punch to the city by both abandoning their hometown for California. Millions of bereft and angry baseball fans wondered how such a thing could be allowed to happen: Who was to blame? After poring relentlessly through archives, original news stories, and government documents, Robert Murphy gives the most fully-researched answer to that question yet offered. Packed with history, rich in baseball lore and legend, this is a book that any New York history buff and all lovers of America’s national pastime will relish.

Source: Amazon.com book description

The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter
by Jason Kersten (B Luciano K)

Art Williams spent his boyhood in a comfortable middle-class existence in 1970s Chicago, but his idyll was shattered when, in short order, his father abandoned the family, his bipolar mother lost her wits, and Williams found himself living in one of Chicago’s worst housing projects. He took to crime almost immediately, starting with petty theft before graduating to robbing drug dealers. Eventually a man nicknamed “DaVinci” taught him the centuries-old art of counterfeiting. After a stint in jail, Williams emerged to discover that the Treasury Department had issued the most secure hundred-dollar bill ever created: the 1996 New Note.

In The Art of Making Money, journalist Jason Kersten details how Williams
painstakingly defeated the anti-forging features of the New Note, how Williams and his partner-in-crime wife converted fake bills into legitimate tender at shopping malls all over America, and how they stayed one step ahead of the Secret Service until trusting the wrong person brought them all down.

Source: Amazon.com book description

Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon
by Craig Nelson (629.454 N)

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon. In this extensively researched account of that epic achievement, author Nelson moves seamlessly between Apollo 11 astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, their nervous families and the equally nervous NASA ground crew. Nelson follows Armstrong in nail-biting detail as he tries to find a place to land with less than a minute's worth of fuel remaining. A central section of the book provides some backstory on the feverish American-Soviet game of one-upmanship in the year leading up to the Apollo 11 launch. For instance, Nelson describes Apollo 8 as an almost reckless gamble by NASA to beat the Russians in sending men to orbit the moon The book also describes the sad personal toll the mission took. Collins was best able to deal with the cost of fame yet expressed the anticlimax of life after Apollo 11: 'I seem gripped by earthly ennui'.

Source: Publishers Weekly

Cooperstown Confidential: Heroes, Rogues, and the Inside Story of the
Baseball Hall of Fame
by Zev Chafets (796.357 C)

Cooperstown is a sleepy New York village with a population barely eclipsing 2,000. But Chafets explains why Cooperstown and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is a must-see destination for hundreds of thousands of baseball fans each year, diving into more than just the 200-plus players that have received baseball immortality by induction into the Hall of Fame. Chafets briefly explores the history of how the Hall of Fame came to pass, but the real good stuff comes as he dives into the politics of the museum and how race has played a role in who has received election and who has received the shaft. He looks at those who oversee the hallowed halls, the writers who act as gatekeepers to the Hall of Fame, and explains how election can make what was once a player's worthless memorabilia into a gold mine. Much of Chafets's subject matter is sure to strike a chord with baseball fans, and many will surely disagree with his stance on steroids as it relates to a player's induction. The relationships he develops with the Hall staff, combined with his accessible style, give the reader a glimpse beyond what one might see at the exhibits.

Source: Publishers Weekly