Thursday, June 2, 2011
Did John Wilkes Booth really die at Garrett's Farm?
Check out this page turning novel that will have you wondering what the truth really is...
Civil War Facts
• More than three million men fought in the war.
• Two percent of the population—more than 620,000—died in it.
• In two days at Shiloh on the banks of the Tennessee River, more Americans fell than in all previous American wars combined.
Want to learn more? Visit http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/war/facts.html to see the full list of Civil War facts.
• Two percent of the population—more than 620,000—died in it.
• In two days at Shiloh on the banks of the Tennessee River, more Americans fell than in all previous American wars combined.
Want to learn more? Visit http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/war/facts.html to see the full list of Civil War facts.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
How Much Is The Library Worth To You?
Find out how much money you SAVE by using the library. Visit the Library Value Calculator to add up the value of the services your library provides.
Enhance Your Web Surfing
PC Magazine has released its special report on their Top 100 Web Sites of 2010. The sites are divided into several areas of interest: Apps, Fun, Info, News, Shopping, Social and Tech. They list both the classic sites that many of us already use, as well as some undiscovered gems.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Review - Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Laura Hillenbrand reached the No. 1 best-seller spot with her first book, "Seabiscuit." Her new book, "Unbroken," is another best-selling forgotten tale of American history.
Instead of a racehorse, the lead character of this book is a man. Louis Zamperini leaves his troubled childhood behind, growing into an Olympic runner who hopes to break the 4-minute mile in the 1940 Games.
But the Games are cancelled when the world starts to fall apart. Zamperini ends up serving as a bombardier on a B-24 in the Pacific Theater. When his bomber ditches in the ocean, he floats a thousand miles on a raft, dealing with sharks and starvation, only to end up facing an even greater and more agonizing challenge. He was brutalized and enslaved in a two-year captivity under a sadistic Japanese prison-camp officer.
This book is subtitled "A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption." In this sense, there can be no real suspense to the story, as the reader knows that Zamperini must survive. But it is a tribute to Hillenbrand's writing skills that the suspense lingers. We may know that he lives, but our amazement lingers as she unfolds his story. Hillenbrand selects the perfect detail to render her nonfiction as exciting as fiction.
It could be said that Hillenbrand has rewritten her first book — or at least dealt with the same territory. Once again, she is exploring exceptionalism in human life. As the jockey, owner, and trainer of Seabiscuit dared the impossible and believed the unbelievable, so does Zamperini survive experiences that do not seem survivable, showing a resilience that seems beyond human capability. Yet his post-war battle with post-traumatic stress disorder reminds us of the trials of contemporary survivors of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hillenbrand interviewed Zamperini many times in writing his story. As he is in his 90s, this may be among the last of the World War II experiences to be published of a living veteran. If so, Zamperini certainly is a worthy member of the Greatest Generation to serve as a final page to this body of writing.
His story renders the reader grateful for the sacrifices of that generation, as well as mystified by the good and evil in human nature. As a work of history and biography that will completely take the reader out of himself, "Unbroken" is well worth reading.
Review by Chris Wiegard
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/entertainment/2011/jan/09/tdbook01-nonfiction-review-unbroken-ar-755023/
Instead of a racehorse, the lead character of this book is a man. Louis Zamperini leaves his troubled childhood behind, growing into an Olympic runner who hopes to break the 4-minute mile in the 1940 Games.
But the Games are cancelled when the world starts to fall apart. Zamperini ends up serving as a bombardier on a B-24 in the Pacific Theater. When his bomber ditches in the ocean, he floats a thousand miles on a raft, dealing with sharks and starvation, only to end up facing an even greater and more agonizing challenge. He was brutalized and enslaved in a two-year captivity under a sadistic Japanese prison-camp officer.
This book is subtitled "A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption." In this sense, there can be no real suspense to the story, as the reader knows that Zamperini must survive. But it is a tribute to Hillenbrand's writing skills that the suspense lingers. We may know that he lives, but our amazement lingers as she unfolds his story. Hillenbrand selects the perfect detail to render her nonfiction as exciting as fiction.
It could be said that Hillenbrand has rewritten her first book — or at least dealt with the same territory. Once again, she is exploring exceptionalism in human life. As the jockey, owner, and trainer of Seabiscuit dared the impossible and believed the unbelievable, so does Zamperini survive experiences that do not seem survivable, showing a resilience that seems beyond human capability. Yet his post-war battle with post-traumatic stress disorder reminds us of the trials of contemporary survivors of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hillenbrand interviewed Zamperini many times in writing his story. As he is in his 90s, this may be among the last of the World War II experiences to be published of a living veteran. If so, Zamperini certainly is a worthy member of the Greatest Generation to serve as a final page to this body of writing.
His story renders the reader grateful for the sacrifices of that generation, as well as mystified by the good and evil in human nature. As a work of history and biography that will completely take the reader out of himself, "Unbroken" is well worth reading.
Review by Chris Wiegard
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/entertainment/2011/jan/09/tdbook01-nonfiction-review-unbroken-ar-755023/
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Review - The Murder Room
Twenty years ago, three men obsessed with solving murders decided to form a group that would dissect cold cases baffling law enforcement bureaucracies. They named the informal organization the Vidocq Society, in honor of a groundbreaking French detective long dead. Although privately invited members lived around the United States and indeed around the globe, the gathering place for the monthly meetings was Philadelphia.
Although the Vidocq Society members did not seek publicity, inevitably journalists and law enforcement officers and the loved ones of murder victims became fascinated. One of those journalists is Michael Capuzzo, who has reported for the Philadelphia Inquirer and who lives in Pennsylvania.
(The book contains a strong Texas angle – Lubbock, to be precise. Stay tuned to this review.)
Capuzzo builds his book around the three Vidocq Society founders: William Fleisher, a former FBI and Customs agent who later created a private detective agency; Richard Walter, a profiler of criminals who worked many years in the Michigan prison system; and Frank Bender, a Philadelphia sculptor whose forensic creations predicted what disfigured murder victims (and sometimes elusive murder suspects) looked like. (Bender's career was the subject of the 2008 book The Girl With the Crooked Nose, by Ted Botha.)
The three protagonists, their colleagues throughout law enforcement, murder victims, grief-stricken loved ones plus the suspected and convicted murderers constitute an always fascinating – albeit gruesome – reading experience. Unfortunately, The Murder Room fails as a narrative because the organization is elusive. Capuzzo introduces specific cases, then drops them until many chapters later. He flits from protagonist to protagonist without chronological or any other discernible progression. He lionizes the three protagonists almost to the point of unreality.
The repetition, especially about the personal habits of these men, is tiresome. A better writer-editor collaboration would have shortened the 426 pages of text to about 300 pages.
Still, the book might be difficult to put down for readers who solve crimes in real life or who act as armchair crime-solvers. For viewers of fictional television dramas, The Murder Room is a real-life mélange of the shows Criminal Minds, The Mentalist, CSI, Lie to Me, Cold Case and maybe others you watch but I have missed.
Back to Lubbock: Normally, the Vidocq Society members refuse to entertain pleas for assistance from desperate relatives of murder victims. But when Fleisher received a call from James Dunn, father of the missing-and-presumed murdered Scott Dunn, Fleisher became involved, and then Walter became even more deeply involved until they played a significant role in solving what had been an unsolved Lubbock murder. (James Dunn collaborated on an earlier book about the case, Trail of Blood, with writer Wanda Evans.)
Following the trail in the Lubbock case, although the trail is disjointed in Capuzzo's telling, constitutes one of the most compelling story lines in The Murder Room.
By STEVE WEINBERG / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
Steve Weinberg is the author of eight nonfiction books, most recently Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller.
Although the Vidocq Society members did not seek publicity, inevitably journalists and law enforcement officers and the loved ones of murder victims became fascinated. One of those journalists is Michael Capuzzo, who has reported for the Philadelphia Inquirer and who lives in Pennsylvania.
(The book contains a strong Texas angle – Lubbock, to be precise. Stay tuned to this review.)
Capuzzo builds his book around the three Vidocq Society founders: William Fleisher, a former FBI and Customs agent who later created a private detective agency; Richard Walter, a profiler of criminals who worked many years in the Michigan prison system; and Frank Bender, a Philadelphia sculptor whose forensic creations predicted what disfigured murder victims (and sometimes elusive murder suspects) looked like. (Bender's career was the subject of the 2008 book The Girl With the Crooked Nose, by Ted Botha.)
The three protagonists, their colleagues throughout law enforcement, murder victims, grief-stricken loved ones plus the suspected and convicted murderers constitute an always fascinating – albeit gruesome – reading experience. Unfortunately, The Murder Room fails as a narrative because the organization is elusive. Capuzzo introduces specific cases, then drops them until many chapters later. He flits from protagonist to protagonist without chronological or any other discernible progression. He lionizes the three protagonists almost to the point of unreality.
The repetition, especially about the personal habits of these men, is tiresome. A better writer-editor collaboration would have shortened the 426 pages of text to about 300 pages.
Still, the book might be difficult to put down for readers who solve crimes in real life or who act as armchair crime-solvers. For viewers of fictional television dramas, The Murder Room is a real-life mélange of the shows Criminal Minds, The Mentalist, CSI, Lie to Me, Cold Case and maybe others you watch but I have missed.
Back to Lubbock: Normally, the Vidocq Society members refuse to entertain pleas for assistance from desperate relatives of murder victims. But when Fleisher received a call from James Dunn, father of the missing-and-presumed murdered Scott Dunn, Fleisher became involved, and then Walter became even more deeply involved until they played a significant role in solving what had been an unsolved Lubbock murder. (James Dunn collaborated on an earlier book about the case, Trail of Blood, with writer Wanda Evans.)
Following the trail in the Lubbock case, although the trail is disjointed in Capuzzo's telling, constitutes one of the most compelling story lines in The Murder Room.
By STEVE WEINBERG / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
Steve Weinberg is the author of eight nonfiction books, most recently Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller.
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