Category Archives: Featured Materials

The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy / Douglas Adams

Call number: FIC ADA

It’s safe to say that The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is one of the funniest science fiction novels ever written. Adams spoofs many core science fiction tropes: space travel, aliens, interstellar war–stripping away all sense of wonder and repainting them as commonplace, even silly.
This omnibus edition begins with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which Arthur Dent is introduced to the galaxy at large when he is rescued by an alien friend seconds before Earth’s destruction. Then in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Arthur and his new friends travel to the end of time and discover the true reason for Earth’s existence. In Life, the Universe, and Everything, the gang goes on a mission to save the entire universe. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish recounts how Arthur finds true love and “God’s Final Message to His Creation.” Finally, Mostly Harmless is the story of Arthur’s continuing search for home, in which he instead encounters his estranged daughter, who is on her own quest. There’s also a bonus short story, “Young Zaphod Plays It Safe,” more of a vignette than a full story, which wraps up this completist’s package of the Don’t Panic chronicles. As the series progresses, its wackier elements diminish, but the satire of human life and foibles is ever present. (From Amazon)

The day we walked on the moon : a photo history of space exploration / by George Sullivan

Call number: TL793 .S925 1990

A fascinating look at outer space exploration filled with dramatic color photographs and bold newspaper headlines. From the first flights into space to the momentous day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, from Skylab to the Shuttle, plus an exciting look at what lies ahead, this book will intrigue readers of all ages. (From Amazon)

America in space : NASA’s first fifty years / foreword by Neil Armstrong

Call number: TL521.312 .A628 2007

The most memorable photographs from America’s recent explorations of space have been taken by the Hubble space telescope and the Huygens mission to Saturn. But as the editors of this lavishly illustrated coffee-table volume demonstrate, in the early years of the space program, the camera’s blinking eye captured human beings. Dick, NASA’s chief historian, and his NASA colleagues offer images of the crew-cut young hot rods of the Mercury and Gemini programs before they became household names, along with a young test pilot named Neil Armstrong in 1956 operating a simulator of the X-15 hypersonic aircraft. Photographs capture the grandeur of the mammoth Saturn rockets blasting off, as well as the tragedy of the fire-charred Apollo 1capsule. NASA’s engineers and technicians receive their due, shown putting equipment and astronauts through their paces. In the post-Apollo years, the almost forgotten Skylab is memorialized, as well as missions to build the International Space Station and the space shuttle program. The book concludes with pictures of the outer reaches of the solar system and stunning vistas light-years away. NASA staff have annotated the photographs with informative mini essays documenting the history of the agency and its mission. Space buffs and their children will thrill to these photos. (From B&N)

Hubble’s universe : greatest discoveries and latest images / Terence Dickinson

Call number: QB500.268 D53 2012

In addition to being one of the greatest scientific instruments of all time, the Hubble Space Telescope has given humanity a spectacular legacy of beautiful images of the universe. The best of these are displayed–and explained–in this book.The book’s precise descriptions and captions brilliantly complement the nearly 300 full-color Hubble images. (From B&N)

Films on Demand: Newly Added Titles

 

Secrets of Branding

From Series:  Secrets of Branding

Discover the secrets behind the brands recognized the world over as this insightful eight-part series looks at how brands are created and explores why some succeed where others fail. Looking at the la…

 

Greatest Human Achievements

From Series:  Greatest Human Achievements

We never stop pushing the boundaries of human potential—from the Stone Age to the stars, from outer space to the very building blocks of life. Our progress in the last century has taken us into a new…

TEDTalks: Jonathan Trent—Energy from Floating Algae Pods

Call it “fuel without fossils”: Jonathan Trent is working on a plan to grow new biofuel by farming micro-algae in floating offshore pods that eat wastewater from cities. In this TEDTalk, hear his team…

Great Artists (Series 1)

From Series:  Great Artists (Series 1)

This is a major 14-part series in which art historian Tim Marlow takes a fresh look at the most important artworks of some the greatest artists in history. Shot on location in over 50 galleries, museu…

Common Childhood Illnesses

From Series:  The Cambridge Preventative Parenting Series

This program addresses common childhood illnesses, their symptoms, possible at-home and professional medical treatments, and how to decide if a doctor should be consulted. School-age children describe…

ATTICA

Social unrest in the United States hit a boiling point on September 9, 1971, when inmates at Attica State Prison—after months of protesting inhumane living conditions—revolted, seizing part of the pri…

The Nightingale / Kristin Hannah

Call number: FIC HAN

How two French sisters survived the onslaught of World War II is the subject of this new novel by Kristin Hannah (Firefly Lane; Winter Garden). After Vianne Mauriac’s husband departs for the front, she is left alone to care for herself and their child. When the Nazis overrun their country, that task becomes infinitely more challenging and dangerous. Meanwhile, the wartime travails of her teenage sister Isabelle are complicated by her reckless love for a French partisan. When he betrays her, she throws herself with near abandon into the Resistance fight for liberation. A penetrating historical novel. (From B&N)

The Sacrifice: A Novel / Joyce Carol Oates

Call number: FIC OAT

New York Times bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates returns with an incendiary novel that illuminates the tragic impact of sexual violence, racism, brutality, and power on innocent lives and probes the persistence of stereotypes, the nature of revenge, the complexities of truth, and our insatiable hunger for sensationalism. When a fourteen-year-old girl is the alleged victim of a terrible act of racial violence, the incident shocks and galvanizes her community, exacerbating the racial tension that has been simmering in this New Jersey town for decades. In this magisterial work of fiction, Joyce Carol Oates explores the uneasy fault lines in a racially troubled society. In such a tense, charged atmosphere, Oates reveals that there must always be a sacrifice—of innocence, truth, trust, and, ultimately, of lives. Unfolding in a succession of multiracial voices, in a community transfixed by this alleged crime and the spectacle unfolding around it, this profound novel exposes what—and who—the “sacrifice” actually is, and what consequences these kinds of events hold for us all. (From B&N)

Obsession in Death (In Death Series #40) / J. D. Robb

Call number: FIC ROB

Eve Dallas has solved a lot of high-profile murders for the NYPSD and gotten a lot of media. She—and her billionaire husband—are getting accustomed to being objects of attention, of gossip, of speculation. But now Eve has become the object of one person’s obsession. Someone who finds her extraordinary, and thinks about her every hour of every day. Who believes the two of them have a special relationship. Who would kill for her—again and again…. With a murderer reading meanings into her every move, handling this case will be a delicate—and dangerous—psychological dance. And Eve knows that underneath the worship and admiration, a terrible threat lies in wait. Because the beautiful lieutenant is not at all grateful for these bloody offerings from her “true and loyal friend.” And in time, idols always fall…. (From B&N)

Of Irish Blood / Mary Pat Kelly

Call number: FIC KEL

 Of Irish Blood, a vivid and compelling story inspired by the life of her great-aunt.(From B&N)

It’s 1903. Nora Kelly, twenty-four, is talented, outspoken, progressive, and climbing the ladder of opportunity, until she falls for an attractive but dangerous man who sends her running back to the Old World her family had fled. Nora takes on Paris, mixing with couturiers, artists, and “les femmes Americaines” of the Left Bank such as Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach. But when she stumbles into the centuries-old Collège des Irlandais, a good-looking scholar, an unconventional priest, and Ireland’s revolutionary women challenge Nora to honor her Irish blood and join the struggle to free Ireland. Author Mary Pat Kelly weaves historical characters such as Maud Gonne, William Butler Yeats, Countess Markievicz, Michael Collins, and Eamon de Valera, as well as Gabrielle Chanel, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and Nora Barnicle, into

Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances / Neil Gaiman

Call number: FIC GAI

From one of the most critically acclaimed and beloved storytellers of our time comes a major new collection of stories and verse. “We each have our little triggers . . . things that wait for us in the dark corridors of our lives.” So says Neil Gaiman in his introduction to Trigger Warning, a remarkable compendium of twenty-five stories and poems that explore the transformative power of imagination.
In “Adventure Story”—a thematic companion to the #1 New York Times bestselling novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane—Gaiman ponders death and the ways in which people take their stories with them when they die. “A Calendar of Tales” is comprised of short pieces about the months of the year—stories of pirates and March winds, an igloo made of books, and a Mother’s Day card that portends disturbances in the universe. Gaiman offers his own ingenious spin on Sherlock Holmes in his award-nominated mystery tale “The Case of Death and Honey.” Also included is “Nothing O’Clock,” a very special Doctor Who story that was written for the beloved series in 2013, as well as the never-before-published “Black Dog,” a haunting new tale that revisits the world of American Gods as Shadow Moon stops in at a village pub on his way back to America. Gaiman, a sophisticated writer whose creative genius is unparalleled, entrances with his literary alchemy and transports us deep into an undiscovered country where the fantastical becomes real and the everyday is incandescent. Replete with wonder and terror, surprises and amusements, Trigger Warning is a treasury of literary delights that engage the mind, stir the heart, and shake the soul.(From B&N)