Hardcover

Memoir

American readers will have their imaginations challenged by 14-year-old Kamkwamba's description of life in Malawi, a famine-stricken, land-locked nation in southern Africa: math is taught in school with the aid of bottle tops ("three Coca-Cola plus ten Carlsberg equal thirteen"), people are slaughtered by enemy warriors "disguised... as green grass" and a ferocious black rhino; and everyday trading is "replaced by the business of survival" after famine hits the country. After starving for five months on his family's small farm, the corn harvest slowly brings Kamkwamba back to life. Witnessing his family's struggle, Kamkwamba's supercharged curiosity leads him to pursue the improbable dream of using "electric wind"(they have no word for windmills) to harness energy for the farm. Kamkwamba's efforts were of course derided; salvaging a motley collection of materials, from his father's broken bike to his mother's clothes line, he was often greeted to the tune of "Ah, look, the madman has come with his garbage." This exquisite tale strips life down to its barest essentials, and once there finds reason for hopes and dreams, and is especially resonant for Americans given the economy and increasingly heated debates over health care and energy policy.

Release date:  June 2, 2009

Hardcover

Memoir

In a spare, brisk prose, Ollestad tells the tragic story of the pivotal event of his life, an airplane crash into the side of a mountain that cost three lives, including his fathers, in 1979. Only 11 years old at the time, he alone survived, using the athletic skills he learned in competitive downhill skiing, amid the twisted wreckage, the bodies and the bone-chilling cold of the blizzard atop the 8,600-foot mountain. Although the narrative core of the memoir remains the horrifying plane crackup into the San Gabriel Mountains, its warm, complex soul is conveyed by the loving relationship between the former FBI agent father and his son, affectionately called the Boy Wonder, during the golden childhood years spent in wild, freewheeling Malibu and Mexico in the late 1970s. Ollestads unyielding concentration on the themes of courage, love and endurance seep into every character portrait, every scene, making this book an inspiring, fascinating read. "(May)" Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

Hardcover

Adult Non-fiction

Nature

A young boys first glimpse of a whale in captivity matures into a writers paean to the giants of the deep in this poetic blend of nautical history, literary allusion, personal experience, and natural science by British biographer Hoare ("Noël Coward"). With Melville as his mentor and Ishmael as his muse, the author haunts one-time whaling town New Bedford, Mass., Americas richest city in the mid19th century thanks to whale oil and baleen (whalebone); recreates the cramped life on board the whalers of 200 years ago; weaves writing about whales by Emerson and Poe into his narrative; and finally revels in face-to-fin encounters with his obsession, swimming with the whales in the Atlantic. Though Hoare rhapsodizes most about the fabled sperm whale, the worlds largest predator with a history dating back 23 million years, he also describes with succinct precision other speciesthe beaked, blue, fin, humpback, and the killer whale, the sperm whales only nonhuman predator. This tour de force is a sensuous biography of the great mammals that range on and under Earths oceans. "(Feb.)" Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

Hardcover

Memoir

On Halloween in 2003, Host was given terrifying news: she had carcinoid tumor, a rare and deadly form of cancer . The wife and mother of three children (then ages 10 months, 11 and 13), who is now in remission, was given a prognosis of 18 to 36 months. In this heartfelt narrative, Host attempts to simultaneously fight the disease and find peace with the possibility of death while remaining strong and hopeful. The author describes the moments of comfort and joy she receives from those around her, but she doesn't flinch from the realities of life-threatening illness. Regarding one particularly harrowing hospital stay, she recalls, I thought I had already earned my doctorate in pain, but it turns out I was wrong. She finds humor among the indignities cancer patients must endure, writing, for example, I should have known that, as a mother of three, the only possible way to get 12 uninterrupted hours of sleep would be surgery. Host's honest depiction of her personal experiences also captures the universal aspects of cancer. In one of the book's entries, dated nearly two years after her initial diagnosis, Host recounts a conversation with a stranger, a fellow train passenger: We have that instant connection that you make with someone who has suffered the loss that cancer can bring. "(Aug.)" Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

Hardcover

Science/Cultural Studies

Science journalist Skloot makes a remarkable debut with this multilayered story about faith, science, journalism, and grace. It is also a tale of medical wonders and medical arrogance, racism, poverty and the bond that grows, sometimes painfully, between two very different womenSkloot and Deborah Lackssharing an obsession to learn about Deborahs mother, Henrietta, and her magical, immortal cells. Henrietta Lacks was a 31-year-old black mother of five in Baltimore when she died of cervical cancer in 1951. Without her knowledge, doctors treating her at Johns Hopkins took tissue samples from her cervix for research. They spawned the first viable, indeed miraculously productive, cell lineknown as HeLa. These cells have aided in medical discoveries from the polio vaccine to AIDS treatments. What Skloot so poignantly portrays is the devastating impact Henriettas death and the eventual importance of her cells had on her husband and children. Skloots portraits of Deborah, her father and brothers are so vibrant and immediate they recall Adrian Nicole LeBlancs "Random Family." Writing in plain, clear prose, Skloot avoids melodrama and makes no judgments. Letting people and events speak for themselves, Skloot tells a rich, resonant tale of modern science, the wonders it can perform and how easily it can exploit societys most vulnerable people. "(Feb.)" Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.