New Non-Fiction Titles

Check out these new New-Fiction books in our Teen section!

• Girl World: How to Ditch the Drama and Find Your Inner Amazing by Patricia Ottaviano
• It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living by Dan Savage
• Sex: An Uncensored Introduction by Nikol Hasler

Books about Justice

•  Speak a Word for Freedom: Women against Slavery by Janet Willen

• A Police Mr. Big Sting Goes Wrong: The Story of Kyle Unger by Richard Brignall
• Sentenced to Life at Seventeen: The Story of David Milgaard by Cynthia J. Faryon
• Jailed for Being Black: The Story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter by Bill Swan

All about Minecraft!

• Minecraft Modding for Kids for Dummies by Sarah Guthals
• Mastering Minecraft: Build, Discover, Survive! by Michael Lummis
• The Ultimate Player's Guide to Minecraft by Stephen J. O'Brien

Historical

• Life in Ancient Egypt by Don Nardo
• Life in the Time of Shakespeare by Hal Marcovitz
• Life in Nazi Germany by Hal Marcovitz

• Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War 
• by Steve Sheinkin
• Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M.T. Anderson

New Non-Fiction YA Titles for October!

Here are the latest titles in YA non-fiction out this month!

by Paul Fleischman

We're living in an Ah-Ha moment. Take 250 years of human ingenuity. Add abundant fossil fuels. The result: a population and lifestyle never before seen. The downsides weren't visible for centuries, but now they are. Suddenly everything needs rethinking – suburbs, cars, fast food, cheap prices. It's a changed world.

This book explains it. Not with isolated facts, but the principles driving attitudes and events, from vested interests to denial to big-country syndrome. Because money is as important as molecules in the environment, science is joined with politics, history, and psychology to provide the briefing needed to comprehend the 21st century.

Extensive back matter, including a glossary, bibliography, and index, as well as numerous references to websites, provides further resources.

by Alex J. Packer

Explaining etiquette from A (“Applause”) to Z (“Zits”), Alex J. Packer blends outrageous humor with sound advice as he guides readers and explains why manners and etiquette are important—because people who know how to handle themselves in social situations come out on top, get what they want, feel good about themselves, and enjoy life to the fullest.

This one is just in time for Halloween!!

by Kelly Milner Halls

Do you believe in ghosts? Enter the realm of the paranormal with Kelly Milner Halls. Explore what ghosts are, where they're found, and meet some famous ghost busters. Check out the high-tech equipment modern ghost hunters use, and see their most convincing evidence that ghosts are real. Finally, take a look at a few famous hoaxes. This book is a little bit spooky and a whole lot of fun!

New Non-Fiction for July!

Here are some new titles in the non-fiction teen section this month!

by Ann Shoket & the
Editors of Seventeen Magazine

Filled with tips and stories from real students, Seventeen Ultimate Guide to College reveals everything a girl needs to know to feel confident on campus and make the next years her best yet. It contains insider secrets she won’t learn from her high school guidance counselor or a college information packet, including:
- How to bond with your roomie
- Navigating the college hookup scene
- Sneaky ways to avoid going broke in college
- Plus a bonus style section on what to wear at every type of school!

by Michael L. Cooper

From colonial times to the modern day, two things have remained constant in American history: the destructive power of fires and the bravery of those who fight them.

Fighting Fire! brings to life ten of the deadliest infernos this nation has ever endured: the great fires of Boston, New York, Chicago, Baltimore, and San Francisco, the disasters of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, the General Slocum, and the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, the wildfire of Witch Creek in San Diego County, and the catastrophe of 9/11. Each blaze led to new firefighting techniques and technologies, yet the struggle against fires continues to this day. With historical images and a fast-paced text, this is both an exciting look at firefighting history and a celebration of the human spirit.

by Elizabeth MacLeod

In "Secrets Underground," history buff Elizabeth MacLeod takes readers deep down, down, down below the earth's surface, and introduces them to a completely different world -- sometimes terrifying, often baffling, and always fascinating.

Discover: the Civil War secrets carefully concealed in Organ Cave, West Virginia the top-secret equipment that lies deep below Grand Central Terminal in New York City the network of tunnels in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, that once hid victims of persecution -- and illegal liquor transported by notorious Chicago gangsters how the Aztec city Tenochtitlan, the largest and most powerful city of its time in what is now North America, nearly disappeared without a trace the abandoned ships buried beneath San Francisco that reveal the city's history as a top destination for fortune seekers during the Gold Rush the nuclear shelter the U.S. government kept hidden for decades underneath an exclusive resort in West Virginia called The Greenbrier.

Guiding readers through these fascinating places, MacLeod reveals their long-kept secrets and deftly explains how these lost and hidden subterranean passages, spaces, and caves answer decades-old puzzles, help us understand our own past, and lead us to discover what life was really like in eras gone by.

by Sophie Maletsky

Sticky Fingers is a vibrant, easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide to creating amazing projects with the hottest crafting material on the market today duct tape! The book includes tons of photographs alongside directions designed to make creating a wallet and making a bag even easier, while also providing a steady stream of ideas for personalizing and embellishing your duct tape creations. Each project includes icons showing difficulty level and project time, as well as helpful hints, such as how to keep your scissors clean and what to do with end pieces. So grab a roll of duct tape, pick a project, and get started!

New Non-Fiction Titles

For those of you that like reading non-fiction, here are a couple of the latest titles added to our collection! You can find them in the Teen New Book Section :)

by Andrea Davis Pinkney

Goodreads Summary: Featuring men and women who have worked passionately to pioneer peaceful solutions to violent conflicts throughout history. Our peace warriors will include Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Dorothy Day, and Ellen Sirleaf Johnson. Find out about their childhoods, where they went to school, what their families were like, and their major accomplishments. Six inspiring tales of courage and conviction.


This is Book #6 in the Biography Profile Series.

by Marcus Weeks

Goodreads Summary: Psychology is all around us -- in the advertising we see, the politics we debate, and in the development of products we use every day. Using engaging graphics, "Heads Up Psychology" explores the big ideas from all areas of psychology including psychoanalysis, intelligence, and mental disorders.

With easy-to-understand coverage of all the approaches to psychology, and the ideas of more than 60 psychologists, from Asch to Milgram and Ramachandran to Zimbardo, this introduction to an often complicated subject is written with young-adult readers in mind, and is structured around the questions they often ask, like "How do I fit in?," "Who needs parents, anyway?," and "Why do I feel so angry all the time?"

In "Heads Up Psychology," psychological theories are explained with the help of cleverly conceived graphic illustrations and diagrams to show how they relate to everyday life. Biography spreads give interesting insights into the lives and work of Freud, Pavlov, and more, while other psychologists and their big ideas are profiled in a comprehensive directory, and case study panels describe groundbreaking experiments in the field.

Supports the Common Core State Standards.

by Joy Masoff

Goodreads Summary: Kids love stuff that's gross. From the liquids, solids, and gases--especially the gases!--or their own bodies to the creepy, crawly, slimy, slithery, fetid, and feculent phenomena in the world at large, kids with a curious bent just can't get enough. "Oh, Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty" brings together, in one book, all the good things about some of the baddest things on Earth. 

Exhaustively researched and impeccably scientific, yet written with a lively lack of earnestness, "Oh, Yuck! "is an ants to zits encyclopedic compendium covering people, animals, insects, plants, foods, and more. Here are vampire bats, which sip blood and pee at the same time so that they'll always be light enough to fly away; and slime eels, wreathed in mucus and eating fellow fish from the inside out. "Oh, Yuck!" explains why vomit smells; where dandruff comes from; what pus is all about; and why maggots adore rotting meant. Other features include gross recipes, putrid projects, 10 foods that make you airborne, and more. 

With hundreds of cartoon illustrations and real-life photographs, "Oh, Yuck!" is the complete guide to the irresistible--at least to an 8-to-12 year old--underbelly of life.

Spending Spree: The History of American Shopping

By Cynthia Overbeck Bix

ISBN: 9781467710176

Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books (CT)
Publication Date:  November 1st 2013
Number of Pages: 88

Source: Local Library

Goodreads Summary: Love it or hate it, everybody shops. Shopping is an integral part of American life, but it hasn't always been so. From small, country general stores to the first shopping emporiums in New York, shopping grew and spread until now, in the twenty-first century, we stroll through malls that are larger than real-life main streets. Spending Spree traces the lively history of shopping in the United States, from the where the shops, department stores, discount barns, malls, and computer keyboards to the whys of consumer behavior.

My Rating:  

This is a non-fiction book all about the history of shopping that goes up until today & looks to the future. It was interesting to read about how shopping has evolved through the years and where the future is going.

We have general stores where you could barter for your items, to the evolution of malls and making shopping an all-day event for a lady to go and eat and socialize in addition to making purchases.

"Victor Gruen designed Southdale, the nation's first indoor mall. Disliking the isolation of U.S. suburban towns, he designed the mall as a community center, where people could socialize as well as shop. He used plants and waterfalls...to help create an attractive, leisurely environment." - Spending Spree, 51

We have super-centers and now the internet.

"You might call them [online shoppers] the 'new window shoppers': whenever they want something, from a flat-screen television to a 36 pack of toilet paper, they just open a new window in the web browser." - Spending Spree, 60 - Original quote: Megan McArdle, "The Future of Shopping," 2012

Recommend this book to anyone who likes to shop or is fascinated with the history of shopping. 

For the Good of Mankind?: The Shameful History of Human Medical Experimentation

It's the start of a new year and I decided to post a review of a non-fiction YA book I just finished reading - I don't see a whole lot of them, so this is unique!

By Vicki O. Wittenstein

ISBN: 9781467706599
Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group
Publication Date: August 1st 2013
Number of Pages: 96
Source: Local Library
Goodreads Summary: Experiment: A child is deliberately infected with the deadly smallpox disease without his parents' informed consent. 
Result: The world's first vaccine. 
Experiment: A slave woman is forced to undergo more than thirty operations without anesthesia. 
Result: The beginnings of modern gynecology. 
Experiment: From 1946 to 1953, seventy-four boys are fed oatmeal laced with radioactive iron and calcium. 
Result: A better understanding of the effects of radioactivity on the human body. 

Experimental incidents such as these paved the way for crucial medical discoveries and lifesaving cures and procedures. But they also violated the rights of their subjects, many of whom did not give their consent to the experiments. The subjects suffered excruciating pain and humiliation. Some even died as a result of the procedures. Even in the twenty-first century—despite laws, regulations, and ethical conventions—the tension between medical experimentation and patient rights continues. 

How do doctors balance the need to test new medicines and procedures with their ethical and moral duty to protect the rights of human subjects? What price has been paid for medical knowledge? Can we learn from the broken oaths of the past? 

Take a harrowing journey through some of history's greatest medical advances—and its most horrifying medical atrocities. You'll read about orphans injected with lethal tuberculosis and concentration camp inmates tortured by Nazi doctors. You’ll also learn about radiation experimentation and present-day clinical trials that prove fatal. Through these stories, explore the human suffering that has gone hand in hand with medical advancement.

My Rating:  

Fascinating read! For lovers of history and cover-ups, this is a book written in easy-to-understand terms but keeps the reader engaged. Some of the experiments described are graphic, so a word of caution.

The author talks about some cases of human experimentation that most are familiar with - like the Nazis during WWII, but she also brings up cases even I haven't heard of (and some performed here in the US!). For example, a program called Green Run is described. From 1944 into the 1960's, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) approved the "secret intentional releases of radioactive materials into the air" (45). Officials would then go around to area schools and test the children for radiation. This is just one instance of experimentation conducted in secret and without contest.

While raising questions of how the ends justify the means, the anecdotes given really open the reader's eyes. There are resources included in the back of the book: a breakdown by chapter with critical thinking questions, source notes, selected bibliography, and a section on more resources.

I appreciated that the rise of pharmaceutical companies and medicine-for-profit is discussed. How can these companies have the public's best interests at heart when their main goal is to make money?  Informed consent is now required but there are blurred lines when it comes to interpreting exactly how much information needs to be given in order for it to be considered "informed."

"Scientific and medical discoveries of the twenty-first century offer the promise of a future without serious medical conditions. Society must continue to experiment on humans to find new treatments and cures. In balancing the rights of the individual versus the advancement of science and medicine, how will you decide between what is right and wrong?" - For the Good of Mankind?: The Shameful History of Human Medical Experimentation, 7