Staff Recommendations & Featured Titles

Phillip Recommends
The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
by Rick Atkinson
$35.00, Hardcover
Henry Holt & Co.

In the second volume of his epic trilogy about the liberation of Europe in World War II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the harrowing story of the campaigns in Sicily and Italy. In An Army at Dawn-winner of the Pulitzer Prize-Rick Atkinson provided a dramatic and authoritative history of the Allied triumph in North Africa. Now, in The Day of Battle, he follows the strengthening American and British armies as they invade Sicily in July 1943 and then, mile by bloody mile, fight their way north toward Rome.The Italian campaign's outcome was never certain; in fact, Roosevelt, Churchill, and their military advisers engaged in heated debate about whether an invasion of the so-called soft underbelly of Europe was even a good idea. But once under way, the commitment to liberate Italy from the Nazis never wavered, despite the agonizingly high price. The battles at Salerno, Anzio, and Monte Cassino were particularly difficult and lethal, yet as the months passed, the Allied forces continued to drive the Germans up the Italian peninsula. Led by Lieutenant General Mark Clark, one of the war's most complex and controversial commanders, American officers and soldiers became increasingly determined and proficient. And with the liberation of Rome in June 1944, ultimate victory at last began to seem inevitable.

Drawing on a wide array of primary source material, written with great drama and flair, this is narrative history of the first rank. With The Day of Battle, Atkinson has once again given us the definitive account of one of history's most compelling military campaigns.

Rick Atkinson was a staff writer and senior editor at The Washington Post for twenty years. He is the bestselling author of An Army at Dawn, The Long Gray Line, In the Company of Soldiers, and Crusade. His many awards include Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and history. He lives in Washington, D.C.


Featured Title
Tree of Smoke
by Denis Johnson
$27.00, Hardcover
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

This is the story of Skip Sands—spy-in-training, engaged in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong—and the disasters that befall him thanks to his famous uncle, a war hero known in intelligence circles simply as the Colonel. This is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert into a war in which the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away. In its vision of human folly, and its gritty, sympathetic portraits of men and women desperate for an end to their loneliness, whether in sex or death or by the grace of God, this is a story like nothing in our literature.

Denis Johnson is the author of five novels, a collection of poetry and one book of reportage. He is the recipient of a Lannan Fellowship and a Whiting Writer's Award, among many other honors for his work. He lives in northern Idaho.



Lynn Recommends
Free Food for Millionaires
by Min Jin Lee
$50.00, Hardcover
DK Publishing

Casey Han's four years at Princeton gave her many things, 'But no job and a number of bad habits.' Casey's parents, who live in Queens, are Korean immigrants working in a dry cleaner, desperately trying to hold on to their culture and their identity. Their daughter, on the other hand, has entered into rarified American society via scholarships. But after graduation, Casey sees the reality of having expensive habits without the means to sustain them.

As she navigates Manhattan, we see her life and the lives around her, culminating in a portrait of New York City and its world of haves and have-nots. Free Food for Millionaires offers up a fresh exploration of the complex layers we inhabit both in society and within ourselves. Inspired by 19th century novels such as Vanity Fair and Middlemarch, Min Jin Lee examines maintaining one's identity within changing communities in what is her remarkably assured debut.


Featured Title
Bird: The Definitive Visual Guide
by David Burnie
$50.00, Hardcover
DK Publishing

Unrivaled in scope for a single-volume reference work, this visual guide to every bird order and family profiles more than 1,500 species, photographed in their native environment by photographers around the globe. Authoritative, comprehensive, and completely up to date, this is a must-have reference for anyone with even a passing interest in the world’s birds.

Bird illustrates the full range of birds, bird behavior, and bird-watching locations. Organized in taxonomic order with detailed introductions to every bird order, the book includes special double-page features on the most spectacular birds as well as breathtaking images of the bird world with an audio CD of bird songs and calls!

Lynn Recommends...
The Blood of Flowers
by Anita Amirrezvani
$23.99, Hardcover
Little, Brown & Company

Set in the legendary time of Sah Abbas the Great, the novel captures the bustle of bazaars overflowing with pomegrantates, rosewater and saffron; the breathtakingly beautiful silk and gold rugs of the Shah's carpet workshop, and Isfahan's incomparable bridges, gardens, teahouses, and hammams. With spellbinding medieval Persian tales and prose that flows like the Zayadeh River through the city of Isfahan, The Blood of Flowers is the story of one woman's struggle to create a life of her choosing, relying - against all odds - on the strength of her own hands, mind and will.


Sharon Recommends...
Afternoons with Emily
by Rose MacMurray
$24.99, Hardcover
Little, Brown & Company

A fascinating view of the extraordinary personality of Emily Dickinson, told from the perspective of Miranda Chase, one of the few intimate friends of the reclusive but brilliant poet.


Phillip Recommends...
The Secret History of the American Empire
by John Perkins
$25.95, Hardcover
Penguin

In his follow-up to Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins globetrots his way around the world detailing region-by-region his clandestine involvement in foreign governments on behalf of his former corporatocratic bosses. Drawn from his own cloak-and-dagger exploits and the secret operations of others Perkins draws a disturbing portrait of corporate involvement in the foreign affairs of developing nations - deep-rooted corruption, viscious land-grabs, brutal exploitation of natural resources -- even cold blooded coups and genocide.

While it's certainly one of those stories that would be far more entertaining if it weren't true, Perkins remains optimistic, specifically outlining his own plan for reform and what you can do to make the world a better place.