Overbooked: A Resource for Readers

Overbooked specializes in providing timely information about fiction (all genres) and readable nonfiction. Overbooked has been online since 1994. Overbooked is a work in progress . . .

Overbooked is the winner of the 2008 Louis Shores - Greenwood Publishing Award: to recognize excellence in book reviewing and other media for libraries. The award recipient is selected for significant achievement related to a reviewing process that helps librarians make selection decisions.

Starred Reviews

All Stars 2007 - Nonfiction

May 30, 2008

Nonfiction titles which received three or more starred reviews (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist (BL), Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus, and Library Journal (LJ).

The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic Gilgamesh
Author: Damrosch, David
Publisher: Holt $ 26 ISBN: 9780805080292 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW Booklist
The Buried Book begins with the rediscovery of the epic and its deciphering in 1872 by George Smith, a brilliant self-taught linguist who created a sensation when he discovered Gilgamesh among the thousands of tablets in the British Museum's collection. From there the story goes backward in time, all the way to Gilgamesh himself. Damrosch reveals the story as a literary bridge between East and West: a document lost in Babylonia, discovered by an Iraqi, decoded by an Englishman, and appropriated in novels by both Philip Roth and Saddam Hussein. This is an illuminating, fast-paced tale of history as it was written, stolen, lost, and--after 2,000 years, countless battles, fevered digs, conspiracies, and revelations--finally found. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 2.19.07
Brother, I'm Dying
Author: Danticat, Edwidge
Publisher: Knopf $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781400041152 Date: 2007
Booklist LJ PW
From the best-selling author of The Dew Breaker comes a major work of nonfiction: a powerfully moving family story that centers around the men closest to her heart--her father, Mira, and his older brother, Joseph.
Updated 7.11.07
Dog Years
Author: Doty, Mark
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 23.95 ISBN: 9780061171000 Date: 2007
LJ Kirkus PW
Both moving and entertaining, Dog Years is the story of two beloved retrievers and is a pointed, perceptive meditation on life, death, and the nature of companionship.
Updated 3.15.07
American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies in the Founding of the Republic
Author: Ellis, Joseph
Publisher: Knopf $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780307263698 Date: 2007
PW Kirkus Booklist
From the prizewinning author of the bestselling Founding Brothers and American Sphinx comes this masterly and highly ironic examination of the founding years of our country.
Updated 10.2.07
The Terror Dream
Author: Faludi, Susan
Publisher: Metropolitan $ 24 ISBN: 9780805086928 Date: 2007
Booklist LJ PW Kirkus
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of Backlash comes an unflinching dissection of the mind of America after 9/11.
Updated 8.20.07
Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to America
Author: Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781400062812 Date: 2007
PW Booklist Kirkus
A groundbreaking biography of the man who gave his name to America, Amerigo is delivered by one of the worlds most exciting historians who spins a grand narrative full of character and story.
Updated 6.15.07
The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of a Universe
Author: Frayn, Michael
Publisher: Metropolitan $ 32.50 ISBN: 9780805081480 Date: 2007
PW Kirkus Booklist
With wit, charm, and brilliance, this epic work sets out to make sense of our place in the scheme of things. Surveying the spectrum of philosophical concerns from the existence of space and time to relativity and language, Frayn attempts to resolve what he calls "the oldest mystery": the world is what we make of it.
Updated 12.29.06
Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
Author: Gawande, Atul
Publisher: Metropolitan $ 24 ISBN: 9780805082111 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW LJ
The "New York Times" bestselling author examines the complex and risk-filled medical profession and how those involved progress from merely good to great. Gawande provides rare insight and offers an honest firsthand account of his own life as a surgeon.
Updated 3.5.07
When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa
Author: Godwin, Peter
Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780316158947 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW Booklist
A brilliant memoir about a son's return to Africa to uncover the secrets of his family and his home. Bearing witness to Zimbabwe's dramatic spiral downwards, Godwin discovers why Africa was his father's sanctuary from another identity and why his family chose to stay amidst the chaos.
Updated 4.18.07
Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts
Author: James, Clive
Publisher: Norton $ 35 ISBN: 9780393061161 Date: 2007
PW Booklist Kirkus
Containing more than 100 original essays organized by quotations, James illuminates, rescues, or occasionally destroys the careers of many of the greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists, and philosophers of the 20th century.
Updated 3.2.07
In Europe: A Journey Through the Twentieth Century
Author: Mak, Geert
Publisher: Pantheon $ 35 ISBN: 9780375424953 Date: 2007
Booklist Kirkus PW
Already a bestseller throughout Europe, Dutch journalist and historian Mak writes a rich and intimate work of modern history. The author chronicles key events and weaves them through individual experiences in order to provide readers with an eyewitness perspective on the past.
Updated 6.28.07
The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm
Author: Nicholson, Juliet
Publisher: Grove $ 25 ISBN: 9780802118462 Date: 2007
Booklist Kirkus PW
Topping the best-seller charts in Britain, The Perfect Summer chronicles a glorious English summer a century ago when the world was on the cusp of irrevocable change. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 3.5.07
Love is a Mix Tape: Life, Loss, And What I Listened To
Author: Sheffield, Rob
Publisher: Crown $ 22.95 ISBN: 9781400083022 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW LJ
Sheffield relates the two important love affairs of his life, the first with music and the fine art of the perfect mix tape, and the second with a woman who changes him forever.
Suggested Reading: Music-Nonfiction | Love is a Mix Tape
Updated 12.29.06
Touch and Go: A Memoir
Author: Turkel, Studs
Publisher: New $ 24.95 ISBN: 9781595580436 Date: 2007
PW Kirkus PW Booklist
At nearly 95, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Terkel offers his long-awaited memoir that embodies the spirit of the man himself--youthful, vivacious, and enormously fun.
Updated 8.27.07
Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis
Author: Todd, Kim
Publisher: Harcourt $ 27 ISBN: 9780151011087 Date: 2007
Booklist Kirkus LJ
Before Darwin, before Audubon, there was Merian. An artist turned naturalist known for her botanical illustra-tions, she was born just sixteen years after Galileo proclaimed that the earth orbited the sun. But at the age of fifty she sailed from Europe to the New World on a solo scientific expedi-tion to study insect metamorphosis--an unheard-of journey for any naturalist at that time, much less a woman. When she returned she produced a book that secured her reputation, only to have it savaged in the nineteenth century by scientists who disdained the work of "amateurs." Exquisitely written and illustrated, Chrysalis takes us from golden-age Amsterdam to the Surinam tropics to modern laboratories where Merian's insights fuel a new branch of biology. Kim Todd brings to life a seventeenth-century woman whose boldness and vision would still be exceptional today. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 1.17.06
Thomas Hardy
Author: Tomalin, Claire
Publisher: Penguin $ 35 ISBN: 9781594201189 Date: 2007
Booklist Kirkus PW
In this seminal biography of the enigmatic novelist and poet Thomas Hardy (Tess of the d'Urbervilles), Whitbread Award winner Tomalin skillfully identifies the inner demons and the outer mores that drove Hardy and presents a rich and complex portrait of one of the greatest figures in English literature.
Updated 12.28.06
Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed
Author: Trynka, Paul
Publisher: Broadway $ 23.95 ISBN: 9780767923194 Date: 2007
PW Kirkus LJ
Iggy Pop transcended life in Michigan to become the "Godfather of Punk." Although his struggles with drug addiction, mental illness, and his problematic question of commercial success were well known, his groundbreaking style profoundly influenced the genres of punk, glam, and New Wave.
Suggested Reading: Music-Nonfiction
Updated 5.11.07
Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History
Author: Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher
Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 9781400041596 Date: 2007
Kirkus LJ Booklist
In this engrossing volume, Ulrich explores what it means to make history. She shows how the feminist wave of the 1970s has created a generation that challenged traditional accounts of both mens and womens histories, and which stimulated better-documented accounts of the past.
Updated 9.10.07
Poor People
Author: Vollmann, William T.
Publisher: Ecco $ 29.95 ISBN: 9780060878825 Date: 2007
Kirkus Booklist LJ
A National Book Award-winning author travels the globe and meets with impoverished individuals where they live to document firsthand the causes and effects of poverty.
Updated 3.5.07
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
Author: Washington, Harriet A.
Publisher: Doubleday $ 27.95 ISBN: 9780385509930 Date: 2007
Booklist Kirkus PW
Medical Apartheidis the first and only comprehensive history of the medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between Africans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the way both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without a hint of informed consent--a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It shows how blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks and a view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. Shocking new details about the government's Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, and private institutions. Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Black History Stars
Updated 12.28.06
The World Without Us
Author: Weisman, Alan
Publisher: Thomas Dunne $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780312347291 Date: 2007
PW LJ Booklist
Weisman, an award-winning journalist, offers readers a penetrating--and sometimes terrifying--take on how the planet would respond without the relentless pressure of the human presence.
Updated 6.28.07

2008

Hotlists

Fiction | Zoho DB

Crime Fiction |Zoho DB

Crime Fiction - embedded

Stars

Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec Crime Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec

Speculative Fiction Romance Historical Nonfiction | YA

Summer Reading

2007

Hotlists

Hotlists: Fiction | Crime Fiction

Genre Hotlists: Christian Fiction | African American Fiction

Stars

Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec Crime Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec

Speculative Fiction Romance Historical Nonfiction | YA

Overbooked is a volunteer project undertaken by Ann Chambers Theis: Collection Management Administrator, Chesterfield County (VA) Public Library. 9501 Lori Rd. or P.O. Box 297, Chesterfield, VA, 23832. Phone: 804.748.1760.

Overbooked is not an official Chesterfield County Public Library service. Overbooked.org is a nonprofit web site hosted by CVCO - Central Virginia's Community Online. Overbooked.com is a nonprofit web site in experimental mode. Overbooked does not endorse any commercial providers (or their products and services) linked to from this web site.

Please join the conversation(s) at Overbookers - a rather quiet social space for the chronically overbooked.

Join the Overbooked List - A quiet list for readers to share recent reads, keep up to date with details about new books, discuss favorite authors/titles, etc.

Comments, suggestions, corrections: Ann Chambers Theis (AKA Ann/ACT): ann_overbooked@earthlink.net or ann@overbooked.com

I really appreciate all the e-mail I receive from avid readers and writers and regret that I am not able to respond to all correspondents. Special thanks to those folks who regularly help keep me on track - you know who you are....