

| Philosophy Non-Fiction |
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| Frankel, Victor | Man's Search for Meaning |
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Tells the chilling and inspirational story of eminent psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who was imprisoned at Auschwitz and other concentration camps for three years during the Second World War. Immersed in great suffering and loss, Frankl began to wonder why some of his fellow prisoners were able not only to survive the horrifying conditions, but to grow in the process. Frankl's conclusion - that the most basic human motivation is the will to meaning - became the basis of his groundbreaking psychological theory, logotherapy. MNHS has this book. 921 FRA |
Recommended by: Mr. Diehl |
A short, quick read that provides both a first-hand account of Nazi terrorism at WWII concentration camps and an enlightening glimpse into the psychology of its captives. Viktor Frankl's ideas were met with rave reviews from the world of psychology and, on a lesser scale, me. His book has done more than entertain me or teach the history buff in me. It has provided me, honestly, with direction and optimism - affected me on a personal level in a way no other book is yet to do. Good for an insightful pick-me-up or even first-hand research for history or psychology classes. Among my top five books ever read. |
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| Philosophy Fiction |
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| Martel, Yuan | Life of Pi |
| Recommended by Mrs. Burdic; Mrs. Shannon |
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Africa |
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Fiction |
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Conrad, Joseph |
Heart of Darkness |
![]() Publication Date: 1899 |
Considered a masterpiece, this book exposes the tenuous fabric that holds "civilization" together and the brutal horror at the center of European colonialism. Conrad's crowning achievement recounts Marlow's physical and psychological journey deep into the heart of the Belgian Congo in search of the mysterious trader Kurtz. MNHS has this book. FIC CON |
| Recommended by: Mrs. Mills |
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LeCarre, John |
The Constant Gardener |
![]() Publication Date: 2000 |
Frightening, heartbreaking, and exquisitely calibrated, John le Carré's new novel opens with the gruesome murder of the young and beautiful Tessa Quayle near northern Kenya's Lake Turkana, the birthplace of mankind. Her putative African lover and traveling companion, a doctor with one of the aid agencies, has vanished from the scene of the crime. Tessa's much older husband, Justin, a career diplomat at the British High Commission in Nairobi, sets out on a personal odyssey in pursuit of the killers and their motive. What he might know and what he ultimately learns make him suspect among his own colleagues and a target for the profiteers who killed his wife. |
| Recommended by: Mrs. Mills |
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Maalouf, Amin |
Leo Africanus |
![]() Publication Date: 1989 |
Written in the form of a memoir, this historical novel explores the meeting of two worlds Islam and Christendom through the adventures of real-life Arab traveler and geographer Hassan al-Wazzan. Born in Spain just as the Moors were expelled in 1492, Hassan grows up in North Africa and as a young man crosses the Sahara to Timbuctu, eventually reaching Cairo on the eve of its conquest by the Ottomans. In the last of his sojourns recounted by Maalouf, Hassan arrives in the Rome of Pope Leo X, who christens him Leo Africanus. This book is on order. Recommended by Mrs. Mills |
| Recommended by: Mrs. Mills |
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| Africa Non-Fiction |
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Achebe, Chinua |
Hopes and Impediments |
![]() Publication Date: 1988 |
Achebe's powerful critique of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness as a racist mirror of Eurocentric attitudes leads off this challenging collection of essays on art, literature and social issues. The famed Nigerian novelist ( Things Fall Apart ) views literature as a medium that can help Africa regain a belief in itself to replace a posture of self-abasement instilled by its traumatic historical encounter with the West. Achebe calls active participation in the political process a prerequisite for his country's, and Africa's, regeneration. MNHS has this book. 896 ACH |
| Recommended by: Mrs. Mills |
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Dinesan, Isak |
Out of Africa |
Publication Date: |
Out of Africa is Isak Dinesen's memoir of her years in Africa, from 1914 to 1931, on a four-thousand-acre coffee plantation in the hills near Nairobi. She had come to Kenya from Denmark with her husband, and when they separated she stayed on to manage the farm by herself, visited frequently by her lover, the big-game hunter Denys Finch-Hatton, for whom she would make up stories "like Scheherazade." In Africa, "I learned how to tell tales," she recalled many years later. "The natives have an ear still. I told stories constantly to them, all kinds." her account of her African adventures, written after she had lost her beloved farm and returned to Denmark, is that of a master storyteller, a woman whom John Updike called "one of the most picturesque and flamboyant literary personalities of the century." MNHS has this book. 921 DIN |
| Recommended by: Mrs. Mills |
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Fuller, Alexandra |
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight |
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From 1972 to 1990, Alexandra Fuller - known to friends and family as Bobo - grew up on several farms in southern and central Africa. Her father joined up on the side of the white government in the Rhodesian civil war, and was often away fighting against the powerful black guerrilla factions. Her mother, in turn, flung herself into their African life and its rugged farm work with the same passion and maniacal energy she brought to everything else. Though she loved her children, she was no hand-holder and had little tolerance for neediness. She nurtured her daughters in other ways: She taught them, by example, to be resilient and self-sufficient, to have strong wills and strong opinions, and to embrace life wholeheartedly, despite and because of difficult circumstances. And she instilled in Bobo, particularly, a love of reading and of storytelling that proved to be her salvation. |
| Recommended by: Mrs. Burdic |
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Fuller, Alexandra |
Scribbling the Cat |
![]() Publication Date: 2004 |
Fuller takes a demon-haunted tour of Zimbabwe and Mozambique in the company of an ex-soldier who fought with the Rhodesian Light Infantry. Visiting her parents in Zambia, Fuller meets K, a white African banana farmer and a veteran of the Rhodesian War. She finds him both "terrifying and unattractive"-he radiates a sense of violence and unpredictability-but also fascinating for the ghosts he harbors. Zimbabwe is deeply unromantic, a place of labor, strain, and toil in which the
marginalized must be endlessly resourceful simply to survive; life expectancy is
35 years, and randomly dispersed landmines, a handful for each citizen, remain a
threat. This book is on order. Omaha Public Library Has. 968.9 FUL |
| Recommended by: Mrs. Burdic |
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Kruger, Kobie |
The Wilderness Family: at home with Africa's wildlife |
![]() Publication Date: 2001 |
In 1980, Kobie Krüger's husband became a game warden in South Africa's Kruger National Park, a 12,000-square-mile expanse teeming with lions, elephants, giraffes, and the like. Along with their three daughters, the couple would spend the next 17 years living in the park, amid the dangers and beauties of its wildlife. These adventures really run the spectrum. The expected run-ins with malaria,
poachers, and marauding elephants are interspersed with more unusual situations:
a python that conceals itself in a chest of drawers and hyenas that raid the
compound for leather shoes and saddles to eat. Yet despite these encounters with
curious, mischievous, or just plain venomous fauna, as well as the searing
summer heat and the loneliness that comes when her children leave for college,
Krüger comes to cherish what this special place gives her. MNHS has this book. 591.9 KRU |
Recommended by: Mrs. Burdic |
The book beautifully portrays the joys and difficulties of living in isolation in a fascinating part of the world. This is highly recommended reading for the arm chair adventurer. Kruger gives a glimpse of an interesting life well-lived with courage and perseverence.She leads the life that I wish I could - but only will in my imagination. If you liked Born Free, you'll love this book. |
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| Tucker, Neely | Love in the Driest Season |
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In 1997 foreign correspondent Neely Tucker and his wife, Vita, arrived in Zimbabwe. After witnessing the devastating consequences of AIDS and economic disaster on the country's children, the couple started volunteering at an orphanage where a critically ill infant, abandoned in a field on the day she was born, was trusted to their care. Within weeks, Chipo, the baby girl whose name means "gift," would come to mean everything to them. Their decision to adopt her, however, would challenge an unspoken social norm: that foreigners should never adopt Zimbabwean children. MNHS has this book. 362.73 Tuc |
| Recommended by: Mrs. Burdic |
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Afghanistan Fiction |
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| Khaled Hosseini | The Kite Runner |
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The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption. And it is also about the power of fathers over sons -- their love, their sacrifices, their lies. The first Afghan novel to be written in English, The Kite Runner tells a sweeping story of family, love, and friendship against a backdrop of history that has not been told in fiction before. |
| Recommended by: Mr. Diehl; Mrs. Tredway |
Because I can't keep you captive and force you to read this, the best I can do is insist. Detailed accounts in this historical fiction book provide shocking and often gruesome insight into modern Afghanistan, the place the world forgot. Thanks to Soviet invasion and chaotic Taliban rule since the early 1990s, the Afghanistan of our main character's adulthood is starkly different from his childhood. How he struggles to reconcile the past and present of his country and his behavior provides for a chilling page-turner that will leave you speechless. |
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| Chinese-Americans Fiction |
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| Tan, Amy | Joy Luck Club |
Publication Date: 1989 |
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| Recommended by: Mrs. Burdic |
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| Hot Topics | |
| Friedman, Thomas | The World is Flat |
![]() Publication Date: 2005 |
This book discusses the convergence of technologies that have allowed countries from throughout the world to participate in the global economy. The middle class is growing at an astonishing rate in India, China and many other countries because they they can effectively participate in the global supply chain for services and manufacturing. This book discusses the 'flattening' which has many implications for the future - both political and economic. Friedman is Pulitzer Prize winning author. The book is well researched and well-written. |
| Recommended by: Mr. Hutfles Mrs. Martinez |
This is a "must-read" for every savvy student - AND their parents! |
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| Barber, Benjamin | Jihad vs. McWorld |
![]() Publication Date: 1995 |
Jihad vs. McWorld is an analysis of the fundamental conflict of our times: consumerist capitalism versus religious and tribal fundamentalism. Jihad vs. McWorld offers a lens through which to understand the chaotic events of the post-Cold War world. Benjamin R. Barber argues that if you look only at the business section of the daily newspaper, you would be convinced that the world was increasingly united, that borders were increasingly porous, that corporate mergers were steadily knitting the globe into a single international market. But if you focus only on the front page, you would be convinced of just the opposite: that the world was increasingly riven by fratricide, civil war, and the breakup of nations. Barber provides a single map that unites these two sides of the same coin, and convincingly demonstrates that what capitalism and fundamentalism have in common is a distaste for democracy. |
| Recommended by: Mr. Diehl |
How can the world become a global community and at the same time preserve its boundaries - especially in fundamentalist and tribal cultures? This book explores the contradictory dichotomy in capitvating fashion, getting at the root of why some people resent of America and will protest against it until their dying day - as long as they can protest in comfortable Nikes and breathable Levi's because, you know, it's a long picket line and it's hot out there. Omaha Public Library Has. 303.482 Ben |
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| World War I - Fiction |
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| Remarque, Erich Maria | All Quiet on the Western Front |
| Recommended by: Mrs. Morgan Mrs. Burdic |
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| Morpurgo, Michael | Private Peaceful (Young Adults Choices) |
| Recommended by: Mrs. Burdic |
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| World War II - Fiction | |
| Heller, Joseph | Catch-22 |
Publication Date: 1961 |
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| Recommended by: Mrs. Martinez |
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| Vonnegut, Kurt | Cat's Cradle |
| Recommended by: Mr. Keber |
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| World War II - Non Fiction |
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| Hershey, John | Hiroshima |
| Recommended by: Mr. Keber |
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| Weisel, Elie | Night |
| Recommended by: Mr. Keber |
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| 1950's Fiction |
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| Salinger, J.D. | Catcher in the Rye |
Publication Date: 1951 |
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| Recommended by: Mr. Keber |
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| Must Reads | |
| Shelley, Mary | Frankenstein |
| Publication Date: 1818 |
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| Recommended by: Mrs. Burdic |
Gothic romanticism at it's best! You must read the 'original' Frankenstein to understand why this story has persisted into movies and other forms of entertainment to this day. It is a cautionary tale about morality and an indictment of the heartless intellect. |
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25 September, 2007
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