New Nonfiction at Rowan Public Library

By Edward A. Hirst

Rowan Public Library

Browsing the new non-fiction shelves at the library is something I try to do on a weekly basis, and these are some titles that have caught my eye recently.

“Paint Your House with Powdered Milk” by Joey Green is full of hundreds of off-beat tips for using name brand products in creative and unusual ways.

Besides the useful tips, you can also read the history behind these products, how they got their names, and quirky facts that you probably never knew about them. You’ll never look at the items on your grocery store shelf the same way again after reading this book.

“The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival” by John Vaillant is a well researched account about a Siberian tiger that terrorizes a remote Russian village in the late ’90s. The book is about a tiger that viciously kills a poacher who wounded it and the men who are assigned to track it down.

The story reaches far beyond this, though, to include man’s relationship with tigers over the ages, issues surrounding the collapse of the Soviet Union and how that has affected the people who live along the Russian-Chinese border.

In “The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future,” Laurence C. Smith writes that as our earth warms, it is likely to cause the land farthest from the equator to become more desirable. This will lead to a population and development explosion in the near-Arctic regions and turn the world’s attention north.

Those countries with land bordering the Arctic Rim will likely benefit from global warming. He writes that spring in North America is arriving one day earlier every two and half years, “Imagine your lawn crawling north, away from your house, at a speed of 5.5 feet per day.”

“On The Grid” by Scott Huler is a fascinating trip through the streets, cables, pipes and other infrastructure that keeps our cities operating and makes modern life possible. It is an entertaining journey, with each chapter focusing on one specific element such as electricity, water, transportation and even garbage. We also meet the people who plan the systems as well as the workers who keep everything running.

In “A Splendid Exchange,” William Bernstein tells the story of global trade from its origins in prehistory to the controversies of today. We travel with ancient sailing ships along the silk trade route from China to Rome, to the rise and fall of the Portuguese trade monopoly in spices in the 16th century.

Along the way he examines inventions such as steam, steel and refrigeration that enabled us to import televisions from Korea, lettuce from Mexico and T-shirts from Costa Rica.

“The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates,” by Wes Moore, is a story about two boys who grow up in the same city in similar environments and how one becomes a Rhodes Scholar and the other ends up in jail as a convicted murderer.

The book examines the forks in the road the boys encounter as they grow up and the external forces they encounter that lead them down their respective paths.

Be sure and visit Rowan Public Library for these books and more.