Book Choices
Your Novel Topic Presentation will be based on a novel that may meet the following criteria:
- The author is new to you.
- The novel is set in a location, culture or time period that is unfamiliar.
- The novel addresses a set of beliefs and values that are unlike any you've known.
Developing some prior knowledge about the author and related subjects portrayed in your book will create a more meaningful reading experience. Below, you'll find a list of titles housed at the PCC library that will provide some background for your text.
Artifacts of loss : crafting survival in Japanese American concentration camps by ISBN: 9780813544076In Artifacts of Loss, Jane E. Dusselier focuses the lens on the lives of these internees and the art they created. Their camp-made artistry included flowers formed from tissue paper and shells, wood carvings honoring pets they left behind, furniture crafted from discarded apple crates, gardens nurtured next to their housing--anything to help alleviate their visual deprivation and isolation. Internees' crafts were central to sustaining, re-forming, and inspiring new relationships. Creating, exhibiting, consuming, and living with art became the essence of everyday camp life and helped provide for mental, emotional, and psychic survival.
Japanese American internment during World War II : a history and reference guide by ISBN: 031331375XNg, herself a Japanese American, has written six thematic essays: "The Japanese in America Before World War II," "Evacuation," "Life Within Barbed Wire," "The Question of Loyalty: Japanese Americans in the Military and Draft Resisters," "Legal Challenges to the Evacuation and Internment," and "After the War: Resettlement and Redress." She also offers a brief photographic essay, short biographies of major personalities in the internment, and a selection of primary documents. Using first-person accounts and government reports, Ng presents a concise overview of events relating to Japanese Americans from the late 19th century through 2000. This book gives the reader a good sense of the effects of the racial discrimination, incarceration, and shame so many Japanese Americans have experienced.
A way of work and a way of life: coal mining in Thurber, Texas, 1888-1926 [electronic resource] by ISBN: 058517508XThe coal mine represented much more than a way of making a living to the miners of Thurber, Texas, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries-it represented a way of life. Coal mining dominated Thurber's work life, and miners dominated its social life. The large immigrant population that filled the mines in Thurber represented more than a dozen nations, which lent a uniqueness to this Texas town.
Marilyn Rhinehart examines the culture of the miners' work, the demographics and social life of the community, and the benefits and constraints of life in a company town.
The Coalwood Way by ISBN: 0440237165Inspired by Werner von Braun and his Cape Canaveral team, 14-year-old Homer Hickam decided in 1957 to build his own rockets. They were his ticket out of Coalwood, West Virginia, a mining town that everyone knew was dying. He grew up to be a NASA engineer and his memoir of the bumpy ride toward a gold medal at the National Science Fair in 1960--an unprecedented honor for a miner's kid--is rich in humor as well as warm sentiment.
Epic Rivalry: The Inside Story of the Soviet and American Space Race by ISBN: 9781426203213The extraordinary saga that gripped the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War—galvanized by the Sputnik launch in 1957, and culminated by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon in 1969—is chronicled in this uniquely balanced history. With a foreword written by the grandson of Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, Sergei Khrushchev, this lively and compelling account offers behind-the-scenes perspective from both sides.
The Space Race by ISBN: 1560068094Aaseng outlines the competition between the Soviet Union and the United States, beginning with a brief look at the pioneering work of Robert Goddard and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Early developments in rocketry are traced up through World War II and the subsequent work on missiles, satellites, and manned flight is described and placed in the context of the Cold War. The author includes recently revealed information about the Soviet space program.
