CLOSE TO SHORE: A TRUE STORY OF TERROR IN AN AGE OF INNOCENCE
by Michael Capuzzo
In July 1916 a lone great white was pulled from the deep ocean by a current of the Gulf Stream and headed in the direction of the New Jersey shoreline. There, near the towns of Beach Haven and Spring Lake-and, incredibly, a farming community eleven miles from the sea-the most ferocious and unpredictable of predators began a deadly rampage: the first shark attacks on swimmers in U.S. history.

MY LOSING SEASON
by Pat Conroy
This is a story of a tough, shy kid growing up on his own in the 1960's and driven to succeed in athletics by hatred of his father's treatment of the family. It's the tale of coming of age, of life at the Citadel, and of playing on a talented basketball team, led to a mediocre season by an enigmatic coach who seemed to make all the wrong choices.

GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER: THE TRUE STORY OF THE EMMETT TILL CASE
by Chris Crowe
A 14-year-old African American from Chicago was murdered by two white men in Mississippi for making "ugly remarks" to one of their wives. The men were acquitted, and several months later, they were interviewed by Look magazine and publicly confessed to the crime. Four months after Till was killed, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, and the wheels of the civil rights movement were set in motion.

KING OF THE MILD FRONTIER: AN ILL-ADVISED AUTOBIOGRAPHY
by Chris Crutcher
Protective of his alcoholic mom and at almost constant odds with his strict and demanding dad, Crutcher describes incidents and telling episodes from his formative years. His signature wit was sharpened in response to both his feelings of inadequacy and his competitive nature, honed by participation in high school and college sports.

AN AMERICAN INSURRECTION: THE BATTLE OF OXFORD, MISSISSIPPI, 1962
by William Doyle
This book takes readers into the eye of the chaotic and ferocious white uprising that occurred when Air Force veteran James Meredith tried to become the first black student to register at the University of Mississippi, only to be physically blocked by radical segregationist Governor Ross Barnett, hundreds of state police, and thousands of student and civilian "volunteers" from across the South.

NICKEL AND DIMED: ON (NOT) GETTING BY IN AMERICA
by Barbara Ehrenreich
Author Barbara Ehrenreich decides to see if she can scratch out a comfortable living in blue-collar America. What she discovers is a culture of desperation, where workers often take multiple low-paying jobs just to keep a roof overhead.

SEEING IN THE DARK: HOW BACKYARD STARGAZERS ARE PROBING DEEP SPACE AND GUARDING EARTH FROM INTERPLANETARY PERIL
by Timothy Ferris
America's finest science writer describes a major revolution sweeping astronomy, as amateur astronomers, in global networks linked by the Internet, make discoveries that are changing knowledge of the universe.

PHINEAS GAGE: A GRUESOME BUT TRUE STORY ABOUT BRAIN SCIENCE
by John Fleischman
A science writer specializing in medicine, Fleischman tells how Gage, foreman of a railroad construction gang, survived an iron rod being blasted through his brain in 1848, and how the subsequent study of him contributed to the modern understanding of the central nervous system.

BEN FRANKLIN’S ALMANAC
by Candace Fleming
Brings together eighteenth century etchings, artifacts, and quotations to create the effect of a scrapbook of the life of Benjamin Franklin.

COAL: A HUMAN HISTORY
by Barbara Freese
The history of coal use in Britain, the U.S., and China, an examination of the ongoing tension between its creative and destructive capacities, the role it has played in the urbanization, centralization, industrialization and mechanization of the world and the severe environmental threat it poses today.

HOLE IN MY LIFE
by Jack Gantos
The author relates how, as a young adult, he became a drug user and smuggler, was arrested, did time in prison, and eventually got out and went to college, all the while hoping to become a writer.

WAR, WOMEN, AND THE NEWS
by Catherine Gourley
Filled with stirring period photographs and news clippings, this volume explores the conflicts and challenges such female news journalists as Margaret Bourke White, Lee Miller and Marguerite Higgins faced before, during and after the Second World War.

MELTDOWN: A RACE AGAINST NUCLEAR DISASTER AT THREE MILE ISLAND
by Wilborn Hampton
Using his gift for capturing dramatic situations in personal stories, this award-winning reporter offers an account of his experiences covering the near meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, PA, in 1979.

HIP-HOP U.S. HISTORY
by Blake Harrison
Featuring an audio CD with 45 minutes of original, educational, and cutting-edge music, this latest entry in the innovative Flocabulary series turns U.S. history into an enjoyable experience. It's perfect for any student preparing for the AP placement test or the SAT II.

THE WILDERNESS FAMILY: AT HOME WITH AFRICA’S WILDLIFE
by Kobie Krüger
Krüger recounts adventures and misadventures with the curious menagerie that shared her turf in the river-laced country between South Africa and Mozambique. Among the animals she encounters are enterprising hyenas who pilfer cookware and blankets; a python that crept into bed with the Krügers; and the occasional ill-tempered elephant. Most affecting of all her encounters is with an orphaned lion cub named Leo, whom she and her family raised into adulthood.

LEFT FOR DEAD: A YOUNG MAN’S SEARCH FOR JUSTICE ON THE USS INDIANAPOLIS
by Peter Nelson
Recalls the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis at the end of World War II, the navy cover-up and unfair court martial of the ship's captain, and how a young boy helped the survivors set the record straight fifty-five years later.

REVENGE OF THE WHALE: THE TRUE STORY OF THE WHALESHIP ESSEX
by Nathaniel Philbrick
Recounts the 1820 sinking of the whaleship "Essex" by an enraged sperm whale and how the crew of young men survived against impossible odds.

TO AFGHANISTAN AND BACK: A GRAPHIC TRAVELOGUE
by Ted Rall
Rall spent three weeks in a country with only five paved roads, where sleeping in unheated rooms with fleas and scorpions were the norm, and where both 11-year-old soldiers and exploding grenades and bombs were commonplace. He describes corruption and treachery, violence, and death; he records the murder of a journalist "killed for his money" the same night he barely escaped a similar fate.

STIFF: THE CURIOUS LIVES OF HUMAN CADAVERS
by Mary Roach
Those curious or brave enough to find out what really happens to a body that is donated to the scientific community can do so with this book. Dissection in medical anatomy classes is about the least bizarre of the purposes that science has devised. Mostly dealing with such contemporary uses such as stand-ins for crash-test dummies, Roach also pulls together considerable historical and background information.

THE TREE OF LIFE: A BOOK DEPICTING THE LIFE OF CHARLES DARWIN, NATURALIST, GEOLOGIST, AND THINKER
by Peter Sís
Presents the life of the famous nineteenth-century naturalist using text from Darwin's writings and detailed drawings by Sís.

THE GATEKEEPERS: A PREMIER COLLEGE ADMITS A FRESHMAN CLASS
by Jacques Steinberg
Steinberg follows a college admissions officer and his eight counterparts through the daunting task of recruiting students nationwide, reading through each of their applications, and meeting behind closed doors to finalize the incoming class. In the process, he shows how the admission process at top colleges really works.

JOURNEY INTO MOHAWK COUNTRY
by H.M. van den Bogaert
An illustrated version of the journal of a young Dutch trader, Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, who journeyed into the land of the Iroquois Indians, a Mowhawk tribe that controlled the trade routes in the area, in 1634, seeking to bolster the Dutch trade in what is now New York State.

BLACK, WHITE, AND JEWISH: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A SHIFTING SELF
by Rebecca Walker
The story of a child's unique struggle for identity and home when nothing in her world shows her who she is. Poetic reflections on memory, time, and self punctuate this gritty exploration of race and sexuality as Walker is caught between the worlds of her black mother and Jewish father.