Don's Book & DVD Selections for 2008 

Our librarians use the "hot topics" section to buy popular non-fiction books that don't easily fit a category, such as memoirs by political or cultural figures, accounts of the Iraq War or terrorism, the economic meltdown, or any other dynamic current issue.  In my case, I comb the New York Times best-seller lists for new "hot" books, and watch the Oregonian and RG Arts section for writers who are visiting, or books with a strong local connection.

Student audience: General

1. 90 minutes in heaven : a true story of death & life / Don Piper with Cecil Murphey

2. A bold fresh piece of humanity / Bill O'Reilly

3. After the war zone : a practical guide for returning troops and their families / Laurie B. Slone and Matthew J. Friedman

4. Are you there vodka? It's me, Chelsea / Chelsea Handler

5. Big Russ and me : father and son, lessons of life / Tim Russert

6. Biting the wax tadpole : confessions of a language fanatic / Elizabeth Little ; [illustrations by Ayumi Piland]

7. Darkening peaks : glacier retreat, science, and society / edited by Ben Orlove, Ellen Wiegandt, and Brian H. Luckman

8. Dewey : a small-town library cat who touched the world / Vicki Myron, with Bret Witter

9. Disorder and decline : crime and the spiral of decay in American neighborhoods / Wesley G. Skogan

10. Early spring : an ecologist and her children wake to a warming world / Amy Seidl

11. Enough : true measures of money, business, and life / John C. Bogle

12. Fast food, fast talk : service work and the routinization of everyday life / Robin Leidner

13. Fatal misconception : the struggle to control world population / Matthew Connelly

14. Firefight : inside the battle to save the Pentagon on 9/11 / Patrick Creed, Rick Newman

15. Fleeced : how Barack Obama, media mockery of terrorist threats, liberals who want to kill talk radio, the do-nothing Congress, companies that help Iran, and Washington lobbyists for foreign governments are scamming us-- and what to do about it / Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

16. Free lunch : how the wealthiest Americans enrich themselves at government expense (and stick you with the bill) / David Cay Johnston

17. Gotcha capitalism : how hidden fees rip you off every day, and what you can do about it / Bob Sullivan

18. Here comes everybody : the power of organizing without organizations / Clay Shirky

19. High crimes : the fate of Everest in an age of greed / Michael Kodas

20. House lust : America's obsession with our homes / Daniel McGinn

21. Instant knowledge / edited by Will Pearson and Mangesh Hattikudur

22. Invitation : Billy Graham and the lives God touched : stories of real people transformed by God / Basyle and Aram Tchividjian

23. Japanamerica : how Japanese pop culture has invaded the U.S. / Roland Kelts

24. Ladies of liberty : the women who shaped our nation / Cokie Roberts

25. Letter to my daughter / Maya Angelou

26. Millennial makeover : MySpace, YouTube, and the future of American politics / Morley Winograd, Michael D. Hais

27. Mo' urban dictionary : ridonkulous street slang defined / compiled by Aaron Peckham

28. More information than you require ... / John Hodgman

29. Our dumb world : the Onion's atlas of the planet earth

30. Quiet, please : dispatches from a public librarian / by Scott Douglas

31. Rethinking popular culture : contemporary perspectives in cultural studies / edited by Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson

32. Rocketeers : how a visionary band of business leaders, engineers, and pilots Is boldly privatizing space / Michael Belfiore

33. Rule the Web : how to do anything and everything on the Internet-- better, faster, easier / Mark Frauenfelder

34. School shootings : what every parent and educator needs to know to protect our children / Joseph A. Lieberman ; foreword by Brad Sachs

35. Smells like dead elephants : dispatches from a rotting empire / Matt Taibbi

36. Social sciences research : research, writing, and presentation strategies for students / Gail M. Staines, Katherine Johnson, Mark Bonacci

37. Spanking the donkey : dispatches from the dumb season / Matt Taibbi ; illustrations by David Rees

38. Sporting guns : a guide to the world's rifles and shotguns / Chris McNab

39. Surviving Iraq : soldiers' stories / Elise Forbes Tripp

40. The Black Lizard big book of pulps / edited by Otto Penzler

41. The complete book of aunts / Rupert Christiansen with Beth Brophy ; illustrated by Stephanie von Reiswitz

42. The devil's food dictionary : a pioneering culinary reference work consisting entirely of lies / Barry Foy ; illustrations by John Boesche

43. The fighting 69th : one remarkable National Guard Unit's journey from Ground Zero to Baghdad / Sean Michael Flynn

44. The great derangement : a terrifying true story of war, politics, and religion at the twilight of the American empire / Matt Taibbi

45. The making of a counter culture : reflections on the technocratic society and its youthful opposition / Theodore Roszak

46. The mighty Wurlitzer : how the CIA played America / Hugh Wilford

47. The monster of Florence / Douglas Preston, with Mario Spezi

48. The nuclear jihadist : the true story of the man who sold the world's most dangerous secrets-- and how we could have stopped him / Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins

49. The open road : the global journey of the fourteenth Dalai Lama / Pico Iyer

50. The prosecution of George W. Bush for murder / Vincent Bugliosi

51. The Taliban and the crisis of Afghanistan / edited by Robert D. Crews and Amin Tarzi

52. The tyranny of oil : the world's most powerful industry--and what we must do to stop it / Antonia Juhasz

53. Touch and go : a memoir / Studs Terkel ; with Sydney Lewis

54. Urban dictionary : fularious street slang defined / compiled by Aaron Peckham

55. What's next : the experts' guide : predictions from 50 of America's most compelling people / Jane Buckingham with Tiffany Ward

56. Wikipedia : the missing manual / John Broughton