Stan Cox: LOSING OUR COOL: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer)
Tuesday 7/6/2010 7pm Manuel’s Tavern, A cappella Books

In America, and especially across the South, air conditioning has become a summer way of life, as ubiquitous as cookouts and baseball. And as climate change continues to push the mercury upward, the role that A/C plays during the sultry times of the year promises to rise along with it. But despite the integral place air conditioners occupy in the modern world, it's rare that they are paid much mind – unless they break or fall victim to a power outage, that is.

With the release of Stan Cox's new book, Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer), however, the myriad problems posed by the world's fast-increasing reliance on air conditioning is being revealed. The first book to tackle the weighty issue of air conditioning's effects on energy use – and thus its role in feeding the warming trend it is being used to combat – as well as on our health itself, Cox's work "offers much for consumers, environmentalists, and policy makers to consider before powering up to cool down," as its recent review in Publishers Weekly read. Losing Our Cool is a thoroughly researched, sweeping account of what lies ahead for our artificially cooled world.
A scientist and environmental writer who currently works at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, Cox spent time in Florida, Arizona and India working on the book. His research uncovered astonishing details of the ways in which air conditioning has taken hold of our lives, including the facts that the amount of energy used to power home air-conditioning systems in America, as well as the greenhouse emissions they produce, has doubled over just the last decade, and energy devoted to cooling the country's retail stores has risen by two-thirds. Six out of every seven gallons of diesel fuel imported by the U.S. into Iraq and Afghanistan goes toward running air conditioners. And amazingly, the amount of electricity Americans use for air conditioners each year is equal to what it takes to power the entire continent of Africa. In addition to those eye-popping details of air conditioning's role in energy use, Cox presents troubling accounts of the technology's effects on rates of infection, allergy, asthma and obesity.
As summer turns up the heat outdoors and inevitably leads us to turn to air conditioning to keep it down indoors, Cox's new book is sure to spark lively discussions of just where all the Freon-induced comfort is leading.

Julie Andrews: THE VERY FAIRY PRINCESS
Friday July 9, 6pm Little Shop of Stories

As any library staff member will tell you, there can never be too many princess stories. Geraldine leads a rather ordinary life, and each page highlights a part of her mundane day. However, in the grand tradition of other literary, bedazzled mini-divas, Geraldine's imagination and love for the color pink brighten the daily grind of being a scab-kneed little girl. Readers will enjoy Geraldine's princess attitude and the vibrant fantasy brought to life through Davenier's ink and colored pencil illustrations.
While her friends and family may not believe in fairies, Geraldine knows, deep down, that she is a VERY fairy princess. From morning to night, Gerry does everything that fairy princesses do: she dresses in her royal attire, practices her flying skills, and she is always on the lookout for problems to solve. But it isn't all twirls and tiaras - as every fairy princess knows, dirty fingernails and scabby knees are just the price you pay for a perfect day! This new picture book addition to the Julie Andrews Collection features the joyful illustrations of Christine Davenier, and is sure to inspire that sparkly feeling within the hearts of readers young and old.

Jon Clinch: KINGS OF THE EARTH
Monday, July 12, 2010 7pm Georgia Center for the Book

In Clinch’s multilayered, pastoral second novel (after Finn), a death among three elderly, illiterate brothers living together on an upstate New York farm raises suspicions and accusations in the surrounding community. After their beloved mother, Ruth, dies, Audie, considered mentally "fragile," is devastated, but goes on tending to the Carversville farm with his brothers Vernon and Creed. When Vernon, frail at 60 and not under a doctor’s care, dies in his bed with evidence of asphyxiation, Creed is interrogated by troopers, along with Audie, the brother closest to Vernon. Family histories and troubles are divulged in short chapters by a cacophony of characters speaking in first person. Secrets and hidden alliances are revealed: Vernon’s nephew, Tom, grew and sold marijuana, which the family used medicinally; the brothers endured painful, bloody haircuts administered by their father. Alongside the police troopers’ investigation, each player contributes his own personal perspectives and motivations, including allusions to homosexual behavior. Inspired by the Ward brothers (of the 1992 documentary My Brother’s Keeper), Clinch explores family dynamics in this quiet storm of a novel that will stun readers with its power.

Week of January 25th

David Orr: DOWN TO THE WIRE
Tuesday January 26, 2010, 7:30 PM
Agnes Scott College
Won a Lyndhurst Prize acknowledging “persons of exceptional moral character, vision, and energy.”

Professor Orr’s latest book, Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse, has been deemed by Ray Anderson, Founder and Chair of Interface, Inc. to be “a sweeping synthesis of science, politics, history, and public policy…this very important book envisions a road map to a livable future.” The book is significant for any individual institution that has made the commitment to help address climate change locally, regionally or nationally.
Before the words “sustainability” and “climate change” were in the daily vocabulary on most college campuses, Professor Orr was challenging students and teachers to consider the consequences of our actions on the environments. In previous books he has set a high standard for including the environment in education that has become well known in the field.
His career as a scholar, teacher, writer, speaker, and entrepreneur spans fields as diverse as environment and politics, environmental education, campus greening, green building, ecological design, and climate change. He is the author of six books and co-editor of three others. Ecological Literacy (SUNY, 1992), described as a “true classic” by Garrett Hardin, is widely read and used in hundreds of colleges and universities. A second book, Earth in Mind (1994/2004) is praised by people as diverse as biologist E. O. Wilson and writer, poet, and farmer, Wendell Berry.
In 1987 he organized studies of energy, water, and materials use on several college campuses that helped to launch the green campus movement. In 1989 Orr organized the first ever conference on the effects of impending climate change on the banking industry. Co-sponsored by then Governor Bill Clinton, the conference featured prominent bankers throughout the mid-South and leading climate scientists including Stephen Schneider and George Woodwell.
In 1996 he organized the effort to design the first substantially green building on a U.S. college campus. The Adam Joseph Lewis Center was later named by the U.S. Department of Energy as “One of Thirty Milestone Buildings in the 20th Century,” and by The New York Times as the most interesting of a new generation of college and university buildings. The Lewis Center purifies all of its wastewater and is the first college building in the U.S. powered entirely by sunlight. But most important it became a laboratory in sustainability that is training some of the nation’s brightest and most dedicated students for careers in solving environmental problems. The story of that building is told in two books, The Nature of Design (Oxford, 2002) that Fritjof Capra called “brilliant,” and a second, Design on the Edge (MIT, 2006), that architect Sim van der Ryn describes as “powerful and inspiring.”
Professor Orr taught at Agnes Scott College in the 1970s and we are honored to have him return at this important time for the college, for his work and for the global environment.

Michael Shelden: MARK TWAIN: MAN IN WHITE: THE GRAND ADVENTURE OF HIS FINAL YEARS
Wednesday, January 27, 7:15pm
Decatur Library
Michael Shelden, author of acclaimed biographies of Graham Greene and George Orwell, turns his attention to Mark Twain with an eagerly anticipated new book, Mark Twain: Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years. It's a deeply researched book utilizing some unpublished sources that brings to vivid life Twain's last years, a period that found the humorist full of charm, vigor and charisma. Critics call it "a breakthrough in Twain biography" and praise the scholarship and writing ("eloquent and moving").

Robert Pinsky :GULF MUSIC: POEMS
Sunday, January 31, 4pm
Glenn Memorial Chapel
Emory University
Served as US Poet Laureate from 1997-2000. He received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in 1974, and in 1997 he was named the United States Poet Laureate and Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. He now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University.
As Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky founded the Favorite Poem Project, in which thousands of Americans of varying backgrounds, all ages, and from every state share their favorite poems. Pinsky believed that, contrary to stereotype, poetry has a strong presence in the American culture. The project sought to document that presence, giving voice to the American audience for poetry.[citation needed]
Pinsky is also the author of the interactive fiction game Mindwheel (1984) developed by Synapse Software and released by Broderbund. [3]
Pinsky guest-starred in a 2002 episode of the animated sitcom The Simpsons, "Little Girl in the Big Ten", and appeared on The Colbert Report in April, 2007, as the judge of a "Meta-Free-Phor-All" between Stephen Colbert and Sean Penn.