Recent Library Acquisitions

New in the Cohen Enrichment Collection...

The Cohen Enrichment Collection is located on the fourth floor of Langsam Library. The collection contains books in all subject areas including cooking, popular fiction, history, and art. It is designed to “enrich and strengthen the educational experience at the University of Cincinnati” with special shelving for the books that encourages browsing and comfortable seating.

The Collection is funded by a gift in 1978 from Julie Cohen in memory of A. B., Dolly, and Ralph Cohen, her father-in-law, mother-in-law, and husband.

Cohen Fiction

Over and Under by Todd Tucker. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2008.
A bitter 1979 labor strike at southern Indiana’s Borden Casket Company serves as the volatile backdrop for this haunting coming-of-age novel from nonfiction writer Tucker. With their fathers on opposite sides of the dispute, Andrew Jackson Gray and Thomas Jefferson Kruer, both 14, learn there is more to life than exploring caves, shooting targets with their prized M-6 Scout rifles and sneaking out on starry nights to run through the woods.
Langsam Cohen PS3620 .U33 094 2008

The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng. Weinstein Books, 2008.
This remarkable debut saga of intrigue and akido flashes back to a darkly opulent WWII-era Malaya. Phillip Hutton, 72, lives in serene Penang comfort, occasionally training students as an akido master “teacher of teachers.” A visit from Michiko Murakami sends him spiraling back into his past, where he grows up the alienated half-British, half-Chinese son of a wealthy Penang trader in the years before WWII.
Langsam Cohen PR9530.9.E54 G54 2008

Cohen Non-Fiction

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What it Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt. Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
Based on exhaustive research and interviews with driving experts and traffic officials around the globe, Traffic gets under the hood of the everyday activity of driving to uncover the surprisingly complex web of physical, psychological, and technical factors that explain how traffic works, why we drive the way we do, and what our driving says about us.
Langsam Cohen TL152.5 .V36 2008

The Toothpick: Technology and Culture by Henry Petroski. Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.
Contents include: The oldest habit -- Artifacts and texts -- Sucksacks and whiskers -- Poor goose! -- The nasty instrument -- Woodpeckers and other dispensers -- Talking round a toothpick -- The fatal martini -- Improving on perfection -- The butler did it -- and more.
Langsam Cohen GT2952 .P48 2007

Look for these soon-to-be-released titles…

The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker. Grand Central, 2009.
In an upstate New York backwater town, Truly, massive from birth, has a bleak existence with her depressed father and her china-doll–like sister, Serena Jane. Truly grows at an astonishing rate—her girth the result of a pituitary gland problem—and after her father dies when Truly is 12, she is sloughed off to the Dyersons, a hapless farming family.

The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee. Viking, 2009.
Former Elle editor Lee delivers a standout debut novel dealing with the rigors of love and survival during a time of war, and the consequences of choices made under duress. Claire Pendleton, newly married and arrived in Hong Kong in 1952, finds work giving piano lessons to the daughter of Melody and Victor Chen, a wealthy Chinese couple. While the girl is less than interested in music, the Chens’ flinty British expat driver, Will Truesdale, is certainly interested in Claire, and vice versa.

Source Index