After the Fall: The End of the European Dream and the Decline of a Continent

Walter Laqueur. Laqueur draws on past history and current insight to present a profile of the current European crisis. The author is more concerned with broader questions of demography and culture, assimilation of immigrants and new approaches to education and social policy than to questions of political and economic integration. A clear guide to understanding and solving a profound set of problems.--Kirkus (Check Catalog)

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

Stephen Greenblatt. Harvard humanities professor Greenblatt shows how the discovery of the last existing manuscript of Lucretius's "On the Nature of Things"—a radical book proclaiming that the world manages without gods and is made of small particles in constant motion—led to the Renaissance. The swerve? Lucretius allowed for the existence of free will in his atom-bound universe by theorizing that those little particles swerve randomly. More wonderfully illuminating Renaissance history from a master scholar and historian.--Library Journal/Kirkus (Check Catalog)

Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero

Chris Mathews. Drawing on interviews with friends and former staffers, as well as on such familiar biographical incidents as Kennedy's rescue of the PT-109 crew and his resulting back injury, Matthews reveals a man who through inner direction and tenacious will created himself out of the loneliness and illness of his youth and who taught himself the hard discipline of politics through his own triumphs and failures. Matthews' stirring biography reveals Kennedy as a fighting prince never free from pain, never far from trouble, and never accepting the world he found.--Publisher's Weekly (Check Catalog)