March Books - 2012

Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea - Charles Seife
The Babylonians invented it, the Greeks banned it, the Hindus worshiped it, and the Church used it to fend off heretics. Now it threatens the foundations of modern physics. For centuries the power of zero savored of the demonic; once harnessed, it became the most important tool in mathematics. For zero, infinity's twin, is not like other numbers. It is both nothing and everything.

Secret Son - Laila Lalami
Raised by his mother in a one-room house in the slums of Casablanca, Youssef El Mekki has always had big dreams of living another life in another world. Suddenly his dreams are within reach when he discovers that his father—whom he’d been led to believe was dead—is very much alive. A wealthy businessman, he seems eager to give his son a new start. Youssef leaves his mother behind to live a life of luxury, until a reversal of fortune sends him back to the streets and his childhood friends. Trapped once again by his class and painfully aware of the limitations of his prospects, he becomes easy prey for a fringe Islamic group.

The Four Levels of Healing - Shakti Gawain
In this profoundly exciting and challenging time, individuals may find they are involved in a difficult yet fascinating learning process -- both their personal evolution and the evolution of human consciousness. In this book, best-selling author Shakti Gawain describes the four levels of human existence -- spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical -- and explains the importance of developing all four. She also provides the meditations and exercises readers need to begin their own healing journeys.

Hector and the Search for Happiness - Franacois Lelord
Hector is a young psychiatrist in Paris who does not understand why his patients in this most beautiful of cities are unhappy. So he decides to take a trip around the world--from Paris to China to Africa to the United States--and to keep a list of observations about the people he meets, hoping to find the secret to happiness.

Small Bird, Tell Me - Helen Papanikolas
"She carries literary dexterity and grace to its ultimate...Being rooted in her people, she is able to probe deeply into their personal experiences and foibles, with compassion and understanding." from The Greek American

The Little Book - Selden Edwards
Thirty years in the writing, Selden Edwards's dazzling first novel is an irresistible triumph of the imagination. Wheeler Burden-banking heir, philosopher, student of history, legend's son, rock idol, writer, lover, recluse, half-Jew, and Harvard baseball hero-one day finds himself wandering not in his hometown of San Francisco in 1988 but in a city and time he knows mysteriously well: Vienna, 1897. Before long, Wheeler acquires a mentor in Sigmund Freud, a bitter rival, a powerful crush on a luminous young woman, and encounters everyone from an eight-year-old Adolf Hitler to Mark Twain as well as the young members of his own family. Solving the riddle of Wheeler's dislocation in time will ultimately reveal nothing short of one eccentric family's unrivaled impact upon the course of human history.