To help the Museum Specialist, Willoughby has compiled a list of recomended books, DVD, and emerging technologies. Our staff is in a continuous search for interesting, innovative, and creative media and technology.

		Berkeley Bohemia: Artist and Visionaries of the Early 20th Century by Ed Herny, Shelley Rideout, and Katie Wadell “Eccentric clothing, vegetarianism, anarchy, communal living, experiments with prohibited substances, new religions, wild parties….” Berkeley in the 1960’s? No, Berkeley in the 1920’s. Berkeley Bohemia highlights the contributions of the eccentric residents of one of America's centers of cultural innovation, during a critical period in the development of the country's radical thought. These writers and artists included Ansel Adams, Jack London, Dorothea Lange, John Muir, Bernard Maybeck, Joaquin Miller, Ina Coolbrith, and Charles and Lousie Keeler and other colorful characters less well known today. Due to its vibrant setting as a crossroads of cultures, Berkeley continues as a fertile ground for individuality, eccentricity, and creative expression. The Berkeley legacy of scholars and visionaries has inspired three generations of men and women, who still make Berkeley a place where ordinary people can flourish creatively, and the extraordinary is welcomed.

		A Rumor of Gems by Ellen Steiber From Publishers Weekly: The first adult novel by children's author Steiber is a somewhat prolix fantasy in a recognizably contemporary world, featuring an intriguing setting—the enchanted yet tawdry port city of Arcato, in which gods pose as mortals for unfathomable reasons and shape-shifters veer between human and animal forms.

		Witness: Endangered Species of North America by Susan Middleton and David Liittschwager From Library Journal: Middleton and Liittschwager have photographed 100 of the plants and animals currently on North America's Endangered Species list. See also NapaValleyMuseum.org for information on the exhibition at Napa Valley Museum.

		Evolution by Stephen Baxter From Amazon.com: Following up his cosmic Manifold series, Stephen Baxter peers back on a more prosaic history in the worthy yet uneven Evolution. The book is nothing less than a novelization of human evolution, a mega-Michener treatment of 65 million years starring a host of smart, furry primates representing Homo sapiens's ancestry.

		The System of the World : Volume 3 of The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson From Publishers Weekly: The colossal and impressive third volume (after Quicksilver and The Confusion) of Stephenson's magisterial exploration of the origins of the modern world in the scientific revolution of the baroque era begins in 1714. Daniel Waterhouse has returned to England, hoping to mediate the feud between Sir Isaac Newton and Leibniz, both of whom claim to have discovered the calculus and neither of whom is showing much scientific rationality in the dispute.

		The Confusion : Volume 2 of The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson From Publishers Weekly: The title of Stephenson's vast, splendid and absorbing sequel to Quicksilver (2003) suggests the state of mind that even devoted fans may face on occasion as they follow the glorious and exceedingly complex parallel stories of Jack Shaftoe, amiable criminal mastermind, and Eliza, Countess de la Zeur, courageous secret agent and former prisoner in a Turkish harem.

		Quicksilver : Volume 1 of The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson From Booklist: This colossal novel by the author of the equally plethoric Cryptonomicon (1999) begins the Baroque Cycle, a trilogy set in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when the foundations were being laid for the science and mathematics that led to the cryptography in Cryptonomi con; and despite its heft, it is readable as well as highly impressive, not least for the feeling for history it displays--something that will, however, surprise only those who haven't read the earlier book.

		Death by Zamboni by David David Katzman From Barbara's Books: Quirky, brazen & endlessly clever. A twisted cartoon world of bizarre episodes that defy conventional logic. WEIRD and COMPELLING.

		Art Since 1900 by Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin Buchloh From Amazon.com: Here's an exceptional rarity: a large, sweeping art history text book so well-done it almost makes the reader wish she or he were back in school. It's rather amazing that it took so long for a book like Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, and Postmodernism to exist: a balanced, seven hundred...

		The Orientalist by Tom Reiss From Booklist: Lev Nussimbaum fabricated a life that in its brief arc encompassed the whole of the Western and Near Eastern culture of his time. A Jew from the Caucasus, born in the first throes of the Russian Revolution, he styled himself a Muslim prince.

		Against the Machine: The Hidden Luddite Tradition in Literature, Art, and Individual Lives by Nicols Fox From Amazon.com: From the cars we drive to the instant messages we receive, from debate about genetically modified foods to astonishing strides in cloning, robotics, and nanotechnology, it would be hard to deny technology's powerful grip on our lives. To stop and ask whether this digitized, implanted reality is quite what we had in mind when we opted for progress, or to ask if we might not be creating more problems than we solve, is likely to peg us as hopelessly backward or suspiciously eccentric. Yet not only questioning, but challenging technology turns out to have a long and noble history.

		The Bondwoman's Narrative by Hannah Crafts From Amazon.com: Possibly the first novel written by an African American woman, The Bondwoman's Narrative tells the story of Hannah Crafts, a young slave working on a wealthy North Carolina plantation, who runs away in a bid for freedom up North. Her compelling story provides a fascinating view of American life in the mid-1800s and the literary conventions of the time.

		The Amber Room by Catherine Scott-Clark From Publishers Weekly: In 1717, Prussian emperor Frederick I presented Peter the Great with a remarkable treasure: enough wall-sized panels covered with meticulously carved amber to decorate an entire room. Eventually installed in a palace near St. Petersburg, the Amber Room was stolen by the Nazis during the 1941 siege...

		Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love And Death In Renaissance Italy by Sarah Bradford From Enjoyment.Independent.co.uk: Lucrezia Borgia has become one of the greatest icons of female monstrosity in the Western imagination, her name indelibly associated with murder, incest and all manner of decadent depravity. In the 19th century, Victor Hugo and Donizetti turned her into a melodramatic anti-heroine. Byron stole one of her long golden hairs from an archive in Milan where it had survived folded up in a letter. Yet according to Sarah Bradford, the real Lucrezia never murdered anyone...

		The Real Eve by Stephen Oppenheimer From Publishers Weekly: There was only one main Exodus of modern humans from Africa, and no more," writes medical doctor and researcher Oppenheimer (Eden in the East), taking on advocates of "multiregional" origins and those who believe there were several exoduses out of Africa. Oppenheimer deftly brings together recent...

		Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926 by Steven Conn From Amazon.com: During the last half of the nineteenth century, Americans built many of the country's most celebrated museums, such as the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Chicago's Field Museum. In this original and daring study, Steven Conn argues that Americans built these institutions with the confidence that they could collect, organize, and display the sum of the world's knowledge...

		Spice: The History of a Temptation by Jack Turner From Publishers Weekly: Spices helped draw Europeans into their age of expansion, but the Western world was far from ignorant of them before that time. Turner's lively and wide-ranging account begins with the voyages of discovery, but demonstrates that, even in ancient times, spices from distant India and Indonesia made...

		Math and the Mona Lisa by Bulent Atalay From Publishers Weekly: In this readable, if less than compelling, disquisition on the close relationship of art and science, physics professor Atalay uses as his touchstone Leonardo da Vinci, of whom he says in his prologue: "Had [da Vinci] been able to publish the scientific ruminations found in his manuscripts in his own time, our present level of sophistication in science and technology might have been reached one or two centuries earlier."

		The Art of the Steal by Christopher Mason From Publishers Weekly: Veteran art writer Mason does a good job separating the bad guys from the slightly less bad guys in his lively, anecdote-packed saga about how the world's two leading auction houses, Sotheby's and Christie's, conspired to fix prices on everything from famous paintings to antique furniture. Alfred...

		The Mapmaker's Wife by Robert Whitaker From Publishers Weekly: As was customary for girls from elite families in 18th-century colonial Peru, Isabel Gramesón was barely a teenager when she married Jean Godin, a Frenchman visiting the territory as an assistant on a scientific expedition. Planning to bring his wife back to France, Godin trekked across South...

		Rubicon : The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland From Publishers Weekly: After a palace coup demolished the reign of King Tarquin of Rome in 509 B.C., a republican government flourished, providing every person an opportunity to participate in political life in the name of liberty. As Holland, a novelist and adapter of Herodotus' Histories for British radio, points out in...

		Lynwood Kreneck, Printmaker by A. Isabelle Howe From TTU Press: Lynwood Kreneck's screenprints are recognized throughout the world for their imaginative, often humor-filled content, vivid colors, and always superb technical execution. His print series, such as Space Probes, Earth's Mysteries Solved, Great Moments in Domestic Mishaps, and Clownz, show wit combined with care and passion for the screenprinting form...

		Color by Victoria Finlay From Publishers Weekly: Defining color is a simple matter-visible light of a particular wavelength. Or is it? It turns out that the pigments and dyes responsible for hues have many remarkable characteristics, most of which we rarely ponder. Journalist Finlay's first book is a blend of travelogue and historical exploration...

		The Substance of Style by Virginia Postrel From Publishers Weekly: At the Great Indoors, a hugely successful department store chain, customers can choose from among 250 lavatory faucets. If that represents too little variety, there are more than 1,500 distinct models of drawer pulls. Like it or not, we live in an age where we can minutely dictate every aesthetic...

		The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene From Amazon.com: There is an ill-concealed skeleton in the closet of physics: "As they are currently formulated, general relativity and quantum mechanics cannot both be right." Each is exceedingly accurate in its field: general relativity explains the behavior of the universe at large scales, while quantum mechanics...

		Why Things Break by Mark Eberhart From Publishers Weekly: Why can you bend a piece of taffy into all kinds of shapes while a peppermint stick breaks if you push on the middle of it? Why does adding carbon to iron make the resulting metal, steel, stronger, whereas adding sulfur brittles it, making it more liable to break? Eberhart, a professor at the...

		The Meaning of Everything by Simon Winchester From Publishers Weekly: With his usual winning blend of scholarship and accessible, skillfully paced narrative, Winchester (Krakatoa) returns to the subject of his first bestseller, The Professor and the Madman, to tell the eventful, personality-filled history of the definitive English dictionary. He emphasizes that the...

		The Known World by Edward P. Jones From Publishers Weekly: In a crabbed, powerful follow-up to his National Book Award-nominated short story collection (Lost in the City), Jones explores an oft-neglected chapter of American history, the world of blacks who owned blacks in the antebellum South...

		Cream 3: 10 Curators - 100 Artists - 10 Source Artists From Amazon.com: The latest book in the internationally recognized series devoted to contemporary art (Cream and Fresh Cream), architecture (10x10), photography (Blink) and product design (Spoon), Cream3 offers an authoritative view on the art world of today and tomorrow...

		The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford...by Mary S. Lovell From Publishers Weekly: In her history of England's Mitford sisters, who were major figures in the international political, literary and social scenes for much of the 20th century, Lovell (The Sound of Wings: The Biography of Amelia Earhart; etc.) rises with aplomb to the challenges of a group biography, deftly weaving...

		Paris 1919 by Margaret Olwen Macmillan From Publishers Weekly: A joke circulating in Paris early in 1919 held that the peacemaking Council of Four, representing Britain, France, the U.S. and Italy, was busy preparing a "just and lasting war." Six months of parleying concluded on June 28 with Germany's coerced agreement...

		Heritage - Civilization and the Jews (2002 Edition) DVD From Amazon.com: Eban Over the course of nine hours, this sumptuous PBS documentary from 1984 chronicles the history of the Jewish people from biblical times through the 20th century. This is not, however, a documentary solely about Judaism; it is instead an in-depth look at the history of Jewish interaction...

		Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order by Steven Strogatz From Publishers Weekly: Strogatz is a Cornell mathematician and pioneer of the science of synchrony, which brings mathematics, physics and biology to bear on the mystery of how spontaneous order occurs at every level of the cosmos, from the nucleus on up. In this eminently accessible and entertaining book, Strogatz...

		Akira Kurosawa - 4 Samurai Classics (Seven Samurai / The Hidden Fortress / Yojimbo / Sanjuro) - Criterion Collection - DVD From Amazon.com: Leading off the set of four Akira Kurosawa classics is Seven Samurai (1954), unanimously hailed as one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of the motion picture. It was the inspiration for countless films modeled after its basic premise, but has never been surpassed in terms of sheer power...

		Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy (Blue / White / Red) - DVD From Amazon.com: Even though one can view each segment of Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy on its own, it seems absurd to do so; why buy the slacks instead of the entire suit? Created by Kieslowski and his writing partner Krzysztof Piesiewicz for France's bicentennial, the titles--and the themes of the...

		Epson Perfection 1650 www.epson.com For those looking for a bargain in the semiprofessional scanning world, the Epson Perfection 1650 can quickly scann photos and documents. It's output is extremely good, its performance peppy, and its price affordable (around $250).

		Toshiba Pocket PC e310™ www.toshiba.com Despite its small size, e310 has everything that you've come to expect (and a great deal more) from current Pocket PCs, including a 206MHz Intel StrongARM processor, 32MB of RAM and ROM, and a 3.5-inch reflective color LCD.

		Sony VAIO PCG-SRX77 (Pentium III-M 800MHz, 128MB, 20GB)™ www.vaio.net Sony's VAIO PCG-SRX77 ultralight notebook strikes a balance between size, performance, and battery life. It also adds versatile networking and multimedia features, making it a good travel notebook for those who might engage in occasional digital-video work.

		TDK Mojo 620™ www.tdk.com The TDK Mojo 620 builds upon the company's earlier MP3 CD Player adding a remote and a modern design while keeping the great antiskip protection and unique navigation system that was in the original Mojo.

		Dreamweaver MX™ www.macromedia.com Macromedia Dreamweaver MX now caters specifically to professional Web designers and developers. Dreamweaver's new integration with UltraDev lets you create dynamic, database-driven Web applications.