Small Town, Big Oil: The Untold Story of the Women Who Took on the Richest Man in the World--And Won by David W. Moore (New York, N.Y. : Diversion Books, 2018). Never underestimate the underdog.
In the fall of 1973, the Greek oil shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, husband of President John F. Kennedy's widow, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and arguably the richest man in the world, proposed to build an oil refinery on the narrow New Hampshire coast, in the town of Durham. At the time, it would have cost $600 million to build and was expected to generate 400,000 barrels of oil per day, making it the largest oil refinery in the world. The project was vigorously supported by the governor, Meldrim Thomson, and by William Loeb, the notorious publisher of the only statewide newspaper, the Manchester Union Leader.
But three women vehemently opposed the project--Nancy Sandberg, the town leader who founded and headed Save Our Shores; Dudley Dudley, the freshman state rep who took the fight to the state legislature; and Phyllis Bennett, the publisher of the local newspaper that alerted the public to Onassis' secret acquisition of the land. Small Town, Big Oil is the story of how the residents of Durham, led by these three women, out-organized, out-witted, and out-maneuvered the governor, the media, and the Onassis cartel to hand the powerful Greek billionaire the most humiliating defeat of his business career, and spare the New Hampshire seacoast from becoming an industrial wasteland.-- Publisher's blurb. Join David Moore on Tuesday, April 24, 2018 at 7:00pm at the Water Street Bookstore in Exeter to discuss his book!
- Joshua Army, Milford
- Anya Bakin, Durham
- Rylie Blanchard, Pembroke
- Jensen Casassa, Exeter
- Ruth Cassidy, Nashua
- Ryan Cavanaugh, Milford
- Rosalyn Caza, Pembroke
- Jake Demers, Pembroke
- Colin Gregg, Milford
- Matthew Harry, Somersworth
- Johnathan Holler, Pembroke
- Emily Johnston, Londonderry
- Julianna Kajka, Hampstead
- Andrew Kelly, Durham
- Brianna Leo, Milford
- Joshua Ma, Nashua
- Samantha MacAvoy, Atkinson
- Carson Morgan, Somersworth
- Paeton Moul, Milford
- Nancy Poore, Exeter
- Caroline Raiano, Milford
- Jaden Russell, Pembroke
- Alexander Shutt, Hollis
- Elisabeth Stapelfeld, Hollis
- Greta Stevens, Exeter
- Michaela Thibault, Exeter
- Olivia Wood, Exeter
- Mehli Yoder, Somersworth
- Alyssa Zimont, Pembroke
Please note that there were 2 other students whose letters were selected as semi-finalists. As of this afternoon we had not received permission to announce their names.
New Hampshire's winning letters will be selected from these semi-finalist letters and announced in early May. The Center for the Book at the New Hampshire State Library will award $100 to each first place winner. State winners will advance to the national Letters About Literature competition. If you want to get the latest LAL news, you can subscribe to LAL news email feed at the NH Letters About Literature page.
The Hidden Life of Life: A Walk Through the Reaches of Time by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (University Park, Pa. : Penn State University Press, 2018). NH author and anthropologist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas brings us another fascinating and thought provoking book that focuses on the connections and similarities between very different species. An iconoclast and best-selling author of both nonfiction and fiction, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas has spent a lifetime observing, thinking, and writing about the cultures of animals such as lions, wolves, dogs, deer, and humans. In this compulsively readable book, she provides a plainspoken, big-picture look at the commonality of life on our planet, from the littlest microbes to the largest lizards.
Inspired by the idea of symbiosis in evolution—that all living things evolve in a series of cooperative relationships—Thomas takes readers on a journey through the progression of life. Along the way she shares the universal likenesses, experiences, and environments of “Gaia’s creatures,” from amoebas in plant soil to the pets we love, from proud primates to Homo sapiens hunter-gatherers on the African savanna. Fervently rejecting “anthropodenial,” the notion that nonhuman life does not share characteristics with humans, Thomas instead shows that paramecia can learn, plants can communicate, humans aren’t really as special as we think we are—and that it doesn’t take a scientist to marvel at the smallest inhabitants of the natural world and their connections to all living things.
A unique voice on anthropology and animal behavior, Thomas challenges scientific convention and the jargon that prevents us all from understanding all living things better. This joyfully written book is a fascinating look at the challenges and behaviors shared by creatures from bacteria to larvae to parasitic fungi, a potted hyacinth to the author herself, and all those in between.-- Publisher's website Join Elizabeth on the following dates where she will be discussing her new book: Tuesday, April 10th at 7:00 PM at Water Street Bookstore in Exeter, NH Saturday, May 19th at 2:00 PM at Gibson's Bookstore in Concord, NH NHPR will also be interviewing Elizabeth Marshall Thomas at the Toadstool Bookstore in Peterborough on Wednesday, April 25th from 7:00 to 8:00 PM. All are welcome to attend.
 Mary's Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein by Lita Judge (New York, N.Y. : Roaring Brook Press, 2018).
Peterborough, NH author/illustrator Lita Judge is well known for her many children's books, including "Flight School" and "Red Sled". Judge has recently released a dark, enthralling, and beautiful telling of Mary Shelley's life leading up to and including the writing of her best known masterpiece.
Pairing free verse with over three hundred pages of black-and-white watercolor illustrations, Mary’s Monster is a unique and stunning biography of Mary Shelley, the pregnant teenage runaway who became one of the greatest authors of all time.
Legend is correct that Mary Shelley began penning Frankenstein in answer to a dare to write a ghost story. What most people don't know, however, is that the seeds of her novel had been planted long before that night. By age nineteen, she had been disowned by her family, was living in scandal with a married man, and had lost her baby daughter just days after her birth. Mary poured her grief, pain, and passion into the powerful book still revered two hundred years later, and in Mary's Monster, author/illustrator Lita Judge has poured her own passion into a gorgeous book that pays tribute to the life of this incredible author.-- Amazon.com
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