Institutions of Reading The Social Life of Libraries in the United States edited by Thomas Augst & Kenneth Carpenter ISBN: 9781558495913 $28.95 Paperback Tracing the evolution of the library as a modern institution from the late 18th century to the digital era, Institutions of Reading explores the diverse practices by which Americans have shared reading matter for instruction, edification, and pleasure. This book offers at once a social history of literacy and leisure, an intellectual history of institutional and technological innovations that facilitated the mass distribution and consumption of printed books and periodicals, and a cultural history of the symbolic meanings and practical uses of reading in American life. Hungry Hill A Memoir by Carole O'Malley Gaunt ISBN: 9781558495890 $19.95 Paperback Pub Date: June On a sweltering June night in 1959, Betty O'Malley died from lymphatic cancer, leaving behind an alcoholic husband and eight shell-shocked children--seven sons and one daughter, ranging in age from two to 15 years. The daughter, Carole, was 13 at the time. In this poignant memoir, she recalls in vivid detail the chaotic course of her family life over the next four years. The author punctuates the narrative with occasional fictional scenes that allow the adult Carole to comment on her teenage experiences and to probe the impact of her mother's death and her father's alcoholism. An American Dream The Life of an African American Soldier and POW Who Spent Twelve Years in Communist China by Clarence Adams edited by Della Adams & Lewis H. Carlson ISBN: 9781558495951 $22.95 Paperback Pub Date: June "An important addition to the remarkably scant canon of African American memoirs about war, as well as a meaningful American memoir."--Jeff Loeb, editor of Memphis-Nam-Sweden: The Autobiography of a Black American Exile by Terry Whitmore "Black participation in the Korean War is an extremely important, yet understudied topic. I expect that future scholars will make use of this narrative both as a source and even as a starting point for further historical inquiry."--Nikhil Pal Singh, author of Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy Mission 66 Modernism and the National Park Dilemma by Ethan Carr ISBN: 9781558495876 $39.95 Hardcover Pub Date: June To address the problem of the declining park system, a ten-year, billion-dollar initiative titled "Mission 66" was launched in 1956, timed to be completed in 1966, the 50th anniversary of the National Park Service. Ethan Carr's book examines the significance of the Mission 66 program and explores the influence of mid-century modernism on landscape design and park planning. Environmental and park historians, architectural and landscape historians, and all who care about our national parks will enjoy this copiously illustrated history of a critical period in the development of the national park system.