SHELF IMPROVEMENT
Notable books and media
Produced by faculty, staff and alumni

DESERT NIGHT SHIFT: A PACK RAT STORY
By Conrad Storad,
The RGU Group

Storad, director of the Office of Research Publications at ASU and a 1983 graduate of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications' master's program, has written a fast-moving and entertaining tale about Penny the Pack Rat and her quest to secure a special treasure for her grandma. Will Penny avoid the nighttime predators at her favorite foraging site, the mining camp, and find a silver spoon?

Aimed at early readers and told in verse, the book features a vocabulary and facts-to-learn section, as well as charming illustrations by artist Nathaniel Jensen.

TERRORISM AND THE POLITICS OF FEAR
By David Altheide,
AltaMira Press

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, ignited significant changes in American society, but David Altheide, Regents' Professor in ASU's School of Justice and Social Inquiry, argues that many of these decisions were actually conditioned by decades of mass media manipulation of news events to incite fear.

The book is a thought-provoking analysis of the power of fear, its uses by politicians and others to further their own social agendas, and the complicity of journalists in feeding the fear machine. This insightful volume received the 2007 Charles Horton Cooley Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.

THE POWER OF HORSES AND OTHER STORIES
By Elizabeth Cook-Lynn,
University of Arizona Press

Cook-Lynn, an emerita visiting professor for ASU's American Indian Studies program, has crafted a set of short stories worthy of her Crow Creek Sioux heritage. Her tales of love, traditional Native American values and betrayal, set in her home state of South Dakota, bring the difficult, beautiful, challenging and inspiring lives of her tribe to life.

Whether it's the humorous tale of attempted salvation in "A Visit from Reverend Tileston," or the heartbreak of loss and rejection that characterize "The Loss of Sky" and "A Family Matter," Cook-Lynn's writing is always spare, yet detailed and saturated with feeling. The book is filled with stories that read quickly, but stay in the heart for much longer.

FIELDS OF POWER, FORESTS OF DISCONTENT: CULTURE, CONSERVATION AND THE STATE IN MEXICO
By Nora Haenn
University of Arizona Press

Can conservation and development work hand in hand? Does political power inevitably taint an ecological idea with good intentions? Nora Haenn, an associate professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, chronicles the rise and fall of an innovative conservation-development project, the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, in the southern Mexican state of Campeche, through its affects on the local campesino population.

Interviews with persons at all levels of the project help provide a comprehensive picture of the Calakmul experiment.