Barbara Kingsolver wrote: "I've followed all of Jim's amazing and hilarious journeys, and am happy to claim him as one of my favorite writers."

Title of Event: Jim Malusa, Cyclist/Adventurer/Discovery Channel Reporter
When: Monday, May 19, 2008 6:30 PM
Location: Fountain Bookstore, Inc.
Description: Into Thick Air is a travelogue of a series of bicycle trips to the lowest points on earth - from Cairo to the Dead Sea. The stories, in journal form, first appeared on Discovery Channel Online. Barbara Kingsolver wrote: "I've followed all of Jim's amazing and hilarious journeys, and am happy to claim him as one of my favorite writers."

JIM MALUSA has reported on assignments for The Discovery Channel and Natural History, including travels to Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, the Atacama Desert in Chile, and Three Gorges Dam in China. A botanist and a lover of maps, his specialty is the biogeography of southern Arizona flora. Malusa lives in Tucson with his wife and their two children.
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Coal Black Horse by Olmstead, Robert When Robey Childs's mother has a premonition about her husband, a soldier fighting in the Civil War, she does the unthinkable. She instructs her only child to retrieve his father from the battlefield and bring him home. Just fourteen and ill-prepared for the journey, Robey sets off wearing the coat his mother sewed to ensure his safety: blue on one side, gray on the other. However, it is the gift of an uncommon horse that changes Robey's destiny-- a horse that becomes his only companion, guide, and protector. As they plunge into a world of death and destruction, Robey is cloaked in the invincibility of youth. But the horrors of war, the truth of his own nature, and the inextricable connection between the two turn the boy into the best a man can be-- and the worst, irrevocably scarred by all that he has seen and done. This " powerful, redemptive narrative" in the tradition of "The Red Badge of Courage" is a brutally honest portrait of what war does to men and how it allows-- even compels-- them to love what they should hate.

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Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson by Crawford, Alan Pell This month's local feature author: Alan Pell Crawford! Much has been written about Thomas Jefferson, with good reason: His life was a great American drama-one of the greatest-played out in compelling acts. He was the architect of our democracy, a visionary chief executive who expanded this nation's physical boundaries to unimagined lengths. But" Twilight at Monticello" is something entirely new: an unprecedented and engrossing personal look at the intimate Jefferson in his final years that will change the way readers think about this true American icon. It was during these years-from his return to Monticello in 1809 after two terms as president until his death in 1826-that Jefferson's idealism would be most severely, and heartbreakingly, tested. Based on new research and documents culled from the Library of Congress, the Virginia Historical Society, and other special collections, including hitherto unexamined letters from family, friends, and Monticello neighbors, Alan Pell Crawford paints an authoritative and deeply moving portrait of Thomas Jefferson as private citizen-the first original depiction of the man in more than a generation. Here, told with grace and masterly detail, is Jefferson with his family at Monticello, dealing with illness and the indignities wrought by early-nineteenth-century medicine; coping with massive debt and the immense costs associated with running a grand residence; navigating public disputes and mediating family squabbles; receiving dignitaries and corresponding with close friends, including John Adams, the Marquis de Lafayette, and other heroes from the Revolution. Enmeshed as he was in these affairs during his final years, Jefferson was still a viable political force, advising his son-in-lawThomas Randolph during his terms as Virginia governor, helping the administration of his good friend President James Madison during the "internal improvements" controversy, and establishing the first wholly secular American institution of higher learning, the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. We also see Jefferson's views on slavery evolve, along with his awareness of the costs to civil harmony exacted by the Founding Fathers' failure to effectively reconcile slaveholding within a republic dedicated to liberty. Right up until his death on the fiftieth anniversary of America's founding, Thomas Jefferson remained an indispensable man, albeit a supremely human one. And it is precisely that figure Alan Pell Crawford introduces to us in the revelatory" Twilight at Monticello."