National Network for Equitable Library Service

In this hilarious collection of stories, Old Autos columnist Bill Sherk describes in vivid detail the trials and tribulations of those brave souls who, throwing caution to the wind and money down the drain, made the fateful decision that would forever change the course of their lives. They went out and bought their very first cars.And whether it came from the showroom or the scrapyard, your first car was your ticket of admission into the adult world.

The human side of birding comes to the fore in The Reluctant Twitcher, a serious yet humorous account of birds and birding and the art of chasing rarities. Richard Pope, a lifelong birder, had successfully avoided this latter pursuit for many years but capitulated in 2007 when he embarked on his "Big Year," the object being to record at least three hundred birds in Ontario within that calendar period.

Seth Grahame-Smith's handy guide to surviving scary movies might just get you through the night. But it might also be the last book you ever read.

Jessica Dorfman Jones delivers proven tactics to help anyone cheat successfully through life. She shows how to creatively enhance a resume and beat a drug or polygraph test. She also reveals how to file fabricated tax and insurance forms. Each of her 32 chapters introduces the scam, reveals its risks and rewards, and describes the time-tested techniques for pulling it off.

Judy Conner refers to her former husband simply as "That X," which is perfectly understandable considering some of the antics he pulled. Inseparable from the family's brown dog, Conner's X performed naked synchronized swoming at the 1984 World's Fair--with the canine as his partner. And one fine spring day, while buzzing on bourbon, he delivered an especially touching gift to his wife--a .38 revolver.

Here, Bing chronicles the great city of Rome from its humble beginnings to its monumental collapse due to greed, in-fighting and general mismanagement. Rome, Inc. then becomes a powerful lesson for business leaders, documenting the many dos and don'ts of a successful corporation.

Gayle humorously recounts his real-life reluctance to "grow up." Like most people, Mike has a lot to do. But when he reaches his mid-30s and realizes he's still not a proper adult, he decides it's time to get serious. So he compiles a list of everything he still needs to accomplish.

What did Donald Rumsfeld mean when he said, "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence"? And what's the essence behind Bill Clinton's gem, "It depends on what the meaning of the word is is"? Whether they are misleading with doublespeak, having fun with ambiguity, drawing weak analogies, or getting inappropriately personal, politicians, frequently make our heads spin. Cathcart and Klein sift through the claptrap and make sense of it all.