Walker Books successes

The Judgment of Paris, Ross King

"[A] spirited account of the decade-long battle between France's officially sanctioned history painters and the wild tribe of upstarts contemptuously dismissed as "impressionists." It is, in its broad outlines, a familiar story, but Mr. King, the author of "Brunelleschi's Dome," tells it with tremendous energy and skill. It is hard to imagine a more inviting account of the artistic civil war that raged around the Paris Salons of the 1860's and 70's, or of the outsize personalities who transformed the way the world looked at painting." - William Grimes, The New York Times

While the Civil War raged in America, another very different revolution was beginning to take shape across the Atlantic, in the studios of Paris: The artists who would make Impressionism the most popular art form in history were showing their first paintings amidst scorn and derision from the French artistic establishment. Indeed, no artistic movement has ever been, at its inception, quite so controversial. The drama of its birth, played out on canvas, would at times resemble a battlefield; and, as Ross King reveals, it would reorder both history and culture, and resonate around the world.

Kakuro for Kids, Alastair Chisholm

Kan U Kakuro? Count on Kakuro for hours of fun!

Be a part of the latest puzzle craze to sweep the country: Kakuro. If you like the logic of Sudoku and the fun of a crossword puzzle, you'll love Kakuro!

You'll be a Kakuro puzzle grand master in no time, with 100 puzzles in fun shapes and all sizes, and Alastair Chisholm, author of the bestselling Kids' Book of Sudoku, as your step-by-step guide and sensei.

Plus, keys on each page list the magical Kakuro Blocks to help you crack the secret of every grid. Your training will begin at the easy White Belt level and build in difficulty until you become a powerful Kakuro Black Belt. Be the first to take the Kakuro challenge!

Among the Dead Cities, A.C. Grayling

A powerful and controversial re-examination of Allied strategy in World War II

Every so often, a book offers the insight and courage to re-evaluate history, to change our minds about the wisdom of previously-accepted events. Among the Dead Cities is such a book. In it, the acclaimed philosopher A. C. Grayling offers a powerful, moral re-examination of the Allied bombing campaigns in World War II against civilians in Germany and Japan.

"Was this bombing offensive a crime against humanity," Grayling writes, "or was it justified by the necessities of war? These questions mark one of the great remaining controversies of the Second World War." Their resolution is especially relevant in this time of terrorist threat, as governments debate how far to go in the name of security.

Grayling begins by narrating the Royal Air Force's and U. S. Army Air Force's missions over Germany and Japan between 1942 and 1945. Through the eyes of survivors, he describes the terrifying experience on the ground as bombs created inferno and devastation in Hamburg, Dresden, and many other German cities; in Tokyo; and finally in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He examines the mindset of those who planned the campaigns in the heat of war, and chronicles the minority voices that opposed attacks on civilians. Based on the facts, he makes a meticulous case for, and one against, civilian bombing, and only then offers his own judgment-that the bombing campaigns were morally indefensible, and that accepting responsibility, even six decades later, is a historical necessity and a moral imperative.

Windswept, Marq de Villiers

Although sometimes enormously destructive, wind is also is one of the elements that make life on Earth possible. Without it, the intense solar radiation beating down on the tropics would have no way of escaping.

Wind warms the higher latitudes and moderates the equatorial regions, and it carries evaporated moisture from the oceans to the land, where it descends as rain. Wind, therefore, sculpted the rivers that nurtured the earliest of human civilizations. Even hurricanes, it turns out, are an essential part of the planet's self-regulatory system. Winds not only taught us to sail, they taught us to fly. Winds and their distribution patterns have to some extent dictated which nations became rich, and which remained poor.

Windswept is the story of humankind's long struggle to understand wind and weather, from the wind gods of ancient times to early discoveries of the dynamics of air movement to high-tech schemes to control hurricanes.

Marq de Villiers is equally adept at explaining the science of wind as he is presenting dramatic personal stories of people's encounters with gales and storms, including his own near-misses. Although we have made great strides in understanding how wind affects weather, there is much left to learn about how global warming and pollution may impact wind.

The stakes are high because, clearly, anything that affects the winds eventually affects human life.