Friday, May 7, 2010

Congratulations Grads

Congratulations to the 2010 graduates of Montana State University! MSU Bookstore will be open Graduation Day 7:30 AM to 4:30 PM, so if you don't have your cap and gown yet, stop in in the morning before it's too late.

A very special congratulations to Vanessa Shaw (the author of this blog for much of the school year), graduating with a Master's in Accounting! Vanessa will be missed at the bookstore, but she is on to bigger and better things.

On another note, today is the last day to sell your books back. See you at the Buyback Window, 8 AM to 5:30 PM today.

Monday, May 3, 2010

CS5 in the Bookstore Soon


Every time you've convinced yourself that Adobe can't take its array of design and production products any further, another version of the Creative Suite comes along to prove you wrong.


Creative Suite 5 (CS5), for both Mac and Windows, injects many of Adobe's existing killer apps—such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash—with some mind-boggling new capabilities, and introduces a new program or two you may not have known you needed. But with the exception of Acrobat, version 9 of which was released in early 2008, every CS5 app has received either a major or minor refreshing, which makes CS5 one of Creative Suite's most extensive updates yet.

Also, there are iPads in stock. Apple purchases only available to faculty, students, and staff.

This Week on the Best Sellers Shelf

Men and Dogs
by Katie Crouch

When Hannah Legare was 11, her father went on a fishing trip in the Charleston harbor and never came back. And while most of the town and her family accepted Buzz's disappearance, Hannah remained steadfastly convinced of his imminent return.

Twenty years later Hannah's new life in San Francisco is unraveling. Her marriage is on the rocks, her business is bankrupt. After a disastrous attempt to win back her husband, she ends up back at her mother's home to "rest up", where she is once again sucked into the mystery of her missing father. Suspecting that those closest are keeping secrets--including Palmer, her emotionally closed, well-mannered brother and Warren, the beautiful boyfriend she left behind--Hannah sets out on an uproarious, dangerous quest that will test the whole family's concepts of loyalty and faith.


Stones into Schools
by Greg Mortenson

A heartening follow-up to the bestselling Three Cups of Tea (2003). Mortenson and his NGO Central Asia Institute (CAI) have been committed to building schools in the most remote corners of Pakistan and Afghanistan for the last 16 years. Here he resumes where he left off in his previous book and spotlights the extraordinary efforts to make good on a promise he made in 1999 to villagers of the Wakhan Corridor, a rugged, isolated area of northeastern Afghanistan.

The Wakhan is occupied by the Kirghiz, who had been forced out of their land with the coming of the Soviets before returning to restricted migratory patterns, and are cut off from basic, life-sustaining government services. For Mortenson and his well-meaning, multiethnic crew he calls his "Dirty Dozen," the village of Bozai Gumbaz proved to be "the definition of our last-place-first philosophy." By enlisting the help of the local leaders and supplying the Kirghiz with necessary building materials (hauled by yak), the CAI fulfilled one of its main goals: to get the people to build a school on their own.

Based in Bozeman, Mont., Mortenson tells the remarkable story of how his group operates. He travels America giving talks, raising awareness and enormous sums of money ($900,000 poured in after a 1993 Parade article), considering proposals about where next to build a school (it must be at least 50 percent girls) and courting local commandhans, or warlords. The organization had to contend with threats of kidnapping, Taliban violence, the Kashmir earthquake of 2005 and ingrained injunctions against educating girls. In his humble, winning style, the author writes of making peace with the U.S. Army, whose bombing caused enormous civilian bloodshed.

Three Cups of Tea is now required reading for counterinsurgency officers, and Mortenson effectively demonstrates the "cascade of positive changes triggered by teaching a single girl how to read and write."Inspiring evidence of the tsunami effects of a committed humanitarian." Kirkus Reviews