Today is the day I changed out the Adult Services Nonfiction Endcap Display for July here at the Library. It turned out to be a mix of events that happened in July, Awareness events that happen in July and people who were born in July.

            There are seven rows of display in total. On the first row I placed The Essential Dalai Lama and Understanding the Book of Mormon. I had actually wanted to place Devil’s Gate: The Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy by David Roberts but when I went to look for the book it wasn’t on the shelf where it is supposed to be so I reported it missing. July is actually Brigham Young’s birth month, as well as the Dalai Lama, so Understanding the Book of Mormon was a far distant second choice.

            On the second row I paid tribute to July being Child Centered Divorce Awareness month with Douglas Darrall’s Beyond Divorce Casualties: Reunifying the Alienated Family; to the establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency with Hugh Wilford’s The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America and the 4^th of July with A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 America’s First Presidential Election by Edward J. Larson.

            The third row houses the aisle where True Crime, among other things, is found. Luckily, July is birth month to both O.J. Simpson and Lizzie Borden so I put Jeffery Toobin’s The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson and Forty Whacks: New Evidence in the Life and Legend of Lizzie Borden by David Kent on display. I wanted to place the Goldman Family’s book, If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer on display but it was also missing from the shelves. Instead of putting more cameras in to watch employees and patrons, maybe the Public Library should invest in a security system to let us know when a book has gone out the door without being checked out. Even an inventory to see what we have and what we don’t have would be nice but apparently those suggestions are too novel to be taken seriously.   

            July is also Ken Starr’s birth month so I placed Susan Schmidt and Michael Weisskopf’s Truth at Any Cost: Ken Starr and the Unmaking of Bill Clinton though some fourteen years down the road Bill Clinton still seems pretty made. July is also the month that President James A. Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau even though he didn’t die until well over two months later, so I finished up row four with Candace Millard’s Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President.

            Herbs: Their Culture and Uses by Rosetta Clarkson made the cut for row five because July is Medicinal Herbs Awareness Month. It is also Dog Month, which accounts for Stanley Cohen’s How Dogs Think landing a spot on the display. National Grilling Month is July so Bobby Flay’s Grilling for Life made the cut. July is also Eggplant and Lettuce Awareness Month so Didi Emmons’ Entertaining for a Veggie Planet went up on the display with Melons: For the Passionate Grower by Amy Goldman as a backup because July is also Mango and Melon Awareness Month.

            The highlight of row five is the lovely oversized book, Planet Golf USA: The Definitive Reference to Great Golf Courses in America which won a spot because July is Family Golf Month. The other three slots went to birthday boys A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez by Selena Roberts, Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Peyton by Jeff Pearlman and Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend by Larry Tye and about Satchel Paige.

            The sixth row offers up the synchronicity that both Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr were each born in July so both Alexander Hamilton: A Life by William Sterne Randall and Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr by Nancy Isenberg went on display. Nancy Reagan and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis are also July babies so we have the late Michael Deaver’s Nancy: A Portrait of My Years With Nancy Reagan and The Eloquent Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: A Portrait in Her Own Words edited by Bill Adler went on display together. I finished off row six with two books that relate to the founding of our Country – Something That Will Surprise the World: The Essential Writings of the Founding Fathers edited by Susan Dunn and Ye Will Say I Am No Christian: The Thomas Jefferson/John Adams Correspondence on Religion, Morals and Values edited by Bruce Braden.

            The last row, row seven, is the Biography aisle. Five of the six books on display here are people born in July, Hawthorne: A Life by Brenda Wineapple about Nathaniel Hawthorne; Caesar: Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworth about Julius Caesar, Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend by Stephen Davis and Kafka: A Biography by Nicholas Murray. The biography of Franz Kafka has been on display several times in the past and has never been checked out even though it is not too long of a book. This leads me to a theory that red books don’t check out because Kafka is a red book and so is Mao: A Life by Phillip Short, also a red book, has also been on display several times and has never checked out although Mao is a very long book.

            The final book to round out the row seven display is The Day John Died by Andrew Morton to commemorate the thirteenth anniversary of the airplane crash that took the like of John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and Carolyn’s sister, Lauren Bessette .

            Hopefully these books will be checked out from the display at a good clip and some of the books I have in reserve will be able to take their places.