NONFICTION

Buffalo: Architecture in the American Forgotten Land” by David A. Steele, 159 pages, ($52.75, hardcover; $36.50, softcover)

Blurb.com Photographer David A. Steele has produced a striking and evocative ode to his hometown, “Buffalo: Architecture in the American Forgotten Land.”

Steele, a Chicago architect who holds a master’s in architecture from UB and is a regular contributor to Buffalo Rising, trains his camera on city landmarks, neighborhood street-scapes and easy-to-overlook details to show the inherent beauty of a city often neglected or put down by outsiders.

The small, rectangle-shaped book’s black-and-white photographs also allow the diversity of Buffalo’s architecture to be seen by residents anew.

That’s true of familiar city sights, whether it’s the statue of a marble sleeping lion in Niagara Square juxtaposed against a darkened City Hall frieze, the serene wading pool outside Kleinhans Music Hall or art deco Central Terminal, as well as homes and houses of worship.

Steele writes of the sense of wonder he experienced looking up at buildings as he walked Buffalo’s streets as a young boy, stoking at an early age his desire to be an architect.

The book is a testament to his love for the city’s architectural splendor, and a gift to the city of his youth.

—Mark Sommer

CHILDREN’S

Sit-In:How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down by Andrea Davis Pinkney; illustrated by Brian Pinkney; Little Brown ($16.99) Ages 6 and up.

A husband and wife team use the picture book form very effectively to bring home the evil of segregation, and the daily insults faced by African-Americans engaged in the most ordinary of activities, through the story of the four college students whose “sit-in” at the “whites-only” Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, N. C., was a defining moment of the civil rights movement 50 years ago (on Feb. 1, 1960, to be exact). The author uses free verse and repetition (“all they wanted was some food. A doughnut and coffee, with cream on the side”) to tell the story of that first sit-in, and the lunch-counter protests that spread around the South for an effective primer on Martin Luther King Jr. and the principles of nonviolent resistance. The watercolor and India ink illustrations dramatically emphasize the ripple effect—a seemingly infinite lunch counter stretching off into the distance. The author includes a civil rights timeline at the end.

—Jean Westmoore

MEMOIR

I Want to Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth: A Memoir by Brenda Peterson; DaCapo Press, 288 pages ($25)

Like immigrants from other cultures, successive generations in America grow further from the once-powerful religious beliefs of their forebears. Environmental stewardship and the tenets and rituals of sustainability provide a new meeting ground for lost and wayward religions. In the house that Brenda Peterson grew up in, Southern Baptist relatives with their prophesies of doom lay down, lion-and- lamb-style, side by side with the beliefs (political and moral) of her father, a forest ranger in the High Sierra. Peterson goes forth to live in New York City and work at the New Yorker.

Then, she designs her own brand of activism: moving to Seattle and watching over a local seal population, being part of a community that includes flora and fauna. It is a rich and often lovely life—full of humor and Peterson’s own unique brand of faith. “You know, George,” she tells her neighbor, who’s a Pentecostal and speaks to her of tribulation, rapture and leaving the Earth for the kingdom of Christ, “I really want to be left behind.”

SUSPENSE

Rescuing Olivia by Julie Compton; Minotaur, 352 pages ($25.99)

A Florida author poses an intriguing view of love in her second novel: How well do you know the person you love and, if the worst happened, what would you do to save her?

Anders Erickson is put to the test when a motorcycle accident leaves his girlfriend Olivia in a coma. Then he is told she has died, but her hospital records have disappeared. Anders is able to piece together enough information to make a trek to her Connecticut hometown and then to Africa, where she was born. His investigation centers on two men who manipulated Olivia all her life: her father and her ex-fiance. This intense novel is full of surprising, mostly realistic twists that add to the tension.