As a student attending Harvard College, John Quincy Adams worried his generation was doomed to mediocrity. His father's generation had cast off the yoke of British rule and founded a new nation. John Quincy saw in himself and his peers a worrisome complacency, even immorality, and a lack of some great cause to strive toward. These concerns came from a young man who had already traveled throughout Europe and Russia and was fluent in multiple languages. This deep-set need to achieve, fostered by the overbearing parenting of John and Abigail Adams, drove John Quincy for the rest of his life. So, too, did another inheritance--an ironclad moral sense. John Quincy's ambition and inflexible standards made him president but, like his father, for only one term. His conscience made him a poor political player, yet it also made him a moral beacon. During his time in the House of Representatives after his presidency (the only ex-president to ever make such a move), John Quincy became the congressional voice for a movement gaining ground during his elder years: the abolition of slavery.

John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit by James Traub (The Devil's Playground) is a sharp portrait of the fascinating statesman who helped bring about the consolidation of the United States from fragile upstart into emerging major power. Traub's plentiful source material--Adams kept a journal throughout most of his life--reveals a complex man: a Puritan patrician, a genius diplomat, a villain to many and hero to a hopeful few, including the Amistad defendants. John Quincy Adams is a magnificent work. --Tobias Mutter, freelance reviewer

In Look Me in the Eye, John Elder Robison wrote about his adult diagnosis of Asperger syndrome. In Switched On, Robison details his participation in a research project at Beth Israel Hospital that used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to ignite certain key areas of his brain that focus on the ability to read people's emotions through their facial and body gestures. The inability to connect emotionally is a common trait in people with Asperger's; they are often seen as detached because they miss the nonverbal signals people send out on a constant basis. TMS works on the premise that when it "adds electromagnetic energy to the neural networks inside your head, it helps them build new connections, and it reinforces the connections we [the doctors] want to strengthen." But because this was a research project, the subjects and the doctors didn't quite know what to expect once the stimulations had been performed.

Robison shares with readers his excitement at the possibilities, his fears of any possible changes and the actual, sudden leaps in understanding and perceptions that transpired after each experimental session. These personal moments are intertwined with discussions on the TMS process, Robison's former work with electronic circuitry and the way his family and friends reacted to the changes he experienced over time. Though a bit wordy, Robison's experiences with TMS and Asperger syndrome provide a great view of new research into the fascinating world of the human brain. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

Journalist Natalie Y. Moore (Almighty Black P Stone Nation) grew up in a middle-class South Side Chicago neighborhood. Despite the many problems she discusses in The South Side, she loves it, calling it "a magical place," the cultural and political heart of black America, home of Ida B. Wells, Sam Cooke and Michelle Obama. As the area's bureau reporter for Chicago's NPR station, Moore found that every dysfunctional story could be traced down to the same root: "from housing to education to crime to food access: segregation is the culprit."

Moore combines her personal and family stories with history, scholarly data and investigative journalism to build a comprehensive vision of Chicago, its past, present and potential future. Housing is her greatest subject--the redlining, white flight and white policies that intentionally built this segregated town. She takes readers to her childhood corner store, her schools and first apartment, tells how black homeowners built and lost thriving communities, and how gleaming new public housing declined into vertical slums. Moore explains the effect of segregated neighborhoods on food access and public education, and in a chapter titled "We Are Not Chiraq," she analyzes and debunks the popular caricature of the South Side as a war zone. She confronts black romantic nostalgia for early Black Belt segregation, and balances that with her love of black and other culturally distinct neighborhoods. This is an essential book for anyone interested in the history and current state of race in the urban U.S. --Sara Catterall

The Czech and Slovak peoples were two of many oppressed ethnic groups in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. For Tomáš Masaryk, Czech professor and lifelong advocate for independence, the outbreak of World War I was the perfect chance to establish a free state. Meanwhile, Czech and Slovak soldiers were forced into the Austro-Hungarian military to fight in Russia, where they surrendered or deserted in huge numbers and joined the Tsar's army to wage war on their former masters.

Masaryk convinced Allied leaders to back the creation of a united Czecho-Slovak state. In Russia, as Tsarist rule collapsed, the Czech and Slovak units fighting for the Russian army became the autonomous Czech Legion. These soldiers, some 40,000, then were pledged to fight in France. The only problem was getting there. The Legion began an epic journey across Russia via the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok on the Pacific, but a fatal incident between the Legion and Hungarian POWs spiraled out of control. Red Army founder Leon Trotsky ordered the Legion to be disarmed and imprisoned. The Czechs and Slovaks not only resisted, but went on to capture nearly the entire railway and the major cities along that route. Foot-dragging by the Allies left thousands of Legion soldiers desperate to fight for a free homeland trapped instead in the turmoil of the Russian Civil War.

Kevin J. McNamara highlights this bizarre and heroic story in Dreams of a Great Small Nation. Much of his extensive source material is only recently available, and he uses it well. The brave misadventures of the Czech Legion deserve the wider recognition this fascinating history should provide. --Tobias Mutter, freelance reviewer

Jooyoung Lee spent five years among rappers at the Los Angeles KAOS Network, observing and shooting video of its weekly hip-hop open mic Project Blowed. In the streets of South Central's Leimert Park neighborhood (as one performer reminds him, "This is the 'hood.... Don't be fooled by the palm trees"), Lee gathered material for Blowin' Up, his engaging study of young black men trying to build enough rap skills to blow up, from a corner spitter to a professional recording star. Lee acknowledges that it took some time for a Korean American sociologist at UCLA to win the trust of black ghetto rappers, but when he put his funk-style popper dance skills on display in a krumping battle, the MCs were impressed and began to share their personal stories. Individual anecdotes from the likes of Big Flossy, Choppa, Trenseta and NA ("No Alias") give Blowin' Up its authenticity and narrative flow.

Lee's research follows some 30 rappers from early ciphers (workshops where established peers advise them to "Get your bars up, homie... and practice your hooks"--sort of a hip-hop Iowa Writers Workshop) to a paying MTV spot or club gig. Like a playground baller with a sweet dribble, a rapper spitting frees needs to learn how to work with a team and manage his branding if he wants to go pro. Very few make it, but these young men live in an environment stacked against them with what Lee calls "existential urgency." They have few safety nets and no good Plan B, so blowin' up is their only way out. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

It's spring, and the birds are singing, "each tweet poking/ a tiny hole/ through the edge of winter." A fashionably bundled-up girl lies stomach-down on the snow to get a nose-to-nose look at a crocus blooming up through the icy whiteness: "a tiny, blue hello."

In When Green Becomes Tomatoes, Julie Fogliano (And Then It's Spring; If You Want to See a Whale) presents her playful, breathtaking poems as journal entries, organized by season for a full year. It's genius. Spring is "muddy mud," "one blue mitten," "the forever rushing daffodils/ wished they had waited" and "everyone is soggy/ but the sometimes sun/ is just enough/ for a robin." Summer is "when green becomes tomatoes" and "those peanut butter sandwiches/ a little bit salty/ and warm from the sun." Fall is "waiting for sweaters," "where notebooks are new" and "pumpkin toss/ pumpkin out/ pumpkin someday/ pumpkin sprout." Winter is an old green bike "suddenly beautiful/ with snow on top." In Fogliano's skillful hands, the sights, smells, tastes and sounds of the unfolding seasons reflect fleeting pleasures, joy and melancholy, discovery and loss, anticipation.

Julie Morstad (Julia, Child; This Is Sadie; Swan) invites readers along on Fogliano's beautiful year-long journey with winsome, pleasingly textured scenes in gouache and pencil crayon. Children of many colors tromp through fields, swim, dig in the sand, play in leaves... and creatures from squirrels to cows populate this vibrant, dynamic world where strawberries are furious and butterflies are anxious, depending on the season. Say yes. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness

Not everyone would run toward the sound of a gunshot in a dark alley, but 10-year-old Izzie Feeney is not just anyone.

Izzie saw the fancy Miss Giddings heading into the alley with a tall man in a long overcoat, and she surely can't abandon the kind lady who not only regularly buys her newspapers, but leaves a tip. As Izzie dashes to the crime scene, she discovers that Miss Giddings is fine, but the dead man isn't. So begins Isabel Feeney, Star Reporter by Beth Fantaskey (Buzz Kill), an entertaining novel about a scrappy newsgirl in 1926 Chicago who wants more than anything to be a crime reporter like her idol, Maude Collier, who writes for the Chicago Tribune. (An author's note indicates that Maude is fictional, but based on the reporter Genevieve Forbes Herrick.) Little does Izzie know that her impulsive act will lead her straight to Maude Collier... and into Chicago's dangerous world of "diamond-studded gangsters" and "ruthless rumrunners."

If Miss Giddings didn't kill her boyfriend in that alley, who did? And was he really connected to bootlegger Al Capone? Izzie takes it upon herself to solve the murder so her benevolent friend doesn't linger on Murderess's Row. She ropes Miss Gidding's polio-stricken son into her detective work, and the murdered mobster's daughter, wanting revenge, gets into the act as well. Izzie is an endearing latchkey kid: blunt, unwittingly funny and doggedly determined. Readers will cheer her on as she fights for the truth and for her newfound friends. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness

Jan B. Balet (The Five Rollatinis) is the German-born author-illustrator behind the warm, wonderful picture book Amos and the Moon, originally published in 1948.

Amos's bedroom is glowing with "a strange blue light" coming out of his mirror! It is the moon. Amos thinks, "Tomorrow the moon and I will play together. The moon will always live in my mirror." The next morning, the moon is gone, so Amos heads out to the local shops to search for it. Amos asks the mustachioed iceman, "Have you seen my moon?" The iceman plays along: "It is a very hard thing to hold onto the moon, you know." He gives Amos a piece of ice to show that it will melt away, just like the moon. John, the elegant junkman, gives him a toy horse on wheels for the boy's "long journey" to find the moon. All the shopkeepers--except the inexplicably angry barber--give the moon-seeking boy a present, from a lemon to a piece of bologna. The laundryman, Joe, gives Amos a birdcage to hang in front of his mirror because "maybe once or twice a month, you will catch the moon, and he will be with you for a little while."

Amos and the Moon is a lovely introduction to the wondrous movements of the moon and a touching ode to a small, kindly community that's big on personality. Balet outdoes himself with enticing illustrations of the shopkeepers' colorful, artfully composed windows--from Zirimis Pastry Shop to C. Wegelin Swiss Watchmaker--all bursting with curiosities, cakes and clocks. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness