Those of us who lived through the Watergate fiasco in the 1970's will recognize the name E. Howard Hunt. A former CIA man who organized the Watergate break-in and other "dirty tricks" that ultimately brought down Richard M. Nixon's presidency, Hunt died this week at the age of 88. His obituary reads like a spy novel including such capers as the overthrow of a Guatemalan president, the oversight of a group of Cuban exiles in the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the firebombing of the Brookings Institution to distract guards while his crew burglarized the think tank.

But did you know that E. Howard Hunt was also a spy novelist? Throughout his life, he wrote more than 80 spy novels and thrillers, usually under such pseudonyms as John Baxter, Robert Dietrich, David St. John, P.S. Donoghue, Gordon Davis or David St. John. One of his leading characters, Peter Ward, and Hunt were both Washington-dwelling Brown graduates. Hunt described this character as "the secret agent with the taste and the talent for fine living" as he himself was.

If you with to read more about this intriguing man, you may wish to read Compulsive Spy: the Strange Career of E. Howard Hunt. You can also go to the E. Howard Hunt website, which introduces Hunt as "one of the most extraordinary, if controversial, men-of-action-and-letters of our time".

Novels written by Hunt include Guilty Knowledge about a potential first female president of the United States, Dragon Teeth about an ex-CIA agent sought by the Chinese and the CIA, The Berlin Ending; a Novel of Discovery, an international thriller, and The Kremlin Conspiracy about a plot to change the balance of power. Non-fiction books written by Hunt include Give Us this Day, an inside account of the Bag of Pigs disaster and its aftermath, and Economics : an Introduction to Traditional and Radical Views.

Truth can be stranger than fiction.

Former baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn died last week. Some of us will remember Kuhn’s tenure as baseball’s commissioner from 1969 to 1984. According to his NY Time obituary, during this period attendance, the value of baseball's salaries, television revenue and franchise values soared, the major leagues expanded into Canada and realigned into divisional play, the World Series became a night-time spectacle, and players won the right to free agency and staged their first strikes. He fined or suspended baseball famous and infamous owners like the Yankees’ George Steinbrenner, the Oakland Athletics’ Charles O. Finley and the Atlanta Braves’ Ted Turner. Bowie Kuhn was known, admired and disliked for killing million-dollar sales of star players, fighting against the players’ union leader, Marvin Miller, and fending off threats to his job.

You can read more about this influential man in the library's Hardball: the education of a baseball commissioner by Bowie Kuhn; editorial assistant, Martin Appel. And check out more about Bowie Kuhn on the web at Baseball Almanac's Bowe Kuhn Biography or The Biz of Baseball - Bowie Kuhn - Former Commissioner (you will need to scroll down to begin the article). Or you may wish to view a somewhat opposite opinion of Bowie Kuhn's achievements in Murray Chase's New York Times column Kuhn’s Achievements Are Not All That They Seem.

You may also be interested in Curt Flood, the player who rebelled against the baseball establishment during Bowie Kuhn’s reign to make free agency a reality. Find out more about this courageous player in NPL’s Bunts: Curt Flood, Camden Yards, Pete Rose, and other reflections on baseball by George F. Will and The way it is by Curt Flood, with Richard Carter.

Bowie Kuhn played a large part in turning baseball into the "big business" it is today. Baseball season is only about a week away!

People often ask at the reference desk, "Where do you keep the newspapers?" Sounds like a simple question, right? If you ask, expect to hear the librarian say, "That depends!"

Many people who ask this question are looking for the latest copy of the Nashua Telegraph or Manchester Union Leader. The latest paper copy of the newspapers can be found in the Stearns Room. To get there from the library entrance, bear right past the circulation desk, pass the New Fiction display, and you'll see an open doorway on your right. In the Stearns Room, you'll also find new and recent copies of our general magazine collection, including business and consumer titles such as Consumer Reports. We keep the latest month's newspapers in the Stearns Room. The newest copy will be out on display, and older papers will be hanging in folders underneath the display.

Sometimes our newspaper-seekers are actually looking for older editions of the newspaper. For this, we have a variety of options available. We have the Telegraph on microfilm going back to the 1800s, and two new microfilm-scanner machines available for viewing, printing, and e-mailing articles from these papers. These are located near the hardcover fiction at the back of the top floor. Just ask at the reference desk if you need assistance using the microfilm machines.

We also have a subscription to two electronic newspaper databases. For modern newspapers (going back about 15 years or so), there's "Newsbank." You can search Newsbank for specific words to find articles that contain those words. There are dozens of newspapers in the Newsbank collection, from local newspapers such as the Telegraph and 1590 Broadcaster to nationwide newspapers (the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and Boston Globe, among others).

For those doing historical research beyond New Hampshire's borders, we also offer the "Newspaper Archives" database. This is a searchable collection of digitized newspapers dating as far back as the 1700s. It is available in the library only, and does not include New Hampshire newspapers.

You can get to both Newsbank and Newspaper Archives through the library's web site, www.nashualibrary.org. From there, click on the button that says "iBrowse Databases" and choose "Newspapers and Magazines" from the dropdown menu. Or go to the news listing directly at http://www.nashua.lib.nh.us/IbrowseAdultNews.htm.

If you're still not sure where to find what you need, do stop by the reference desk and let us know what you're looking for!

The tempestuous life of Boris Yeltsin came to an end yesterday. Yeltsin, the former president of Russia, was 76. Articles about the leader's life and legacy have been flowing following word of his death.

He is in the spotlight today in the Biography Resource Center database, which provides biographical and other articles about the late president. For a more international view, try the Newsbank database (scroll down the list of databases to "Newsbank" and be sure to select "remote access" if you are reading this outside the library). Go to "America's Newspapers and International News," and then click "Expand to: The World" and search on "Yeltsin." This will bring up the full text of news articles from around the world.

Other good sources of news articles include the Facts.com and EBSCO databases. In particular, EBSCO provides access to more scholarly journal articles in addition to major magazines such as Time and Newsweek. Facts.com has a narrower focus, primarily covering major world events.

To take an in-depth look at Boris Yeltsin's life and times, check out "Yeltsin : a revolutionary life" by Leon Aron. For a more general book about Russian history, including the end of the Soviet Union and the Chechnya conflict, try "Russia and the Russians : a history" by Geoffrey Hosking.

David Halberstam, well-known author, and Pulitzer Prize winner for his reporting for the New York Times during the Vietnam War, died Monday at the age of 73. He died in a car crash in California while on his way from a speaking engagement at Berkeley to an interview during which he had planned to research the subject of a new book.

America's obituaries and death notices, a database available on the library's website, currently has obituaries from ten different newspapers for David Halberstam. These can be accessed by entering his first and last name in the box marked Name of the Deceased. His career as a writer began in 1955, when, after his graduation from Harvard, he traveled to the South to write about race relations there. He went on to report from the Vietnam war, where his goal was to keep the American people informed of the truth about the Vietnam war. In addition to his reporting, he has also written 21 books ranging in topic from history through sports. Regardless of what he was writing, he was first and foremost a reporter.

Biography Resource Center, another database on the library's website, has not yet updated their database information to reflect his death, but only about 24 hours has passed. The database does have considerable information about his writing career and his life, including three narrative biographies .

Nashua Public Library currently has a special display of his writings on the counter to the right of the circulation desk. As a sports fan, Halberstam wrote about people and memorable games. His 2005 book The education of a coach is about Bill Belichick, coach of the New England Patriots. His 2003 book The teammates deals with the bond of friendship formed by four Red Sox team members which still endured sixty years later. After 9/11, David Halberstam wrote a book called Firehouse which told the story of one of the engine and ladder companies in New York most affected by the tragedy of that day. Although this book is currently available only as a downloadable audiobook from the state library, a print copy has been ordered for NPL.

Whether he was writing about war, politics, current events or sports, David Halberstam researched everything thoroughly. All the facts were always there; the reader could believe in what Halberstam wrote as strongly as he did. He will be greatly missed.

Robert Jordan (born James Oliver Rigney, Jr.) died this past Sunday from complications of primary amyloidosis (a blood disease) that he disclosed and tracked in his own blog. He was 58 and also wrote under the names Reagan O'Neal and Jackson O'Reilly.

Jordan was a decorated two-tour veteran of the Vietnam war (1968-1970). He earned a degree in physics from The Citadel when he returned from the war and then served in the U.S. Navy as a nuclear engineer. In the late seventies he began writing science fiction and fantasy which would later define his public identity. Thousands of websites and millions of readers are devoted to his work.

Jordan, probably the most popular fantasy writer since J.R.R. Tolkien, is known best for his twelve volume The Wheel of Time series, eleven of which have been published. Jordan named the 12th book A Memory of Light and warned that the final volume of the saga "could be a 1500-page monster" because there were so many hanging plot threads to resolve in a single volume. He maintained that A Memory of Light would remain one volume regardless of its length. Jordan's blog entries relate that he continued work on this volume until his death, and that he shared all of the significant plot details with his family prior to his death.

You may wish to take a look at Robert Jordan's Official Blog, although an overabundance of traffic has been it unreachable this past week. If you have not read The Wheel of Time series, or even if you have, you should take a look at Robert Jordan - The Wheel of Time. I am not a science fiction fan but after looking at this site, I jumped into the NPL catalog to reserve the first book of the series, The Eye of the World. Another site that should be of interest is Wotmania. (It did take me a bit of time to figure out that this is an acronym for Wheel of Time Mania.)

Our library has all of the eleven published volumes of the Wheel of Time series. We also have such other books of his as The further chronicles of Conan and The fallon pride which was written under the name Reagan O'Neal.

Do not hesitate to stop at or call our Reference Desk (589-4611) if you hear of any other Robert Jordan books of interest to you. We will be glad to borrow or purchase them for you to read.