Peter White Public Library offers the following new nonfiction titles as late-winter diversions.

The Best of Instructables, Volume 1 from the staff and editors of MAKE magazine and instructables.com offers the best of the various do-it-yourself build projects as seen on the Web site.

Those whose spring plans include a new small building for their backyard should check out Building a Shed by Joseph Truini. Plans in this volume include a variety of sheds with specific purposes. The library has numerous books with building and design ideas.

It Looked Good on Paper: Bizarre Inventions, Design Disasters, and Engineering Follies by Bill Fawcett is a humorous account of 67 ideas that were a little off. It includes military, scientific, commercial and infrastructure follies - a collection of mankind's ideas that would have turned out much better with the addition of a few key bits of knowledge or common sense, such as the lead water pipes of Rome, and a Mars probe that failed because of simple math mistakes.

It has been 42 years since Hunter S. Thompson's groundbreaking "Hells Angels" was published. Undercover agent Jay Dobyns infiltrated and spent two years with the group, resulting in No angel: My Harrowing Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels, a brutally honest look at the modern face of the Hells Angels.

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann follows the 1925 excursion of British explorer Col. Percy Fawcett and two companions as they plunged into the Amazon jungle in search of the legendary lost city of "Z." Their party was small and traveled light, but their quest grandiose. The lost city was purported to contain not only a lost civilization, but also riches of gold (sought by early Spanish explorers as El Dorado). No members of the team were ever heard from again.

Back in the Days by Jamel Shabazz is a history of the early hip-hop days of the 1980s. Everyday photos from the boroughs of New York City portray the fashion and culture of the times from a photographer who has been featured at the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

Jon Bream's 2008 book Whole Lotta Led Zeppelin: The Illustrated History of the Heaviest Band of All Time coincided with the 40th anniversary of the first Led Zeppelin album. Stories, trivia and never-before-seen pictures fill nearly 300 pages. Also see Hammer of the Gods: the Led Zeppelin Saga by Stephen Davis.

The Peter White Public Library is "going green." A little more than a year ago, the library staff started sending e-mail reminders three days before items became due. This proved so popular that more e-mail addresses are sought for entry into the system for sending library-related content to patrons' inboxes. As always, the library does not share contact information, and only sends out library-related messages. Visit www.pwpl.info to sign up for any of these electronic bulletins: notices related to a library account, the library newsletter, or to receive e-mails about films playing at the library.

- Bruce MacDonald

Circulation Services