Excerpts help

So I’ve decided just to customize a theme rather than try to integrate the blog into a page, because that wasn’t working very well.

I still can’t find any documentation on putting the excerpts on my main page though.

Right now, i have this code entered, as per a previous instruction:

<?php
$how_many=5; //
require_once(“blog/wp-config.php”); // ?>

<ol id=”whats-new”>
<?
$news=$wpdb->get_results(“SELECT ID,post_title FROM $wpdb->posts
WHERE post_status= \”publish\” ORDER BY ‘ID’ DESC LIMIT “.$how_many);
foreach($news as $np){
printf (”

• %s

“, $np->ID,$np->post_title);
}?>

That gives me the last 5 entries, and it seems to work fine.

What code do i need to enter in there (and where) to also include the excerpts for the 5 links? I need to link a little more than just the entry subject.