March 2024: Current social issues

Quill has lived on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota her whole life. She knows what happens to women who look like her. So when learns women are being stolen, she is determined to do something about it. In her quest to find justice for all the women of the reservation, Quill is confronted with the hard truths of their home and the people who purport to serve them. 

"Pacific Hills, California: Gated communities, ocean views, well-tended lawns, serene pools, and now the new home of the Shah family. For the Shah parents, who came to America twenty years earlier with little more than an education and their new marriage, this move represents the culmination of years of hard work and dreaming. For their children, born and raised in America, success is not so simple. For the most part, these differences among the five members of the Shah family are minor irritants, arguments between parents and children, older and younger siblings. But one Saturday night, the twelve-year-old son is arrested. The fallout from that event will shake each family member's perception of themselves as individuals, as community members, as Americans, and will lead each to consider: how do we define success? At what cost comes ambition? And what is our role and responsibility in the cultural mosaic of modern America?" --

In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance. Seeking some reprieve from her recent hardships and from her family’s addiction to their devices, she splurges on passes that allow them three nights’ respite inside the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals flourish. But her insistence that her son, daughter, and husband leave their devices at home proves far more fraught than she anticipated, and the lush beauty of the Botanical Garden is not the balm she hoped it would be. When her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a hum of uncertain motives as she works to restore the life of her family.

"A page-turning look at race and violence in 1960s America that showcases Pitts's gift for telling emotionally wrenching and relevant stories"--

The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fable that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. An air force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing-and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. These and five other strangers, each summoned in different ways by trees, are brought together in a last and violent stand to save the continent's few remaining acres of virgin forest. There is a world alongside ours-vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

"The go-to book on immigration: fact-based, comprehensive, and nonpartisan. Immigration is one of the most controversial topics in the United States and everywhere else. Pundits, politicians, and the public usually depict immigrants as either villains or victims. The villain narrative is that immigrants pose a threat--to our economy because they steal our jobs; our way of life because they change our culture; and to our safety and laws because of their criminality. The victim argument tells us that immigrants are needy outsiders--the poor, huddled masses whom we must help at our own cost if necessary. But the data clearly debunks both narratives. From jobs, investment, and innovation to cultural vitality and national security, more immigration has an overwhelmingly positive impact on everything that makes a society successful. In The Truth About Immigration, Wharton professor Zeke Hernandez draws from nearly 20 years of research to answer all the big questions about immigration. He combines moving personal stories with rigorous research to offer an accessible, apolitical, and evidence-based look at how newcomers affect our local communities and our nation. You'll learn about the overlooked impact of immigrants on investment and job creation; realize how much we take for granted the novel technologies, products, and businesses newcomers create; get the facts straight about perennial concerns like jobs, crime, and undocumented immigrants; and gain new perspectives on misunderstood issues such as the border, taxes, and assimilation. Most books making a case for immigration tell you that immigration is good for immigrants. This book is all about how newcomers benefit you, your community, and your country. Skeptics fear that newcomers compete economically with locals because of their similarities and fail to socially assimilate because of their differences. You'll see that it's exactly the opposite: newcomers bring enduring economic benefits because of their differences and contribute positively to society because of their similarities. Destined to become the go-to book on one of the most important issues of our time, this book turns fear into hope by proving a simple truth: immigrants are essential for economically prosperous and socially vibrant nations"--

"Sometimes the bravest thing we can do while facing an existential crisis is imagine life on the other side. This provocative and joyous book maps an inspiring landscape of possible climate futures. Through clear-eyed essays and vibrant conversations, infused with data, poetry, and art, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson guides us through solutions and possibilities at the nexus of science, policy, culture, and justice. Visionary farmers and financers, architects and advocates help us conjure a flourishing future, one worth the effort it will take--from all of us, with whatever we have to offer--to create. If you haven't yet been able to picture a transformed and replenished world-or see yourself, your loved ones, and your community in it- this book is for you. If you haven't yet found your role in shaping this new world, or you're not sure how we can actually get there, this book is for you. With grace, humor, and humanity, Ayana invites readers to ask and answer this ultimate question, together: What if we get it right?"--

In Magically Black and Other Essays Jerald Walker elegantly blends personal revelation and cultural critique to create a bracing and often humorous examination of Black American life. He thoughtfully addresses the inherent complexities of topics as eclectic as incarceration, home renovations, gentrification, the crip walk, pimping, and the rise of the MAGA movement, approaching them through various Black perspectives, including husband, father, teacher, and writer. The collection's overarching theme is captured in the titular essay, which examines the culture of heroic action that African Americans created in response to their enslavement and oppression.

Marie Arana draws on her own experience as the daughter of an American mother and Peruvian father who came to the US at age nine to celebrate Latino resilience and character, and demonstrate why we must understand the fastest-growing minority in America.

A political freedom fighter who paid the ultimate price for his convictions recounts his political career, the many attempts on his life and the lives of the people closest to him and the relentless campaign he and his team waged against an increasingly dictatorial regime.

On December 16, 1989, when a young U.S. Marine is gunned down at a checkpoint in Panama City, Naval Investigative Service (NIS) Special Agent Rick Yell and his cadre of trusted agents deploy immediately to investigate the killing, and what they determine will decide the fate of two nations.

"On the night Miles Abernathy--sixteen-year-old socialist and proud West Virginian--comes out as trans to his parents, he sneaks off to a party, carrying evidence that may finally turn the tide of the blood feud plaguing Twist Creek: Photos that prove the county's Sheriff Davies was responsible for the so-called "accident" that injured his dad, killed others, and crushed their grassroots efforts to unseat him. The feud began a hundred years ago when Miles's great-great-grandfather, Saint Abernathy, incited a miners' rebellion that ended with a public execution at the hands of law enforcement. Now, Miles becomes the feud's latest victim as the sheriff's son and his friends sniff out the evidence, follow him through the woods, and beat him nearly to death. In the hospital, the ghost of a soot-covered man hovers over Miles's bedside while Sheriff Davies threatens Miles into silence. But when Miles accidently kills one of the boys who hurt him, he learns of other folks in Twist Creek who want out from under the sheriff's heel. To free their families from this cycle of cruelty, they're willing to put everything on the line--is Miles?" --

Everyone in fifteen-year-old Bella’s life needs something from her. Her mom needs her to help around the house, her dad needs her to not make waves, her ex needs her to not be so much. The only person who never needed anything from her was her grandmother--and now she’s dead. There’s only one thing that dulls the pressure: alcohol. Vodka, beer, peppermint schnapps--alcohol smooths the sharp edges of Bella’s life. And what’s the big deal? Everyone drinks. Besides, Bella can stop whenever she wants. But after she gets blackout drunk at a Thanksgiving party and wakes up in the hospital, it’s time to face reality. And for Bella, reality means rehab.

In this thoughtful treatise spurred by the 2015 death of African-American academic Sandra Bland in jail after a traffic stop, New Yorker writer Gladwell (The Tipping Point) aims to figure out the strategies people use to assess strangers--to "analyze, critique them, figure out where they came from, figure out how to fix them," in other words: to understand how to balance trust and safety. He uses a variety of examples from history and recent headlines to illustrate that people size up the motivations, emotions, and trustworthiness of those they don't know both wrongly and with misplaced confidence.

"Poet Renée Watson looks back at her childhood and urges readers to look forward at their futures with love, understanding, and celebration in this fully illustrated poetry collection"--

A spacious umbrella welcomes anyone and everyone who needs shelter from the rain.

A gripping first-hand account from inside the halls of Congress as Donald Trump and his enablers betrayed the American people and the Constitution--leading to the violent attack on our Capitol on January 6th, 2021--by the House Republican leader who dared to stand up to it. In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump and many around him, including certain other elected Republican officials, intentionally breached their oath to the they ignored the rulings of dozens of courts, plotted to overturn a lawful election, and provoked a violent attack on our Capitol. Liz Cheney, one of the few Republican officials to take a stand against these efforts, witnessed the attack first-hand, and then helped lead the Congressional Select Committee investigation into how it happened. In Oath and Honor , she tells the story of this perilous moment in our history, those who helped Trump spread the stolen election lie, those whose actions preserved our constitutional framework, and the risks we still face. 7/15

In this history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation--that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law makes it clear that it was segregation by the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day. The story begins in the 1920s, and shows how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the South to the North. Rothstein shows how government policies led to the creation of officially segregated public housing and the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods. While urban areas rapidly deteriorated, the great American suburbanization of the post-World War II years was spurred on by federal subsidies for builders on the condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. Finally, Police and prosecutors brutally upheld these standards by supporting violent resistance to black families in white neighborhoods. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 that prohibited future discrimination did nothing to reverse residential patterns that had become deeply embedded. Recent outbursts of violence in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, and Milwaukee show us how the legacy of these earlier eras contributes to persistent racial unrest.--From inside jacket flaps.

"More than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results. Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order. The testimonies of these two young women are joined by a third voice: a woman who wields power through the ruthless accumulation and deployment of secrets. As Atwood unfolds The Testaments, she opens up the innermost workings of Gilead as each woman is forced to come to terms with who she is, and how far she will go for what she believes." -- amazon.com

"In 1967, Sireen Sawalha's mother, with her young children, walked back to Palestine against the traffic of exile. My Brother, My Land is the story of Sireen's family in the decades that followed and their lives in the Palestinian village of Kufr Ra'i. From Sireen's early life growing up in the shadow of the '67 War and her family's work as farmers caring for their land, to the involvement of her brother Iyad in armed resistance in the First and Second Intifada, Sami Hermez, with Sireen Sawalha, crafts a rich story of intertwining voices, mixing genres of oral history, memoir, and creative nonfiction. Through the lives of the Sawalha family, and the story of Iyad's involvement in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hermez confronts readers with the politics and complexities of armed resistance and the ethical tensions and contradictions that arise, as well as with the dispossession and suffocation of people living under occupation and their ordinary lives in such times. Whether this story leaves readers discomforted, angry, or empowered, they will certainly emerge with a deeper understanding of the Palestinian predicament"--