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Kiku : the Japanese art of good listening
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Description:
Inspired by the Japanese concept of kiku--a more engaged, empathetic style of listening--a sociolinguistics researcher and writer offers a ground-breaking guide to more intentional and meaningful communication. No other life form turns noise into sound, sound into language, then language into understanding quite the way we humans do when we listen. As a sociolinguist who grew up in different places with very different languages, Haru Yamada has always been fascinated with the way people navigate their day listening to language systems that code the world in such dramatically different ways. And it was as Haru was recovering in the ICU from an accident that had inflicted a permanent hearing disability when she rediscovered the extraordinary benefit found in the science of listening--the critical intelligence we need to learn and grow and get better. Now, Haru Yamada offers a practical guide to more effective listening as a perceptive, creative exercise. We don't just listen to what people say and don't say, we reconstruct what someone else is saying and doing and meaning and feeling. Listening is a skill that requires our physical ear and brain power and the effort of our creative mind and social heart to remix what we hear from others and recreate it within ourselves. Kiku will allow you to harness the vital energy of listening to connect, sustain, and enhance the relationships you have with your friends, families, and professional teams.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
153.68 Yam
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The genius bat : the secret life of the only flying mammal
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Description:
An awe-inspiring tour of bat world by the world's leading expert With nearly 1500 species, bats account for more than twenty percent of mammalian species. The most successful and most diverse group of mammals, bats come in different sizes, shapes, and colors, from the tiny bumblebee bat to the giant golden-crowned flying fox. Some bats eat fruit and nectar; others eat frogs, scorpions or fish. Vampire bats feed on blood. Bats are the only mammals that can fly; their fingers have elongated through evolution to become wings with a unique super-flexible skin membrane stretched between them. Their robust immune system is one of the reasons for their extreme longevity. A tiny bat can live for forty years. Yossi Yovel, an ecologist and a neurobiologist, is passionate about deciphering the secrets of bats, including using AI to decipher their communication. In The Genius Bat he brings to vivid life these amazing creatures as well as the obsessive and sometime eccentric people who study them-bat scientists. From muddy rainforests, to star-covered night deserts, from guest houses in Thailand, to museum drawers full of fossils in New York, this is an eye-opening and entertaining account of a mighty mammal.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
599.4 Yov
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Super natural : how life thrives in impossible places
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From scorching deserts to frozen seabeds, from the highest peaks of the Himalaya to the hadal depths of the oceans, there are habitats on this Earth that appear hostile to life--yet where, nevertheless, life flourishes. In North American forests, wood frogs awaken each spring from solid blocks of ice. Under the Saharan sun, shielded by silvery hairs, desert ants sprint through the midday heat that is lethal to any other animal. At the bottom of ice-covered lakes, painted turtles pass months without breathing oxygen. Transporting readers to far-flung environments we could never call home, in Super Natural, award-winning science writer Alex Riley paints an awe-inspiring portrait of life's remarkable resilience even under the harshest circumstances. Riley illuminates ecosystems on every continent to tell the stories of creatures exquisitely adapted to endure unimaginable deprivations--of water, oxygen, food, sunlight--and extremes of heat and cold, of pressure and altitude. To survive half a year without food on barren islands, snakes will shrink and regrow their digestive systems--even their hearts. At the site of the Chernobyl disaster, fungi harness radiation to thrive. Evolution, we see, can and will carve out a niche just about anywhere. Super Natural shows us how, at nature's furthest limits, the rules of biology as we know them are rewritten--and how, in life's astonishing ingenuity and persistence even in the face of calamity and change, we can find hope for the future of life on Earth.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
577 Ril
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Bird school : a beginner in the wood
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Description:
An intimate exploration by a master naturalist of the lives of birds and their interactions with man. Poets and scientists, saints and naturalists, stalk through these pages. Neighboring cock robins duel almost to the death. Tawny owl widows are seen looking for tawny owl widowers to set up shop with. Blackbirds are found singing phrases from late Beethoven quartets, both in a garden in southern England (where they have been listening to records played through the open window of a drawing room) and in Bonn, where Beethoven himself first heard them and where they are still singing to the same rhythms two hundred fifty years later. Bird School describes and follows Adam Nicolson's progress over two or three years in trying to learn about, and eventually to create an environment friendly to, the birds of the farm where he lives in Sussex. In simple language that evinces his careful observational prowess, Nicolson aims to cross the boundary between the scientific and the prescientific understanding of birds, looking into why and how they sing, how they fly and breed, how they survive and migrate, how they have suffered at our hands, how we have loved them and damaged them, and how we might create, or re-create, a refuge for them. Here is a set of lessons for someone who knows little but cares a lot about the living world that is in such dire crisis. Here is life in the "rough grounds," on the edge of culture and nature.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
598.07234 Nic
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The genius of trees : how they mastered the elements and shaped the world
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Description:
For a supposedly stationary life-form, trees have demonstrated an astonishing mastery over the environment around them. In The Genius of Trees, tree scientist Harriet Rix reveals the inventive ways trees sculpt their environment and explains the science of how they achieve these incredible feats. Taking us on an awe-inspiring journey through deep history and unseen biochemistry across the globe, Rix restores trees to their rightful station, not as victims of our negligence but as ingenious, stunningly inventive agents in a grand ecological narrative. Trees manipulate fundamental elements, plants, animals, bacteria, fungi, and even humankind to achieve their ends, as seen with oaks in Devon, England, shaping ecosystems through root networks and fungi, and in Amedi, Iraq, changing sexes as they age; laurel rainforests in the Canary Islands regulating water cycles; and metasequoias in California influencing microclimates. Some tree species have gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure their fruits reach large primates, who can spread their seeds over vast distances, while poisoning smaller and less useful mammals. Others can split solid rock and create fertile ground in barren landscapes, effectively building entire ecosystems from scratch. And new discoveries are constantly coming to light: research has shown that trees have an even greater role in preventing global warming than we thought--trees, at one time thought to produce methane actually consume it. We share one world with trees and one need for survival. This eye-opening journey into the inner lives of nature's most powerful plant is a profoundly new and original way of understanding both the miracles trees perform and the glories of our natural world.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
582.16 Rix
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Description:
A playful deep dive into anthropomorphism (our peculiar tendency to humanize the nonhuman) that will resonate with anyone who has thrown a birthday party for their dog. Bestselling science writer Justin Gregg explores the science behind our instinct to see ourselves in the creatures and objects around us. Ours is a world filled with emotional support alligators, a woman who married her briefcase, and Soviet super babies that drink dolphin milk. Delivered with a delightful mix of scientific insight and humor, Humanish is a groundbreaking exploration of one of the most powerful--but rarely talked about--cognitive biases influencing our behavior. Through quirky stories and fascinating research, Gregg unravels the reasons behind why we treat our pets like babies, fall in love with chatbots, and talk to our cars. Discover how anthropomorphism drives both consumerism and the coming AI revolution, and how the inverse process, dehumanization, allows us to treat our fellow humans so inhumanely. Explore the brighter side of anthropomorphism's biological benefits--it helps us connect with other humans and make sense of our unpredictable world. Humanish is filled with captivating stories and invaluable ideas of how we can harness our understanding of anthropomorphism to build healthier relationships and enrich our lives.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
155.7 Gre
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Running deep : bravery, survival, and the true story of the deadliest submarine in World War II
Author(s):
Description:
The true story of the deadliest submarine in World War II and the courageous captain who survived torture and imprisonment at the hands of the enemy. There was one submarine that outfought all other boats in the Silent Service in World War II: the USS Tang. Captain Richard Hetherington O'Kane commanded the attack submarine that sunk more tonnage, rescued more downed aviators, and successfully completed more surface attacks than any other American submarine. These undersea predators were the first to lead the offensive rebound against the Japanese, but at great cost: Submariners would have six times the mortality rate as the sailors who manned surface ships. The Tang achieved its greatest success on October 24, 1944, when it took on an entire Japanese convoy and destroyed it. But its 24th and last torpedo boomeranged, returning to strike the Tang. Mortally wounded, the boat sunk, coming to rest on the bottom, 180 feet down. After hours of struggle, nine of the 87 crewmen, including O'Kane, made it to the surface. Captured by the Japanese, the Tang sailors joined other submariners and flyers - including Louis Zamperini and "Pappy" Boyington - at a "torture camp" whose purpose was to gain vital information from inmates and otherwise let them die from malnutrition, disease, and abuse. A special target was Captain O'Kane after the Japanese learned of the headlines about the Tang. Against all odds, when the camp was liberated in August 1945, O'Kane, at only 90 pounds, still lived. The following January, Richard O'Kane limped into the White House where President Truman bestowed him with the Medal of Honor. This is the true story of death and survival in the high seas-- and of the submarine and her brave captain who would become legends.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
940.5426 Cla
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Frostlines : a journey through entangled lives and landscapes in a warming Arctic
Author(s):
Description:
As warming reshapes our planet, the Arctic--a region that once seemed unchangeable, beyond the reach of modern problems--is quickly coming undone. While the old cold world can still be glimpsed in the movements of caribou, the hidden lives of wolves, and the hunting skill of an Iñupiaq elder, look closer and you'll find a new Arctic appearing in its place. ... Neil Shea blends natural history, anthropology, and travel writing to explore how the beauty, chaos, and power of change in the far north are reflected in the lives of people and animals. He sojourns with a wolf pack on Canada's Ellesmere Island and travels with Indigenous hunters in Alaska, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories. He tracks dwindling caribou herds across the top of North America, searches for vanished Vikings in Greenland, and visits the front line of the new Cold War rising between Russia and Europe. What Shea finds is not one Arctic but many--all still linked by shattering cold, seasons of darkness, and a pure, inimitable light.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
577.586 She
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Fateful hours : the collapse of the Weimar Republic
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Description:
Format:
Book
Call Number:
943.085 Ull
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Our dear friends in Moscow : the inside story of a broken generation
Author(s):
Description:
'Our dear friends in Moscow' tells the story of a group of young Russians, part of an idealistic generation who came of age in Moscow at the end of the twentieth century, just as the communist era imploded and a future full of potential, and uncertainty, stood in front of them. Initially, the group seized and enjoyed the freedoms of the new era, but quickly the notion that Russia was destined to join the West, and Europe, in a new partnership began to fade. At home the economy crashed, civil war stalked Chechnya, and terrorism came to Moscow. More discreetly, the new Russian government, getting angrier at the West and collecting a list of grievances, began to pull inward. By the time of Vladimir Putin's second and apparently endless term as president, the country had embraced a kind of ethnonationalism and was heading for war at home and abroad. The group is torn apart by the shift in Russia. Some flee; others become sinister agents of the ever more aggressive state. The center cannot hold.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
070.43092 Sol
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Wild by nature : from Siberia to Australia, three years alone in the wilderness on foot
Author(s):
Description:
One woman, 10,000 miles on foot, 6 countries, 8 pairs of hiking boots, 3,000 cups of tea, 1,000 days and nights ... In Wild by Nature, National Geographic Explorer Sarah Marquis takes you on the trail of her ten-thousand-mile solo hike from Siberia to Thailand, at which point she was transported by boat to complete the hike at her favorite tree in Australia.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
613.69 Mar
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How to cook a coyote : the joy of old age
Author(s):
Description:
From telling what it's like to go blind to confronting the ongoing erosion of time and the mystery of what's to come, HOW TO COOK A COYOTE recounts a decade of change as the celebrated food writer and critic Betty Fussell moves from Manhattan to the Montecito retirement community where Julia Child once resided. As Fussell recalls family, friends, enemies, and lovers with wry humor, affection, and a sharp-eyed confrontation with morality, all the while the coyote watches. An emblem of the wild and her metaphor for all the things one can't control, this coyote stalks her, taking on greater emotional and metaphorical resonance as the day progresses. Ultimately, this exciting new work from an incomparable voice in American writing provides a recipe for how to enjoy each moment as if it were the last day of your life.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
641.5092 Fus
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Captain's dinner : a shipwreck, an act of cannibalism, and a murder trial that changed legal history
Author(s):
Description:
On May 19, 1884, the yacht Mignonette set sail from England on what should have been an uneventful voyage. When their vessel sank in the Atlantic, Captain Thomas Dudley and his crew found themselves adrift in a tiny lifeboat. As days turned to weeks, they faced an unthinkable choice: starve to death or resort to cannibalism. Their decision to sacrifice the youngest, 17-year-old cabin boy Richard Parker, ignited a firestorm of controversy upon their rescue. Instead of being hailed as heroes and survivors, Dudley and his crew found themselves at the center of Regina v. Dudley and Stephens, a landmark murder trial that would establish the legal precedent that necessity cannot justify murder, a principle that continues to shape Anglo-American law today.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
364.1523 Coh
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Island at the edge of the world : the forgotten history of Easter Island
Author(s):
Description:
A vital and timely work of historical adventure and reclamation by British archeological scholar Mike Pitts--a book that rewrites the popular yet flawed history of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and uses newly unearthed findings and documents to challenge the long-standing historical assumptions about the manmade ecological disaster that caused the island's collapse.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
996.18 Pit
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Neptune's fortune : the billion-dollar shipwreck and the ghosts of the Spanish empire
Author(s):
Description:
Roger Dooley wasn't looking for the San José. But an accidental discovery in the dusty stacks of a Spanish archive led him to the story of a lifetime: the tale of a great eighteenth-century treasure ship loaded with riches from the New World and destined for Spain. But that ship, the galleon San José, met a darker fate. It was drawn into a pitched battle with British ships of war off the coast of Cartagena, and when the smoke cleared, the San José and its bounty had disappeared into the ocean, its coordinates lost to time. Though a diver at heart, Dooley was an unlikely candidate to find the [ship]. He had little in the way of serious credentials, yet his tenacity and single-minded devotion to finding and excavating the ship powered him across four decades, even as he became a man in exile from the country of his birth. As Dooley jousted with famous treasure hunters and well-funded competitors, he slowly homed in on a patch of sea that might contain a three-hundred-year-old shipwreck--or nothing at all.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
910.916365 Sac
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Kennedy's coup : a White House plot, a Saigon murder, and America's descent into Vietnam
Author(s):
Description:
A gripping narrative account of the CIA-backed coup in South Vietnam that John F. Kennedy encouraged and which precipitated America's involvement in one of the most controversial and consequential wars in our history.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
327.730597 Che
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The powerful primate : how controlling energy enabled us to build civilization
Author(s):
Description:
The Powerful Primate presents a compelling argument that flips the traditional view of humanity on its head. Rather than focusing solely on our intellectual abilities, author Roland Ennos argues it's our physical power and engineering brilliance that have set us apart in the animal kingdom. From our bipedal ancestors wielding simple tools to modern humans mastering complex machinery, Ennos takes us on a gripping journey through the evolution of human dominance. Readers will learn the fascinating history of how humans have progressively harnessed energy from sources such as wood, animals, water, wind, fossil fuels, and even atomic nuclei to drive our rise to being the most powerful species on Earth. Our ancestors' ability to hit harder, throw further, and cut deeper than any other animal laid the groundwork for the development of agriculture, industry, and ultimately, modern civilization. Yet, this power has come at a cost: environmental degradation and societal challenges have arisen from our relentless pursuit of energy and technological advancement. There is hope, however-- the same engineering skills that have brought us here can pave the way for a more sustainable future. Blending anthropology, biomechanics, engineering, and history, The Powerful Primate is a thought-provoking story of ambition, ingenuity, and the costs of progress-- a must-read for anyone interested in the forces that shape human civilization
Format:
Book
Call Number:
303.483 Enn
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A gripping and deeply researched exploration of the hidden influence of organized crime on the global economy that reveals the mafia as an uncredited architect of modern society.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
364.106 Gin
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Author(s):
Description:
In Traversal, Maria Popova illuminates our various instruments of reckoning with the bewilderment of being alive--our telescopes and our treatises, our postulates and our poems--through the intertwined lives, loves, and legacies of visionaries both celebrated and sidelined by history, people born into the margins of their time and place who lived to write the future: Mary Shelley, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Fanny Wright, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, Marie Tharp, Alfred Wegener, Humphry Davy, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead. Woven throughout their stories are other threads--the first global scientific collaboration, the Irish potato famine, the decoding of the insulin molecule, the invention of the bicycle, how nature creates blue--to make the tapestry of meaning more elaborate yet clearer as the book advances, converging on the ultimate question of what makes life alive and worth living. By turns epic and intimate--as concerned with the physical laws binding atoms into molecules as with the psychic forces binding us to one other--Traversal explores the universe between cells and souls to reveal the world, and our lives, in a dazzling new light.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
128 Pop
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Attensity! : a manifesto of the attention liberation movement
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Description:
A rallying cry to fight the commodification of human attention, with the tools we need to reclaim our humanity, by a group of writers, artists, and activists in the vanguard of the movement. ... We all feel it: something is seriously wrong. Our attention--that essential ability to give our minds and senses to the world--is being trapped, gutted, and sold out from under us by an industry of immense technological and financial power. The heedless exploitation of this vital capacity by a handful of tech companies is harming us all, reducing our very selfhood to that which can be quantified, bought, and sold--and shaking the foundations of our democracy. To push back against this 'human fracking,' we need more than individual willpower or isolated efforts. We need a movement of collective resistance. Such a movement is beginning to bloom, and in this radical, first-of-its-kind guide, The Friends of Attention show us how to join the fight. We meet welders, nurses, poets, and surfers, all of whom are engaged in attentional practices. We learn to seek out sanctuaries--theaters and museums, houses of worship, dance parties--where together we can take refuge from the frackers. Attention activism takes our apocalyptic present, turns it on its head, and reveals new vistas of human flourishing. Drawing on a rich legacy of critical intellectuals and the creative wisdom of diverse traditions, 'Attensity!' calls on us to come together to defeat the greedy dehumanizing forces of brute instrumentalization--and re-enchant the world.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
153.733 Att
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American struggle : democracy, dissent, and the pursuit of a more perfect union : an anthology
Author(s):
Description:
In a polarized era, history can become a subject of political contention. Many see America as perfect; many others argue that the national experiment is fundamentally flawed. The truth, Meacham shows, likely lies between these extremes. America has had shining hours, and also dark ones. In American Struggle, Jon Meacham illuminates the nation's complicated past. This rich and diverse collection covers a wide spectrum of history, from 1619 to the twenty-first century, with primary-source documents that take us back to critical moments in which Americans fought over the meaning and the direction of the national experiment. From the founders to Lincoln to Obama, from Andrew Jackson to Theodore Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan, from Seneca Falls to the March on Washington, this chorus -- sometimes discordant and always fascinating -- tells the story of the country and of its people. As clashes over liberty and slavery, inclusion and exclusion, play out, these voices, brilliantly framed by Meacham's singular commentary, remind us that contentious citizenship and fair-minded observations are essential to bringing about the more perfect union envisioned in the Preamble to the Constitution, which Frederick Douglass called a "glorious liberty document." Conflict is nothing new in our democracy; rather, as Meacham and these texts show, tensions are inherent, stubborn, and perennial. And American Struggle teaches us anew that to know what has come before, to watch as long-running disputes rise and fall, is to be armed against despair.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
306.20973 Mea
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I give you my silence : a novel
Author(s):
Description:
In Peru, a struggling writer becomes obsessed with documenting the life of an elusive guitarist whom he believes embodies the spirit of the vals, a Creole musical tradition. Hoping that a biography of the musician and a celebration of the culture surrounding the music might reveal Peru's national soul and foster social unity, the writer confronts the tensions between artistic idealism and a society marked by political violence.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
FIC Var