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Vertigo : the rise and fall of Weimar Germany
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Germany, 1918: a country in flux. The First World War is over, the nation defeated. Revolution is afoot, the monarchy has fallen and the victory of democracy beckons. Everything must change with the times. Out of the ashes of the First World War, Germany launches an unprecedented political project- its first democratic government. The Weimar Republic is established. The years that follow see political extremism, economic upheaval, revolutionary violence and the transformation of Germany. Tradition is shaken to its core as a triumphant procession of liberated lifestyles emerges. Women conquer the racetracks and tennis courts, go out alone in the evenings, cut their hair short and cast the idea of marriage aside. Unisex style comes into fashion, androgynous and experimental. People revel in the discovery of leisure, filling up boxing halls, dance palaces and the hotspots of the New Age, embracing the department stores' promise of happiness and accepting the streets as a place of fierce political battles. In this short burst of life between the wars, amidst a frenzy of change, comes a backlash from those who do not see themselves reflected in the new Republic. Little by little, deep divisions begin to emerge. Divisions that would bring devastating consequences, altering the course of the twentieth century and the lives of millions around the world. Vertigo is a vital, kaleidoscopic portrait of a pivotal moment in German history.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
943.085 Jah
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A remarkable story of the scientists behind a long-forgotten and life-saving cure: the healing viruses that can conquer antibiotic resistant bacterial infections First discovered in 1917, bacteriophages-or "phages"-are living medicines: viruses that devour bacteria. Ubiquitous in the environment, they are found in water, soil, inside plants and animals, and in the human body. When phages were first recognized as medicines, their promise seemed limitless. Grown by research scientists and physicians in France, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere to target specific bacteria, they cured cholera, dysentery, bubonic plague, and other deadly infectious diseases. But after Stalin's brutal purges and the rise of antibiotics, phage therapy declined and nearly was lost to history-until today. In The Living Medicine, acclaimed science journalist Lina Zeldovich reveals the remarkable history of phages, told through the lives of the French, Soviet, and American scientists who discovered, developed, and are reviving this unique cure for seemingly-intractable diseases. Ranging from Paris to Soviet Georgia to Egypt, India, South Africa, remote islands in the Far East, and America, The Living Medicine shows how phages once saved tens of thousands of lives. Today, with our antibiotic shield collapsing, Zeldovich demonstrates how phages are making our food safe and, in cases of dire emergency, rescuing people from the brink of death. They may be humanity's best defense against the pandemics to come. Filled with adventure, human ambition, tragedy, technology, irrepressible scientists and the excitement of their innovation, The Living Medicine offers a vision of how our future may be saved by knowledge from the past.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
579.26 Zel
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Power metal : the race for the resources that will shape the future
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Description:
How the metals we need to power technology and energy are spawning environmental havoc, political upheaval, and murder-- and how we can do better. An Australian multimillionaire's plan to mine the ocean floor. Garbage pickers in Nigeria risking their lives to salvage e-waste amid nightmarish pollution. A Bill Gates-backed entrepreneur harnessing artificial intelligence to find metals in the Arctic. Train-robbing copper thieves in Chile. These are some of the people in the intensifying global competition to locate and extract the minerals essential for two critical technologies that will shape humanity's future: the internet and renewable energy. It's a race that will create new industries, generate enormous wealth, and destabilize the global balance of power. It could propel us to a more sustainable future--or plunge us into an environmental nightmare. In Power Metal, journalist and author Vince Beiser explores the Achilles' heel of green power and digital technology: that the manufacturing of our computers, cell phones, electric cars, solar panels, and wind turbines requires enormous amounts of increasingly rare materials--lithium, cobalt, copper, and others--the demand for which is skyrocketing. Around the world, businesses and governments are scrambling for new places and new ways to get those metals, at enormous cost to people and the planet. Beiser crisscrossed the world to witness this race, reporting on the damage it is already inflicting, the ways it could get worse, and the ways in which we can minimize that damage. The result is a book that is both a gripping read and a sobering account of the battle between what civilization demands and what the planet can withstand. Power Metal is a compelling and important glimpse into this new, disturbing, and exciting world.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
333.85 Bei
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The white ladder : triumph and tragedy at the dawn of mountaineering
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Description:
A sweeping history of mountaineering before Everest, and the epic human quest to reach the highest places on Earth.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
796.522 Lig
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Most honorable son : a forgotten hero's fight against fascism and hate during World War II
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Description:
Ben Kuroki was a twenty-four-year-old Japanese American farm boy whose heritage was never a problem in remote Nebraska--until Pearl Harbor. Among the millions of Americans who flocked to military stations to enlist, Ben wanted to avenge the attack, reclaim his family honor, and prove his patriotism. But as anti-Japanese sentiment soared, Ben had to fight to be allowed to fight for America. And fight he did.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
940.548173 Jon
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Ocean : a history of the Atlantic before Columbus
Author(s):
Description:
This work is a comprehensive cultural history of the Atlantic Ocean before Columbus, tracing its development from geological formation and the rise of early humans to the advancements in shipbuilding, navigation, and maritime exploration. It delves into the origins of the transatlantic slave trade and the early stages of European imperialism, offering a broad overview of the forces shaping this crucial body of water and its global significance.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
551.4613 Hay
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In this stranger than fiction story of the massive crime network that rigged the McDonald's monopoly game for decades, unlock new, exclusive interviews and stories that couldn't make it into the HBO docuseries, McMillion$. In March of 2001, Federal prosecutor Mark Devereaux cold-called Rob Holm, the head of security for McDonald's Corporation. Without explanation, Devereaux asked that Holm and several other McDonald's senior executives plan a visit to the Jacksonville, Florida, FBI, and tell no one about their intended destination. It wasn't up for discussion. Upon their arrival, Devereaux watched them closely, looking at body language, checking for tells. To him, they were all potential suspects. Once they were seated in an unremarkable conference room, sealed away in the hyper-secure FBI building, Devereaux began to lay out a shocking conspiracy, one that ran deep into McDonald's most beloved promotions: the Monopoly game. This is where they began to discover from 1989 to 2001, almost every high-value prize winner was actually illegitimate. But how could this happen and who all was behind it? A rookie FBI agent and a brilliant undercover operation led them to one man who brilliantly crafted a near-infallible nationwide conspiracy for fraud. Expanded from the wildly popular HBO docuseries with major new interviews, McMillion$ traces this massive crime, the intricate web of lies that bolstered it, and the tireless work of the FBI agents that unraveled it all. It is a story littered with tragedy: families torn apart, betrayals, financial ruin, and one suspicious car crash. Yet, there are bright spots in the hijinks of the FBI agents and their co-conspirators. Ultimately, it is a story of what happens when the American dream goes very wrong.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
364.163 Her
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Midnight in Moscow : a memoir from the front lines of Russia's war against the West
Author(s):
Description:
For weeks before the invasion of Ukraine, U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan was warning that it would happen. When troops finally crossed the border, he was woken in the middle of the night by an employee at Embassy Moscow with a prearranged code. The signal was even more bracing than the cold of that February night: it meant that Sullivan needed to collect his bodyguards and get to the embassy as soon as possible. The war had begun, and U.S.-Russia relations would never be the same. In Midnight in Moscow, Sullivan offers a memoir of his last post, as well as a broader argument about how our relationship with Russia has deteriorated over the past three years and where it's going. His arrival in Moscow coincided almost exactly with a dramatic series of escalations by the Kremlin. He saw firsthand how the Russian leadership repeatedly lied about their intentions to invade Ukraine in the weeks leading up to the attack-while also devoting huge numbers of personnel and vast resources to undermining the U.S. diplomatic presence in Russia. But it was not until Vladimir Putin gave the order to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 25, 2022 that Sullivan had to admit that Russia was not just at war with its neighbor: it was also at war, in a very real sense, with the United States, and with everything that it represents. Russian leaders' treachery and naked hostility, he says, is definitive proof that there can be no negotiation with Putin's regime or with the Russians at large until their government is thoroughly transformed. A unique perspective on a pivotal moment in world history, Midnight in Moscow also draws shocking historical parallels to explain why we need to stand up to Moscow--and how far we should be prepared to go in that confrontation.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
947.7086 Sul
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Bite : an incisive history of teeth, from hagfish to humans
Author(s):
Description:
In Bite, zoologist Bill Schutt makes a surprising case: it is teeth that are responsible for the long-term success of vertebrates. The appearance of teeth, roughly half a billion years ago, was an adaptation that allowed animals with backbones, such as fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, dinosaurs and mammals -- including us -- to chow down in pretty much every conceivable environment. And it's not just food. Tusks and fangs have played crucial roles as defensive weapons -- glimpsing the upper canines of snarling dogs is all it takes to know that teeth are an efficient means of aggression. Vampire bats use their razor-sharp teeth to obtain a widespread but generally untappable resource: blood. Early humans employed their teeth as tools to soften tough fibers and animal hides. Our teeth project information and social status -- the ancient Etruscans were the first to wear tooth bling, and it's doubtful that George Washington would have been elected president without the false teeth he wore. So much of what we know about life on this planet has come from the study of fossilized teeth, which have provided information not only about evolution but also about famine, war, and disease. In his signature witty style, the author of Pump and Cannibalism shows us how our continued understanding of teeth may help us humans through current and future crises, from Alzheimer' disease to mental health issues. Bite is popular science at its best and will appeal to readers of Mary Roach, Merlin Sheldrake, and Ed Yong.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
573.356 Sch
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The ultimate hidden truth of the world . . . : essays
Author(s):
Description:
"Drawn from more than two decades of pathbreaking writing, the iconic and bestselling David Graeber's most important essays and interviews"--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
301 Gra
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Your stone age brain in the screen age : coping with digital distraction and sensory overload
Author(s):
Description:
An award winning neurologist considers the effect of social media and digital devices on our brains, especially our ability to pay attention.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
616.8584 Cyt
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Mood machine : the rise of Spotify and the costs of the perfect playlist
Author(s):
Description:
An unsparing investigation into Spotify's origins and influence on music, weaving unprecedented reporting with incisive cultural criticism, illuminating how streaming is reshaping music for listeners and artists alike. Drawing on over one hundred interviews with industry insiders, former Spotify employees, and musicians, Mood Machine takes us to the inner workings of today's highly consolidated record business, showing what has changed as music has become increasingly playlisted, personalized, and autoplayed. Building on her years of wide-ranging reporting on streaming, music journalist Liz Pelly details the consequences of the Spotify model by examining both sides of what the company calls its two-sided marketplace: the listeners who pay with their dollars and data, and the musicians who provide the material powering it all. The music business is notoriously opaque, but here Pelly lifts the veil on major stories like streaming services filling popular playlists with low-cost stock music and the rise of new payola-like practices. For all of the inequities exacerbated by streaming, Pelly also finds hope in chronicling the artist-led fight for better models, pointing toward what must be done collectively to revalue music and create sustainable systems. A timely exploration of a company that has become synonymous with music, Mood Machine will change the way you think about and listen to music.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
780.285 Pel
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Talk : the science of conversation and the art of being ourselves
Author(s):
Description:
A groundbreaking book that reveals the hidden architecture of our conversations and how even small improvements can have a profound impact on our relationships in work and life-- from a celebrated Harvard Business School professor and leading expert on the psychology of conversation.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
153.6 Bro
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Aflame : learning from silence
Author(s):
Description:
Pico Iyer has made more than 100 retreats over the past three decades to a small Benedictine hermitage, high above the sea in Big Sur, California. He's not a Christian--or a member of any religious group--but his life has been transformed by these periods of time spent in silence. That silence reminds him of what is essential and awakens a joy that nothing can efface. It's not just freedom from distraction and noise and rush: it's a reminder of some deeper truths he misplaced along the way. In Aflame, Iyer connects with inner stillness and joy in his many seasons at the monastery, even as his life is going through constant change: a house burns down, a parent dies, a daughter is diagnosed with cancer. He shares the revelations he experiences, alongside wisdom from other non-monastics who have learned from adversity and inwardness. And most profoundly, he shows how solitude can be a training in community and companionship. In so doing, he offers a unique outsider's view of monastic life-- and of a group of selfless souls who have dedicated their days to ensuring there's a space for quiet and recollection that's open to us all. Radiant, intimate and gripping, Aflame offers ageless counsel about the power of silence, and what it can teach us about how to live, how to love and, ultimately, how to die.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
204.2 Iye
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How the new world became old : the deep time revolution in America
Author(s):
Description:
During the nineteenth century, Americans were shocked to learn that the land beneath their feet had once been stalked by terrifying beasts. T. rex and Brontosaurus ruled the continent. North America was home to saber-toothed cats and woolly mammoths, great herds of camels and hippos, and sultry tropical forests now fossilized into massive coal seams. How the New World Became Old tells the extraordinary story of how Americans discovered that the New World was not just old--it was a place rooted in deep time. In this panoramic book, Caroline Winterer traces the history of an idea that today lies at the heart of the nation's identity as a place of primordial natural beauty. Europeans called America the New World, and literal readings of the Bible suggested that Earth was only six thousand years old. Winterer takes readers from glacier-capped peaks in Yosemite to Alabama slave plantations and canal works in upstate New York, describing how naturalists, explorers, engineers, and ordinary Americans unearthed a past they never suspected, a history more ancient than anyone ever could have imagined. Drawing on archival evidence ranging from unpublished field notes and letters to early stratigraphic diagrams, How the New World Became Old reveals how the deep time revolution ushered in profound changes in science, literature, art, and religion, and how Americans came to realize that the New World might in fact be the oldest world of all.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
973.5 Win
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Pillars of creation : how the James Webb Telescope unlocked the secrets of the cosmos
Author(s):
Description:
The James Webb Space Telescope is transforming the universe right before our eyes--and here, for the first time, is the inside account of how the mission originated, how it performs its miracles of science, and what its revolutionary images are revealing.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
522.2919 Pan
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How good it is I have no fear of dying : Lieutenant Yulia Mykytenko's fight for Ukraine
Author(s):
Description:
The first time Lara Marlowe interviewed Lieutenant Yulia Mykytenko in Ukraine in 2023, Marlowe realized that the 28-year-old woman army officer was one of the most extraordinary people she had encountered in 42 years of journalism. Mykytenko was born in Kyiv in July 1995. She co-founded the 'female squad' of the 16th regiment of the Self-Defence Force during the 2013/14 Euromaidan protests, which overthrew the corrupt, pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych. She married Illia Serbin, a soldier, in 2015 and joined the army to serve with him in Donbas the following year. Mykytenko briefly left the army after her husband was killed in a Russian bombardment, but re-enlisted on the first day of the full-scale Russian invasion of 24 February 2022. She commands a 25-man drone unit on the frontline in Donbas. Drawing from a series of interviews with Mykytenko through the winter of 2023/24, Marlowe paints a searing portrait of life on the frontline and offers insights into Ukraine's past and possible future. How Good It Is I Have No Fear of Dying is a compelling story of a country at war and a fearless woman fighting for its survival.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
947.7062 Mar
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Seeking shelter : a working mother, her children, and a story of homelessness in America
Author(s):
Description:
In the tradition of Evicted and Invisible Child, Jeff Hobbs masterfully explores America's housing crisis through the real-life story of Evelyn. This is Hobbs's first book since The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace that focuses on a single character and her extraordinarily illuminating journey. In 2018, poverty and domestic violence cast Evelyn and her children into the urban wilderness of Los Angeles, where she avoids the family crisis network that offers no clear pathway for her children to remain together and in a decent school. For the next five years, Evelyn works full time as a waitress yet remains unable to afford legitimate housing or qualify for government aid. All the while she strives to provide stability, education, loving memories, and college aspirations for her children even as they sleep in motels and in her car, living in fear of both her ex and the nation's largest child welfare agency. Eventually Evelyn encounters Wendi Gaines, a recently trained social worker who decades earlier survived her own abusive marriage and housing crisis. Evelyn becomes one of Wendi's first clients, and the relationship transforms them both. Told from the perspectives of Evelyn, Wendi, and Evelyn's teenaged son, Orlando, Seeking Shelter is a powerful and urgent exploration of the issues of homelessness, poverty, and education in America--a must-read for anyone interested in understanding not just social inequality and economic disparity in our society but also the power of a mother's love and vision for her kids.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
362.592092 Hob
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The stained glass window : a family history as the American story, 1790-1958
Author(s):
Description:
National Humanities Medal recipient and two-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize David Levering Lewis's own family history that shifts our understanding of the larger American story Sitting beneath a stained-glass window dedicated to his grandmother in the Atlanta church where his family had prayed for generations, it struck Lewis that he knew very little about those ancestors. And so, in his mid-80s, the esteemed historian began to excavate their past and his own. We know that there is no singular, quintessential American story. Yet, the Lewis family contains many defining ones. His lineage leads him to the Kings and Belvinses, two white slaveholding families in Georgia; to the Bells, a mulatto slaveholding family in South Carolina; and to the Lewises, an up-from-slavery black family in Georgia. In The Stained-Glass Window, Lewis is heir and chronicler of them all. His father, John Henry Lewis, Sr. set Lewis on the path he would doggedly pursue, introducing him to W.E.B. Du Bois and living by example as an aid to Thurgood Marshall in a key civil rights case in Little Rock. In The Stained-Glass Widow, Lewis reckons with his legacy in full, facing his ancestors and all that was lost, all the doors that were closed to them. In this country, the bonds of kinship and the horrific fetters of slavery are themselves bound up together. The fight for equity, the loud echoes of the antebellum project in our present, and narratives of exceptionalism are ever with us-in these pages, so too are the voices of Clarissa, Isaac, Hattie, Alice, and John who have shaped this nation and will transform the way we see it.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
975.00496 Lew
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Outmaneuvered : America's tragic encounter with warfare from Vietnam to Afghanistan
Author(s):
Description:
Since the early 1960s, there have only been twelve years in which American troops have not been in combat, either in a formally declared conflict or otherwise. The vast majority of these have ended in failure, or something close to it. Why has the US been so ineffective, given the fact that the American armed forces are universally recognized as the best in the world? This is the key question James Warren answers here in Outmaneuvered. Most scholars and analysts believe that the primary cause of our abysmal war record since Vietnam has been the US military's overwhelmingly conventional approach-- which favors kinetic operations, highly mobile precision firepower, and sophisticated systems of command and control. Here, Warren argues that the more formidable obstacle to success has been pervasive strategic ineptitude at the highest levels of Washington, including the executive branch, Congress, and the national security council responsible for shaping US foreign policy. Time and time again, American presidents have committed military forces to operations in foreign countries whose politics and cultures they did not fully understand. Presidents of both political parties, including Kennedy, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Obama have overestimated the capacity of US forces to alter the social and political landscape of foreign nations, and underestimated the ability of insurgents and terrorists to develop strategies that draw out conflict and wage effective propaganda campaigns to curtail Washington's will to carry on the fight. Warren concludes the book by advocating for a less hubristic foreign policy and a broader conception of warfare as a political and military enterprise.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
355.00973 War
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Inside the stargazer's palace : the transformation of science in 16th-century Europe
Author(s):
Description:
In 1506 a comet appears above Augsburg. As the astronomer Johann Virdung explains, it heralds conflict, the destruction of crops and the death of kings. He concludes his theories with a poem. In 1680 Isaac Newton peers at a comet through a telescope for the first time. He calculates its orbit and distance from the Sun. Of its meaning, he says nothing. No poetry ensues. Violet Moller takes us through a centuries-long quest for knowledge of the earth and the heavens. In Louvain, Gerard Mercator engraves globes for the Habsburg Emperor, but only narrowly escapes death for heresy. Tycho Brahe catalogues stars on the island of Hven and keeps up a prospering practice in alchemy. In opulent palaces and bustling workshops, the modern astronomical endeavor is born.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
509.409031 Mol
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After the North Pole : a story of survival, mythmaking, and melting ice
Author(s):
Description:
A memoir from the Norwegian explorer recounts his 58-day ski journey to the North Pole, offering a gripping adventure story and a deep reflection on nature, human resilience and the profound significance of this remote region.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
910.91632 Kag
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Spell freedom : the underground schools that built the civil rights movement
Author(s):
Description:
In the summer of 1954, educator Septima Clark and small businessman Esau Jenkins travelled to rural Tennessee's Highlander Folk School, an interracial training center for social change founded by Myles Horton, a white southerner with roots in the labor movement. There, the trio united behind a shared mission: preparing Black southerners to pass the daunting Jim Crow era voter registration literacy tests that were designed to disenfranchise them. Together with beautician-turned-teacher Bernice Robinson, they launched the underground Citizenship Schools project, which began with a single makeshift classroom hidden in the back of a rural grocery store. By the time the Voting Rights Act was signed into law in 1965, the secretive undertaking had established more than nine hundred citizenship schools across the South, preparing tens of thousands of Black citizens to read and write, demand their rights--and vote. Simultaneously, it nurtured a generation of activists--many of them women--trained in community organizing, political citizenship, and tactics of resistance and struggle who became the grassroots foundation of the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King called Septima Clark, 'Mother of the Movement.' In the vein of Hidden Figures and Devil in the Grove, Spell Freedom is both a riveting, crucially important lens onto our past, and a deeply moving story for our present.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
324.620899 Wei
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The pardon : the politics of presidential mercy
Author(s):
Description:
Examines the contentious events surrounding President Ford's decision to pardon Nixon, featuring key players such as Alexander Haig and Benton Becker, and explores its long-term impact on American politics and the presidency, arguing that this was not a necessary act of healing, but rather an unwise gift to an undeserving recipient.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
342.73062 Too
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World eaters : how venture capital is cannibalizing the economy
Author(s):
Description:
An urgent and illuminating insider/outsider perspective that offers a window into how the most pernicious aspects of the venture capital ethos is reaching all areas of our lives, into everything from healthcare to food to entertainment to the labor market, and leaving a trail destruction in their wake.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
332.04154 Bra
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Stronger : the untold story of muscle in our lives
Author(s):
Description:
An account of the history and science of muscle and weight training, from the Trojan War to modern-day research, highlighting how strength-building exercises can prevent and treat chronic diseases, improve quality of life, and challenge age-old biases against muscle.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
612.74 Gro
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The fifteen : murder, retribution, and the forgotten story of Nazi POWs in America
Author(s):
Description:
The true story of the long-forgotten POW camps for German soldiers erected in hundreds of small U.S. towns during World War II, and the secret Nazi killings that ensnared fifteen brave American POWs in a high-stakes showdown.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
940.547273 Ger
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Who is government? : the untold story of public service
Author(s):
Description:
The government is a vast, complex system that Americans pay for, rebel against, rely upon, dismiss, and celebrate. It's also our shared resource for addressing the biggest problems of society. And it's made up of people, mostly unrecognized and uncelebrated, doing work that can be deeply consequential and beneficial to everyone. Michael Lewis invited his favorite writers to find someone doing an interesting job for the government and write about them in a special in-depth series for the Washington Post. The stories they found are unexpected, riveting, and inspiring, including a former coal miner devoted to making mine roofs less likely to collapse, saving thousands of lives; an IRS agent straight out of a crime thriller; and the manager who made the National Cemetery Administration the best-run organization, public or private, in the entire country. Each essay shines a spotlight on the essential behind-the-scenes work of exemplary federal employees. Whether they're digitizing archives, chasing down cybercriminals, or discovering new planets, these public servants are committed to their work and universally reluctant to take credit. Expanding on the Washington Post series, the vivid profiles in Who Is Government? blow up the stereotype of the irrelevant bureaucrat. They show how the essential business of government makes our lives possible, and how much it matters.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
351 Lew
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Gentlemen of the woods : manhood, myth, and the American lumberjack
Author(s):
Description:
The folk hero Paul Bunyan stands astride the story of the upper Midwest-- a manly symbol of the labor that cleared the vast north woods for the march of industrialization while somehow also maintaining an aura of pristine nature. This conception receives a long overdue and thoroughly revealing correction in Gentlemen of the Woods, a cultural history of the life and lore of the real lumberjack and his true place in American history.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
634.98092 Bro
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Warbody : a Marine sniper and the hidden violence of modern warfare
Author(s):
Description:
Alexander Lemons is a Marine Corps scout sniper who, after serving multiple tours during the Iraq War, returned home seriously and mysteriously ill. Joshua Howe is an environmental historian who met Lemons as a student in one of his classes. Together they have crafted a vital book that challenges us to think beyond warfare's acute violence of bullets and bombs to the "slow violence" of toxic exposure and lasting trauma. In alternating chapters, Lemons vividly describes his time in Fallujah and elsewhere during the worst of the Iraq War, his descent into a decade-long battle with mysterious and severe sickness, and his return to health; Howe explains, with clarity and scientific insight, the many toxicities to which Lemons was exposed and their potential consequences. Together they cover the whirlwind of toxic exposures military personnel face from the things they touch and breathe in all the time, including lead from bullets, jet fuel, fire retardants, pesticides, mercury, dust, and the cocktail of toxicants emitted by the open-air "burn pits" used in military settings to burn waste products like paint, human waste, metal cans, oil, and plastics. They also consider PTSD and traumatic brain injury, which are endemic among the military and cause and exacerbate all kinds of physical and mental health problems. Finally, they explore how both mainstream and alternative medicine struggle to understand, accommodate, and address the vast array of health problems among military veterans.--
Format:
Book
Call Number:
956.70443 How
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Bye bye I love you : the story of our first and last words
Author(s):
Description:
An exploration of the first words and last words of life, written by a linguistically-trained trade author.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
302.224 Era
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High yield, small space organic gardening : practical tips for growing your own food
Author(s):
Description:
The founder of Gardenerd offers step-by-step strategies and scientific tips to maximize home gardening in small or unconventional spaces, enabling gardeners to grow abundant, thriving crops with minimal effort and on a budget.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
635.0484 Wil
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Zero sum : the arc of international business in Russia
Author(s):
Description:
When the hammer and sickle came down in late 1991, Russia's feverish new market opened for business. From banking to breweries, sectors emerged out of nowhere, in a country that had never had a functioning economy. For the next three turbulent decades, a wild, proto-capitalist free-for-all transformed Russian society. Then, in 2022, Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The market started to collapse; Western firms fled Moscow's skyscrapers. No country this large had ever transformed itself as dizzyingly as 1990s Russia--now, just as dramatically, it was over. The intervening decades had seen phenomenal successes and crushing failures; the creation and destruction of enormous fortunes. How did it all happen? Zero Sum brings to life the complex, vivid color of one of the greatest experiments in the history of global commerce. What have businesses learnt--or failed to learn--from this adventure, both about Russia and about dynamics between countries and companies in the face of relentless change?
Format:
Book
Call Number:
337.47 Hec
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The ocean's menagerie : how earth's strangest creatures reshape the rules of life
Author(s):
Description:
Hundred-year-old giant clams, coral kingdoms the size and shape of cities, and jellyfish that glow in the dark: ocean invertebrates are among the oldest and most diverse organisms on earth, bending our rules of land-based biology. Although often overlooked, the spineless creatures of the deep contain 600 million years of adaptation to problems of disease, energy consumption, nutrition, and defense. In The Ocean's Menagerie, world-renowned marine ecologist Dr. Drew Harvell takes us from Hawaii to the Salish Sea, from St. Croix to Indonesia, to uncover the incredible underwater "superpowers" of spineless creatures: we meet corals many times stronger than steel or concrete, sponges who create potent chemical compounds to fight off disease, and sea stars that act as gardeners for coastlines, keeping all the other nearby species in perfect balance. As our planet changes fast, the biomedical, engineering, and energy innovations of these wonderous creatures hold ever more important secrets to our own survival. The Ocean's Menagerie is a tale of biological marvels, a story of a woman's passionate connection to a career in science, and a call to arms to protect the world's most ancient ecosystems.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
591.77 Har
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New & Best List
The ideological brain : the radical science of flexible thinking
Author(s):
Description:
Why do some people become radicalized? How do ideologies shape the human brain? And how can we unchain our minds from toxic dogmas? In The Ideological Brain, Leor Zmigrod reveals the deep connection between political beliefs and the biology of the brain. Drawing on her own pioneering research, she uncovers the complex interplay between biology and environment that predisposes some individuals to rigid ways of thinking, and explains how ideologies take hold of our brains, fundamentally changing the way we think, act and interact with others. She shows how ideologues of all types struggle to change their thought patterns when faced with new information, culminating in the radical message that our politics are not superficial but are woven into the fabric of our minds. This authoritative, accessible and playful blend of psychology, politics and philosophy explores the cutting-edge of the emerging field of political neuroscience. Zmigrod examines its historical roots before she looks to the future, considering the broader social and political implications of her groundbreaking research. Guiding readers through her experiments, she eventually describes what a free, authentic, and tolerant brain looks like, and explains how anyone can keep their mind open and flexible in the face of extremist ideologies.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
320.019 Zmi
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New & Best List
The witch's door : oddities & tales from the esoteric to the extreme
Author(s):
Description:
In this spellbinding and entertaining memoir, Regina and Ryan Cohn, founders of Oddities Flea Market, share their incredible history and stories, taking us on a fascinating and specially curated tour of their most macabre and mysterious objects, art, and artifacts.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
381.192 Coh