See Also:
New & Best List
Voices from Gettysburg : letters, papers, and memoirs from the greatest battle of the Civil War
Author(s):
Description:
The voices of those who witnessed the Battle of Gettysburg and its aftermath with their own eyes - who saw the bloodshed, heard its din, trembled in its crash, struggled with its aftermath - are collected for the first time by Allen C. Guelzo, America's foremost Civil War scholar, in this moving and sobering oral history. This treasure trove of original documents - many never-before published - creates a uniquely personal, day-by-day eyewitness account of the monumental collision at Gettysburg, in the words of the commanders, soldiers, politicians, and civilians from both the North and the South who experienced firsthand the changing course of the Civil War.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
973.7349 Gue
See Also:
New & Best List
The garden against time : in search of a common paradise
Author(s):
Description:
In 2020, Olivia Laing began to restore an eighteenth-century walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants. The work brought to light a crucial question for our age: Who gets to live in paradise, and how can we share it while there's still time? Moving between real and imagined gardens, from Milton's Paradise Lost to John Clare's enclosure elegies, from a wartime sanctuary in Italy to a grotesque aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, Laing interrogates the sometimes shocking cost of making paradise on earth. But the story of the garden doesn't always enact larger patterns of privilege and exclusion. It's also a place of rebel outposts and communal dreams. From the improbable queer utopia conjured by Derek Jarman on the beach at Dungeness to the fertile vision of a common Eden propagated by William Morris, new modes of living can and have been attempted amidst the flower beds, experiments that could prove vital in the coming era of climate change. The result is a humming, glowing tapestry, a beautiful and exacting account of the abundant pleasures and possibilities of gardens: not as a place to hide from the world but as a site of encounter and discovery, bee-loud and pollen-laden.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
635.094264 Lai
See Also:
New & Best List
Frostbite : how refrigeration changed our food, our planet, and ourselves
Author(s):
Description:
An engaging and far-reaching exploration of refrigeration, tracing its evolution from scientific mystery to globe-spanning infrastructure, and an essential investigation into how it has remade our entire relationship with food-- for better and for worse. How often do we open the fridge or peer into the freezer with the expectation that we'll find something fresh and ready to eat? It's an everyday act, easily taken for granted, but just a century ago, eating food that had been refrigerated was cause for both fear and excitement. Banquets were held just so guests could enjoy the novelty of eggs, butter, and apples that had been preserved for months in cold storage-- and demonstrate that such zombie foods were not deadly. The introduction of artificial refrigeration overturned millennia of dietary history, launching an entirely new chapter in human nutrition. We could now overcome not just rot, but also seasonality and geography. Tomatoes in January? Avocados in Shanghai? All possible. In FROSTBITE, New Yorker contributor and co-host of the award-winning podcast Gastropod Nicola Twilley takes readers with her on a tour of the cold chain from farm to fridge, visiting such off-the-beaten-track landmarks as Missouri's subterranean cheese caves, the banana-ripening rooms of New York City, and the vast refrigerated tanks that store the nation's OJ reserves. Today, more than three-quarters of everything on the average American plate is processed, shipped, stored, and sold under refrigeration. It's impossible to make sense of our food system without understanding the all-but-invisible network of thermal control that underpins it. Twilley's eye-opening book is the first to reveal the transformative impact refrigeration has had on our health and our guts; our farms, tables, kitchens, and cities; global economics and politics; and even our environment. In the developed world, we've reaped the benefits of refrigeration for more than a century, but as Twilley soon discovers, the costs are catching up with us. We've eroded our connection to our food, extending the distance between producers and consumers and redefining what "fresh" really means. More importantly, refrigeration is one of the leading contributors to climate change. As the developing world races to build a U.S.-style cold chain, Twilley asks, can we reduce our dependence on refrigeration? Should we? A deeply-researched and reported, original, and entertaining dive into the most important invention in the history of food and drink, FROSTBITE makes the case for a recalibration of our relationship with the fridge-and how our future might depend on it.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
621.5609 Twi
See Also:
New & Best List
Carrie Carolyn Coco : my friend, her murder, and an obsession with the unthinkable
Author(s):
Description:
On the night of September 28, 2016, twenty-five-year-old Carolyn Bush was brutally stabbed to death in her New York City apartment by her roommate Render Stetson-Shanahan, leaving friends and family of both reeling. In life, Carolyn was a gregarious, smart-mouthed aspiring poet, who had seemingly gotten along well with Render, a reserved art handler. Where had it gone so terribly wrong? This is the question that has plagued acclaimed author Sarah Gerard and driven her obsessive pursuit to understand this horrific tragedy. In Sarah's exploration of Carolyn's life and death, she spent thousands of hours interviewing Carolyn's and Render's friends and family, poring over court documents and news media, reading obscure writings and internet posts, and attending Carolyn's memorials and Render's trial. What emerged from Sarah's relentless instinct to follow a story and its characters to their darkest ends is a book that is at once a striking homage to Carolyn's life, a chilling excavation of a brutal crime, and a captivating whydunit with a shocking conclusion.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
364.1523 Ger
See Also:
New & Best List
The new tourist : waking up to the power and perils of travel
Author(s):
Description:
An American journalist and regular contributor to The New York Times explores how tourism has shaped the world, for better and for worse, highlighting painful truths but also delivering a message of hope: the right kind of tourism--and the right kind of tourist--can be a powerful force for good.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
338.4791 Mcc
See Also:
New & Best List
Swimming pretty : the untold story of women in water
Author(s):
Description:
Published to coincide with the 40th anniversary of synchronized swimming's elevation to Olympic status, this breathtaking book, tracing a century of aquatic performance, from vaudeville and dime museums to the Olympic arena, honors the grit, glamor and sheer athleticism of an utterly unique sport that forever changed women's relationships with water.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
797.217082 Val
See Also:
New & Best List
This fierce people : the untold story of America's Revolutionary War in the South
Author(s):
Description:
A groundbreaking, important recovery of history; the overlooked story, fully explored, of the critical aspect of America's Revolutionary War that was fought in the South showing that the British surrender at Yorktown was the direct result of the southern campaign and, that the battles that emerged south of the Mason-Dixon line between loyalists to the Crown and patriots who fought for independence were, in fact, America's first civil war. The famous battles that form the backbone of the story put forth of American independence--at Lexington and Concord, Brandywine, Germantown, Saratoga, and Monmouth--while crucial, did not lead to the surrender at Yorktown. It was in the three-plus years between Monmouth and Yorktown that the war was won. Alan Pell Crawford's riveting new book, This Fierce People, tells the story of these missing three years, long ignored by historians, and of the fierce battles fought in the south that made up the central theater of military operations in the latter years of the Revolutionary War, upending the essential American myth that the War of Independence was fought primarily in the north. Weaving throughout the stories of the heroic men and women, largely unsung patriots--African Americans and whites, militiamen and 'irregulars,' Patriots and Tories, Americans, Frenchmen, Brits and Hessians--Crawford reveals the misperceptions and contradictions of our accepted understanding of how our nation came to be, as well as the national narrative that America's victory over the British lay solely with General George Washington and his troops.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
975.03 Cra
See Also:
New & Best List
The secret history of sharks : the rise of the ocean's most fearsome predators
Author(s):
Description:
From ancient megalodons to fearsome Great Whites, this is the complete, untold story of how sharks emerged as Earth's ultimate survivors, by a world-leading paleontologist. Sharks have been fighting for their lives for 500 million years and are under dire threat today. They are the longest surviving vertebrate on Earth, outlasting multiple mass extinction events that decimated life on the planet. How did they thrive so long? By developing superpower-like abilities that allowed them to ascend to the top of the oceanic food chain. Yet they often found themselves in the shadows of larger, more formidable killers-- and they not only survived, but also took their crown as the king of the sea. The Secret History of Sharks is the thrilling story of sharks' unparalleled reign. Because of recent technological breakthroughs scientists' understanding of sharks has taken a quantum leap forward in the last decade. John Long has been on the cutting edge of this research and in this masterwork weaves a fully updated and unexpected tale of shark's extraordinary evolutionary adventure. Along the way, The Secret History of Sharks introduces an enormous range of incredible organisms: a thirty-foot-long shark with a deadly saw blade of jagged teeth protruding from its lower jaws, a monster giant clams crusher, and bizarre sharks fossilized while in their mating ritual, and also includes startling new facts about the mighty megalodon, with its sixty-six-foot-long body, massive jaws, and six-inch serrated teeth that allowed it to dismember baleen whales. The book showcases the global search to discover sharks' secret history, led by Long and dozens of other extraordinary scientists. They embark on digs to all seven continents, investigating layers of earth to reveal never-before-found fossils and the clues to sharks' singular story. With insights into the threats to sharks today, how sharks contribute to medical advances, and the lessons sharks can teach us for our own survival, The Secret History of Sharks is a thrilling story of scientific discovery with ramifications far beyond the ocean.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
567.3 Lon
See Also:
New & Best List
A sea full of turtles : the search for optimism in an epoch of extinction
Author(s):
Description:
Everyone alive today is witnessing a mass extinction event caused by the more than eight billion humans who share this planet. At times, it seems there is little hope. Climate change, resource exploitation, agrochemicals, overfishing, plastics, dead zones in our oceans, drought and desertification, conversion of habitat to housing, farming, and industrial infrastructure--the list of impacts and insults goes on and on. We are, it seems, on an unalterable path that will continue to decimate biodiversity. A feeling of hopelessness, while not unwarranted, is part of the problem. Without hope, without some belief in the possibility of positive outcomes, the fight for nature is over. Why even try if the battle is already lost? While staring the problems squarely in the face, A Sea Full of Turtles offers hope for those who care about our living world. Delivered as a travel narrative set in Mexico's Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez), at one level the book focuses on dramatically underfunded but highly successful efforts to protect sea turtles. But the book goes beyond Mexico and beyond sea turtles to look at how some humans have changed their relationship with nature--and how that change can one day end the extinction crisis. Enchanting, galvanizing, and brimming with joy and wonder, A Sea Full of Turtles will inspire immediate action to face the great challenges that lie ahead. Pessimism is the lazy way out. Optimism, it turns out, is both a reasonable and an essential attitude for us all as we fight for the beautiful diversity of life on our Earth.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
639.977928 Str
See Also:
New & Best List
The science of why we exist : a history of the universe from the big bang to consciousness
Author(s):
Description:
From the Big Bang and the evolution of the genetic code to the birth of consciousness, this is the extraordinary story of the chain of events that led to human life on earth. Have you ever wondered why you exist? What had to happen for you to be alive and conscious? Scientists have come a long way in answering this question, and this book describes what they have found out. It also examines whether our existence was inevitable at the universe's birth 13.77 billion years ago--or whether we are just incredibly lucky. The book is aimed at readers who are interested in science but are not experts. Written in an entertaining and accessible style, the narrative begins by describing how scientists discover facts before taking the reader on a journey from the Big Bang to the creation of the human genome. Covering physics, astronomy, chemistry, earth sciences, the emergence of life, evolution, consciousness, the rise of humanity, and how our personalities are moulded by genes, chance, and the environment, the journey explains how the universe started as point of intense energy that over time, in our corner of the universe, resulted in our wonderful planet--and in you.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
509 Cou
See Also:
New & Best List
Author(s):
Description:
This meticulously researched account of assaults on democracy by five presidents who imprisoned critics, spread a culture of white supremacy and committed crimes with impunity shows how citizens like Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells and Daniel Ellsberg fought back against presidential abuses of power.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
342.730628 Bre
See Also:
New & Best List
Mr. Churchill in the White House : the untold story of a prime minister and two presidents
Author(s):
Description:
Well into the twenty-first century, Winston Churchill continues to be the subject of scores of books. Biographers portray him as a soldier, statesman, writer, painter, and even a daredevil, but Robert Schmuhl, the noted author and journalist, may be the first to depict him as a demanding, indeed exhausting White House guest. For the British prime minister, America's most famous residence was "the summit of the United States," and staying weeks on end with the president as host enhanced his global influence and prestige, yet what makes Churchill's sojourns so remarkable are their duration at critical moments in twentieth-century history ... Drawing on years of research, Schmuhl not only contextualizes the unprecedented time Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt spent together between 1941 and 1945, but he also depicts the individual figures involved: from Churchill himself to "General Ike," as he affectionately called Dwight D. Eisenhower, to Harry Truman, and not to mention the formidable Eleanor Roosevelt, who resented Churchill's presence in the White House and wanted him to occupy the nearby Blair House instead (which, predictably, he did not do).
Format:
Book
Call Number:
941.084092 Sch
See Also:
New & Best List
Meet the neighbors : animal minds and life in a more-than-human world
Author(s):
Description:
Honeybees deliberate democratically. Rats reflect on the past. Snakes have friends. In recent decades, our understanding of animal cognition has exploded, making it indisputably clear that the cities and landscapes around us are filled with thinking, feeling individuals besides ourselves. But the way we relate to wild animals has yet to catch up. In Meet the Neighbors, acclaimed science journalist Brandon Keim asks: what would it mean to take the minds of other animals seriously? In this wide-ranging, wonder-filled exploration of animals' inner lives, Keim takes us into courtrooms and wildlife hospitals, under backyard decks and into deserts, to meet anew the wild creatures who populate our communities and the philosophers, rogue pest controllers, ecologists, wildlife doctors, and others who are reimagining our relationships to them. If bats trade favors and groups of swans vote to take off by honking, should we then see them as fellow persons--even members of society? When we come to understand the depths of their pleasures and pains, the richness of their family lives and their histories, what do we owe so-called pests and predators, or animals who are sick or injured? Can thinking of nonhumans as our neighbors help chart a course to a kinder, gentler planet? As Keim suggests, the answers to these questions are central to how we understand not only the rest of the living world, but ourselves. A beguiling invitation to discover an expanded sense of community and kinship beyond our own species, Meet the Neighbors opens our eyes to the world of vibrant intelligence just outside our doors.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
591.51313 Kei
See Also:
New & Best List
Impossible monsters : dinosaurs, Darwin, and the battle between science and religion
Author(s):
Description:
When the twelve-year-old daughter of a British carpenter pulled some strange-looking bones from the country's southern shoreline in 1811, few people dared to question that the Bible told the accurate history of the world. But Mary Anning had in fact discovered the 'first' ichthyosaur, and over the next seventy-five years--as the science of paleontology developed, as Charles Darwin posited radical new theories of evolutionary biology, and as scholars began to identify the internal inconsistencies of the Scriptures--everything changed. Beginning with the archbishop who dated the creation of the world to 6 p.m. on October 22, 4004 BC, and told through the lives of the nineteenth-century men and women who found and argued about these seemingly impossible, history-rewriting fossils, Impossible Monsters reveals the central role of dinosaurs and their discovery in toppling traditional religious authority, and in changing perceptions about the Bible, history, and mankind's place in the world.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
231.7652 Tay
See Also:
New & Best List
Catland : Louis Wain and the great cat mania
Author(s):
Description:
In Catland, Kathryn Hughes chronicles the cat craze of the early twentieth century through the life and career of Louis Wain. Wain's anthropomorphic drawings of cats in top hats falling in love, sipping champagne, golfing, driving cars, and piloting planes are some of the most instantly recognizable images from the era. His round-faced fluffy characters established the prototype for the modern cat, which cat "fanciers" were busily trying to achieve using their newfound knowledge of the latest scientific breeding techniques. Despite being a household name, Wain endured multiple bankruptcies and mental breakdowns, spending his last fifteen years in an asylum, drawing abstract and multicolored felines. But it was his ubiquitous anthropomorphic cats that helped usher the formerly reviled creatures into homes across Europe.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
759.2 Hug
See Also:
New & Best List
Watford forever : how Graham Taylor and Elton John saved a football club, a town, and each other
Author(s):
Description:
The unforgettable story, decades before Ted Lasso, of the real-life Watford Football Team, transformed into a powerhouse by coach Graham Taylor and owner Elton John.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
796.334094 Pre
See Also:
New & Best List
Trash talk : an eye-opening exploration of our planet's dirtiest problem
Author(s):
Description:
In a world of mass consumption and busy schedules, taking the time to understand our own trash habits can be daunting. In Talking Trash, the ever-curious and talented Iris Gottlieb pulls back the curtain on the intricacies of the global trash production system and its contribution to climate change. From the history of the mafia's rule of the New York sanitation system to orbital debris (space trash) to the myth of recycling, Gottlieb will help readers see trash in a whole new way. Complete with beautiful illustrations and several landfills' worth of research, Talking Trash shines a much-needed light on a system that has been broken for far too long, providing readers with surprising, disgusting, and insightful information to better understand how we affect garbage and how it affects us.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
363.728 Got
See Also:
New & Best List
The struggle for Taiwan : a history of America, China, and the island caught between
Author(s):
Description:
As tensions over Taiwan escalate, the United States and China stand on the brink of a catastrophic war. Resolving the impasse demands we understand how it began. In 1943, America declared that Japanese-held Taiwan would return to China at the conclusion of World War II. The Chinese civil war led to a change of plans. The Communist Party came to power in China and the defeated Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, fled to Taiwan, where he was afforded US protection. The specter of conflict has loomed ever since. In The Struggle for Taiwan, Sulmaan Wasif Khan offers the first comprehensive history of the triangular relationship between the United States, China, and Taiwan, exploring America's ambivalent commitment to Taiwan's defense, China's bitterness about the separation, and Taiwan's impressive transformation into a flourishing democracy. War is not inevitable, Khan shows, but to avoid it, decision-makers must heed the lessons of the past. From the White Terror to the Taiwan Straits Crises, from the normalization of Sino-American relations to Trump-era rising tensions, The Struggle for Taiwan charts the paths to our present predicament to show what futures might be possible.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
951.24905 Kha
See Also:
New & Best List
By the fire we carry : the generations-long fight for justice on native land
Author(s):
Description:
A powerful work of reportage and American history in the vein of Caste and How the Word Is Passed that braids the story of the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands in the nation's earliest days, and a small-town murder in the '90s that led to a Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land over a century later.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
323.1197 Nag
See Also:
New & Best List
Burdened : student debt and the making of an American crisis
Author(s):
Description:
Ryann Liebenthal's Burdened tells the maddening story of how the power plays of legislators and presidents, the commodification of higher education, and the rapacious practices of for-profit colleges and private lenders have created today's student-debt lava pit.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
378.362 Lie
See Also:
New & Best List
Feeding the machine : the hidden human labor powering A.I.
Author(s):
Description:
Silicon Valley has sold us the illusion that artificial intelligence is a frictionless technology that will bring wealth and prosperity to humanity. But hidden beneath this smooth surface lies the grim reality of a precarious global workforce of millions laboring under often appalling conditions to make A.I. possible. This book presents an urgent, riveting investigation of the intricate network that maintains this exploitative system, revealing the untold truth of A.I.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
620.82 Mul
See Also:
New & Best List
Cut, shape, assemble : easy woodworking crafts for small spaces
Author(s):
Description:
Step-by-step projects for all skill levels to spruce up your home, from bookends to breakfast trays to birdhouses. With the right tools, guidance, and attitude, anyone can create beautiful and useful home goods from wood. In Cut, Shape, Assemble, award-winning artist Boo Paterson empowers you to craft with confidence and embark on your own creative journey. With information on tools and materials, clear instructions, full-color photography, and one-of-a-kind, hand-drawn blueprints, she guides you through easy-to-make projects that can be pulled together on the floor of a small apartment. All the designs in this book are stylish and modern, with everything a homeowner needs, like a knife block, plant stand, and even a table! Cutting boards, bookends, and serving platters make for wonderful additions to your home or great gifts for friends and family. Whether you're a woodworking enthusiast, hobbyist crafter, or complete newcomer, this encouraging guide will inspire you to elevate your living space, your creativity, and your confidence as you experience the joy of making something of your own out of wood.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
684.082 Pat
See Also:
New & Best List
How the world made the West : a 4,000 year history
Author(s):
Description:
In How the World Made the West, Oxford historian and classicist Josephine Quinn poses perhaps the most significant challenge ever to the "civilizational" thinking regarding the origins of Western culture and thought-- that is, the idea that civilizations arose separately and distinctly from one another. Upending two centuries of conventional historiography and troubling the waters of our Western origin story, she locates the roots of the West in everything from literature from Sumeria, the law codes of Babylon, metallurgy from the Hittites, to sculpture from Egypt, irrigation from Assyria, and the art of navigation and the alphabet from Phoenicia, to name just a few examples. Rather than the very popular "West and the rest" view of history, Quinn demonstrates that cultures come to life by borrowing heavily from others, near and far. Reducing the backstory of the modern west to a narrative that focuses on, or even begins with, Greece and Rome reveals an impoverished view of the past. Our west-centric understanding of modern history would have made no sense to the ancient Greeks and Romans themselves. Instead, ancient authors understood and talked about their own connections to and borrowings from others, and they consistently present their own history as the result of contact and exchange. Quinn builds on the writings they left behind, through rich analyses of ancient literary sources like the epic of Gilgamesh, holy texts, and newly discovered records revealing details about ancient life that are constantly emerging from archival research in the waterlogged sites of the north and the sands of the desert. A work of breath-taking scholarship, How the World Made the West also draws on the material culture of the times in art and artifacts as well as findings from the latest scientific advances in carbon dating and human genetics to thoroughly debunk the myth of the modern West as a self-made miracle.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
909.09821 Qui
See Also:
New & Best List
Bone of the bone : essays on America by a daughter of the working class, 2013-2024
Author(s):
Description:
In Bone of the Bone, Sarah Smarsh brings her graceful storytelling and incisive critique to the challenges that define our times--class division, political fissures, gender inequality, environmental crisis, media bias, the rural-urban gulf. Smarsh, a journalist who grew up on a wheat farm in Kansas and was the first in her family to graduate from college, has long focused on cultural dissonance that many in her industry neglected until recently. Now, this thought-provoking collection of more than thirty of her highly relevant, previously published essays from the past decade (2013-2024)--ranging from personal narratives to news commentary--demonstrates a life and a career steeped in the issues that affect our collective future. Compiling Smarsh's reportage and more poetic reflections, Bone of the Bone is a singular work covering one of the most tumultuous decades in civic life. Timely, filled with perspective-shifting observations, and a pleasure to read, Sarah Smarsh's essays--on topics as varied as the socioeconomic significance of dentistry, laws criminalizing poverty, fallacies of the "red vs. blue" political framework, working as a Hooters Girl, and much more--are an important addition to any discussion on contemporary America.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
305.562 Sma
See Also:
New & Best List
Nexus : a brief history of information networks from the Stone Age to AI
Author(s):
Description:
For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI-a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive? Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonization of the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism, and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems throughout history have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
306.42 Har
See Also:
New & Best List
Ordinary disasters : how I stopped being a model minority
Author(s):
Description:
Part memoir, part cultural criticism, part history, Anne Anlin Cheng's original essays focus on art, politics, and popular culture. Through personal stories woven with a keen eye and an open heart, Cheng summons up the grief, love, anger, and humor in negotiating the realities of being a scholar, an immigrant Asian American woman, a cancer patient, a wife of a white man, and a mother of biracial children . . . all in the midst of the (extra)ordinary stresses of recent years.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
973.0495 Che
See Also:
New & Best List
Author(s):
Description:
The masterful narration of a daughter's decades-long quest to understand her extraordinary mother, who was born in Lenin's Soviet Union, served as a combat soldier in the Red Army, and endured three years of Nazi captivity--but never revealed her darkest secrets. As a child, Roxana Spicer would sometimes wake to the sound of the Red Army choir. She would tip-toe downstairs to find her mother, cigarette in one hand and Black Russian in the other, singing along. Roxana would keep her company, and wonder.... Everyone in their village knew Agnes Spicer was Russian, that she had been a captive of the Nazis. And that was all they knew, because Agnes kept her secrets close: how she managed to escape Germany, what the tattoo on her arm meant, even her real name. Discovering the truth about her beloved, charismatic, volatile mother became Roxana's obsession. Throughout her career as a journalist and documentarian, between investigations across Canada and around the world, she always went home to ask her mother more questions, often while filming. Roxana also took every chance to visit the few places that she did know played a role in her mother's story: Bad Salzuflen, Germany, home to POW slave labourers during the war; notorious concentration camps; and Russia. Under Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and the early years of Putin, she was able to find people, places, and documents that are now--perhaps forever--lost again. The Traitor's Daughter is intimate and exhaustively researched, vividly conversational, and shot through with Agnes Spicer's irrepressible, fiery personality. It is a true labour of love as well as a triumph of blending personal biography with sweeping history.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
940.5318 Spi
See Also:
New & Best List
Into unknown skies : an unlikely team, a daring race, and the first flight around the world
Author(s):
Description:
Equal parts THE RIGHT STUFF and THE BOYS IN THE BOAT, INTO UNKNOWN SKIES tells the unbelievable history of the 1924 race to circumnavigate the globe for the first time by air, a nail-biting contest that pitted underdog US pilots against their better-funded European rivals, created technology that changed aviation, and convinced America that its future was in the sky. In the early 1920s, America's faith in aviation was in shambles. Twenty years after the Wright Brothers' first flight, most Americans believed airplanes were for delivering the mail or performing daredevil stunts in front of crowds. The dream of commercial air travel remained just that. Even the American military was a skeptic-- rather than pay to bring its planes back from Europe following World War I, the War Department chose to burn most of them instead. All that changed with a single race in 1924. It was not just any race, though-- it was a race to become the first to circle the globe in an airplane, pitting a team of four underdog American pilots against the best aviators in the world from England, Italy, Portugal, France, and Argentina. Rooted in the same daring spirit that pushed early twentieth-century explorers to attempt crossings of the Antarctic ice or locate the source of the Nile, this race was an adventure unlike anything the world had seen before. The obstacles were daunting-- from experimental planes, to dangerous landings in uncharted territory, to the simple navigational gauges that could lead pilots hundreds of miles off course. Failure seemed all but guaranteed-the suspense less about who would win than how many would perish for the honor of being the first. Now on the race's centennial, award-winning author David K. Randall tells the story of this riveting, long-forgotten race. Through larger-than-life characters, treacherous landings, disease, and ultimately triumph, INTO UNKNOWN SKIES demonstrates how one race returned America to aviation greatness. A story of underdog teammates, bold exploration, and American ingenuity, INTO UNKNOWN SKIES is an untold adventure tale showing the power of flight to bring the world together.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
910.41 Ran
See Also:
New & Best List
A hell of a storm : the battle for Kansas, the end of compromise, and the coming of the Civil War
Author(s):
Description:
The history of the United States includes a series of sectional compromises-- the Constitutional Convention, the Missouri Compromise in 1820, and the Compromise of 1850. While these accords created an imperfect republic, or "a house divided," as Lincoln put it, the country remained united. But then in 1854, this three-generations system suddenly blew up with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and here, David Brown explores in riveting detail how the Act led to the sudden division of North and South. The Act declared that planters, if permitted by territorial laws, could bring their enslaved peoples to the land extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains-- the core of Jefferson's old Louisiana Purchase which had been reserved for free labor. Northerners were shocked that free soil might now be turned over to slavery and responded with unprecedented backlash. In the bill's wake the conservative Whig Party (winners of multiple presidential elections) collapsed, and the radical Republican Party was born-- in six years it would take control of the central government, provoking Southern secession. In A Hell of a Storm, Brown brings history to life in a way that resonates with the events of present. Through chapters on Lincoln, Emerson, Stowe, Thoreau, and Tubman, along with a cast of presidents, poets, abolitionists, and black emigrationists, Brown weaves a political, cultural, and literary history that chronicles the Republican party's creation and rise, the collapse of antebellum compromises, and the coming of the Civil War, all topics that mirror current discussions about polarization in our nation today. By illuminating the personalities and the platforms, the writings and ideas that upended an older America and made space for its successor, A Hell of a Storm reminds us that American history is always being made, and it can be both dynamic and dangerous, both then and now.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
973.7113 Bro
See Also:
New & Best List
It's a gas : the sublime and elusive elements that expand our world
Author(s):
Description:
A rollicking guided tour of the secret lives of gases: the magnificent, strange, and fascinating substances that shape our world. Gases are all around us -- they fill our lungs, power our movement, create stars, and warm our atmosphere. Often invisible and sometimes odorless, these ubiquitous substances are also the least understood materials in our world, and always have been. It wasn't long ago that gases were seen as the work of ancient spirits: the sudden closing of a door after a change in airflow signaled a ghost's presence. Scientists and engineers have struggled with their own gaseous demons. The development of high-pressure steam power in the eighteenth century literally blew away some researchers, ushering in a new era for both safety regulations and mass transit. And carbon dioxide, that noxious by-product of fossil fuel consumption and cow burps, gave rise to modern civilization. Its warming properties known for centuries, it now spells ruin for our fragile atmosphere. In It's a Gas, bestselling materials scientist Mark Miodownik chronicles twelve gases and technologies that shaped human history. From hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and neon to laughing gas, steam, and even wind, the story of gases is the story of the space where science and belief collide, and of the elusive limits of human understanding.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
530.43 Mio
See Also:
New & Best List
Author(s):
Description:
His quest takes him from his home in the Tetons to an eerie, mist-shrouded island of gigantic bruins; from the Bear Center at Washington State University--where scientists believe the secrets of hibernation might help treat diabetes, heart disease, and obesity in humans--to the dark underbelly of for-profit wildlife parks, illegal animal trade and black markets hawking bear bile. Along the way, he meets fascinating biologists and activists and discovers that everything he knew about grizzlies was wrong. Ultimately, his odyssey leads him to find answers on a remote corner of the Alaskan Peninsula where, for the last fifty years, humans have coexisted peacefully alongside the largest gathering of brown bears on the planet.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
599.784 Gra
See Also:
New & Best List
The inner clock : living in sync with our circadian rhythms
Author(s):
Description:
How the groundbreaking science of circadian rhythms can help you sleep better, feel happier, and improve your overall health.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
612.022 Pee
See Also:
New & Best List
In the land of Ninkasi : a history of beer in ancient Mesopotamia
Author(s):
Description:
In the Land of Ninkasi: A History of Beer in Mesopotamia presents the narrative surrounding the world's first great beer culture. It focuses on the beers of ancient Mesopotamia while also considering the people who brewed and drank them and the places where they were drunk. The clear roadmap into the ancient source material provides insights from archaeological remains, ancient works of art, and cuneiform texts. Moreover, narrative vignettes and thought experiments were used to analyze and interpret the culture of beer drinking in ancient Mesopotamia. Additionally, In the Land of Ninkasi provides an overview of drinking styles, brewing equipment, and the gods and goddesses who governed the lives of people.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
663.420935 Pau
See Also:
New & Best List
The world in books : 52 works of great short nonfiction
Author(s):
Description:
From ancient times to the present day, The World in Books offers a wide-ranging historical education through pleasure reading-- and a fantastic introduction to some of the most thought-provoking, profound, and interesting nonfiction works of all time. From Sun Tzu's The Art of War to bell hooks's All About Love, as well as such recent classics as Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's We Should All Be Feminists, Davis's guide suggests a world of nonfiction books and explains just why they're so historically meaningful and culturally relevant today.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
028 Dav
See Also:
New & Best List
Devil's contract : the history of the Faustian bargain
Author(s):
Description:
From ancient times to the modern world, the idea of the Faustian bargain--the exchange of one's soul in return for untold riches and power--has exerted a magnetic pull upon our collective imaginations. Scholar Ed Simon takes us on a historical tour of the Faustian bargain, from the Bible to blues, and illustrates how the impulse to sacrifice our principles in exchange for power is present in all kinds of social ills, from colonialism to nuclear warfare, from social media to climate change to AI, and beyond. In doing so, Simon conveys just how much the Faustian bargain shows us about power and evil ... and ourselves.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
809.93351 Sim
See Also:
New & Best List
The driving machine : a design history of the car
Author(s):
Description:
The renowned design writer on the extraordinary history of car design. In this lively and entertaining work, Witold Rybczynski--hailed as "one of the best writers on design working today" by Publishers Weekly--tells the story of the most distinctive cars in history and the artists, engineers, dreamers, and gearheads who created them. Delving into more than 170 years of ingenuity in design, technology, and engineering, he takes us from Carl Benz's three-wheel motorcar in 1855 to the present-day shift to electric cars. Along the way, he looks at the emergence of mass production with Henry Ford's Model T; the Golden Age of American car design and the rise of car culture; postwar European subcompacts typified by the Mini Cooper; and the long tradition of the streamlined and elegant sports car. Rybczynski explores how cars have been reflections of national character (the charming Italian Fiat Cinquecento), icons of a subculture (the VW bus for American hippies), and even emblems of an era (the practical Chrysler minivan). He explains key developments in automotive technology, including the electric starter, rack-and-pinion steering, and disc brakes, bringing to light how the modern automobile is the result of more than a century of trial and error. And he weaves in charming accounts of the many cars he's owned and driven, starting with his first--the iconic Volkswagen Beetle. The Driving Machine is a breezy and fascinating history of design, illustrated with the author's delightful drawings.
Format:
Call Number:
629.222 Ryb
See Also:
New & Best List
A place called Yellowstone : the epic history of the world's first national park
Author(s):
Description:
It has been called Wonderland, America's Serengeti, the crown jewel of the National Park System, and America's best idea. But how did this faraway landscape evolve into one of the most recognizable places in the world? As the birthplace of the national park system, Yellowstone witnessed the first-ever attempt to protect wildlife, to restore endangered species, and to develop a new industry centered on nature tourism. Yellowstone remains a national icon, one of the few entities capable of bridging ideological divides in the United States. Yet the park's history is also filled with episodes of conflict and exclusion, setting precedents for Native American land dispossession, land rights disputes, and prolonged tensions between commercialism and environmental conservation. Yellowstone's legacies are both celebratory and problematic. A Place Called Yellowstone tells the comprehensive story of Yellowstone as the story of the nation itself.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
978.752 Wil
See Also:
New & Best List
Morningside : the 1979 Greensboro massacre and the struggle for an American city's soul
Author(s):
Description:
On November 3, 1979, as activist Nelson Johnson assembled people for a march adjacent to Morningside Homes in Greensboro, North Carolina, gunshots rang out. A caravan of Klansmen and Neo-Nazis sped from the scene, leaving behind five dead. Known as the "Greensboro Massacre," the event and its aftermath encapsulate the racial conflict, economic anxiety, clash of ideologies, and toxic mix of corruption and conspiracy that roiled American democracy then--and threaten it today. In 88 seconds, one Southern city shattered over irreconcilable visions of America's past and future. When the shooters are acquitted in the courts, Reverend Johnson, his wife Joyce, and their allies, at odds with the police and the Greensboro establishment, sought alternative forms of justice. As the Johnsons rebuilt their lives after 1979, they found inspiration in Nelson Mandela's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Martin Luther King Jr's concept of Beloved Community and insist that only by facing history's hardest truths can healing come to the city they refuse to give up on. This intimate, deeply researched, and heart-stopping account draws upon survivor interviews, court documents, and the files from one of the largest investigations in FBI history. The persistent mysteries of the case touch deep cultural insecurities and contradictions about race and class. A quintessentially American story, Morningside explores the courage required to make change and the evolving pursuit of a more inclusive and equal future.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
975.662 She
See Also:
New & Best List
Crisis averted : the hidden science of fighting outbreaks
Author(s):
Description:
A fascinating window into the secret life of epidemiology, weaving together stories of triumph and tragedy, with a boots-on-the-ground perspective on how we can avert the next public health crisis There are few visible markers of the accomplishments of public health. If epidemiologists do their jobs, nothing happens. An outbreak does not grow into an epidemic. A child does not go hungry. A would-be smoker never lights up. These achievements are rarely noticed or celebrated, but Caitlin Rivers lives for such victories. By making sure that things don't happen, she and legions of scientists, practitioners, and policymakers change the course of history. We have many of the tools and experiences needed to prevent the next crisis, but countless challenges remain, including constantly emerging pathogens, the rapid growth of biotechnology, and the inconsistent cycles of funding for government organizations like the CDC. Progress can be slow, even with the next pandemic potentially right around the corner, but the unsung heroes in public health remain focused on their missions. Crisis Averted is their story-from the eradication of smallpox in the 20th century to today's safeguards against extraterrestrial germs. By taking a candid look at how we solve problems in public health, Caitlin Rivers illuminates the role of epidemiology in all our lives and lays out the case for what can be accomplished, given sufficient vision, leadership, and resources. Crisis Averted is an inspiring and galvanizing clarion call for us to work together towards a healthier, more resilient future.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
362.1 Riv
See Also:
New & Best List
Bright shining : how grace changes everything
Author(s):
Description:
Grace is both mysterious and hard to define. It can be found when we create ways to find meaning and dignity in connection with each other, building on our shared humanity, being kinder, bigger, better with each other. If, in its crudest interpretation, karma is getting what you deserve, then grace is the opposite: forgiving the unforgivable, favouring the undeserving, loving the unlovable. But we live in an era when grace is an increasingly rare currency. The silos in which we consume information dot the media landscape like skyscrapers, and our growing distrust of the media, politicians and public figures has choked our ability to cut each other slack, to allow each other to stumble, to forgive one another. So what does grace look like in our world, and how do we recognise it, nurture it in ourselves and express it, even in the darkest of times? From award-winning journalist Julia Baird, author of the acclaimed national bestseller Phosphorescence, comes Bright Shining, a luminously beautiful, deeply insightful and most timely exploration of grace.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
158.1 Bai