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Where the green light shines : a fifty-year odyssey from the Boundary Waters to the Far North
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Description:
A centuries-long story of adventure runs through the Boundary Waters. Stretching from northern Minnesota into the Canadian Shield, this lake-dappled expanse--long an Indigenous homeland and later also a fur trading hub--is the most visited designated wilderness in North America, with more than 200,000 people dipping their paddles into its ancient waterways each year. Bridging the legendary arctic expeditions of the nineteenth century and the making of today's recreational paddling tradition, Where the Green Light Shines is a fascinating chronicle of canoe exploration, told through the journeys of a true master of the craft, Bob O'Hara. O'Hara first launched his canoe as a Boy Scout in the 1950s, and he spent every summer for the next sixty-five years venturing further north into the Canadian barrens, a region rarely seen by paddlers. Mentored by a generation of adventurers and by the Inuit who long paddled the northern tundra rivers, O'Hara would become a guiding light for many young canoeists. Passionate yet guarded, O'Hara dedicated his life to the thrill of paddling, and his extraordinary journeys here become a touchstone as Ryan Rodgers tells the story of a nascent canoeing scene that continues to thrive today. A vivid depiction of the northern wilds traversed by an eclectic roster of paddlers, bush pilots, and historic characters, Where the Green Light Shines illuminates a lost world of arctic canoeing remade in our time. It is bound to transport anyone interested in outdoor adventure--from wilderness canoeists to armchair travelers--and to bring home the eternal allure of the far north.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
797.122 Rod
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Monster of a land : on the road in search of modern America - VIEW IN CATALOG
Monster of a land : on the road in search of modern America
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Description:
From The New York Times bestselling author of Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing: a cross-country journey exploring this land and its people from someone who knows what it's like to truly exist on the margins. Lauren Hough has always been haunted by the road trips she never got to take: no money, no vacation days, no car capable of making the drive. So upon finally finding herself in a situation where such a trip might be possible, she leaps at the chance, refurbishing a ramshackle 2001 Dodge Ram van and setting off from Austin, Texas, in the tire tracks of John Steinbeck's iconic Travels with Charley. With Woody, her husky mix, as wingman, Lauren chats -- at gas stations and restaurants and auto shops and bars -- with an incredible cross section of Americans from all walks of life and every possible political perspective. And as she circumnavigates the country, she documents, with all-too-rare empathy, what it means to be poor, to be marginalized, and to be seen as other in America. Part travelogue, part social commentary, Monster of a Land is a journey that will show us how far we've come as a nation and how far we still have to go.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
917.304 Hou
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How to try again : an approachable guide to navigating chaos and making change that sticks
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Description:
Some people wake up at 4 A.M., run fifteen miles barefoot, and take an ice bath. This book is for the rest of us. The false promises of optimized wellness and productivity are a recipe for personal blame and frustration. We're chasing the wrong goals with the wrong expectations and the wrong strategy. We're trying to make positive change while living in an environment that's determined to keep us complacent and distracted. No wonder all-or-nothing thinking leads to 'all, then nothing' results. Of course we're struggling! Fortunately, escaping this 'doom loop' is Steve Kamb's superpower. We're not failures. We're humans who failed at something. Welcome to the club! For nearly two decades, Kamb has helped tens of millions of people make sustainable progress, even when life happens. Blending empathy and REAL helpful advice, How to Try Again will help you navigate everyday chaos, restart without guilt, and make change that sticks. Drawing on behavioral psychology, real-world examples, and self-deprecating humor, How to Try Again offers a compassionate, funny, and radically practical guide for anyone who has ever struggled to make their goals last. Discover: The PACT Framework: A four-step method to turn any failure into a data point for future success; How to Tread Water: How to maintain momentum even when life gets overwhelming; The Doom Loop: Why we self-sabotage after one mistake and how to escape it instantly; The 'Shower Tomorrow' Strategy: A mental hack to restart your progress without guilt. We don't need to succeed with more discipline. We need to fail with more compassion. We can stop waiting for the perfect plan, stop feeling guilty about the past, and learn How to Try Again differently. All while being delightfully, forgivably human.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
155.24 Kam
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Hidden creatures : luscious leeches, bashful botflies, and the wondrous, history-shaping world of parasites
Author(s):
Description:
There is the tapeworm, which can grow 120 feet in length within the gut of a whale; the tsetse fly, a notorious vector of disease that can pierce the skin even of crocodiles with its needle-like mouth; and the most universal symbol of parasitic behavior: the leech. Long villainized as, well, parasitic, these creatures are actually a vital part of every ecosystem--and Dr. Dino Martins, an award-winning entomologist and biologist from Kenya, has made it his life's mission to demystify these beguiling beings. Hidden Creatures is a journey across the world ten times over--from Martins's home in the wilds of East Africa to the rainforests of Borneo to cities and backyards across the globe. Along the way we encounter brilliant and eccentric experts who join Martins on his adventures to investigate not only parasites but their hosts, from hyraxes and hippos to, of course, humans.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
591.7857 Mar
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The cure at Walden Pond : a guide to recovering our humanity - VIEW IN CATALOG
The cure at Walden Pond : a guide to recovering our humanity
Author(s):
Description:
Drawing upon Walden and Thoreau's journals, Moore explores themes of mindfulness, spirituality, simplicity, nature, memory, and community, encouraging readers to cultivate a more meaningful and harmonious life.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
158.13 Moo
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Babylon : the biography of a metropolis
Author(s):
Description:
Babylon often appears more myth than history. Purportedly the site of the Hanging Gardens and the Tower of Babel, its infamous presence in the Bible has made it a byword for sinful decadence. But Babylon was a real place teeming with life, a bustling mega-city on the Euphrates where schoolteachers, artisans, priests, slaves, prostitutes, and soldiers rubbed shoulders in maze-like streets and busy marketplaces. The city was home to some extraordinary rulers, from Hammurabi, the great lawgiver, to Nebuchadnezzar II, the conqueror-king, in whose reign the city glistened in gold and lapis lazuli. In Babylon, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones brings the ancient city vividly to life, tracing its foundation from its world domination to its subsequent decline and fall into ruin, and then to dust. From ribald drinking songs to acerbic letters between rival kings, extraordinary ancient sources help inform what is both a stunning work of scholarship and a fascinating evocation of a long-lost world.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
935.5 Lle
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American alt : a true story of madness and friendship in a fractured country - VIEW IN CATALOG
American alt : a true story of madness and friendship in a fractured country
Author(s):
Description:
A glimpse into the mind of an American conspiracy theorist, the schizophrenia, trauma, and misinformation that drove him to the brink, and the friendship that brought him back. On the eve of January 6, 2021, Michael Dodd and his three friends found themselves in a stolen vehicle on the grounds of the Washington State capitol, armed to the teeth, and ready to kidnap Governor Jay Inslee. Only there weren't actually three others in the car-- Michael was alone. Months later, the violent plan thwarted, Michael sat in a psychiatric hospital and learned that he was struggling with undiagnosed schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder. His knowledge of that fateful day was spotty, fractured by the different personality states he now knew were affecting his reality. Skeptical of a state mental health system, but anxious to find out how his world turned upside down, he reached out to his longtime friend, the author Chris Lockhart, for help. American Alt is the odyssey of two friends trying to piece together the fragments of Michael's shattered memory and uncover the truth of what pushed him to the edge. Set against the beautiful but economically broken region where both men rambled in their youth, Lockhart delivers a suspenseful, profoundly moving story of discovery and affirmation.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
616.89 Loc
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Scavenging beauty : a memoir in walks
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Description:
The transformative memoir of a woman who dedicates herself to walking every street in her county to heal from decades of trauma. As a social worker in California, Angelica Glass spent her career helping families struggling with poverty, abuse, and neglect. When she realized that the stress of her job was becoming overpowering, she turned to walking as an outlet. Yet what began as a chance to exercise her body turned into something much more: a years-long odyssey in which Glass drew on the cathartic beauty of nature, the discipline of exercise, and the healing power of reflection to confront her own past. The more she walked, the more she found what she rarely had growing up: solace and forgiveness. One of eight children born to parents who suffered from addiction and mental illness, Glass had survived privation, hunger, and abuse, and for a time lived on the streets and in foster care. Despite these challenges, she eventually finished high school, graduated from college, established stable long-term relationships, and raised two sons. In the process, she learned that it was by drawing on nature to heal herself - by scavenging beauty on her terms - that she began to understand that we do not have to be prisoners of our pasts. By turns intimate and sweeping, evocative and eye-opening, Scavenging Beauty is a powerful and hopeful celebration of how nature can help us heal from within.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
158.1 Gla
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Been there, done that : how our history shows what we can overcome - VIEW IN CATALOG
Been there, done that : how our history shows what we can overcome
Author(s):
Description:
Our nation's past is full of massive upheaval, disagreement, and departures from the moral high ground. The political gentlemanly conduct of yesteryear is no more than a myth. But that reality never allowed our worst historical selves to defeat our better angels. In Been There, Done That, Greg looks back in time to eight examples from our nation's history and shows that some of the hottest issues of our day are, in fact, American traditions that stand firmly beside another deeply American trait: the will to push back on these demons, prevail, and overcome. It may be 250 years since this country's founding, but the playbook has remained mostly the same. From the Founding Father's hyperpartisan print war of the 1790s, to the caning of Senator Charles Sumner in 1856, to the thoroughly corrupt presidential election of 1876, and all the way through the yellow journalism and print war of Joseph Pulitzer and William Randoph Hearst, you will recognize how familiar these stories are to our own supposedly unprecedented times.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
306.20973 Jac
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They stole a city : Wilmington's white supremacist coup and the families who live with its legacy
Author(s):
Description:
In this ambitious and groundbreaking history, Lauren Collins weaves together stories of four Wilmington, NC, families over 125 years to create a full accounting of the long-term effects of the 1898 white supremacist massacre and coup and its critical role in subverting American democracy. After the Civil War, Reconstruction ushered in an era of political equality and economic opportunity for Black people, and it lasted longer in Wilmington than almost anywhere else. In 1898, Wilmington was a bastion of Black success: Black cultural life flourished, while a thriving Black middle class brimmed with lawyers, educators, and elected officials. The city became a symbol of Black hope -- only for all of it to come to a violent end on November 10, 1898. In this epic, multigenerational narrative, Lauren Collins traces the fates of four Wilmington families: the Howes, the Halseys, the Moores, and the Bellamy/MacRaes, all of whom were present on the day when a mob of white supremacists launched a murderous coup to "take the city." After issuing a "White Declaration of Independence," white men gunned down scores of Black men, chasing their families into hiding. Then they marched to city hall, where they overthrew the democratically elected, multiracial local government at gunpoint in what is thought to be the only successful coup d'̌état on American soil. No one knows exactly how many Black citizens they murdered -- surely dozens, likely hundreds -- while driving thousands of survivors and their white allies out of town. Folklore among both Black and white Wilmingtonians holds that the Cape Fear River ran red. While the effects of this episode of racial terrorism would ricochet through the next century of our nation's history, no one was ever prosecuted or punished, and many of the details have been largely -- and deliberately -- forgotten. In collaboration with living descendants of Black and white families, Collins seeks to create a more complete understanding of 1898 than can be drawn solely from the archives. She follows these four families and their descendants through the eras of segregation and Jim Crow, the Great Migration, the Civil Rights movement, and school desegregation, all the way up to the Black Lives Matter and racial justice protests in 2020, emphasizing the lasting and consequential effects of 1898 on the city and people of Wilmington. Weaving together each generation's reckoning with their past and how it has imprinted on their present, They Stole a City is an ambitious and revelatory examination of American racial terror as it has played out in one Southern city, written in the conviction that the story of the 1898 Wilmington massacre and coup is, in fact, a story about America in 2025.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
975.627041 Col
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Kingdom of devils : a tale of murder in the shadow of the American Revolution - VIEW IN CATALOG
Kingdom of devils : a tale of murder in the shadow of the American Revolution
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Description:
In Kingdom of Devils, historian Katherine Grandjean examines the terrifying crimes of the Harp brothers, often considered America's first serial killers. During the late 1790s, Wiley and Micajah Harp carried out a brutal series of murders across the frontier regions of Tennessee and Kentucky, leaving communities terrified and authorities unable to stop them. Beyond recounting the crimes themselves, Grandjean explores how the upheaval and economic hardships following the American Revolution created anger, instability, and violence in the young United States, offering a deeper look at the darker side of early American history.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
364.1523 Gra
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Hotel exile : Paris in the shadow of war
Author(s):
Description:
Since its opening in 1910, the Hotel Lutetia has been a grand Paris institution, a meeting place for artists, intellectuals, musicians, and politicians. André Gide took his lunch here, James Joyce lived in one of its rooms, Picasso and Matisse were regular guests. But the hotel has a darker history, too--from the years before, during, and after the second World War. In this short period, the Lutetia witnessed some of the most dramatic and terrible events in recent history. In Hotel Exile, Jane Rogoyska evokes in novelistic prose the emotions, dilemmas, and fates of the hotel's patrons. In the 1930s, Europe's bohemian artists and political activists, forced to flee their homes when Hitler came to power, met at the Lutetia with the hope of forming an alternative government. But when war came, Paris was occupied, and the hotel became the headquarters of the German military intelligence service--and the center of their operation to root out enemies of the Reich. In 1945, the Lutetia was requisitioned once more, this time transformed into a reception center for Holocaust survivors who sought refuge after the Liberation. Rogoyska explores what it meant for these three profoundly different groups to live in exile, under the shadow of the dark ideology that dictated the course of their lives. A masterpiece of empathy and concision, Hotel Exile is about what happens at the edges of a war, passing through the doors of a normally functioning hotel, a site under occupation, and, finally, a shelter and place of healing.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
944.361 Rog
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Sisters of the midnight sun : a murder in Arctic Alaska - VIEW IN CATALOG
Sisters of the midnight sun : a murder in Arctic Alaska
Author(s):
Description:
Rebecca Wright is a defense attorney living in the Lower 48 when she suddenly finds herself a widow and an empty nester. In need of a radical change, she accepts a public defender position in Utqiagvik on Alaska's North Slope, an oil-rich area the size of Wyoming where the Inupiat community holds great cultural, political, and economic power.Though she'll always be a tanik--an outsider--she works hard to gain the trust and friendship of the folks who call this singular place home. When two well-known sisters, Bernice and Wanda Ipalook, are found murdered, Wright is tasked with representing Amos Lane, a drifter on the short-list of murder suspects. Criminal charges are looming. But this is summer in northern Alaska, the season of the midnight sun, when twenty-four-hour sunlight makes it difficult for witnesses to confirm the time--or even the day--they last saw the sisters, Amos, or anyone else. Wright must navigate an unreliable client, a prosecution willing to entrap her to get a conviction, a budding romance, and a community that believes Amos might deserve a different form of justice from what the tanik legal system can provide.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
364.1523 Wri
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Our knives will save us : dispatches from a White Mountain Apache chef - VIEW IN CATALOG
Our knives will save us : dispatches from a White Mountain Apache chef
Author(s):
Description:
From beloved Indigenous chef Nephi Craig, a searing personal and cultural reckoning about the power of food to heal intergenerational wounds. When Nephi Craig enrolled in the culinary program at Scottsdale Community College, it was out of necessity--his DUI conviction had left him with three years' probation with either full-time employment or education. He chose school, expecting little more than a means to an end. But what he encountered on his first day was a profound dissonance: not a single other Indigenous person in the room and European recipes that, beneath their French and Italian names, echoed the flavors of his own Apache roots. Calling to mind his roaming childhood on the White Mountain Apache and Navajo reservations, that moment sparked a lifelong pursuit, not just of culinary mastery, but also of cultural rediscovery. Craig began tracing the buried histories of Indigenous cultivars such as the acorn, the squash, and the cacao bean, each one a portal into the violent legacy of colonization. He was hungry to not only better understand the way this history embedded itself in Native foodways but to also build Indigenous food sovereignty and to reconnect people with this rich cuisine. His mission led him around the world, from high-end kitchens in Japan, Germany, and England, to Executive Chef roles across the US. All the while, though, Craig wrestled in the shadows of his alcoholism and substance abuse, entering one addiction treatment center after another in the hopes that he could get--and remain--sober. Unexpectedly, in the heat and rhythm of professional kitchens and in the collaborative energy of top fine dining restaurants, Craig found a lifeline. However, it wasn't until he was faced with the difficult decision of choosing between a career in culinary prestige and one serving the Native communities at home that he found his true vocation. Interweaving personal reflection with searing cultural insight, Craig lays bare the ongoing traumas wrought by colonial violence, from systemic poverty and poor mental health to addiction and suicide within Native communities. At the same time, he offers a vision of hope: one where food is decolonized, history is honored, and healing is possible.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
641.5092 Cra
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Unleashed : how to bring out the best in your dog - VIEW IN CATALOG
Unleashed : how to bring out the best in your dog
Author(s):
Description:
Our dogs are no longer just pets--they're family. This means, according to celebrity dog trainer Jaime Goodrich, that the way we train them needs to change. Unleashed argues that behavior problems worsen, not improve, with heavy discipline. If you instead address the source of a dog's anxiety or fear, problematic behaviors will naturally and permanently disappear. Goodrich provides techniques rooted in kindness and understanding rather than punishment and dominance. She addresses attachment in dogs--what normal attachment looks like and what it looks like when things go south. She teaches you how to identify your dog's particular coping strategy and how to identify stress signals your dog is giving you. You'll be able to recognize your dog's particular triggers and desires, and, most importantly, be able to figure out how to work within your dog's particular neurological level to make substantial change in their behaviors.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
636.70887 Goo
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How to kill a language : power, resistance, and the race to save our words - VIEW IN CATALOG
How to kill a language : power, resistance, and the race to save our words
Author(s):
Description:
Languages can be killed in many ways: war, the climate crisis, nationalism, and even quiet choices made at the dinner table. Around the world, an unprecedented shift is drawing speakers toward national and global lingua francas. For some, that means losing the language of parents or grandparents; for many, it is a permanent farewell to systems that carry knowledge, culture, and belonging. With half of our 7,000 languages due to disappear this century, linguicide is one of the most pressing cultural emergencies of our age. In How to Kill a Language, journalist Sophia Smith Galer travels across continents and generations to chart this phenomenon. In Ecuador, she sees firsthand how shame deters parents from passing Kichwa onto their children. In Oman, she learns about languages with roots older than Arabic but never officially recognized. And in Italy, she searches for her Nonna's dia︠lt, which is vanishing from diaspora communities and Italy itself. But languages can also be reclaimed: We meet the Karuk tribe of California, pioneering a grassroots language immersion program, and the storytellers challenging the criminalization of Kurdish. And in her discussion of Hebrew, Smith Galer reckons with the unintended consequences of raising a language seemingly from the grave. Part investigation, part travelogue from a disappearing world, How to Kill a Language exposes the true costs of this mass extinction event. Brought to life by vivid storytelling and Smith Galer's own experience with language loss, it's a fierce rallying cry for a multilingual future.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
417.7 Smi
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Data empire : the power of information to organize, control, and dominate - VIEW IN CATALOG
Data empire : the power of information to organize, control, and dominate
Author(s):
Description:
A new lens on human history outlining data's powerful role in governance and exploitation.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
005.7 Ris
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You won't get free of it : stories of mothers and daughters - VIEW IN CATALOG
You won't get free of it : stories of mothers and daughters
Author(s):
Description:
A collection of reported stories that explore the relationship between mothers and daughters by the award-winning author of Strangers to Ourselves.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
306.8743 Avi
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A pox on fools : the true believers, grifters, and cynics who convinced us to reject vaccines
Author(s):
Description:
This work examines the historical development of vaccine skepticism from the introduction of smallpox inoculation in the eighteenth century to the present. Through three essays, Thomas Levenson explores recurring concerns about the safety, effectiveness, and social implications of vaccination, tracing how these ideas emerged in different historical contexts and influenced public attitudes and public health policy. The book discusses the relationship between scientific evidence, public trust, and the spread of vaccine misinformation.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
614.47 Lev
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Agatha Christie : the mother of the cozy mystery - VIEW IN CATALOG
Agatha Christie : the mother of the cozy mystery
Author(s):
Description:
Step into the world of history's most legendary mystery and crime writer--Agatha Christie! Through one hundred short entries, you'll get an intimate glimpse into the life, mind, and works of the mother of the cozy mystery. Featuring quotes about--and from--the literary genius and excerpts from her suspenseful stories, this beautifully crafted biography celebrates Christie's literary brilliance and timeless creations. With each page, you'll discover the experiences that shaped her classic detective novels, short stories, and plays, from her early years to her lasting impact on popular culture. Whether you're a longtime Christie admirer or just beginning your literary adventure, uncover the unexpected mysteries behind the "Queen of Crime" with Agatha Christie!
Format:
Book
Call Number:
823.912 Wes
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Hiroshima, 8:15 : the lost memoir
Author(s):
Description:
At approximately 8:15 on the morning of August 6, 1945, Kiyoshi Tanimoto was on the outskirts of Hiroshima when a flash in the sky signaled the birth of a horrifying new world. In an instant, tens of thousands of Hiroshima residents had been vaporized or crushed to death. As Tanimoto, a thirty-six-year-old Methodist minister, raced back to the city center in search of his wife and infant daughter, he encountered unimaginable devastation: structures leveled; fires everywhere; uncountable injured suffering from burns, broken bones, and the effects of radiation. In the days, weeks, and months that followed this unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, he invested body and soul in helping his living congregants obtain food, shelter, and medical care, as well as identifying and burying with as much dignity as possible those who had perished. He dedicated himself to rebuilding not only his church, but his city and his nation. Tanimoto went on to gain renown as one of the survivors featured in John Hersey's New Yorker piece and book, Hiroshima, which changed the American public's understanding of the event. But Tanimoto also wrote his own story. Hiroshima, 8:15 is Tanimoto's never-before-published firsthand account of the bombing of Hiroshima, written in the immediate aftermath, in his own words. This singular memoir is both an invaluable addition to the historical record and an urgent eyewitness testimony of one of the most calamitous events to befall humanity. At a time when the threat of nuclear war still looms, Tanimoto's message of peace, and his vision of a better path forward for humankind, is of vital importance. --
Format:
Book
Call Number:
940.5425 Tan
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Three rivers : the extraordinary waterways that created Europe - VIEW IN CATALOG
Three rivers : the extraordinary waterways that created Europe
Author(s):
Description:
Three of Europe's greatest rivers share the same geological cradle: one fertile patch of Alpine ice in the jagged heights of central Switzerland. Coursing down through the peaks, the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Po gave birth to three different European cultures--German, French, and Italian--as they flowed across the continent. From this shared geological cradle, these waterways have shaped the landscape, influenced the pattern of towns and cities, laid the foundation for economies and created an intricate network of transport, trade, and agriculture. From the Romanesque buttresses and vines of Provence to the Wagnerian music of the Rhine and the artistic miracles of Lombardy, the heart of Western Europe--its languages, religion, philosophy, science, politics, and art--has been nourished by these waters. Setting off in the dramatic mountain landscape where this story begins, acclaimed historian Robert Winder traces the rivers' journeys from their increasingly fragile glacial sources, revealing in shimmering detail their impact on Europe's rich history as they flow toward the sea.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
551.483094 Win
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The ego trip : psychedelic toads, a trail of deaths, and the guru who peddled transcendence
Author(s):
Description:
The riveting story of a charismatic doctor who evangelized a transformative psychedelic treatment, leading to the global spread of "the god molecule" while leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. The Sonoran Desert is a place of extremes: inhospitable climate, rampant cartel violence, severe drug addiction, and, strangely, a humble toad that possesses an unbelievable power. In 2012, a Mexican doctor claimed to have revived an ancient, forgotten Mesoamerican ritual that involved smoking the Sonoran Desert toad's toxic secretions, which he contended could cure intractable drug addiction and other mental health disorders, while temporarily dissolving the ego and rocketing users to transcendence. But as he gained international notoriety as an administer of "toad medicine," harrowing stories of nightmarish trips and even deaths began to surface, complicating the picture of a benevolent physician rehabilitating an indigenous cultural practice. What lies beneath the surface is a tale of cult-like manipulation and the unshakeable allure of psychedelics. Circling around this powerful substance is a bizarre set of interested parties: psychonauts seeking spiritual awakening; pharmaceutical companies who are racing to cash in on the drug's psychiatric potential; opportunistic toad collectors chasing after dwindling populations in cartel territory; and indigenous groups integrating toad smoking into their cultural practices both to attract tourist dollars, and to treat the drug addiction that is rife in their communities. With sensitivity, insight, and verve, Kimon de Greef draws us in to this kaleidoscopic world and unpacks the mysterious and exhilarating story of this drug. Gripping, deeply reported, and full of twists and turns, The Ego Trip is a chronicle of the rise and fall of a messianic figure, but it is also an investigation into a larger truth about our age of spiritual desolation. No matter the lengths we go to in order to attain a more cosmic understanding, this story illustrates that we will forever remain inescapably human.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
364.142 de G
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The story of your life : how social media shapes the way we experience everything - VIEW IN CATALOG
The story of your life : how social media shapes the way we experience everything
Author(s):
Description:
Over the past two decades, platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok have revolutionized how we document and share our lives. We once archived our experiences in photo albums, and now we capture our most significant moments in reels and photo dumps. Whether we prefer to admit it or not, social media is where our history lives now. In The Story of Your Life, journalist and New York magazine columnist Kathryn Jezer-Morton examines how these algorithm-driven platforms not only change the way we share information but also shape the content itself. What stories do we choose to tell, and how do these choices reflect and shape our evolving identities? Through rigorous research and intimate interviews with everyday people, Jezer-Morton explores how the platforms on which we have told our life stories for the past twenty years have determined what those stories have come to look and sound like. Today our attention spans are short, and our stories reflect that, with spectacle and exaggeration playing ever-larger roles in our accounts of everyday life. By examining how we share, talk, and post about our milestones, vacations, homes, relationships, hardships, politics, and more, Jezer-Morton shows just how pervasive and influential our social media platforms have become in how we view ourselves and what we consider to be a life well lived.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
302.231 Jez
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The nerd reich : Silicon Valley fascism and the war on democracy - VIEW IN CATALOG
The nerd reich : Silicon Valley fascism and the war on democracy
Author(s):
Description:
When Silicon Valley says it is 'moving fast and breaking things,' the world interprets the chaos as a necessary cost of innovation. Gil Durán reveals something far more sinister: a decades-long campaign to replace elected governments with corporate rule. Drawing on insider political experience and new investigations, Durán traces this ideology from its philosophical roots in The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. He introduces its modern apostles - some of Silicon Valley's biggest names - and shows how the promise of technological liberation has transformed into a global movement for digital feudalism, powered by cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, and the algorithmic propaganda of social media. The Nerd Reich explains the origins, strategies, and ambitions of Silicon Valley's war on democracy for the first time. From San Francisco's weaponized elections and secret billionaire projects to the White House, Dur̀n exposes how the world's richest men are building a new political order. The Nerd Reich is more than a hidden history, it's an urgent warning: democracy is being dismantled not by coups or tanks, but by code, capital, and the illusion of innovation. Dur̀n insists there is still time to fight back--if we act now.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
320.973 Dur
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Up on Cove Mountain : adventure, tragedy, and a quest for meaning on the Appalachian Trail
Author(s):
Description:
In 1990, a youthful Earl Swift backpacked the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia, a transformative experience that colored every aspect of his later life. He emerged from his hike across the rugged, sky-high roof of fourteen eastern states a sharper and more organized thinker, a better problem solver, and a committed outdoorsman. But he also left the AT with baggage: Early in his odyssey, he spent time with a couple of other southbounders, who were friendly, capable, and doing everything right, but who were nonetheless murdered weeks later at a mountaintop campsite in Pennsylvania--a fit of violence that the killer never explained. Half a lifetime later, Swift returned to the trail to find out whether he was still, in his sixties, equal to the AT's roller-coaster terrain. Driving him, too, was a quest for answers that had nagged at him since that first hike: What had happened at that campsite to turn two smart, bighearted people into prey? Why had fate chosen them, when other hikers--Swift included--seemed more likely candidates? And how could such a grisly episode have unfolded in the backcountry's sylvan loveliness, not to mention one of the safest places around?
Format:
Book
Call Number:
796.51092 Swi
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This book may cause side effects : the curious and dangerous power of the nocebo effect, placebo's evil twin
Author(s):
Description:
In This Book May Cause Side Effects, Dr. Helen Pilcher explores the "nocebo" effect--the shadow side of the placebo--and shows how our convictions can sometimes quite literally harm us. Take the COVID vaccine. If you experienced side effects from your COVID vaccine, there is a 76 percent chance that these were caused by your belief that you would experience them--not by the mRNA circulating in your system. Or, even more extreme, take the case of Sam Shoeman: Although his diagnosis of late-stage esophageal cancer turned out to be erroneous, he was nonetheless dead in months. The power of words, especially from health-care providers, is so formidable that even a wrong diagnosis can actually kill. Our health, or lack of it, is as much about our expectations of illness and its causes as it is about damaged cells or wayward hormones. And because we can never fully step outside our cultural context, it's only by understanding these effects that we can hope to prevent them. From "hex deaths" to TikTok "illfluencers" to mysterious disorders with very real symptoms but no obvious physical cause, This Book May Cause Side Effects explores the many ways expectations can shape our health. Although the nocebo effect has always existed, the internet age has helped it spread faster than ever. Thankfully, Dr. Pilcher also explains what we can do about it. She walks us through steps we can take individually and collectively to avoid invoking the nocebo, like reevaluating our relationship with technology, setting up risk-minimizing guidelines in health-care settings, and even crowbarring open-label placebo therapies and nocebo-blocking medicines into the pharmacological toolkit.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
616.0019 Pil
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The rise and fall of the artificial state
Author(s):
Description:
"Much in history is headlong but few grand transformations have been more precipitate or more heedless than the rise of... the Artificial State," writes Jill Lepore in this passionate account of how rule by machine has ravaged the world. Inspired by Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, which argued in 1951 that the machinery of modern life was reshaping the very fundamentals of human existence, Lepore, profoundly disturbed by the technology revolution and by the soulless inundation of artificial intelligence, unfurls a new history for our own twenty-first century. Building on an essay in The New Yorker in 2024, Lepore's clarion call traces our increasing dependence on and strangulation by data. Political campaigns, awash in an avalanche of fake bots, have been reduced to attention-mining algorithms, while multinational media corporations dictate public discourse, and the era of the liberal nation-state seems to be coming to a rapid end, replaced by billionaire technocrats reliant on autocracy and the tools of AI. With Orwellian overtones, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State demonstrates how technology has corroded global democracy, leading to the destruction of both human community and capacity for self-government, creating a new form of AI government, a digital citizen's assembly, where AI will recommend the course of action to humans in place of human-run legislatures. Especially sobering with this proliferation of "dizzying, ever-changing schemes, prophesies, and predictions" is that the Artificial State has come at the expense of the natural world, leading to catastrophic loss of wildlife habitat and biodiversity. Deliberately alarming, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, despite its abundance of dire facts, is not a funeral dirge; rather, it's an inspiring wake-up call, written in Lepore's typically elegiac prose, which demonstrates that nothing about the Artificial State was inevitable, for it is a "government without consent, even government without humans." It can, Lepore asserts, be dismantled. Other heinous systems, like feudalism, fascism, and slavery, have also been dismantled, but disassembly requires identifying the parts, tracing the sources. It requires telling a new history. This is the purpose of The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
303.4834 Lep
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Your fellow Americans : dispatches from across the country we call home - VIEW IN CATALOG
Your fellow Americans : dispatches from across the country we call home
Author(s):
Description:
Have you ever swapped stories on a porch with Amish snowbirds in Florida? Searched for reindeer with the Siberian Yupik in Alaska? Been a guest on a houseboat deep in the Louisiana bayou? Peter Santenello hadn't either until, after years spent traveling through eighty-five countries and living abroad, he realized the most unfamiliar territory was often his own American backyard. And so, with a camera in hand and an open mind, he began visiting communities across the country, places that most media overlooks or misrepresents, from tiny towns in Appalachia to the streets of East LA. What began as curiosity became--one story at a time--an intimate, revealing portrait of America today. From road trips and chance encounters to dinners shared in locals' homes, Your Fellow Americans captures what makes this country so dynamic, so resilient, and most of all, so very human. Because what Peter discovered on his travels wasn't a nation torn in two. He found something more complex and more powerful: People who want to be seen, who are willing to listen, and who still believe we're more alike than we are different
Format:
Book
Call Number:
917.3049 San
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The ghost of the mountains : unraveling the secrets of the snow leopard - VIEW IN CATALOG
The ghost of the mountains : unraveling the secrets of the snow leopard
Author(s):
Description:
The vivid account of a world-leading conservationist's efforts to find, study, and protect snow leopards, revealing the challenges facing a beautiful, fragile world in the midst of a major transition Snow leopards have a special grip on the human imagination, a symbol of the mysteries that still exist on our planet. These elusive predators live solitary lives in the highest reaches of the Himalaya, moving along rock faces like smoke. They are also the flagship species of Himalayan conservation, key to the efforts to preserve this austere, delicate ecosystem. Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi (or Kullu, as he is widely known) is one of the world's leading snow leopard scientists. In The Ghost of the Mountains he offers an evocative and personal account of his decades of work in this field, from his exhilarating adventures on the high peaks to his efforts to build a community-based, collaborative model for protecting the snow leopards and their remaining habitat. That habitat is increasingly under threat as encroaching development, ongoing armed conflict, and rapidly intensifying climate change transform this region. Thrilling, illuminating, and filled with transporting storytelling, this is an important work from a gifted new voice. Kullu brings deep scientific and cultural knowledge to his depiction of this idyllic, remote region. As he describes his work as a conservationist in a rapidly changing world, he conveys an infectious sense of wonder. For Kullu, every snow leopard encounter is still a transcendent experience, offering a renewed sense of meaning and purpose.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
599.7555 Sur
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The time tax : how the government wastes our time--and how to fix it - VIEW IN CATALOG
The time tax : how the government wastes our time--and how to fix it
Author(s):
Description:
Annie Lowrey's The Time Tax examines the burdensome paperwork, bureaucracy, and administrative hurdles Americans face when accessing government benefits and everyday services. It traces the historical roots of administrative burdens, including their use as tools of discrimination, and shows how they perpetuate poverty and erode trust in government. Lowrey argues that these burdens are unnecessary and advocates simplifying public administration to give citizens back their time.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
302.35 Low
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Uncovering Antioch : the ancient city and its lost treasures of mosaic art - VIEW IN CATALOG
Uncovering Antioch : the ancient city and its lost treasures of mosaic art
Author(s):
Description:
The story of the making, loss, and recovery of some of the greatest treasures of antiquity, raising questions about ancient mosaic art and its creation, the work of archaeology, and museum practice.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
738.509394 Kan
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The Black shield : an American memoir of family and power - VIEW IN CATALOG
The Black shield : an American memoir of family and power
Author(s):
Description:
Amid the fervent protests over police killings in 2020, the reporter Wilbert L. Cooper returned to his hometown of Cleveland to profile the president of a Black police organization called the Black Shield. The group had aligned itself with activists calling for reform, but its president was notorious for having shot a young unarmed Black man years earlier. As Cooper explored the question of whether Black cops can create the kind of radical changes in policing that Black people are calling for, he was also welcomed by the members of the group in a different, more complicated capacity: as Sergeant Will Cooper's son. For Cooper, this assignment was personal. His parents are retired Black Cleveland cops; his sister was a Cleveland cop; on his mother's side, there has been a Cleveland cop in the family since 1950. In unearthing the dramatic histories of the Black Shield and his own family, Cooper tells the intertwined stories of the two: his relatives, whose lineage traces back to the Great Migration and who chose policing because it was one of the few stepping stones to economic security and status in a segregated city; and an organization that, over decades of cultural and political upheaval, has cycled endlessly between rebellion and acquiescence. An intimate, bold work of literary nonfiction, The Black Shield is an urgent exploration of the complex duality of the Black cop. Cooper grapples with a knot of contradictions: Is the Black officer a sign of progressive change, or of a system that shifts its appearance without changing its outcomes? How to reconcile the fact that policing helped lift his family out of poverty while it has kept its knee on the necks of his people? Fearless and singularly powerful, The Black Shield gives us an American story about race and power that has never been told before.
Format:
Book
Call Number:
363.2092 Coo