New Books for Balmy Days
As June winds down, summer thunderstorms pick up, and you find yourself in the mood for a good book, drop by the library to check out the new additions to our collection. Here are some recommendations for what to read while sunbathing:
Kate Bolick reclaims the term "spinster" and chronicles the ups and downs as life as a singleton in Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own. She examines the history of single women in America through the paradigm-shifting stories of five pioneering women, from poet Edna St. Vincent Millay to novelist Edith Wharton.
In Quitter: Closing the Gap Between Your Day Job & Your Dream Job, New York Times bestselling author Jonathan M. Acuff shows readers that, with the proper care and feeding, daydreams can become full-fledged careers. Creatives interested in turning their art into a living should check out Make Your Mark: The Creative's Guide to Building a Business with Impact by Jocelyn K. Glei. Interested in writing professionally? Jeff Goins shows readers how he overcame self-doubt and turned passion into a profession in You Are a Writer: (So Start Acting Like One), and offers insight into how aspiring writers can do the same. Writer for Hire: 101 Secrets to Freelance Success by Kelly James-Enger digs into the details of writing freelance.
Just as the prohibition of alcohol faltered and gave way to legalization in the early 1930s, so the legalization of marijuana is changing the face of America. Christian Hageseth explores this dawn of a new industry from the perspective of an entrepreneur in Big Weed: An Entrepreneur's High-Stakes Adventures in the Budding Legal Marijuana Business. Essayist Bruce Barcott journeys into this same strange, new world in Weed the People: The Future of Legal Marijuana in America, interviewing everyone from botanists to scientists about this cultural change.
Math and lasagna have a lot more in common than you think. Eugenia Cheng uses insights from the kitchen to tackle questions like “what is math” and “how exactly does it work” in How to Bake [Pi]: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics.
Ian Tattersall explores the often overlooked complexities of paleoanthropology in The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack: And Other Cautionary Tales from Human Evolution. He challenges the tradition of “human exceptionalism” to reveal the wonder and random happenstance of how we evolved and why this matters.
Curious about the “physics, biology, chemistry, metallurgy, psychology, and neurobiology” behind that Happy Hour beverage? Adam Rogers digs into the details of alcohol production in Proof: The Science of Booze.
Mona Eltahawy’s passionate and hard-hitting first book, Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution, calls for women in the Middle East and North Africa to wage a twofold revolution against oppressive regimes, continuing the work begun by the Arab Spring, and against the political and economic systems that oppress them. “A manifesto motivated by hope and fury in equal measure, Headscarves and Hymens is as illuminating as it is incendiary.” (From the publisher’s description.)
You can find all of these books and more in our catalog!
Kate Bolick reclaims the term "spinster" and chronicles the ups and downs as life as a singleton in Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own. She examines the history of single women in America through the paradigm-shifting stories of five pioneering women, from poet Edna St. Vincent Millay to novelist Edith Wharton.
In Quitter: Closing the Gap Between Your Day Job & Your Dream Job, New York Times bestselling author Jonathan M. Acuff shows readers that, with the proper care and feeding, daydreams can become full-fledged careers. Creatives interested in turning their art into a living should check out Make Your Mark: The Creative's Guide to Building a Business with Impact by Jocelyn K. Glei. Interested in writing professionally? Jeff Goins shows readers how he overcame self-doubt and turned passion into a profession in You Are a Writer: (So Start Acting Like One), and offers insight into how aspiring writers can do the same. Writer for Hire: 101 Secrets to Freelance Success by Kelly James-Enger digs into the details of writing freelance.
Just as the prohibition of alcohol faltered and gave way to legalization in the early 1930s, so the legalization of marijuana is changing the face of America. Christian Hageseth explores this dawn of a new industry from the perspective of an entrepreneur in Big Weed: An Entrepreneur's High-Stakes Adventures in the Budding Legal Marijuana Business. Essayist Bruce Barcott journeys into this same strange, new world in Weed the People: The Future of Legal Marijuana in America, interviewing everyone from botanists to scientists about this cultural change.
Math and lasagna have a lot more in common than you think. Eugenia Cheng uses insights from the kitchen to tackle questions like “what is math” and “how exactly does it work” in How to Bake [Pi]: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics.
Ian Tattersall explores the often overlooked complexities of paleoanthropology in The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack: And Other Cautionary Tales from Human Evolution. He challenges the tradition of “human exceptionalism” to reveal the wonder and random happenstance of how we evolved and why this matters.
Curious about the “physics, biology, chemistry, metallurgy, psychology, and neurobiology” behind that Happy Hour beverage? Adam Rogers digs into the details of alcohol production in Proof: The Science of Booze.
Mona Eltahawy’s passionate and hard-hitting first book, Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution, calls for women in the Middle East and North Africa to wage a twofold revolution against oppressive regimes, continuing the work begun by the Arab Spring, and against the political and economic systems that oppress them. “A manifesto motivated by hope and fury in equal measure, Headscarves and Hymens is as illuminating as it is incendiary.” (From the publisher’s description.)
You can find all of these books and more in our catalog!