Stars, Superheroes, and Bite-Sized Astrophysics: New Books Are In

New month, new books: October is here, and here at Jessup Library there are 250+ new books gracing our shelves. The weather is cooling off (knock on wood) and fall break is only a week away -- time to take a break from your studies and curl up with a good book for an hour or two! If you're looking for suggestions to get you started, look no further than the list below:

Hidden Figures, the 2017 choice for PVCC's One Book Program, celebrates the accomplishments of the African-American women who launched the first astronauts into orbit. If you're looking for more books about women and the stars, check out The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobel, which reveals the hidden world of the women who worked as "human computers" at the Harvard College Observatory in the late 19th century; and Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence by Sarah Scoles, an exploration of the life of the astronomer Jill Tarter, former director of the Center for SETI Research.

Need inspiration for that superhero Halloween costume you've been planning to cobble together since last year? The good news is that there is a universe of superheroes just waiting for you to find them. Check out The Evolution of the Costumed Avenger: The 4,000-Year History of the Superhero to learn about superheroes going back to Gilgamesh.

Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures by Jennifer Romolini is a practical guide to succeeding in the world of work, no matter where you start. Pair it, like fine wine, with Jen Sincero's guide to financial success, You Are A Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth.

Our ever-expanding collection of the Very Short Introduction series offers bite-sized investigations into pretty much everything: theology, the Mexican Revolution, Voltaire, intellectual property, plague, Shakespeare's comedies, folk music, gravity, family law, exploration, and more.

Speaking of exploration: much as we've learned as a species, there's still so much to discover. Get a sense of just how much with The Lost City of the Monkey God, in which author Douglas Preston goes looking for a lost civilization with a team of scientists; Weird Dinosaurs: The Strange New Fossils Challenging Everything We Thought We Knew by John Pickrell, which chronicles the discovery of new fossils -- including carnivores with bat wings and dwarf dinosaurs -- and how our understanding of the distant past is changing; and Know This: Today's Most Interesting and Important Scientific Ideas, Discoveries, and Developments, edited by John Brockman, in which 198 visionary thinkers identify the ideas of the present that will carry us into the future.

Curious about astrophysics, but pressed for time? Neil DeGrasse Tyson has you covered. Check out Astrophysics for People in a Hurry for another bite-sized introduction to a vast and incredible subject.

Check out all of these books and more in our catalog. Happy October, and happy reading!