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When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words, and Wounds of Palestine
by Francesca Albanese
The first woman to serve as United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territory conveys the spirit of a people through 10 unforgettable stories of resilience and humanity. Francesca Albanese is the most lucid voice against Israel's apartheid policies in Gaza and the West Bank, a voice that has been heard around the world when it comes to speaking the truth about the Palestinian genocide. In the wake of October 7, 2023, and Israel's retaliatory war, the renowned Italian jurist has become a lightning rod for her staunch defense of human rights. Reflecting on her years living in Jerusalem and her personal and professional journey toward understanding the Palestinian struggle, Albanese pays tribute to 10 people whose profoundly affecting stories opened her eyes, from Hind Rajab, a young Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces, to the remarkable Jewish scholars who acted as Albanese's mentors: forensic architect Eyal Weizman, trauma expert Gabor Mat , and Holocaust historian Alon Confino. When the World Sleeps is a courageous testimony of the harsh reality that Palestinians face. It raises critical questions about the past, present, and future of Palestine: What are the consequences of the occupation? Where is a refugee's home? In what conditions do Palestinians live? With the uncertain end of the war, will there be a Palestinian state? Will Palestinians have the right to self-determination, and will they be able to live in peace, free at last from the coercion of Israel?
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Rasputin: The Downfall of the Romanovs
by Antony Beevor
A beautifully written, clear-eyed biography of a very Russian tragedy.--Dan Jones, The Sunday Times From one of our most acclaimed historians, a major new biography of one of history's most disturbing, dubious masterminds, showing how a Siberian peasant, through his seduction of the imperial household, contributed to the collapse of the greatest autocracy in the world When Russia's Dowager Empress was pregnant with the future Tsar, she dreamed that a peasant would one day kill her son. The idea terrified her, and for the rest of her days she 'lived under the pressure of the prophecy'. Did the prophecy come true with the arrival at court of a mysterious, barely literate moujhik from Siberia, Grigori Rasputin? In this extraordinary portrait of an enigmatic character, Antony Beevor brings readers closer than ever before to Rasputin's scandalous life and death. Though he had no official position at court, Rasputin's hold over the Romanovs became the stuff of legend. Exaggerated accounts of political and financial corruption swirled around him, to say nothing of the stories of his debauchery with the Empress and even her daughters. The consequences of the rumor and conspiracy theories were devastating--when the February revolution broke out in 1917, hardly a sword was raised in the Tsar's defense. Through extensive use of previously unpublished reports, interviews, and interrogations, Beevor shows the truth of Rasputin's rampant lust and opportunism, victimization of poor and vulnerable women, and deep hypocrisy and corruption. Part political thriller, part gothic mystery, Rasputin is a fascinating story of human perversity.
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Vengeance: The Last Stands of Custer, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull
by Tom Clavin
A dramatic new look at Custer's Last Stand in time for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, by the #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Heart of Everything That Is. On June 25-27, 1876, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was fought between combined forces of the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes and the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. Along the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory, the battle resulted in the devastating defeat of U.S. forces and was the most significant action of the Great Sioux War of 1876. This dramatic look at the Little Bighorn battle includes not only the Native American point of view-with two dynamic Native figures, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, on prominent display-but also the impact it had on the Plains Indians. It turned out to be their last stand too because a vengeful nation quashed any remaining resistance, with a conclusive massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890, almost simultaneous with the murder of Sitting Bull. In addition, Custer's character by June 1876 is at the heart of this world-famous disaster. For all his celebrated bravery, especially at Gettysburg 13 years earlier, Custer became a devout media hound, desperate to gain fame. Even, some say, his own demise was a misguided attempt at grabbing national headlines: He envisioned a massacre - just not his own. As both the camera and the tabloid came of age, George Armstrong Custer became America's first bona fide celebrity. Vengeance is a thrilling read, filled with action, legendary characters, and poignance for the impact this had on Native Americans and the shape of the American West.
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Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better
by David Epstein
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Fascinating stories. . . . Boxing ourselves in may be the ultimate way to think outside the box. --Wall Street Journal I thought David Epstein's first two books were brilliant, but Inside the Box is his best. I'll never think about my own work the same way again. --Malcolm Gladwell It's never been easier to do too much. From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Range, why limits are the key to stimulating creativity, innovation, collaboration, and personal contentment. We live in a world that gives us seemingly infinite choices and prizes freedom above all else. We have an unprecedented number of options regarding what to do, who to be, and how to spend our time. All that choice is wonderful; it is also overwhelming. The irony is that total freedom can be paralyzing, and unlimited resources don't necessarily lead to the biggest breakthroughs. In fact, overvaluing complete freedom can be disastrous for everything from starting a company to harnessing creativity to finding personal satisfaction. David Epstein argues that all of us--individuals, businesses, institutions, even societies--can benefit from narrowing our options. He dives into the science and practice of constraints, exploring exactly when and how guardrails can be beneficial, whether we're working with limited resources or using self-imposed boundaries to tap unexpected wells of focus and innovation. Original, galvanizing, and deeply researched, Inside the Box tells absorbing stories of people and organizations that embraced constraints to transform themselves, and the world--as well as a few that struggled from a lack of limits. Epstein reveals how boundaries create breakthroughs, and how setting the right constraints can help you become the most creative, productive, and satisfied version of yourself.
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This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark
by Craig Fehrman
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A major revisionist history of the Lewis and Clark expedition: For the first time in a generation, This Vast Enterprise offers a fresh and more accurate account of one of the most important episodes in American history, humanizing forgotten figures and shattering long-held myths. This Vast Enterprise is a page-turner and a fantastic achievement. --The New York Times - Immensely engaging. --The Wall Street Journal - This is vivid, character-based history...It also makes for a ripping good read. --The Boston Globe Do we really need another book about the Lewis and Clark expedition?...My answer is an emphatic yes. The author has done a huge amount of research, shifting the focus away from the familiar pairing of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark...Each chapter unfolds from the viewpoint of a different individual and the result is a richly woven tapestry of voices...Fehrman reframes this well-known story, revealing it as more complex, and profoundly human. --Andrea Wulf, The New York Times Book Review (front-cover review) In 1806, when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark return from their journey--having led the Corps of Discovery across eight thousand miles of rapids, mountains, forests, and ravines--they bring an incredible tale starring themselves as courageous explorers, skilled survivalists, underrated scientists, and peaceful ambassadors. While there is truth in those descriptions, there is also distortion. From one of the most exciting new historians to emerge in the past decade, This Vast Enterprise offers a novel take on the expedition: a gripping narrative that draws on lost documents, stunning analysis, and Native perspectives. Craig Fehrman spent five years visiting more than thirty archives, interviewing more than a hundred sources, and collecting oral history passed down over centuries. He came to see that the success of Lewis and Clark depended on much more than just Lewis and Clark. We all know Sacajawea, and some of us know York, the Black man Clark enslaved. But here we meet John Ordway, a working-class soldier who fought grizzlies and towed the captains' hulking barge. We hear from Wolf Calf, a Blackfoot teenager who watched his friend die in a battle with Lewis and his men. Each chapter moves to a different person's point of view, describing their desires and contradictions. We see Thomas Jefferson operating in an age of bitter partisan unrest--his secret political maneuvers to fund the expedition, revealed here for the first time, are a case study in presidential power. We witness the strategy and strength of Black Buffalo, completely upending our understanding of Lakota-American diplomacy. York, in his chapters, finds ways to wield power and make choices in an era that didn't allow him much of either. Clark is not a folksy Kentuckian but a student of the Enlightenment. (Fehrman discovered his college notebook; no previous biographer even realized that he went to college.) Lewis is someone willing to sacrifice everything for his country and his mentor, Jefferson. In the end, the captains are men who needed help--from Sacajawea, from the Corps, and from each other. Mile after mile, the expedition pushes on through hailstorms and flash floods, frostbite and infections, rattlesnakes and rabid wolves, with the Spanish cavalry in fierce pursuit. Fehrman balances the story's adventure with the humanity of its protagonists. The result is a thrilling reminder that even the most familiar moments in history can still surprise us.
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American Rambler: Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed
by Isaac Fitzgerald
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - New York Times bestselling author Isaac Fitzgerald sets off into the heart of America, following the path of the legendary Johnny Appleseed on an epic journey that both takes him far from home and brings him closer to it. Rollicking, heartfelt. . . . Made me feel the kind of wonder and hope I've been longing for. --John Green, author of Everything Is Tuberculosis As a child, Isaac Fitzgerald was captivated by Johnny Appleseed, drawn to the legend by family ties, his father's larger-than-life stories, and a shared restlessness to leave home and discover what lay beyond. In American Rambler, he sets out on a year-long journey to follow Appleseed's path, walking (okay, sometimes driving, and at one point, even floating downstream) from Massachusetts to Indiana. On this journey, Fitzgerald turns a childhood fascination into a profound reckoning of loss and grief, ritual and faith, grimy gas station bathrooms and scenic apple picking. He is followed by a mysterious creature, camps in hostile environments, trespasses more than once, and is warmed by the generosity of strangers at every turn. A moving blend of memoir, history, and travelogue, American Rambler is at once an ode to the American heartland, a meditation on escaping the breakneck pace of modern life, and a clear-eyed look at the myths--often violent, sometimes hopeful, frequently romanticized--at the very core of American identity and history.
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Screen People: How We Entertained Ourselves Into a State of Emergency
by Megan Garber
An eye-opening look at how the current media landscape has incentivized us to see our fellow citizens as characters in an ongoing entertainment--and how we can fight back, from the popular and award-winning staff writer for The Atlantic.Whether it's our reality-television-star President or our expertly curated Instagram feeds, the line between fact and fiction--between what's real and what's fabricated for entertainment--has never been more blurred. Screen People explores what happens when we cede our reality to spectacle. Megan Garber explains how today's internet-inflected culture conditions us to see one another not as people but as characters in an ongoing show, and how some of our most chronic and harmful social conditions--loneliness, depression, mistrust, misinformation, cynicism--stem from our demand for diversion.In ten chapters, each themed around an element of entertainment--from The Producers, who edit our reality, to The Extras, the strangers we turn into objects of our amusement, to the Haters, the worshipful Qanon-types who expect the prophecies of their anonymous leader to play out on live television--Garber argues that this comedy of our daily lives is quickly becoming tragedy. And we can't understand our politics without first understanding our culture.Like The Anxious Generation but about our media diet, Screen People shows why Megan Garber is one of the most respected and widely-read journalists of our day. It is an urgent, page-turning, and dazzling look at how we entertained ourselves into our current predicament, and how we might find our way out of the maze of misinformation and chaos.
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Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kay
by Mary Lisa Gavenas
The only woman in Forbes' Greatest Business Stories of All Time and the first woman to chair a company on the New York Stock Exchange, Mary Kay Ash has a life story that reads like a Barbara Taylor Bradford novel Growing up in Depression-era Texas, Mary Kathlyn Wagner is a dutiful daughter and diligent student with ambition aplenty and no place to use it. Married at sixteen, she is a grandmother at thirty-four. When she is not cooking or cleaning or taking care of the kids, she peddles cleaning products to other housewives. The work has no salary and no security but she sticks with it, sure that direct selling will make her dreams come true. In 1963, after she has been divorced three times and widowed twice, she sets up her own company, selling second chance and self-invention for the price of a skin care showcase. Soon millions know her as the little lady in the big wig who gives away pink Cadillacs. From its unpromising start in a 500-square-foot Dallas storefront, Mary Kay Inc. grows into a global phenomenon with 3.5 million reps in over 35 countries. She becomes the most famous saleswoman in the world. Maybe the most famous ever. Based on fifteen years of research, Selling Opportunity gives us a page-turning rags-to-riches story set against the background of direct selling in all its overstated, over-the-top glory. Here, for the first time, is the definitive history of a peculiarly American industry and a mid-century mindset that ennobled extreme self-reliance, sticking to your guns, and blind faith in the American dream.
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The Laws of Thought: The Quest for a Mathematical Theory of the Mind
by Tom Griffiths
From the coauthor of Algorithms to Live By, an exploration of the quest to use mathematics to describe the ways we think, from its origins three hundred years ago to the ideas behind modern AI systems and the ways in which they still differ from human minds Everyone has a basic understanding of how the physical world works. We learn about physics and chemistry in school, letting us explain the world around us in terms of concepts like force, acceleration, and gravity--the Laws of Nature. But we don't have the same fluency with concepts needed to understand the world inside us--the Laws of Thought. While the story of how mathematics has been used to reveal the mysteries of the universe is familiar, the story of how it has been used to study the mind is not. There is no one better to tell that story than Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton's AI Lab and a renowned expert in the field of cognitive science. In this groundbreaking book, he explains the three major approaches to formalizing thought--rules and symbols, neural networks, and probability and statistics--introducing each idea through the stories of the people behind it. As informed conversations about thought, language, and learning become ever more pressing in the age of AI, The Laws of Thought is an essential read for anyone interested in the future of technology.
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Beyond Inheritance: Our Ever-Mutating Cells and a New Understanding of Health
by Roxanne Khamsi
Constantly fascinating and impeccably reported...You won't look at yourself in the same way again. --Ed Yong, bestselling author of An Immense World and I Contain Multitudes A captivating exploration of the remarkable ways our DNA mutates over the course of our lives, with radical implications for the future of medicine Our DNA is the indispensable set of instructions that guides our growth and vitality. The common misconception is that this molecular blueprint stays the same throughout our lives. In reality, the genetic makeup of our cells is continuously mutating, from the moment we are conceived until our last breath. The hidden changes that amass in our genomes can have a huge influence on our health. In this groundbreaking book, science writer Roxanne Khamsi describes our bodies as active landscapes of mutation. She reveals how the forces of Darwinian evolution operate within our own tissues. The effects can be devastating, such as when mutant blood cells outcompete their normal counterparts and increase the risk of heart attacks. But mutations can also make our bodies more resilient: Liver cells with genetic changes seem to cope better with excess calories. And immune cells with remixed DNA can make more effective antibodies against the microbes that threaten us. By letting go of the antiquated idea that every cell in a body has the same exact DNA, we can usher in a whole new era of medicine, including better vaccines and treatments that outsmart cancer. Beyond Inheritance will open your eyes to the immense genetic diversity that exists within you and its incredible potential to shape your well-being.
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To Catch a Fish: Essays on the Joy, Frustration, Curiosity, and Allure of Fishing
by Mark Kurlansky
From the award-winning, New York Times best-selling author of Cod and Salt, To Catch a Fish is an entertaining and beautifully written illustrated collection of essays that explore a lifetime fascination with fishing. For as long as there have been humans, there have been humans trying to catch fish. The two species--fish and man--live in constant tension. One chases the other. One tries to get away. Some of us--author Mark Kurlansky included--are hard-wired for that chase. Guiding readers through the waters and into the mind of the fish, Kurlansky considers who fish are and why they behave the way they do, and along the way delves into the many approaches to catching a fish, their ecology, and the ins and outs of cooking and eating your catch. Whether you're a seasoned angler or a novice, or simply want to explore the world of fish, the forty short essays in this collection and the dazzling illustrations by Bri Dostie, shed new light on these creatures and our relationship to them.
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This Dark Night: Emily Bronte, a Life
by Deborah Lutz
Deborah Lutz compellingly captures Emily Jane Brontë, extraordinary poet and author of the incomparable Wuthering Heights, with deep insight and glorious prose.
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The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie
by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A fresh, charming, socially conscious tour of the mysteries of space-time, from the award-winning author of The Disordered Cosmos With this extraordinary book, Prescod-Weinstein cements her status as one of the most accomplished and important science writers of our time --Ed Yong, author of An Immense World In her highly acclaimed debut, distinguished cosmologist and particle physicist Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein shared with her audience an abiding sense of wonder at the cosmos, while imagining a world without the entrenched injustice that plagues her field. Now, in The Edge of Space-Time, she embraces that cosmic wonder, taking readers on a mind-altering journey to the boundaries of the universe, inviting us to spend time at the edge of what we know about space-time and about ourselves. Guided by her conviction that for humanity to go forward we must know our cosmic past, and drawing on poetry and popular culture--from Langston Hughes, Queen Latifah, and Lewis Carroll, to Big K.R.I.T., Sun Ra, and Star Trek--Prescod-Weinstein renders accessible some of the most abstract concepts of theoretical physics to tell fascinating stories about the history and fundamental nature of our universe. Here we meet the quantum cat that is both dead and alive, learn the difference between dark matter and dark energy, explore the inner workings of black holes, and investigate the possibility of a unified theory of quantum gravity, following our guide out to the far reaches of the cosmic event horizon and down to the tiniest (and queerest) neutrino. Along the way, she calls on us to resist colonial approaches to space exploration and instead imagine a better path forward in our pursuit of humanity's undeniable connection with the stars. Through Prescod-Weinstein's clear-eyed and unique perspective, and informed by her deep knowledge of postcolonial history and Black feminist thought, The Edge of Space-Time argues that physics is an essential way for everyone to look at the universe and presents a compelling case that the edge is a powerful vantage point from which to see the big picture.
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Becoming Martian: How Living in Space Will Change Our Bodies and Minds
by Scott Solomon
How living in space will affect future generations--and what the potential unintended consequences of space settlements are. We are on the cusp of a golden age of space travel in which, for the first time, it will be possible for large numbers of people to venture into space. Some intend to stay. But what happens--and will happen--to us in the extreme conditions of space? What should space tourists expect to happen to them during a journey to an orbiting space station, the Moon, or Mars? What would happen to children born on another planet? Would they evolve into a new species? In Becoming Martian, Scott Solomon explores the many ways in which humanity's migration into space will change our bodies and our minds. This book focuses on the latest science, taking readers to the front lines of research. We hear from astronauts, including Scott Kelly who writes the foreword, and we join a team of scientists guiding a rover across the surface of Mars. We visit a high-security lab where engineers are simulating space radiation to measure its effects on the body. We travel to isolated islands where field biologists are gleaning insights into evolutionary processes applicable to people isolated on faraway planets. We meet synthetic biologists developing gene-editing tools to equip future humans to thrive in alien environments. We watch a rocket designed to carry humanity to Mars make its first successful launch. And then we ask, knowing what we know: Should we go?
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Morton Grove Public Library
6140 Lincoln Ave
Morton Grove, Illinois 60053
(847) 965-4220www.mgpl.org |
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