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New Nonfiction October 2020
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A knock at midnight
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Brittany K. Barnett
An award-winning attorney presents an urgent call for justice-system reform in the story of a disadvantaged, African-American single mother from the rural South who was separated from her young daughter and sentenced to life in prison for a first-time offense.
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Eat a peach : a memoir
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David Chang
The star of Ugly Delicious traces his upbringing as a youngest son in a deeply religious Korean-American family, his search for identity, his struggles with manic depression and his unlikely rise as one of his generation’s most influential chefs.
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Magdalena : river of dreams
by
Wade Davis
Vividly brings to life the story of the great Río Magdalena, illuminating Colombia’s complex past, present and future.
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The lost art of dying : reviving forgotten wisdom
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Lydia S. Dugdale
A Columbia University physician shares uplifting prescriptive advice on how to rethink death and the art of dying well, drawing on specialist insights in medical ethics and elder care to outline more qualitative, holistic approaches.
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Fathoms : The World in the Whale
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Rebecca Giggs
Blending together natural history, philosophy and science, this stunning meditation on the extraordinary lives of whales takes readers on an exploration of the natural world to reveal what whales can teach us about ourselves, our planet and our relationship to other species.
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Conditional citizens : on belonging in America
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Laila Lalami
"The acclaimed, award-winning novelist--author of The Moor's Account and The Other Americans--now gives us a bracingly personal work of nonfiction that is concerned with the experiences of "conditional citizens." What does it mean to be American? In thisstarkly illuminating and impassioned book, Pulitzer Prize Finalist Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to U.S. citizen, using it as a starting point for her exploration of the rights, liberties, and protections that are traditionally associated with American citizenship. Tapping into history, politics, and literature, she elucidates how accidents of birth--such as national origin, race, or gender--that once determined the boundaries of Americanness still cast their shadows today. Throughout the book, she poignantly illustrates how white supremacy survives through adaptation and legislation, with the result that a caste system is maintained, keeping the modern equivalent of white male landowners at the top of the social hierarchy. Conditional citizens, she argues, are all the people whom America embraces with one arm, and pushes away with the other. Brilliantly argued and deeply personal, Conditional Citizens weaves together the author's own experiences with explorations of the place of nonwhites in the broader American culture"
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The End of Everything : (Astrophysically Speaking)
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Katie Mack
From one a dynamic rising star in astrophysics comes an accessible and eye-opening look at five ways the universe could end, and the mind-blowing lessons each scenario reveals about the most important concepts in cosmology.
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The dead are arising : the life of Malcolm X
by
Les Payne
A portrait of the iconic civil rights leader draws on hundreds of hours of interviews with surviving family members, intelligence officers and political leaders to offer new insights into Malcolm X's Depression-era youth, religious conversion and 1965 assassination.
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The lost pianos of Siberia
by
Sophy Roberts
A first book by an acclaimed British journalist tours the history of piano music in one of the world’s harshest landscapes, chronicling how Russian-made pianos have played a diverse part in remarkable lifetimes and historical events.
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The smallest lights in the universe : A Memoir
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Sara Seager
"In this luminous memoir, an MIT astrophysicist must reinvent herself in the wake of tragedy and discovers the power of connection on this planet, even as she searches our galaxy for another Earth. Sara Seager has always been in love with the stars: so many lights in the sky, so much possibility. Now a pioneering planetary scientist, she searches for exoplanets--especially that distant, elusive world that sustains life. But with the unexpected death of Seager's husband, the purpose of her own life becomes hard for her to see. Suddenly, at forty, she is a widow and the single mother of two young boys. For the first time, she feels alone in the universe. As she struggles to navigate her life after loss, Seager takes solace in the alien beauty of exoplanetsand the technical challenges of exploration. At the same time, she discovers earthbound connections that feel every bit as wondrous, when strangers and loved ones alike reach out to her across the space of her grief. Among them are the Widows of Concord,a group of women offering advice on everything from home maintenance to dating, and her beloved sons, Max and Alex. Most unexpected of all, there is another kind of one-in-a-billion match, not in the stars but here at home. Probing and invigoratingly honest, The Smallest Lights in the Universe is its own kind of light in the dark"
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Sitting pretty : the view from my ordinary resilient disabled body
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Rebekah Taussig
"From disability advocate with a PhD in disability studies and creative nonfiction, and creator of the Instagram account @ sitting pretty, an essay collection based on a lifetime of experiences in a paralyzed body, tackling themes of identity, accessibility, bodies, and representation"
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Caste : the origins of our discontents
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Isabel Wilkerson
"As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power--which groups have it and which do not." In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people--including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others--she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity. Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of America life today"
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Tales from the ant world
by
Edward O. Wilson
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard professor emeritus and author of Anthill shares eloquent descriptions of his natural-world encounters with ants, from his boyhood explorations in the Alabama woods to his perilous journeys into the Brazilian rainforest.
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Morton Grove Public Library 6140 Lincoln Ave Morton Grove, Illinois 60053 (847) 965-4220www.mgpl.org |
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