Squirrel: How a Backyard Forager Shapes Our World
by Nancy Castaldo

Squirrels are a common sight, seemingly everywhere in wild and urban nature. Their chattering antics in city parks delight us while their raids on our backyard gardens and birdfeeders never fail to exasperate. But squirrels are more than amusing backyard entertainers, and few of us know much about them or fully appreciate their role in keeping the environment healthy. As stress on the natural world intensifies, should we be paying more attention to the plight of squirrels? In Squirrel, Nancy Castaldo shines new light on this familiar backyard mammal, exploring their staggering diversity and the many surprising ways they shape our world, our communities, and our cultures. Squirrel is accessible and entertaining, perfect for anyone who has felt exasperation, curiosity, and kinship with our bushy-tailed rodent neighbors.

The Lucky Egg: Understanding Your Fertility and How to Get Pregnant Now
by Lucky Sekhon

Comprehensive, compassionate, and refreshingly clear, The Lucky Egg is the fertility guide we've all been waiting for. Imagine if your best friend also happened to be a top reproductive endocrinologist—the kind who could break down the complexities of conception with warmth, humor, and real-world insight. Here, Dr. Lucky Sekhon is that brilliant friend, ready to guide you through every stage of the fertility journey, whether it's straightforward or deeply complex. From understanding what your AMH level really means to navigating egg freezing, IVF, or embryo genetic testing, Dr. Lucky blends expert medical knowledge with relatable patient stories to demystify the process. Her guidance meets you exactly where you are--whether you're just starting to track ovulation, facing a diagnosis of diminished ovarian reserve, exploring the use of donor eggs or sperm, or have been through multiple rounds of treatment with no clear path forward.

All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now
by Ruby Tandoh

How, in the space of a few decades, has food gone from fact of life to national past time; something to be thought about—and talked about—24/7? In this startlingly original, deeply irreverent cultural history, Ruby Tandoh traces that transformation, exposing how cult cookbooks, bad TV, visionary restaurants, and new social media have all wildly overhauled our appetites. Our tastes have been radically refashioned, painstakingly engineered in the depths of food factories, and hacked by craveable Instagram recipes. They've been pulled into supermarket aisles and seduced by Michelin stars, transfixed by Top Chefs and shaped by fads. A deep dive into the social, economic, cultural, legislative, and demographic forces that have reshaped our relationship with food, All Consuming questions how our tastes have been shaped—and how much they are, in fact, our own.

The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth
by Nicolas Niarchos

Swaths of Congo lack basic infrastructure, and, after many decades of colonial occupation, its people are officially among the poorest in the world. But hidden beneath the soil are vast quantities of a veritable periodic table of resources that has become extremely valuable because these metals are essential for the global energy transition—the plan for wealthy nations to wean themselves off fossil fuels by shifting to sustainable forms of energy, such as solar and wind. With unparalleled, original reporting, Nicolas Niarchos reveals how the scramble to control these metals and their production is overturning the world order, just as the global race to drill for oil shaped the twentieth century. Exploring the advent of the lithium-ion battery and tracing the supply chain for its production, Niarchos tells the story both of the people driving these tectonic changes and those whose lives are being upended. He reveals the true, devastating consequences of our best intentions and helps us prepare for an uncertain future.

Invisible Illness: A History, from Hysteria to Long Covid
by Emily Mendenhall

From lupus to Lyme, invisible illness is often dismissed by everyone but the sufferers. Why does the medical establishment continually insist that, when symptoms are hard to explain, they are probably just in your head? Inspired by her work with long COVID patients, medical anthropologist Emily Mendenhall traces the story of complex chronic conditions to show why both research and practice fail so many. Mendenhall points out disconnects between the reality of chronic disease—which typically involves multiple intersecting problems resulting in unique, individualized illness—and the assumptions of medical providers, who behave as though chronic diseases have uniform effects for everyone. And while invisible illnesses have historically been associated with white middle-class women, being believed that you are sick is even more difficult for patients whose social identities and lived experiences may not align with dominant medical thought. Weaving together cultural history with intimate interviews, Invisible Illness upholds the experiences of those living with complex illness to expose the failures of the American healthcare system—and how we can do better.

Your Kid Belongs Here: An Insider's Guide to Parenting Neurodiverse Children
by Katie Rose Guest Pryal

This book is a practical and empathetic guide for neurodivergent parents raising neurodivergent children. It offers strategies for advocacy, emotional support, navigating education systems, and embracing neurodiversity to foster resilience and inclusivity.

Growing Up Mindful: Essential Practices to Help Children, Teens, and Families Find Balance, Calm, and Resilience
by Christopher Willard

Introducing mindfulness into the lives of our children and teenagers is perhaps the greatest gift we can offer. Mindfulness builds emotional intelligence, boosts happiness, increases curiosity and engagement, reduces anxiety and depression, soothes the pain of trauma, and helps kids (and adults) focus, learn, and make better choices. If that weren't enough, research now shows that mindfulness significantly enhances what psychologists call flourishing—the opposite of depression and avoidance.

The Other Side of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans
by Maya Shankar

Out of nowhere, we're confronting the end of a relationship, an unexpected diagnosis, the loss of a job, or some other twist of fate. In these moments, it can feel like we're free-falling into the unknown. As a cognitive scientist, Maya Shankar has spent decades studying the human mind. When an unwanted change in her own life left her reeling, she sought out people who had navigated major disruptions. In The Other Side of Change, Shankar tells their riveting, singular stories and weaves in scientific insights to illuminate universal lessons hidden within them. The result is a rich portrait of our complex reactions to change and a deep well of wisdom we can draw from during these experiences. 

Are You Mad at Me?: How to Stop Focusing on What Others Think and Start Living for You
by Meg Josephson

Psychotherapist Meg Josephson is here to show you that people-pleasing is not a personality trait. It's a common trauma response known as fawning, an instinct often learned in childhood to become more appealing to a perceived threat in order to feel safe. Yet many people are stuck in this way of being for their whole lives. Are You Mad at Me? weaves Josephson's own moving story with that of fascinating client stories and thought-provoking exercises to show you how to rethink conflict and boundaries as an opening for deeper connection, practice leaning back in relationships, recognize when people-pleasing is actually necessary (with your chaotic boss) and when it's not (with your close friends), and stop self-loathing when you slip into old patterns. Optimally, you will learn to shift away from the familiar chaos, anxiety, and resentment you're used to as you move closer to yourself and a life that no longer depletes you—but brings you joy. 

Our next discussion:
Thursday, March 19, 6:30 pm
Library Conference Room on Lower Level
If you're a regular reader of non-fiction about nature and science, consider joining our Eco-centric Book Club! The club usually meets on the third Thursday of the month at 6:30, but we do recommend confirming details on our events calendar in case of changes. Copies of our next book will be on reserve at the Circulation Desk. We hope to see you there!

Elemental: How Five Elements Changed Earth's Past and Will Shape Our Future
by Stephen Porder

It is rare for life to change Earth, yet three organisms have profoundly transformed our planet over the long course of its history. Elemental reveals how microbes, plants, and people used the fundamental building blocks of life to alter the climate, and with it, the trajectory of life on Earth in the past, present, and future. Taking readers from the deep geologic past to our current era of human dominance, Stephen Porder focuses on five of life's essential elements: hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus.