Are you looking for a new book? Check out the following new nonfiction titles available at our Eastern Avenue Branch. Check out the titles and see if any of them are something that you would be interested in. All descriptions have been provided by the publisher.
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Extraordinary Parenting: The Essential Guide to Parenting and Educating at Home by Eloise Rickman
In this warm, accessible book, experienced parenting coach Eloise Rickman tells you everything you really need to know about parenting and educating your child at home. Whether you’re planning to make a permanent move to homeschooling or you’re temporarily balancing it alongside paid work, Extraordinary Parenting shows that you don’t need a huge house, endless free time, or a host of expensive resources to unlock your child’s potential.
Instead, this straightforward and empathic book will teach you to:
— Deepen your connection with your child to create an attachment that promotes learning and openness.
— Build strong, adaptable family rhythms to provide your child with security and stimulation every day, every month, and every year.
— Create a calm, simplified home environment which will encourage deep play and independence — whatever your living situation.
— Discover enjoyable ways of learning together as a family, identify your child’s interests, and use traditional teaching materials in a creative way.
— Take care of your own needs as a parent, in order to become the parent your child needs.
Based on years of research and hands-on work with parents, this book will reassure you that, whilst extraordinary times call for extraordinary parenting, you can be sure that you are up to the challenge.
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The New Long Life: A Framework for Flourishing in a Changing World by Andrew J. Scott & Lynda Gratton
Smart new technologies. Longer, healthier lives. Human progress has risen to great heights, but at the same time it has prompted anxiety about where we’re heading. Are our jobs under threat? If we live to 100, will we ever really stop working? And how will this change the way we love, manage and learn from others?
One thing is clear: advances in technology have not been matched by the necessary innovation to our social structures. In our era of unprecedented change, we haven’t yet discovered new ways of living.
Drawing from the fields of economics and psychology, Andrew J Scott and Lynda Gratton offer a simple framework based on three fundamental principles (Narrate, Explore and Relate) to give you the tools to navigate the challenges ahead. Both a personal road-map and a primer for governments, corporations and colleges, The New Long Life is the essential guide to a longer, smarter, happier life.
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Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen
An incendiary examination of burnout in millennials—the cultural shifts that got us here, the pressures that sustain it, and the need for drastic change.
Do you feel like your life is an endless to-do list? Do you find yourself mindlessly scrolling through Instagram because you’re too exhausted to pick up a book? Are you mired in debt, or feel like you work all the time, or feel pressure to take whatever gives you joy and turn it into a monetizable hustle? Welcome to burnout culture.
While burnout may seem like the default setting for the modern era, in Can’t Even, BuzzFeed culture writer and former academic Anne Helen Petersen argues that burnout is a definitional condition for the millennial generation, born out of distrust in the institutions that have failed us, the unrealistic expectations of the modern workplace, and a sharp uptick in anxiety and hopelessness exacerbated by the constant pressure to “perform” our lives online. The genesis for the book is Petersen’s viral BuzzFeed article on the topic, which has amassed over eight million reads since its publication in January 2019.
Can’t Even goes beyond the original article, as Petersen examines how millennials have arrived at this point of burnout (think: unchecked capitalism and changing labor laws) and examines the phenomenon through a variety of lenses—including how burnout affects the way we work, parent, and socialize—describing its resonance in alarming familiarity. Utilizing a combination of sociohistorical framework, original interviews, and detailed analysis, Can’t Even offers a galvanizing, intimate, and ultimately redemptive look at the lives of this much-maligned generation, and will be required reading for both millennials and the parents and employers trying to understand them.
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Tomboy: The Surprising History and Future of Girls who Dare to be Different by Lisa Selin Davis
Inspired by her thought-provoking op-ed for The New York Times, Lisa Selin Davis’s TOMBOY explores the history, and imagines the future, of girls who defy societal expectations based on their gender. TOMBOY is a revealing dive into the forces that have shifted and narrowed our ideas of what’s normal for boys and girls, and for kids who don’t fall neatly into either category. It looks at tomboyism from a Victorian ideal to a twenty-first century fashion statement, chronicling the evolution of the pink/blue divide and what motivates those who cross or straddle it to gender independence-and who they grow up to be. Davis critically investigates the word “tomboy,” but lauds the ideas and ideals it represents.
Davis talks to experts from clothing designers to psychologists, historians to neuroscientists, and tomboys from 8 to 80, to illuminate debates about what is masculine and feminine; what is biological versus socially constructed; what constitutes the categories of boy and girl; and the connection between tomboyism, gender identity, and sexuality. Ultimately, TOMBOY is a celebration not just of tomboys but of gender diversity itself, and of those who resist the pressure of gender norms and summon the courage to live as their true selves. In TOMBOY, Davis tackles an intellectual and emotional makeover of notions of gender, ultimately finding that gender nonconformity can be–and often is–a true gift.
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Somewhere in the Unknown World: A Collective Refugee Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang
Somewhere in the Unknown World is a themed collection of stories of refugees from around the world who have converged on Minneapolis, collected and told by the award-winning author of The Latehomecomer and The Song Poet.
Back in the 1980s, Minnesota’s University Avenue was barely clinging to life. Lined with church thrift stores, boarded windows, and prostitutes leaning against streetlights, the sidewalks were thick with bloody, discarded needles. Today, University Avenue is a bustling commercial center, a hub of Halal butchers, Mexican carnicerias, grocery stores selling delicacies to new arrivals from Ethiopia and Bosnia, Iraq and China. A dying strip of America has been revived by the stateless.
As the country’s doors are closing and nativism is on the rise, Kao Kalia Yang—herself a refugee from Laos—set out to tell the stories of the refugees to whom University Avenue is now home. Here are people who have summoned the energy and determination to make a new life even as they carry an extraordinary burden of hardship, loss, and emotional damage: Irina, an ex-Soviet, who still hoards magical American fruit—bananas!—under her bed; the Thai brothers of Vinai and their business selling purified water to gullible immigrants; the Kareni boys, who have brought Minnesota to basketball glory.
In Yang’s exquisite, poetic, and necessary telling, the voices of refugees from all over the world restore humanity to America’s strangers and redeem its long history of welcome.
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She Votes: How U.S. Women Won Suffrage, and What Happened Next by Bridget Quinn, foreward by Nell Irvin Painter
From the first female Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation to the first woman to wear pants on the Senate floor, Quinn shines a spotlight on the women who broke down barriers. She shows how, in the hundred years since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, women have continued to speak out so that all U.S. women truly have a voice in the future of their country.
She Votes is an intersectional story of the women who won suffrage, and those who have continued to raise their voices for equality ever since.
This deluxe book also honors the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment with illustrations by 100 women artists. A colorful, intersectional account of the struggle for women’s rights in the United States that features heart-pounding scenes and keenly observed portraits and includes dynamic women from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Audre Lorde.
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Bad Medicine: Catching New York’s Deadliest Pill Pusher by Charlotte Bismuth
For fans of Dopesick and Bad Blood, the shocking story of New York’s most infamous pill-pushing doctor, written by the prosecutor who brought him down.
In 2010, a brave whistleblower alerted the police to Dr. Stan Li’s corrupt pain management clinic in Queens, New York. Li spent years supplying more than seventy patients a day with oxycodone and Xanax, trading prescriptions for cash. Emergency room doctors, psychiatrists, and desperate family members warned him that his patients were at risk of death but he would not stop.
In Bad Medicine, former prosecutor Charlotte Bismuth meticulously recounts the jaw dropping details of this criminal case that would span four years, culminating in a landmark trial. As a new assistant district attorney and single mother, Bismuth worked tirelessly with her team to bring Dr. Li to justice. Bad Medicine is a chilling story of corruption and greed and an important look at the role individual doctors play in America’s opioid epidemic.
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What’s Your Pronoun?: Beyond He and She by Dennis Baron
The story of how we got from he and she to zie and hir and singular they. Like trigger warnings and gender-neutral bathrooms, pronouns are suddenly sparking debate, prompting new policies in schools, workplaces, even prisons, about what pronouns to use. Colleges ask students to declare their pronouns; corporate conferences print nametags with space for people to add their pronouns; email signatures sport pronouns along with names and titles. Far more than a byproduct of campus politics or culture wars, gender-neutral pronouns are in fact nothing new. Renowned linguist Dennis Baron puts them in historical context, demonstrating that Shakespeare used singular they; that women evoked the generic use of he to assert the right to vote (while those opposed to women’s rights invoked the same word to assert that he did not include she), and that self-appointed language experts have been coining new gender pronouns, not just hir and zie but hundreds more, like thon, ip, and em, for centuries. Based on Baron’s own empirical research, What’s Your Pronoun? tells the untold story of gender-neutral and nonbinary pronouns.
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Bedeviled: A Shadow History of Demons in Science by Jimena Canales
How scientists through the ages have conducted thought experiments using imaginary entities–demons–to test the laws of nature and push the frontiers of what is possible.
Science may be known for banishing the demons of superstition from the modern world. Yet just as the demon-haunted world was being exorcized by the enlightening power of reason, a new kind of demon mischievously materialized in the scientific imagination itself. Scientists began to employ hypothetical beings to perform certain roles in thought experiments–experiments that can only be done in the imagination–and these impish assistants helped scientists achieve major breakthroughs that pushed forward the frontiers of science and technology.
Spanning four centuries of discovery–from Descartes, whose demon could hijack sensorial reality, to James Clerk Maxwell, whose molecular-sized demon deftly broke the second law of thermodynamics, to Darwin, Einstein, Feynman, and beyond–Jimena Canales tells a shadow history of science and the demons that bedevil it. She reveals how the greatest scientific thinkers used demons to explore problems, test the limits of what is possible, and better understand nature. Their imaginary familiars helped unlock the secrets of entropy, heredity, relativity, quantum mechanics, and other scientific wonders–and continue to inspire breakthroughs in the realms of computer science, artificial intelligence, and economics today.
The world may no longer be haunted as it once was, but the demons of the scientific imagination are alive and well, continuing to play a vital role in scientists’ efforts to explore the unknown and make the impossible real.
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The Remarkable Life of the Skin: An Intimate Journey Across Our Largest Organ by Monty Lyman
Providing a cover for our delicate and intricate bodies, the skin is our largest and fastest-growing organ. We see it, touch it, and live in it every day. It is a habitat for a mesmerizingly complex world of micro-organisms and physical functions that are vital to our health and our survival. It is also a waste removal plant, a warning system for underlying disease and a dynamic immune barrier to infection. One of the first things people see about us, skin is crucial to our sense of identity, providing us with social significance and psychological meaning. And yet our skin and the fascinating way it functions is largely unknown to us. In prose as lucid as his research underlying it is rigorous, blending in memorable stories from the past and from his own medical experience, Monty Lyman has written a revelatory book exploring our outer surface that will surprise and enlighten in equal measure. Through the lenses of science, sociology, and history–on topics as diverse as the mechanics and magic of touch (how much goes on in the simple act of taking keys out of a pocket and unlocking a door is astounding), the close connection between the skin and the gut, what happens instantly when one gets a paper cut, and how a midnight snack can lead to sunburn–Lyman leads us on a journey across our most underrated and unexplored organ and reveals how our skin is far stranger, more wondrous, and more complex than we have ever imagined.
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When the Earth Had Two Moons by Erik Asphaug
An astonishing exploration of planet formation and the origins of life by one of the world’s most innovative planetary geologists.
In 1959, the Soviet probe Luna 3 took the first photos of the far side of the moon. Even in their poor resolution, the images stunned scientists: the far side is an enormous mountainous expanse, not the vast lava-plains seen from Earth. Subsequent missions have confirmed this in much greater detail.
How could this be, and what might it tell us about our own place in the universe? As it turns out, quite a lot.
Fourteen billion years ago, the universe exploded into being, creating galaxies and stars. Planets formed out of the leftover dust and gas that coalesced into larger and larger bodies orbiting around each star. In a sort of heavenly survival of the fittest, planetary bodies smashed into each other until solar systems emerged. Curiously, instead of being relatively similar in terms of composition, the planets in our solar system, and the comets, asteroids, satellites and rings, are bewitchingly distinct. So, too, the halves of our moon.
In When the Earth Had Two Moons, esteemed planetary geologist Erik Asphaug takes us on an exhilarating tour through the farthest reaches of time and our galaxy to find out why. Beautifully written and provocatively argued, When the Earth Had Two Moons is not only a mind-blowing astronomical tour but a profound inquiry into the nature of life here—and billions of miles from home.
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Borrowing Life: How Scientists, Surgeons, and a War Hero Who Made the First Successful Organ Transplant a Reality by Shelley Fraser Mickle
Against a global backdrop of wartime suffering and postwar hope, Borrowing Life gathers the personal histories of the men and women behind the team that enabled and performed the modern medical miracle of the world’s first successful organ transplant.
Performed at Boston’s Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in 1954, the first successful kidney transplant was the culmination of years of grit, compassion, and the pursuit of excellence by a remarkable medical team–Nobel Prize-winning surgeon Joseph Murray, his boss and fellow surgeon Francis Moore, and British scientist and fellow Nobel laureate Peter Medawar. Drawing on the lives of these members of the Greatest Generation, Borrowing Life creates a compelling narrative that begins in wartime and tracks decades of the ups and downs, personal and professional, of these inspiring men and their achievements, which continue to benefit humankind in so many ways.
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American Cheese: An Indulgent Odyssey through the Artisan Cheese World by Joe Berkowitz
Joe Berkowitz loves cheese. Or at least he thought he did. After stumbling upon an artisinal tasting at an upscale cheese shop one Valentine’s Day, he realized he’d hardly even scratched the surface. These cheeses were like nothing he had ever tasted—a visceral drug-punch that reverberated deliciousness—and they were from America. He felt like he was being let in a great cosmic secret, and instantly he was in love.
This discovery inspired Joe to embark on the cheese adventure of a lifetime, spending a year exploring the subculture around cheese, from its trenches to its command centers. He dove headfirst into the world of artisan cheese; of premiere makers and mongers, cave-dwelling affineurs, dairy scientists, and restauranteurs. The journey would take him around the world, from the underground cheese caves in Paris to the mountains of Gruyere, leaving no curd unturned, all the while cultivating an appreciation for cheese and its place in society.
Joe’s journey from amateur to aficionado eventually comes to mirror the rise of American cheese on the world stage. As he embeds with Team USA at an international mongering competition and makes cheese in the experimental vats at the Dairy Research Center in Wisconsin, one of the makers he meets along the way gears up to make America’s biggest splash ever at the World Cheese Awards. Through this odyssey of cheese, an unexpected culture of passionate cheesemakers is revealed, along with the impact of one delicious dairy product.
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Betting on You: How to Put Yourself First and (Finally) Take Control of Your Career by Laurie Ruettimann
An essential guide for how to snap out of autopilot and become your own best advocate, with candid anecdotes and easy-to-adopt steps, from veteran HR specialist and popular podcast host Laurie Ruettimann
Chances are you’ve spent the past few months cooped up inside, buried under a relentless news cycle and work that never seems to switch off. Millions of us worldwide are overworked, exhausted, and trying our hardest—yet not getting the recognition we deserve. It’s time for a fix.
Top career coach and HR consultant Laurie Ruettimann knows firsthand that work can get a hell of a lot better. A decade ago, Ruettimann was uninspired, blaming others and herself for the unhappiness she felt. Until she had an epiphany: if she wanted a fulfilling existence, she couldn’t sit around and wait for change. She had to be her own leader. She had to truly take ahold of life—the good, the bad, and the downright ugly—in order to transform her future.
Today, as businesses prioritize their bottom line over employee satisfaction and workers become increasingly isolated, the need to safeguard your well-being is crucial. And though this sounds intimidating, it’s easier to do than you think. Through tactical advice on how to approach work in a smart and healthy manner, which includes knowing when to sign off for the day, doubling down on our capacity to learn, fixing those finances, and beating impostor syndrome once and for all, Ruettimann lays out the framework necessary to champion your interests and create a life you actually enjoy.
Packed with advice and stories of others who regained control of their lives, Betting on You is a game-changing must-read for how to radically improve your day-to-day, working more effectively and enthusiastically starting now.
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The Paper Solution: What to Shred, What to Save, and How to Stop it From Taking Over Your Life by Lisa Woodruff
From the “Marie Kondo of paper” comes a simple and accessible guide to paper management.
Americans are drowning in paper. We keep stacks of it on the kitchen counter, stash it in drawers, and store file cabinets full of documents that we never even look at. Studies show that fully 85 percent of the paper in our lives can be tossed–but which 85 percent? And how do we organize and manage the 15 percent that remains?
With The Paper Solution, founder of Organize365 Lisa Woodruff delivers a proven, step-by-step guide for what to shred, what to save, and how to sort what’s left behind. With her method, you’ll learn:
• What documents you must absolutely hold on to
• Which papers you can dispose of today
• How to ditch your bulky filing cabinets and make your vital documents accessible and portable
And at the heart of it all is the Sunday Basket: a box that sits on your counter and corrals those stray bills, forms, coupons, and scraps into an easy-to-use paper-management system. The Sunday Basket will become your new weekly habit–one that leads to less paper, less stress, and more time to spend on the things (and people) that matter most.