2020 Acquisitions

AFRICAN AMERICAN ISSUES 
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi. An award-winning historian argues that racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit.  BOOK DONATED BY RICHARD ZEYEN
 
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson.
Historian Carol Anderson reinterprets “black rage” as "white rage at work” which provides the “kindling” for black protests.  BOOK DONATED BY RICHARD ZEYEN
 
BIOGRAPHY 
Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.  Mixing memoir, history, and analysis, Glaude powerfully unpacks the tangled web of race, trauma, and memory and asks us to call forth a new America.
 
Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home by Nora Krug. A deeply personal memoir of struggles with German identity after World War II, coming to terms with her family history, and exploring the German idea of Heimat, or homeland. 
 
This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman by Ilhan Omar.  A remarkable memoir tracing Omar’s incredible journey from war-torn Mogadishu to the US House of Representatives.
 
ESSAYS 
Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl.  Essays offer a psychological and spiritual portrait of an entire family and place in beautiful prose, in a richly illustrated book with her brother’s artwork---beautiful to look at and to read.  BOOK DONATED BY VEENA DEO
 
A Map Is Only One Story: Twenty Writers on Immigration, Family, and the Meaning of Home edited by Nicole Chung.  Twenty funny, poignant essays on
migration and new beginnings, breaking our image of the world with fixed borders and identities to create something new.
 
World of Wonders:  In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.  A debut essay collection guides readers through a stunning menagerie of curious species, from dancing frogs and vampire squids to corpse flowers-creatures that often seem alien but share a lot with us.  BOOK DONATED BY VEENA DEO
 
FICTION
Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague Year by Maggie O’Farrell.  This “glorious novel” recreates the tragic story of Shakespeare’s son, showing how even the most shattered heart can heal.
 
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry.  Winner of the 1985 Pulitzer Prize, this epic tale of two Texas Rangers who drive their cattle to Montana is a meditation on old age, death, unrequited love, and friendship.
 
Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe.  An American classic of the 20th century, Wolfe’s first, largely autobiographical novel, is about a young man leaving home in search of a more intellectual life.
 
Northernmost by Peter Geye.  Following The Lighthouse Road and Wintering, this final book in Eide family trilogy is a beautiful ode to the enduring human spirit
BOOK DONATED BY CAROL VAN WHY
 
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.  The iconic story of love and betrayal in a provincial French town. This classic is new to our library.
 
Trust Exercise by Susan Choi.  Named best book of the year by The Washington Post, New York Times, The Atlantic, and Vanity Fair, this is a coming-of-age novel as well as a satire on egotism and obsession in an academic society.
 
LARGE PRINT 
On the Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel by Ocean Vuong.  An extraordinary coming-of-age story, about a young Vietnamese American writer whose fractured family was torn by their experiences during the Vietnam War.
 
MEDICINE AND HEALTH 
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor.  Using new technologies for investigation as well as old forms of knowledge, the writer explains the power of breathing techniques that can help us all with chronic, everyday breathing problems in modern life.
 
Pandemic 1918: Eyewitness Accounts from the Greatest Medical Holocaust in Modern History by Catharine Arnold. A gripping narrative marking the 100th anniversary of an epidemic that altered world history.
 
Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction by Maia Szalavitz. The writer combines her own experience as a former drug user with the latest scientific research to challenge traditional ideas of an “addictive personality” as a disease, suggesting instead that it is a learning disorder that can be treated.
 
 MYSTERY/SPY/ADVENTURE 
All the Devils Are Here by Louise Penney.  Fans of Louise Penny will welcome this newest mystery, set in Paris, in the latest title in the Armand Gramache series.   Reine-Marie Gramache, a librarian uses her research skills to unravel the well-constructed plot. The location may change from the Canadian village, but the marvelous descriptions of food, landscape and characters are still there.
 
A Bitter Feast by Deborah Crombie.  Another first for our collection: married detectives Kincaid and James investigate suspicious deaths in the picturesque Cotswolds.
 
Blood Curse: The Springtime of Commissario Ricciardi by Maurizio de Giovanni.
The visions Ricciardi has of the final seconds in the lives of victims of violent deaths have helped him become one of the most acute and successful homicide detectives in the Naples police force but hollowed him out. #2 in the Commissario Ricciardi series.  BOOK DONATED BY ED LOTTERMAN AND VICTORIA TIRREL
 
I Will Have Vengeance: The Winter of Commissario Ricciardi by Maurizio de Giovanni. Naples 1931: When one of the world's greatest tenors is found brutally murdered in his dressing room at Naples' famous San Carlo Theatre, the enigmatic and aloof Commissario Ricciardi is called in to investigate. #1 in the Commissario Ricciardi series.
 
The Island by Ragnar Jonasson.  Well-plotted Icelandic thriller in the popular Scandinavian mystery genre.  Another new author for us.
 
Spies of Shilling Lane by Jennifer Ryan.  In this “delightful” mystery, a woman seeks her missing daughter, and finds friendship, during the London blitz.
 
Standardization of Demoralization Procedures by Jennifer Hoffman.  In a world of spycraft, betrayals, and reversals, a Stasi officer is unraveled by the cruel system he served.  The author’s first novel is a stunning tale of espionage which readers of John LeCarre will be eager to read. 
 
The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Kahn.
First in the clever, prizewinning series starring a Mumbai detective; new to our collection.
 
NATURE/ENVIRONMENT 
A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes by Eric Jay Dolin. A fascinating narrative of the most significant hurricanes that have affected the United States.  American journalist Elizabeth Kolbert finds in the book “a story of a changing climate, and it forces us to reckon with the reality that as bad as the past has been, the future will probably be worse, unless we drastically re-imagine or relationship with the planet.”
 
NATURE GUIDES 
What It’s Like to Be a Bird: From Flying to Nesting, Eating to Singing—What Birds Are Doing, and Why by David Sibley. For birders and non-birders alike, this book tells us why “birdbrained” cannot be an insult if we knew what birds did and why.
 
POETRY
The Tradition by Jericho Brown.  Winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, Jericho Brown has written masterful lyrics that combine delicacy with urgency about bodies vulnerable to hostility and violence.
 
TRAVEL WRITINGS 
Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders by Joshua Foer et al.  A joyful antidote to the idea that travel now is a homogenized, corporate shopping opportunity.  Here are hundreds of surprising, mind-blowing, inspiring reasons to travel a day longer and farther off the path.
 
The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts.  Robert’s calls her book “as much elegy as detective story.”  Her search for lost pianos offers a richly absorbing account of Siberia over the last 250 years.
 
U.S. HISTORY 
These Truths:  A History of the United States by Jill Lepore. An extraordinary recounting of American history in an intellectually honest way.
 
WORLD POLITICS/GOVERNMENT 
Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum. One of the first American journalists to raise an alarm about antidemocratic trends in the West explains the lure of nationalism and autocracy.