March Book Purchases

Katie Weiblen and her team hit it out of the park with their March book selections.  The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson joins The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson in being two of the most anticipated books of 2021.  What else do these notables have in common?  They are already on, or on their way to, the Coffman Library shelves. 
 
A review from the Minneapolis Star Tribune says that Isaacson’s book is a “confluence of the perfect writer, 

perfect subject and perfect timing…almost certainly the most important book of the year.”  In his review, Gwande Atul heaps praise on the biography’s subject, Doudna, by calling her “a heroine for the ages.”
 
Wilson is a Mdewakaton descendant enrolled on the Rosebud Reservation.  The Seed Keeper is an ‘intergenerational narrative of the U.S. government’s deliberate destruction of Native ways.” An earlier book by Wilson--Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past—won a Minnesota Book Award and is also in Coffman’s collection.
 
Speaking of hitting it out of the park, Minneapolis-based Milkweed Editions not only published The Seed Keeper but in 2013 published the very popular Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer.    For this book of essays on Native folkways involving plants, Kimmerer won the 2014 Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. 
 
Library Committee member Veena Deo, a former Milkweed Editions board member, donated a copy of Kimmerer’s book to our library.  When not signed out to another resident, find the book on the library’s upper level in the Nature/Environment section.