To find these selections and many other new titles, see the NMC library catalog.
NON-FICTION
How To Have Difficult Conversations About Race: Practical Tools for Necessary Change in the Workplace and Beyond
by Kwame Christian
Whether you’re looking to create change for yourself and other BIPOC, or a white ally seeking to support your coworkers or clients, you’ll learn how to overcome your internal barriers to talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). If you’ve ever struggled to turn that passion into persuasion, or been too afraid to speak up at work (or outside of it), this book is for you. The first step toward lasting social change is productive discussion.
Craft and Conscience: How to Write about Social Issues
by Kavita Das
Writers are witnesses and scribes to society’s conscience but writing about social issues in the twenty-first century requires a new, sharper toolkit. Craft and Conscience helps writers weave together their narrative craft, analytical and research skills, and their conscience to create prose which makes us feel the individual and collective impact of crucial issues of our time. Das guides writers to take on nuanced perspectives and embrace intentionality through a social justice lens.
The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: A Photographic History
by Karlos K. Hill ; foreword by Kevin Matthews
A visual documentary account of the violence unleashed upon the Black citizens of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921, using over one hundred color photos and oral history testimony.
After the Ivory Tower Falls: How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics– and How to Fix It
by Will Bunch
Award-winning journalist Will Bunch traces the history of college in the U.S., beginning with the first technical schools, through the landmark GI Bill, and the culture wars of the ‘60s and ‘70s, which found their start on college campuses. We see how resentment of college-educated elites morphed into a rejection of knowledge itself—and how the explosion in student loan debt fueled major social movements like Occupy Wall Street. Bunch then takes a question we need to ask all over again—what, and who, is college even for?—and proposes a new model for all Americans.
The Stolen Year: How COVID Changed Children’s Lives, and Where We Go Now
by Anya Kamenetz
An NPR education reporter shows how the last true social safety net– the public school system—was decimated by the pandemic, and how years of political decisions have failed to put our children first. The cost of closing our schools during COVID, made with good intentions, has not yet been fully reckoned with. Kamenetz makes the case that 2020 wasn’t a lost year–it was taken from our children, by years of neglect and bad faith.
FICTION
The Falconer
by Dana Czapnik
New York, 1993. Street-smart seventeen-year-old Lucy Adler is often the only girl on the public basketball courts. Lucy’s inner life is a contradiction. She’s by turns quixotic and cynical, insecure and self-possessed, and, despite herself, is in unrequited love with her best friend, Percy, the rebellious son of a prominent New York family. As Lucy begins to question accepted notions of success, she is drawn into the world of a pair of provocative feminist artists living in what remains of New York’s bohemia. In her critically acclaimed debut, Dana Czapnik captures the voice of an unforgettable modern literary heroine, a young woman in the first flush of freedom.
Topics of Conversation
by Miranda Popkey
Composed almost exclusively of conversations between women—the stories they tell each other and the stories they tell themselves— Topics of Conversation careens through 20 years in the life of an unnamed narrator hungry for experience and bent on upending her life. In exchanges about shame and love, infidelity and self-sabotage, Popkey touches upon desire, disgust, motherhood, loneliness, art, pain, feminism, anger, envy, and guilt. Edgy, wry, and written in language that sizzles with intelligence and eroticism, this novel introduces an audacious and immensely gifted new novelist.
Infinite Country
by Patricia Engel
Talia is being held at a correctional facility in the mountains of Colombia after committing an impulsive act of violence that may or may not have been warranted. She urgently needs to get out and get back home to Bogotá, where her father and a plane ticket to the United States are waiting for her. Award-winning, internationally acclaimed author Patricia Engel, herself a dual citizen and the daughter of Colombian immigrants, gives voice to this family. Rich with Bogotá urban life, steeped in Andean myth, and tense with the daily reality of the undocumented in America.
LIBRARY OF THINGS
Podcasting microphone
Everdell board game
Within the charming valley of Everdell, a civilization of forest critters is thriving and expanding. The time has come for new territories to be settled and new cities established. You will be the leader of a group of critters intent on just such a task. Description from boardgamegeek.com.
Carcassonne board game
Shape the medieval landscape of France, claiming cities, monasteries and farms. Description from boardgamegeek.com.
Evolution board game
In a dynamic ecosystem where food is scarce and predators lurk, your species will have to adapt to survive. Traits like Hard Shell and Horns will protect your species from Carnivores, while a Long Neck will help them get food that others cannot reach. With over 12,000 ways to evolve your species, every game becomes a different adventure. Description from publisher
Summaries and images adapted from publishers.