New books at the NMC library

Autism & Education: The Way I See It : What Parents and Teachers Need to Know
by Temple Grandin
Here is a concise handbook that illustrates what Temple Grandin has found to work in the field of education. Topics include: the importance of early intervention, teaching for different types of thinking, developing talent, motivating students, keeping high expectations, and much more. Dr. Grandin offers do’s and don’ts and practical strategies based on her insider perspective and extensive research. She argues that education for kids on the autism spectrum must focus on their overlooked strengths to foster their unique contributions to the world.

Class: A Memoir
by Stephanie Land
Handpicked by President Obama as one of the best books of 2019, Land’s memoir Maid, was called “an eye-opening journey into the lives of the working poor (people)”. In Class, Land takes us with her as she finishes college and pursues her writing career. Facing barriers at every turn including a byzantine loan system, not having enough money for food, navigating the judgments of professors and fellow students who didn’t understand the demands of attending college while under the poverty line, Land finds a way to survive once again, finally graduating in her mid-thirties.

The Myth of the Amateur : A History of College Athletic Scholarships
by Ronald A. Smith
In this look at the heated debates over paying college athletes, Smith starts at the beginning: the first intercollegiate athletics competition–a crew regatta between Harvard and Yale–in 1852, when both teams received an all-expenses-paid vacation from a railroad magnate. From that first contest to athletes’ attempts to unionize and California’s recent laws, Smith explores how the regulation of student-athletes has shifted; how class, race, and gender played a role in these transitions; and how the case for amateurism evolved from a moral argument to one protecting college sports and the NCAA.

Plastic Free: The Inspiring Story of a Global Environmental Movement and Why it Matters
by Rebecca Prince-Ruiz
This book explores how one of the world’s leading environmental campaigns, Plastic Free July, took off and shares lessons from its success. From narrating marine-debris research expeditions to tracking what actually happens to our waste to sharing insights from behavioral research, it speaks to the massive scale of the plastic waste problem and how we can tackle it together. Plastic Free tells the inspiring story of how ordinary people have created change in their homes, communities, workplaces, schools, businesses, and beyond.

Pop Art
by Klaus Honnef
Peaking in the 1960s, Pop Art began as a revolt against mainstream approaches to art and culture and evolved into a wholesale interrogation of modern society, consumer culture, and the role of the artist and artwork. Focusing on issues of materialism, celebrity, and media, Pop Art also deployed methods of mass-production, reducing the role of the individual artist with mechanized techniques such as screen printing.

Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity
by Michele Norris
Our Hidden Conversations is a unique compilation of stories, richly reported essays, and photographs providing a window into America during a tumultuous era. This powerful book offers an honest, if sometimes uncomfortable, conversation about race and identity, permitting us to eavesdrop on deep-seated thoughts, private discussions, and long submerged memories.

Womb City
by Tlotlo Tsamaase
Set in a cruel futuristic surveillance state where bodies are a government-issued resource, this harrowing story is a nail-biting commentary on power, monstrosity, and bodily autonomy. In evocative prose, Womb City interrogates how patriarchy pits women against each other as unwitting collaborators in their own oppression. In this devastatingly timely debut novel, acclaimed short fiction writer Tlotlo Tsamaase brings a searing intelligence and Botswana’s cultural sensibility to the question: just how far must a woman go to bring the whole system crashing down?

The Fury
by Alex Michaelides
Spending Easter with Lana Farrar, a reclusive ex-movie star and one of the most famous women in the world, on her idyllic private Greek island, her guests, concealing hatred and desire for revenge, become trapped when the night ends in violence and murder.

The Waters
by Bonnie Jo Campbell
On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp–an area known as “The Waters” to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan–herbalist and eccentric Hermine Zook has healed the local women of their ailments for generations. Rose Thorn, her youngest daughter, has left her own daughter, eleven-year-old Dorothy “Donkey” Zook, to grow up wild. Donkey spends her days searching for truths in the lush landscape and in her math books, waiting for her wayward mother and longing for a father, unaware that family secrets, passionate love, and violent men will flood through the swamp and upend her idyllic childhood. [Northern Michigan author]

Maame
by Jessica George
Maddie’s life in London is far from rewarding. With a mother who spends most of her time in Ghana (yet still somehow manages to be overbearing), Maddie is the primary caretaker for her father. At work, her boss is a nightmare and Maddie is tired of always being the only Black person in every meeting. When her mum returns, Maddie leaps at the chance to finally start living. A self-acknowledged late bloomer, she’s ready to experience some important “firsts.” But when tragedy strikes, it forces Maddie to face the nature of her unconventional family, and the perils–and rewards–of putting her heart on the line.

The Vaster Wilds
by Lauren Groff
A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her. Lauren Groff’s new novel is at once a thrilling adventure story and a penetrating fable about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism.

Day
by Michael Cunningham
April 5th, 2019: In a cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, the veneer of domestic bliss is beginning to crack. Nathan, age ten, is aking his first uncertain steps toward independence, while Violet, five, does her best not to notice the growing rift between her parents. April 5th, 2020: As the world goes into lockdown, the brownstone is feeling more like a prison. Violet is terrified of leaving the windows open, obsessed with keeping her family safe. Isabel and Dan communicate mostly in veiled jabs and frustrated sighs. And Isabel’s brother Robbie is stranded in Iceland. April 5th, 2021: Emerging from the worst of the crisis, the family reckons with what they’ve learned, what they’ve lost, and how they might go on.

Balance Board

Classical Guitar (¾ sized)