New books at the NMC library

Mutualism: Building the Next Economy from the Ground Up
by Sara Horowitz with Andy Kifer
The twentieth century changed every facet of life for American workers. But by 2027, a majority of American workers will be part of the gig economy, and without the traditional employer-sponsored safety net that baby boomers took for granted. Horowitz demonstrates how mutualist structures are already helping us solve common problems and how cooperatives are quietly driving rural and urban economies alike all over the world. Call it good business, call it good citizenship–Sara Horowitz calls it Mutualism: an elegant solution to the current crisis of work, and a manifesto for a culture of collaborative cooperation.

Say the Right Thing : How to Talk About Identity, Diversity, and Justice
by Kenji Yoshino and David Glasgow
Through stories drawn from contexts as varied as social media posts, dinner party conversations, and workplace disputes, Yoshino and Glasgow offer seven user-friendly principles that teach skills such as how to avoid common conversational pitfalls, engage in respectful disagreement, offer authentic apologies, and better support people in our lives who experience bias. Whether managing diverse teams at work, navigating issues of inclusion at college, or challenging biased comments at a family barbecue, the authors help us move from unconsciously hurting people to consciously helping them.

Open Skies: My Life as Afghanistan’s First Female Pilot
by Niloofar Rahmani with Adam Sikes
In 2010, for the first time since the Soviets, Afghanistan allowed women to join the armed forces, and Rahmani entered Afghanistan’s military academy. She had to break through social barriers to demonstrate confidence, leadership, and decisiveness–essential qualities for a combat pilot. Rahmani performed the first solo flight of her class and in 2013 became Afghanistan’s first female fixed-wing air force pilot. The US State Department honored Rahmani with the International Women of Courage Award and brought her to the United States to fly with the US Navy’s Blue Angels.

Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden
by Camille T. Dungy
Poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy recounts the seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominantly white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. When she moved there in 2013, with her husband and daughter, the community held strict restrictions about what residents could and could not plant. In resistance to the homogeneous policies, Dungy employs the various plants, herbs, vegetables, and flowers she grows in her garden as metaphor and treatise for how homogeneity threatens the future of our planet, and why cultivating diverse and intersectional language in our national discourse about the environment is the best means of protecting it.

The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History
by Ned Blackhawk
The most enduring feature of U.S. history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. A new generation of scholars insist that a full American history address the struggle, survival, and resurgence of American Indian nations. Blackhawk interweaves five centuries of Native and non-Native histories, from Spanish colonial exploration to the rise of Native American self-determination in the late twentieth century.

The Morningside
by Téa Obreht
When Silvia and her mother finally land in a place called Island City, after being expelled from their ancestral home in a not-too-distant future, they end up living and working at a crumbling luxury tower where Silvia’s aunt, Ena, has been serving as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her life, but in Ena there is an opening: a person willing to give a young girl glimpses into her demolished homeland. Silvia’s mission to unravel the truth about this woman’s life, and her own haunted past, will transform her own life in the most unexpected of ways.

Murtagh
by Christopher Paolini
Master storyteller and internationally bestselling author Christopher Paolini returns to the World of Eragon in this stunning epic fantasy set a year after the events of the Inheritance Cycle. Join Dragon Rider –and fan favorite– Murtagh and his dragon as they confront a perilous new enemy. The world is no longer safe for the Dragon Rider Murtagh and his dragon, Thorn. An evil king has been toppled, and they are left to face the consequences of the reluctant role they played in his reign of terror. Now they are hated and alone, exiled to the outskirts of society.

Wandering Stars
by Tommy Orange
In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in There There—warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts—asking what it means to be the children and grandchildren of massacre. Wandering Stars is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today.

The Book of Love
by Kelly Link
Late one night, Laura, Daniel, and Mo find themselves confused and disembodied, blinking under the fluorescent lights of their high school music room. They are greeted by their music teacher, who restores the ghostly teens to their corporeal forms with a flick of his fingers and explains: nearly a year ago they went missing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, and have long been presumed dead. Which they are. But their resurrection has attracted the notice of several supernatural figures, engulfing Lovesend in danger and chaos.

Family Meal
by Bryan Washington
Cam is living in Los Angeles and falling apart after the love of his life has died. When Cam returns to his hometown of Houston, he crashes back into the orbit of his former best friend, TJ, and TJ’s family bakery. TJ’s not sure how to navigate this changed Cam, impenetrably cool and self-destructing, or their charged estrangement. Can they find a way past all that has been said – and left unsaid – to save each other?

James
by Percival Everett
James is a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, who recently returned to town. Thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Next time you come to the library, you might leave not just with a book, but a board game too – or a disc golf set, a musical instrument, or even a telescope!

We have asked students, faculty, and staff for their input about what we should add to this new Library of Things as it expands. Based on your suggestions, the collection continues to grow, adding everything from a selection of lawn games to binoculars to a sewing machine – all yours to borrow free of charge with your NMC ID!

See the entire collection on the new Library of Things LibGuide!