To find these selections and many other new titles, see the NMC library catalog.
Non-Fiction
The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind by Raghuram Rajan
Raghuram Rajan, University of Chicago professor, former IMF chief economist, head of India’s central bank, and author of Fault Lines, has an unparalleled vantage point onto the social and economic consequences of globalization and their ultimate effect on our politics. In The Third Pillar he offers up a big-picture framework for understanding how these three forces–the state, markets, and our communities–interact, why things begin to break down, and how we can find our way back to a more secure and stable plane.
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert.
The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity’s transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it? In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth.
Homie: Poems by Danez Smith
Homie is Danez Smith’s magnificent anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith’s close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. In poems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a country overrun by violence, xenophobia, and disparity, and in a body defined by race, queerness, and diagnosis, it can be hard to survive, even harder to remember reasons for living. But then the phone lights up, or a shout comes up to the window, and family–blood and chosen–arrives with just the right food and some redemption.
Wisdom Engaged: Traditional Knowledge for Northern Community Well-being edited by Leslie Main Johnson
Wisdom Engaged demonstrates how traditional knowledge, Indigenous approaches to healing, and the insights of Western bio-medicine can complement each other when all voices are heard in a collaborative effort to address changes to Indigenous communities’ well-being. In this collection, voices of Elders, healers, physicians, and scholars are gathered to provide a critical conversation about the nature of medicine; a demonstration of ethical commitment; and an example of successful community relationship building.
Muslim American City: Gender and Religion in Metro Detroit by Alisa Perkins
Drawing on more than ten years of ethnographic research in Hamtramck, which boasts one of the largest concentrations of Muslim residents of any American city, Alisa Perkins shows how the Muslim American population has grown and asserted itself in public life. Her in-depth fieldwork incorporates the perspectives of both Muslims and non-Muslims, including Polish Catholics, African American Protestants, and other city residents.
Fiction
The Other Black Girl: a Novel by Zakiya Dalila Harris
Get Out meets The Devil Wears Prada in this electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing. Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. A whip-smart and dynamic thriller and sly social commentary that is perfect for anyone who has ever felt manipulated, threatened, or overlooked in the workplace, The Other Black Girl will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last twist.
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
After being rescued as infants from a sinking ocean liner in 1914, Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their uncle in Missoula, Montana. There, Marian commences her lifelong love affair with flight. A century later, Hadley Baxter is cast to play Marian in a film that centers on Marian’s disappearance over the South Pacific. Her immersion into the character of Marian unfolds, thrillingly, alongside Marian’s own story, as the two womens’ fates collide. Epic and emotional, meticulously researched and gloriously told, Great Circle is a tremendous leap forward for the prodigiously gifted Maggie Shipstead.
Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi
When Otto and Xavier Shin declare their love, an aunt gifts them a trip on a sleeper train. They seem to be the only people onboard, until Otto discovers a secretive woman who issues a surprising message. As further clues and questions pile up, and the trip upends everything they thought they knew, Otto and Xavier begin to see connections to their own pasts. A spellbinding tale from a star author, Peaces is about what it means to be seen by another person–whether it’s your lover or a stranger on a train–and what happens when things you thought were firmly in the past turn out to be right beside you.
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church’s double standards and their own needs and passions.
Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction.
A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
The early masterpiece of V. S. Naipaul’s brilliant career, ‘A House for Mr. Biswas’ has been hailed as one of the twentieth century’s finest novels.
Shuttled from one residence to another after the death of his father, Mr. Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. But when he marries into the domineering Tulsi family, Mr. Biswas embarks on an arduous-and endless-struggle to weaken their hold over him and purchase a house of his own. A House for Mr. Biswas masterfully evokes a man’s quest for autonomy against an emblematic post-colonial canvas.
Summaries adapted from publishers.