The library has purchased many new books so far this year. You can view a handful here along with descriptions or go here to see the full listing. These books are on display in the library’s lobby.

Title: The Noma Guide to Fermentation: Including koji, kombuchas, shoyus, misos, vinegars, garums, lacto-ferments, and black fruits and vegetables (Foundations of Flavor)

Author: Rene Redzepi and David Zilber

At Noma—four times named the world’s best restaurant—every dish includes some form of fermentation, whether it’s a bright hit of vinegar, a deeply savory miso, an electrifying drop of garum, or the sweet intensity of black garlic. Fermentation is one of the foundations behind Noma’s extraordinary flavor profiles. Now René Redzepi, chef and co-owner of Noma, and David Zilber, the chef who runs the restaurant’s acclaimed fermentation lab, share never-before-revealed techniques to creating Noma’s extensive pantry of ferments. And they do so with a book conceived specifically to share their knowledge and techniques with home cooks. With more than 500 step-by-step photographs and illustrations, and with every recipe approachably written and meticulously tested, The Noma Guide to Fermentation takes readers far beyond the typical kimchi and sauerkraut to include koji, kombuchas, shoyus, misos, lacto-ferments, vinegars, garums, and black fruits and vegetables. And—perhaps even more important—it shows how to use these game-changing pantry ingredients in more than 100 original recipes.

Title: Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World

Author: Marcia Bjornerud

Few of us have any conception of the enormous timescales in our planet’s long history, and this narrow perspective underlies many of the environmental problems we are creating for ourselves. The passage of nine days, which is how long a drop of water typically stays in Earth’s atmosphere, is something we can easily grasp. But spans of hundreds of years―the time a molecule of carbon dioxide resides in the atmosphere―approach the limits of our comprehension. Our everyday lives are shaped by processes that vastly predate us, and our habits will in turn have consequences that will outlast us by generations. Timefulness reveals how knowing the rhythms of Earth’s deep past and conceiving of time as a geologist does can give us the perspective we need for a more sustainable future.

Title: The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After

Author: Clemantine Wamariya Elizabeth Weil

Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when her neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder. In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years migrating through seven African countries, searching for safety– perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, and enduring and escaping refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing inhuman cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive. 

 

Title: Calm Technology: Principles and Patterns for Non-Intrusive Design

Author: Amber Case

How can you design technology that becomes a part of a user’s life and not a distraction from it? This practical book explores the concept of calm technology, a method for smoothly capturing a user’s attention only when necessary, while calmly remaining in the background most of the time. You’ll learn how to design products that work well, launch well, are easy to support, easy to use, and remain unobtrusive.

Title: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

Author: Shoshana Zuboff

In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth.

Title: The Palestinian Table

Author: Reem Kassis

While interest in Middle Eastern cuisines has blossomed, the nuances of Palestinian food have remained relatively unexplored – until now. The Palestinian Table is a visual feast of stunning, authentic dishes that demonstrate the true depth of this cuisine. But this is more than just a cookbook; author Reem Kassis truly creates a sense of ‘place,’ exploring the importance of heritage and community through her recipes and stories. In her debut cookbook, Reem Kassis weaves a tapestry of local customs,context, personal anecdotes and traditions of Palestinian life and cooking. Ranging from simple breakfasts to celebratory dishes fit for a feast, recipes are accompanied by specially commissioned photographs, bringing these vibrant dishes to life. This striking book takes readers on a gastronomic journey across Palestine, showcasing the rich culinary history of the area.

Title: Life After Trauma: a Workbook for Healing

Author: Dena Rosenbloom, PhD, Mary Beth Williams, PhD

Trauma can turn your world upside down–afterward, nothing may look safe or familiar. This compassionate workbook has already helped tens of thousands of trauma survivors start rebuilding their lives. Full of practical strategies for coping and self-care, the book guides you toward reclaiming a solid sense of safety, self-worth, trust, and control, as well as the capacity to be close to others. The focus is on finding the way forward in your life today, no matter what has happened in the past. The updated second edition has a new section on managing emotions through mindfulness and an appendix on easing the stress of health care visits. Dozens of step-by-step questionnaires and exercise are included; you can download and print additional copies of these tools for repeated use. 

Title: How Long ‘Til black Future Month?

Author: N.K. Jemisin

K. Jemisin is one of the most powerful and acclaimed authors of our time. In the first collection of her evocative short fiction, which includes never-before-seen stories, Jemisin equally challenges and delights readers with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption. Spirits haunt the flooded streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a parallel universe, a utopian society watches our world, trying to learn from our mistakes. A black mother in the Jim Crow South must save her daughter from a fey offering impossible promises. And in the Hugo award-nominated short story “The City Born Great,” a young street kid fights to give birth to an old metropolis’s soul.

Title:  Beasts at Bedtime: Revealing the Environmental Wisdom in Children’s Literature

Author: Liam Heneghan

Talking lions, philosophical bears, very hungry caterpillars, wise spiders, altruistic trees, companionable moles, urbane elephants: this is the magnificent menagerie that delights our children at bedtime. Within the entertaining pages of many children’s books, however, also lie profound teachings about the natural world that can help children develop an educated and engaged appreciation of the dynamic environment they inhabit.

Title: White Guys on Campus:  Racism, White Immunity, and the Myth of “Post-Racial” Higher Education

Author:  Nolan L. Cabrera

On April 22, 2015, Boston University professor Saida Grundy set off a Twitter storm with her provocative question: “Why is white America so reluctant to identify white college males as a problem population?” White Guys on Campus is a critical examination of race in higher education, centering Whiteness, in an effort to unveil the frequently unconscious habits of racism among White male undergraduates. Nolan L. Cabrera moves beyond the “few bad apples” frame of contemporary racism, and explores the structures, policies, ideologies, and experiences that allow racism to flourish. This book details many of the contours of contemporary, systemic racism, while engaging the possibility of White students to participate in anti-racism. Ultimately, White Guys on Campus calls upon institutions of higher education to be sites of social transformation instead of reinforcing systemic racism, while creating a platform to engage and challenge the public discourse of “post- racialism.”