Introvert power: why your inner life is your hidden strength

By Helgoe, Laurie A.

Publishing Date: ©2013

Classification: 100

Call Number: 155.232 HEL

America is reportedly a nation of extroverts, but the latest research shows that more than half of Americans are in fact introverts. In a time when introversion is hot, Introvert Power is a valuable self-help book for introverts, treating introversion not as a hurdle to overcome but a personal attribute to embrace.

The divine within: selected writings on enlightenment

By Huxley, Aldous

Publishing Date: 2013, 1992

Classification: 200

Call Number: 200 HUX

Brave New World author Aldous Huxley on enlightenment and the "ultimate reality" In this anthology of twenty-six essays and other writings, Huxley discusses the nature of God, enlightenment, being, good and evil, religion, eternity, and the divine. Huxley consistently examined the spiritual basis of both the individual and human society, always seeking to reach an authentic and clearly defined experience of the divine. Featuring an introduction by renowned religious scholar Huston Smith, this celebration of "ultimate reality" proves relevant and prophetic in addressing the spiritual hunger so many feel today.

I am that: talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

By Nisargadatta

Publishing Date: 2012, ©1973

Classification: 200

Call Number: 294.54 NIS

This collection of the timeless teachings of one of the greatest sages of India, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, is a testament to the uniqueness of the seer's life and work and is regarded by many as a modern spiritual classic. I Am That (first published in 1973) continues to draw new audiences and to enlighten seekers anxious for self-realization. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj was a teacher who did not propound any ideology or religion, but gently unwrapped the mystery of the self. His message was simple, direct, and sublime. I Am That preserves his dialogs with the followers who came from around the world seeking guidance in destroying false identities. The sage's sole concern was with the human suffering and the ending of suffering. It was his mission to guide the individual to an understanding of his true nature and the timelessness of being. He taught that the mind must recognize and penetrate its own state of being--not "being this or that, here or there, then or now," but just timeless being.

The Ramayana of Valmiki: the complete English translation

By Valmiki

Publishing Date: 2021

Classification: 200

Call Number: 294.5922 VAL

"The definitive translation of the classic Sanskrit work in a single-volume paperback edition"--

NEW RELEASE

Survival of the richest: escape fantasies of the tech billionaires

By Rushkoff, Douglas

Publishing Date: [2022]

Classification: 300

Call Number: 303.483 RUS

"The tech elite have a plan to survive the apocalypse: they want to leave us all behind. Five mysterious billionaires summoned theorist Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The topic? How to survive the "Event": the societal catastrophe they know is coming. Rushkoff came to understand that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley-style certainty that they and their cohort can break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to escape a disaster of their own making-as long as they have enough money and the right technology. In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. In a dozen urgent, electrifying chapters, he confronts tech utopianism, the datafication of all human interaction, and the exploitation of that data by corporations. Through fascinating characters-master programmers who want to remake the world from scratch as if redesigning a video game and bankers who return from Burning Man convinced that incentivized capitalism is the solution to environmental disasters-Rushkoff explains why those with the most power to change our current trajectory have no interest in doing so. And he shows how recent forms of anti-mainstream rebellion-QAnon, for example, or meme stocks-reinforce the same destructive order. This mind-blowing work of social analysis shows us how to transcend the landscape The Mindset created-a world alive with algorithms and intelligences actively rewarding our most selfish tendencies-and rediscover community, mutual aid, and human interdependency. In a thundering conclusion, Survival of the Richest argues that the only way to survive the coming catastrophe is to ensure it doesn't happen in the first place"--

The underground girls of Kabul: in search of a hidden resistance in Afghanistan

By Nordberg, Jenny

Publishing Date: [2015]

Classification: 300

Call Number: 305.3095 NOR

An award-winning foreign correspondent who contributed to a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series reveals the secret Afghan custom of disguising girls as boys to improve their prospects, discussing its political and social significance as well as the experiences of its practitioners.

The will to change: men, masculinity, and love

By hooks, bell

Publishing Date: [2004]

Classification: 300

Call Number: 305.31 HOO

In a social and cultural analysis, the author explores the world of masculinity and maleness to address some of men's most common concerns, including a fear of intimacy and the loss of their patriarchal place in society, arguing that an emotionally rewarding inner life holds the key to successful intimate relationships.

White rage: the unspoken truth of our racial divide

By Anderson, Carol

Publishing Date: 2016

Classification: 300

Call Number: 305.8009 AND

"As Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in August 2014, and media commentators across the ideological spectrum referred to the angry response of African Americans as 'black rage, ' historian Carol Anderson wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post showing that this was, instead, 'white rage at work. With so much attention on the flames, ' she writes, 'everyone had ignored the kindling.' Since 1865 and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, every time African Americans have made advances towards full participation in our democracy, white reaction has fueled a deliberate and relentless rollback of their gains. The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with the Black Codes and Jim Crow; the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was met with the shutting down of public schools throughout the South while taxpayer dollars financed segregated white private schools; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 triggered a coded but powerful response, the so-called Southern Strategy and the War on Drugs that disenfranchised millions of African Americans while propelling presidents Nixon and Reagan into the White House. Carefully linking these and other historical flash points when social progress for African Americans was countered by deliberate and cleverly crafted opposition, Anderson pulls back the veil that has long covered actions made in the name of protecting democracy, fiscal responsibility, or protection against fraud, rendering visible the long lineage of white rage. Compelling and dramatic in the unimpeachable history it relates, White Rage will add an important new dimension to the national conversation about race in America."--Publisher's description

Making sense: conversations on consciousness, morality, and the future of humanity

By Harris, Sam

Publishing Date: [2020]

Classification: 300

Call Number: 306 HAR

"A dozen of the best conversations from the podcast Making Sense, on topics that range from the nature of consciousness and free will, to politics and extremism, to acting ethically"--

NEW RELEASE

The free world: art and thought in the Cold War

By Menand, Louis

Publishing Date: 2022

Classification: 300

Call Number: 306.0973 MEN

In his follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand offers a new intellectual and cultural history of the postwar years. The Cold War was not just a contest of power. It was also about ideas, in the broadest sense--economic and political, artistic and personal. In The Free World, the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar and critic Louis Menand tells the story of American culture in the pivotal years from the end of World War II to Vietnam and shows how changing economic, technological, and social forces put their mark on creations of the mind. How did elitism and an anti-totalitarian skepticism of passion and ideology give way to a new sensibility defined by freewheeling experimentation and loving the Beatles? How was the ideal of "freedom" applied to causes that ranged from anti-communism and civil rights to radical acts of self-creation via art and even crime? With the wit and insight familiar to readers of The Metaphysical Club and his New Yorker essays, Menand takes us inside Hannah Arendt's Manhattan, the Paris of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Merce Cunningham and John Cage's residencies at North Carolina's Black Mountain College, and the Memphis studio where Sam Phillips and Elvis Presley created a new music for the American teenager. He examines the post war vogue for French existentialism, structuralism and post-structuralism, the rise of abstract expressionism and pop art, Allen Ginsberg's friendship with Lionel Trilling, James Baldwin's transformation into a Civil Right spokesman, Susan Sontag's challenges to the New York Intellectuals, the defeat of obscenity laws, and the rise of the New Hollywood. Stressing the rich flow of ideas across the Atlantic, he also shows how Europeans played a vital role in promoting and influencing American art and entertainment. By the end of the Vietnam era, the American government had lost the moral prestige it enjoyed at the end of the Second World War, but America's once-despised culture had become respected and adored. With unprecedented verve and range, this book explains how that happened. --

World War II and the West it wrought

Publishing Date: [2020]

Classification: 300

Call Number: 307.1

"This volume examines how the Western United States underwent a period of profound transformation during World War II. A lineup of notable historians examines the cultural, environmental, economic, and political ramifications of the war on the American West, and argue for new ways of conceptualizing the "Western frontier" in the second half of the twentieth century"--

NEW RELEASE

Recessional: the death of free speech and the cost of a free lunch

By Mamet, David

Publishing Date: [2022]

Classification: 300

Call Number: 320.5097 MAM

Exposing how oppressive cultural codes--encapsulated in buzzwords such as inclusion, diversity, social justice, appropriation--are constricting the vibrant intellectual life of the world's freest country, a renowned author and playwright examines how politics and cultural attitudes about rebellion have shifted in the U.S. throughout history.

NEW RELEASE

Voting rights

Publishing Date: 2022

Classification: 300

Call Number: 324.6

"This issue of The Reference Shelf looks at some of the best American journalism and writing on the topic of voting rights. Sections present articles on subjects ranging from convict disenfranchisement, voting and race, and the challenges of voting in urban versus rural areas. This issue pays special attention to the debate over voter fraud and voting security and how recent allegations of voter fraud have been used to justify new voter restrictions in many states. Other topics covered include voter ID requirements, voting and transportation for the elderly, and the debate over online voting."--

NEW RELEASE

The big lie: election chaos, political opportunism, and the state of American politics after 2020

By Lemire, Jonathan

Publishing Date: 2022

Classification: 300

Call Number: 324.973 LEM

"A probing and illuminating analysis of current state of American politics, focusing on Donald Trump's lie about election fraud, by the White House Bureau Chief of Politico and the host of MSNBC's Way Too Early Donald Trump first tried it out in 2016, at an August rally in Ohio. He said that perhaps he wouldn't accept the election results in his race against Hillary Clinton, that the election was "rigged." He then mentioned it at more rallies and even at one of the fall debates. He didn't have to challenge the result that year, but the stage was set. When he lost in 2020, he started the lie back up again and to devastating results: an insurrection at the Capitol in January 2021. In the more than five tumultuous, paradigm-shifting years of Donald Trump's presidency and beyond, his near-constant lying has become a fixture of political life. It is inextricably linked with how his party behaves, how the Democrats respond to it, and how he remains relevant, even after a decisive loss in 2020. Jonathan Lemire brings his connections, profile, and dogged reportorial instincts to bear in his first book that explores how this phenomenon shapes our politics. He uncovers that "The Big Lie," as it's been termed, isn't just about the 2020 election. It's become a political philosophy that has only further divided the two parties. Republicans are still wholly under Trump's sway. From his retirement at his Florida and New Jersey clubs he meets with Republican officials, aspiring candidates, and advisers and demands loyalty about this twisted way of thinking. And Democrats still deal with him as their opposition party is driven by a blatant lie. The parties aren't divided by the aisle-they're on different planets. Written with sharp political insight and detailed with dozens of interviews, The Big Lie is the first book to examine this unprecedented and tenuous moment in our nation's politics"--

Better than sex: confessions of a political junkie

By Thompson, Hunter S.

Publishing Date: [1994]

Classification: 300

Call Number: 324.973 THO

"Bill Clinton would have played the Jew's harp stark naked on 60 Minutes if he thought it would help him get elected. He is the Willy Loman of Generation X, a traveling salesman from Arkansas who has the loyalty of a lizard with its tail broken off and the midnight taste of a man who'd double-date with the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart.".

The Atlantic and its enemies: a personal history of the Cold War

By Stone, Norman

Publishing Date: 2010

Classification: 300

Call Number: 327.0904 STO

Discusses the abundance of Communist military and cultural successes during the Cold War and the sudden triumph of the British and American financial systems and ideology.

Facts and fears: hard truths from a life in intelligence

By Clapper, James R.

Publishing Date: [2018]

Classification: 300

Call Number: 327.1273 CLA

When he stepped down in January 2017 as the fourth United States Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper had been President Obama's senior intelligence adviser for six and a half years, longer than his three predecessors combined. He led the U.S. intelligence community through a period that included the raid on Osama bin Laden, the Benghazi attack, the leaks of Edward Snowden, and Russia's influence operation during the 2016 U.S. election campaign. Now Clapper traces his career through the growing threat of cyberattacks, his relationships with presidents and Congress, and the truth about Russia's role in the presidential election. He describes, in the wake of Snowden and WikiLeaks, his efforts to make intelligence more transparent and to push back against the suspicion that Americans' private lives are subject to surveillance. Finally, it was living through Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and seeing how the foundations of American democracy were -- and continue to be -- undermined by a foreign power that led him to break with his instincts honed through more than five decades in the intelligence profession to share his inside experience.

The dynamics of Congress: the guide to the people and the process of lawmaking

By Woods, Patricia Dillon

Publishing Date: [2017]

Classification: 300

Call Number: 328.73 WOO

Good economics for hard times

By Banerjee, Abhijit V.

Publishing Date: 2019

Classification: 300

Call Number: 330.9 BAN

Figuring out how to deal with today's critical economic problems is perhaps the great challenge of our time. Much greater than space travel or perhaps even the next revolutionary medical breakthrough, what is at stake is the whole idea of the good life as we have known it. Immigration and inequality, globalization and technological disruption, slowing growth and accelerating climate change - these are sources of great anxiety across the world, from New Delhi and Dakar to Paris and Washington, DC. The resources to address these challenges are there - what we lack are ideas that will help us jump the wall of disagreement and distrust that divides us. If we succeed, history will remember our era with gratitude: if we fail, the potential losses are incalculable. In this revolutionary book, renowned MIT economists Abijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo take on this challenge, building on cutting-edge research in economics explained with lucidity and grace. Original, provocative, and urgent, Good Economics for Hard Times makes a persuasive case for an intelligent interventionism and a society built on compassion and respect. It is an extraordinary achievement, one that shines a light to help us appreciate and understand our precariously balanced world. --

NEW RELEASE

Fen, bog & swamp: a short history of peatland destruction and its role in the climate crisis

By Proulx, Annie

Publishing Date: 2022

Classification: 300

Call Number: 333 PRO

From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx - whose novels are infused with her knowledge and deep concern for the earth - comes an urgent and riveting history of wetlands, their ecological role and how the loss of them threatens the planet. Fens, bogs, swamps and marine estuaries are the earth's most desirable and dependable resources, and in four illuminating parts Proulx documents the emergence of their systemic destruction in the pursuit of profit and the consequent release of their stored carbon. Wide-ranging and idiosyncratic, Proulx's explanation of wetlands takes readers to the fens of sixteenth-century England, Canada's Hudson Bay Lowlands, Russia's Great Vasyugan Mire and America's Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and introduces the nineteenth-century explorers who launched the ravaging of the Amazon rainforest. Proulx was born in the 1930s, a time, as she says, when 'in the ever-continuing name of progress, Western countries busily raped their own and other countries of minerals, timber, fish and wildlife.' Fen, Bog & Swamp is both a revelatory history and an urgent plea for wetland reclamation from a writer whose passionate devotion to observing and preserving the environment is on glorious display.