Author: Merchant, Brian, author.
Published: 2023
Call Number: 303.483
Format: Books
Summary: Long-listed for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year The "rich and gripping" true story of the first time machines came for human jobs--and how the Luddite uprising explains the power, threat, and toll of big tech and AI today (Naomi Klein)-- The most urgent story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley but two hundred years ago in rural England, when workers known as the Luddites rose up rather than starve at the hands of factory owners who were using automated machines to erase their livelihoods. The Luddites organized guerrilla raids to smash those machines--on punishment of death--and won the support of Lord Byron, enraged the Prince Regent, and inspired the birth of science fiction. This all-but-forgotten class struggle brought nineteenth-century England to its knees. Today, technology imperils millions of jobs, robots are crowding factory floors, and artificial intelligence will soon pervade every aspect of our economy. How will this change the way we live? And what can we do about it? The answers lie in Blood in the Machine. Brian Merchant intertwines a lucid examination of our current age with the story of the Luddites, showing how automation changed our world--and is shaping our future.
Author: Richardson, Heather Cox, author.
Published: 2023
Call Number: 320.473
Format: Books
Summary: "From historian and author of the popular daily newsletter Letters from an American, a vital narrative that explains how America, once a beacon of democracy, now teeters on the brink of autocracy--and how we can turn back. In the midst of the impeachment crisis of 2019, Heather Cox Richardson launched a daily Facebook essay providing the historical background of the daily torrent of news. The essays soon turned into a newsletter and, spread by word of mouth, its readership ballooned to more than 2 million dedicated readers who rely on its plainspoken and informed take on the present and past in America. In Democracy Awakening, Richardson crafts a compelling and original narrative, explaining how, over the decades, a small group of wealthy people have made war on American ideals. By weaponizing language and promoting false history they have led us into authoritarianism--creating a disaffected population and then promising to recreate an imagined past where those people could feel important again. She argues that taking our country back starts by remembering the elements of the nation's true history that marginalized Americans have always upheld. Their dedication to the principles on which this nation was founded has enabled us to renew and expand our commitment to democracy in the past. Richardson sees this history as a roadmap for the nation's future..."--
Author: Pearce, A. J. (Amanda-Jane), author.
Published: 2023
Call Number: LP F PEARCE
Format: Large print
Summary: "London, April 1943. Emmy Lake is in charge of "Yours Cheerfully," the popular advice column in Woman's Friend magazine. Emmy is dedicated to helping readers face the increasing challenges brought about by over three years of war. But her world is turned upside down when Mrs. Cressida Porter becomes the new publisher of the magazine and wants to change everything the readers love. Worst of all, she announces that she is cutting the "Yours Cheerfully" column and her vision for the publication's future seems dire. With the stakes higher than ever, Emmy and her friends must find a way to save the magazine that they love"--
Author: Zhang, C Pam, author.
Published: 2023
Call Number: F ZHANG
Format: Books
Summary: "About a Chinese American chef who, lured to a decadent, enigmatic colony of the superrich in a near future in which food is disappearing, discovers the meaning of pleasure and the ethics of who gets to enjoy it, altering her life and, indirectly, the world"-- A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world's troubles. There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body. In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef's boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.
Author: Finkelstein, Daniel, 1962- author.
Published: 2023
Call Number: 940.53
Format: Books
Summary: "An epic and beautifully written World War II family history that spans Europe, telling of two happy families uprooted by war, their incredible suffering in Hitler's and Stalin's camps, and the near-miraculous survival and rescue of the author's parents who met after the war. Daniel Finkelstein's grandfather Alfred Wiener was a German Jewish intellectual leader who tolled an early warning of the impending Holocaust and became an archivist of Nazi crimes. He relocated his family to safety in Amsterdam, where they became close with Anne Frank's family. But they were eventually separated, and Daniel's mother Mirjam was sent to Bergen-Belsen with her mother and sisters while Alfred worked feverishly to free them. Finkelstein's father, Ludwik, grew up in a prosperous Jewish family in Poland where his father was a patriotic hero of the Great War. But when Stalin took control, Finkelstein's grandfather was deported to Siberia, while Ludwik and his mother were sent to Kazahkstan, where they barely survived freezing winters and harrowing forced labor conditions. Two Roads Home is a page-turning account of ingenuity, bravery and the almost unbelievable coincidences that brought Daniel's parents together. The story features secret archives, forgery and theft, and sweeps across Europe to show the expanse of the war. Moving, engrossing and inspiring, Two Roads Home will profoundly touch all who read it"--
Author: Hamilton, Lisa M., author.
Published: 2023
Call Number: B MOUA
Format: Books
Summary: This unforgettable portrait of resistance, from Laos to California, follows one woman, with wounds inflicted by war and family alike, as she builds a new existence for her and her children by growing Hmong rice, just as her ancestors did, and selling it to those who hunger for the Laos of their memories.
Author: Dev, Sonali, author.
Published: 2023
Call Number: F DEV
Format: Books
Summary: From the bestselling author of The Vibrant Years comes an emotional story of three women navigating ugly truths and safe lies with only love to guide them on a journey of motherhood, friendship, and life. Bestselling advice columnist Vandy Guru built her career teaching others how to live honestly and courageously, but after the loss of her husband, Vandy's public veneer can barely conceal her grief. When her beloved daughter Mallika suddenly disappears and her estranged childhood best friend Rani returns, stirring up long-buried secrets, Vandy's carefully crafted life feels at risk. Aspiring choreographer Mallika Guru is tired of failure. When another audition ends in rejection, she signs up for a genetic study to find out why she's so different from her accomplished family. But the results reveal her whole life to be a lie, and Rani seems to be the only one who knows the truth. Rani Parekh sacrificed everything for Vandy once. But to hold on to the life she's rebuilt, she must confront her troubled history and face Vandy and Mallika. Join these three extraordinary women as they journey from LA to Mumbai on an incredible path of discovery, hope, and love.
Author: O'Reilly, Bill, author. Dugard, Martin, author.
Published: 2023
Call Number: 974.45
Format: Books
Summary: "With over 19 million copies in print and a remarkable record of #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestsellers, Bill O'Reilly's Killing series is the most popular series of narrative histories in the world. Killing the Witches revisits one of the most frightening and inexplicable episodes in American history: the events of 1692 and 1693 in Salem Village, Massachusetts. What began as a mysterious affliction of two young girls who suffered violent fits and exhibited strange behavior soon spread to other young women. Rumors of demonic possession and witchcraft consumed Salem. Soon three women were arrested under suspicion of being witches--but as the hysteria spread, more than 200 people were accused. Thirty were found guilty, twenty were executed, and others died in jail or their lives were ruined. What really happened in Salem? Killing the Witches tells the horrifying story of a colonial town's madness, offering the historical context of similar episodes of community mania during that time, and exploring the evidence that emerged in the Salem trials, in contemporary accounts, and in subsequent investigations. The result is a compulsively readable book about good, evil, and how fear can overwhelm fact and reason"--
Author: Diop, David, 1966- author. Taylor, Sam, 1970- translator.
Published: 2023 2021
Call Number: F DIOP
Format: Books
Summary: "A historical novel about a French botanist's search for a mysterious woman who escaped from slavery in Senegal"-- "Paris, 1806. The renowned botanist Michel Adanson lies on his deathbed, the masterwork to which he dedicated his life still incomplete. As he expires, the last word to escape his lips is a woman's name: Maram. The key to this mysterious woman's identity is Adanson's unpublished memoir of the years he spent in Senegal, concealed in a secret compartment in a chest of drawers. Therein lies a story as fantastical as it is tragic: Maram, it turns out, is none other than the fabled revenant. A young woman of noble birth from the kingdom of Waalo, Maram was sold into slavery but managed to escape from the Island of Gorée--a major embarkation point of the transatlantic slave trade--to a small village hidden in the forest. While on a research expedition in West Africa as a young man, Adanson hears the story of the revenant and becomes obsessed with finding her. Accompanied by his guide, he ventures deep into the Senegalese bush on a journey that reveals not only the savagery of the French colonial occupation but also the unlikely transports of the human heart." --Amazon.com
Author: Umrigar, Thrity N., author.
Published: 2023
Call Number: F UMRIGAR
Format: Books
Summary: "Remy Wadia left India for the United States long ago, carrying his resentment of his mother with him. He has now returned to Bombay to adopt a baby--and to see his elderly mother for the first time in several years. Discovering that she is in the hospital, has stopped talking, and seems to have given up on life, he is struck with guilt for not realizing just how sick she has become. His unexpected appearance and assiduous attention revives her and enables her to return to her home. But when Remy finds an old photograph from his adoring late father, shocking long-held family secrets surface"--
Author: Wright, Lawrence, 1947- author.
Published: 2023
Call Number: F WRIGHT
Format: Books
Summary: "A sharply drawn send-up of Texas politics--from the Pulitzer Prize winner and best-selling author--about a dark-horse candidate who risks his personal happiness for a career in the Texas House of Representatives." --inner jacket blurb intro. "Sonny Lamb is an affable, if floundering, rancher with the unfortunate habit of becoming a punchline in his Texas hometown. Most recently, he bought his own bull at auction, saving it from being sold to a slaughterhouse. But when a fire breaks out at a neighbor's farm, Sonny makes headlines in another way: Not waiting for help, he bolts to the farm and heroically saves the family's daughter and her horse, riding the animal out of their burning barn. Within days of the event, he attracts the notice of a mysterious man named L.D. who arrives at his door and asks if he'd like to run as a Republican for his districts representative seat. Though Sonny has zero experience and doesn't consider himself political in the least, he decides to throw his hat in the ring...and he wins. As Sonny navigates life in politics, from running a campaign to negotiating in the capitol, he must learn the ropes, weighing his own ethics and environmental concerns against the pressures of veteran politicians, savvy lobbyists, and his own party. In tracing Sonny's attempt to balance his marriage and morality with an increasingly volatile professional life, Lawrence Wright has crafted a hilarious, immensely clever rollercoaster ride about one man's pursuit of goodness in the Lonestar State"--
Author: Hill, Kashmir, author.
Published: 2023
Call Number: 006.2483
Format: Books
Summary: "In this riveting feat of reporting, Kashmir Hill illuminates the improbable rise of Clearview AI and how Hoan Ton-That, a computer engineer and Richard Schwartz, a Giuliani associate, launched a terrifying facial recognition app with society-altering potential. They were assisted by a cast of controversial characters, including conservative provocateur Charles Johnson and billionaire Trump backer Peter Thiel. The app can scan a blurry portrait, and, in just seconds, collect every instance of a person's online life. It can find your name, your social media profiles, your friends and family, even your home address (as well as photos of you that you may not even have known existed). The story of Clearview AI opens up a window into a larger, more urgent one about our tortured relationship to technology, the way it entertains and seduces us even as it steals our privacy and lays us bare to bad actors in politics, criminal justice, and tech. This technology has been quietly growing more powerful for decades. Ubiquitous in China and Russia, it was also developed by American companies, including Google and Facebook, who decided it was too radical to release. That did not stop Clearview. They gave demos of the tech to interested private investors and contracted it out to hundreds of law enforcement agencies around the country. American law enforcement, including the Department of Homeland Security, has already used it to arrest people for everything from petty theft to assault. Without regulation it could expand the reach of policing--as it has in China and Russia--to a terrifying, dystopian level"--
Author: Wendig, Chuck, author.
Published: 2023
Call Number: F WENDIG
Format: Books
Summary: "A small town is transformed when seven strange trees begin bearing magical apples in this horror novel from the bestselling author of Wanderers and The Book of Accidents"-- It's autumn in the town of Harrow, but something else is changing in the town besides the season. Because in that town there is an orchard, and in that orchard, seven most unusual trees. And from those trees grows a new sort of apple: Strange, beautiful, with skin so red it's nearly black. Take a bite of one of these apples and you will desire only to devour another. And another. You will become stronger. More vital. More yourself, you will believe. But then your appetite for the apples and their peculiar gifts will keep growing--and become darker. This is what happens when the townsfolk discover the secret of the orchard. Soon it seems that everyone is consumed by an obsession with the magic of the apples... and what's the harm, if it is making them all happier, more confident, more powerful?
Author: Follett, Ken, author.
Published: 2023
Call Number: F FOLLETT
Format: Books
Summary: "The Spinning Jenny was invented in 1770, and with that, a new era of manufacturing and industry changed lives everywhere within a generation. A world filled with unrest wrestles for control over this new world order: A mother's husband is killed in a work accident due to negligence; a young woman fights to fund her school for impoverished children; a well-intentioned young man unexpectedly inherits a failing business; one man ruthlessly protects his wealth no matter the cost, all the while war cries are heard from France, as Napoleon sets forth a violent master plan to become emperor of the world. As institutions are challenged and toppled in unprecedented fashion, ripples of change ricochet through our characters' lives as they are left to reckon with the future and a world they must rebuild from the ashes of war" --
Author: Maher, Kerri, author.
Published: 2023
Call Number: F MAHER
Format: Books
Summary: "A dramatic and inspiring novel based on the true story of the Jane Collective and the brave women who fought for our right to choose, from the USA Today bestselling author of The Paris Bookseller. Chicago, early 1970s: Who does a woman call when she needs help? Jane. The best-known secret in the city, Jane is an underground women's health organization composed entirely of women helping women, empowering them to live lives free from the expectations of society by offering reproductive counseling and safe, illegal abortions. Veronica, Jane's founder, prides herself on the services she has provided to thousands of women, yet the price of others' freedom is that she leads a double life. When she's not at Jane, Veronica plays the role of a conventional housewife--which becomes even more difficult during her own high-risk pregnancy. Two more women in Veronica's neighborhood are grappling with similar disconnects. Margaret, a young professor at the University of Chicago, secretly volunteers at Jane as she falls in love with a man whose attitude toward his ex-wife increasingly disturbs her. Patty, who's long been content as a devoted wife and mother, has begun to sense that something essential is missing from her life. When her runaway younger sister Eliza shows up unexpectedly, Patty is forced to come to terms with what it really means to love and support a sister. In this historic moment when the personal was nothing if not political, when television, movies, and commercials told women they'd "come a long way, baby," Veronica, Margaret, and Patty must make choices that will change the course of their lives forever"--
Author: Winger, Jill, author.
Published: 2023
Call Number: 333.72
Format: Books
Summary: When the pandemic hit in 2020, flour and vegetable seeds flew off the shelves. But homesteader and entrepreneur Jill Winger believes these longings for sourdough bread and fresh veggies are more than a trend. As our society races toward progress, we've left something important behind. We are more connected than ever before, yet we're still feeling unfulfilled. In Old-Fashioned on Purpose, Winger shows how simplifying our lives and adopting retro skills such as gardening and handiwork can be the key to creating the happy and healthy life we're yearning for. Inside these pages, readers will learn: How to find joy in the kitchen (even if you hate to cook) Proven strategies for growing your own groceries The surprising stress-relievers that can be found in your backyard How to craft a more grounded routine and save money in the process Clever tips and creative DIYs to help you embark on your old-fashioned journey You don't have to live on a farm to cultivate a simpler life. This inspiring and practical book offers a powerful new sense of purpose, with plenty of tomatoes, chickens, and bread making along the way.
Author: Connolly, John, 1968- author.
Published: 2023
Call Number: F CONNOLLY
Format: Books
Summary: While reading aloud fairy stories in hopes of bringing her comatose eight-year-old daughter back to this world, Ceres is called to a land colored by the memories of childhood and the folklore beloved by her father where old enemies are watching and waiting. "Phoebe, an eight-year-old girl, lies comatose following a car accident--a body without a spirit. Ceres, her mother, can only sit by her bedside and read aloud the fairy stories Phoebe loves in the hope they might summon her back to this world. But an old house on the hospital grounds, a property connected to a book written by a vanished author, is calling to Ceres. Something wants her to enter, to journey to a land colored by the memories of childhood, and the folklore beloved of her father--a land of witches and dryads, giants and mandrakes; a land where old enemies are watching and waiting...The Land of Lost Things." --Amazon.com
Author: Patterson, James, 1947- author. Lupica, Mike, author.
Published: 2023
Call Number: F PATTERSO
Format: Books
Summary: "Tough-as-nails criminal defense attorney Jane Smith is hip-deep in the murder trial of the century. Actually, her charmless client might've committed several murders. She's also fallen in love with a wonderful guy. And an equally wonderful dog, a mutt. But Jane doesn't have much time. She's just received a terminal diagnosis giving her twelve months. Unless she's murdered before her expiration date"--Dust jacket flap.
Author: Galbraith, Robert, author.
Published: 2023
Call Number: F GALBRAIT
Format: Books
Summary: "In the seventh installment in the Strike series, Cormoran and Robin must rescue a man ensnared in the trap of a dangerous cult. Private Detective Cormoran Strike is contacted by a worried father whose son, Will, has gone to join a religious cult in the depths of the Norfolk countryside. The Universal Humanitarian Church is, on the surface, a peaceable organization that campaigns for a better world. Yet Strike discovers that beneath the surface there are deeply sinister undertones, and unexplained deaths. In order to try to rescue Will, Strike's business partner, Robin Ellacott, decides to infiltrate the cult, and she travels to Norfolk to live incognito among its members. But in doing so, she is unprepared for the dangers that await her there or for the toll it will take on her..."--
Author: Archer, Jeffrey, 1940- author.
Published: 2023
Call Number: F ARCHER
Format: Books
Summary: "Impenetrable. Well protected. Secure. Home to the most valuable jewels on earth. But once a year, when the Queen attends the State Opening of Parliament, the Metropolitan Police must execute the most secret operation in their armory as they transport the Crown Jewels across London. For decades, the elite squad at Scotland Yard have been in charge of the operation. And for decades, it's run like clockwork. But this year, everything is about to change. Because a master criminal has set his sights on pulling off the most outrageous theft in history--and with a man on the inside, the odds are in his favor. Unless the team can stop him before it's too late..."--
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