NCW Libraries

"In finite games, like football or chess, the players are known, the rules are fixed, and the endpoint is clear. The winners and losers are easily identified. In infinite games, like business or politics or life itself, the players come and go, the rules are changeable, and there is no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers in an infinite game; there is only ahead and behind. The more I started to understand the difference between finite...

Vance, a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, provides an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm. J.D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like...

"Fourteen years old and growing up in the Middle East, Lamya is an overachiever and a class clown, qualities that help her hide in plain sight when she realizes she has a crush on her teacher--her female teacher. She's also fourteen when she reads a passage in Quran class about Maryam, known as the Virgin Mary in the Christian Bible, that changes everything. Lamya learns that Maryam was untempted by an angelically handsome man, and later, when told...

"Being a working mom should work. Instead, it is a thankless, incredibly difficult job, marked by impossible contradictions and unreachable expectations. American moms are more burned out than any time in history. We believed we could have it all - fulfilling work and a healthy and happy family. We pick up responsibilities wherever we go - at work, at home, in our communities. We try to CARRY it all-and we can. Because moms are superheroes with superpowers!...

Popular sixteen-year-old Gavin is happy spending his time with friends, dating, and playing tennis, until a mysterious girl named Antoinette transfers to his school and influences the way he views himself, his friends, and his relationships.

"A stirring and powerful memoir from black cultural critic Rebecca Carroll recounting her struggle to overcome a completely white childhood in order to forge her identity as a black woman in America"--

"In the current period of social and political unrest, conversations about identity are becoming more frequent and more difficult. On subjects like critical race theory, gender equity in the workplace, and LGBTQ-inclusive classrooms, many of us are understandably fearful of saying the wrong thing. That fear can sometimes prevent us from speaking up at all, depriving people from marginalized groups of support and stalling progress toward a more just...

Chronicles America's more than twenty-year struggle with opioid addiction, from the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, through the spread of addiction in distressed communities in Central Appalachia, to the current national crisis.

"Voter suppression has plagued America since its inception, and so has the issue of identity-who is really American and what that means. When tied together, as they are in our modern politics, citizens are harmed in overt, subtle, and even personal ways. Stacey Abrams experienced the effects firsthand, running one of the most unconventional races in modern politics as the Democratic nominee for the governorship in Georgia and the first black woman...

"A current, constructive, and actionable exploration of today's racial landscape, offering straightforward clarity that readers of all races need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divide. In So You Want to Talk About Race, Editor at Large of The Establishment, Ijeoma Oluo offers a contemporary, accessible take on the racial landscape in America, addressing head-on such issues as privilege, police brutality, intersectionality, micro-aggressions,...