NCW Libraries

When four girls from different social cliques meet each other during Senior Skip Day, they discover they are more like each other than they thought.

"A guide for how to be a thoughtful, informed ally to disabled people, with actionable steps for what to say and do (and what not to do) and how you can help make the world a more accessible place."-- "People with disabilities are the world's largest minority, an estimated 15 percent of the global population. But many of us - disabled and nondisabled alike - don't know how to act, what to say, or how to be an ally to the disability community. 'Demystifying...

""David Bandurski is a modern-day Marco Polo taking us into theheart of new China." --Kevin Sites, author of In the Hot Zone China's explosive modernization has led to a unique phenomenon: voraciously-growing cities absorbing formerly distant villages that become tenement communities. Dragons in Diamond Village is about the plight--and the courage--of the village-dwellers caught in this tide of urbanization: Huang Minpeng, a semi-literate farmer turned...

"Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Gene Weingarten explores the events of a random day in U.S. history, offering a diorama of American life that illuminates all that has changed--and all that hasn't--in the past three decades. On New Year's Day 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Gene Weingarten asked three strangers to, literally, pluck a day, month, and year from a hat. That day--chosen completely at random--turned out to be Sunday, December 28, 1986,...

Is race only about the color of your skin? In The Latinos of Asia, Anthony Christian Ocampo shows that what "color" you are depends largely on your social context. Filipino Americans, for example, helped establish the Asian American movement and are classified by the U.S. Census as Asian. But the legacy of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines means that they share many cultural characteristics with Latinos, such as last names, religion, and language....

"Billionaire Wilderness offers an unprecedented look inside the world of the ultra-wealthy and their relationship to the natural world, showing how the ultra-rich use nature to resolve key predicaments in their lives. Justin Farrell immerses himself in Teton County, Wyoming--both the richest county in the United States and the county with the nation's highest level of income inequality--to investigate interconnected questions about money, nature,...

"Misinformation affects all of us on a daily basis--from social media to larger political challenges, from casual conversations in supermarkets, to even our closest relationships. While we recognize the dangers that misinformation poses, the problem is complex--far beyond what policing social media alone can achieve--and too often our limited solutions are shaped by partisan politics and individual interpretations of truth. In Misbelief, preeminent...

"Many of us are worried (or at least we should be) about the impacts of globalization, pollution, and biotechnology on our diets. Whether it's monoculture crops, hormone-fed beef, or high-fructose corn syrup, industrially-produced foods have troubling consequences for us and the planet. But as culinary diversity diminishes, many people are looking to a surprising place to safeguard the future: into the past. The Lost Supper explores an idea that is...

"Joining the ranks of Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Zora Neale Hurston's rediscovered classic Barracoon, an immersive and revelatory history of the Clotilda, the last slave ship to land on US soil, told through the stories of its survivors-the last documented survivors of any slave ship-whose lives diverged and intersected in profound ways"-- Provided by publisher.

"For readers of Atul Gawande, Andrew Solomon, and Anne Lamott, a profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir by a young neurosurgeon faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis who attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the...