“Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories,” is the theme for Women’s History Month this year, and I don’t think they could have picked a better theme. At our core, humans are creatures of stories. Long before the written word, we used oral storytelling to convey important information and ideas and most importantly, meaning. Whether you…
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While a few Black documentary film directors like Ava DuVernay (“13th”) and Spike Lee (“When The Levees Broke”) have achieved celebrity status, many more are flying under the mainstream radar. Given a lack of representation, people have called out #OscarsSoWhite every year since 2015. Acknowledging that audiences want to see diversity both on screen and…
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Living in a world that is so connected through the internet and social media, it is difficult to imagine how in a world connected mostly by pen, paper and telegraph, the Underground Railroad, a collaboration of somewhat random individuals across the country, managed to connect and bring so many people to safety. Around 30,000 slaves…
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Here is a quick look at the most noteworthy nonfiction titles being released this July. Visit our catalog for a more extensive list. Top Picks “Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History, and the Outbreaks to Come” by Richard Preston This time, Ebola started with a two-year-old child…
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Do you love all matter of spooky ephemera, including (but not limited to) asymmetrical gourds, a crunchy walk through leaf-litter at dusk, black cats, swooping bats, a chilly breeze, the moonlit hoot-hooting of an owl, flickering shadows, the curling crackle of a bonfire with friends, your favorite elder’s throaty cackle? 🍠🍂🐈🖤🦇🌬️🌕🔥 Are you into that…
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“All human things are a circle” is the inscription on the temple to Athena in Athens. I had started to write a very different article. I was going to write about summer and beach reads, but this just doesn’t seem to be the summer for that. Not that there’s anything wrong with escaping into a…
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What a year this was! Am I right? Between the global pandemic, raging fires on the west coast, a cancelled Olympics, and an election that just wouldn’t stop, I found it difficult to read. Well, I shouldn’t say that because I did read plenty, but the nature of what I read and how I read…
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Below I’m highlighting some of the last nonfiction books coming out this year in December. All of the mentioned titles are available to put on hold in our catalog and will also be made available via the library’s Overdrive website on the day of publication in eBook and downloadable audiobook format (as available). For a more extensive list of new…
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My Mom bought us a beautiful globe and world atlas when we were kids. The ocean floors were depicted in blues ranging from a very light, almost white blue to a deep navy. The rifts running through the oceans looked like seams knitting our planet together. We owe this image and theories of plate tectonics…
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“Command and Control” tells the true story of a 1980 nuclear weapons incident in Damascus, Arkansas – during routine maintenance at a Titan II missile silo in Damascus, a technician dropped a socket wrench which led to a fire in the silo, and eventually an explosion. The book also splices in parts of nuclear history…
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