New Books: Tuesday, August 25

The library is now open for limited patron access. There are four marked parking spaces outside; please park in one of these if you’d like to come in to browse. If all four spaces are full, please wait until one becomes available, in order to allow us to keep safe social distances inside. There is also a space designated for curbside book delivery, and another for anyone who needs to use a computer. Please use these spaces as appropriate, or wait in another spot until one becomes available. Thank you for your help as we work to make the library a safe place for all!

Here are a few more of the new books we’ve gotten in since we closed for the pandemic:

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Return From Siberia

In the midst of running a long-shot political campaign, Democratic political consultant John Simon discovers a 100-year-old manuscript written by his grandfather Joseph–a brilliant young revolutionary whose exile to Siberia by the last czar of Russia is just the beginning of an extraordinary tale of survival, romance, and revolution. As Joseph’s manuscript is translated, chapter-by-chapter, the Simon family is pulled deep into their ancestor’s story– in particular, the bitter rivalry between two brothers, whose competing visions of the American Dream are played out on the campaign trail and in their lives.

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What to Expect: Eating Well When You’re Expecting

This brand new edition of America’s pregnancy food bible covers it all through those nine months of baby-making and beyond: the latest facts on superfoods, food trends, food safety. Foods to chow down on, foods (and drinks) to limit, and those to cut out altogether. Realistic, body-positive advice and savvy strategies on how to eat well when you’re too green to come face-to-fork with broccoli. Or too bloated to eat at all. Or on the run. Or on the job. Whether you’re a red-meat eater or a vegan, a carb craver or a gluten-free girl, a fast-foodie or a slow cooker. Whether you’re hungry for nutritional facts (which vitamins and minerals the pregnant body needs and where to find them), or just plain hungry. Plus, how to put it all together, easily and tastily, with dozens of practical tips and 170 recipes that are as delicious as they are nutritious, as easy to love as they are to make.

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Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and journalist explains, with electrifying clarity, why some of her contemporaries have abandoned liberal democratic ideals in favor of strongman cults, nationalist movements, or one-party states. Across the world today, from the U.S. to Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege while different forms of authoritarianism are on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum argues that we should not be surprised by this change: There is an inherent appeal to political systems with radically simple beliefs, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else. People are not just ideological, she contends in this captivating extended essay; they are also practical, pragmatic, opportunist. The authoritarian and nationalist parties that have arisen within modern democracies offer new paths to wealth or power for their adherents. Describing politicians, journalists, intellectuals, and others who have abandoned democratic ideals in the U.K., U.S., Spain, Poland, and Hungary, Applebaum reveals the patterns that link the new advocates of illiberalism and charts how they use conspiracy theory, political polarization, social media, and nostalgia to change their societies

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