New Non-Fiction: Thursday, October 31

If you frequently read fiction books, you might want to consider a nonfiction text for a change of pace. The library is constantly receiving new nonfiction and biography books, including the items below. Why not stop by and check out a book, CD, movie, or other material that you find interesting. We will continue to offer “Grab and Go” services for those who prefer to place their books on hold online and then pick them up in the cabinet inside the library.

Here are a few of the new nonfiction books that have arrived at the library recently. We invite you to check them out!

Atlas Obscura Wild Life: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Living Wonders

It’s more than a field guide—it’s an adventure. From the curious minds of Atlas Obscura, comes an unputdownable tour through the world’s most extraordinary natural wonders and curiosities. Learn how dung beetles navigate by the stars and trees communicate through their roots. Meet one of the strongest animals in the world: the puny peacock mantis shrimp. Visit a 44,000 year old shrub, float along flying rivers, and explore a garbage dump teeming with endangered storks. Featuring over 500 extraordinary plants, animals, and natural phenomena with illustrations and photos on every page, first-person interviews, and engaging infographics, the book takes readers around the globe, with stops in every continent.

The Message

The first of the book’s three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. He roams the “steampunk” city of “old traditions and new machinery,” meeting with strangers and dining with local writers who quiz him in French about African American politics. Back in the USA he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he explores a different mythology, this one enforced on its subjects by the state. In Palestine, the longest of the essays, he meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians. He travels into Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality the myth is meant to hide.

Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering

Why is Miami… Miami? What does the heartbreaking fate of the cheetah tell us about the way we raise our children? Why do Ivy League schools care so much about sports? In this provocative new work, Malcolm Gladwell returns for the first time in twenty-five years to the subject of social epidemics and tipping points, this time with the aim of explaining the dark side of contagious phenomena. Through a series of riveting stories, Gladwell traces the rise of a new and troubling form of social engineering. Revenge of the Tipping Point is Gladwell’s most personal book yet. With his characteristic mix of storytelling and social science, he offers a guide to making sense of the contagions of modern world.