NF-Staff Faves

"The classic, bestselling book on the psychology of racism-now fully revised and updated. Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about enabling communication...

In Wilder, Claire Wahmanholm maps an alien but unnervingly familiar world as it accelerates into cataclysm. Here refugees listen to relaxation tapes that create an Arcadia out of tires and bleach. Here the alphabet spells out disaster and devours children. Here plate tectonics birth a misery rift, spinning loved ones away from each other across an uncaring sea. And here the cosmos--and Cosmos, as Carl Sagan's hopeful words are fissured by erasure--yawns...

"For anyone who has ever felt like they don't belong, Sigh, Gone shares an irreverent, funny, and moving tale of displacement and assimilation woven together with poignant themes from beloved works of classic literature. In 1975, during the fall of Saigon, Phuc Tran immigrates to America along with his family. By sheer chance they land in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a small town where the Trans struggle to assimilate into their new life. In this coming-of-age...

"Irby is forty, and increasingly uncomfortable in her own skin despite what Inspirational Instagram Infographics have promised her. She has left her job as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic, has published successful books and has been friendzoned by Hollywood, left Chicago, and moved into a house with a garden that requires repairs and know-how with her wife in a Blue town in the middle of a Red state where she now hosts book clubs and makes mason...

Oliver Sacks investigates the complex relationship between the brain and the mind and, almost impossibly, manages to make his subject matter not only accessible to the general reader, but utterly absorbing. He tells the stories of individuals suffering from perceptual and intellectual disorders: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; whose...

Setting off alone from Boston aboard the 36 foot wooden sloop Spray in April 1895, Capt. Slocum went on to join the ranks of the world's great circumnavigators. But by circling wthe globe without crew or consorts, Slocum would outdo them all. His three year solo voyage of more than 46,000 miles remains unmatched in maritime history of its courage, skill and determination. Includes hair-raising encounters with pirates off Gibraltar and dnagerous natives...

An inspiring memoir of life, love, loss, and new beginnings by the widower of bestselling author and filmmaker Amy Krouse Rosenthal, whose last act of love before her death was setting the stage for her husband's life without her in a Modern Love column in the New York Times.

10 books. "Gay has written ... about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as 'wildly undisciplined,' Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care"--Amazon.com.

Playful, poignant and wholly original, this coming-of-age memoir about Blackness, masculinity and addiction follows the author, a poet and screenwriter, as he recounts his experiences, revealing a perpetual outsider awkwardly squirming to find his way in. -- Publisher description.

Includes dumpling history and lore, this comic book cookbook invites readers to explore the big little world of Asian dumplings and proves that intricate folding styles and flavorful fillings are achievable in the home kitchen.