Maps and legends: reading and writing along the borderlands

By Chabon, Michael

Publishing Date: 2009, ©2008

Classification: 800

Call Number: 801.95 CHA

A series of linked essays in praise of reading and writing, with subjects running from ghost stories to comic books, Sherlock Holmes to Cormac McCarthy. Throughout, Chabon energetically argues for a return to the thrilling, chilling origins of storytelling, rejecting the false walls around "serious" literature in favor of a wide-ranging affection.

The best American science writing, 2011

Publishing Date: ©2011

Classification: 800

Call Number: 808.0665

Collects into one volume the most crucial, thought-provoking, and engaging science writing of the year 2011. Culled from a wide variety of publications, these selections of outstanding journalism cover the full spectrum of scientific inquiry, providing a comprehensive overview of the most compelling, relevant, and exciting developments in the world of science.

The best American science and nature writing 2001

Publishing Date: 2001

Classification: 800

Call Number: 808.8

Iterations of immortality / David Berlinski -- To save a watering hole / Mark Cherrington -- New life in a death trap / Edwin Dobb -- Abortion and brain waves / Gregg Easterbrook -- Baby steps / Malcolm Gladwell -- In the forests of Gombe / Jane Goodall -- The doubting disease / Jerome Groopman -- The recycled generation -- Stephen S. Hall -- Endurance predator / Bernd Heinrich -- Harpy eagles / Edward Hoagland -- Why the future doesn't need us / Bill Joy -- A killing at dawn / Ted Kerasote -- Seeing scarlet / Barbara Kingsolver and Steven Hopp -- The best clock in the world / Verlyn Klinkenborg -- The wild world's Scotland Yard / Jon R. Luoma -- Breeding discontent / Cynthia Mills -- Ice station Vostok / Oliver Morton -- Being prey / Val Plumwood -- Troubled waters / Sandra Postel -- The genome warrior / Richard Preston -- Megatransect / David Quammen -- Inside the volcano / Donovan Webster.

The best American science and nature writing, 2002

Publishing Date: 2002

Classification: 800

Call Number: 808.8

A collection of nature and science based essays by such authors as Malcolm Gladwell, Joy Williams, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Dennis Overbye.

The best American science and nature writing 2019

Publishing Date: 2019

Classification: 800

Call Number: 810.8

Sy Montgomery, New York Times best-selling author and recipient of numerous awards, edits this year's volume of the finest science and nature writing. "Science is important because this is how we seek to discover the truth about the world. And this is what makes excellent science and nature writing essential," observes New York Times best-selling author Sy Montgomery. "Science and nature writing are how we share the truth about the universe with the people of the world." And collected here are truths about nearly every corner of the universe. From meditations on extinction, to the search for alien life, to the prejudice that infects our medical system, the pieces in this year's Best American Science and Nature Writing seek to bring to the people stories of some of the most pressing issues facing our planet, as well as moments of wonder reflecting the immense beauty our natural world offers.

Whale day: and other poems

By Collins, Billy

Publishing Date: 2021

Classification: 800

Call Number: 811.54 COL

Whale Day brings together more than fifty poems and showcases the deft mixing of the playful and the serious that has made Billy Collins one of our country’s most celebrated and widely read poets. Here are poems that leap with whimsy and imagination, yet stay grounded in the familiar, common things of everyday experience. Collins takes us for a walk with an impossibly ancient dog, discovers the original way to eat a banana, meets an Irish spider, and even invites us to his own funeral. Sensitive to the wonders of being alive as well as the thrill of mortality, Whale Day builds on and amplifies Collins’s reputation as one of America’s most interesting and durable poets. - (Random House, Inc.)

The winged seed: a remembrance

By Lee, Li-Young

Publishing Date: 1995

Classification: 800

Call Number: 811.54 LEE

This memoir of Chinese American poet Lee creates a moving portrait of his imposing, emotionally elusive father that testifies to the pride, hope, social pain, and cultural alienation of Asian refugees in America.

Handwriting: poems

By Ondaatje, Michael

Publishing Date: 2000, ©1998

Classification: 800

Call Number: 811.54 OND

Handwriting is Michael Ondaatje's return to the place of his family, a remembrance, an honoring, and a lament of astonishing beauty. It is an irresistible work of poetic genius, and reaffirms Ondaatje's stature as one of the finest poets writing today. He takes us through the sweep of history in the island of Sri Lanka, summoning up stories of war and love, of goon squads, kings and robbers, and of two millennia of culture, to create a tapestry of images, scents and gestures—the unburial of stone Buddhas, a family of stilt-walkers crossing a field, the pattern of teeth marks on skin drawn by a monk from memory—that reveal the longing for, and expose our anguish over, lost loves, homes, and lost ways of expression. He joins the poets of old who "wrote their stories on rock and leaf / to celebrate the work of the day,/ the shadow pleasures of the night." At the same time, his artistry as a poet, and the language of these poems, supersede all individual story-moments to give us a larger understanding of the human condition—he himself can be counted among those who "shared it / on a scroll or nudged / the ink onto stone / to hold the vista of a life." - (Random House, Inc.)

Don't call us dead: poems

By Smith, Danez

Publishing Date: [2017]

Classification: 800

Call Number: 811.6 SMI

Smith's unflinching poetry addresses race, class, sexuality, faith, social justice, mortality, and the challenges of living HIV positive at the intersection of black and queer identity. The collection opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved on earth. "Dear White America," which Smith performed at the 2014 Rustbelt Midwest Region Poetry Slam, has as strong an impact on the page as it did on the spoken word stage. Smith's courage and hope amidst the struggle for unity in America will humble and uplift you.

The big sea: an autobiography

By Hughes, Langston

Publishing Date: ©1986

Classification: 800

Call Number: 818.5209 HUG

Volume one of Hughes' autobiography tells of his early years--in Paris and Harlem.

NEW RELEASE

How to be perfect: the correct answer to every moral question

By Schur, Michael

Publishing Date: 2022

Classification: 800

Call Number: 818.602 SCH

"From the creator of The Good Place and the co-creator of Parks and Recreation, a hilarious, thought-provoking guide to living an ethical life, drawing on 2,500 years of deep thinking from around the world"--

House lessons: renovating a life

By Bauermeister, Erica

Publishing Date: [2020]

Classification: 800

Call Number: 818.603 BAU

"In this memoir-in-essays, New York Times bestselling author Erica Bauermeister renovates a trash-filled house in the eccentric town of Port Townsend, WA, and in the process takes readers on a journey into the ways our spaces subliminally affect us, ultimately showing us how to make our houses (and lives) better"--

Late migrations: a natural history of love and loss

By Renkl, Margaret

Publishing Date: 2021

Classification: 800

Call Number: 818.608 REN

Selected as a TODAY Show #ReadWithJenna book club pick, Late Migrations is an unusual, captivating portrait of a family—and of the cycles of joy and grief that inscribe human lives within the natural world—from beloved New York Times contributing opinion writer Margaret Renkl. Growing up in Alabama, Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she traces a tender and honest portrait of her complicated parents—her exuberant, creative mother; her steady, supportive father—and of the bittersweet moments that accompany a child’s transition to caregiver. And here, braided into the overall narrative, Renkl offers observations on the world surrounding her suburban Nashville home. Ringing with rapture and heartache, these essays convey the dignity of bluebirds and rat snakes, monarch butterflies and native bees. As these two threads haunt and harmonize with each other, Renkl suggests that there is astonishment to be found in common things: in what seems ordinary, in what we all share. For in both worlds—the natural one and our own—“the shadow side of love is always loss, and grief is only love’s own twin.” Gorgeously illustrated by the author’s brother, Billy Renkl, Late Migrations is an assured and memorable debut. - (Perseus Publishing)

The country under my skin: a memoir of love and war

By Belli, Gioconda

Publishing Date: 2002

Classification: 800

Call Number: 868.6409 BEL

Until her early twenties, Gioconda Belli inhabited an upper-class cocoon: sheltered from the poverty in Managua in a world of country clubs and debutante balls; educated abroad; early marriage and motherhood. But in 1970, everything changed. Her growing dissatisfaction with domestic life, and a blossoming awareness of the social inequities in Nicaragua, led her to join the Sandinistas, then a burgeoning but still hidden organization. She would be involved with them over the next twenty years at the highest, and often most dangerous, levels. Her memoir is both a revelatory insider's account of the Revolution and a vivid, intensely felt story about coming of age under extraordinary circumstances. Belli writes with both striking lyricism and candor about her personal and political lives: about her family, her children, the men in her life, about her poetry; about the dichotomies between her birthright and the life she chose for herself; about the failures and triumphs of the Revolution; about her current life, divided between California (with her American husband and their children) and Nicaragua; and about her sustained and sustaining passion for her country and its people. - (Blackwell North Amer)