Art & Art History

 

Cover ArtMoney in the Air by Gail Feigenbaum (Editor); Sandra van Ginhoven (Editor); Edward Sterrett (Editor)

Call Number: N8620 .M66 2024
ISBN: 9781606068915
Publication Date: 2024-06-25
This volume explores the crucial role of art dealers in creating a transatlantic art market in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. "There was money in the air, ever so much money," wrote Henry James in 1907, reflecting on the American appetite for art acquisitions. Indeed, collectors such as Henry Clay Frick and Andrew W. Mellon are credited with bringing noteworthy European art to the United States, with their collections forming the backbone of major American museums today. But what of the dealers, who possessed the expertise in art and recognized the potential of developing a new market model on both sides of the Atlantic? Money in the Air investigates the often-overlooked role of these dealers in creating an international art world. Contributors examine the histories of well-known international firms like Duveen Brothers, M. Knoedler & Co., and Goupil & Cie and their relationships with American clients, as well as accounts of other remarkable dealers active in the transatlantic art market. Drawing on dealer archives, scholars reveal compelling findings, including previously unknown partnerships and systems of cooperation. This volume offers new perspectives on the development of art collections that formed the core of American art museums, such as the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Frick Collection.
 

Cover ArtThe Shape of Power by Karen Lemmey; Renée Ater (Contribution by); Jacqueline Francis (Contribution by); Tess Korobkin (Contribution by); Jami Powell (Contribution by); Tobias Wofford; Grace Yasumura; Elizabeth Hutchinson (Contribution by); Claudia E. Zapata (Contribution by); James Smalls (Contribution by)

Call Number: NB205 .S53 2024
ISBN: 9780691261492
Publication Date: 2024-11-12
A major new survey of American sculpture, exploring how it both reflects and redefines concepts of race and identity in the United States How does American sculpture intersect with the history of race in the United States? The three-dimensional qualities of sculpture give it a distinct advantage over other art forms in capturing a subject's likeness, and our minds can swiftly conjure a body and racialize it from the most minimal of prompts. The Shape of Power examines the role of American sculpture, from the nineteenth century to today, in understanding and constructing the concept of race in the United States and how this medium has shaped the way generations have learned to visualize and think about race. Exploring the relationship between sculpture and ideas about race in the United States, this book provides fresh perspectives on artists ranging from Hiram Powers, Edmonia Lewis, and Augusta Savage to Barbara Chase-Riboud, Titus Kaphar, Raven Halfmoon, Sanford Biggers, Betye Saar, Yolanda López, and Simone Leigh. It reveals how sculptors use this versatile medium to challenge discriminatory ideologies and entrenched social and cultural constructions of race while offering bold new visions of community, identity, and selfhood. Featuring superb illustrations of sculptural works in a broad range of media, The Shape of Power contributes new scholarship to the understudied field of American sculpture, which hasn't been the subject of a major publication survey in more than fifty years. Published in association with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC Exhibition Schedule Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC November 8, 2024-September 14, 2025
 

Biology

 

Cover ArtInside Science: Revolution in Biology and Its Impact by Benjamin Lewin

Call Number: QH324 .L49 2023
ISBN: 9781621825012
Publication Date: 2023-09-12
Looking behind widely held beliefs about the myth of the scientific enterprise, Inside Science is a rare examination of how science really functions. Drawing on his 25 years of experience as the founding editor of Cell, the worlds leading journal in biology, Benjamin Lewin questions the dogma that scientific papers describe how research was actually done, describes the distortions caused by pressure to publish, and considers the effects of changes in the way science is communicated as we move ever further into the digital era. The view that science protects itself by identifying and excluding work that is not reproducible is rigorously examined, as is the prevalence of fraud in science. Lewin argues that the move from research done in small teams to the much larger scale of big science has the potential to change the nature of science itself. He asks if science can continue in its present form or if new methods of evaluation will be needed for science to function in the future. Lewin brings these general principles to life by considering the history of the genetics revolution, from the discovery of the double helical structure of DNA to the sequencing of the human genome and the possibilities of gene editing today. History shows us that each period of progress in science relied on dogmas that often advanced but sometimes retarded progress, and that views of reality often changed suddenly and dramatically. One example is the current critical reassessment of epigenetics that is raising the possibility that there may be factors in inheritance extraneous to DNA. The book concludes by asking if the reductionist manifesto that has dominated biology for the past half century can continue to hold, and revisits the much-debated question: What is science?
 

Cover ArtIntertwined by Michael Gross

Call Number: QH541 .G76 2024
ISBN: 9781421449975
Publication Date: 2024-10-15
A compelling call to action to focus on what connects us in nature to solve today's problems. In nature, everything is connected: from microscopic bacteria and soaring trees to animals struggling for survival amid thriving humanity. Yet many of today's toughest problems, from environmental destruction to divisive politics, stem from fundamental disconnections. In Intertwined, science writer Michael Gross explains how the natural world can be a powerful reminder of our interdependence. Using examples based on recent scientific discoveries across a broad range of ecosystems and species, Gross shares important--and often surprising--stories about the sophisticated web of connections in nature. From plant cooperation to turtle communication, he highlights crucial lessons we can apply to solve complex problems caused by human disturbances to these connections. Gross provides ample evidence of the far-reaching impacts of both natural and anthropogenic phenomena, from coevolution and nutrient cycles to species domestication and extinction. We live in a complex world endangered by simplistic thinking, as the escalating climate crisis and loss of biodiversity demonstrate. To address these issues, we must recognize the wonder and ubiquity of the self-regulating network that enables life on Earth. These thought-provoking stories from nature illustrate why it is so vital to respect and protect the connections that tie us to our world and each other.
 

Cover ArtThe Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger

Call Number: QK711.2 .S34 2024
ISBN: 9780063073852
Publication Date: 2024-05-07
It takes tremendous biological creativity to be a plant. To survive and thrive while rooted in a single spot, plants have adapted ingenious methods of survival. In recent years, scientists have learned about their ability to communicate, recognize their kin and behave socially, hear sounds, morph their bodies to blend into their surroundings, store useful memories that inform their life cycle, and trick animals into behaving to their benefit, to name just a few remarkable talents. The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it? Zoë Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close. What can we learn about life on Earth from the living things that thrive, adapt, consume, and accommodate simultaneously? More important, what do we owe these life forms once we come to understand their rich and varied abilities? An eye-opening and informative look at the ecosystem we live in, this book challenges us to rethink the role of plants--and our own place--in the natural world.
 

Business & Economics

 

Cover ArtBuild, Baby, Build by Bryan Caplan; Ady Branzei (Illustrator)

Call Number: HD7293 .C265 2024
ISBN: 9781952223419
Publication Date: 2024-05-01
In this exciting new graphic novel, economist Bryan Caplan examines how changes to housing regulation can lead us to a vastly better world. Why are housing prices in America so unbelievably high, especially in the country's most desirable locations? The superficial answer is "supply and demand," but the deep answer―the reason supply is so low―is a regulatory system that treats developers like criminals. In Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation, economist Bryan Caplan makes the economic and philosophical case for radical deregulation of this massive market―freeing property owners to build as tall and dense as they wish. Not only would the average price of housing be cut in half, but the building boom unleashed by deregulation would simultaneously reduce inequality, increase social mobility, promote economic growth, reduce homelessness, increase birth rates, help the environment, cut crime, and more. Combining stunning homage to classic animation with careful interdisciplinary research, Build, Baby, Build takes readers on a grand tour of a bona fide "panacea policy." We can start realizing these missed opportunities as soon as we abandon the widespread misconception that housing regulation solves more problems than it causes.
 

Cover ArtBetter and Better: Creating a Culture of Purpose, Excellence, and Transformative Human Engagement by Robert Stiller

Call Number: HD9199.U54 G74 2025
ISBN: 9781265460846
Publication Date: 2024-08-30
Green Mountain Coffee founder Bob Stiller delivers the timeless leadership approach he pioneered in the 1990s to help you increase engagement, retention, and revenue Decades before the business world discovered the power of authentic staff engagement, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters cofounder Bob Stiller was busy creating a company with a mission to build an engaged workforce focused on innovation. In the end, Green Mountain became a place where people realized they could make a difference, where their input mattered, where they were rewarded fairly, and where they can gro. It became a place workers feel good about.  A community.  A happy place that got better and better.   And business results followed. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters went public, moved to selling wholesale exclusively, invested in Keurig, and became one of the few coffee companies to ever reach $1 billion in sales. It became one of the top-performing stocks of the 1990s on the Nasdaq exchange, and from 1995 to 2015, its stock had a 70 percent compounded annual rate of growth.  In Better and Better, Stiller explains how he did it, from donating five percent pretax net income to environmental and social causes, with employees collectively deciding how donations would be used; to paying employees to volunteer in their own communities; to providing much-needed loans to small farms.  With Better and Better, you'll learn how to use optimism, self-awareness, and kindness to build an inclusive and cherished workplace culture.
 

Cover ArtResume and LinkedIn Strategies for New College Graduates by Jan Melnik (Contribution by); Louise Kursmark (Contribution by)

Call Number: HF5383 .M456 2023
ISBN: 9780996680394
Publication Date: 2023-03-01
Jan Melnik and Louise Kursmark are recognized leaders in the field of career management. Both are Master Resume Writers and have worked with new-graduate job seekers for more than two decades. Together and separately they have authored dozens of books and delivered countless presentations related to resumes and job search. In addition, Melnik is a faculty member at University of South Florida and Bay Path University, teaching English and business communications. Kursmark is a regular presenter and trainer to college and university career centers nationwide. Friends since high school, the two have collaborated on numerous writing and training projects as they have pursued parallel careers.
 

Cover ArtWhy You, Why Me, Why Now by Rachel Toor

Call Number: HF5383 .T664 2024
ISBN: 9780226831145
Publication Date: 2024-03-04
A clear, accessible, and fun guide on everything it takes to land a job. Searching for a job can be hard and demoralizing work. In Why You, Why Me, Why Now, Rachel Toor delivers some good news. The most important thing is within your control--a mindset that shows you know the goals of the organization you want to work for and that you're ready and eager to contribute. Toor provides, with compassion and enthusiasm, strategies to make it easy for hiring managers to say "yes." Through useful and funny anecdotes, she offers advice from professionals across industries and focuses on the attitude applicants can adopt to find success. Revealing traits employers seek, Toor shows how to craft winning cover letters, ways to tailor resumes for each job, and practical tips to get past AI screening. She also explains how to use LinkedIn and gives tips on preparing for interviews. Throughout, the book features Toor's notes on writing well to help in landing a first job and beyond. Encouraging, entertaining, and blunt, this is a job-search guide like no other.
 

Cover ArtJobs, Health, and the Meaning of Work by Mary Davis

Call Number: HF5549.5.M6 D38 2024
ISBN: 9780262548694
Publication Date: 2024-08-06
A first-of-its-kind analysis using public health and economics research to illuminate how jobs affect our well-being. As the saying goes, "find a job you that you love, and you'll never work a day in your life." Could it really be so simple? According to Mary Davis's innovative Jobs, Health, and the Meaning of Work, of course not. Davis explores the science of jobs from the vantage point of both public health and economics; in doing so, she untangles the complex weave of what makes people happy, healthy, and fulfilled at work. Sharing the real-life stories of workers who thrive (or struggle) in their jobs, this book emphasizes the point that there is no single recipe for what makes work healthy and meaningful across workers. Topics covered in the book include wage and nonwage characteristics of jobs that impact worker well-being, the role of recessions, the concept of meaningful work, and job stress and burnout. It concludes by putting these stories and research within the context of the COVID labor economy and the future of work. This novel blend of economic and public health research deepens the discussion of what makes work meaningful.
 

Education

 

Cover ArtHow to Become a Successful College Student by Scotty Dunlap; Brian Dudak

Call Number: LB2343.32 .D86 2024
ISBN: 9781032524092
Publication Date: 2023-10-01
This book is your one-stop shop for the academic tools and habits needed to make your transition from high school to college a resounding success!
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtKnow That You Are Worthy by Adam J. Rodríguez (Editor); Yolanda Norman (Foreword by)

Call Number: LC4069.6 .K56 2023
ISBN: 9781538162408
Publication Date: 2023-02-09
Thirty-one alumni who were the first in their family to obtain a college degree share their experiences as first-generation students in this noteworthy new text. Their stories illuminate how the struggles of first-generation students are primarily due to a combination of multiple social inequities that are ignored, reinforced, and perpetuated by exclusive college systems. Speaking directly to current and future first-generation students, the authors offer tips and advice for success, along with powerful words of encouragement. Faculty and staff will also benefit from reading this book, as the authors describe a more equitable system in which universities are enriched by the wisdom, experiences, and talents of first-generation students while promoting a generative culture for all learners.
 
 

English & Literature

 

Cover ArtDigital Encounters by Cecily Raynor (Editor); Rhian Lewis (Editor)

Call Number: PQ7081.A1 D54 2023
ISBN: 9781487508685
Publication Date: 2023-04-30
To understand the creative fabric of digital networks, scholars of literary and cultural studies must turn their attention to crowdsourced forms of production, discussion, and distribution. Digital Encounters explores the influence of an increasingly networked world on contemporary Latin American cultural production. Drawing on a spectrum of case studies, the contributors to this volume examine literature, art, and political activism as they dialogue with programming languages, social media platforms, online publishing, and geospatial metadata. Implicit within these connections are questions of power, privilege, and stratification. The book critically examines issues of inequitable access and data privacy, technology's capacity to divide people from one another, and the digital space as a site of racialized and gendered violence. Through an expansive approach to the study of connectivity, Digital Encountersillustrates how new connections - between analog and digital, human and machine, print text and pixel - alter representations of self, Other, and world.
 

Cover ArtYaguareté White by Diego Báez

Call Number: PS3602.A386 Y34 2024
ISBN: 9780816552191
Publication Date: 2024-02-20
In Diego Báez's debut collection, Yaguareté White, English, Spanish, and Guaraní encounter each other through the elusive yet potent figure of the jaguar. The son of a Paraguayan father and a mother from Pennsylvania, Báez grew up in central Illinois as one of the only brown kids on the block--but that didn't keep him from feeling like a gringo on family visits to Paraguay. Exploring this contradiction as it weaves through experiences of language, self, and place, Báez revels in showing up the absurdities of empire and chafes at the limits of patrimony, but he always reserves his most trenchant irony for the gaze he turns on himself. Notably, this raucous collection also wrestles with Guaraní, a state-recognized Indigenous language widely spoken in Paraguay. Guaraní both structures and punctures the book, surfacing in a sequence of jokes that double as poems, and introducing but leaving unresolved ambient questions about local histories of militarism, masculine bravado, and the outlook of the campos. Cutting across borders of every kind, Báez's poems attempt to reconcile the incomplete, contradictory, and inconsistent experiences of a speaking self that resides between languages, nations, and generations. Yaguareté White is a lyrical exploration of Paraguayan American identity and what it means to see through a colored whiteness in all of its tangled contradictions.  
 

Cover ArtGay Poems for Red States by Willie Edward Taylor Carver

Call Number: PS3603.A7955 G39 2023
ISBN: 9780813198118
Publication Date: 2023-06-06
No one will protect you. Months after being named the 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year, Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr. announced his decision to leave the public school system. His career as a high school English teacher had spanned more than a decade but ended abruptly--another casualty of the cruel and dangerous anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination that is creeping back into the halls of government and the homes of Americans. At the beginning of Carver's career, an administrator warned him about discussing his otherwise openly gay identity at work: "No one will protect you, including me." A new administration allowed for more freedom, but the initial warning eventually rang true. School officials failed repeatedly to address harassment of students and of Carver himself, until he could no longer endure such a purposeful deterioration of human rights. While Carver's testimony before the House of Representatives brought much-needed attention to the need for protections for LGBTQ+ people in schools, the damage was done. In Gay Poems for Red States, Carver counters the injustice of a persistent anti-LGBTQ+ movement by asserting that a life full of beauty and pride is possible for everyone. More than a collection of poetry, Carver's earnest and heartfelt verses are for those wishing to discover and understand the vastness of Appalachia, and for the LGBTQ+ Appalachians who long for a future--for a home--in an often unwelcoming place.
 

Cover ArtAnder and Santi Were Here by Jonny Garza Villa

Call Number: YA PZ7.1.G3783 An 2023
ISBN: 9781250843999
Publication Date: 2023-05-02
A STONEWALL YOUNG ADULT HONOR BOOK Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe meets The Sun is Also a Star in this YA contemporary love story from Jonny Garza Villa, Ander & Santi Were Here, about a nonbinary Mexican American teen falling for the shy new waiter at their family's taqueria. Finding home. Falling in love. Fighting to belong. The Santos Vista neighborhood of San Antonio, Texas, is all Ander Martínez has ever known. The smell of pan dulce. The mixture of Spanish and English filling the streets. And, especially their job at their family's taquería. It's the place that has inspired Ander as a muralist, and, as they get ready to leave for art school, it's all of these things that give them hesitancy. That give them the thought, are they ready to leave it all behind? To keep Ander from becoming complacent during their gap year, their family "fires" them so they can transition from restaurant life to focusing on their murals and prepare for college. That is, until they meet Santiago López Alvarado, the hot new waiter. Falling for each other becomes as natural as breathing. Through Santi's eyes, Ander starts to understand who they are and want to be as an artist, and Ander becomes Santi's first steps toward making Santos Vista and the United States feel like home. Until ICE agents come for Santi, and Ander realizes how fragile that sense of home is. How love can only hold on so long when the whole world is against them. And when, eventually, the world starts to win.
 

Film Studies

 

Cover ArtNarcomedia by Jason Ruiz

Call Number: PN1995.9.L37 R85 2023
ISBN: 9781477328187
Publication Date: 2023-10-10
2024 Honorable Mention -- The Victor Villaseñor Best Latino Focused Nonfiction Book Award - English, Empowering Latino Futures' International Latino Book Awards Exploring representations of Latinx people from Scarface to Narcos, this book examines how pop culture has framed Latin America as the villain in America's long and ineffectual War on Drugs. If there is an enemy in the War on Drugs, it is people of color. That is the lesson of forty years of cultural production in the United States. Popular culture, from Scarface and Miami Vice to Narcos and Better Call Saul, has continually positioned Latinos as an alien people who threaten the US body politic with drugs. Jason Ruiz explores the creation and endurance of this trope, its effects on Latin Americans and Latinx people, and its role in the cultural politics of the War on Drugs. Even as the focus of drug anxiety has shifted over the years from cocaine to crack and from methamphetamines to opioids, and even as significant strides have been made in representational politics in many areas of pop culture, Latinx people remain an unshakeable fixture in stories narrating the production, distribution, and sale of narcotics. Narcomedia argues that such representations of Latinx people, regardless of the intentions of their creators, are best understood as a cultural front in the War on Drugs. Latinos and Latin Americans are not actually America's drug problem, yet many Americans think otherwise--and that is in no small part because popular culture has largely refused to imagine the drug trade any other way.
 

Cover ArtGrief, Madness, and Crises of Masculinity in Mind-Game Films by Rosalind Sibielski

Call Number: SP COLL PN1995.9.M46 S53 2024 FacPubn
ISBN: 9781666936445
Publication Date: 2024-08-22
This book analyzes a cycle of early twenty-first-century mind-game films and TV series in which male protagonists retreat into fantasies, dreams, or hallucinations as a means of coping with grief and guilt following the death of a loved one. Discussing films like Memento, Inception, and Shutter Island alongside the TV series Mr. Robot, among others, Rosalind Sibielski highlights how the construction of alternate realities allows the protagonists to work through bereavement and past trauma. Sibielski also argues that, as part of this process, the protagonists not only find themselves questioning their memories and what they believe to be true about their identities, but they are also forced to reevaluate who they are as men and the way that they define their manhood. Finally, Grief, Madness, and Crises of Masculinity in Mind-Game Films examines these stories of intersecting crises of reality and crises of masculinity within the context of millennial culture wars in the US over the way that manhood is, can be, or should be enacted.
 

Cover ArtFrom Havana to Hollywood by Philip Kaisary

Call Number: PN1995.9.S557 K35 2024
ISBN: 9781438498492
Publication Date: 2024-07-01
From Havana to Hollywood examines the presence or absence of Black resistance to slavery in feature films produced in either Havana or Hollywood--including Gillo Pontecorvo's Burn!, neglected masterpieces by Cuban auteurs Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Sergio Giral, and Steve McQueen's Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave. Philip Kaisary argues that, with rare exceptions, the representation of Black agency in Hollywood has always been, and remains, taboo. Contrastingly, Cuban cinema foregrounds Black agency, challenging the ways in which slavery has been misremembered and misunderstood in North America and Europe. With powerful, richly theorized readings, the book shows how Cuban cinema especially recreates the past to fuel visions of liberation and asks how the medium of film might contribute to a renewal of emancipatory politics today.
 

History

 

Cover ArtPuerto Rico by Jorell Meléndez-Badillo

Call Number: Ebook
ISBN: 9780691231273
Publication Date: 2024-04-02
A panoramic history of Puerto Rico from pre-Columbian times to today Puerto Rico is a Spanish-speaking territory of the United States with a history shaped by conquest and resistance. For centuries, Puerto Ricans have crafted and negotiated complex ideas about nationhood. Jorell Meléndez-Badillo provides a new history of Puerto Rico that gives voice to the archipelago's people while offering a lens through which to understand the political, economic, and social challenges confronting them today. In this masterful work of scholarship, Meléndez-Badillo sheds light on the vibrant cultures of the archipelago in the centuries before the arrival of Columbus and captures the full sweep of Puerto Rico's turbulent history in the centuries that followed, from the first indigenous insurrection against colonial rule in 1511--led by the powerful chieftain Agüeybaná II--to the establishment of the Commonwealth in 1952. He deftly portrays the contemporary period and the intertwined though unequal histories of the archipelago and the continental United States. Puerto Rico is an engaging, sometimes personal, and consistently surprising history of colonialism, revolt, and the creation of a national identity, offering new perspectives not only on Puerto Rico and the Caribbean but on the United States and the Atlantic world more broadly. 
 

Cover ArtWilliam Hanson and the Texas-Mexico Border by John Weber

Call Number: F786.H27 W43 2024
ISBN: 9781477329221
Publication Date: 2024-05-14
An examination of the career of Texas Ranger and immigration official William Hanson illustrating the intersections of corruption, state-building, and racial violence in early twentieth century Texas. At the Texas-Mexico border in the 1910s and 1920s, William Hanson was a witness to, and an active agent of, history. As a Texas Ranger captain and then a top official in the Immigration Service, he helped shape how US policymakers understood the border, its residents, and the movement of goods and people across the international boundary. An associate of powerful politicians and oil company executives, he also used his positions to further his and his patrons' personal interests, financial and political, often through threats and extralegal methods. Hanson's career illustrates the ways in which legal exclusion, white-supremacist violence, and official corruption overlapped and were essential building blocks of a growing state presence along the border in the early twentieth century. In this book, John Weber reveals Hanson's cynical efforts to use state and federal power to proclaim the border region inherently dangerous and traces the origins of current nativist politics that seek to demonize the border population. In doing so, he provides insight into how a minor political appointee, motivated by his own ambitions, had lasting impacts on how the border was experienced by immigrants and seen by the nation.
 

Justice Studies

 

Cover ArtRadical Acts of Justice by Jocelyn Simonson

Call Number: KF9632 .S56 2023
ISBN: 9781620977446
Publication Date: 2023-08-15
Shortlisted, 2024 Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice A Ms. Magazine Most Anticipated Book An original argument that the answer to mass incarceration lies not with experts and pundits, but with ordinary people taking extraordinary actions together--written by a leading authority on bail reform and social movements From reading books on mass incarceration, one might conclude that the way out of our overly punitive, racially disparate criminal system is to put things in the hands of experts, technocrats able to think their way out of the problem. But, as Jocelyn Simonson points out in her groundbreaking new book, the problems posed by the American carceral state are not just technical puzzles; they present profound moral questions for our time. Radical Acts of Justice tells the stories of ordinary people joining together in collective acts of resistance: paying bail for a stranger, using social media to let the public know what everyday courtroom proceedings are like, making a video about someone's life for a criminal court judge, presenting a budget proposal to the city council. When people join together to contest received ideas of justice and safety, they challenge the ideas that prosecutions and prisons make us safer; that public officials charged with maintaining "law and order" are carrying out the will of the people; and that justice requires putting people in cages. Through collective action, these groups live out new and more radical ideas of what justice can look like. In a book that will be essential reading for those who believe our current systems of policing, criminal law, and prisons are untenable, Jocelyn Simonson shows how to shift power away from the elite actors at the front of the courtroom and toward the swelling collective in the back.
 

Music

 

Cover ArtAccordion Eulogies by Noé Álvarez

Call Number: JV6456 .A45 2024
ISBN: 9781646220892
Publication Date: 2024-05-28
Growing up in Yakima, Washington, Noe Alvarez never knew his grandfather. Stories swirled around this mythologized, larger-than-life figure: That he had abandoned his family, and had possibly done something awful that put a curse on his descendants. About his grandfather, young Noe was sure of only one thing: That he had played the accordion. Now an adult, reckoning with the legacy of silence surrounding his family's migration from Mexico, Alvarez resolves both to take up the instrument and to journey into Mexico to discover the grandfather he never knew. Alvarez travels across the US with his accordion, meeting makers and players in cities that range from San Antonio to Boston. He uncovers the story of an instrument that's been central to classic American genres, but also played a critical role in indigenous Mexican history. Like the accordion itself, Alvarez feels trapped between his roots in Mexico and the U.S. As he tries to make sense of his place in the world - as a father, a son, a musician - he gets closer to uncovering the mystery of his origins.
 

Cover ArtBird of Four Hundred Voices by Eugene Rodriguez

Call Number: ML419.R605 A3 2024
ISBN: 9781597146449
Publication Date: 2024-08-06
From the founder of Los Cenzontles Cultural Arts Academy, a profoundly personal exploration of music's power to build cultural bridges that last. "I wish I had studied with Eugene Rodrigeuz when I was growing up. Read this beautifully written book about culture, identity and resilience, and you will know why." --Linda Ronstadt NPR Books We Love 2024: "[Rodriguez's] commitment to his community and his exploration of growing up bicultural are both inspiring." From an early age Eugene Rodriguez knew he was captivated by music. But he found himself encountering the same two problems again and again: the chilly rigidity of so much formal music education, and the underrepresentation of Mexican culture in American media. In 1989 he founded Los Cenzontles (The Mockingbirds), a group that offered music education to Bay Area youth, and that gave pride of place to Mexican musical traditions. Bird of Four Hundred Voices follows Rodriguez as he leads his young students from a California barrio to uncover their ancestral roots. From their home community in San Pablo, Los Cenzontles journey to fandangos in Veracruz, resurrect a lost mariachi tradition, and collaborate with luminaries like Linda Ronstadt, Lalo Guerrero, Taj Mahal, Jackson Browne, Flaco Jiménez, and Los Lobos. Rodriguez's story offers an honest, deeply personal look at the cultural work that confronts historical oppression and joyously challenges cultural borders. And it is a profound celebration of the powerful influence of Mexico's musical heritage on American culture.
 

Nursing & Health

 

Cover ArtOne Health and the Politics of COVID-19 by Laura H. Kahn

Call Number: RA644.C67 K342 2024
ISBN: 9781421449326
Publication Date: 2024-10-08
Unpacking the mysteries of COVID-19's origins to impart important lessons for future outbreaks. In this timely book, leading public health expert Laura H. Kahn uses the comprehensive One Health approach to investigate the COVID-19 pandemic. The concept of "One Health" recognizes the interconnected links among the health of humans, animals, plants, and the environment. By comparing the history, science, and clinical presentations of three different coronaviruses--SARS-CoV-1, MERS, and SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19)--Kahn uncovers insights with important repercussions for how to prepare for and avoid future pandemics. The One Health approach is a useful framework for examining the outbreak of COVID-19. Understanding the origins of this zoonotic disease requires examining the environmental and molecular biological factors that allowed the virus to spread to humans. Kahn investigates the many ways in which the wild animal trade, wet markets, and the camel industry contributed to the spread of earlier coronaviruses such as SARS-CoV-1 and MERS. The book also explores the biosafety, biosecurity, and bioethics implications of gain-of-function research on pandemic potential pathogens. This important book is a must-read to understand the history, science, and geopolitics of the COVID-19 pandemic.
 

Cover ArtNursing Care Plans by Marilynn E. Doenges; Mary Frances Moorhouse; Alice C. Murr; Christina Baughn; Margaret Moore-Nadler

Call Number: RT49 .D64 2025
ISBN: 9781719647465
Publication Date: 2024-10-02
The all-in-one care planning resource. Here's the step-by-step guidance you need to develop individualized plans of care while also honing your analytical, critical-thinking, and clinical judgment skills. You'll find over 160 care plans in all, covering acute, community, and home-care settings across the life span. Each plan features... Client assessment database for each medical condition. Complete listings of nursing diagnoses organized by priority. Diagnostic studies with explanations of the reason for the test and what the results mean. Actions and interventions with comprehensive rationales. NANDA, NIC, and NOC's most recent guidelines.
 

Cover ArtCompassion Fatigue and Burnout in Nursing by Vidette Todaro-Franceschi

Call Number: RT86 .T63 2025
ISBN: 9780826155283
Publication Date: 2024-01-28
Praise for Past Editions "This book is a vital read for individuals and the collective nursing profession... I encourage those who are concerned about the collective nursing profession, about what nurse educators are teaching students, about healthcare's high staff turnover and poor patient quality outcomes to consider reading and using this book." - M. R. Morrow, RN, PhD., Nursing Science Quarterly "This book addresses the issue that all nurses eventually face at one time or another in their career, a loss of passion. The author takes readers on a journey to recapture their passion...Every nurse should read this book." -V. Hedderick, Doody's Review Service As relevant today as it was when the first edition was published in 2012--likely even more so after the devastation of COVID 19--Dr. Vidette Todaro-Franceschi delves deeper into issues surrounding professional quality of life (PQOL) for nurses and the intricate connection to caliber of care and healthcare outcomes. She offers new insights on compassion fatigue, burnout, moral distress, caring for the dying, PTSD, and workplace bullying and violence noting that while the COVID-19 pandemic has grossly exacerbated existing problems in the workplace it has also created a "perfect storm" for nurses to regain a sense of the meaning and purpose of their work. Written by an acknowledged expert in end-of-life education, professional quality of life, and clinical leadership, this book will help empower nurses so that they can create a healthier, more compassionate work environment. Supported by research but written from a holistic and personal perspective, the text includes real-life examples, strategies, and exercises that will help readers to identify negative patterns and explore ways to recapture the joy in their work lives.
 

Political Science

 

Cover ArtInternet, Humor, and Nation in Latin America by Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste (Editor); Juan Poblete (Editor)

Call Number: F1408.3 .I584 2024
ISBN: 9781683404033
Publication Date: 2024-02-27
How online humor influences politics and culture in Latin America. This volume is the first to provide a comprehensive Latin American perspective on the role of humor in the Spanish- and Portuguese-language Internet, highlighting how the production and circulation of online humor influence the region's relation to democracy and civil society and the production of meaning in everyday life. Several case studies consider memes, including discussions of political cartoons in Mexico and imagery that portrays the mismanagement of natural disasters in Puerto Rico. Essays on Brazil examine how memes are shared on WhatsApp by Jair Bolsonaro supporters and how the Instagram account Barbie Fascionista offers memes as political commentary. Other case studies consider video content, including the sketches of Argentinian comedian Guillermo Aquino, the short-form material of Chilean vlogger Germán Garmendia, and a satirical YouTube column created by journalists in Colombia. Contributors also offer new methodologies for studying the laughable on social media, including a model for analyzing fake Twitter accounts. Internet, Humor, and Nation in Latin America demonstrates that Internet humor can generate novel means of public interaction with the political and cultural spheres and create greater expectations of governmental accountability and democratic participation. This volume shows the importance of paying serious attention to humorous digital content as part of contemporary culture.
 

Cover ArtElections in Latin America by Kevin Pallister

Call Number: JL968 .P35 2024
ISBN: 9781538189023
Publication Date: 2024-03-19
Even as several Latin American countries have regressed to authoritarian rule in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, elections remain permanent and vital features of the region's political life. Kevin Pallister provides an accessible overview of elections throughout Latin America, including formal electoral institutions, informal practices, and the behavior of voters and candidates. Through a wide-ranging synthesis of scholarly literature and sources, it offers a descriptive and analytical look at how elections in the region work, from the legal rules of the game to the final counting of the votes, and provides an even-handed discussion of its complexities such as electoral integrity, gender quotas, the role of social media, corruption in campaign finance, and how elections can be instruments of both democracy and autocracy. This comprehensive narrative, from Mexico to Argentina, is complemented with illustrative examples, case studies, and data. By understanding how elections in Latin America work as flawed but indispensable institutions of democracy, students and other readers will enhance their knowledge of contemporary Latin American politics and the important process of democratization in the region.
 

Cover ArtCorporatocracy by Ciara Torres-Spelliscy

Call Number: KF9351 .T67 2024
ISBN: 9781479828326
Publication Date: 2024-11-05
Reveals how corporate greed led to scandal, corruption, and the January 6th insurrection--and how we can stop it from happening again Donald Trump's false claims of election fraud and the violence of the Capitol riot have made it unavoidably clear that the future of American democracy is in peril. Unseen political actors and untraceable dark money influence our elections, while anti-democratic rhetoric threatens a tilt towards authoritarianism. In Corporatocracy, Ciara Torres-Spelliscy reveals the role corporations play in this dire state of political affairs, and explains why and how they should be held accountable by the courts, their shareholders, and citizens themselves. Drawing on key Supreme Court cases, Torres-Spelliscy explores how corporations have, more often than not, been on the wrong side of history by working to undermine democratic norms, practices, and laws. From bankrolling regressive politicians to funding ghost candidates with dark money, she shows us how corporations subvert the will of the American people, and how courts struggle to hold them and corrupt politicians accountable. Corporations have existed far longer than democracies have. If voters, consumers, and investors are not careful, corporations may well outlive democracy. Corporatocracy brings all of these shadowy tactics to light and offers meaningful legal reforms that can strengthen and protect American democracy.
 

Reference

 

Cover ArtIndigenous Materials in Libraries and the Curriculum by Javier Muñoz-Díaz; Kathia Ibacache; Leila. Gómez

Call Number: Ebook
ISBN: 9781032618494
Publication Date: 2024-04-29
Indigenous Materials in Libraries and the Curriculum: Latin American and Latinx Sources argues for a decolonial engagement with Indigenous peoples' creative work to build awareness of divergent epistemologies and foster healing in the learning community. This book explores how faculty and librarians can collaborate to develop inclusive library collections and curricula by supporting Indigenous peoples' reclamation of lands and languages. The authors present practices to build and disseminate collections that showcase the work of Indigenous creators from Latin America and compensate for historical erasure and misrepresentation. Consideration is also given to developing a non-hegemonic curriculum in Indigenous languages and cultures for faculty and students from multicultural backgrounds, particularly Latinx students of Indigenous descent. Above all, the book aspires to facilitate the participation of Indigenous peoples in the scholarly conversation to counteract epistemic and material extractivism and transform the scaffolding of higher education in the current global climate crisis. Indigenous Materials in Libraries and the Curriculum is inspired by a transhemispheric vision to elicit conversation between Indigenous peoples from Latin America (Abiayala) and North America (Turtle Island). The book will appeal to academics, librarians, students, and activists interested in Indigenous languages and cultures, decolonization, DEI initiatives, and library collection development policies that prioritize non-hegemonic narratives.
 

Sociology

 

Cover ArtIntersectional Advocacy by Margaret Perez Brower

Call Number: HV6250.4.W65 B758 2024
ISBN: 9781009433099
Publication Date: 2024-01-04
What happens to those living at the margins of US politics and policy - trapped between multiple struggles: gender-based violence, poverty, homelessness, unaffordable healthcare, mass incarceration and immigration? In this book, Margaret Perez Brower offers the concept of 'intersectional advocacy' to reveal how select organizations addressing gender-based violence are closing policy gaps that perpetuate inequalities by gender, race, ethnicity, and class. Intersectional advocacy is a roadmap for rethinking public policy. The book captures how advocacy groups strategically contest, reimagine, and reconfigure policy institutions using comprehensive new strategies that connect issues together. As these groups challenge traditional ways of addressing the most pressing social issues in the US, they uncover deep inequities that are housed within these institutions. Ultimately, organizations practicing intersectional advocacy illuminate how to redraw the boundaries of policies in ways that transform US democracy to be more representative, equitable, and just.
 

Cover ArtSuicide by John Bateson

Call Number: HV6548.U5 B38 2024
ISBN: 9781421449418
Publication Date: 2024-09-03
An urgent call to action on a rising--and preventable--trend. Each year in the United States alone, nearly 50,000 individuals die by suicide; more than 1.2 million others attempt it. John Bateson, former executive director of a suicide prevention center, examines this national tragedy from multiple angles while debunking common myths, sharing demographic data, and identifying risk factors and warning signs. Suicide provides essential information about the current landscape surrounding suicide in the United States as well as strategies to prevent further tragedy. Bateson emphasizes that the rise in suicide and attempted suicide is not only a mental health issue affecting individuals but also an urgent problem for society at large. He discusses suicide in parks, prisons, and the military, as well as assisted suicide, suicide by cop, and murder-suicide. In particular, he details the stark relationship among guns, drugs, jump sites, and suicide, focusing on one of the most effective ways to prevent suicide--restricting access to lethal means. In addition to presenting practical information for identifying people at risk of suicide, Bateson details important steps that individuals, businesses, and the government can take to end this public health problem.