Just the facts, Ma’am
Over the past few years, the difficult realities of everyday life have driven many readers into the arms of escapist fiction; mystery, espionage, romance, and science fiction books have been very popular at the Mendocino Community Library. But for those who still prefer the unvarnished truth, we maintain a good-sized collection of new and enduring nonfiction. Below are just a few of the new titles.
The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams
Samuel Adams probably isn’t the first name that comes to mind when you think of the nation’s founders, but Thomas Jefferson asserted that he was the main leader of the Revolution. With highminded ideals and bareknuckle tactics, Adams masterminded the radical campaign of civil resistance to British governance. He employed every tool available—many of which were not strictly legal—to mobilize towns, colonies, and eventually a band of colonies. Because of his “dirty tricks,” he became the man Britain most wanted to get rid of.
Profiles in Ignorance: How America’s Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber
One of the funniest people in America brilliantly chronicles the country’s embrace of anti-intellectualism in our politics, from Ronald Reagan to Dan Quayle, from George W. Bush to Sarah Palin, to its apotheosis in Donald J. Trump.
Master Slave Husband Wife
An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
In late 1848, an enslaved couple made a daring escape from bondage in Georgia to freedom in the North disguised as a wealthy planter and his servant. Ellen Craft, an enslaved seamstress, and her husband, a cabinetmaker named William, decided to flee in style. The fairskinned Ellen chopped her hair off short and dressed like a gentleman. William acted as her servant in a new beaver hat and his usual clothing. With $150 saved from their work as artisans, they caught the first of many trains heading north on a journey as risky and unpredictable as a trip to the moon.
South to America: A Journey below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
The conviction of this book is that “the creation of racial slavery in the colonies was a gateway to habits and dispositions that ultimately became the commonplace ways of doing things in this country.” In other words, the South is America, and its history and influence cannot be dismissed as an embarrassing relative at the nation’s holiday dinner table. Perry travels to over a dozen Southern cities and towns, examining both histories and modern realities. At each stop, she recounts a historical atrocity and documents the longterm consequences.
The Island of Extraordinary Captives
The Isle of Man is a peaceful holiday haven today, but for much of WWII, it hosted ten internment camps. The seventh complex held 12,000 German and Austrian refugees, the majority Jewish. This book tells the truly shocking story of Britain’s “national misjudgment.” As Nazi persecution increased in the immediate years before war broke out, thousands sought sanctuary in Britain. Encouraged by widespread antisemitism and anti-refugee sentiments, and the paranoia of Britain’s popular press, the government, led by Winston Churchill from 1940, decided to incarcerate the people termed “the enemy in our midst.”
What It’s Like to Be a Bird
For birders and nonbirders alike, this book will give you an understanding of what common, mostly backyard, birds are doing and why: Can birds smell? Is this flicker the same one that put a hole in my siding last year? Do robins “hear” worms? A renowned author-illustrator of bird field guides, Sibley covers more than 200 species, includes more than 330 of his new drawings, and drops cool bird facts on every page.
An Immense World:
How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms around Us
This book urges us humans to break outside our “sensory bubble” to consider the unique ways that dogs, dolphins, mice, and other animals perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. Yong knows that we cannot regard ourselves as masters of the planet when we don’t even understand how songbirds migrate across oceans and mountain ranges to the same place they nested last year.
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. She brings these two ways of knowing together to take us on a journey that is as mythic as it is scientific, circling toward her central argument: the awakening of ecological consciousness requires acknowledgment of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.
The Half-Known Life: In Search of Paradise
Most of us dream of that elusive place where the anxieties, struggles, and burdens of life fall away, but each of us has very different ideas about where it is to be found.
For some, it can be enjoyed only after death; for others, it’s just across the ocean—or even in our midst—if only we can see it. Traveling from Iran to North Korea, from the Himalayas to the temples of Japan, Iyer brings together a lifetime of explorations to ask how we might find peace in the midst of difficulty and suffering.
From a Mountain in Tibet: A Monk’s Journey
The extraordinary story of how a wayward boy escaped his war-torn country, found himself and became the leading Tibetan monk in the West. Now in his seventies and a leading monk at the Samye Ling monastery in Scotland, Lama Yeshe casts a hopeful look back on his momentous life.
Findng Me: A Memoir The award-winning actor tells her story frankly: she grew up in a poor, dysfunctional family in Rhode Island and over
find success and fame. Davis touches upon the interrelation of poverty, race, and trauma; the long and arduous process of coming to terms with her identity in the face of marginalization; and the roles that luck, chance, and privilege play in the world of Hollywood.
The Mendocino Community Library is open Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm. Besides books, we have magazines, jigsaw puzzles, books on CD, and movie DVDs. On our web page (https:// www.mendocinocom munitylibrary.org/) you can find any item in our collection.