September Library Newsletter

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Barbara Kingsolver says Demon Copperhead was inspired by David Copperfield, the classic novel by Charles Dickens. It won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Fierce, angry, funny, groundbreaking-​-​Tommy Orange's first novel is a wondrous and shattering portrait of an America few of us have ever seen. There There is a multi-​generational, relentlessly paced story about violence and recovery, hope and loss, identity and power, dislocation and communion, and the beauty and despair woven into the history of a nation and its people. It tells the story of twelve characters, each of whom have private reasons for traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow.

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig's King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.--and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father--as well as the nation's most mourned martyr.

J. Robert Oppenheimer is one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, a physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war, and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress. In this biography twenty-five years in the making, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin capture Oppenheimer's life and times, from his early career to his central role in the Cold War. American Prometheus won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and is the inspiration for the recent movie Oppenheimer.

From the first women in the military in World War II to the final push in the 1990s, The Fly Girls Revolt chronicles the actions of a band of women who overcame decades of discrimination and prevailed against bureaucrats, chauvinists, anti-feminists, and even other military women. Drawing on extensive research, interviews with women who served in the 1970s and 1980s, and her personal experiences in the Air Force, Eileen Bjorkman weaves together a riveting tale of the women who fought for the right to enter combat and be treated as equal partners in the U.S. military.

In American Sirens, acclaimed journalist and paramedic Kevin Hazzard tells the dramatic story of how a group of young, under-educated Black men forged a new frontier of healthcare. He follows a rich cast of characters that includes John Moon, an orphan who found his calling as a paramedic; Peter Safar, the Nobel Prize-nominated physician who invented CPR and realized his vision for a trained ambulance service; and Nancy Caroline, the idealistic young doctor who turned a scrappy team into an international leader. Never-before revealed in full, this is a rich and troubling hidden history of the Black origins of America’s paramedics, a special band of dedicated essential workers, who stand ready to serve day and night on the line between life and death for every one of us.  

A landmark work of narrative history that shatters our previous Eurocentric understanding of the Age of Discovery by telling the story of the Indigenous Americans who journeyed across the Atlantic to Europe after 1492. We have long been taught to presume that modern global history began when the "Old World" encountered the "New", when Christopher Columbus "discovered" America in 1492. But, as Caroline Dodds Pennock conclusively shows in this groundbreaking book, for tens of thousands of Aztecs, Maya, Totonacs, Inuit and others-​-​enslaved people, diplomats, explorers, servants, traders--the reverse was true: they discovered Europe. For them, Europe comprised savage shores, a land of riches and marvels, yet perplexing for its brutal disparities of wealth and quality of life, and its baffling beliefs.

This original, entertaining, and surprising book is a natural history of things we wish we didn't say (but do), as well as a look at what happens in American culture (and others) when we do (and wish we didn't). Covering a vast array of verbal blunders, from Spoonerisms to malapropisms to "uh" and "um," linguist and author Erard provides a look into the science to explain why they happen and a look at society for how they're received in everyday life, in politics, and in the popular culture. 

Vashti believes that she cannot draw, but her art teacher's encouragement leads her to change her mind and she goes on to encourage another student who feels the same as she had. The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds inspired International Dot Day which celebrates creativity, courage and collaboration on or around September 15-ish each year.

Since its first publication, The Visual Arts: A History has been hailed as the most comprehensive history of art ever published in a single volume. Presenting art history as an essential part of the development of humankind, it offers an authoritative, balanced, and enlightening account, ranging from a statuette carved in central Europe some 30,000 years ago to the digital, video, and installation art of the new millennium.

Using his experiences from working in the comic book industry, movie studios and teaching, in Framed Ink Marcos introduces the reader to a step-by-step system that will create the most successful storyboards and graphics for the best visual communication. After a brief discussion on narrative art, Marcos introduces us to drawing and composing a single image, to composing steady shots to drawing to compose for continuity between all the shots. These lessons are then applied to three diverse story lines - a train accident, a cowboy tale and bikers approaching a mysterious house. 

For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.

ChatGPT For Dummies demystifies the artificial intelligence tool that can answer questions, write essays, and generate just about any kind of text it’s asked for. This powerful example of generative AI is widely predicted to upend education and business. In this book, you’ll learn how ChatGPT works and how you can operate it in a way that yields satisfactory results. You’ll also explore the ethics of using AI-generated content for various purposes. Written by a journalist who's been on the front lines of artificial intelligence for over a decade, this book dives deep into ChatGPT’s potential, so you can make informed decisions―without asking ChatGPT for help.