Library Studies

In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River, tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts that had fallen into obscurity. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu tells the incredible story of how Haidara, a mild-mannered archivist and historian from the legendary city of Timbuktu, later became one of the world's greatest and most brazen smugglers.

Abandoned in a library book-drop slot in the dead of winter, the small kitten who came to be known as Dewey Readmore Books miraculously endured the coldest night of the year. When librarian Vicki Myron found him in the morning, she wrapped him in her arms, gave him his first bath, and then introduced him to his new home: the library. Dewey charmed Spencer, Iowa’s library-goers, young and old, with his ability to know just which visitors needed a friend.

The Brutish Museums sits at the heart of a heated debate about cultural restitution, repatriation and the decolonisation of museums. Since its first publication, museums across the western world have begun to return their Bronzes to Nigeria, heralding a new era in the way we understand the collections of empire we once took for granted.

Do you like puzzles, coding, and taking things apart? Do you write stories, act in plays, slay at Wordle? The things you are good at are clues to how your brain works. Are you good at math? Working with your hands? Are you a neat freak or a big mess? With her knack for making science easy to understand, Temple Grandin explains different types of thinkers: verbal thinkers who are good with language, and visual thinkers who think in pictures and patterns. You will discover all kinds of minds and how we need to work together to create solutions to help solve real-world problems.

Librarians spend their lives weeding - not weeds, but books - books that have reached the end of their shelf life both literally and figuratively. They remove books that patrons no longer check out, and they put back books they treasure. Annie Spence, who has a decade of experience as a Midwestern librarian, does this not only at her Michigan library but also at home, for her neighbors, at cocktail parties - everywhere. In Dear Fahrenheit 451, she addresses those books directly.

Now more than ever, kids need to feel empowered as they work through anxiety and low self-esteem. With its helpful, hands-on suggestions and tips, Superpowered will be embraced by every kid with insecurities, worries, and anxious thoughts. Renee Jain and Dr. Shefali Tsabary make listeners the superheroes of their own stories. They introduce a toolkit of easy-to-understand methods for recognizing anxious behaviors, identifying the root causes of worried thinking, and realizing that strength can be found in reclaiming one's inner superpowers.

A powerful guide to why even the most well-intentioned innovations go haywire, and the surprising ways we can change course to create a more positive future, by two celebrated experts working at the intersection of design, technology, and learning at Stanford University’s acclaimed d.school.

The yearning to slow down and simplify, return to the earth, and maybe even “rewild” what has been tamed in ourselves persists even though that dream may seem ever more remote in contemporary life. Danielle Dulsky shows that even in our high-tech and high-pressure lives, it is possible to manifest your own “year of the wild” and to tap into often-forgotten holy wisdom. Seasons of Moon and Flame guides you to live cyclically while working with the archetype of the Sacred Hag, or wild grandmother, who appears in various guises.

The Book of Belonging is designed for families seeking a Bible storybook that reflects the diversity of God’s people and for every listener seeking a more expansive and wondrous view of God. The thoughtful text present some of Scripture’s most important and overlooked stories—including many female-centered ones—alongside old favorites reimagined to convey greater inclusivity, diversity, and historical representation.

The Western museum is a battleground—a terrain of ideological, political, and economic contestation. Almost everyone today wants to rethink the museum, but how many have the audacity to question the idea of the universal museum itself? In A Programme of Absolute Disorder, Françoise Vergès puts the museum in its place. Exploring the Louvre's history, she uncovers the context in which the universal museum emerged: as a product of colonialism, and of Europe's self-appointed claim to be the guardian of global heritage.

In this enthralling narrative, professor and award-winning author Jeffrey Ostler recounts the Lakota Sioux’s loss of their spiritual homeland and their remarkable legal battle to regain it. Moving easily from battlefields to reservations to Supreme Court chambers, Ostler captures the strength that bore the Lakotas through the worst times and kept alive the dream of reclaiming their cherished lands.

It’s all but certain that the next 50 years will bring enormous, not to say cataclysmic, disruptions to our present way of life. World oil reserves will be exhausted within that time frame, as will the lithium that powers today’s most sophisticated batteries, suggesting that transportation is equally imperiled. Farming for the Long Haul is about building a viable small-farm economy that can withstand the economic, political, and climatic shock waves that the 21st century portends.

While young children are avid observers and questioners of their world, adults often shut down or postpone conversations on complicated topics because it's hard to know where to begin. Research shows that talking about issues like race and gender from the age of two not only helps children understand what they see, but also increases self-awareness, self-esteem, and allows them to recognize and confront things that are unfair, like discrimination and prejudice.

Most of us take for granted that our books are vertical on our shelves with the spines facing out, but Henry Petroski, inveterately curious engineer, didn’t. As a result, listeners are guided along the astonishing evolution from papyrus scrolls boxed at Alexandria to upright books shelved at the Library of Congress. Petroski takes us into the pre-Gutenberg world, when books were so scarce they were chained to lecterns for security.

As a young man in India, Gandhi saw firsthand how people were treated unfairly. Refusing to accept injustice, he came up with a brilliant way to fight back through quiet, peaceful protest. He took his methods with him from South Africa back to India, where he led a nonviolent revolution that freed his country from British rule. Through his calm, steady heroism, Gandhi changed everything for India and inspired civil rights movements all over the world, proving that the smallest of us can be the most powerful.

The fascinating and little-known story of the Louvre, from its inception as a humble fortress to its transformation into the palatial residence of the kings of France and then into the world's greatest art museum.

June 28, 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which is considered the most significant event in the gay liberation movement, and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Drawing from the New York Public Library's archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots.

This grimoire—a book of magick, spells, ceremonies, journaling exercises, recipes, and incantations—is an invitation to be Witch and bewitch. As you journey through this book, you will reflect and reshape your story, beholding your life’s poetry and wielding a mythic intelligence. Danielle Dulsky guides you to see through the lens of the five elements, earth, water, fire, air, and ether, and to call upon age-old archetypes to heal and liberate your best self. You will become a rebel queen, hooded seer, and wild king.

Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you’ll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But a closer look at research on the world’s top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule.

If you buy a book at the bookstore, you own it. You can take it home, scribble in the margins, put it on the shelf, lend it to a friend, or sell it at a garage sale. But is the same thing true for the eBooks or other digital goods you buy? Retailers and copyright holders argue that you don't own those purchases, you merely license them. That means your eBook vendor can delete the book from your device without warning or explanation - as Amazon deleted Orwell's 1984 from the Kindles of surprised readers.