Bookmark the Blog


AMERICAN HARVEST

One of our recommended books for 2020 is American Harvest by Marie Mutsuki Mockett

For over one hundred years, the Mockett family has owned a seven-thousand-acre wheat farm in Nebraska, where Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s father was raised. Mockett, who grew up in Carmel, California, with her father and her Japanese mother, knew little about farming when she inherited this land. Her father had all but forsworn it.

At the invitation of Eric Wolgemuth, the conservative farmer who has cut her family’s fields for decades, Mockett accompanies a group of evangelical wheat harvesters through the heartland as they follow the trail of ripening wheat from Texas to Idaho. Together they contemplate what Eric refers to as “the divide,” peeling back layers of the American story to expose its contradictions and unhealed wounds.

read more

SIGH, GONE

One of our recommended books for 2020 is Sigh, Gone by Phuc Tran

For anyone who has ever felt like they don’t belong, Sigh, Gone shares an irreverent, funny, and moving tale of displacement and assimilation woven together with poignant themes from beloved works of classic literature.

In 1975, during the fall of Saigon, Phuc Tran immigrates to America along with his family. By sheer chance they land in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a small town where the Trans struggle to assimilate into their new life. In this coming-of-age memoir told through the themes of great books such as The Metamorphosis, The Scarlet Letter,

read more

BRAVE ENOUGH

One of our recommended books for 2020 is Brave Enough by Jessie Diggins

In Brave Enough, Jessie Diggins reveals the true story of her journey from the American Midwest into sports history, when she and teammate Kikkan Randall won the first ever cross-country skiing gold medal for the United States at the 2018 Winter Olympics. With candid charm and characteristic grit, she connects the dots from her free-spirited upbringing in Minnesota to racing in the spotlights of the Olympics. Going beyond stories of races and ribbons, she describes the challenges and frustrations of becoming a serious athlete, the intense pressure of competing at the highest levels, and her harrowing struggle with bulimia,

read more

STAMPED

One of our recommended books for 2020 is Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

A timely, crucial, and empowering exploration of racism–and antiracism–in America.

This is NOT a history book.
This is a book about the here and now.
A book to help us better understand why we are where we are.
A book about race.

The construct of race has always been used to gain and keep power, to create dynamics that separate and silence. This remarkable reimagining of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning reveals the history of racist ideas in America,

read more

WHAT STARS ARE MADE OF

One of our recommended books for 2020 is What Stars Are Made of by Donovan Moore

The history of science is replete with women getting little notice for their groundbreaking discoveries. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, a tireless innovator who correctly theorized the substance of stars, was one of them.

It was not easy being a woman of ambition in early twentieth-century England, much less one who wished to be a scientist. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin overcame prodigious obstacles to become a woman of many firsts: the first to receive a PhD in astronomy from Radcliffe College, the first promoted to full professor at Harvard, the first to head a department there. And, in what has been called “the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy,” she was the first to describe what stars are made of.

read more

WHY WE ACT

One of our recommended books is Why We Act by Catherine A. Sanderson

Why do good people so often do nothing when a seemingly small action could make a big difference? A pioneering social psychologist explains why moral courage is so rare—and reveals how it can be triggered or trained.

We are bombarded every day by reports of bad behavior, from sexual harassment and political corruption to bullying belligerence. It’s tempting to blame evil acts on evil people, but that leaves the rest us off the hook. Silence, after all, can perpetuate cruelty. Why We Act draws on the latest developments in psychology and neuroscience to tackle an urgent question: Why do so many of us fail to intervene when we’re needed—and what would it take to make us step up?

read more