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Nonfiction

Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism

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Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble

Format: Book

Who it’s for: Adults

If I asked you how you search for information, I bet your answer would be: “I Google it!” Safiya Umoja Noble’s book makes you take a long, hard look at how you find information, and who you trust to give you that information.

The author challenges the common belief that results are presented based on unbiased relevance.  She examines the algorithms that control the results, and discusses how the people who write those algorithms own biases can impact the results. The authors considers how racism and sexism are reinforces through these “algorithms of oppression” and why we should be critical of the search engines that have a monopoly on our information seeking habits.

This non-fiction book analyzes internet search results, focusing especially on Google, and what goes on behind the scenes to get you the results you see. You will never look at your search results the same way again.

 

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Hillbilly Elegy

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Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
Format: Digital audiobook
Who it’s for: Adults

J.D. Vance grew up in the Rust Belt town of Middletown, Ohio.  He is the grandson of a poor, uneducated couple who left their Appalachian roots at a very young age for a better life in Ohio.

Although part of the white middle-class in Ohio, J.D.’s family could never quite escape the Appalachian stereotype described as “uneducated and prone to impulsive acts of violence”.  Life for J.D. and his family was chaotic and dysfunctional, fraught with the social problems of his hometown including alcoholism, drug addiction, and constant money problems.

J.D.’s family struggled like many working-class American families from small towns do.  But J.D. was fortunate.  He had the constant love and support of his grandmother and extended family members. J.D.’s grandmother taught him that working hard matters as well as taking responsibility for one’s choices.

Hillbilly Elegy is J.D. Vance’s story of surviving the dysfunction of white working class America to become a graduate of Ohio State University and Yale Law School.  It is his own explanation of how the Appalachian values passed down from his grandparents actually helped him survive the stigma of the poor American and taught him that if he worked hard enough, he could make it.

The audio version of this book is narrated by the author.

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Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan

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Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan
Format: Book
Who It’s For: Adults

After graduating from college and working for a year, Kelly Corrigan and a good friend decided to set out on the adventure of a lifetime.  Everything was great until they began to run out of money in Australia.  Instead of asking their parents to wire them money, Kelly and her friend decided to get jobs.

Kelly took a job as a live-in nanny for the Tanner family.  The mother of the family had just passed away after battling cancer.  Kelly was responsible for taking the children to school, doing their laundry, cooking their meals, taking care of them when they returned home, cleaning up after them, and getting them ready for bed.

Glitter and Glue is a memoir in which Kelly examines her relationship with her mother while being the substitute mother for the Tanner children.  The book is heartwarming.  Kelly has a style of writing that will leave you laughing and sometimes crying.  It will leave you thinking of your relationship with your own mother and reflecting on what it means for one parent to be the “glitter” and one parent to be the “glue”.  This is a book that you won’t be able to put down.

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Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World

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Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World by Matt Parker
Format: Book, eBook
Who it’s for: Adults

What do you get when you cross a stand-up comedian with a math enthusiast? You get Matt Parker, and his chuckle-inducing book Humble Pi. Math typically works quietly behind the scenes of life, ensuring that your internet works, your train runs smoothly on its tracks, and the calendar marches steadily onward…until, suddenly, it doesn’t.

Parker reveals the math mistakes behind some of the world’s most spectacular failures, from a bridge collapse to a stock market meltdown to an election debacle. For an entertaining tour through humanity’s mathematical stumbling blocks, find it in the catalog.

The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World

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The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World by Charles C. Mann
Format: Book
Who it’s for: Adults

How should we feed and provide power to the growing world population? Many debates about this question come down to two conflicting beliefs. We all need to cut back or else everyone will suffer when we hit our ecological limits! says one side. No, we need MORE people doing MORE innovating, and technology will let us overcome all problems! counters the other.

People who espouse the former sentiment, Charles Mann argues, might be called “Prophets”, warning of doom unless we change our ways. The latter, techno-optimist point of view is held by “Wizards”, contending that the magic wand of technology will cause any apparent limits to evaporate.

In The Wizard and the Prophet, Mann examines the lives of two twentieth-century scientists whom you may never have heard of, but whose opposing views came to dominate our current discussions of pressing environmental and humanitarian problems. He uncovers the development of William Vogt’s prophetic beliefs and Norman Borlaug’s wizardly notions, then demonstrates how their philosophical descendants approach some of the conundrums facing humanity: sufficient food, adequate water, energy generation, and climate change.

Find it in the catalog, check it out, then supply yourself with both a dictionary and an open mind as you read this book. Mann will introduce you to both some new words (perfervid, anyone?) and some new thoughts about the key issues of our time.

Packs: Strength in Numbers

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Packs: Strength in Numbers by Hannah Salyer
Format: Book
Who Its For: Kids

Take a look at nature and you will find groups-herds, flocks, swarms of creatures big and small. In Packs: Strength in Numbers, Hannah Salyer celebrates this unity and diversity found in the animal world. With her illustrations of dusty bison on the march, or wolves streaking through snow-quiet forest, she gives us a close up view of just how animals, birds and insects work together to survive and thrive, in hunting, traveling, growing food, singing, protecting the young. This book contains loads of information about the habits of these creatures which will satisfy the curiosity of little naturalists, and big ones too (for example, did you know that a herd of wildebeests can have up to a million animals, and is called an implausibility? Me either!) The book ends with a gentle reminder that working together is always better for creatures and humans alike.

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