E-Books & QR Codes - A New Way To Access Our E-books!

There is something new sharing the shelves at the NHTI Library!  In the past, like many libraries throughout the country our display shelves would present the newest arrivals, books of important current topics and selected fiction and non-fiction books we thought you would enjoy.  But now there is something new nestled among them.  Scattered throughout the library you will find laminated placards highlighting one of our many
e-books.  If you see something that catches your eye there is no need to bring anything up to the front desk – your e-book is just a phone scan away.  Use the QR scan code reader on your smart phone to read the conveniently located scan code on the placard, tap the webpage notification and you will be immediately taken to the NHTI log in page.  Log in with your Easy Login and Password and the E-book will be there for you to enjoy.

Once you are in you will have options to search the e-book, print pages, email pages and even get citations.  So next time you are in the Library take out your smartphone and scan your way into one of our many E-books.  And don’t forget if you don’t see it on one of our shelves, you can still access our E-books by using the Quick Search on Library’s home page.

  

 

What's On Display!

The beauty of having every month of the calendar honor a specific group or topic is that it allows us to open our minds to differences around us and, if we choose, explore the ideas, successes and challenges surrounding whomever or whatever is being celebrated. Some may seem quite silly such as National Pizza Month or National Ice Cream Month but others take the opportunity to honor great segments of our society. Our blogs in the past have highlighted Women’s History Month, Black History Month and LGBTQ Pride Month. The newest books on display in the library celebrate Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage month.  Here are a few of the great titles on display.                                             

 

Last Boat Out of Shanghai by Helen Zia

Shanghai has historically been China's jewel, its richest, most modern and westernized city. The bustling metropolis was home to sophisticated intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and a thriving middle class when Mao's proletarian revolution emerged victorious from the long civil war. Terrified of the horrors the Communists would wreak upon their lives, citizens of Shanghai who could afford to fled in every direction. Seventy years later, members of the last generation to fully recall this massive exodus have revealed their stories to Chinese American journalist Helen Zia, who interviewed hundreds of exiles about their journey through one of the most tumultuous events of the twentieth century. From these moving accounts, Zia weaves together the stories of four young Shanghai residents who wrestled with the decision to abandon everything for an uncertain life as refugees in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States.

Days of Distraction by Alexandra Chang

The plan is to leave. As for how, when, to where, and even why--she doesn't know yet. So begins a journey for the twenty-four-year-old narrator of Days of Distraction. As a staff writer at a prestigious tech publication, she reports on the achievements of smug Silicon Valley billionaires while her own request for a raise gets bumped from manager to manager. And when her longtime boyfriend, J, decides to move to a quiet upstate New York town for grad school, she sees an excuse to cut and run.

Moving is supposed to be a grand gesture of her commitment to J and a way to reshape her sense of self. But in the process, she finds herself facing misgivings about her role in an interracial relationship. Captivated by the stories of her ancestors and other Asian Americans in history, she must confront a question at the core of her identity: What does it mean to exist in a society that does not notice or understand you?

 

Family in Six Tones by Lan Cao and Harlan Margaret Van Cao

After more than forty years in the United States, Lan Cao still feels tentative about her place in her adoptive country, one which she came to as a thirteen-year old refugee. And after sixteen years of being a mother, she still ventures through motherhood as if it is a foreign landscape. In this lyrical memoir, Lan explores these two defining experiences of her life with the help of her fierce, independently-minded daughter, Harlan Margaret Van Cao.

In chapters that both reflect and refract her mother's narrative, Harlan describes the rites of passage of childhood and adolescence, as they are filtered through the aftereffects of her family's history of war and migration. Lan responds in turn, revealing her struggles to understand her American daughter. In this unique format of alternating storytelling, their complicated mother-daughter relationship begins to crystallize. Lan's struggles with the traumatic aftermath of war--punctuated by emotional, detailed flashbacks to her childhood--become operatic and fantastical interludes as told by her daughter. Harlan's struggle to make friends in high school challenges her mother to step back and let her daughter find her own way.

Eat a Peach by David Chang

In 2004, Momofuku Noodle Bar opened in a tiny, stark space in Manhattan's East Village. Its young chef-owner, David Chang, worked the line, serving ramen and pork buns to a mix of fellow restaurant cooks and confused diners whose idea of ramen was instant noodles in Styrofoam cups. It would have been impossible to know it at the time--and certainly Chang would have bet against himself--but he, who had failed at almost every endeavor in his life, was about to become one of the most influential chefs of his generation, driven by the question, "What if the underground could become the mainstream?"
 
Chang lays bare his mistakes and wonders about his extraordinary luck as he recounts the improbable series of events that led him to the top of his profession. He wrestles with his lifelong feelings of otherness and inadequacy, explores the mental illness that almost killed him, and finds hope in the shared value of deliciousness.

Let’s Talk Magazines by: Annie M. Gagne

In my opinion, magazines are often one of the most overlooked items in a library. Think about it, when is the last time you went to the library for the sole purpose of flipping through a magazine? What about the last time you used a magazine as a reference in one of your papers or presentations? How about to just get ideas for home improvement, or what to make for dinner this week? Magazines are a great resource for that! Sure, you come to the library for a book, or a newspaper, but why not swing through for a magazine?

Thankfully, we’ve got a pretty large selection to choose from! Whether it be new recipes you’re seeking, or maybe you want to brush up on your Nat Geo articles, or you’re looking to redecorate your space, we’ve got a magazine for that. Here are just a few subscriptions the Library and Learning Commons carries:

What’s Been Going Out!

Even with the pandemic ruling our daily lives, we still make time to pick up a good book. Sometimes it is a biography or a historical look back. Other times it is a grand adventure story that sweeps us away from the day-to-day trials. The NHTI Library blog has made many great suggestions for you covering a variety of subjects but this time lets take a different approach – lets take a look at what you have been taking out. Below are just some of the books/audio books finding their way off the shelves and into your hands and minds.

Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare by James H. Cone

In his book, James Cone re-examines the two most influential African-American leaders of this century. By analyzing the social, economic and religious backgrounds of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X the author helps the reader understand how the philosophy of one brought forward the notion of the unfulfilled dream of America and the other to a nightmare version of America.

 

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?

 

The Great Influenza: The story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry

At the height of WWI, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease. Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research and now revised to reflect the growing danger of the avian flu, The Great Influenza is ultimately a tale of triumph amid tragedy, which provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon. John M. Barry has written a new afterword for this edition that brings us up to speed on the terrible threat of the avian flu and suggest ways in which we might head off another flu pandemic.

 

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ours

 

Following by Christopher Nolan

The fragmented tale of an unemployed young writer who trails strangers through London, hoping that they will provide inspiration for his first novel. He gets more than he bargained for with one of his unwitting subjects, who leads him down a dark, criminal path.

To Do List: Read More! by Annie Gagne

Let's talk books! One of my goals last year was to read at least 12 books over the course of the year. Should be an easy task right? I only needed to read one book a month (and during a pandemic when activities are limited no less). Well, as life goes, I didn't make the goal so I'm trying again. Don't get me wrong, I read plenty of information throughout the day between work, online posts and so on, but actually sitting with a good book means time I sometimes do not have. I'm determined though! I own far too many books that will not be ignored. Here are a handful of titles I've added to my list and others that may feed your own reading habit. If you have any suggested titles, send them my way, I've got two down and at least 10 to go!

 

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is angry and humiliated. Alix wants make things right. 

But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix's desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix's past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Two men, an architect and a murderer, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America's rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair's brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country's most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his "World's Fair Hotel" just west of the fairgrounds - a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium.

Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake.

Notes on a Silencing by Lacy Crawford

In this searing book, Crawford tells the story of coming forward during the state investigation of the elite New England prep school decades after her assault, only to find for the first time evidence that corroborated her memories. Here were depictions of the naïve, hardworking girl she'd been, as well as astonishing proof of an institutional silencing. The slander, innuendo, and lack of adult concern that Crawford had experienced as a student hadn't been imagined; they were the actions of a school that prized its reputation above anything, even a child.
 
This revelation launched Crawford on an extraordinary inquiry deep into gender, privilege, and power, and the ways shame and guilt are used to silence victims. Insightful, arresting, and beautifully written, Notes on a Silencing wrestles with an essential question for our time: what telling of a survivor's story will finally force a remedy?

The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

When you read this book, you will make many assumptions.

You will assume you are reading about a jealous ex-wife.
You will assume she is obsessed with her replacement - a beautiful, younger woman who is about to marry the man they both love.
You will assume you know the anatomy of this tangled love triangle.
Assume nothing.

Twisted and deliciously chilling, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen's The Wife Between Us exposes the secret complexities of an enviable marriage - and the dangerous truths we ignore in the name of love.

 

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins

A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.  

Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from--a place to which she vowed she'd never return.
 
With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, twisting, deeply satisfying read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory, as well as the devastating ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present.
 

In Celebration of Women's History Month

March is Women’s History Month and it is a great time to read up on some of the fantastic women who have helped shaped the world.  From the famous to the lesser known, these women have touched everyone’s lives in a significant way.

Making Marie Curie: Intellectual Property and Celebrity Culture in an Age of Information by Eva Hemmungs Wirtén

Not only was Marie Curie the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, she did it twice!  She was the first woman to earn a doctorate degree in Europe and was the first female professor of the University of Paris.  Making Marie Curie explores what went into the creation of this icon of science.  Eva Hemmungs Wirt, traces her career providing an innovative and historically grounded account of how modern science emerges in tandem with celebrity culture under the influence of intellectual property in a dawning age of information. She explores the emergence of the Curie persona, the information culture of the period that shaped its development, and the strategies Curie used to manage and exploit her intellectual property. This book explores what special conditions bore upon scientific women, and on married women in particular an how, and with what consequences, a scientific reputation secured.

Code Girls:  The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II by Liza Mundy

Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of code-breaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them. A strict vow of secrecy nearly erased their efforts from history; now, through dazzling research and interviews with surviving code girls, bestselling author Liza Mundy brings to life this riveting and vital story of American courage, service, and scientific accomplishment.

 

Code Name: Lise: The True Story of World War II’s Most Highly Decorated Woman by Larry Loftis

In Code Name: Lise, Larry Loftis paints a portrait of true courage, patriotism, and love--of two incredibly heroic people who endured unimaginable horrors and degradations.

The year is 1942, and World War II is in full swing. Odette Sansom decides to follow in her war hero father's footsteps by becoming an SOE agent to aid Britain and her beloved homeland, France. Five failed attempts and one plane crash later, she finally lands in occupied France to begin her mission. It is here that she meets her commanding officer Captain Peter Churchill.

As they successfully complete mission after mission, Peter and Odette fall in love. All the while, they are being hunted by the cunning German secret police sergeant, Hugo Bleicher, who finally succeeds in capturing them. They are sent to Paris's Fresnes prison, and from there to concentration camps in Germany where they are starved, beaten, and tortured. But in the face of despair, they never give up hope, their love for each other, or the whereabouts of their colleagues.

 

Ada Lovelace: The Making of a Computer Scientist by Christopher Hollings

Ada, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852), daughter of romantic poet Lord Byron and his highly educated wife, Anne Isabella, is sometimes called the world's first computer programmer and has become an icon for women in technology. But how did a young woman in the nineteenth century, without access to formal school or university education, acquire the knowledge and expertise to become a pioneer of computer science?  Featuring images of the 'first programme' and Lovelace's correspondence, alongside mathematical models, and contemporary illustrations, this book shows how Ada Lovelace, with astonishing prescience, explored key mathematical questions to understand the principles behind modern computing.

 

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life by Lori D. Ginzberg

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a brilliant activist-intellectual. That nearly all of her ideas-that women are entitled to seek an education, to own property, to get a divorce, and to vote-are now commonplace is in large part because she worked tirelessly to extend the nation's promise of radical individualism to women.  Few could match Stanton's self-confidence; loving an argument, she rarely wavered in her assumption that she had won. But she was no secular saint, and her positions were not always on the side of the broadest possible conception of justice and social change. Elitism runs through Stanton's life and thought, defined most often by class, frequently by race, and always by intellect. Even her closest friends found her absolutism both thrilling and exasperating, for Stanton could be an excellent ally and a bothersome menace, sometimes simultaneously. At once critical and admiring, Ginzberg captures Stanton's ambiguous place in the world of reformers and intellectuals, describes how she changed the world, and suggests that Stanton left a mixed legacy that continues to haunt American feminism.

The list of women that own a spot in Women’s History Month is long; some such as Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Katherine Johnson, one of the women mathematicians of NASA, have been mentioned in previous blogs, but there are so many more.  From Catherine the Great to Mother Theresa, Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks women’s contributions to history are as great as they are varied.  Do a quick search of the Library’s catalog on our webpage and treat yourself to a great read.

Black History Month: Authors, Historical Figures and More by Annie M. Gagne

February is Black History Month and what better way to celebrate than with books by black authors, about prominent black historical figures and more! While I’ve only read a handful of the titles listed below, they all deserve equal recognition. From our first black president, Barack Obama, to the compelling storytelling of Angie Thomas, author of On the Come Up and The Hate You Give, these fantastic books are well worth the time and provide the reader and astounding look into the culture and lives of the subjects. Enjoy!

Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell by Karen DeYoung 
Over the course of a lifetime of service to his country, Colin Powell became a national hero, a beacon of wise leadership and, according to polls, “the most trusted man in America.” From his humble origins as the son of Jamaican immigrants to the highest levels of government in four administrations, he helped guide the nation through some of its most heart-wrenching hours. Washington Post journalist Karen DeYoung takes us from Powell’s Bronx childhood and meteoric rise through the military ranks to his formative roles in Washington’s corridors of power and his controversial tenure as secretary of state.

Drawing on interviews with U.S. and foreign sources as well as with Powell himself, and with unprecedented access to his personal and professional papers, Soldier is a revelatory portrait of an American icon: a man at once heroic and all-too-humanly fallible.  

 

Kindred by Octavia Butler
Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin. 

 We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 

In this personal, eloquently-argued essay--adapted from the much-admired TEDx talk of the same name--Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author's exploration of what it means to be a woman now--and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.

  

How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones
How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir about a young, black, gay man from the South as he fights to carve out a place for himself, within his family, within his country, within his own hopes, desires, and fears. Through a series of vignettes that chart a course across the American landscape, Jones draws readers into his boyhood and adolescence--into tumultuous relationships with his family, into passing flings with lovers, friends, and strangers. Each piece builds into a larger examination of race and queerness, power and vulnerability, love and grief: a portrait of what we all do for one another--and to one another--as we fight to become ourselves.

 

 Hidden Figures: the American dream and the untold story of the Black women mathematicians who helped win the space race by Margot Lee Shetterly 

Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.

This book relates the phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA at the leading edge of the feminist and civil rights movement, whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space and is the basis for the smash Academy Award-nominated film starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten Dunst, and Kevin Costner.

Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA's greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country's future.

 

 

The Poet X: A Novel by Elizabeth Acevedo
Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.

 

But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers--especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about.

 

With her mother's determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school's slam poetry club, she doesn't know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out. But she still can't stop thinking about performing her poems.

  

On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
Sixteen-year-old Bri wants to be one of the greatest rappers of all time. Or at least win her first battle. As the daughter of an underground hip hop legend who died right before he hit big, Bri's got massive shoes to fill.

 

But it's hard to get your come up when you're labeled a hoodlum at school, and your fridge at home is empty after your mom loses her job. So Bri pours her anger and frustration into her first song, which goes viral . . . for all the wrong reasons.

 

Bri soon finds herself at the center of a controversy, portrayed by the media as more menace than MC. But with an eviction notice staring her family down, Bri doesn't just want to make it--she has to. Even if it means becoming the very thing the public has made her out to be. 

 

Insightful, unflinching, and full of heart, On the Come Up is an ode to hip hop from one of the most influential literary voices of a generation. It is the story of fighting for your dreams, even as the odds are stacked against you; and about how, especially for young black people, freedom of speech isn't always free.

Obama: From Promise to Power by David Mendell
Barack Obama is arguably the most dynamic political figure to grace the American stage since John F. Kennedy. His meteoric rise from promise to power has stunned even the cynics and inspired a legion of devout followers.

 

For anyone who wants to know more about the man, David Mendell's Obama is essential reading. Mendell, who covered Obama for the Chicago Tribune, had far-reaching access to the Chicago politician as Obama climbed the ladder to the White House, the details of which he shares in this compelling biography. Positioning Obama as the savior of a fumbling Democratic party, Mendell reveals how Obama conquered Illinois politics and paved the way brick by brick for a galvanizing, historic presidential run.

 

With a new afterword by the author, which includes a fresh perspective on Barack Obama following his two historic terms as the first African-American president, and with exclusive interviews with family members and top advisers, and details on Obama's voting record, David Mendell offers a complete, complex, and revealing portrait. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in American politics in general and President Barack Obama in particular.