Books – Detail

Beyond Glass Cases represents the Library Company's ongoing commitment to boldly, honestly, and thoughtfully interpret challenging, and at times harmful, collection items. An independent research library founded in 1731 and specializing in American society and culture from the 17th through the early 20th centuries, the Library Company has collected books and graphics throughout its almost 300-year history. Today, the Library is faced with the task of finding new and better ways of advancing understanding and engaging public awareness of the complex histories of these challenging collection items, while still holding space for their historical significance.

This anthology presents a selection of more than 100 words which show the influence of writing, reading and publishing books on our everyday vocabulary over the centuries, telling the stories behind their linguistic origins, and uncovering some surprising twists in the development of their meaning through time.

In this lively and insightful book, Japonica Brown-Saracino traces how a concept originally intended to describe the brick-and-mortar transformation of neighborhoods has come to characterize transformations that have little to do with cities. She describes how journalists, artists, filmmakers, novelists, and academics use gentrification as a symbolic device to mourn how everyday pleasures and forms of self-expression--from music to marijuana, kale, and tattoos--entered the domain of the elite. She weighs the implications of turning to gentrification as a tool to tell stories, entertain audiences, and communicate political messages.

From New York Times bestselling author Jamie Oliver comes a new cookbook to help you build a celebratory relationship with nourishing food that will make you feel healthier and happier.

Toni Morrison's lectures on the American canon, illuminating the relationship between race, the arts, and life beyond the page. From Herman Melville's Moby Dick to Carson McCullers's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin to the works of Faulkner and Hemingway, Morrison interrogates major works of American literature as only she can.

Elizabeth McCracken, author of bestselling novels, National Book Award long-listed story collections, and a highly praised memoir, has been teaching for more than thirty-five years, guiding her many students through their own answers. In A Long Game, she shares insights gleaned along the way, offering practical tips and incisive thoughts about her own work as an artist. "Writing is a long game," she notes. "What matters is that you learn to get work done in the way that is possible for you, through consistency or panic. Through self-recrimination or self-forgiveness: every life needs both."

Mattering examines the concept of "mattering," defined as the perception of being valued and having opportunities to contribute, and its relationship to individual and social well-being.

This is Morrison as you've never encountered her before, a journey through her oeuvre--her fiction and criticism, as well as her lesser-known dramatic works and poetry--with contextual guidance, archival discoveries, and original close readings. At once accessible and uncompromisingly rigorous, On Morrison is a primer not only on how to read one of the most significant American authors of all time, but also on how to read great works of literature in general.

Blunt, irreverent, and at times wittily subversive, Opera Wars spotlights opera's colorful and sometimes warring personalities, increasingly fierce controversies over content, and the battles being waged for its economic future.

This much-anticipated, definitive edition of Heaney's poetry encompasses all the pieces published in his lifetime--twelve standalone volumes, from Death of a Naturalist (1966) to Human Chain (2010), as well as verse that appeared in pamphlets, journals, and magazines--along with the small number of poems that appeared after his death.

Finding the time to appreciate the bounty of our world can be tricky amid the demands of work, family and scrolling our phones. Happily, E. Foley and B. Coates have curated A Year of Living Curiously, a book of daily shots of knowledge that will lift your spirits and expand your mind in a flash. In 365 joyfully random, utterly fascinating entries, you'll learn what the Japanese mean by 'kuchisabishii' and how the Victorians communicate through flowers; you'll start to get quantum computing and discover the secret history of the bobble hat.