Frank Carlson Library

"At 28, Stephanie Land's plans of breaking free from the roots of her hometown in the Pacific Northwest to chase her dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer, were cut short when a summer fling turned into an unplanned pregnancy. She turned to housekeeping to make ends meet, and, with a tenacious grip on her dream to provide her daughter the very best life possible, Stephanie worked days and took classes online to earn a college degree,...

"Why are people more relaxed and at ease with each other in some countries than others? Why do we worry so much about what others think of us and often feel social life is a stressful performance? Why is mental illness three times as common in the USA as in Germany? Why is the American dream more of a reality in Denmark than the USA? What makes child well-being so much worse in some countries than others? As The Inner Level demonstrates, the answer...

"In 1963 Attorney General Robert Kennedy sought out James Baldwin to explain the rage that threatened to engulf black America. Baldwin brought along some friends, including playwright Lorraine Hansberry, psychologist Kenneth Clark, and a valiant activist, Jerome Smith..."-- Kennedy walked away from the nearly three-hour meeting angry--that the black folk assembled didn't understand politics, that they weren't as easy to talk to as Martin Luther King,...

"The Great Chicago Fire in October 1871 destroyed 2,600 acres and left tens of thousands without housing, food, fuel, or clothing. In the aftermath the mayor handed all relief duties to the commercial elite at the Chicago Relief and Aid Society. This was, as Joel E. Black's provocative study shows, a critical decision--one that ensured that Chicago's physical rebuilding would be coupled with an equally ambitious rebuilding of the city's poor, as reformers,...

Mark Zuckerberg, Chris Christie, and Cory Booker were ready to reform our failing schools. They got an education. When Mark Zuckerberg announced in front of a cheering Oprah audience his $100 million pledge to transform the Newark Schools -- and to solve the education crisis in every city in America -- it looked like a huge win for then-mayor Cory Booker and governor Chris Christie. But their plans soon ran into a constituency not so easily moved...

Can a person truly be 'trapped' in the wrong body? Can modern medicine really 'reassign' sex? What should our law say on these issues? Anderson offers a balanced approach to the policy issues, a nuanced vision of human embodiment, and a sober and honest survey of the human costs of getting human nature wrong. In doing so, he examines the grim contrast between the media's sunny depiction and the often sad realities of gender-identity struggles. He...

Too often, writing about social security turns the noteworthy details of the benefits into boring details about regulations or biased political arguments that would put even a die-hard bureaucrat to sleep. Social Security 101 cuts out the tedious explanations and instead provides a hands-on lesson that keeps you engaged as you learn all you need to know about the federal program that's been around since the Great Depression. From the history of social...

"Facts are and must be the coin of the realm in a democracy, for government "of the people, by the people and for the people," requires and assumes to some extent an informed citizenry. Unfortunately, for citizens in the United States and throughout the world, distinguishing between fact and fiction has always been a formidable challenge, often with real life and death consequences. But now it is more difficult and confusing than ever. The Internet...

"The real-life answers to Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, Unruly Places explores the most extraordinary, off-grid, offbeat places on the planet. Alastair Bonnett's tour of the planet's most unlikely micro-nations, moving villages, secret cities, and no man's lands shows us the modern world from surprising new vantage points, bound to inspire urban explorers, off-the-beaten-trail wanderers, and armchair travelers. He connects what we see on maps...

Farming for the Long Haul is a guide to building a viable small farm economy - one that can withstand the economic, political, and climatic shock waves that the twenty-first century portends. It details the innovative work of contemporary farmers, but more than anything else it draws from the experience of farming societies that maintained resilient agricultural systems over centuries of often turbulent change.--INSIDE FLAP.