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YA Book Club POSTPONED! Due to unforeseen circumstances, we have had to cancel this Saturday's YA book club meeting. We will reschedule and post it here and on our social media as soon as we can.
Ithaca Teachers
Jacob White can write.--Padgett Powell
A wide array of layered stories written with disarming care.--Ron Carlson, author of Five Skies
Jacob White's characters are in trouble, and their creator brings them to life with language both lush and harsh, gritty and great.--Antonya Nelson, author of Bound
Fresh, fierce, sad, funny, deep. The author is a natural story teller, with a voice that is like music. . . . This book sings. It's real, it's beautiful.--Lev Raphael, author of The German Money
Set largely in the modern South, the stories in Being Dead in South Carolina concern people who no longer recognize themselves, who have arrived, like the Sunbelt itself, to a strange day that seems disconnected from all the old days, the old stories, the old selves. Yet it's always on this day we must answer for ourselves--right an overturned car, recover the body of a brother, convince a son of our worth and his. We are adrift with bad judgment, a little loose in the head, but searching for the correction.
A South Carolina native, Jacob White studied creative writing at the University of Houston, where he received the Donald Barthelme Memorial Fellowship in Fiction. His fiction has appeared in many journals, including the Georgia Review, New Letters, Salt Hill, and the Sewanee Review, from which he received the Andrew Lytle Prize. He teaches creative writing at Johnson State College and co-edits Green Mountains Review.
Poetry. In Roald Hoffmann's latest poetry collection, he casts his inquisitive mind and love for words and syntax on the worlds he encounters. In a winter retreat in inland Provence, he ponders the long-cultivated land around, and its little treasures. Midst that beauty, he cannot stop thinking of the wounds to his family in the Holocaust. Then, an intense interaction with the crafts community in the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina leads to a strong set of poems. A commission to write a poem for the 50th anniversary of the Watson and Crick paper might be rejected; it still yields three good poems, as does the puzzle of a Japanese mountain god who does not work at night, lest he frighten humans. Why? The collection ends in the forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, midst manzanita and redwoods, reaching for consilience. Roald loves words, and the conjunctions of sound and meaning that can be woven from them. From wherever in the world he has been (and that includes a desperate time in his childhood), he brings back a abiding feeling of quiet beauty, of science and nature at peace with each other.
; *Los Angeles Times
"POWERFUL . . . A stirring defense of informed rationality. . . Rich in surprising information and beautiful writing."
; *The Washington Post Book World
How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don't understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions.
Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.
"COMPELLING."
; *USA Today
"A clear vision of what good science means and why it makes a difference. . . . A testimonial to the power of science and a warning of the dangers of unrestrained credulity."
; *The Sciences
"PASSIONATE."
; *San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle
Spanning the years from World War II, when he was a civilian statistician in the operations research section of the Royal Air Force Bomber Command, through his studies with Hans Bethe at Cornell University, his early friendship with Richard Feynman, and his postgraduate work with J. Robert Oppenheimer, Freeman Dyson has composed an autobiography unlike any other. Dyson evocatively conveys the thrill of a deep engagement with the world-be it as scientist, citizen, student, or parent. Detailing a unique career not limited to his groundbreaking work in physics, Dyson discusses his interest in minimizing loss of life in war, in disarmament, and even in thought experiments on the expansion of our frontiers into the galaxies.
Why the dollar is--and will remain--the dominant global currency
The U.S. dollar's dominance seems under threat. The near collapse of the U.S. financial system in 2008-2009, political paralysis that has blocked effective policymaking, and emerging competitors such as the Chinese renminbi have heightened speculation about the dollar's looming displacement as the main reserve currency. Yet, as The Dollar Trap powerfully argues, the financial crisis, a dysfunctional international monetary system, and U.S. policies have paradoxically strengthened the dollar's importance. Eswar Prasad examines how the dollar came to have a central role in the world economy and demonstrates that it will remain the cornerstone of global finance for the foreseeable future. Marshaling a range of arguments and data, and drawing on the latest research, Prasad shows why it will be difficult to dislodge the dollar-centric system. With vast amounts of foreign financial capital locked up in dollar assets, including U.S. government securities, other countries now have a strong incentive to prevent a dollar crash. Prasad takes the reader through key contemporary issues in international finance--including the growing economic influence of emerging markets, the currency wars, the complexities of the China-U.S. relationship, and the role of institutions like the International Monetary Fund--and offers new ideas for fixing the flawed monetary system. Readers are also given a rare look into some of the intrigue and backdoor scheming in the corridors of international finance. The Dollar Trap offers a panoramic analysis of the fragile state of global finance and makes a compelling case that, despite all its flaws, the dollar will remain the ultimate safe-haven currency.
Suicides, excessive overtime, and hostility and violence on the factory floor in China. Drawing on vivid testimonies from rural migrant workers, student interns, managers and trade union staff, Dying for an iPhone is a devastating expose of two of the world's most powerful companies: Foxconn and Apple.
As the leading manufacturer of iPhones, iPads, and Kindles, and employing one million workers in China alone, Taiwanese-invested Foxconn's drive to dominate global electronics manufacturing has aligned perfectly with China's goal of becoming the world leader in technology. This book reveals the human cost of that ambition and what our demands for the newest and best technology means for workers.
Foxconn workers have repeatedly demonstrated their power to strike at key nodes of transnational production, challenge management and the Chinese state, and confront global tech behemoths. Dying for an iPhone allows us to assess the impact of global capitalism's deepening crisis on workers.'
