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Ellison Library

Information, Academic, Cultural Epicenter- STA Upper School

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The Mystery of Sleep, by Meir Kyger, MD

"Kryger, a professor at Yale Medical School, is a leader in the field of sleep medicine, and has treated more than thirty thousand patients with sleep problems during a career that spans four decades. He draws on this voluminous clinical experience in his book, which is an authoritative and accessible survey of what is known, what is believed, and what is still obscure about normal patterns of sleep and the conditions that disrupt it."—Jerome Groopman, New Yorker


“Ably marries science with a doctor’s advice.”—Publishers Weekly


"This book introduces readers to the topic of sleep, raises awareness of the effects of sleep disorders on people’s lives, and empowers people to use the tools in the book to recognize sleep problems and to seek help."—Ermal Bojdani, Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine


“Dr. Kryger, winner of the National Sleep Foundation’s 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award, beautifully describes the enigmatic nature of human sleep from birth through retirement.  A must-read for all sleepers!”—Lauren Hale, Editor-in-Chief, Sleep Health


“This readable book fills an important gap in the popular literature about sleep. Dr. Kryger brilliantly provides patient stories, the background science, and solutions for those suffering from a wide range of these mysterious disorders.”—Max Hirshkowitz, Baylor College of Medicine, author of Sleep Disorders for Dummies


“Meir Kryger is the oracle when it comes to the conundrums of when, why, and how we sleep. I cannot recommend him highly enough.”—Dotun Adebayo, BBC Radio 5


"Sleep is vital to health and well-being. In The Mystery of Sleep, Dr. Meir Kryger, one of the foremost authorities on sleep and sleep disorders, shares his experience, knowledge, and wisdom, showing that if we’re going to truly thrive, we must begin with sleep."—Arianna Huffington, author of The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time

This Day in Rap and Hip Hop History, by Chuck D

If you want to understand our culture. To learn knowledge itself. Truth about the art form of poetry in motion. The struggle of our community through rhyme and rhythm. This is the book that inspired me long before I found my place in hip-hop. The power of self-expression. Unapologetically. Taught by the teacher himself. Chuck D!!!!―Kendrick Lamar

This book is required reading for those who claim to know hip-hop, love hip-hop, and want their information from a true Master and General of the hip-hop culture...Public Enemy #1, Chuck D!―Ice-T

Chuck D wasn't put here to play any games. He created the greatest hip-hop album in my opinion to date, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. But the very first minute he sonically appeared to us, I knew rap was changed forever. Power, awareness, strength, and militancy is his stance in a world obsessed with punishing poor people. I knew he would righteously and boldly die so that a little young boy he didn't even know from Queensbridge could live. He attacked wickedness head-on being the rappin' rhino terror that he is. He represented for all of us putting his life on the line and making the right music fighting for hip hop, the youth, truth, and justice. Chuck D made the lane for people like me to walk.―Nas

Reading this book is like reliving my life all over again. Chuck D is Dope!!!―LL Cool J

"This Day In Rap and Hip-Hop History, with a forward and amazing illustrations by Shepard Fairy, paints a picture of a restless art form that has been constantly evolving and has come to dominate the cultural landscape."―Esquire

"The immense scope of Chuck D's influence on hip-hop is as unwavering as it is undeniable."―Vibe

"From DJ Kool Herc's early experiments in turntablism to the meteoric rise of Kendrick Lamar and the glorious success of historic hip-hop musical Hamilton, it breaks 40 years of a uniquely American art form down into easily digestible pieces of comprehensive chronology."―GeekDad

"Even the most knowledgeable music lover in your squad could use this book in their collection."―Complex

"Unmatched legend of hip-hop culture, Public Enemy's Chuck D is on a mission to set all records straight regarding the chronological history of rap and hip-hop culture. So, forget about all of those Instagram and Tumblr pages floating around in the name of "today in hip-hop history" that is being run by 18-year old hip-hop heads and allow a living legend who walks, talks, and breathes this culture, tell it."―The Source

World Without Mind, by Franklin Foer

“Important and incredibly informative (and entertaining) new book…I can’t recommend this enough…I want everyone to go out and get World Without Mind.” — Hugh Hewitt

"But Foer’s writing is deft enough to make this a polemic in the best sense of the word, which is to say a relentless intellectual argument, executed in the tradition of George Orwell and Christopher Hitchens, which often eschews nuance in favor of wit and aggression." – Washington Post

“Foer conjures concise, insightful psychological profiles of each mover-and-shaker, detailing how they've mixed utopianism and monopolism into an insidious whole. He also offers compelling mini-bios of everyone from Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew and the father of modern propaganda, to Stewart Brand, publisher of The Whole Earth Catalog and a massive influence on Silicon Valley . . . . World Without Mind is a searing take, a polemic packed with urgency and desperation that, for all its erudition and eloquence, is not afraid to roll up its sleeves and make things personal.” – NPR.org

"When the author Franklin Foer first raised concerns about Silicon Valley’s power players, ‘people looked at me funny’. Now his work appears prophetic."– The Guardian

“Lucid and ambitious new book . . . Foer is smart and trenchant when he attacks.” – Globe and Mail

“World Without Mind is an argument in the spirit of those brave democracy protestors who stand alone before tanks. Franklin Foer asks us to unplug and think. He asks us to recognize and challenge Silicon Valley’s monopoly power. His book is a vital response to digital utopianism at a time when we desperately need new ethics for social media.”
—Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars and Private Empire 
 
“A provocative, enlightening, and above all, important book that is asking the most important question of our times. It is nothing less than an examination of the future of humanity and what we like to call ‘free will.’ It is also a good read—Foer writes with an engaging vibrancy that makes the book a page-turner.”
—Tim Wu, author of The Attention Merchants and The Master Switch
 
“As the dust settles from the great tech upheavals of the early 21st century, it turns out that the titans of Silicon Valley have not ushered us into a utopia of peace and freedom. Instead, as Foer so convincingly shows, by monopolizing the means of distribution, they have systematically demonetized and degraded the written word. World without Mind makes a passionate, deeply informed case for the need to take back culture—knowledge, information, ideas—from the Facebooks and Amazons. Its message could not be more timely.”
—William Deresiewicz, New York Times bestselling author of Excellent Sheep and A Jane Austen Education
 
“Franklin Foer’s World Without Mind is a fascinating biography of the biggest players in big tech—a handful of humans that, through their decisions, govern the lives of seven billion tech consumers. Foer shows that these decisions are robbing us of our humanity, our values, and our ability to grapple with complexity. World Without Mind is an important and urgent book that should be required reading for anyone who’s ever shopped on Amazon, swiped the screen on an Apple device, or scrolled through the Facebook newsfeed—in short, for all of us.”
—Adam Alter, New York Times bestselling author of Irresistible and Drunk Tank Pink

“Essential reading – while we still know what reading is – Foer's terrifying analysis of the cyber state we're in is both portrait gallery of the robber barons, the monopolists, the tax dodgers and the fantasists who own the data troughs from which we feed, and passionate plea for the retention of those values of privacy, nonconformity, contemplation, creativity and mind, which the Big Tech companies are well on their way to destroying, not out of cynicism but the deepest ignorance of what a person is and why individuality is indispensable to him.  This book leaves us in no doubt: no greater threat to our humanity exists.”
—Howard Jacobson, Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Dog’s Last Walk and The Finkler Question

These Truths, by Jill Lepore

“[B]rilliant…insightful…It isn’t until you start reading it that you realize how much we need a book like this one at this particular moment.”
- Andrew Sullivan, New York Times Book Review

“This sweeping, sobering account of the American past is a story not of relentless progress but of conflict and contradiction, with crosscurrents of reason and faith, black and white, immigrant and native, industry and agriculture rippling through a narrative that is far from completion.”
- New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice

“[Lepore’s] one-volume history is elegant, readable, sobering; it extends a steadying hand when a breakneck news cycle lurches from one event to another, confounding minds and churning stomachs.”
- Jennifer Szalai, New York Times

“Jill Lepore is an extraordinarily gifted writer, and These Truths is nothing short of a masterpiece of American history. By engaging with our country's painful past (and present) in an intellectually honest way, she has created a book that truly does encapsulate the American story in all its pain and all its triumph.”
- Michael Schaub, NPR

“Lepore’s brilliant book, These Truths, rings as clear as a church bell, the lucid, welcome yield of clear thinking and a capable, curious mind.”
- Karen R. Long, Newsday

“An ambitious and provocative attempt to interpret American history as an effort to fulfill and maintain certain fundamental principles…Lepore is a historian with wide popular appeal, and this comprehensive work will answer readers’ questions about who we are as a nation.”
- Booklist (starred review)

“This thought-provoking and fascinating book stands to become the definitive one-volume U.S. history for a new generation.”
- Library Journal (starred review)

“With this epic work of grand chronological sweep, brilliantly illuminating the idea of truth in the history of our republic, Lepore reaffirms her place as one of one of the truly great historians of our time.”
- Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard University

“Astounding…[Lepore] has assembled evidence of an America that was better than some thought, worse than almost anyone imagined, and weirder than most serious history books ever convey.”
- Casey N. Cep, Harvard Magazine

“In her epic new work, Jill Lepore helps us learn from whence we came.”
- O, The Oprah Magazine

Green Japan, by Carin Holroyd

From the Jacket:

“As climate change continues to threaten both our economic and ecological well-being, countries around the world are trying to implement green strategies that will simultaneously curb emissions and spur economic growth. 


Green Japan critically examines the Japanese effort to combine economic growth with commitments to environmental sustainability. Carin Holroyd explores green growth strategies in various industries including conservation, energy, urban development, and international trade. Holroyd’s comprehensive analysis of how innovation strategies connect with environmental priorities combines a detailed study of government policies with insightful assessments of consumer and market responses. The unevenness of Japan’s success clearly demonstrates the exceptional technological innovation and creative public policy initiatives that are needed in order to successfully reverse the effects of climate change. Green Japan offers a nuanced and hopeful account of one nation’s attempts at linking environmental sustainability and continued prosperity.”

The Captain Class, by Sam Walker

 
“Wildly entertaining and thought-provoking . . . makes you reexamine long-held beliefs about leadership and the glue that binds winning teams together.”—Theo Epstein, president of baseball operations, Chicago Cubs
 
“If you care about leadership, talent development, or the art of competition, you need to read this immediately.”—Daniel Coyle, author of The Culture Code
 
“The insights in this book are tremendous.”—Bob Myers, general manager, Golden State Warriors
 
“An awesome book . . . I find myself relating a lot to its portrayal of the out-of the-norm leader.”—Carli Lloyd, co-captain, U.S. Soccer Women’s National Team
 
“A great read . . . Sam Walker used data and a systems approach to reach some original and unconventional conclusions about the kinds of leaders that foster enduring success. Most business and leadership books lapse into clichés. This one is fresh.”—Jeff Immelt, chairman and former CEO, General Electric 
 
“I can’t tell you how much I loved The Captain Class. It identifies something many people who’ve been around successful teams have felt but were never able to articulate. It has deeply affected my thoughts around how we build our culture.”—Derek Falvey, chief baseball officer, Minnesota Twins

What Schools Teach Us about Religious Life, by Daniel Heischman

The second edition of What Schools Teach Us About Religious Life continues to explore the ways in which private education in the United States mirrors the growing complexity and fluidity of religious life in the United States. Through the study of ten different private schools―representing a wide variety of religious traditions as well as some secular institutions―a picture of contemporary culture, and the place of religious belief within the culture, emerges. Each chapter of this second edition of What Schools Teach Us About Religious Life contains a different picture of how individual schools then address that culture.

My Soul Has Grown Deep

My Soul Has Grown Deep considers the art-historical significance of contemporary Black artists working throughout the southeastern United States. These paintings, drawings, mixed-media compositions, sculptures, and textiles include pieces ranging from the profound assemblages of Thornton Dial to the renowned quilts of Gee’s Bend. Nearly 60 remarkable examples are illustrated alongside insightful texts that situate them in the history of modernism and the context of African American experience in the 20th-century South. This remarkable study simultaneously considers these works on their own merits while also making connections to mainstream contemporary art.

Art historians Cheryl Finley, Randall R. Griffey, and Amelia Peck illuminate shared artistic practices, including the novel use of found or salvaged materials and the artists’ interest in improvisational approaches across media. Novelist and essayist Darryl Pinckney provides a thoughtful consideration of the cultural and political history of the American South, during and after the Civil Rights era. These diverse works, described and beautifully illustrated, tell the compelling stories of artists who overcame enormous obstacles to create distinctive and culturally resonant works of art.

Pontius Pilate, by Aldo Schiavone

From the Jacket:

“The Roman prefect Pontius Pilate has been cloaked in rumor and myth since the first century, but what do we actually know of the man who condemned Jesus of Nazareth to the Cross? In this breakthrough, revisionist biography of one of the Bible’s most controversial figures, Italian classicist Aldo Schiavone explains what might have happened in that brief meeting between the governor and Jesus, and why the Gospels—and history itself—have made Pilate a figure of immense ambiguity.


Pontius Pilate lived during a turning point in both religious and Roman history. Though little is known of the his life before the Passion, two first-century intellectuals—Flavius Josephus and Philo of Alexandria—chronicled significant moments in Pilate’s rule in Judaea, which shaped the principal elements that have come to define him. By carefully dissecting the complex politics of the Roman governor’s Jewish critics, Schiavone suggests concerns and sensitivities among the people that may have informed their widely influential claims, especially as the beginnings of Christianity neared.


Against this historical backdrop, Schiavone offers a dramatic reexamination of Pilate and Jesus’s moment of contact, indicating what was likely said between them and identifying lines of dialogue in the Gospels that are arguably fictive. Teasing out subtle but significant contradictions in details, Schiavone shows how certain gestures and utterances have had inestimable consequences over the years. What emerges is a humanizing portrait of Pilate that reveals how he reacted in the face of an almost impossible dilemma: on one hand wishing to spare Jesus’s life and on the other hoping to satisfy the Jewish priests who demanded his execution. Simultaneously exploring Jesus’s own thought process, the author reaches a stunning conclusion—one that has never previously been argued—about Pilate’s intuitions regarding Jesus.


While we know almost nothing about what came before or after, for a few hours on the eve of the Passover Pilate deliberated over a fate that would spark an entirely new religion and lift up a weary prisoner forever as the Son of God. Groundbreaking in its analysis and evocative in its narrative exposition, Pontius Pilate is an absorbing portrait of a man who has been relegated to the borders of history and legend for over two thousand years.”

The Black Penguin, by Andrew Evans

A devout young boy in rural Ohio, Andrew Evans had his life mapped for him: baptism, mission, Brigham Young University, temple marriage, and children of his own. But as an awkward gay kid, bullied and bored, he escaped into the glossy pages of National Geographic and the wide promise of the world atlas. The Black Penguin is Evans's memoir, travel tale, and love story of his eventual journey to the farthest reaches of the map, a wild yet touching adventure across some of the most astonishing landscapes on Earth.

Ejected from church and shunned by his family as a young man, Evans embarks on an ambitious overland journey halfway across the world. Riding public transportation, he crosses swamps, deserts, mountains, and jungles, slowly approaching his lifelong dream and ultimate goal: Antarctica. With each new mile comes laughter, pain, unexpected friendship, true weirdness, unsettling realities, and some hair-raising moments that eventually lead to a singular discovery on a remote beach at the bottom of the world.

Evans's 12,000-mile voyage becomes a soulful quest to balance faith, family, and self, reminding us that, in the end, our lives are defined by the roads we take, the places we touch, and those we hold nearest.

Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The bestselling novel—and one of Barack Obama’s summer reading picks—from the award-winning author of We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele.

“From one of the world’s great contemporary writers comes the story of two Nigerians making their way in the U.S. and the UK, raising universal questions of race and belonging, the overseas experience for the African diaspora, and the search for identity and a home.” —Barack Obama

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read

Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion—for each other and for their homeland. 

Why Liberalism Failed, by Patrick Deneen

Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.

Basquiat

A thematic presentation of the groundbreaking and provocative art of Jean-Michel Basquiat, this volume offers a new appreciation of his tragic but highly influential career. From his early years spray painting the walls of lower Manhattan to his first solo show in 1982 and his untimely death at the age of 27 in 1988, Jean-Michel Basquiat has become a symbol of the 1980s New York art scene. Now, more than a quarter-century since his death, this book considers Basquiat’s works in light of their transformative power. Exquisitely reproduced full-page color illustrations of his paintings cover the full thematic range of Basquiat’s work. From the autobiographical elements of Untitled (1981) and the powerful critique of racial justice that is Irony of a Negro Policeman to an exploration of black heroes, Untitled (1982) and the tongue-in-cheek social commentary of A Panel of Experts, Basquiat’s limitless palette of observation, criticism, and cultural references endows his art with lasting and provocative power. Author Dieter Buchhart explores how Basquiat’s success paved the way for an entire generation of black artists and how street culture has spread into popular culture. Texts by curators, art dealers, and cultural critics discuss the significance of Basquiat’s oeuvre and show how his approach and subject matter continue to influence artists around the world.

When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • For readers of Atul Gawande, Andrew Solomon, and Anne Lamott, this inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living?

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • The Washington Post • Slate • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out New York • Publishers Weekly • BookPage

Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

Electric Arches, by Eve L. Ewing

Electric Arches is an imaginative exploration of Black girlhood and womanhood through poetry, visual art, and narrative prose.

Blending stark realism with the surreal and fantastic, Eve L. Ewing’s narrative takes us from the streets of 1990s Chicago to an unspecified future, deftly navigating the boundaries of space, time, and reality. Ewing imagines familiar figures in magical circumstances―blues legend Koko Taylor is a tall-tale hero; LeBron James travels through time and encounters his teenage self. She identifies everyday objects―hair moisturizer, a spiral notebook―as precious icons.

Her visual art is spare, playful, and poignant―a cereal box decoder ring that allows the wearer to understand what Black girls are saying; a teacher’s angry, subversive message scrawled on the chalkboard. Electric Arches invites fresh conversations about race, gender, the city, identity, and the joy and pain of growing up.

Eve L. Ewing is a writer, scholar, artist, and educator from Chicago. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, New Republic, The Nation, The Atlantic, and many other publications. She is a sociologist at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration.

The Mystery of Sleep, by Meir Kyger, MD

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This Day in Rap and Hip Hop History, by Chuck D

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World Without Mind, by Franklin Foer

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These Truths, by Jill Lepore

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Green Japan, by Carin Holroyd

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The Captain Class, by Sam Walker

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What Schools Teach Us about Religious Life, by Daniel Heischman

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My Soul Has Grown Deep

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Pontius Pilate, by Aldo Schiavone

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The Black Penguin, by Andrew Evans

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Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Why Liberalism Failed, by Patrick Deneen

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Basquiat

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When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi

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Electric Arches, by Eve L. Ewing

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