I don’t know about you, but I finally feel like I’m getting in to the swing of the new semester after the holidays and our snow day last week! Though you may find the pace of the semester is heating up, make sure you leave yourself some time for reading. As usual, we have some great titles in New and Noteworthy and Current Literature.
- Failure : why science is so successful by Stuart Firestein, a professor in the department of biological sciences at Columbia University. This book examines how trial and error are an important part of the scientific process. To find out more about this book, check out this interesting NYT review.
- Carry on : the rise and fall of Simon Snow by Rainbow Rowell is a really fun YA book that turns the common fantasy trope of the “chosen one” on its head! In this book Rowell takes the Simon Snow world that she created for her Fangirl novel and makes it into its own standalone story.
- Lafayette in the somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell, who is the bestselling author of books such as Unfamiliar Fishes and The Wordy Shipmates and a former contributing editor of This American Life on NPR. Her newest book is an account of the Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette.
- America dancing : from the cakewalk to the moonwalk by Megan Pugh. Using the stories of tapper Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, ballet and Broadway choreographer Agnes de Mille, choreographer Paul Taylor, and Michael Jackson, Megan Pugh shows how freedom–that nebulous, contested American ideal–emerges as a genre-defining aesthetic. In Pugh’s account, ballerinas mingle with slumming thrill-seekers, and hoedowns show up on elite opera house stages.
- Neurotribes : the legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity by Steve Silberman, winner of the 2015 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. You can find out more about this interesting book about autism here, here, and here.