Bent Northrop Memorial Library

In this book, David Brooks explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. Our personal fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments. Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity and beauty of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner,...

In the effort to make friends at her new school, Sofia gets involved with group of popular girls who dislike Brooklyn, a loner who they believe to be evil.

Whether investigating a solution to global warming or explaining why the price of oral sex has fallen so drastically, Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling to show how people respond to incentives.

In Australia, Lucy tries to balance her life at home surrounded by her Chinese immigrant family, with her life at a pretentious private school.

A fascinating foray into the obsessions, friendships, scientific curiosity, misfortunes and rewards of suburban beekeeping--through the eyes of a Master Beekeeper . . . Who wants to keep bees? And why? For the answers, Master Beekeeper Frank Mortimer invites readers on an eye-opening journey into the secret world of bees, and the singular world of his fellow bee-keepers. There's the Badger, who introduces Frank to the world of bees; Rusty, a one-eyed...

"For as long as Elizabeth can remember, she has watched her father trail after her mother, kissing her multiple times a day and holding her hand. She watched her mother smooth the lines in her father's face and pay attention to his every move, even when she was desperate for some time to herself. When her parents began to age, Elizabeth and her siblings are placed in the difficult position of taking over more and more supportive roles and tasks. They...

Frankie Stein was created in a laboratory, and when she enters Merston High School camouflaged as a "normi," all she wants is to fit in, but it takes the help of another new student who believes that everyone should be treated equally before Frankie even has a chance.

The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality.
In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted...

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
The story of a kind of poverty in America so deep that we, as a country, don't even think exists—from a leading national poverty expert who "defies convention." (The New York Times)
Jessica Compton's family of four would have no income if she didn't donate plasma twice a week at her local donation center in Tennessee. Modonna Harris and her teenage daughter,...

Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold wrote the essays that constitute Culture and Anarchy between 1867 and 1869, a time of rapid social change and uncertainty. Defining culture as "the best that has been thought and said," Arnold offers concrete suggestions for its role as a corrective to the chaos of materialism, industrialism, and self-interest. Acclaimed by Commentary as "the classic defense of high culture against the depredations of modernity,"...