Bent Northrop Memorial Library

"Isaac Fitzgerald has lived many lives. He's been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents' lives-or so he was told. In Dirtbag, Massachusetts, Fitzgerald, with warmth and humor, recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity, and a more expansive definition of family and self. Fitzgerald's memoir-in-essays...

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...

"In essays that revisit her cringey past and anticipate her rapidly approaching, early middle-aged future, McInerny lays bare her own chaos, inviting us to drop the facade of perfection and embrace the truth: that we are all--at best--slightly unhinged. Socrates claimed that the unexamined life is not worth living. Bad Vibes Only is for the people who have taken that dictum a bit too far--the overthinkers, the analyzers, the recovering Girl Bosses,...

"Despite years of feminism and such activist groups as Women Strike for Peace, much of the female population in the world is often powerless, forced to remain voiceless and subjugated to acts of extreme violence in the home, on school campuses and anywhere men deem they should dominate. "Rape and other acts of violence, up to and including murder, as well as threats of violence, constitute the barrage some men lay down as they attempt to control some...

In this charming collection of nineteen stories, you can't help but fall in love with the unlucky fawn who is saved by a nursing home, the troublesome rabbit who warms her way into a new family and the good (German) shepherd who comforts the sick. These are stories of hope, humor, triumph, loyalty, compassion, life and even death—but most of all, these are stories of love and the extraordinary animals who make our lives the richer for it.

Philosopher, mathematician and social critic, Bertrand Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. In The Analysis of Mind, one of his most influential and exciting books, Russell presents an intriguing reconciliation of the materialism of psychology with the antimaterialism of physics. This book established a new conception of the mind and provided one of the most original and interesting externalist accounts of knowledge. Drawing...

This 1872 installment in Holmes's popular Breakfast Table series is a fluent, gossipy exchange among the poet of the title and his breakfast companions-with the lion's share of conversation belonging to the poet, who delivers his somewhat eccentric and fitfully amusing opinions of books, people, and habits of thought. Written fifteen years after the start of the series, The Poet takes a comparatively calm and nostalgic tone.

When Condé Nast offered Ruth Reichl the top position at America's oldest epicurean magazine, she declined. She was a writer, not a manager, and had no inclination to be anyone's boss. Yet Reichl had been reading Gourmet since she was eight; it had inspired her career. How could she say no? This is the story of a former Berkeley hippie entering the corporate world and worrying about losing her soul. It is the story of the moment restaurants became...

"YOU'LL GROW OUT OF IT hilariously, and candidly, explores the journey of the twenty-first century woman. As both a tomboy and a late bloomer, comedian Jessi Klein grew up feeling more like an outsider than a participant in the rites of modern femininity. In YOU'LL GROW OUT OF IT, Klein offers-through an incisive collection of real-life stories-a relentlessly funny yet poignant take on a variety of topics she has experienced along her strange journey...

The author presents a tender story of his family's love for their yellow Labrador retriever, Marley, and recalls how he grew from a mischievous puppy into a nearly impossible adult that no amount of obedience school training could correct, and of the love they felt for him.