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Image one: E-book titled Bears: Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Perspectives in Native North America (2020) - synopsis: Although scholars have long recognized the mythic status of bears in Indigenous North American societies of the past, this is the first volume to synthesize the vast amount of archaeological and historical research on the topic. Bears charts the special relationship between the American black bear and humans in eastern Native American cultures across thousands of years. These essays draw on zooarchaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic evidence from nearly 300 archaeological sites from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico.
Image two: E-book titled The Cosmos Revealed: Precontact Mississippian Rock Art at Painted Bluff, Alabama (2021) - synopsis: Boasting more than 130 paintings and engravings, Painted Bluff is perhaps the most elaborate prehistoric pictograph site east of the Mississippi River. Positioned at several levels on a dramatic sandstone cliff along the Tennessee River in northern Alabama, the spectacular paintings and engravings depict mythical creatures, dancing humans, and mystical portals. The Cosmos Revealed is the first complete documentation of one of the most important archaeological sites in eastern North America. Through art, the site materializes a model or “cosmogram” of the Mississippian Native American view of the universe, offering connections between the visible and invisible worlds for Native spiritual leaders and other visitors.
Image one: E-book titled Your Brain on Latino Comics: From Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez (2009) - synopsis: Your Brain on Latino Comics illuminates the world of superheroes Firebird, Vibe, and the new Blue Beetle while also examining the effects on readers who are challenged to envision such worlds. Exploring mainstream companies such as Marvel and DC as well as rising stars from other segments of the industry, Frederick Aldama provides a new reading of race, ethnicity, and the relatively new storytelling medium of comics themselves. Overview chapters cover the evolution of Latino influences in comics, innovations, and representations of women, demonstrating Latino transcendence of many mainstream techniques.
Image two: E-book titled Razabilly: Transforming Sights, Sounds, and History in the Los Angeles Latino/a Rockabilly Scene (2021) - synopsis: Vocals tinged with pain and desperation. The deep thuds of an upright bass. Women with short bangs and men in cuffed jeans. These elements and others are the unmistakable signatures of rockabilly, a musical genre normally associated with white male musicians of the 1950s. But in Los Angeles today, rockabilly’s primary producers and consumers are Latinos and Latinas. Pairing a decade of participant observation with interviews and historical research, author Nicholas F. Centino explores the reasons behind a Rockabilly renaissance in 1990s Los Angeles and demonstrates how, as a form of working-class leisure, this scene provides Razabillies with spaces of respite and conviviality within the alienating landscape of the urban metropolis.
Image one: E-book titled E-book titled Your Undergraduate Degree in Psychology: From College to Career (2013) - synopsis: Drawing on current research data, applied theory, and both academic and workplace experiences, this book will help stimulate self-reflection and improve decision making as students approach their careers. The text covers key topics in the college-to-career transition, including career planning and development, identifying and transferring marketable skills, building and sustaining strong networks, understanding what employers want and don’t want, coping with personal life changes, becoming a valued employee, and more.
Image two: E-book titled Expanding Your English and Creative Skills through Art and the Humanities (2018) - synopsis: Expanding your English and Creative Skills through Art and the Humanities has been designed for students or professionals who would like to use and improve their English in areas such as history, art history, literature, film and media, and language, at an upper-intermediate or advanced level. This book integrates practice of the four skills (reading, listening, speaking and writing) and has been written from a holistic and humanistic approach.
Fiction:- Lock Every Door by Riley Sager- The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides- Artemis by Andy Weir- Dead Astronauts by Jeff Vandermeer- My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite- Vox by Christina Dalcher- Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens- The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Nonfiction:- Little Weirds by Jenny Slate- Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino- The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders by Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefevre, and Frederic Lemercier- Manga Kamishibai: The Art of Japanese Paper Theater by Eric P. Nash- The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator by Timothy C. Winegard- Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life by Colin Ellard- Theories of International Politics and Zombies by Daniel W. Drezner- The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America by Karen Abbott
Image one: E-book titled Music Is Power: Popular Songs, Social Justice, and the Will To Change - synopsis: Popular music has long been a powerful force for social change. Protest songs have served as anthems regarding war, racism, sexism, ecological destruction, and so many other crucial issues. Music Is Power takes us on a guided tour through the past one hundred years of politically conscious music, from Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie to Green Day and NWA. Covering a wide variety of genres, including reggae, country, metal, psychedelia, rap, punk, folk, and soul, Brad Schreiber demonstrates how musicians can take a variety of approaches-- angry rallying cries, mournful elegies to the victims of injustice, or even humorous mockeries of authority--to fight for a fairer world. While shining a spotlight on Phil Ochs, Gil Scott-Heron, the Dead Kennedys and other seminal, politicized artists, he also gives readers a new appreciation of classic acts such as Lesley Gore, James Brown, and Black Sabbath, who overcame limitations in their industry to create politically potent music.
Image two: E-book titled We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War - synopsis: In We Gotta Get Out of This Place, Doug Bradley and Craig Werner place popular music at the heart of the American experience in Vietnam. They explore how and why U.S. troops turned to music as a way of connecting to each other and the World back home and of coping with the complexities of the war they had been sent to fight. They also demonstrate that music was important for every group of Vietnam veterans--black and white, Latino and Native American, men and women, officers and "grunts"--whose personal reflections drive the book's narrative.
Image one: E-book titled The Shaman's Mirror: Visionary Art of the Huichol (2012) - synopsis: Huichol Indian yarn paintings are one of the world’s great indigenous arts, sold around the world and advertised as authentic records of dreams and visions of the shamans. Using glowing colored yarns, the Huichol Indians of Mexico paint the mystical symbols of their culture—the hallucinogenic peyote cactus, the blue deer-spirit who appears to the shamans as they croon their songs around the fire in all-night ceremonies deep in the Sierra Madre mountains, and the pilgrimages to sacred sites, high in the central Mexican desert of Wirikuta. Hope MacLean provides the first comprehensive study of Huichol yarn paintings, from their origins as sacred offerings to their transformation into commercial art. Drawing on twenty years of ethnographic fieldwork, she interviews Huichol artists who have innovated important themes and styles.
Image two: Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century (2015) - synopsis: In 1916, as World War I raged around them, a group of bohemians gathered at a small nightclub in Zurich, Switzerland for a series of bizarre performances. Three readers simultaneously recited a poem in three languages; a monocle-wearing teenager performed a spell from New Zealand; another young man flung bits of papier-mâché into the air and glued them into place where they landed. One of these artists called the sessions “both buffoonery and a requiem mass.” Soon they would be known by a more evocative name: Dada. In Destruction Was My Beatrice, modernist scholar Jed Rasula presents the first narrative history of the emergence, decline, and legacy of Dada, showing how this strange artistic phenomenon spread across Europe and then the world in the wake of the Great War, fundamentally reshaping modern culture in ways we’re still struggling to understand today.
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Image one: E-book titled Visual Vitriol: The Street Art and Subculture of the Punk and Hardcore Generation (2011) - synopsis: Visual Vitriol: The Street Art and Subcultures of the Punk and Hardcore Generation is a vibrant, in-depth, and visually appealing history of punk, which reveals punk concert flyers as urban folk art. David Ensminger exposes the movement’s deeply participatory street art, including flyers, stencils, and graffiti. This discovery leads him to an examination of the often-overlooked presence of African Americans, Latinos, women, and the LGBTQ community who have widely impacted the worldviews and music of this subculture.
Image two: E-book titled Ripped, Torn, and Cut: Pop, Politics, and Fanzines from 1976 (2018) - synopsis: Offers a collection of original essays exploring the motivations behind - and the politics within - the multitude of fanzines that emerged in the wake of British punk from 1976 that would be cut and pasted in bedrooms across the UK. From these, glimpses into provincial cultures, teenage style wars, and formative political ideas may be gleaned.
Image one: E-book titled Art on Trial: Art Therapy in Capital Murder Cases (2013) - synopsis: A man kidnaps his two children, murders one, and attempts to kill the other. The prosecution seeks the death penalty, while the defense employs an unusual strategy to avoid the sentence. The defendant’s attorneys turn to more than 100 examples of his artwork, created over many years, to determine whether he was mentally ill at the time he committed the crimes. Detailing an outstanding example of the use of forensic art therapy in a capital murder case, David Gussak, an art therapist contracted by the defense to analyze the images that were to be presented as evidence, recounts his findings and his testimony in court, as well as the future implications of his work for criminal proceedings.
Image two: E-book titled The Art of Art Therapy: What Every Art Therapist Needs To Know (2011) - synopsis: The Art of Art Therapy is written primarily to help art therapists define and then refine a way of thinking about their work. This book invites the reader to first consider closely the main elements of the discipline embodied in its name: the “Art Part” and the “Therapy Part.” The interface helps readers put the two together in an integrated, artistic way, followed by chapters on Applications and Related Service.
Image one: E-book titled Your Brain on Latino Comics: From Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez (2009) - synopsis: Though the field of comic book studies has burgeoned in recent years, Latino characters and creators have received little attention. Putting the spotlight on this vibrant segment, Your Brain on Latino Comics illuminates the world of superheroes Firebird, Vibe, and the Blue Beetle while also examining the effects on readers who are challenged to envision such worlds. Exploring mainstream companies such as Marvel and DC as well as rising stars from other segments of the industry, Frederick Aldama provides a new reading of race, ethnicity, and the relatively new storytelling medium of comics themselves.
Image two: E-book titled Marvel's Black Panther: A Comic Book Biography from Stan Lee to Ta-Nehisi Coates (2018) - synopsis: Created by Marvel Comics Legends Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, The Black Panther is considered the first Black superhero in American mainstream comics. Through a textual analysis, this book narrates the history of the character from his first appearance in 1966—the same year, the Black Panther Party was formed in Oakland, California—through Ta-Nehisi Coates’ version in 2015. It tells the story of how Black and white writers envisioned the character between those years and reveals the limitations of white liberalism and the boundless nature of the Black imagination.
Image one: E-book titled American Poetry in Performance: From Walt Whitman to Hip Hop (2011) - synopsis: American Poetry in Performance: From Walt Whitman to Hip Hop is the first book to trace a comprehensive history of performance poetry in America, covering 150 years of literary history from Walt Whitman through the rap-meets-poetry scene. It reveals how the performance of poetry is bound up with the performance of identity and nationality in the modern period and carries its own shifting cultural politics. This book stands at the crossroads of the humanities and the social sciences; it is a book of literary and cultural criticism that deals squarely with issues of “performance,” a concept that has attained great importance in the disciplines of anthropology and sociology and has generated its own distinct field of performance studies.
Image two: E-book titled Stop, Think, Go, Do: How Typography and Graphic Design Influence Behavior (2012) - synopsis: This revolutionary guide is not only the first to look at how typography in design creates a call to action, but it also explores type and image as language. Stop, Think, Go, Do is packed with arresting imagery from around the world that influences human behavior. Page after page, you’ll find innovative messages that advocate, advise caution, educate, entertain, express, inform, play, and transform.
Image one: Art and Poetry Month
Image two: E-book titled Lockdown Cultures: The Arts and Humanities in the Year of the Pandemic, 2020-21 (2022) - synopsis: This book offers a unique response to the question of how the humanities commented on and were impacted by one of the dominant crises of our times: the Covid-19 pandemic. While the role of engineers, epidemiologists and, of course, medics is assumed, Lockdown Cultures illustrates some of the ways in which the humanities understood and analyzed 2020–21, the year of lockdown and plague. Though the impulse behind the book was topical, underpinning the richly varied and individual essays is a lasting concern with the value of the humanities in the twenty-first century. Each contributor approaches this differently but there are two dominant strands: how art and culture can help us understand the Covid crisis; and how the value of the humanities can be demonstrated by engaging with cultural products from the past.
Image three: E-book titled Building Fires in the Snow: A Collection of Alaska LGBTQ Short Fiction and Poetry (2016) - synopsis: Diversity has always been central to Alaska identity, as the state’s population consists of people with many different backgrounds, viewpoints, and life experiences. This book opens a window into these diverse lives, gathering stories and poems about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer life into a brilliant, path-breaking anthology. In these pages we see the panoply of LGBTQ life in Alaska today, from the quotidian urban adventures of a family—shopping, going out, working—to intimate encounters with Alaska’s breathtaking natural beauty.
Image one: E-book titled Black Women in Sequence: Re-Inking Comics, Graphic Novels, and Anime (2015) - synopsis: Black Women in Sequence takes readers on a search for women of African descent in comics subculture. From the 1971 appearance of the Skywald Publications character “the Butterfly” - the first Black female superheroine in a comic book - to contemporary comic books, graphic novels, film, manga, and video gaming, a growing number of Black women are becoming producers, viewers, and subjects of sequential art. As the first detailed investigation of Black women’s participation in comic art, Black Women in Sequence examines the representation, production, and transnational circulation of women of African descent in the sequential art world.
Image two: E-book titled Marvel's Black Panther: A Comic Book Biography, from Stan Lee to Ta-Nehisi Coates (2018) - synopsis: Created by Marvel Comics Legends Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the Black Panther is considered the first Black superhero in American mainstream comics. Through a textual analysis, this book narrates the history of the character from his first appearance in 1966—the same year, the Black Panther Party was formed in Oakland, California—through Ta-Nehisi Coates’ version in 2015
Image one: E-book titled The Chicana/o Hip Hop Nation: Politics of a New Millennial Mestizaje (2013) - synopsis: Far from antiquated concepts of mestizaje, recent scholarship has shown that Mexicana/o and Chicana/o culture is a mixture of indigenous, African, and Spanish and other European peoples and cultures. No one reflects this rich blend of cultures better than Chicano/a rappers, whose lyrics and iconography can help to deepen our understanding of what it means to be Chicano/a or Mexicano/a today. While some identify as Mexican mestizos, others identify as indigenous people or base their identities on their class and racial/ethnic makeup. No less significant is the intimate level of contact between Chicano/as and black Americans. Via a firm theoretical foundation, Pancho McFarland explores the language and ethos of Chicano/a and Mexicano/a hip hop and sheds new light on three distinct identities reflected in the music: indigenous/Mexica, Mexican nationalist/immigrant, and street hopper.
Image two: E-book titled Mexicana Fashions: Politics, Self-Adornment, and Identity Construction (2020) - synopsis: Collecting the perspectives of scholars who reflect on their own relationships to particular garments, analyze the politics of dress, and examine the role of consumerism and entrepreneurialism in the production of creating and selling a style, Mexicana Fashions examines and searches for meaning in these visible, performative aspects of identity.
Image one: American: Government, History, and Culture
Image two: E-book titled Barbecue: The History of an American Institution (2020) - synopsis: The definitive history of an iconic American food, with new chapters, sidebars, and updated historical accounts. The full story of barbecue in the United States had been virtually untold before Robert F. Moss revealed its long, rich history in his 2010 book Barbecue: The History of an American Institution. Moss researched hundreds of sources—newspapers, letters, journals, diaries, and travel narratives—to document the evolution of barbecue from its origins among Native Americans to its present status as an icon of American culture. He mapped out the development of the rich array of regional barbecue styles, chronicled the rise of barbecue restaurants, and profiled the famed pitmasters who made the tradition what it is today.
Image three: E-book titled Winnebago Nation: The Peculiar Place of the RV in American Culture (2014) - synopsis: In Winnebago Nation, popular critic James B. Twitchell takes a light-hearted look at the culture and industry behind the yearning to spend the night in one’s car. Informed by his own experiences on the road, Twitchell recounts the RV’s origins and evolution over the twentieth century; its rise, fall, and rebirth as a cultural icon; its growing mechanical complexity as it evolved from an estate wagon to a converted bus to a mobile home; and its role in bolstering and challenging conceptions of American identity.
Image one: LGBTQ+ Pride Month
Image two: E-book titled Letters to O.N.E.: Gay and Lesbian Voices from the 1950s and 1960s (2012) - synopsis: Long before the Stonewall riots, ONE magazine the first openly gay magazine in the United States offered a positive viewpoint of homosexuality and encouraged gay people to resist discrimination and persecution. Despite a limited monthly circulation of only a few thousand, the magazine influenced the substance, character, and tone of the early American gay rights movement. This book is a collection of letters written to the magazine, a small number of which were published in ONE, but most of them were not. The letters candidly explore issues such as police harassment of gay and lesbian communities, antigay job purges, and the philosophical, scientific, and religious meanings of homosexuality.
Image three: E-book titled Coming Out under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II (2010) - synopsis: During World War II, as the United States called on its citizens to serve in unprecedented numbers, the presence of gay Americans in the armed forces increasingly conflicted with the expanding anti-homosexual policies and procedures of the military. In Coming Out under Fire, Allan Berube examines in depth and detail these social and political confrontations—not as a story of how the military victimized homosexuals, but as a story of how a dynamic power relationship developed between gay citizens and their government, transforming them both. Drawing on G.I.s’ wartime letters, extensive interviews with gay veterans, and declassified military documents, Berube thoughtfully constructs a startling history of the two wars gay military men and women fought—one for America and another as homosexuals within the military.
Image one: E-book titled Twining: Critical and Creative Approaches to Hypertext Narratives (2021) - synopsis: Hypertext is now commonplace: links and linking structure nearly all of our experiences online. Yet the literary, as opposed to commercial, potential of hypertext has receded. One of the few tools still focused on hypertext as a means for digital storytelling is Twine, a platform for building choice-driven stories without relying heavily on code. In Twining, Anastasia Salter and Stuart Moulthrop lead readers on a journey at once technical, critical, contextual, and personal. The book’s chapters alternate careful, stepwise discussion of adaptable Twine projects, offer commentary on exemplary Twine works, and discuss Twine’s technological and cultural background. Beyond telling the story of Twine and how to make Twine stories, Twining reflects on the ongoing process of making.
Image two: E-book titled For Home and Country: World War I Propaganda on the Home Front (2010) - synopsis: World War I prompted the first massive organized propaganda campaign of the twentieth century. Posters, pamphlets, and other media spread fear about the “Hun,” who was often depicted threatening American families in their homes, while additional campaigns encouraged Americans and their allies to support the war effort. With most men actively involved in warfare, women and children became a special focus—and a tool—of social manipulation during the war. For Home and Country examines the propaganda that targeted noncombatants on the home front in the United States and Europe during World War I. By examining a diverse collection of literary texts, songs, posters, and toys, Celia Malone Kingsbury reveals how these pervasive materials were used to fight the war’s cultural battle.
Image one: E-book titled A Companion to Modern African Art (2013) - synopsis: Offering a wealth of perspectives on African modern and Modernist art from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, this new Companion features essays by African, European, and North American authors who assess the work of individual artists as well as exploring broader themes such as discoveries of new technologies and globalization. A pioneering continent-based assessment of modern art and modernity across Africa includes original and previously unpublished fieldwork-based material.
Image two: E-book titled Modernist Art in Ethiopia (2019) - synopsis: If modernism initially came to Africa through colonial contact, what does Ethiopia’s inimitable historical condition—its independence save for five years under Italian occupation—mean for its own modernist tradition? In Modernist Art in Ethiopia—the first book-length study of the topic—Elizabeth W. Giorgis recognizes that her home country’s supposed singularity, particularly as it pertains to its history from 1900 to the present, cannot be conceived outside the broader colonial legacy. She uses the evolution of modernist art in Ethiopia to open up the intellectual, cultural, and political histories of it in a pan-African context.
Image one: Women's History Month
Image two: E-book titled Black Women in Sequence: Re-inking Comics, Graphic Novels, and Anime (2015) - synopsis: From the 1971 appearance of the Skywald Publications character “the Butterfly” – the first Black female superheroine in a comic book – to contemporary comic books, graphic novels, film, manga, and video gaming, a growing number of Black women are becoming producers, viewers, and subjects of sequential art. As the first detailed investigation of Black women’s participation in comic art, Black Women in Sequence examines the representation, production, and transnational circulation of women of African descent in the sequential art world.
Image three: E-book titled Baseline Shift: Untold Stories of Women in Graphic Design History (2021) - synopsis: Baseline Shift captures the untold stories of women across time who used graphic design to earn a living while changing the world, centering diverse women across backgrounds whose work has shaped, shifted, and formed graphic design as we know it today. From an interdisciplinary book designer and calligrapher during Harlem’s Renaissance, to the invisible drafters of Monotype’s drawing office, the women represented here include auteurs, advocates for social justice, and creators ahead of their time.
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MLK Day
Quote from Martin Luther King Jr. - Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.
Quote from Martin Luther King Jr. - Anation that continues to year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
Quote from Martin Luther King Jr. - Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
Quote by Martin Luther King Jr. - The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
Quote from Martin Luther King Jr. - We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.
Image one: MLK Day
Image two: E-book titled Misremembering Dr. King: Revisiting the Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. (2014) - synopsis: We all know the name. Martin Luther King Jr., the great American civil rights leader. But most people today know relatively little about King, the campaigner against militarism, materialism, and racism - what he called the “giant triplets.” Author Jennifer J. Yanco takes steps to redress this imbalance by briefly telling the familiar story of King’s civil rights campaigns and accomplishments before moving on to the lesser-known concerns that are an essential part of his legacy.
Image three: E-book titled The Chicago Freedom Movement: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Activism in the North (2016) - synopsis: Six months after the Selma to Montgomery marches and just weeks after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a group from Martin Luther King Jr.'s staff arrived in Chicago, eager to apply his nonviolent approach to social change in a northern city. The open housing demonstrations they organized eventually resulted in a controversial agreement with Mayor Richard J. Daley and other city leaders, the fallout of which has historically led some to conclude that the movement was largely ineffective. In this important volume, an eminent team of scholars and activists offer an alternative assessment of the Chicago Freedom Movement's impact on race relations and social justice, both in the city and across the nation.
Image one: E-book titled Of Corpse: Death and Humor in Folklore and Popular Culture (2003) - synopsis: Laughter, contemporary theory suggests, is often aggressive in some manner and may be prompted by a sudden perception of incongruity combined with memories of past emotional experience. Given this importance of the past to our recognition of the comic, it follows that some “traditions” dispose us to ludic responses. The studies in Of Corpse: Death and Humor in Folklore and Popular Culture examine specific interactions of text (jokes, poetry, epitaphs, iconography, film drama) and social context (wakes, festivals, disasters) that shape and generate laughter.
Image two: E-book titled The Monster in the Garden: The Grotesque and the Gigantic in Renaissance Landscape Design (2015) - synopsis: In The Monster in the Garden, Luke Morgan argues that the monster is a key figure in Renaissance culture. Drawing on sixteenth-century medical, legal, and scientific texts, as well as recent scholarship on monstrosity, abnormality, and difference in early modern Europe, he considers the garden within a broader framework of inquiry. Developing a new conceptual model of Renaissance landscape design, Morgan argues that the presence of monsters was not incidental but an essential feature of the experience of gardens.
Image one: E-book titled Arts and Terror (2014) - synopsis: This book examines the manifestations of terror in the arts. From classical tragedy to post-9/11 responses, terror – as an emotion, violent act, and state of the world – has been a preoccupation of artists in all genres. Using philosophy, art history, film studies, interdisciplinary arts, theatre studies, and musicology, the authors included here delve into this perennially contemporary theme to produce insights articulated in a variety of idioms: from traditional philosophical humanism to phenomenology to feminism.
Image two: E-book titled Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds (2017) - synopsis: The original 1818 text of Mary Shelley’s classic novel, with annotations and essays highlighting its scientific, ethical, and cautionary aspects. Although the novel is most often discussed in literary-historical terms--as a seminal example of romanticism or as a groundbreaking early work of science fiction--Mary Shelley was keenly aware of contemporary scientific developments and incorporated them into her story. In our era of synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and climate engineering, this edition of Frankenstein will resonate forcefully for readers with a background or interest in science and engineering, and anyone intrigued by the fundamental questions of creativity and responsibility.
Image one - America: Government, History, Culture
Image two - E-book titled A Constitutional History of the U.S. Supreme Court (2015) - synopsis: In A Constitutional History of the U.S. Supreme Court, Richard Regan presents a concise overview and general history for readers and students in constitutional history and politics, one that will also make an excellent fact-filled source book for lawyers and political scientists. The chapters deal with leading decisions of successive courts and begin with brief biographies of the justices on the courts. Famous cases from Marbury v Madison, to the Dred-Scott decision, Brown v Board of Education, Roe v Wade, up to the Roberts court decision on the constitutionality of Obamacare are discussed. Four appendices deal with the text of the Constitution and amendments, the court system, a chronological list of the justices with biographical details, and a chronological list of the membership on successive courts.
Image three - E-book titled Fit for the Presidency?: Winners, Losers, What-Ifs, and Also-Rans (2017) - synopsis: In Fit for the Presidency?, Seymour Morris Jr. applies an executive recruiter's approach to fifteen presidential prospects from 1789 to 1980, analyzing their résumés and references to determine their fitness for the job. Were they qualified? How real were their actual accomplishments? Could they be trusted, or were their campaign promises unrealistic? The result is a fresh and original look at a host of contenders from George Washington to William McAdoo, from DeWitt Clinton to Ronald Reagan.
Image four - E-book titled John Adams's Republic: The One, the Few, and the Many (2016) - synopsis: Of all the founding fathers, author Richard Alan Ryerson argues, John Adams may have worried the most about the problem of social jealousy and political conflict in the new republic. Ryerson explains how these concerns, coupled with Adams's concept of executive authority and his fear of aristocracy, deeply influenced his political mindset. He weaves together a close analysis of Adams's public writings, a comprehensive chronological narrative beginning in the 1760s, and an exploration of the second president's private diary, manuscript autobiography, and personal and family letters, revealing Adams's most intimate political thoughts across six decades.
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Image one: E-book titled The Magic of Tiny Business: You Don't Have to Go Big To Make a Great Living (2018) - synopsis: Eco-Bags Products founder Sharon Rowe shares how a tiny business is built on maintaining a laser focus on what is essential by living an intentional life. As an entrepreneur and mother, Rowe is most concerned with putting family first, maintaining financial security, and doing something that makes an impact in the world. Using the success story of Eco-Bags Products, Rowe distills the step-by-step process of building a profitable, right-scaled, sustainable venture that doesn’t compromise your values. She shows you how to test your concept, manage your money and priorities, and more, while staying true to the “tiny” ethos.
Image two: E-book titled The Work of Art: Value in Creative Careers (2017) - synopsis: In The Work of Art, Alison Gerber explores art worlds to investigate who artists are (and who they’re not), why they do the things they do, and whether a sense of vocational calling and the need to make a living are as incompatible as we've been led to believe. Listening to the stories of artists from across the United States, Gerber finds patterns of agreements and disagreements shared by art-makers from all walks of life. For professionals and hobbyists alike, the alliance of love and money has become central to contemporary art-making, and danger awaits those who fail to strike a balance between the two. The stories artists tell are just as much a part of artistic practice as putting brush to canvas or chisel to marble.
Image one: E-book titled Romanesque Art (2016) - synopsis: In art history, the term ‘Romanesque art‘ distinguishes the period between the beginning of the 11th and the end of the 12th century. This era showed a great diversity of regional schools each with their own unique style. In architecture as well as in sculpture, Romanesque art is marked by raw forms. Through its rich iconography and captivating text, this work reclaims the importance of this art which is today often overshadowed by the later Gothic style.
Image two: E-book titled Developing a Sense of Place: The Role of the Arts in Regenerating Communities (2020) - synopsis: Developing a Sense of Place brings together new models and case studies, each drawn from a specific geographical or socio-cultural context. Selected for their lasting effect in their local community, the case studies explore new models for opening up the relationship between the university and its regional partners, explicitly connecting creative, critical, and theoretical approaches to civic development.
Image one: E-book titled Stone by Stone: Exploring Ancient Sites on the Canadian Plains (2015) - synopsis: In this revised and updated edition of her one-of-a-kind guidebook, author Liz Bryan explores archaeological sites that are accessible to today's inquisitive travelers and provides enough detailed information, striking photographs, maps, and illustrations to satisfy any armchair archaeologist. With riveting insight and clarity, Bryan presents the stone effigies, cairns, medicine wheels, buffalo jumps, rock art, and remains of settlements scattered across this vast prairie, creating an invaluable resource for anyone who wishes to navigate these ancient sites and understand their significance.
Image two: E-book titled Prose: Literary Terms and Concepts (2012) - synopsis: Narratives come in many forms, fall into many genres, and tell the stories of an endless assortment of characters. Despite recurring themes and conceits in works from around the world, each story—from biography to science fiction—is singular and designed to elicit a distinct emotional response from its readers. The rhetorical tools and literary styles that have helped reinvent the art and study of storytelling over time are surveyed in this captivating volume.
Image one: E-book titled Gothic Art (2016) - synopsis: Gothic art finds its roots in the powerful architecture of the cathedrals of northern France. It is a medieval art movement that evolved throughout Europe over more than 200 years. Leaving curved Roman forms behind, the architects started using flying buttresses and pointed arches to open up cathedrals to daylight. A period of great economic and social change, the Gothic era also saw the development of a new iconography celebrating the Holy Mary – in drastic contrast to the fearful themes of dark Roman times.
Image two: E-book titled Beowulf - synopsis: Written between the 8th and 11th centuries, Beowulf is the oldest surviving epic poem written in Old English. The story is set in pagan Scandinavia in the 6th century. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall in Heorot has been under attack by the monster Grendel. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel’s mother attacks the hall and is then defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years later, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is mortally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants cremate his body and erect a tower on a headland in his memory.
Image one: E-book titled Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era (2014) - synopsis: Beginning as early as 1914 and lasting into the 1940s, the Harlem Renaissance saw individuals reject the stereotypes of African Americans and confront the racist, social, political, and economic ideas that denied them citizenship and access to the American Dream. While the majority of recognized literary and artistic contributors to this period were Black males, African American women were also key contributors. Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era profiles the most important figures of this cultural and intellectual movement. Highlighting the accomplishments of black women who sought to create positive change after the end of WWI, this reference work includes representatives not only from the literary scene but also activists, actresses, artists, educators, entrepreneurs, musicians, political leaders, and scholars.
Image two: E-book titled On Art and Artists (2013) - synopsis: These critical essays on art and artists by T.G. Rosenthal, chosen by the author from his considerable output over more than fifty years of writing and reviewing, focus mainly on what has come to be known as ‘Modern British‘ art - art from the 20th century. Rosenthal knew many of his subjects personally and some became friends: Michael Ayrton; Arthur Boyd; Ivon Hitchens; Thelma Hulbert; L. S. Lowry; Sidney Nolan; Paula Rego. There are also essays on Wyndham Lewis, Jack B. Yeats and the paintings of August Strindberg. There is a profile of Walter and Eva Neurath, founders of the art-book publishers Thames & Hudson, the author's first employers; an essay on Anti-Semitism in England; and an obituary of Matthew Hodgart, who at Cambridge, influenced and developed Rosenthal's knowledge and passion for literature.
Image one: E-book titled Leaves of Grass (1855) - synopsis: This collection of loosely connected poems represents the celebration of Walt Whitman’s philosophy of life and humanity and praises nature and the individual human’s role in it. Rather than focusing on religious or spiritual matters, Leaves of Grass focuses primarily on the body and the material world. With one exception, its poems do not rhyme or follow standard rules for meter and line length. Leaves of Grass is also notable for its discussion of delight in sensual pleasures during a time when such candid displays were considered immoral.
Image two: E-book titled Dreamtime Superhighway: Sydney Basin Rock Art and Prehistoric Information Exchange (2008) - synopsis: Dreamtime Superhighway presents a thorough and original contextualization of the rock art and archaeology of the Sydney Basin in Australia. By combining excavation results with rock art analysis it demonstrates that a true archaeology of rock art can provide insights into rock art image-making in people’s social and cultural lives.
Image two: E-book titled Encyclopedia of African-American Writing (2018) - synopsis: A timely survey of an important sector of American letters, The Encyclopedia of African-American Writing covers the role and influence of African American cultural leaders, from all walks of life, from the 18th century to the present. Readers will explore what inspired various African-American writers to create poems, plays, short stories, novels, essays, opinion pieces and numerous other works, and how those writings contributed to culture in America today.
Image three: E-book titled Allie Victoria Tennant and the Visual Arts in Dallas (2015) - synopsis: Follows Tennant’s public career from the 1920s to the 1960s, both as an artist and as a culture-bearer, as she advanced cultural endeavors, including the arts. A true pathfinder, she helped to create and nurture art institutions that still exist today, most especially the Dallas Museum of Art, on whose board of trustees she sat for almost thirty years.
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First Generation Club and McNair Scholars Program presents
UNT Dallas Library Sessions with librarian Robert Taylor
1. How to develop a research strategy - 1/27/2022 - 6pm to 7pm
2. How to Google like a scholar - 2/3/2022 - 6pm to 7pm
3. What's new at the library - 2/10/2022 - 6pm to 7pm
Zoom ID (for each session): 83148094734
Thanksgiving Week Library Hours
Sunday, 11/21 - noon to 5 PM Monday to Tuesday, 11/22 to 11/23 - 8 AM to 5 PM Wednesday, 11/24 - 8 AM to noon Thursday to Sunday, 11/25 to 11/28 - Closed Monday, 11/29 - Regular hours (8 AM to 8 PM)
Image one: E-book titled Shifting Grounds: Landscape in Contemporary Native American Art (2019) - synopsis: In Shifting Grounds, art historian Kate Morris argues that Indigenous artists are expanding, reconceptualizing, and remaking the forms of landscape painting still further, expressing Indigenous attitudes toward land and belonging even as they draw upon mainstream art practices. The resulting works are rarely if ever primarily visual representations, but instead evoke all five senses: from the overt sensuality of Kay WalkingStick's tactile paintings to the eerie soundscapes of Alan Michelson's videos and Postcommodity's installations to the immersive environments of Kent Monkman's dioramas, this landscape art resonates with a fully embodied and embedded subjectivity.
Image two: E-book titled Living with Whales: Documents and Oral Histories of Native New England Whaling History (2013) - synopsis: Native Americans along the coasts of southern New England and Long Island have had close ties to whales for thousands of years. They made a living from the sea and saw in the world’s largest beings special power and meaning. After English settlement in the early seventeenth century, the region’s natural bounty of these creatures drew Natives and colonists alike to develop whale hunting on an industrial scale. By the nineteenth century, New England dominated the world in whaling, and Native Americans contributed substantially to whaleship crews. In Living with Whales, Nancy Shoemaker reconstructs the history of Native whaling in New England through a diversity of primary documents: explorers’ descriptions of their “first encounters,” indentures, deeds, merchants’ accounts, Indian overseer reports, crew lists, memoirs, obituaries, and excerpts from journals kept by Native whalemen on their voyages.
Image one: Native American Heritage Month
Image two: E-book titled Kayanerenkó:wa - The Great Law of Peace (2018) - synopsis: Several centuries ago, the five nations that would become the Haudenosaunee — Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca — were locked in generations-long cycles of bloodshed. When they established Kayanerenkó:wa, the Great Law of Peace, they not only resolved intractable conflicts, but also shaped a system of law and government that would maintain peace for generations to come. This law remains in place today in Haudenosaunee communities: an Indigenous legal system, distinctive, complex, and principled. It is not only a survivor, but a viable alternative to Euro-American systems of law. With its emphasis on lasting relationships, respect for the natural world, building consensus, and on making and maintaining peace, it stands in contrast to legal systems based on property, resource exploitation, and majority rule.
Image one: Happy Halloween
Image two: E-book titled Cemeteries and Gravemarkers: Voices of American Culture (1989) - synopsis: Cemeteries house the dead, but gravemarkers are fashioned by the living, who record on them not only their pleasures, sorrows, and hopes for an afterlife, but also more than they realize of their history, ethnicity, and culture. Richard Meyer has gathered twelve original essays examining burial grounds through the centuries and across the land to give a broad understanding of the history and cultural values of communities, regions, and American society at large.
Image three: E-book titled The Untold Story of Champ: A Social History of America's Loch Ness Monster (2012) - synopsis: Robert E. Bartholomew embarks on a search for the Champ monster, both of the Lake Champlain firsthand and through period sources and archives, many never before published. Although he finds the trail obscured by sloppy journalism, local leaders motivated by tourism income, and bickering monster hunters, he weighs the evidence to craft a rich, colorful history of Champ. From the nineteenth century, when Champ was a household name, to 1977, when he appeared in Sandra Mansi’s controversial photograph, Bartholomew covers it all. Real or imaginary, Champ and his story will fascinate believers and skeptics alike.
Image one: E-book titled Japanese Demon Lore: Oni from Ancient Times to the Present (2010) - synopsis: Oni, ubiquitous supernatural figures in Japanese literature, lore, art, and religion, usually appear as demons or ogres, and they appear frequently in various arts and media, from Noh theater and picture scrolls to modern fiction and political propaganda. They remain common figures in popular Japanese anime, manga, and film and are becoming embedded in American and international popular culture through such media. Noriko Reider’s book is the first in English devoted to oni as she fully examines their cultural history, multifaceted roles, and complex significance as “others” to the Japanese.
Image two: E-book titled The Monster in the Garden: The Grotesque and the Gigantic in Renaissance Landscape Design (2015) - synopsis: Monsters, grotesque creatures, and giants were frequently depicted in Italian Renaissance landscape design, yet they have rarely been studied. In The Monster in the Garden, Luke Morgan argues that the monster is a key figure in Renaissance culture that acts as a cipher for contemporary anxieties about normative social life and identity. Drawing on sixteenth-century medical, legal, and scientific texts, as well as recent scholarship on monstrosity, abnormality, and difference in early modern Europe, he develops a new conceptual model of Renaissance landscape design and argues that the presence of monsters was not incidental but an essential feature of the experience of gardens.
Image one: E-books for Halloween
Image two: E-book titled The Spectral Arctic: A History of Dreams and Ghosts in Polar Expedition (2018) - synopsis: In contrast to oft-told tales of heroism and disaster, this book reveals the hidden stories of dreaming and haunted explorers, of frozen mummies, of rescue balloons, visits to Inuit shamans, and of the entranced female clairvoyants who travelled to the Arctic in search of John Franklin’s lost expedition. Through new readings of archival documents, exploration narratives, and fictional texts, these spectral stories reflect the complex ways that men and women actually thought about the far North in the past.
Image three: E-book titled Dracula - synopsis: Shrugging off warnings of vampires from villagers he meets on his journey, Jonathan Harker, a young lawyer from England, travels to a castle in Transylvania to handle a real estate transaction with the mysterious, reclusive Count Dracula. Harker discovers he has become Dracula's prisoner and barely escapes with his life, only to learn that Dracula has hijacked a Russian ship to follow him back to England.
Image one: E-book titled The Woman Who Turned into a Jaguar and Other Narratives of Native Women in Archives of Colonial Mexico (2017) - synopsis: This book is an ambitious and wide-ranging social and cultural history of gender relations among indigenous peoples of New Spain, from the Spanish conquest through the first half of the eighteenth century. In this expansive account, Lisa Sousa focuses on four native groups in highland Mexico—the Nahua, Mixtec, Zapotec, and Mixe—and traces cross-cultural similarities and differences in the roles and status attributed to women in pre-Hispanic and colonial Mesoamerica.
Image two: E-book titled Ceramics and the Spanish Conquest: Response and Continuity of Indigenous Pottery Technology in Central Mexico (2012) - synopsis: This work presents insights into the process of cultural continuity and change in the indigenous world by focusing on pottery technology in the Nahua (Aztec) region of Central Mexico. The late pre-colonial, early colonial, and present-day characteristics of this industry are explored in order to come to a renewed understanding of its long-term development.
