Bookshelf

(New York: Knopf/Penguin Random House, 2021).
Named a “book to read” by Fortune magazine, this book explores not only the future of where we work, but how we work. “Based on groundbreaking reporting and interviews with workers and managers around the world, Out of Office illuminates the key values and questions that should be driving this conversation: trust, fairness, flexibility, inclusive workplaces, equity, and work-life balance,” the publisher notes. “Above all, they argue that companies need to listen to their employees – and that this will promote, rather than impede, productivity and profitability.” Warzel writes the newsletter “Galaxy Brain” for The Atlantic, where he is a contributing writer.

(New York: Katherine Tegen Books/HarperCollins, 2022).
From the author of the Case Closed series and three other books for young readers comes the first in a new middle-grade fantasy series. “Full of action, adventure, and friendship, a team of five girls must stop a powerful villain by finding their mythical familiars,” notes the publisher. Beautifully illustrated by Mirelle Ortega, this book invites readers to join these dynamic girls with mysterious powers as they fight to earn their “Mythies” and save their home, Terrafamiliar.

(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2022).
The publisher notes: “The same men and women who offered profound advancements in European understanding of the human condition — and laid the foundations of the Scientific Revolution — were also obsessed with controlling that condition and the wider natural world. Tracing early modern artisanal practice, Mackenzie Cooley shows how the idea of race and theories of inheritance developed through animal breeding in the shadow of the Spanish Empire. While one strand of the Renaissance celebrated a liberal view of human potential, another limited it by biology, reducing man to beast and prince to stud. ‘Race,’ Cooley explains, first referred to animal stock honed through breeding. To those who invented the concept, race was not inflexible, but the fragile result of reproductive work. As the Spanish empire expanded, the concept of race moved from nonhuman to human animals. Cooley reveals how, as the dangerous idea of controlled reproduction was brought to life again and again, a rich, complex, and ever-shifting language of race and breeding was born.”

(Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen Press, 2021).

In this book, the author has compiled the important terms, laws, and information on the political life of Guyana. Andaiye, the late Guyanese gender rights activist, wrote in the foreword: “A Political Glossary of Guyana is pioneering work. There has been no previous recorded attempt at compiling a similar glossary in the country, although there have been earlier reference books of different kinds … best of all, it is designed to be of use not only to students and teachers in a range of disciplines including Caribbean studies and political science, but to the very many of us outside academia who do not have the skills to dig up information for ourselves from dust-filled documents and memories.”

(Boston: Beacon Press, 2022).
Meet Sadia, a bright, spirited Somali Bantu teenager who rebels against her formidable mother; Ali, an Iraqi translator who creates a home with a divorced American woman but is still traumatized by war; and Mersiha, a hard-working Bosnian who dreams of opening a café.

(Berkeley, Calif.: Ten Speed Press/Random House: 2021).

Throw out that long grocery list. This cookbook, named one of the best of the year by The Washington Post, features 60 recipes that deliver mouth-watering results “in five, four, three … or, yep, even two ingredients,” notes the publisher.

(Villanova, Pa.: Connelly Press, 2022).

This book of two novellas offers what one reviewer describes as ”poignant portraits of aging men, their fears and strengths, and earned love. Groome is all about the narrative.” Set in the Adirondacks, “Giant of the Valley” is a tale of a family struggling with the encroaching dementia of its aging patriarch. “The Witness” is the story of Jusuf Kurtovic, who pays a horrendous price to protect his Muslim granddaughters during the Bosnian War.

(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2021).
The author, professor, and chair of the Department of Politics at Oberlin College investigates how the fear of labor protest has inhibited substantial economic transformation in Russia. The publisher notes, “Labor protests currently show little sign of threatening Putin’s hold on power, but the manner in which they are being conducted point to substantial chronic problems that will be difficult to resolve. Putin’s Labor Dilemma demonstrates that the Russian economy must either find new sources of economic growth or face stagnation. Either scenario — market reforms or economic stagnation — raises the possibility, even probability, of destabilizing social unrest.”

(Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 2021).

This book is the first to set the poets of Scottish King James IV’s court — William Dunbar, Walter Kennedy, and Gavin Douglas — in an extended dialogue with Latin and vernacular traditions of historiography. As one reviewer noted, “Terrell’s elegant study examines how these Scottish writers marked out a distinct realm of Scottish cultural and poetic achievement, appropriating and subverting English literary models in ways that reveal the interplay between literary and historical authority in the scripting of nationhood.

(New York: Abrams Books, 2022).

Described by the publisher as “the perfect gift for every parent,” this book translates the science on what babies need for optimal growth from infancy through toddlerhood into a language that is easy for parents of all ages and backgrounds to understand. “Children’s minds are molded by experience, and science tells us that the way a parent touches, holds, looks at, and responds to babies and toddlers has a lifelong impact on the way that this brand-new person will come to see the world and their place within it,” the publisher notes. The book is filled with beautiful images of babies and toddlers matched with captions “spoken” in their voices and summaries of the research on the powerful impact of nurturing interactions.