Arcadia Public Library

“Reading How Literature Saved My Life is like getting to listen in on a really great, smart, provocative conversation. The book is not straightforward, it resists any single interpretation, and it seems to me to constitute nothing less than a new form.” ––Whitney Otto
 
In this wonderfully intelligent, stunningly honest, painfully funny book, acclaimed writer David Shields uses himself as a representative

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From Dreaming the Beatles John, Paul, George, and Ringo remain the world's favorite thing. Yet every theory ever devised to explain why has failed. It wasn't their timing. It wasn't drugs. It wasn't that they were the voice of a generation. The vast majority of Beatles fans today weren't born when the records came out--yet the allure of the music keeps on growing, nearly fifty years after the band split. The world keeps dreaming the Beatles, long...

"The oral history and exploration of the cultural impact of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the classic, ground-breaking television show still adored by fans old and new, from pop culture critic and nearly lifelong devotee of the show Evan Ross Katz, social media's foremost Sarah Michelle Gellar historian"--

Veteran journalist Ifill sheds new light on the impact of Barack Obama's presidential victory and introduces the emerging African American politicians forging a new path to political power. Ifill argues that the Black political structure formed during the Civil Rights movement is giving way to a generation who are the direct beneficiaries of the struggles of the 1960s. She offers detailed profiles of such prominent leaders as Newark Mayor Cory Booker,...

On All Hallow's Eve in 1517, a young monk named Martin Luther posted a document he hoped would spark an academic debate, but that instead ignited a conflagration that would forever destroy the world he knew. Five hundred years after Luther's Ninety-five Theses appeared, Eric Metaxas paints a startling portrait of the wild figure whose adamantine faith cracked the edifice of Western Christendom and dragged medieval Europe into the future. Luther's...

"Named for the anarchist utopia in Ursula K. Le Guin's science fiction classic The Dispossessed, Dispatches from Anarres embodies the anarchic spirit of Le Guin's hometown, Portland, Oregon, while paying tribute to her enduring vision. In stories that range from fantasy to sci fi to realism, some of Portland's most vital voices have come together to celebrate Le Guin's lasting legacy and influence on that most subversive of human faculties: the imagination....

From the author of 1491, the study of the pre-Columbian Americas, this new work is a history that explores the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed totally different suites of plants and animals. Columbus's voyages brought them back together, and marked the beginning of an extraordinary...

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, triggered U.S. military action abroad and changes in U.S. society. This title begins with a brief history of the September 11 Attacks and then examines key questions.

When a stranger with unusual manners is murdered for his unflattering and insightful illustrations, a government report writer and concentration camp survivor writes an official, whitewashed account of the incident while secretly penning the truth in a parallel narrative.

"The Farewell was published at the end of Washington's second term. It was reprinted in newspapers across the country. The President began the letter during his first term intending to retire but was persuaded by Hamilton and Jefferson to run for a second. By the end of that term he was the object of scurrilous press attacks and alarmed by the growing partisan bitterness. Fearful for the country's future, Washington pled with his countrymen to resist...