Staff Picks

In this captivating memoir by African-American abolitionist and former escaped slave Frederick Douglass, it is clear to see why this work became one of the most influential texts in abolitionist history. With its heart-wrenching renderings of the beatings Douglass saw administered by his ruthless overseers on his friends, family, and other slaves on the various plantations he was sent to and with the detailing of the natures of his different masters, Douglass conveys how slavery is in every way morally wrong and horrendous even with “kind” masters. He makes many remarks on how slavery is not only awful for the slave but also causes the slaveholder’s character to change for the worse. For example, while writing about when he was first sent to Baltimore to live with Mrs. Sophia Auld and her husband, he nostalgically reminisces about how kind she was (she even taught him the alphabet, though it was because she did not know that it was prohibited to teach slaves to read and write). He then laments how slaveholding made her become more and more cruel and unfeeling and caused her relationship with her husband to deteriorate. Through this and other accounts of his fearful experiences, Douglass was among the first to paint an accurate picture of the horrors of slavery to the white American public and was the very first to gain such immediate success after the publication of his memoir.

 

- Jiyu K, ninth-grade teen volunteer

 

Publisher's description:

The preeminent American slave narrative first published in 1845, Frederick Douglass’s Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist from his birth into slavery in 1818 to his escape to the North in 1838, how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and driver, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die.

 

Peterson takes a look at female celebrities who defy the "laws of womanhood" that society has created. It is a refreshing take on what makes a woman a woman and an encouraging narrative that suggests you be yourself, no matter who that is.

 

Publisher's description:

You know the type: the woman who won’t shut up, who’s too brazen, too opinionated—too much. She’s the unruly woman, and she embodies one of the most provocative and powerful forms of womanhood today. In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of “unruliness” to explore the ascension of pop culture powerhouses like Lena Dunham, Nicki Minaj, and Kim Kardashian, exploring why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures. With its brisk, incisive analysis, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud will be a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today.

 

The author, an infectious disease doctor, does a masterful job presenting the harm caused by ultra-processed foods (UPFs) to our physical and mental health, as well as the environment. This book motivated me to change my diet and see the need for marketing restrictions and warning labels on UPFs.

 

Publisher's description:

A manifesto to change how you eat and how you think about the human body.

It’s not you, it’s the food.

In a fast-paced and eye-opening narrative van Tulleken explores the origins, science, and economics of Ultra-Processed Food to reveal its catastrophic impact on our bodies and the planet. And he proposes real solutions for doctors, for policy makers, and for all of us who have to eat. A book that won’t only upend the way you shop and eat, Ultra-Processed People will open your eyes to the need for action on a global scale.

 

I loved reading this novel because of the plot and setting. Salt and Sugar, by Rebecca Carvalho, is a novel about two characters who start out as enemies and end as best friends: Lari Ramires from the Salt Bakery and Pedro Molinas from the Sugar Bakery. Both character’s families have been in a feud for years because of the constant competitions between both bakeries. Lari and Pedro have never been close before, but when they start attending the same high school something shifts in their attitudes toward one another. Both teenagers are determined to keep their bakeries safe against a big supermarket chain that moved into their town and is forcing family-owned, small businesses to close. Read this novel to find out what happens when two enemies work together with trust and determination!

- Anonymous eleventh-grade teen volunteer

 

Publisher's description:

Trust neither thin-bottomed frying pans nor Molinas. Lari Ramires has always known this to be true. In Olinda, Brazil, her family's bakery, Salt, has been at war with the Molinas' bakery across the street, Sugar, for generations. But Lari's world turns upside down when her beloved grandmother passes away. On top of that, a big supermarket chain has moved to town, forcing many of the small businesses to close. Determined to protect her home, Lari does the unthinkable--she works together with Pedro Molina to save both of their bakeries. Lari realizes she might not know Pedro as well as she thought--and she maybe even likes what she learns--but the question remains: Can a Ramires and a Molina truly trust one another?

 

 

Publisher's description:

In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada's oil industry and America's biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration--the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina--John Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event, but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world. Fire has been a partner in our evolution for hundreds of millennia, shaping culture, civilization, and, very likely, our brains. Fire has enabled us to cook our food, defend and heat our homes, and power the machines that drive our titanic economy. Yet this volatile energy source has always threatened to elude our control, and in our new age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in previously unimaginable ways. With masterly prose and a cinematic eye, Vaillant takes us on a riveting journey through the intertwined histories of North America's oil industry and the birth of climate science, to the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern forest fires, and into lives forever changed by these disasters. John Vaillant's urgent work is a book for--and from--our new century of fire, which has only just begun.

 

This new book of essays is perfect for readers of the One Book One Boulder selection All We Can Save. In much the same way, this is a hopeful and engaging collection of writing from around the world, "a book that provides some brightness, passion, and intelligence in dark times." (Kirkus Reviews).

 

Publisher's description:

An energizing case for hope about the climate, from Rebecca Solnit ("the voice of the resistance"--New York Times), climate activist Thelma Young Lutunatabua, and a chorus of voices calling on us to rise to the moment. Not Too Late is the book for anyone who is despondent, defeatist, or unsure about climate change and seeking answers. As the contributors to this volume make clear, the future will be decided by whether we act in the present--and we must act to counter institutional inertia, fossil fuel interests, and political obduracy. These dispatches from the climate movement around the world feature the voices of organizers like Guam-based lawyer and writer Julian Aguon; climate scientists like Dr. Jacquelyn Gill and Dr. Edward Carr; poets like Marshall Islands activist Kathy Jetnil-Kijner; and longtime organizers like The Tyranny of Oil author Antonia Juhasz. Guided by Rebecca Solnit's typical clear-eyed wisdom and enriched by photographs and quotes, Not Too Late leads readers from discouragement to possibilities, from climate despair to climate hope.

Find Not Too Late in our online catalog.

We recommend this new book about living off the grid in the San Luis Valley from Pulitzer Prize finalist Conover, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Newjack. In her insightful review, New York Times book critic Jennifer Szalai calls Conover "one of our great narrative journalists."

 

Publisher's description:

In May 2017, Ted Conover went to Colorado to explore firsthand a rural way of life that is about living cheaply, on your own land--and keeping clear of the mainstream. The failed subdivisions of the enormous San Luis Valley make this possible. Five-acre lots on the high prairie can be had for five thousand dollars, sometimes less. Conover volunteered for a local group trying to prevent homelessness during the bitter winters. He encountered an unexpected diversity: veterans with PTSD, families homeschooling, addicts young and old, gay people, people of color, lovers of guns and marijuana, people with social anxiety--most of them spurning charity and aiming, and sometimes failing, to be self-sufficient. And more than a few predicting they'll be the last ones standing when society collapses. Conover bought his own five acres and immersed himself for parts of four years in the often contentious culture of the far margins. He found many who dislike the government but depend on its subsidies; who love their space but nevertheless find themselves in each other's business; who are generous but wary of thieves; who endure squalor but appreciate beauty. In their struggles to survive and get along, they tell us about an America riven by difference where the edges speak more and more loudly to the mainstream.

 

The author of Dopesick returns to the subject of the opioid epidemic and how the pharmacy industry and politicians alike play a role in this ongoing national tragedy. As New York Times reporter Jan Hoffman notes in her review, "Macy, no longer struggling with why, has moved on to an even more impenetrable question: How the hell do we extract ourselves from this quicksand?" Readers who were fascinated and outraged by Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe's chronicle of the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma, will want to check out this new title, which Kirkus Reviews calls "A profoundly disconcerting book that, with luck, will inspire reform to aid the dopesick and punish their suppliers."

 

Publisher's Description:

Nearly a decade into the second wave of America's overdose crisis, pharmaceutical companies have yet to answer for the harms they created. As pending court battles against opioid makers, distributors, and retailers drag on, addiction rates have soared to record-breaking levels during the COVID pandemic, illustrating the critical need for leadership, urgency, and change. Meanwhile, there is scant consensus between law enforcement and medical leaders, nor an understanding of how to truly scale the programs that are out there, working at the ragged edge of capacity and actually saving lives. Distilling this massive, unprecedented national health crisis down to its character-driven emotional core as only she can, Beth Macy takes us into the country’s hardest hit places to witness the devastating personal costs that one-third of America's families are now being forced to shoulder. Here we meet the ordinary people fighting for the least of us with the fewest resources, from harm reductionists risking arrest to bring lifesaving care to the homeless and addicted to the activists and bereaved families pushing to hold Purdue and the Sackler family accountable. These heroes come from all walks of life; what they have in common is an up-close and personal understanding of addiction that refuses to stigmatize—and therefore abandon—people who use drugs, as big pharma execs and many politicians are all too ready to do. Like the treatment innovators she profiles, Beth Macy meets the opioid crisis where it is—not where we think it should be or wish it was. Bearing witness with clear eyes, intrepid curiosity, and unfailing empathy, she brings us the crucial next installment in the story of the defining disaster of our era, one that touches every single one of us, whether directly or indirectly. A complex story of public health, big pharma, dark money, politics, race, and class that is by turns harrowing and heartening, infuriating and inspiring, Raising Lazarus is a must-read for all Americans.

 

You've probably heard something about supply chains recently, but how much do you actually know about how our food gets to our shelves? This book made me realize that I actually knew very little! Sourcing food, pitching a product, designing labels, securing transportation, and storage space are all very important realities of the food supply chain. From learning the philosophies behind our favorite stores to shadowing industry professionals, Benjamin Lorr travels the world to witness the (sometimes horrific) market forces and human ingenuity that decide what we will be having for dinner.

 

Publisher's description: What does it take to run the American supermarket? How do products get to shelves? Who sets the price? And who suffers the consequences of increased convenience end efficiency? In this alarming exposé, Benjamin Lorr pulls back the curtain on this highly secretive industry. Combining deep sourcing, immersive reporting, and compulsively readable prose, Lorr leads a wild investigation in which we learn: The secrets of Trader Joe's success from Trader Joe himself; Why truckers call their job "sharecropping on wheels"; What it takes for a product to earn certification labels like "organic" and "fair trade"; The struggles entrepreneurs face as they fight for shelf space, including essential tips, tricks, and traps for any new food business; The truth behind the alarming slave trade in the shrimp industry. The result is a page-turning portrait of an industry in flux, filled with the passion, ingenuity, and exploitation required to make this everyday miracle continue to function.

We've all seen books that compare the food, holidays, or fashion of different cultures, but that's so passé. Now, there's a book that compares all the bizarre, morbid, and fascinatingly gruesome ways that we as human beings handle death. Kicking off right here in Colorado with the nation's only open air pyre, this book is uncomfortable and entrancing--its descriptions of our treatment of the dead highlight numerous ways we approach the human condition and how we live when others move on.

 

Publisher's description:

Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for the dead. In rural Indonesia, she watches a man clean and dress his grandfather's mummified body, which has resided in the family home for two years. In La Paz, she meets Bolivian natitas (cigarette-smoking, wish-granting human skulls), and in Tokyo she encounters the Japanese kotsuage ceremony, in which relatives use chopsticks to pluck their loved-ones' bones from cremation ashes. Doughty vividly describes decomposed bodies and investigates the world's funerary history. She introduces deathcare innovators researching body composting and green burial, and examines how varied traditions, from Mexico's Días de los Muertos to Zoroastrian sky burial help us see our own death customs in a new light. Doughty contends the American funeral industry sells a particular -- and, upon close inspection, peculiar -- set of 'respectful' rites: bodies are whisked to a mortuary, pumped full of chemicals, and entombed in concrete. She argues our expensive, impersonal system fosters a corrosive fear of death that hinders our ability to cope and mourn. By comparing customs, she demonstrates mourners everywhere respond best when they help care for the deceased, and have space to participate in the process. Illustrated by artist Landis Blair, From Here to Eternity is an adventure into the morbid unknown, a story about the many fascinating ways people everywhere have confronted the very human challenge of mortality.