Staff Picks

I love reading about scams, history, and the history of scams, and I am pleased to report that this is simply the finest book about pyramid schemes that I have ever read. This book considers pyramid schemes within the full context of American business history, bringing the propulsive energy and weird details of a novel while remaining almost comprehensively informative and engaging. If you only read one book about pyramid schemes, ever, in your life, make it this one.

 

Publisher's description: 
A groundbreaking work of history and reportage that unveils the stranger-than-fiction world of multilevel marketing, from the shadowy cabals at the top to the strivers at the bottom, whose deferred dreams churn a massive money-making scam that has remade American society. Multilevel marketing companies like Amway, Mary Kay, and Herbalife advertise the ultimate business opportunity: the chance to be your own boss. In exchange for peddling their wares, they offer a world of pink Cadillacs, white-columned mansions, tropical vacations, and-most precious of all-financial freedom. If, that is, you're willing to shell out for expensive products, recruit everyone you know to buy them, and make them recruit everyone they know to do the same-thus creating the "multiple levels" of multilevel marketing, or MLM. Despite overwhelming evidence that multilevel marketing causes most of its participants to lose their money, and that many MLM companies are pyramid schemes, the industry's dubious origins, inextricably tied to well-known ideological figures like Ronald Reagan, have escaped public scrutiny. Behind the scenes of American life, MLM has slithered in the wake of every economic crisis of the last century, from the Depression to the pandemic, ensnaring laid-off workers, stay-at-home moms, teachers, nurses-anyone who has been left behind by inequality. In Little Bosses Everywhere, journalist Bridget Read tells the gripping story of multilevel marketing in full for the first time, winding from sunny post-war California, where a failed salesman started a vitamin business, through the suburbs of Michigan and North Carolina, where MLM bought its political protection, to the stadium-sized conventions where top sellers today preach to die-hard recruits. MLM has been endorsed by multiple American presidents, has its own Congressional caucus, and enriched powerful people, like the DeVos and Van Andel families, Warren Buffet, and Donald Trump. Along the way, Read delves into the heartbreaking stories of those enmeshed in the majority-female industry: a veteran in Florida searching for healing; a young mom in Texas struggling to feed her children; a waitress scraping by in Brooklyn. A wild trip down an endless rabbit hole of greed and exploitation, Little Bosses Everywhere exposes multilevel marketing as American capitalism's stealthiest PR campaign: a cunning right-wing political project that has shaped nearly everything about how we live.

 

For those that are fans of Macolm Gladwell or listeners to his podcast, "Revisionist History," this sequel to The Tipping Point delivers big time. Gladwell is a master of revisiting historical moments and encourages his readers to approach critical moments from new perspectives. His work is a reminder that headlines often do not tell the full story; it is crucial that we allow time to pass to be able to really look at and absorb the full picture.

 

Publisher’s description
Twenty-five years after the publication of his groundbreaking first book, Malcolm Gladwell returns with a brand-new volume that reframes the lessons of The Tipping Point in a startling and revealing light. Why is Miami… Miami? What does the heartbreaking fate of the cheetah tell us about the way we raise our children? Why do Ivy League schools care so much about sports? What is the Magic Third, and what does it mean for racial harmony? In this provocative new work, Malcolm Gladwell returns for the first time in twenty-five years to the subject of social epidemics and tipping points, this time with the aim of explaining the dark side of contagious phenomena. Through a series of riveting stories, Gladwell traces the rise of a new and troubling form of social engineering. He takes us to the streets of Los Angeles to meet the world’s most successful bank robbers, rediscovers a forgotten television show from the 1970s that changed the world, visits the site of a historic experiment on a tiny cul-de-sac in northern California, and offers an alternate history of two of the biggest epidemics of our day: COVID and the opioid crisis. Revenge of the Tipping Point is Gladwell’s most personal book yet. With his characteristic mix of storytelling and social science, he offers a guide to making sense of the contagions of modern world. It’s time we took tipping points seriously.

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Abdurraqib's writing is passionate, jumps off the page at times, and has rhythm and meaning for every word and at the corners of every sentence. He articulates what it means to be a true fan, how that fandom is intertwined with the city you're from, and how a lot of times that city lets you down but you keep showing up, because you've always dreamed of the day your team, your city, can rise above it and get national recognition for redemption, even if it's just for that moment.

 

Publisher's description: 

While Hanif Abdurraqib is an acclaimed author, a gifted poet, and one of our culture's most insightful music critics, he is most of all, at heart, an Ohioan. Growing up in Columbus in the '90s, Abdurraqib witnessed a golden era of basketball, one in which legends like LeBron were forged, and countless others weren't. His lifelong love of the game leads Abdurraqib into a lyrical, historical, and emotionally rich exploration of what it means to make it, who we think deserves success, the tensions between excellence and expectation, and the very notion of role-models, all of which he expertly weaves together with memoir: "Here is where I would like to tell you about the form on my father's jumpshot," Abdurraqib writes. "The truth, though, is that I saw my father shoot a basketball only one time.

 

This book dives into how some big trends in the past few decades have shaped today's political, social, and cultural atmosphere in the U.S. It takes on three major "untruths" that have crept into modern thinking: “What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker” -- where overprotective parenting has shielded children from challenges and has made younger generations less emotionally resilient; “Always trust your feelings” -- where people are encouraged to follow emotional reactions over logical and rational problem-solving; and “Life is a battle between good and evil people” -- where black-and-white mindsets fuel polarization and conflict. The authors connect these trends to the rise of "common enemy politics" and the intense divide in America today. What I really appreciated about this book was that it wasn’t just a pessimistic report of these negative trends. Instead, the authors actually offer advice for parents, schools, and young people to break out of these patterns. This book has a way of being brutally honest about the challenges that America is facing and will continue to face, but still leaves you feeling hopeful by the end, as it ends on a positive note. Personally, as someone who’s grown up in this generation, it made me reflect on how I was raised and how I see others being raised, especially as I get ready for college. It gave me awareness of these issues and practical ideas on how to approach America’s political and social climate with more emotional awareness and resilience. If you like politics, sociology, or just want a better understanding of why things feel so divided these days, I would totally recommend this book. It’s not just informative, well-written, and politically unbiased (which is always nice to see in political non-fiction), but it’s a wonderful guide for anyone who wants to help make things better.

 

-Ainsley, twelfth-grade volunteer

 

Publisher's Description: 

This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines.

 

Am I really in control of my thoughts, or are they shaped by the internet, media, and AI? Is there a remedy for an oversaturated mind? This book made me reflect on our world while feeling like I was chatting with a friend. I highly recommend it for anyone struggling with information overload.

Publisher’s description:

'Magical thinking' can be broadly defined as the belief that one's internal thoughts can affect unrelated events in the external world: Think of the conviction that one can manifest their way out of poverty, stave off cancer with positive vibes, thwart the apocalypse by learning to can their own peaches, or transform an unhealthy relationship to a glorious one with loyalty alone. In all its forms, magical thinking works in service of restoring agency amid chaos, but in The Age of Magical Overthinking, Montell argues that in the modern information age, our brain's coping mechanisms have been overloaded, and our irrationality turned up to an eleven. Montell delves into a cornucopia of the cognitive biases that run rampant in our brains, from how the 'Halo effect' cultivates worship (and hatred) of larger than life celebrities, to how the 'Sunk cost fallacy' can keep us in detrimental relationships long after we've realized they're not serving us. As she illuminates these concepts with her signature brilliance and wit, Montell's prevailing message is one of hope, empathy, and ultimately forgiveness for our anxiety-addled human selves. If you have all but lost faith in our ability to reason, Montell aims to make some sense of the senseless. To crack open a window in our minds, and let a warm breeze in. To help quiet the cacophony for a while, or even hear a melody in it.

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This book really opened my eyes to the ethical complications that can arise when pursuing genetic testing as a genealogical hobby. The author describes the interesting history of genealogy. She interviews many DNA testers who walk away with more questions than answers about family and heritage.

 

Publisher's description:
A deeply reported look at the rise of home genetic testing and the seismic shock it has had on individual lives You swab your cheek or spit into a vial, then send it away to a lab somewhere. Weeks later you get a report that might tell you where your ancestors came from or if you carry certain genetic risks. Or the report could reveal a long-buried family secret and upend your entire sense of identity. Soon a lark becomes an obsession, an incessant desire to find answers to questions at the core of your being, like “Who am I?” and “Where did I come from?” Welcome to the age of home genetic testing. In The Lost Family, journalist Libby Copeland investigates what happens when we embark on a vast social experiment with little understanding of the ramifications. Copeland explores the culture of genealogy buffs, the science of DNA, and the business of companies like Ancestry and 23andMe, all while tracing the story of one woman, her unusual results, and a relentless methodical drive for answers that becomes a thoroughly modern genetic detective story. The Lost Family delves into the many lives that have been irrevocably changed by home DNA tests—a technology that represents the end of family secrets. There are the adoptees who’ve used the tests to find their birth parents; donor-conceived adults who suddenly discover they have more than fifty siblings; hundreds of thousands of Americans who discover their fathers aren’t biologically related to them, a phenomenon so common it is known as a “non-paternity event”; and individuals who are left to grapple with their conceptions of race and ethnicity when their true ancestral histories are discovered. Throughout these accounts, Copeland explores the impulse toward genetic essentialism and raises the question of how much our genes should get to tell us about who we are. With more than thirty million people having undergone home DNA testing, the answer to that question is more important than ever. Gripping and masterfully told, The Lost Family is a spectacular book on a big, timely subject.

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Some tense, racist moments in this story of a factory town and its inhabitants. We are reminded that no matter the race or the economic status, all families struggle and love endures. It was also a deep dive into seasons in small-town Ohio, beautifully described.

 

Publisher's description:

Set in failing small town in central Ohio, [this novel] asks how one manages, in an America of increasing division, to find a sense of family and community. [It focuses] on the members of three families: the Baileys, a white family who have put down deep roots in the community; the Marwats, an immigrant family that owns the town's largest employer; and the Shaws, especially young Anthony, an outsider whose very presence gently shakes the town's understanding of itself.

 

A fascinating (if biased) biography about an incredible creative. If you grew up with the Muppets or Sesame Street and want to catch a glimpse of the man behind the curtain, this is the book for you.

 

Publisher's description: 

Jim Henson was a gentle dreamer whose genial bearded visage was recognized around the world, but most people got to know him only through the iconic characters he created: Kermit the Frog, Bert and Ernie, Miss Piggy, Big Bird. The Muppets made Jim Henson a household name, but they were just part of his remarkable story.

 

Find Jim Henson: The Biography in our online catalog.