Washoe County Library System

'Paris Review contributor Katy Kelleher explores our obsession with gorgeous things, unveiling the fraught histories of makeup, flowers, perfume, silk, and other beautiful objects. April recommended reading by the New York Times Book Review, Vanity Fair, Goodreads, Jezebel, and Next Big Idea Club One of Curbed’s best architecture, design, and urbanism books of the spring A most anticipated book of 2023 by The Millions Katy Kelleher has spent much...

"In today's world, the acceleration of megatrends - increasing longevity and the explosion of technology among many others - are transforming life as we now know it. In The Perennials, bestselling author of 2030 Mauro Guillaen unpacks a sweeping societalshift triggered by demographic and technological transformation. Guillaen argues that outmoded terms like Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z have long been used to pigeonhole us into rigid categories...

"A call to reform our antiquated political institutions before it's too late-from the New York Times bestselling authors of How Democracies Die. America is undergoing a massive experiment: It is moving, in fits and starts, toward a multiracial democracy,something few societies have ever done. But the prospect of change has sparked an authoritarian backlash that threatens the very foundations of our political system. Why is democracy under assault...

"From Joan of Arc to Queen Elizabeth I, to Harriet Tubman and Susan B. Anthony, to Sally Ride and Jennifer Aniston, history is full of women without children. Some chose to forgo reproduction in order to pursue intellectually satisfying work-a tension noted by medieval European nuns, 1970s women's liberationists, and modern professionals alike. Some refused to bring children into a world beset by famine, pollution, or climate change. For others, childlessness...

We live in a pop age gone loco for retro and crazy for commemoration. Band re-formations and reunion tours, expanded reissues of classic albums and outtake-crammed box sets, remakes and sequels, tribute albums and mash-ups ... But what happens when we runout of past? Are we heading toward a sort of cultural-ecological catastrophe, where the archival stream of pop history has been exhausted? Retromania is the first book to examine the retro industry...

From the photographer behind the Instagram sensation Brown Girls Do Ballet, this stunning coffee-table book showcases breathtaking images of ballerinas of color of all ages and levels that reflect today’s beautifully diverse world of dance. For decades the prominent image of a ballet dancer has been a white body with pale clothing. It took 75 years for American Ballet Theatre to have its first African American female principal dancer, Misty Copeland....

"In 1941, when German armies were marching towards Moscow, Lenin's body was moved from his tomb on Red Square and taken to Siberia. By 1945, a victorious Stalin had turned a poor country into a victorious superpower. Over the course of those four years, Stalin, at Churchill's insistence, accepted an Anglo-American press corps in Moscow to cover the Eastern Front. To turn these reporters into Kremlin mouthpieces, Stalin imposed the most draconian controls--unbending...

"An unflinching reimagining of Legacy: Trauma, Story, and Indigenous Healing for young adults Written specifically for young adults, reluctant readers, and literacy learners, Killing the Wittigo explains the traumatic effects of colonization on Indigenous people and communities and how trauma alters an individual’s brain, body, and behavior. It explores how learned patterns of behavior ― the ways people adapt to trauma to survive ― are passed...