Washoe County Library System

"An exuberant work of popular history: the story of how streets got their names and houses their numbers, and why something as seemingly mundane as an address can save lives or enforce power. When most people think about street addresses, if they think of them at all, it is in their capacity to ensure that the postman can deliver mail or a traveler won't get lost. But street addresses were not invented to help you find your way; they were created...

Reason, we are told, is what makes us human, the source of our knowledge and wisdom. If reason is so useful, why didn't it also evolve in other animals? If reason is that reliable, why do we produce so much thoroughly reasoned nonsense? In their groundbreaking account of the evolution and workings of reason, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber set out to solve this double enigma. Reason, they argue with a compelling mix of real-life and experimental evidence,...

In The Formula, Luke Dormehl takes readers inside the world of numbers, asking how we came to believe in the all-conquering power of algorithms; introducing the mathematicians, artificial intelligence experts and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who are shaping this brave new world, and ultimately asking how we survive in an era where numbers can sometimes seem to create as many problems as they solve.

"A linguistic exploration of the speech habits we love to hate-and why our "um"s, "like"s, and "you know"s actually make us better communicators. Do you hate that you say "like" too much? Do you go over your email drafts to remove excess "so"s and "really"s? Do you wish your presentation at work wasn't so full of "um"s and "uh"s? Do you get tripped up by slang, overly familiar greetings, or new pronouns? What if these features of our speech weren't...

"The Great Displacement is closely observed, compassionate, and far-sighted.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Under a White Sky The untold story of climate migration in the United States—the personal stories of those experiencing displacement, the portraits of communities being torn apart by disaster, and the implications for all of us as we confront a changing future. Even as climate change dominates the headlines, many...

"Transformative change can come out of the COVID-19 crisis, which has exposed everything that's wrong with decades of the world's governments betting on militarism, competition and wealth creation. A return to sanity and humane governance is still possible. We need a pandemic pivot. Both a sobering analysis of the present moment and a hopeful cry on behalf of the power inherent in a global, people-oriented response to the pandemic and the societal...

"By the author of the award-winning To Be a Machine, a deeply considered look at the people and places in confrontation with the end of our days. We're alive in a time of worst-case scenarios: The weather has gone uncanny, volatile. Our old post-war alliances are crumbling. Everywhere you look there's an omen, a joke whose punchline is the end of the world. How are we to live in the shadow of such a grim future? What does the world hold for our children?...

"What is silence? In a series of short meditations, novelist and playwright John Biguenet considers silence as a servant of power, as a lie, as a punishment, as the voice of God, as a terrorist's final weapon, as a luxury good, as the reason for the torture - in short, as an object of we both do and do not recognize. Exploring the prospects for its future in a world burgeoning with noise, Biguenet asks wheter we should desire or fear silence - or...

Were you one of the more than 80,000 people around the globe who were uploading their personal video of what happened in their lives on July 24th, 2010? Directed by Kevin MacDonald and produced by Ridley Scott, these two filmmakers sifted through over 4,500 hours of footage to create one incredible motion picture event. Created entirely from footage uploaded by YouTube users, 'Life in a Day' is a film first: exhilarating, moving and very, very funny-it...