National Network for Equitable Library Service

Joanna Palani made headlines across the world when her role fighting ISIS in the Syrian conflict was revealed. Inspired by the Arab Spring, Joanna left behind her student life in Copenhagen and traveled to the Middle East to join the YPJ, the all-female brigade of the Kurdish militia in Syria. After undergoing extensive military training, including as a saboteur and sniper, Joanna served as a YPJ fighter for several years and took part in the brutal siege of Kobani.

In this honest, hilarious, fiercely intelligent memoir, journalist Susan Shapiro dares to do what every woman dreams of: track down the five men who broke her heart and find out what really went wrong. Between the ages of thirteen and thirty-five, Susan plunged into love, heart-first, five times, each breakup more hurtful and humiliating than the last. With insight and daring, she chronicles her six-month-long journey back down a road strewn with romantic regret.

The untold story of a fascinating Renaissance man on an adventurous hunt for a lost civilization—an epic quest through castles, courts, mythologies, and the spectacular world of the imagination. What do Zeus, Apollo, and the gods of Mount Olympus have in common with Odin, Thor, and the gods of Valhalla? What do these, in turn, have to do with the shades of Hades, the pharaohs of Egypt, and the glories of fabled Atlantis?

Eric Hobsbawm's works have had a nearly incalculable effect across generations of readers and students, influencing more than the practice of history but also the perception of it. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, of second-generation British parents, Hobsbawm was orphaned at age fourteen in 1931. Living with an uncle in Berlin, he experienced the full force of world economic depression, and in the charged reaction to it in Germany was forced to choose between Nazism and Communism, which was no choice at all.

“Includes some of Lam’s most memorable writings, about cuisine, self-esteem, sex and kung fu, all seen from a two-hemisphere perspective.” —SFGate East Eats West shines new light on the bridges and crossroads where two global regions meld into one worldwide “immigrant nation.” In this new nation, with its amalgamation of divergent ideas, tastes, and styles, today’s bold fusion becomes tomorrow’s classic. But while the space between East and West continues to shrink in this age of globalization, some cultural gaps remain.

Everyone says they would like to retire early, but Rodney Rothman actually did it—forty years early. Burnt out, he decides at the age of twenty-eight to get an early start on his golden years. He travels to Boca Raton, Florida, where he moves in with an elderly piano teacher at Century Village, a retirement community that is home to thousands of senior citizens. Early Bird is an irreverent, hilarious, and ultimately warmhearted account of Rodney's journey deep into the heart of retirement.

« Je n’ai jamais voulu écrire l’histoire de ma vie. D’abord parce qu’elle concerne, heureusement, beaucoup de gens vivants, et ensuite parce que ma mémoire est devenue complètement défaillante : il me manque cinq ans par-ci, cinq ans par-là, qui feraient croire à des secrets ou des cachotteries également inexistants. À y penser, les seuls jalons de ma chronologie seraient les dates de mes romans, les seules bornes vérifiables, ponctuelles, et enfin presque sensibles de ma vie.

An award-winning writer delivers a major reckoning with religion, place, and sexuality in the aftermath of 9/11. Hailed in The Washington Post as “one of the most eloquent and probing public intellectuals in America,” Richard Rodriguez now considers religious violence worldwide, growing public atheism in the West, and his own mortality. Rodriguez’s stylish new memoir—the first book in a decade from the Pulitzer Prize finalist—moves from Jerusalem to Silicon Valley, from Moses to Liberace, from Lance Armstrong to Mother Teresa.

Isadora Tattlin is the American wife of a European energy consultant posted to Havana in the 1990s. Wisely, the witty Mrs. Tattlin began a diary the day her husband informed her of their new assignment. One of the first entries is her shopping list of things to take, including six gallons of shampoo. For although the Tattlins were provided with a wonderful, big house in Havana, complete with a staff of seven, there wasn't much else money could buy in a country whose shelves are nearly bare.

World-renowned Egyptologist Dr. Joann Fletcher offers an unparalleled look at one of history’s most fascinating leaders—politician, mother, and goddess—the legendary Cleopatra. The subject of myth for more than two millennia, Cleopatra was a woman of passion, magnetism, and political genius, the last and greatest Egyptian pharaoh. In this mesmerizing biography, Egyptologist Joann Fletcher draws on a wealth of newly discovered information and research to reveal this vital woman as she truly was, from her first meeting with Julius Caesar to her legendary death by snakebite.