Because I’m a librarian at a research university, authors and publishers often email me to promote their books… and article collections… and digital archives… and films… and even chapbooks of poetry or local history (!). I also get lists of new books from our vendors, and catalogs from academic…
In No Exit: What Parents Owe Their Children and What Society Owes Parents, Anne Alstott argues that those who choose to parent are ethically obliged to provide stable, continuous care until the child reaches adulthood. This benefits society—so what support does society owe parents who sacrifice their future security to…
Who doesn’t love a creepy wedding photo on the cover of a book? In Breaking the Marriage Idol, evangelical professor Kutter Callaway challenges American Christians to develop a new “theological anthropology,” or vision of who we are as people and what a good life looks like. Tearing down the…
I’ve been in Kazakhstan for the past two weeks on an exchange program, but just realized some friends don’t know much about it. Below, I’ve listed a few key facts you might store in your head and share with others: It’s an enormous land. Think of the world’s ten…
How would you do as a Somali pirate? A third world farmer? A fake news dealer? Find out here.
Recently, someone asked me for good sociology books for her nonfiction book club. As an academic librarian, I don’t usually get asked for broad recommendations—instead, it’s specific research requests like where do I find site reports on shell mound archaeology or I need academic articles on ancestral genetic testing…
Oddly enough, I started writing about bucket lists… and ended up exploring my thoughts on wills. So here we are. I suppose I felt I had to set bucket lists in the context of our wills, because I see both as a snapshot of our hopes and desires at…
Little Women is a Civil War-era novel of close friendship among four sisters, and in one of the more vivid scenes, Amy worries about her dying sister while trying to please her wealthy aunt… and resolves this tension around money, life, and death by writing her own will. I could…
If the women in your life disappeared, what would happen? Reading about this today, I realized I’d find it hard to get much done: no bus driver to take me to work no one to purchase the library’s journals no one to manage the students who lend books no…
I’m a big pusher for libraries. “Did you know they have free stuff?” I say. You roll your eyes. Yes, you know. “I mean, they have books, but did you know they have other free stuff?” *** It’s easy to take the free thing for granted, but many early…