Booklists

When Breath Becomes Air

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. 

Call: 616.99 KAL

Devil in the White City

The Devil in the White City draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty. Following two men architect Daniel Hudson Burnham the architect for the 1893 world's fair, and Henry H. Holmes a ruthless murderer who in a malign parody of the White City, built his "World's Fair Hotel" just west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and crematorium. Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he struggled to build the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake.

Call: 364.1523 LAR

Guns Germs and Steel

In this "artful, informative, and delightful" book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed writing, technology, government, and organized religion—as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war. 

303.4 DIA

Louis Riel Comic biography

Winner of the Harvey Award for best writing and best graphic novel, this compelling, meticulous, and dispassionate retelling of the charismatic, and perhaps mentally ill, nineteenth-century Métis leader Louis Riel. Brown coolly documents with dramatic subtlety the violent rebellion on the Canadian prairie. Riel remains a controversial figure in Canada, to some he his a martyr who died in the name of freedom, while others consider him a treacherous murderer.

CALL: 923.71 BRO

Bomb

In December of 1938, a chemist in a German laboratory made a shocking discovery: When placed next to radioactive material, a Uranium atom split in two. That simple discovery launched a scientific race that spanned 3 continents. In Great Britain and the United States, Soviet spies worked their way into the scientific community; in Norway, a commando force slipped behind enemy lines to attack German heavy-water manufacturing; and deep in the desert, one brilliant group of scientists was hidden away at a remote site at Los Alamos. This is the story of the plotting, the risk-taking, the deceit, and genius that created the world's most formidable weapon. This is the story of the atomic bomb.

CALL: 623.4 SHE