Iowa City Public Library | Virtual Branch

Featured Collections On the shelf & ready to reserve

Check out these award-winning books from the past few years.

Beneath the tamarind tree : a story of courage, family, and the lost schoolgirls of Boko Haram

Midnight in Chernobyl : the untold story of the world's greatest nuclear disaster

Until the end of time : mind, matter, and our search for meaning in an evolving universe

Slime : how algae created us, plague us, and just might save us

Exercise of power : American failures, successes, and a new path forward in the post-Cold War world

Floating coast : an environmental history of the Bering Strait

The trial of Lizzie Borden : a true story

Grace will lead us home : the Charleston Church Massacre and the hard, inspiring journey to forgiveness

The contender : the story of Marlon Brando

A good provider is one who leaves : one family and migration in the 21st century

No visible bruises : what we don't know about domestic violence can kill us

Dying of whiteness : how the politics of racial resentment is killing America's heartland

The mastermind : drugs, empire, murder, betrayal

Furious hours : murder, fraud, and the last trial of Harper Lee

The uninhabitable earth : life after warming

Kochland : the secret history of Koch Industries and corporate power in America

Haben : the Deafblind woman who conquered Harvard Law

The source of self-regard : selected essays, speeches, and meditations

The sirens of Mars : searching for life on another world

Go ahead in the rain : notes to A Tribe Called Quest

Solitary : unbroken by four decades in solitary confinement : my story of transformation and hope

The unwinding of the miracle : a memoir of life, death, and everything that comes after

A story about cancer (with a happy ending)

Fatal throne : the wives of Henry VIII tell all

Thirteen doorways, wolves behind them all

Look both ways : a tale told in ten blocks

Wundersmith : the calling of Morrigan Crow

King & Kayla and the case of the lost tooth

More featured collections

Events

Writing a Will / Basics of Estate Planning

January 21, 2021 - 7:00pm

Group Journaling Prompts

January 21, 2021 - 7:00pm

ICPL Recommends

Caste : the origins of our discontents book cover

The sky atlas : the greatest maps, myths and discoveries of the universe book cover

The office : the untold story of the greatest sitcom of the 2000s book cover

Sisters in hate : American women on the front lines of white nationalism

Seyward Darby

322.42 /Darby
Political

"After the election of Donald J. Trump, journalist Seyward Darby went looking for the women of the so-called "alt-right" -- really just white nationalism with a new label. The mainstream media depicted the alt-right as a bastion of angry white men, but was it? As women headlined resistance to the Trump administration's bigotry and sexism, most notably at the Women's Marches, Darby wanted to know why others were joining a movement espousing racism and anti-feminism. Who were these women, and what did their activism reveal about America's past, present, and future? Darby researched dozens of women across the country before settling on three -- Corinna Olsen, Ayla Stewart, and Lana Lokteff. Each was born in 1979, and became a white nationalist in the post-9/11 era. Their respective stories of radicalization upend much of what we assume about women, politics, and political extremism. Corinna, a professional embalmer who was once a body builder, found community in white nationalism before it was the alt-right, while she was grieving the death of her brother and the end of her marriage. For Corinna, hate was more than just personal animus -- it could also bring people together. Eventually, she decided to leave the movement and served as an informant for the FBI. Ayla, a devoutly Christian mother of six, underwent a personal transformation from self-professed feminist to far-right online personality. Her identification with the burgeoning "tradwife" movement reveals how white nationalism traffics in society's preferred, retrograde ways of seeing women. Lana, who runs a right-wing media company with her husband, enjoys greater fame and notoriety than many of her sisters in hate. Her work disseminating and monetizing far-right dogma is a testament to the power of disinformation. With acute psychological insight and eye-opening reporting, Darby steps inside the contemporary hate movement and draws connections to precursors like the Ku Klux Klan. Far more than mere helpmeets, women like Corinna, Ayla, and Lana have been sustaining features of white nationalism. Sisters in Hate shows how the work women do to normalize and propagate racist extremism has consequences well beyond the hate movement."--Amazon.

This book shows how easily a person can be seduced by racism and white nationalism, how innocuous it can seem, and how deep a person can get into it. One of the main women featured is no longer a participant in the culture, and has found a different way to belong, and I really wish the best for her. This was a fascinating and engaging read, and I highly recommend it. -Amanda

Sometimes you have to lie : the life and times of Louise Fitzhugh, renegade author of Harriet the spy

Leslie Brody

BIOGRAPHY Fitzhugh, Louise
Biographies

"The protagonist and anti-heroine of Louise Fitzhugh's masterpiece Harriet the Spy, first published first in 1964, continues to mesmerize generation after generation of readers. Harriet is an erratic, unsentimental, and endearing prototype--someone very like the woman who dreamed her up, author and artist Louise Fitzhugh. Born in 1928, Fitzhugh was raised in a wealthy home in segregated Memphis, and she escaped her cloistered world and made a beeline for New York as soon as she could. Her expanded milieu stretched from the lesbian bars of Greenwich Village to the dance clubs of Harlem, on to the resurgent artist studios of post-war New York, France, and Italy. Her circle of friends included artists like Maurice Sendak and playwrights like Lorraine Hansberry. In the 1960s, Fitzhugh wrote Harriet the Spy, and in doing so she introduced "new realism" into children's books-she launched a genre of children's books that allowed characters to experience authentic feelings and acknowledged topics that were formerly considered taboo. Fitzhugh's books are full of resistance: to liars, to conformity, to authority, and even (radically, for a children's author) to make-believe. As a commercial children's author and lesbian, Fitzhugh often had to disguise the nature of her most intimate relationships. She lived her life as a dissenter--a friend to underdogs, outsiders, and artists--and her masterpiece remains long after her death to influence and provoke new generations of readers. Harriet is massively influential among girls and women in contemporary culture; she is the missing link between Jo March and Scout Finch, and it's not surprising that writers have thought of her as a kind of patron saint for misfit writers and unfeminine girls. This lively, rich biography brings Harriet's creator into the frame, shedding new light on an extraordinary author and her marvelous creation"--

An absolutely delightful and engaging biography on the woman behind one of my favorite books, Harriet the Spy. I knew absolutely nothing about Louise Fitzhugh prior to reading this, and found her a truly wonderful artist who knew so many people and had a genuine talent that Harriet the Spy was able to exemplify... but she had so much more to offer. I highly recommend this to fans of Harriet, anyone who appreciates LGBTQ+ history, and fans of midcentury literature in general. -Amanda