Pines and Plains Libraries

"Workplace positivity expert Shola Richards (Making Work Work) explores a radical new concept for rethinking our personal, professional, and social lives: togetherness."-- The African philosophy of Ubuntu embraces the belief that we are universally connected to each other. Richards suggests it could transform the way we treat others, making us kinder and more respectful to others, on and off the job. He believes that the illusion that we are more...

Decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians -- but Indians almost never did the same. Tribal society has been exerting an almost gravitational pull on Westerners for hundreds of years, and the reason lies deep in our evolutionary past as a communal species. The most recent example of that attraction is combat veterans who come home to find themselves missing the...

Following Christmas break, the girls are back together, but everything seems different with the addition of Alicia's cousin from Spain who is spending the semester at Octavian Country Day School.

Returning for her senior year at an exclusive private school and poised to become the new "Master of the Universe," a teenaged girl falls from social glory and must scrabble her way back to the top using strategic effort and the help of her best friend.

Out of Control chronicles the dawn of a new era in which the machines and systems that drive our economy are so complex and autonomous as to be indistinguishable from living things. Kevin Kelly is Executive Editor of Wired, the new bible of the techno-culture. Formerly Publisher and Editor of Whole Earth Review, he has been instrumental in helping launch a number of cultural innovations: The Hacker's Conference; Cyberthon; the first virtual-reality...

Unearths the radical agenda of the ACLU, documenting a nearly hundred-year campaign to separate America from its religious roots.--

Chronicles social networking and communication throughout the history of America, from Native American councils to the SETI program.

A poignant look at empathetic encounters between staunch ideological rivals, all centered around our common need for food. While America's new reality appears to be a deeply divided body politic, many are wondering how we can or should move forward from here. Can political or social divisiveness be healed? Is empathy among people with very little ideological common ground possible? In A Decent Meal, Michael Carolan finds answers to these fundamental...