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07/03/2023 - 12:10pm

MI's magazine sale is back!

After a break of a few strange years, the Institute’s annual magazine sale is back! Come visit the sales nook on the 2nd floor of the library to buy bundles of your favorite titles. You can find older issues of art magazines, cooking, history, and even the beautiful Country Life! We’ll be adding new titles and bundles of magazines throughout the summer and then as more become available. While you are in our sales nook, check out our other items for sale like books, DVDs, postcards, Mechanics’...

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06/15/2023 - 5:45pm

New chess books in the library May 2023

Vinay Bhat How I became a chess grandmaster 794.1092 B575

The first recipient of the Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club's "Falconer Award" (a cash prize given to the highest rated junior player under Age 18 in Northern California), Vinay Bhat has gone on to overc...

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06/09/2023 - 12:59pm

Hidden Gems - Working Stiff (in print and eAudiobook)

Want to get away with murder? Kill someone that New York City police and DAs do not consider important. This was only one of the more disconcerting "take-aways" I found in Judy Melinek's Working Stiff : two years, 262 bodies, and the making of a medical examiner.  During a time when T.V. shows and movies have so glamorized forensic science to the...

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06/08/2023 - 6:30pm

New eBooks for May 2023

EBOOKS

Anzia Yezierska Bread Givers
Nikolaĭ Vasilʹevich Gogolʹ Collected stories
1859-1916 Sholem Aleichem Three passover tales
Christopher Stasheff Escape velocity : Warlock of gramarye
Christopher Stasheff...

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06/08/2023 - 5:52pm

New Print Fiction for May 2023

PRINT BOOKS

FICTION

Kang Han Greek lessons : a novel Fic Han
Belén Gopegui Stay this day and night with me Fic Gopegui
Dave Barry Swamp story : a novel Fic Barry
Don Winslow City of dreams : a novel...

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06/08/2023 - 5:42pm

New Print Non-Fiction for May 2023

PRINT BOOKS

NON-FICTION

Arts, Architecture & Crafts
Stephen Berkman Predicting the past : Zohar Studios, the lost years 779.99 B513

Biography & Genealogy
James Risen The last honest man : the CIA, the FBI, the mafia, and the Kennedys--and one senator's fight to save democra...

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06/06/2023 - 6:23pm

New eAudiobooks for May 2023

E-AUDIOBOOKS

Joanne B Freeman The Field of Blood : Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War
Eric Bentley Are you now or have you ever been?
Anzia Yezierska Bread givers : 3rd edition
Richard Nelson Some Americans abro...

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06/01/2023 - 3:55pm

Introducing our new Library Manager

The library is happy to announce librarian Myles Cooper as our new Library Manager! Myles has been with Mechanics’ Institute for 8 years, first as an on-call Library Assistant and progressing into teaching classes and overseeing various book groups, becoming an essential part of the programming team. Myles has a background in teaching, loves providing adult education services, and is eager to focus more on the library, man...

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05/23/2023 - 5:52pm

Hidden Gems -- Copenhagen

Everyone recognizes the name Albert Einstein, but the 20th century was "the century of physics," and we have many other brilliant people who made enormous contributions to our understanding of the universe at the atomic, or quantum, level. Here, we have a play about two of them: Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg.  Although only about 16 years apart in age, many referred to Heisenberg as "Niels Bohr's eldest son." ...

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05/19/2023 - 3:53pm

What book(s) are you reading right now?

A few months ago, I read a quote from Carl Sagan's book, The Demon-haunted World, that the writer Paul Ratner claimed predicted, back in 1995, our present-day social, technological and political conditions. 

“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an Am...

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