Books
New Non-fiction
See more new non-fiction in our catalog
Crossing the wine-dark sea : journeys through ancient literature
By Wilson, Emily R., 1971- author
"In this sharp and often entertaining tour through antiquity, Emily Wilson--whose renditions of Homer's Odyssey and Iliad have captured a generation's imagination--explores the complicated terrain of reading and writing about the ancient past. Drawing on twenty years of scholarship and teaching, Wilson explores the difficult choices that translators must make, the pleasures of finding new solutions to old problems, and the inevitable frustrations of never fully capturing what is in the original work. Across chapters that range from the politics of Helen of Troy to the obscenities of Aristophanes, from Roman imitation of Greek models to contemporary debates over 'foreignizing' and 'domesticizing' styles, Wilson examines how modern norms of gender, sexuality, violence, humor, and power complicate our readings of ancient works, and how translation always risks denaturing what is unique and strange about the ancient world. Brilliant, erudite, and yet accessible to readers with no classical background, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea is at once an introduction to the wonders of Greek and Roman literature, a manifesto for the value of translation in a rapidly changing world, and an invitation to encounter ancient cultures anew."
The rise and fall of the artificial state
By Lepore, Jill, 1966- author.
"Much in history is headlong but few grand transformations have been more precipitate or more heedless than the rise of... the Artificial State," writes Jill Lepore in this passionate account of how rule by machine has ravaged the world. Inspired by Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, which argued in 1951 that the machinery of modern life was reshaping the very fundamentals of human existence, Lepore, profoundly disturbed by the technology revolution and by the soulless inundation of artificial intelligence, unfurls a new history for our own twenty-first century. Building on an essay in The New Yorker in 2024, Lepore's clarion call traces our increasing dependence on and strangulation by data. Political campaigns, awash in an avalanche of fake bots, have been reduced to attention-mining algorithms, while multinational media corporations dictate public discourse, and the era of the liberal nation-state seems to be coming to a rapid end, replaced by billionaire technocrats reliant on autocracy and the tools of AI. With Orwellian overtones, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State demonstrates how technology has corroded global democracy, leading to the destruction of both human community and capacity for self-government, creating a new form of AI government, a digital citizen's assembly, where AI will recommend the course of action to humans in place of human-run legislatures. Especially sobering with this proliferation of "dizzying, ever-changing schemes, prophesies, and predictions" is that the Artificial State has come at the expense of the natural world, leading to catastrophic loss of wildlife habitat and biodiversity. Deliberately alarming, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, despite its abundance of dire facts, is not a funeral dirge; rather, it's an inspiring wake-up call, written in Lepore's typically elegiac prose, which demonstrates that nothing about the Artificial State was inevitable, for it is a "government without consent, even government without humans." It can, Lepore asserts, be dismantled. Other heinous systems, like feudalism, fascism, and slavery, have also been dismantled, but disassembly requires identifying the parts, tracing the sources. It requires telling a new history. This is the purpose of The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State." --
You won't get free of it : stories of mothers and daughters
By Aviv, Rachel, author.
"A collection of reported stories that explore the relationship between mothers and daughters by the award-winning author of Strangers to Ourselves"-- Provided by publisher.
Days of miracle and wonder : Paul Simon and the trials and triumphs of Graceland
By Kahn, Ashley, author.
The definitive story of the making and legacy of Graceland, Paul Simon's still-beloved, career-topping 1986 album, drawn from extensive research and exclusive interviews with nearly 100 participants and witnesses: musicians, producers, engineers, record executives and journalists from Africa, the US, and Europe.
A history of England in twenty-five poems
By Clarke, Catherine A. M., author.
"This is the history of England told in a new way: glimpsed through twenty-five remarkable poems written down between the eighth century and today, which connect us directly with the nation's past and the experiences, emotions, and imaginations of those who lived it. These poems open windows onto wildly different worlds--from the public to the intimate, from the witty to the savage, from the playful to the wistful. They take us onto battlefields, inside royal courts, down coal mines, and below stairs in great houses. Their creators--witnesses to events from the Great Fire of London to the Miners' Strike--range from the famous to the forgotten, yet each invites us into an immersive encounter with their own time. A History of England in Twenty-Five Poems is a portal to the past; a constant companion, filled with vivid voices and surprising stories alongside familiar landmarks, and language that speaks in new ways on each reading. Catherine Clarke's knowledge and passion take us inside the words and the moments they capture, with thoughtful insights, humor, and new perspectives on how the nation has dreamed itself into existence." -- Dust jacket.
Out of the ballpark : how to think about baseball
By Henkin, David M., author.
"From America's Pastime to a global phenomenon--the life of the spectacular game as it is played and celebrated in communities around the world All over the world, masses of people watch, follow, document, and obsess over baseball. Everything remarkable about the impact of baseball derives from the game's history and cultural status as events that draw people together in these ways. Understanding baseball as a cultural phenomenon is therefore less a matter of mastering the vocabulary of the game or merely recollecting its iconic stadiums, players, and stats. While all those details compel insiders and inspire fans, baseball's peculiar and persistent appeal can only be understood by adopting a wider lens. It requires reckoning with the history of structured competition. The classic backyard game of catch between a father and son draws meaning from its associations with the organized sport and its history. The challenge lies less in finding one perfect spot to look, but rather in identifying the many different places where baseball has accumulated significance. Out of the Ballpark reconsiders the character, meaning, and delights of the game by exploring both baseball's unusual features and the sport's many resonances with other aspects of modern life. To this end, it abandons several assumptions and mythologies that underlie most approaches to histories of baseball: that it is unique among sports and fundamentally different from other kinds of entertainment; that it is specific to the United States; that it has changed fundamentally in recent years; and that the keys to understanding it lie primarily in examining what happens on the field of play. Instead, David M. Henkin moves across time and space to examine baseball's history since the nineteenth century and beyond US borders. He takes readers inside the structures of clubs and leagues, interprets the sacred scripture of rulebooks, and illuminates some of baseball's rites and rituals that are often associated with honor and manhood. He charts baseball's significance along the routes of American and Japanese imperial expansion and the shifting maps of race and ethnicity in the US. Baseball is found at negotiating tables that pit capital against labor and in pivotal moments in the history of mass media. Here, we are shown how baseball might offer a complex and capacious space for thinking about such things as spectatorship, success, community, order, and contingency in the modern world." --Amazon.
Data empire : the power of information to organize, control, and dominate
By Risam, Roopika, author.
"A new lens on human history outlining data's powerful role in governance and exploitation"--
The story of your life : how social media shapes the way we experience everything
By Jezer-Morton, Kathryn, author.
"Over the past two decades, platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok have revolutionized how we document and share our lives. We once archived our experiences in photo albums, and now we capture our most significant moments in reels and photo dumps. Whether we prefer to admit it or not, social media is where our history lives now. In The Story of Your Life, journalist and New York magazine columnist Kathryn Jezer-Morton examines how these algorithm-driven platforms not only change the way we share information but also shape the content itself. What stories do we choose to tell, and how do these choices reflect and shape our evolving identities? Through rigorous research and intimate interviews with everyday people, Jezer-Morton explores how the platforms on which we have told our life stories for the past twenty years have determined what those stories have come to look and sound like. Today our attention spans are short, and our stories reflect that, with spectacle and exaggeration playing ever-larger roles in our accounts of everyday life. By examining how we share, talk, and post about our milestones, vacations, homes, relationships, hardships, politics, and more, Jezer-Morton shows just how pervasive and influential our social media platforms have become in how we view ourselves and what we consider to be a life well lived."--Provided by publisher.
A sudden flicker of light : a revisionist history of movies
By Thomson, David, 1941- author.
"From one of cinema's wisest and most penetrating observers, an arresting new perspective on the sweep of film history. David Thomson has been called "the greatest living writer on the movies." Here is a career capstone of sorts -- a one-volume history of film and screens as illuminating and provocative as his classic Biographical Dictionary of Film. In tracing the progress, from the Lumiere Brothers to the Coens, Thomson glories in the great movies, but admits to increasing unease over what the medium has done to us -- promoting fantasy, misleading models of sexual identity, the cult of authority, power, and happy endings. This revisionist history is as alert to technology and business as it is to art and fun in tracing our pursuit of the lifelike instead of life. By turns trenchant, lyrical, and comic, Thoms
AI for good : how real people are using artificial intelligence to fix things that matter
By Tyrangiel, Josh, author.
Don't be evil : bad bosses, fake promises, and my escape from big tech
By Stapleton, Claire, author.
Empire of ink : the printers, rogues, and radicals who invented the American newspaper
By Wright, Alex, 1966- author.
Our wild familiars : how animals are adapting to cities and reshaping the natural world
By Werb, Dan, author.
Gerontocracy in America : how the old are hoarding power and wealth - and what to do about it
By Moyn, Samuel, author.
Rolling stone and the rise of hip capitalism : how a magazine born in the 1960s changed America
By Ponce de Leon, Charles L. (Charles Leonard), author.
Take me to your leader : perspectives on your first alien encounter
By Tyson, Neil deGrasse, author.
Self-help from the Middle Ages : what the seven deadly sins can teach us about living
By Jones, P. V. (Peter V.), author.
Hōjōki : a Buddhist reflection on solitude, imperfection and transcendence ; bilingual English and Japanese texts with free online audio recordings
By Kamo, Chōmei, 1153?-1216?, author.
City on the edge : Technology, Politics, and the Fight for the Soul of San Francisco
By Weber, Jonathan, author.
The reverse centaur's guide to life after AI : how to think about artificial intelligence--before it's too late
By Doctorow, Cory, author
New Fiction
See more new fiction in our catalog
The disappearers
By James, Marlon, 1970- author.
"On a day in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1988, eight men come together to begin rehearsals for a play. Though they are strangers to one another, they share an inescapable truth: They are gay in a country that wants nothing to do with them. One night the men are savagely attacked and one of them is killed. As the survivors heal, each man finds that he must confront the bigotry and homophobia that the attack laid bare. Some of the men try to ignore what the murder unearthed. Some embrace their rage. Others simply vanish into thin air. All of them are forever scarred by what happened. In The Disappearers, Marlon James has written the powerful and unflinching story of the men who must grapple with the hatred, alienation, and shame they face in a world that refuses to accept them. By turns epic and intimate, violent and forgiving, this is above all a deeply human story of acceptance and insight as only Marlon James can tell it"--
My dear you : stories
By Khong, Rachel, 1985- author.
"From the beloved author of New York Times bestseller Real Americans, a brilliant short story collection about love, life, and the anguish of becoming oneself in a time when it's so easy to be someone else. The characters in these pages find themselves facing extraordinary choices in scenarios that range from the everyday to the absurd: The U.S. government injects all citizens with a drug that makes them see everyone else as members of their own race and gender. God does away with humans in favor of something much better. A woman adopts a cat who conjures the ghosts of her ex-loves. The simple, mellowed memory of a sweet college crush. These stories go deep beneath the surface, touching on everything from the awkwardness of dating in your thirties to what it means to be an Asian woman in America--in fact, what it means to be American at all, and to be human. Along the way, the characters we meet must stop to consider interventions from the supernatural, the earthly, and the immortal. Playful, profane, and yet enveloped with profound compassion for this life we're living, these stories take on dating, marriage, childbearing age; intimacy, memory, race, and capitalism; living, dying, and being dead. But at their very core, they are tales of love in all its forms--what it means to be in love when you're not supposed to be, or not to be in love when you wish you were; to fail at dating apps or find yourself in weird-but-wonderful lifelong friendships; to struggle, even, in remembering your husband in heaven. Ranging from sinister to tender, witty, and without fail expertly paced, these stories will have you laughing out loud one minute and reaching out for your best friend the next"--
A good person : a novel
By King, Kirsten (Writer), author.
"An electric debut from a rising-star screenwriter about a millennial antihero who seeks revenge on her ex-situationship with a drunken hex, only for him to actually die the next day. Lillian and Henry have very much been enjoying each other's company the last few months, and quite frantically in bed. Even though Lillian's plain Jane of a best friend Jamie still frustratingly calls it "a situationship," she doesn't know anything. Lillian will lock Henry down--and she has a plan. Everyone knows you have to be strategic about these things. After all, it's clear Henry's hooked on her sexually deviant ways. So when Henry blindsides her with a breakup instead of the love declaration she told herself was on its way, Lillian exacts revenge by performing a drunken hex. There's a little wrinkle, though: Henry actually ends up dead the next morning, and Lillian becomes a prime suspect in his murder case. As the Boston police begin investigating Henry's death, Lillian quickly learns she wasn't the only woman in his life--and to cope with this reckoning, she plunges into a new obsession: stalking the long-term girlfriend Henry left behind. Desperate to control the narrative around her relationship with Henry, her season of mourning, and where she was the night he died, Lillian's chaotic pursuit for recognition (but only in all the right ways) takes her to ever darker places, and slowly she begins to uncover a reality she dearly wishes had stayed under wraps"--
Etna : a novel
By Yoon, Paul, author.
"Set in a fictional country in the present day, this is a story told through the eyes of an ex-military dog, Etna. After surviving years of a devastating war, Etna decides one night to leave the men he has fought alongside for years and return home--to the place where he was taken from when he was young, in the thin but persistent hope that if a home exists for him, it might be there. Thus begins an exhilarating odyssey told through the eyes of a dog as he traverses across ruined landscapes and fights to survive in a world that, even in peacetime, proves to be just as precarious. Along the way, he encounters other animals and humans who are attempting to figure out how to start again. What makes a life when there is no home to go back to? How do we begin to trust each other again after such profound loss?"--
May we feed the king
By Perry, Rebecca, 1986- author.
She is a curator, who spends her time dressing the rooms of historic buildings to bring them to life. But in the lush private quarters of a medieval palace, she finds herself so transfixed by the reign of an almost-forgotten King that the edges of her life begin to blur. He is a reluctant ruler with no hunger for power, rushed to the throne after the untimely deaths of his older brothers. But it isn't long before whispers begin to fly around the court. And with the growing belief that the King is not fit for the throne comes the idea that another might rule in his stead.
A trade of blood
By Bennett, Robert Jackson, 1984- author.
"In the canton of Sapirdad, two of the Empire's most powerful families are moments away from going to war with each other, their hundreds of retainers gathered with swords drawn. If blood is spilled, the whole of the empire may be plunged into starvation and chaos. To deescalate matters, someone must do the impossible: prove that one family's eldest son is innocent of a gruesome and unforgivable murder, despite the incontrovertible evidence against him. It is with this undertaking that the great detective Ana Dolabra is tasked, her assistant Din at her side--and the two find themselves racing with great speed and little dignity to the scene. As ever, the impossible proves little obstacle for the deadly combination of Ana's intellect and Din's keen eye, and mere hours after riding into the dusty town, Ana glimpses the greater pattern behind the crime. A deeper, subtler web of death is being woven in plain sight, by a mastermind with an ancient magical technology at his disposal. But even Ana's uncanny insight is of little use when each new suspect she uncovers ends up dead--with each new killing calculated to bring tensions between the two rival clans past the boiling point. And as Din pursues their adversary through the canton's wild ranges, sprawling ranches, and reeking slaughterhouses, he finds his loyalties divided in unexpected ways"--
Plant lady
By Kang, Min-yŏng, author.
"Tucked away in a serene neighborhood in Sejin City, South Korea, is Plant Shop. The owner, Yoohee, has started anew, and her meticulously grown foliage thrives under her tender care. To both Yoohee and her customers, Plant Shop is a refuge, where petunias and marigolds bloom and the air itself is like an elixir of peace. By day, Yoohee dispenses advice on gardening, but she also finds herself offering a special service off the clock. Women who are at their wits' end come to her about men they hope might disappear from their lives. Pulling extra hours is taxing, but Yoohee has encountered -- and dealt with -- these kind of men in her own life, men who treated her (and her beloved plants) with utter disrespect. So as night falls, Yoohee trades her apron for a shovel and a hoe and disappears into her moonlit garden. There, she buries not just the remains of the day but also the bloody remnants of a few unfortunate encounters. As men begin to disappear ... will anyone ever suspect the plant lady?"--Book jacket flap.
Plastic, prism, void. Part one
By Allen, Violet (Science fiction and fantasy writer), author.
"Acrasia is in the ultimate long-distance relationship: with Opus Zhao, a man from another universe. She was a trans girl who was also an intergalactic moth-goddess. He was a trans guy who piloted a giant robotic tiger. They hated each other, then fell in love, then their universes moved apart. Now, years later, he's turned up in her dimension again. What won't she do to keep him there?" -- Back cover.
American fantasy
By Straub, Emma, author.
"When the 'American Fantasy' cruise ship sets sail for a four-day themed voyage, aboard are all five members of a famous nineties-era boy band and three thousand screaming women who have worshipped them since childhood. Feeling slightly out of place amid this crowd is Annie, newly divorced, fifty years old with an empty nest, and here on a lark to appease her sister. Yet when the lights come up and the idols of her youth begin to sing, something is unlocked. Call it memory. Call it nostalgia. Call it the chemical reaction of hormones, hope, and sexual reawakening. Between the slushy alcoholic drinks, the familiar music, and the throngs of middle-aged women acting like lovesick teenagers, Annie finally reconnects to a long-submerged part of herself. By the time she meets one of the band members--not just a celebrity but someone in need of a friend--she has accessed a new sense of possibility. In a smart and incisive book packed with laugh-out-loud reflections on fame, marriage, and middle age, Emma Straub delivers a richly textured story showing us that real passion is never truly lost, that what we love makes us who we are, and that deep meaning can sometimes be found in a sea of screaming fans."--
A tender age
By Lee, Chang-rae, author.
"An exploration of American masculinity and family dynamics as seen through the confused eyes of a prepubescent child of immigrants. Korean American Jeon-Gi is torn between competing ideas of himself. At home, his working-class parents dote on him. Outside, he is part of a roving pack of kids with dominion over a derelict baseball field, weedy parking lot, and rusty jungle gym. Getting into and out of trouble is all-consuming. But the summer he turns eleven, he beco
Disability Pride Month
Booker Prize 2026 Longlist
Booker Prize nominees for 2026 that are available now in the Library. More coming to the collection soon!
Black bag
By Kennard, Luke, author.
"An out-of-work actor accepts the role of a lifetime--sitting soundlessly in a lecture theater, zipped into a large leather bag--to aid a professor's psychological experiment. What could possibly go wrong? In Luke Kennard's audacious new novel, a penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a job working for Dr. Blend, a university professor who is conducting a psychological experiment. How will Dr. Blend's students react to someone zipped into an oversized bag, sitting at the back of the lecture hall over a series of Fall lectures? The role, eagerly accepted, soon has unexpected consequences. A professor of post-humanism develops research questions of her own--in particular, can you love someone secreted away inside a black bag?--and the actor's childhood friend forms a vision for monetizing this new situation . . . A warped campus novel, an investigation into the crisis of masculinity, and an off-kilter love story, Black Bag is a firework of a novel: blazingly funny and profoundly humane"--Book jacket flap.
The things we never say : a novel
By Strout, Elizabeth, author.
"Artie Dam is a man with a secret. He goes about his days teaching American history to high schoolers, correcting their casual ignorance, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He spends his free time sailing the beautiful Massachusetts Bay, or with his adult son and his wife of more than three decades - and as Artie does these things, he plans the event that will forever change the world he inhabits. But when a startling accident awakens a new perspective in Artie, and he realizes that life has its own secret it's been keeping from him - along with a lot more to say on the weighty matters of fate and freedom in his home and his country - he charts another course full of grief, hilarity, and heart, to a place where the end marks the beginning. Elizabeth Strout, as we have come to expect, delivers a profound exploration of the human condition - one that brims with deep compassion for each and every one of her characters. With exquisite prose and gentle intimacy, Artie Dam takes one man's fears and loneliness and makes them universal. And in the same breath, captures the mysterious love that sustains and holds us through it all"-- Provided by publisher.
May we feed the king
By Perry, Rebecca, 1986- author.
She is a curator, who spends her time dressing the rooms of historic buildings to bring them to life. But in the lush private quarters of a medieval palace, she finds herself so transfixed by the reign of an almost-forgotten King that the edges of her life begin to blur. He is a reluctant ruler with no hunger for power, rushed to the throne after the untimely deaths of his older brothers. But it isn't long before whispers begin to fly around the court. And with the growing belief that the King is not fit for the throne comes the idea that another might rule in his stead.
John of John
By Stuart, Douglas, 1976- author.
"Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry back home to the Isle of Harris to find that little has changed except for him. He returns to the windswept croft and the two pillars of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, tweed weaver, and lay preacher in the local Presbyterian church, and his maternal grandmother Ella, a profanity-loving Glaswegian whose steady warmth helped Cal weather the sudden departure of his mother. Cal privately wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, while John is dismayed by his son's long hair, strange clothes, and seeming unwillingness to be Saved. But Cal isn't the only one in the croft house who is keeping secrets. As lambing season turns to shearing season, the threads holding the community together become increasingly frayed, and nothing will remain as it was before. John of John is a singular novel about duty, passion, and the transformative power of the truth. It is a magnificent literary work that cements Douglas Stuart's reputation as one of our greatest novelists working today"-- Provided by publisher.
The palm house
By Riley, Gwendoline, 1979- author.
"Laura's long friendship with Edmund Putnam is tested when he resigns from Sequence magazine--one of the few places he has ever felt he belonged. Putnam repines. His sweet-natured father has recently died, which has not improved his mood. Meanwhile Laura's relentlessly "outward-facing" mother is still at large and toting a new boyfriend as if he were a marotte. Laura, too, needs a new job, and a place to live that doesn't have centipedes in the kitchen. Gwendoline Riley's seventh novel explores acceptance and affinity. Young people don't drink anymore but Laura and Putnam are no longer young. Over wine and crisps the pair reflect on what has brought them to where they are. There are memories of childhood package holidays, teenage friendships and obsessions, peculiar love affairs, bad parties. Life is fleeting. Sequence magazine means something, but what? Might Putnam plot a return?"-- Provided by publisher.
Staff Picks
Books, music, and movie recommendations from Mechanics' staff
Stop me if you've heard this one : a novel
By Arnett, Kristen, author.
Picked by Danica, Annual Fund and Marketing Manager
Days at the Morisaki bookshop : a novel
By Yagisawa, Satoshi, 1977- author.
Picked by Andy, Programs Director
The serviceberry : abundance and reciprocity in the natural world
By Kimmerer, Robin Wall, 1953- author.
Picked by Jessica, Librarian
Poor things : episodes from the early life of Archibald McCandless M. D. Scottish public health officer
By Gray, Alasdair, author, illustrator.
Picked by Danica, Annual Fund and Marketing Manager
Mechanics' Institute Library has over 100,000 circulating materials in its collection and continues to grow. We serve the general reader with a wide, diverse, and eclectic collection covering a vast array of subjects and interests.
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