Library of Dust


Book Description

Esteemed photographer David Maisel has created a somber and beautiful series of images depicting canisters containing the cremated remains of the unclaimed dead from an Oregon psychiatric hospital. Dating back as far as the nineteenth century, these canisters have undergone chemical reactions, causing extravagant blooms of brilliant white, green, and blue corrosion, revealing unexpected beauty in the most unlikely of places. This stately volume is both a quietly astonishing body of fine art from a preeminent contemporary photographer, and an exceptionally poignant monument to the unknown deceased.




Children of the Dust Bowl: The True Story of the School at Weedpatch Camp


Book Description

Illus. with photographs from the Dust Bowl era. This true story took place at the emergency farm-labor camp immortalized in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Ostracized as "dumb Okies," the children of Dust Bowl migrant laborers went without school--until Superintendent Leo Hart and 50 Okie kids built their own school in a nearby field.




Closer to Dust


Book Description

No one thinks straight. At least no one remembers straight. But ten years ago, things were different, weren’t they? Roland Barthes once wrote that color in a photograph is like make-up on a corpse. No one is fooled. In anarchic denial of convenient truths, a young international couple meet and marry on a small Mediterranean island. Ten years later, the couple separate in part due to complications with immigration laws. Following this transcontinental rupture, fragmented histories emerge in response to the woman’s encounters with a series of color snapshots. There is death here, familiar to the mourner, as the photographs issue their special powers to magically and auspiciously predict the future and simultaneously to permit the return of the dead. The woman recognizes pieces of herself as past objects indexed within photographic stills, but paradoxically, she is present, outside in this chaos trying not to fall apart. The images and their objects yawn to remind us of the reluctant destiny of all our beloved memories, bodies, and things: that is, to disintegrate. Borrowing its title from a passage in The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald, Closer to Dust is a séance, a gathering of invitees: inherently biased elegies, the images that conjured them, and the reader- viewer in attendance who is warmly invited to order these intimate fragments into cohesion.




A World From Dust


Book Description

A World From Dust describes how a set of chemical rules combined with the principles of evolution in order to create an environment in which life as we know it could unfold. Beginning with simple mathematics, these predictable rules led to the advent of the planet itself, as well as cells, organs and organelles, ecosystems, and increasingly complex life forms. McFarland provides an accessible discussion of a geological history as well, describing how the inorganic matter on Earth underwent chemical reactions with air and water, allowing for life to emerge from the world's first rocks. He traces the history of life all the way to modern neuroscience, and shows how the bioelectric signals that make up the human brain were formed. Most popular science books on the topic present either the physics of how the universe formed, or the biology of how complex life came about; this book's approach would be novel in that it condenses in an engaging way the chemistry that links the two fields. This book is an accessible and multidisciplinary look at how life on our planet came to be, and how it continues to develop and change even today. This book includes 40 illustrations by Gala Bent, print artist and studio faculty member at Cornish College of the Arts, and Mary Anderson, medical illustrator.




In a Cloud of Dust


Book Description

A Tanzanian schoolgirl struggles with a long walk to and from school that leaves her no daylight in which to do homework. When studying at lunchtime makes her miss out on the bicycle library's visit, her compassionate classmates find a way to share t




Devils Unto Dust


Book Description

Keep together. Keep your eyes open. Keep your wits about you. The desert is unkind in the best of times. And the decade since the Civil War has been anything but the best of times for Daisy Wilcox—call her Willie—and her family. This tense, heart-pounding alternate history about a young woman fighting to survive the unthinkable will keep fans of Westworld and The Walking Dead reading late into the night. A horrifying sickness has spread across the West Texas desert. Infected people—shakes—attack the living, and the surviving towns are only as safe as their perimeter walls are strong. The state is all but quarantined from the rest of the country. Glory, Texas, is a near ghost town. Still, seventeen-year-old Willie has managed to keep her siblings safe, even after the sickness took their mother. But then her good-for-nothing father steals a fortune from one of the most merciless shake hunters in town, and Willie is left on the hook for his debt. With two young hunters as guides, Willie sets out across the desert to find her father. And the desert holds more dangers than just shakes. This riveting debut novel blends True Grit with 28 Days Later for an unforgettable journey.




The Little Free Library Book


Book Description

LFL history, quirky and poignant firsthand stories, a resource guide, and some of the most creative and inspired LFLs around.




Heat and Dust


Book Description

Winner of the Booker Prize as best novel of the year in 1983, Heat and Dust was also made into a major motion picture starring Julie Christie, now regarded by many as a classic.




Hands Around the Library


Book Description

The inspiring true story of demonstrators standing up for the love of a library, from a New York Times bestselling illustrator In January 2011, in a moment that captured the hearts of people all over the world, thousands of Egypt's students, library workers, and demonstrators surrounded the great Library of Alexandria and joined hands, forming a human chain to protect the building. They chanted "We love you, Egypt!" as they stood together for the freedom the library represented. Illustrated with Susan L. Roth's stunning collages, this amazing true story demonstrates how the love of books and libraries can unite a country, even in the midst of turmoil.




Gather Out of Star-dust


Book Description

Gather Out of Star-Dust takes as its central premise that the Harlem Renaissance, known by its participants as the Negro Renaissance, relied heavily on "gatherings" of all kinds. Collaboration, friendship, partnership, and sponsorship were all central to the rise in prominence of African American publication, performance, and visual art. Most importantly, the act of collecting materials from this time subsequently enabled scholars to remember the movement. Gather Out of Star-Dust showcases fifty items from the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters at Beinecke Library. Each of these objects--letters, journal entries, photographs, ephemera, artworks, and first editions--is accompanied by a mini-essay telling a piece of the story about this dynamic period. While numerous scholarly works have been written about this time of rebirth, this book returns us to the primary materials that have made that scholarship possible. Distributed for the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library Exhibition Schedule: Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library (01/13/17-04/17/17)