Upcoming O’Neal Library events for adults:
Saturday, May 10th 10am-noon: Crafterday, bring your own craft and visit with fellow crafters
Saturday, May 10th 3-5:30pm: Great Short Stories on Film presents Minority Report (PG13/2h25m)
Monday, May 12th 6:30-7:30pm: Great Short Stories discussing “Minority Report” by Philip K. Dick
Tuesday, May 27th 6:30-8pm: Books & Beyond discussing
dystopian/apocalyptic/postapocalyptic books and films
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
In 1951, a monumental book by a relatively unknown
German-Jewish émigré addressed the terrifying new mode of political
organization underlying the twin horrors of Stalinism and Nazism. Herself a
refugee from Nazi persecution, Hannah Arendt sought, from her exile in New York
City, to answer the unfathomable questions raised by the Soviet gulag and the
Holocaust: How could there be such barbarism in the midst of civilization? How
had governments exerted such absolute control over citizens, terrorizing them
and enlisting them to commit atrocities on their behalf?
Conclave by Robert Harris
The best-selling author of Enigma and Fatherland turns
to today's Vatican in a ripped-from-the-headlines novel and gives us his most
ambitious, pause-resisting thriller yet - where the power of God is nearly
equaled by the ambition of men.
Conclave (Rated PG, 2h0m)
CONCLAVE follows one of the world’s most secretive and
ancient events -- selecting the new Pope. Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is
tasked with running this covert process after the unexpected death of the
beloved Pope. Once the Catholic Church’s most powerful leaders have gathered
from around the world and are locked together in the Vatican halls, Lawrence
uncovers a trail of deep secrets left in the dead Pope’s wake, secrets which
could shake the foundations of the Church.
Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum
Pulitzer Prize, General Nonfiction, 2004
Applebaum intimately recreates what life was like in Soviet concentration camps
and links them to the larger history of the Soviet Union. Immediately
recognized as a landmark and long-overdue work of scholarship, Gulag is
an essential book for anyone who wishes to understand the history of the 20th
century.
The Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum
In the long-awaited follow-up to her Pulitzer
Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a
groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World
War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under
its sway.
The Grim Reaper’s Lawyer by Mea Monique
When having to decide between spending her afterlife in hell or as the Grim Reaper’s Lawyer, it's not even a hard choice for Joyce Parker. Of course she’d choose hell. Joyce thought her prayers were finally answered when her client killed her. Yes, she knows, it's morbid. But, so is being a lawyer. Now dead, Joyce thought it was blue skies, angel wings, mimosas and Jesus. Well, she was embarrassingly wrong. The insufferable, but good-looking Grim Reaper needs a favor. He needs her to represent him in the newly formed Reaper’s Court. That is, of course, if she wants to go to heaven rather than to hell, which is exactly where she was heading.
What starts off as a favor turns into a whirlwind of chaos
with Joyce and the Grim Reaper being in the center of it all. Not only does
Joyce have to help the grumpy Reaper, but she also has to save the whole
Afterworld—a job she most definitely did not sign up for. Joyce’s
life on earth was boring, but her afterlife ends up being the most alive she’s
ever felt. Trials, secrets, evil reapers, missing souls, traitors, stolen
mimosas and unexpected romance—all the elements for one hell (literally) of a
life after death.
PODCASTS
-You’re Wrong About (The McDonald’s Hot Coffee Case)
Mike tells Sarah how a tragic story became a national
punchline and a decades-long moral panic. Digressions include a sympathetic
psychic, a paternalistic principal and a manure mishap. Mike appears to be
unaware of the difference between a cousin and a nephew.
-70 Million (A Special Court Keeping Native Americans Out of Jail)
Kirsten made her way out of jail and addiction with the help
of a special court on the Penobscot Nation reservation in Maine. There, culture
and justice work together to bypass traditional punitive measures for more
restorative ones. Reporter Lisa Bartfai visits the Healing to Wellness Court to
see how it all works.
-Slow Burn (10 seasons available)
Slow Burn illuminates America’s most consequential moments,
making sense of the past to better understand the present. Through archival
tape and first-person interviews, the series uncovers the surprising events and
little-known characters lurking within the biggest stories of our time.
-This Land (Season 2)
Host Rebecca Nagle reports on how the far right is using Native
children to attack American Indian tribes and advance a conservative agenda.
-5-4 (190 episodes available)
5-4 is a progressive and occasionally profane take on the
ideological battles at the heart of the Court’s most important landmark cases;
an irreverent tour of all of the ways in which the law is shaped by politics.
The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter
Talcott Garland is a successful law professor, devoted
father, and husband of a beautiful and ambitious woman, whose future desires
may threaten the family he holds so dear. When Talcott’s father, Judge Oliver
Garland, a disgraced former Supreme Court nominee, is found dead under
suspicioius circumstances, Talcott wonders if he may have been murdered. Guided
by the elements of a mysterious puzzle that his father left, Talcott must risk
his marriage, his career and even his life in his quest for justice. Superbly
written and filled with memorable characters, The Emperor of Ocean Park is
both a stunning literary achievement and a grand literary entertainment.
The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen L. Carter
Stephen L. Carter’s thrilling new novel takes as its
starting point an alternate history: President Abraham Lincoln survives the
assassination attempt at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. Two years later he
is charged with overstepping his constitutional authority, both during and
after the Civil War, and faces an impeachment trial.... Here is a vividly
imagined work of historical fiction that captures the emotional tenor of
post-Civil War America, a brilliantly realized courtroom drama that explores
the always contentious question of the nature of presidential authority, and a
galvanizing story of political suspense.
Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy by Stephen L. Carter
Taking inspiration from the Abolitionist sermons of the
nineteenth century, Carter proposes to rebuild our public and private lives
around the fundamental rule that we must love our neighbors, a tenet of all the
world's great religions. Drawing on such diverse disciplines as law, theology,
and psychology, he investigates many of the fundamental institutions of
society-including the family, churches, and schools-and illustrates how each
one must do more to promote the virtue of civility.aThrough it all, Carter
emphasizes that loving our neighbors has little to do with how we feel and
everything to do with how we choose to act. The true test of civility is
whether out of love and concern for others, we will discipline our individual
desires and work for the common good.
The Stranger by Albert Camus
This 1942 novella is the first of Camus' novels published in
his lifetime. The story follows Meursault, an indifferent settler in French
Algeria, who, weeks after his mother's funeral, kills an unnamed Arab man in
Algiers.
The Law of Similars by Chris Bohjalian
When one of homeopath Carissa Lake's patients falls into an
allergy-induced coma, possibly due to her prescribed remedy, Leland Fowler's
office starts investigating the case. But Leland is also one of Carissa's
patients, and he is begining to realize that he has fallen in love with her. As
love and legal obligations collide, Leland comes face-to-face with an ethical
dilemma of enormous proportions. Graceful, intelligent, and suspenseful, The
Law of Similars is a powerful examination of the links between hope and
hubris, love and deception.
The Anatomy of a Fall (Rated R, 2h 30m)
For the past year, Sandra, her husband Samuel, and their
eleven-year-old son Daniel have lived a secluded life in a remote town in the
French Alps. When Samuel is found dead in the snow below their chalet, the
police question whether he was murdered or committed suicide. Samuel's
suspicious death is presumed murder, and Sandra becomes the main suspect. What
follows is not just an investigation into the circumstances of Samuel's death
but an unsettling psychological journey into the depths of Sandra and Samuel's
conflicted relationship.
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan
Stevenson
Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal
Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most
desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children
trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his
first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die
for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a
tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship—and
transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.
Murder on Shades Mountain: The Legal Lynching of Willie Peterson and the Struggle for Justice in Jim Crow Birmingham by Melanie
Morrison
One August night in 1931, on a secluded mountain ridge
overlooking Birmingham, Alabama, three young white women were brutally
attacked. The sole survivor, Nell Williams, age eighteen, said a black man had
held the women captive for four hours before shooting them and disappearing
into the woods. That same night, a reign of terror was unleashed on
Birmingham's black community: black businesses were set ablaze, posses of armed
white men roamed the streets, and dozens of black men were arrested in the largest
manhunt in Jefferson County history. Weeks later, Nell identified Willie
Peterson as the attacker who killed her sister Augusta and their friend
Jennie Wood. With the exception of being black, Peterson bore little
resemblance to the description Nell gave the police. An all-white jury
convicted Peterson of murder and sentenced him to death.
Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution by Diane McWhorter
A Pulitzer Prize-winning, dramatic account of the Civil
Rights Era’s climactic battle in Birmingham as the movement, led by Martin
Luther King, Jr., brought down the institutions of segregation.
Children of Darkness and Light: Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell: A Story of Murderous Faith by Lori Hellis
A blonde beauty queen, missing children, six suspicious
deaths, and the twisted Mormon doomsday writings of her fifth husband are only
the beginning of a tragic crime saga that gripped Americans and instigated
frantic searches all over the country. Clinging to and manipulating one
another, Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell believed the return of Jesus Christ was
imminent and that God had chosen them to lead the 144,000 and usher in the new
millennium. When the people closest to them began dying, it became clear they
would stop at nothing to be together and fulfill their mission. When the bodies
of Lori’s missing children—J.J. and Tylee—were discovered in Chad’s backyard,
the strange and complex story of their fundamentalist Mormon beliefs were
revealed in all their true horror.
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from
private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein
describes how the American government systematically imposed residential
segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully
segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create
whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation;
and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods.
A groundbreaking, “virtually indispensable” study that has already transformed
our understanding of twentieth-century urban history (Chicago Daily Observer),
The
Color of Law forces us to face the obligation to remedy our
unconstitutional past.
Item descriptions pulled from Amazon, Rotten Tomatoes, and
podcast aggregator sites.
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