THE FRIDAY LIST

Every week, new books and eBooks are arriving at RLB Library! Below are a few highlighted titles that are placed in the 1st floor leisure reading kiosk. There you’ll also find past The Friday List titles, but there are many more that we just don’t have room to show off. The last 30 days of new arrivals are listed at the bottom of this post, where you’ll be sure to find something to read for class assignments, your own personal enrichment, or just to have some fun!

Beautiful Math : the surprisingly simple ideas behind the digital revolution in how we live, work, and communicate, by Chris Bernhardt, 2024

Most of us know something about the grand theories of physics that transformed our views of the universe at the start of the twentieth century: quantum mechanics and general relativity. But we are much less familiar with the brilliant theories that make up the backbone of the digital revolution. In Beautiful Math, Chris Bernhardt explores the mathematics at the very heart of the information age. He asks questions such as: What is information? What advantages does digital information have over analog? How do we convert analog signals into digital ones? What is an algorithm? What is a universal computer? And how can a machine learn?

Is Anyone Listening? : What Animals Are Saying to Each Other and to Us, by Denise L Herzig, 2024

Is Anyone Listening? connects research on dolphin communication to findings from Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Dian Fossey on mountain gorillas, Cynthia Moss on African elephants, and others driving today’s exploration of possible animal languages. Although humans have long attempted to crack animal communication codes, only now do we have the advanced machine-learning tools to help. As Herzing reveals, researchers are finding fascinating hints of language in nonhuman species, including linguistic structures, vowel equivalents, and complex repeated sequences. By looking at the many ways animals use and manipulate signals, we see that we’ve only just begun to appreciate the diversity of animal intelligence and the complicated and subtle aspects of animal communication. Considering dolphins and other nonhuman animals as colleagues instead of research subjects, Herzing asks us to meet animals as both speakers and listeners, as mutually curious beings, and to listen to what they are saying.

The Opioid Crisis : a policy case study, by Gail Ukockis, 2024

The Trouble of Color : an American family memoir, by Martha S. Jones, 2025

A child of the civil rights era, Martha S. Jones grew up feeling her Black identity was obvious to all who saw her. But in Jones's first semester of college, a Black Studies classmate challenged her right to speak. Suspicious of the color of her skin and the texture of her hair, he confronted her with a question that inspired a lifetime of introspection: "Who do you think you are?" Now a prizewinning scholar of Black history, Jones delves into her own family's past for answers, only to find a story that archives alone can't tell, a story of race in America that takes us beyond slavery, Jim Crow, and civil rights. Ever since her great-great-great-grandmother Nancy emerged from bondage in 1865 determined to raise a free family, skin color has determined Jones's ancestors' lives. But color and race are not the same, and through her family's story, Jones discovers the uneven, unpredictable relationship between the two. Drawing readers along the shifting and jagged path of America's color line, The Trouble of Color is a lyrical, deeply felt meditation on the most fundamental matters of identity, belonging, and family.

New Arrivals in the last 30 days:

(Arrivals are sorted by recency and then alphabetically)