As the dog days of summer come to an end and a new school year approaches across the US, we are diving into Dorothy Lazard's book about the how libraries serve as "cherished containers of our ideals" and "the power of books and community in a time of division." We go even further in Rowan Hooper's new exploration of how 
"all life on Earth hinges on collaboration" before turning to Adrian Daub's examination of how big tech is "seeking to remake your workplace, your child's school, and the federal government in their image." And finally, a book that "exposes the ten cultural taboos keeping Latina leaders silent" and "how to find your public voice, how to shed a survivor mentality, [and] how to choose your own healing without apology."

All four of the following titles hit local bookshop shelves and online ratailers in July. Interested in buying multiple copies for your team, book club, or employee resource group? Follow the links below or give us a call to purchase the books, or check out our services for bulk book buyers to learn more about how we can help.

Unless otherwise noted, all descriptions of the books below come from the publisher.

Behind the Desk at the Main: A Librarian's Memoir by Dorothy Lazard, published by Heyday

From a celebrated librarian and public historian, a memoir about the promise of public libraries in a fractured world.

When Dorothy Lazard became a public librarian, she returned to the building that had shaped her life from childhood. At the flagship branch ("the Main") of the Oakland Public Library, she connected with her hometown to a degree that few people experience. Helping her fellow community members and ultimately becoming the keeper of Oakland's public history archives, she witnessed the joys and dilemmas that shape one of the most diverse cities in the US. In Behind the Desk at the Main, Lazard takes readers through the day-to-day life of library work with love, wit, and candor. As the cracks in American society grow and our public institutions are strained to the breaking point, libraries remain the cherished containers of our ideals: They are places of curiosity, imagination, memory, and togetherness. Lazard reveals the pressures that library workers face—from economic crises to book bans and political upheaval—as they uphold these ideals in a fractured world. Filled with humor and urgency, Behind the Desk at the Main is a testament to the power of books and community in a time of division.

Togetherness: Symbiosis and the Hidden Story of Life's Greatest Collaborations by Rowan Hooper, published by Knopf

A wondrous, eye-opening exploration of the surprising ways life is interconnected—and why it matters.

From evolution to capitalism, our belief in the “survival of the fittest” has shaped our view of the world. But we got it wrong—and our mistake has brought us to the brink.

In Togetherness, evolutionary biologist Rowan Hooper shows us that all life on Earth hinges on collaboration. From the rich underbrush, to the murky ocean depths, to the human body itself, Hooper uncovers the poetry of life’s greatest collaborations. The female wasp venturing deep inside a fig to pollinate the fruit and lay her egg; the intricate relationship between corals and the algae that sustain them; the symbiotic gut microbes that influence our moods. These are just a few of the intimate negotiations that animate and connect all living things. But, as Hooper explains, they also provide a guide to a more sustainable future.

Dazzlingly clever and suffused with awe, Togetherness will change the way you see the world, our place in it, and our obligation to its hidden wonders.

What Tech Calls Governing by Adrian Daub, published by Stanford University Press

Expanding upon the work begun in What Tech Calls Thinking, Adrian Daub explores which ideas of politics, power, and dominance characterize the tech industry, and how those ideas came to be.

Tech companies increasingly determine who regulates and who governs. And the tech elite increasingly wield political power, seeking to remake your workplace, your child's school, and the federal government in their image. But what do they mean by power?

Taking readers from investor meetings to lecture halls, from science fiction to a neo-feudal worldview, Daub acerbically explores how tech culture approaches hierarchy and dominance, and what role a very specific form of masculinity plays in tech culture's ethos. From billboards to social media, Daub interrogates the way the tech elite exert power in their families and offices, but also in gyms and on YouTube channels, in courtrooms and on their commutes. As What Tech Calls Governing shows, to ask "how do they seek to dominate?" is actually to retell the history of Silicon Valley as the story of a fragile—and precisely for that reason domineering—masculinity intent on all the influence with none of the responsibility.

What Will They Say?: Confront Cultural Taboos and Discover Your Inner Power by Denise Soler Cox, published by Primero Sueno Press

You already know the rules. Bájale dos rayitas. De eso no se habla. Los trapos sucios se lavan en casa. You've lived by them your whole life. And they have cost you more than you know.

Denise Soler Cox was on a conference call when she felt the blood. She speed-walked to the bathroom, miscarrying her baby into a DIY pad she'd rigged together because God forbid she admit that she needed to go home. On her knees scrubbing blood from the grout with wet paper towels, she wanted to scream. But even then, she was worried that someone might hear.

This is what it looks like when the rules run your life, at work, in your body, your marriage, and at your mother's kitchen table. In the silence you kept the night something unfathomable happened and no one asked if you were ok.

For nearly a decade, brilliant women line up after her keynotes to confess secrets they'd never told anyone. Women who stayed silent to keep the peace, who felt guilty for wanting more, who believed that choosing themselves meant abandoning their families.

Through raw storytelling, a sharp, unapologetic sense of humor, and wisdom she earned the hard way, Denise exposes the ten cultural taboos keeping Latina leaders silent and shows us, finally, how to stop living by rules we never chose. How to find your public voice, how to shed a survivor mentality, how to choose your own healing without apology.

A leadership book that proves you can honor your cultura and take up every inch of space you deserve.