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!This will be the last The Friday List of the year, as we’ll be going on break until Spring 2025. We hope everyone had a successful Fall semester, and congrats to all who are graduating this month!

The final days of Edgar Allan Poe : nevermore in Baltimore, by David Gaylin, 2024

Occurring in a time of primitive medicine and inconsistent record-keeping, Poe’s death has become one of the enduring mysteries of American literature. David F. Gaylin’s book marks the first attempt to offer a comprehensive and balanced study of this historical event. After chronicling the circumstances that may have contributed to the poet’s death, the book examines key details about the story. It traces Poe’s movements and personal encounters before also exploring how Poe was handled and treated by others who attempted to come to his aid. Proceeding with the liveliness of a detective story, the discussion sheds new light on these events, and it offers new information about the burial of Poe’s body and the subsequent relocations of his tomb. With the addition of supplementary reference materials including a register of formally proposed causes of death, a timeline of relevant events, and a map of Poe’s final movements in Baltimore, this book is an essential resource for both scholars and general readers seeking answers to the mystery of Poe’s death.

Free and equal : what would a fair society look like?, by Daniel Chandler, 2023

Imagine: You are designing a society, but you don’t know who you’ll be within it—rich or poor, man or woman, gay or straight. What would you want that society to look like? This is the revolutionary thought experiment proposed by the twentieth century’s greatest political philosopher, John Rawls. As economist and philosopher Daniel Chandler argues in this hugely ambitious and exhilarating manifesto, it is by rediscovering Rawls that we can find a way out of the escalating crises that are devastating our world today.

Long Island : a novel by Colm Tóibín, 2024

Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents, a huge extended family that lives and works, eats and plays together. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis, now in her forties with two teenage children, has no one to rely on in this still-new country. Though her ties to the town in Ireland where she grew up remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades. One day, when Tony is at his job, an Irishman comes to the door asking for her by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child, and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but instead will deposit it on Eilis’s doorstep. It is what Eilis does–and what she refuses to do–in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín’s novel so riveting. Long Island is about longings unfulfilled, even unrecognized. The silences in Eilis’s life are thunderous and dangerous, and there’s no one defter than Tóibín at giving them language. This is a gorgeous story of a woman alone in a marriage and the deepest of bonds she rekindles on her return to the place and people she left behind, to ways of living and loving she thought she’d lost. Eilis is perhaps Tóibín’s most moving and unforgettable character, and this novel is a masterpiece.

Protest art, by Jessica Lack, 2024

From anticolonial struggle to the campaign for nuclear disarmament, from the Suffragettes to Black Lives Matter, art has long been a powerful tool by which to upend the status quo. Protest Art looks at the multitude of ways in which art and politics have intertwined in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, taking in a broad range of artists’ actions including performance and street art, banners and digital media, sculpture and painting. Over nine thematic chapters, Jessica Lack explores art’s relationships with the media, institutions and the state, its use by activists as a weapon, a tool or a way of imagining otherwise, and ideas of artists as warriors, prophets and revolutionary leaders. Lack situates major artworks, campaigns and movements in their social and political contexts, recognizing the networks of solidarity, inspiration and cooperation that remain vital to both protest and art-making. Beautifully illustrated and carefully researched, Protest Art offers an accessible introduction to this vast and unruly field from the early twentieth century onwards.

New Arrivals in the last 30 days:

(Arrivals are sorted by recency and then alphabetically)