Recommended by Courtney Bippley, Main Campus Librarian: “This book has advice, inspiration, hope, and data for anyone and everyone, no matter where you are in your climate change awareness.”

Check out the rest of her What We’re Reading book review! 

Available as an audiobook through Dogwood Digital Library. 

Recommended by Meredith Lewis, Orange County Campus Librarian: “The author is a university professor of botany, a poet, and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She draws on all those areas to examine the relationship between humans and plant-life/the natural world. A really beautiful, meditative, and thought-provoking set of essays.”

Available as an ebook through Dogwood Digital Library. 

Recommended by Susan Baker, Main Campus Librarian: “Before there was the movie, there was the book.  Hidden Figures tells the story of the African American women mathematicians hired to work as human ‘computers’ from the 1930s through the 1960s in the laboratory that later became NASA.  The book [is] definitely worth checking out if you saw the movie and want to learn more.”

Available at the Main and Orange County Campus and through Dogwood Digital Library as both an ebook and audiobook.

Recommended by Julie Humprey, Library Director: “Walker was an important philanthropist and businesswoman from the early twentieth century.  She created a hair care enterprise and lived a remarkable life and isn’t as well-known as she should be.”

Available as an ebook through Dogwood Digtial Library.

Recommended by the Durham Tech Library: “You may think of Dolly Parton as country star with a rags-to-riches backstory and a stack of Grammys higher than her biggest blonde wig, famous for crooning “Jolene” and belting out “9 to 5”.   But Dolly’s done more than make a living; she has made others’ lives sing, not just with high dollar philanthropic donations to numerous worthy causes but with programs she initiated herself, including her Imagination Library, which gets books into the hands of children across the globe.  Learn to love the woman behind the legend.”

Available as an audiobook through Dogwood Digital Library (and read by Dolly Parton herself). 

Recommended by Tracey Callision, Main Campus Librarian: “In the early 20th Century, Madame Curie’s discovery of the element radium sparked a huge industry of its applications in medicine and fashion, leading to warehouses of women who worked with it every day.  As they began to sicken and die from working so closely with the poisonous substance, they found themselves embroiled in one of the largest scandals and labor struggles in the history of the US.”

Available through Dogwood Digital Library and on the Main Campus. 

Recommended by Rachel Smith, Northern Durham Center Librarian: “I loved this book and couldn’t put it down! It’s like every word is spoken direct to you by Cicely Tyson herself. A line in particular stood out to me, as Cicely was describing one of her mother’s recipes: ‘My mother’s secret wasn’t any single ingredient. Her creations were a symphony of flavors, blended together perfectly with love immeasurably.'”

Available through Dogwood Digital Library. 

Recommended by Stephen Brooks, Main Campus Librarian: “Often overlooked by mainstream white feminism, Dorothy Pitman Hughes is best-known as Gloria Steinem’s traveling and speaking companion. This new, first biography of Hughes gives her her due, as a co-founder of Ms. Magazine and an activist fighting for women’s rights and against gentrification.”

Available as an audiobook through Dogwood Digital Library

Recommended by the Durham Tech Library and part of our new Spanish Language Collection: “Un audiolibro lleno de amor y de humor que reconstruye, desde la evocación, la vida, la felicidad añorada y los espacios más queridos de Isabel Allende.”

Available as an audiobook through Dogwood Digital Library. 

The Durham Tech Library is a member of the Dogwood Digital Library, a collection of online ebooks and audiobooks through the Overdrive/Libby app.