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New and popular titles at Juniata County Library

With so many good books being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to check out next. Every week, I offer a run-down of significant releases available here at the library.

Visit our online card catalog at juniata.sparkpa.org to search today or call 717-436-6378 to have a helpful library staff member assist you.

“Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist” by Eli Saslow

Whether it is Barack Obama or Donald Trump, politics today are very revealing of our inner struggles, most notably in relation to race, ethnicity and religion. America was built upon faulty notions of race and supremacy and we have never been able to fully shake these ghosts. As with any problem, healing cannot happen if we do not talk about it and examine ourselves. It is easy for us to say we want to change the world, but what about changing ourselves first?

It is a small irony that Derek Black abandoned the nationalist, white power movement at just about the time that a president entered the White House who consciously put white nationalist rhetoric at the center of his campaign. Black came by his race hatred naturally, following his father’s ideology as the founder of Stormfront, the neo-Nazi clearinghouse, and that of his godfather, KKK stalwart David Duke. From his father, Black carried the urgent message that whites were being made victims of cultural genocide in their own country, a grievance actually rooted in feeling a loss of privilege. However, he had a different vision in which hooded, hidden supremacists would become respectable, persuading his father to outlaw “slurs, Nazi insignia, and threats of violence or lawbreaking” from the Stormfront website. Thus Charlottesville, with its clean-cut, polo shirt-wearing tiki torchlight parade marchers. By then, though, Derek was long gone. Bright, well-read and skilled in debate, he had gone off to college in Florida, and there, his home-schooling parents’ worst nightmare was realized: He formed a bond with a Jewish girl, though he continued his agitating, and when his identity as a white nationalist was exposed, a Jewish conservative invited him to exchange ideas. Black’s eventual renunciation of the nationalist cause threw his parents into turmoil; as Saslow writes, his father hoped that “maybe Derek was just faking a change in ideology so he could have an easier life and a more successful career in academia.” But absent widespread changes of heart, Black’s story is an anomaly, if an instructive one–and one that closes with a dark message that conflict is looming as the white nationalist movement appears to be mushrooming. We can learn a lot from the Jewish community in that their faith is rooted in discussion and debate, not insisting they have the answers and shutting others out. You can find this book in the New Adult Nonfiction section.

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Bookshots…Here are some quick book recommendations, the star ratings I give them, or whether you should skip it, borrow it, or buy it.

Elevation by Stephen King (5 stars)

The Library Book by Susan Orlean (4 stars)

A Christman Revelation by Anne Perry (3 stars)

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Come Play, Learn, and Read!

≤Fall Story Time Info: October 1 – November 23, 2018

≤Preschool Story Time: For children ages 3 and over (Mondays at 10:30 am, Thursdays at 6:00 pm) – Stories, songs, rhymes, flannel board activities, crafts, and fun!

≤Tales for Twos: Toddler Story Time and Playgroup (Fridays at 10:30 am) – For children ages 18 mos. through 2 yrs. 20-30 minutes of stories, songs, rhymes, flannelboard activities, and movement, followed by 30 minutes of playtime!

≤There will be no preschool story time on Monday, November 12. Feel free to join us on Thursday evening that week (11/15)

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Vince Giordano has been the director of the Juniata County Library since 2015.

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