Through the intimate stories of those seeking work, “The Tolls of Uncertainty” offers a startling look at the nation’s unemployment system — who it helps, who it hurts, and what, if anything, we can do to make it fair. Drawing on interviews with one hundred men and women who have lost jobs across Pennsylvania, Sarah Damaske examines the ways unemployment shapes families, finances, health, and the job hunt. Damaske demonstrates that commonly held views of unemployment are either incomplete or just plain wrong. Shaped by a person’s gender and class, unemployment generates new inequalities that cast uncertainties on the search for work and on life chances beyond the world of work, threatening opportunity in America.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘What Do You Want Out of Life?’ by Valerie Tiberius

What do you want out of life? To make a lot of money—or work for justice? To have children—or travel the world? The things we care about in life—family, friendship, leisure activities, work, our moral ideals—often conflict, preventing us from doing what matters most to us.
Even worse, we don’t always know what we really want, or how to define success. Blending personal stories, philosophy, and psychology, this insightful and entertaining book offers invaluable advice about living well by understanding your values and resolving the conflicts that frustrate their fulfillment.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘Wildlife of the Eastern Caribbean’

Authors: Steve Holliday and Gill Holliday
This is the first photographic field identification guide to Eastern Caribbean birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, land crabs, dragonflies, and butterflies.
Beautiful and easy-to-use, the guide covers 17 island groups stretching from the Virgin Islands south through the Lesser Antilles, from Anguilla to Grenada, where a unique range of flora and fauna evolved in relative isolation.
Around 30 percent of all the species included are endemic to the region.
For each island group there is a list of endemic and “don’t miss” species.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘African Modernism’

Edited by: Manuel Herz
The late 1950s and early 1960s saw a large number of central and sub-Saharan African countries gaining independence, and one of the key ways in which they expressed their newly established national identity was through distinctive architecture.
Parliament buildings, stadiums, universities, central banks, convention halls, and other major public buildings and housing projects were built in daring, even heroic designs.
“African Modernism” takes a close look at the relationship between these cutting-edge architectural projects, according to a review on goodreads.com. The book will be of interest to historians of architecture and students alike.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘A Leaf Unturned’: Short story collection explores questions of identity, social constraint

- “Saifi is an accomplished writer with a deep understanding of the human condition, particularly when it comes to themes of desire, identity, and societal constraint
Author: Shamim Saifi
“A Leaf Unturned” is the English translation of a collection of short stories originally written in Urdu by Shamim Saifi, one of India’s leading short story writers.
The stories were originally published by Bihar Urdu Academy under the title “Ek Warq,” and have been translated by Syed Sarwar Hussain, a professor of English at Riyadh’s King Saud University who has translated several books of renowned Indian and Pakistani writers.

Saifi, who died in 1994 while serving as a High Court judge, demonstrates a deep understanding of the human psyche, particularly in relation to themes of identity, and the struggles of individuals living on the margins of society.
The collection contains 12 short stories, each with a different flavor of writing, but all rich in symbolism and often with a stream-of-consciousness pattern that allows readers to follow each character’s inner thought process.
The stories offer a distinctive kaleidoscope of Joycean surrealism, Kafkaesque existentialism, and Faulknerian symbolism.
Sarwar Hussain writes in his introduction: “Shamim Saifi’s work is marked by its ability to evoke strong emotional responses and its keen insight into the complex intersections between personal desire, societal expectations, and existential crises.
“Saifi is an accomplished writer with a deep understanding of the human condition, particularly when it comes to themes of desire, identity, and societal constraint. His writing is rich in symbolism and emotional resonance, making him a writer whose work invites introspection and reflection.”
The book is available on Amazon.in and Kindle.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘Grasshoppers, Locusts, and Crickets of the World’

Edited by Martin Husemann and Oliver Hawlitschek
Grasshoppers, locusts, crickets, bush crickets, and katydids make up the order of insects known as Orthoptera.
Although there about 30,000 species of Orthoptera around the world, many people pay little attention to them and even scientists know relatively little about them.
Yet the world of grasshoppers is a fascinating and diverse one.