Front Table

February 3rd, 2023
Front Table 2/3/2023

On this week's Front Table, find a mosaic of the historical fragments, diaries, criticism and research that shaped the modern world: from a braided narrative of two leaders who embodied the fighting spirit of the 1960s to a deeper dive into one of the world’s most influential poems that described the moral decay of a world after war. Find the following and more at...

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January 27th, 2023
Front Table 1/27/2023

On this week's Front Table, recover forgotten forms of social and political order that gesture toward new possibilities for the future: from a revolutionary approach to animal rights, ethics, and law to a look into the societies of Pirates, their self-governance, alternative social formations and radical visions of freedom. Find the following and more at semcoop.com

Daodejing
(Liveright)
Laozi; Brook Ziporyn, trans. ...

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January 20th, 2023
Front Table 1/20/2023

On this week's Front Table, journey into stories about familial love and hate, human prejudice and cruelty, and the transformative power of art: from a collection that moves effortlessly between a mother, grandmother, and daughter to explore the meanings of maternal to a biography of a 19th century multiracial family who personified the racial myths that reverberate to this day. Find the following and more at...

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January 13th, 2023
Front Table 1/13/2023

On this week's Front Table, draw from historic and modern thought to begin filling gaps in history on how our individual present is informed by a collective past: from one prisoner’s unburied and translated account of life and death in Auschwitz to an imagining of the end of the world to reflect on the purpose of life. Find the following and more at semcoop.com
Black Dignity: The Struggle Against...
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January 6th, 2023
Front Table 1/6/2023

On this week's Front Table, discover the personal details of a life devoted to craft: from a traveling musician’s moving meditation on the relationship between music and home to a portrait of one of the great American entertainers, guitarists, and lyricists of the 20th century: Chuck Berry. Find the following and more at semcoop.com
Chuck Berry: An American Life
(Hachette Books)
RJ Smith

Best known as the...

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December 16th, 2022
Front Table 12/16/2022

On this week's Front Table, find a masterful collection that explores why we lead one life instead of another, from a story of doppelgängers living two versions of the same life whilst grappling with their own existentialism to three interconnected stories set in contemporary Japan, where the same set of characters are revisited at different junctures in their lives. Find the following and more at semcoop.com
I Fear My Pain Interests You
...
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December 9th, 2022
Front Table 12/9/2022

On this week's Front Table, delve deeper into the life and works of the artists and writers you know and love, from an uncovering of T.S. Eliot’s lifelong love affair with his hidden muse to insight into one of the most influential illustrators of the twentieth century, Tove Jansson. Find the following and more at semcoop.com
The Everybody Ensemble
(Picador USA)
Amy Leach

Are you feeling dismay, despair, disillusion? Need a break from the ho-hum, the hopeless, and the hurtful? Feel certain that there's a version of our world that doesn't break down into tiny categories...

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December 2nd, 2022
Front Table 12/2/2022

On this week's Front Table, find stories framed against the backdrop of a migratory adolescence to reckon with race, religious conflict, culture clash, and multiple identities - from a mapping of one young woman’s Black diaspora as she revisits her unsettled childhood in order to reclaim her legacies to a young boy’s story of coming north to the promise of opportunity, only to pay the harrowing costs of deindustrialization and neglect. Find the following and more at semcoop.com

Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants...
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November 23rd, 2022
Front Table 11/23/2022

On this week's Front Table, explore the most elemental aspects of humanity: perseverance and artistry - from an analyses of structural oppression and the changes necessary to end it to how to appreciate the art we, and others, create regardless of the world around us. Find the following and more at semcoop.com

How to Write Like a Writer: A Sharp and Subversive Guide to Ignoring Inhibitions, Inviting Inspiration, and Finding Your True Voice
(Harper Perennial...

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November 18th, 2022
Front Table 11/18/2022

On this week's Front Table, explore destruction as being a step in the creation of our modern world; from the stunning ways in which volcanoes sculpt the land, sea and modern machinery to stories of the lives harmed by wrongful convictions and the steps we can take for a powerful call to change. Find the following and more at semcoop.com
Barred: Why the Innocent Can't Get Out of Prison 
(Basic Books)
Daniel S. Medwed

Thousands of innocent people are behind bars in the United States. But proving their innocence and winning their release is nearly...

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