culture

Looking for a feel-good movie? Babies is a must-see documentary. Watch as four newborn babies from around the globe grow, learn, and love during their first year of life on this planet.

Each baby is born into a world full of different customs and opportunities, yet their universal humanity busts through cultural boundaries. Follow Ponijao from Namibia, Bayarjargal from Mongolia, Hattie from San Francisco, and Mari from Tokyo as each baby navigates his or her place in the world.

Whether it’s Ponijao sitting in the dirt pounding stones with his friend, Bayarjargal sharing his bathwater with

This great non-fiction book for readers of all ages presents the accumulated human knowledge of the last 32,000 years. The history of the world is represented via the most significant charts, sketches, drawings and illustrations. These are the 100 schematics that had the strongest influence and impact on society, and they are presented in a chronological order with one page half page of text to describe each of them. The diagrams come from many fields: mathematics, history, music, arts, astronomy, cartography, and chemistry. The newest image is the iPod from 2001 and the oldest is the Chavet

This book was suggested to me by a library patron – a nurse.  This non-fiction, cultural anthropology book describes an arrival of South East Asian community of Hmongs to a small town called Merced, California in the 1980s.  The Hmong people who lived for centuries in isolation, with their history dating back to the 3rd century, were given a refugee status in America for their support of CIA militaristic efforts in Laos. This book is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions of cultural classes and misunderstanding.  A little Hmong girl Lia is diagnosed with epilepsy and is brought to be treated