The South College Library provides students, faculty, and staff access to over 100,000 eBooks. Find eBooks related to your academic studies, personal interests, and self-improvement. Do you enjoy reading fiction books? The library’s collection includes novels, collections of short stories, and poetry too.
Grain and Fire: A History of Baking in the American South by Rebecca Sharpless
While a luscious layer cake may exemplify the towering glory of southern baking, like everything about the American South, baking is far more complicated than it seems. Rebecca Sharpless here weaves a brilliant chronicle, vast in perspective and entertaining in detail, revealing how three global food traditions—Indigenous American, European, and African—collided with and merged in the economies, cultures, and foodways of the South to create what we know as the southern baking tradition. Sharpless takes delight in deflating stereotypes as she delves into the surprising realities underlying the creation and consumption of baked goods. People who controlled the food supply in the South used baking to reinforce their power and make social distinctions. Who used white cornmeal and who used yellow, who put sugar in their cornbread and who did not had traditional meanings for Southerners, as did the proportions of flour, fat, and liquid in biscuits. By the twentieth century, however, the popularity of convenience foods and mixes exploded in the region, as it did nationwide. Still, while some regional distinctions have waned, baking in the South continues to be a remarkable, and remarkably tasty, source of identity and entrepreneurship.
In Search of The Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece by Salamishah Tillet
Mixing cultural criticism, literary history, biography, and memoir, Salamishah Tillet explores Alice Walker's critically acclaimed and controversial novel, The Color Purple. Alice Walker made history in 1983 when she became the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Color Purple. Published in the Reagan era amid a severe backlash to civil rights, the Jazz Age novel tells the story of racial and gender inequality through the life of a 14-year-old girl from Georgia who is haunted by domestic and sexual violence. The Color Purple received both praise and criticism upon publication, and the conversation it sparked around race and gender continues today.
The Introvert's Complete Career Guide: From Landing a Job, to Surviving, Thriving, and Moving on Up by Jane Finkle
What do Elon Musk, Warren Buffet, Marissa Mayer, and Bill Gates all have in common outside of being wildly successful? They are all introverts. In today's fast-paced, unstable workplace achieving success requires speaking up, promoting oneself and one's ideas, and taking initiative. Extroverts, fearless in tooting their own horns, naturally thrive in this environment, but introverts often stumble. If you question your ability to perform and succeed in this extroverted work culture, The Introvert's Complete Career Guide is custom fit for you. In this supportive, all-inclusive handbook, Jane Finkle demonstrates how to use your introverted qualities to their best advantage, then add a sprinkling of extroverted skills to round out a forceful combination for ultimate career success. Finkle shares the keys to navigating each stage of professional development--from self-assessment and job searching, to survival in a new position and career advancement.
NFL Football: A History of America's New National Pastime by Richard Crepeau
A multibillion-dollar entertainment empire, the National Football League is a coast-to-coast obsession that borders on religion and dominates our sports-mad culture. But today's NFL also provides a stage for playing out important issues roiling American society. The updated and expanded edition of NFL Football observes the league's centennial by following the NFL into the twenty-first century, where off-the-field concerns compete with touchdowns and goal line stands for headlines. Richard Crepeau delves into the history of the league and breaks down the new era with an in-depth look at the controversies and dramas swirling around pro football today: Tensions between players and Commissioner Roger Goodell over collusion, drug policies, and revenue; The firestorm surrounding Colin Kaepernick and protests of police violence and inequality; Andrew Luck and others choosing early retirement over the threat to their long-term health; Paul Tagliabue's role in covering up information on concussions; The Super Bowl's evolution into a national holiday. Authoritative and up to the minute, NFL Football continues the epic American success story.
The Carriers: What the Fragile X Gene Reveals About Family, Heredity, and Scientific Discovery by Anne Skomorowsky
A tiny mutation on the X chromosome can shape a family's history. Passed down from a “carrier” parent to a child, fragile X syndrome is the most common inherited cause of intellectual disability and autism. Beyond that—and a rarity among genetic disorders—some fragile X carriers not only transmit the mutation but also experience related conditions themselves. In such cases, carriers can have tremors, infertility, and psychiatric disorders that complicate raising children with fragile X syndrome—and all too often, they suffer in silence. The Carriers investigates this common but still little-known genetic condition and its life-altering consequences. Anne Skomorowsky reveals how this disorder afflicts families across generations, telling the stories of the mothers and grandparents of fragile X patients and considering how genes interact with family dynamics. She interweaves the personal narratives and family histories of the people affected by fragile X disorders with clear and accessible explanations of the science behind them.
Aero-Neurosis: Pilots of the First World War and the Psychological Legacies of Combat by Mark C. Wilkins
The young men who flew and fought during the First World War had no idea what was awaiting them. The “technology shock” that coalesced at the Western Front was not envisaged by any of the leadership or medical establishment. Despite the attendant horrors many men experienced, some felt that the dynamic context of aerial combat was something that, after the war, they still longed for... Doctors argued over best practice for treatment. Of course, the military wanted these men to return to duty as quickly as possible; with mounting casualties, each country needed every man. Aviation psychiatry arose as a new subset of the field, attempting to treat psychological symptoms previously unseen in combatants. The unique conditions of combat flying produced a whole new type of neurosis. Terms such as “aero-neurosis” were coined to provide the necessary label yet, like shell shock, they were inadequate when it came to describing the full and complete shock to the psyche. Wilkins includes expert medical testimony and excerpts where relevant in a fascinating book that explores the legacies of aerial combat, illustrating the ways in which pilots had to amalgamate their suffering and experiences into their postwar lives. Their attempts to do so can perhaps be seen as an extension of their heroism.
It happens to the best of us: you start off the quarter feeling ready for your new classes and then as the quarter progresses, you feel as though you’re just going through the motions. If you’re feeling like this, there is a high chance you’re experiencing academic burnout. Academic burnout is a negative emotional, physical, and mental reaction to studying for prolonged periods of time, working on the same project for a while, or being in school for years and feeling the stress of it weighing down on you. Other factors that can lead to burnout include lack of sleep, poor eating habits, poor time management, piles of schoolwork, and prolonged stress due to studying. Burnout can happen when you start to feel overwhelmed with your workload and in turn, this might cause you to lose motivation and energy.
Signs of academic burnout
Feeling exhausted
Lacking motivation for assignments
Lacking motivation to participate in class
Incapability to meet deadlines
Tension in your body, such as headaches or sore muscles
Inability to concentrate
Increased stress and irritability
Increased feelings of anxiety or depression
Ways to avoid academic burnout
Try to schedule time for enjoyable activities and take time for yourself
Try to increase your physical activity
Weather permitting, go outside and enjoy nature
Develop good relationships with your professors and take advantage of office hours
Create small goals for yourself
Avoid procrastination as much as possible
Develop better time management skills
Try to create a better work-life balance
Give yourself grace and accept that you’re only human
If you find yourself experiencing academic burnout, one way to manage it is to reach out to others. This can be a trusted professor, student success advisor, family member, or friend, really anyone you feel comfortable sharing your feelings with. You do not have to silently suffer and having someone to confide in will help ease some of your mental stress. Another way to manage it is to not compare yourself to classmates. This will put unnecessary pressure on you to perform a certain way, which will cause more stress. Instead, create smaller, more manageable goals for yourself and remember that every student works at their own pace.
You should also check out the library’s LibGuide on student wellness. This guide provides resources that will help you manage stress, feelings of anxiety and depression, and more. There is a tab dedicated to mental wellness, and here you can find eBooks and articles related to understanding signs of depression as well as how to prioritize your wellbeing. There are eBooks talking about the power of gratitude and how practicing daily gratitude can shift your whole perspective.
Albert Einstein College of Medicine. (n.d.). Dealing with study burnout. https://www.einsteinmed.edu/education/student-affairs/academic-support-counseling/medical-school-challenges/study-burnout.aspx
University of the People. (2023, October 13). What is academic burnout? https://www.uopeople.edu/blog/what-is-academic-burnout/