Category Archives: Displays

Artificial Intelligence – Redpath Book Display, September 2024

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Everywhere you look today, you will see signs of artificial intelligence (AI) all around you — from the apps on your phone to the algorithms behind the scenes. While AI might feel like a recent phenomenon, its roots trace back to the 1950s—making it older than Tim Hortons!

What’s changed is the surge of new AI tools now available to the public, transforming how we interact with technology. That is why you are hearing more and more about AI every day.

Below, you will find a few recommended reads from our Redpath Book Display for the month of September highlighting the topic of “Artificial Intelligence”. Have a good read!

A concise but informative overview of AI ethics and policy. Artificial intelligence, or AI for short, has generated a staggering amount of hype in the past several years. Authored by experts in fields ranging from computer science and law to philosophy and cognitive science, this book offers a concise overview of moral, political, legal and economic implications of AI. It covers the basics of AI’s latest permutation, machine learning, and considers issues such as transparency, bias, liability, privacy, and regulation. Both business and government have integrated algorithmic decision support systems into their daily operations, and the book explores the implications for our lives as citizens.

Groundbreaking narrative on the urgency of ethically designed AI and a guidebook to reimagining life in the era of intelligent technology A Human Algorithm: How Artificial Intelligence Is Redefining Who We Are examines the immense impact intelligent technology will have on humanity. These machines, while challenging our personal beliefs and our socio-economic world order, also have the potential to transform our health and well-being, alleviate poverty and suffering, and reveal the mysteries of intelligence and consciousness. International human rights attorney Flynn Coleman deftly argues that it is critical we instill values, ethics, and morals into our robots, algorithms, and other forms of AI. Equally important, we need to develop and implement laws, policies, and oversight mechanisms to protect us from tech’s insidious threats. To realize AI’s transcendent potential, Coleman advocates for inviting a diverse group of voices to participate in designing our intelligent machines and using our moral imagination to ensure that human rights, empathy, and equity are core principles of emerging technologies. Ultimately, A Human Algorithm is a clarion call for building a more humane future and moving conscientiously into a new frontier of our own design.

The United States has long been the leader in Artificial Intelligence. But Dr. Kai-Fu Lee–one of the world’s most respected experts on AI–reveals that China has caught up to the US at an astonishingly rapid pace. As Sino-American competition in AI heats up, Lee envisions China and the US forming a powerful duopoly in AI. He outlines the upheaval of traditional jobs, how the suddenly unemployed will find new ways of making their lives meaningful, and how the Chinese and American governments will have to cope with the changing economic landscape.

How will AI evolve and what major innovations are on the horizon? What will its impact be on the job market, economy, and society? What is the path toward human-level machine intelligence? What should we be concerned about as artificial intelligence advances? Architects of Intelligence contains a series of in-depth, one-to-one interviews where New York Times bestselling author, Martin Ford, uncovers the truth behind these questions from some of the brightest minds in the Artificial Intelligence community. Martin has wide-ranging conversations with twenty-three of the world’s foremost researchers and entrepreneurs working in AI and robotics.

Addressing major issues in the design of intelligent machines, such as consciousness and environment, and covering everything from the influential groundwork of Alan Turing to the cutting-edge robots of today, Introducing Artificial Intelligence is a uniquely accessible illustrated introduction to this fascinating area of science.

Enduring Conflict: Children’s Stories of War and Survival – a Redpath Book Display

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Children have long been the innocent victims of war, enduring unimaginable suffering and loss. Therefore, The Redpath Book Display for August is on the theme of “Children and War.” The Humanities and Social Sciences Library has put together a thoughtful collection that highlights the voices of these children through literature, history, and personal accounts. These books and films highlight children’s lives who have been afflicted by armed conflicts since WWII.

A photo of the Redpath Book Display

Here are some notable titles from the display:

  1. “Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine” by Refaat Alareer: This collection features short stories from young Palestinian writers in Gaza, who share their experiences of life under occupation and conflict. Their stories highlight resilience, fear, and hope amidst war (2008-2009), offering personal glimpses into a region often depicted only through politics and violence.
  2. “The Drone Eats with Me: Diaries from a City Under Fire” by Atef Abu Saif: Abu Saif’s powerful diary details life in Gaza during Israel’s 2014 military offensive. Saif’s narrative is raw and vivid, detailing the daily struggle to survive amidst the constant presence of drones and bombings.
  3. “Beasts of No Nation” by Uzodinma Iweala: Agu, a young boy in an unnamed West African nation, is recruited into a unit of guerrilla fighters as civil war engulfs his country. Haunted by his father’s own death at the hands of militants, which he fled just before witnessing, Agu is vulnerable to the dangerous yet paternal nature of his new commander.
  4. “The Breadwinner” by Deborah Ellis: Young Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan. Because he has a foreign education, her father is arrested by the Taliban.
  5. “War Brothers” by Sharon E. McKay: This graphic novel provides a harrowing look at child soldiers in Uganda. It follows the lives of boys abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army and their desperate journey to escape, offering a deep and empathetic portrayal of their struggles.
  6. “To the Starry Island” by Park Kwang-su: Moon Chae-Ku and his friend Kim Chul try to bring the body of Moon’s father back to his native Kwisong Island for burial. Their ferry is intercepted by resentful islanders who will not let the boat dock, because of the father’s political activities during the Korean War.
  7. “Children’s Rights and International Development: lessons and challenges from the field” This collection of essays, edited by Myriam Denov (Professor & Canada Research Chair at McGill; Director of Global Child McGill), Richard Maclure, and Kathryn Campbell, combines accounts of the experiences and perspectives of marginalized children in ten developing countries with critical assessments of current child rights policies and strategies of intervention.

This collection at the Redpath Library is a reflection on the resilience and bravery of children facing the horrors of war. These stories provide insight into the psychological, emotional, and physical toll of conflict on children, offering readers a way to connect with history and current global issues through the eyes of its youngest victims. Visit the Redpath Library display to explore these in addition to other impactful works.

Add Colour to Your Collection With This Book Display!

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Though we are often told not to judge a book by its cover, we may have to make an exception for January’s Redpath Book Display.

This month, the main floor of Redpath received a colourful twist with our “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” book display. Featuring all types of genres from romance to mystery, fantasy and history, this display will be sure to catch your eye with all seven colours of the rainbow!

Below are a few picks from the January display. For the full collection, check out the in-person display at the McLennan-Redpath Library, or the Virtual Book Display!

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz

Farlingaye Hall is a beautiful hotel in Suffolk on the east coast of England. Unfortunately, it is also the site of the brutal murder of Frank Parris, a retired advertising executive. Stefan Codrescu, a Romanian maintenance man, is arrested after police discover blood spatter on his clothes and bed linen. He is found guilty and sentenced to eight years in prison. It appears to be an open-and-shut case, but there is more to it than meets the eye.

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors—Indigenous, Black, and white—in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story—and the song—of America itself.

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

James deftly chronicles the lives of a host of unforgettable characters – gunmen, drug dealers, one-night stands, CIA agents,  even ghosts – over the course of thirty years as they roam the streets of 1970s Kingston, dominate the crack houses of 1980s New York, and ultimately reemerge into the radically altered Jamaica of the 1990s. Along the way, they learn that evil does indeed cast long shadows, that justice and retribution are inextricably linked, and that no one can truly escape his fate.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

A series of mysterious events gets Flavia’s attention: A dead bird is found on the doormat, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. A mysterious late-night visitor argues with her aloof father, Colonel de Luce, behind closed doors. And in the early morning Flavia finds a red-headed stranger lying in the cucumber patch and watches him take his dying breath. For Flavia, the summer begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw: “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed. With stunning revelations and multiple threads, and in prose that is vibrantly alive and original, Groff delivers a deeply satisfying novel about love, art, creativity, and power that is unlike anything that has come before it. Profound, surprising, propulsive, and emotionally riveting, it stirs both the mind and the heart.

Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

Shortly after Ellingham Academy opened, Albert Ellingham’s wife and daughter were kidnapped. The only real clue was a mocking riddle listing methods of murder, signed with the frightening pseudonym “Truly, Devious.” It became one of the great unsolved crimes of American history. True-crime aficionado Stevie Bell is set to begin her first year at Ellingham Academy, and she has an ambitious plan: She will solve this cold case.

Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor

Located in a nameless desert somewhere in the great American Southwest, Night Vale is a small town where ghosts, angels, aliens, and government conspiracies are all commonplace parts of everyday life. It is here that the lives of two women, with two mysteries, will converge.