Each month, the Columbia Public Library offers selections from its collection related to a current best-seller or hot topic. Library Associate Nathan Ferguson compiled this month’s selections.

“After about two months of the war, I decided to do something normal, ordinary, necessary. I took my eight-year-old daughter for a haircut,” journalist Maram Humaid wrote in October 2024 for Al Jazeera, recounting her first year reporting the war on Gaza. Visiting with Najla the hairdresser, Humaid is moved by her generosity in sharing stories that Najla’s clients have shared. These “side-stories” are in some ways at odds with the pressing priorities of Humaid’s journalism.

The necessity Humaid discovers in these ordinary stories speaks to alternative ways of grasping the flow of events or “sit

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