Nonfiction, Biography & Memoir New Releases
Educational & Informative Books to Expand Your Mind
Feed your insatiable curiosity and need for knowledge this summer with the most absorbing nonfiction, biography and memoir new releases. Designed to broaden your horizons, this genre dives deep into historical events, science and human triumphs written by world-renowned experts, journalists and historians. To guide your quest for knowledge, our in-house editorial team conducts exhaustive research, scouring reader reviews, presales numbers and librarian recommendations to choose the most enlightening new titles for Lifelong Learners like you.
August Nonfiction New Releases
Daylight Come: Harry Belafonte and the World He Made
by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro - Henry Louis Gates
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by The New York Times
"Daylight Come takes us to places no biography in recent memory has. ... This book fills the heart and mind, and is essential reading for our times." – Hilton Als
A vibrant, revealing portrait of the "King of Calypso," whose extraordinary performing career and activism helped remake America through the civil rights era and beyond
Even three years after his death, Harry Belafonte is everywhere. You can't go to a wedding, or to a sports arena, without hearing "Day-O," "Jump in the Line" or "Jamaica Farewell." The Harlem-born son of Caribbean immigrants, Belafonte turned the folk music of the islands into American pop and shaped the fantasy of Caribbean life that endures as an ideal and as a multibillion-dollar tourist industry.
Belafonte released the first million-selling LP in history. He was America's first Black movie star, the first Black person to produce a prime-time special on network TV and the first to win an Emmy Award. He was once the highest-paid Black performer of all time, beloved by Black and white fans alike, even under segregation. His artistic career helped create the pop culture of the 20th century, and his political activism reshaped the course of American history.
In this sparkling new biography, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro brings Belafonte's personality and music vibrantly to life, following him from rags to riches and from Harlem to Jamaica to the March on Washington. Jelly-Schapiro takes us inside Belafonte's lifelong brotherhood with Sidney Poitier, his friendship with Fidel Castro, his collaboration with Nelson Mandela and the sometimes shocking therapeutic relationships his difficult upbringing necessitated.
At the heart of the story is Belafonte's bond with Martin Luther King Jr., whose cause Belafonte would champion for the rest of his life. That commitment to the greater good would sustain him and benefit untold numbers--and would come at a cost.
The indelible story of an American icon -- and a provocative study of authenticity, fame and conviction -- Daylight Come is, like Harry Belafonte himself, brimming with style and consequence.
Depraved: The Story of Dangerous Art
by Daisy Dixon
"Timely and punchy ... won't let you look away" -- The Guardian
"Essential, sparklingly smart." -- Dan Jones, New York Times bestselling author of The Plantagenets and Henry V
A bold, expansive argument for a new way to understand immoral art in our time of cultural and political upheaval
In this unconventional journey through the history of art, philosopher and artist Daisy Dixon explores works of art that society has condemned as depraved, obscene or dangerous, from prehistoric sculpture to extreme metal music, videogames to classical paintings. Interrogating our sense of morality, past and present, Depraved asks readers to engage with essential questions about art, censorship, social progress and the eternal debate over right and wrong. Can an artwork speak? How can it shape or distort our world? Who gets to decide whether a work of art is depraved, and what are the qualities that make it so? And of course, what should we do about it?
As art is subjected to renewed criticism in the cultural and political spheres, it is imperative that we examine it with care. Only by understanding the long history of depraved art can we begin to bring our own age into focus. Art can be dangerous, but censorship can be equally catastrophic. Where does this leave us? With wit, fascinating anecdotes and shrewd analysis, Dixon crafts a path forward that demands a new understanding of the nature of art itself.
Duct Tape and Determination: A True Story of Turning Devastation Into Grit
by Jacky Hunt-Broersma - Cindy Kuzma - Mirna Valerio
"Duct Tape and Determination is the unexpected story of Jacky Hunt-Broersma, who is forced to find courage and determination, inviting the reader to do as she does: Just keep going. A truly inspiring read for striving under any passion or craft." -- DEENA KASTOR, Olympic medalist and New York Times bestselling author of Let Your Mind Run
Struggle. Overcome. Inspire.
For Jacky Hunt-Broersma, a cancer diagnosis in her mid-20s brought a life-changing challenge: a below-the-knee amputation. Navigating her new reality, Jacky first kept her difference hidden as she learned to walk and do daily activities using a prosthesis. Years later, inspired by her husband's passion for races, Jacky started to run and hasn't stopped since. Two decades after losing her leg, she ran 104 marathons in 104 consecutive days, setting a world record.
Duct Tape and Determination is more than a running memoir; it's a story of turning pain into purpose. With honesty and humor, Jacky shares the highs and lows of her journey: the blisters and breakdowns, the finish lines and triumphs and the duct tape fixes that kept her moving forward.
Her story proves that persistence, positivity and grit can take you farther than you ever imagined, wherever it is you're hoping your life will take you.
"Jacky Hunt-Broersma pulls you in from the very first mile, taking you from cancer patient to internationally recognized runner with heart and humor. Her story is a powerful reminder how life-changing simply putting one foot in front of the other can be." -- Dimity McDowell, cohost of Another Mother Runner and author of The 27th Mile: How to Smooth the Rough Transition Out of Your Running Years
Exhumed: Unearthing the History of the American Vampire
by Aaron Mahnke
An engrossing and macabre exploration of the folklore and early medical practices that led to the New England Vampire Panic in the 1890s, from critically acclaimed podcaster and bestselling author Aaron Mahnke.
What would drive a man to exhume the body of his daughter and remove her heart? That question has haunted Aaron Mahnke, creator and host of the award-winning podcast Lore. Fueled by a decade of research, Mahnke excavates the past to understand the hysteria that fueled the ghastly exhumation of Mercy Brown in 1892, who like her mother and sister before her, succumbed to "consumption" at the age of 19.
With Exhumed, Mahnke presents a unique history of the intersection of folklore and science and how pop culture and both genuine medical advancements and pseudoscience of the time shaped the perspectives of people in 19th century America. From the death of George Washington to Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein, Mahnke leads reads on a fascinating journey through history, touching on methods of mummification, the multifaceted role of executioners, medicine made from corpses, European folklore that traveled across the Atlantic and so much more.
He reveals that as shocking as Brown's exhumation might seem, it also reflected surprisingly common attitudes and beliefs about the relationship between the dead and the living, the nature of science and magic and the fate of a human soul. It all builds to a revelatory understanding of human behavior that continues to this very day.
Possessing an irreverent view of science, history and the human condition, Exhumed is perfect for fans of Mary Roach's Stiff, as well as readers of forgotten American histories like Brad Meltzer's New York Times bestselling The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington.
I, Julius Caesar: A Graphic History of an Extraordinary Destiny
by Alfred de Montesquiou - Névil Névil
Few people have made a bigger mark on history and lived such an adventurous life as Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE). A sickly orphan boy who would climb to the top of the Roman Empire, his life was nothing short of legendary. How could Julius, a scrawny, penniless teenager, become Caesar, the most powerful man in the world? How could he vanquish every enemy who crossed his path, only to be assassinated by men he called friends? To tell this story, there's no one better than Caesar himself, and thanks to extraordinarily intensive research, he can do so here.
Brought to life through striking illustrations, this is a chronicle of the man who was a triumphant general, shrewd politician and tyrannical dictator. Beginning with his humble roots in Suburra, Caesar brings readers along for bloody battles against his rival, Pompey, and into heated debates on the floor of the Roman Senate. He recounts the campaign that led him into Egypt -- and to an affair with Cleopatra -- and his reforms in Roman society, from the calendar to a census. And in his own words, Caesar narrates his own death on March 15, 44 BCE, the Ides of March.
Award-winning journalist, author and documentary filmmaker Alfred de Montesquiou interviewed over 30 of the world's most eminent historians of ancient Rome, many of whom specialize in different periods of Caesar's life, which made it possible to pull off a stupendous feat -- to write this graphic history based exclusively on documented facts. Accompanied by masterful artwork by Névil, I, Julius Caesar is history like you've never experienced it before.
Mothers of Invention: A History of Creativity from the Greek Muses
by Moiya McTier
A rollicking, enlightening examination of humanity's changing relationship to creativity, written from the perspectives of the Greek Muses.
The thing that sets humans apart from other animals is our ability to create, to imagine how one thing could become something else. For millennia, art and science, fueled by creativity, have driven the advancement of civilization. From Socrates to Galileo to Ella Fitzgerald, so-called geniuses have left indelible marks on culture, but the creative's role in society is shifting.
The artists and scientists who were once seen as bastions of innovation and enlightenment have been reduced to mere entertainment in the age of media and celebrity. This degradation of art is as harmful as it is boring, putting undue pressure on fallible individuals and eroding the magic of true creative expression. But if you know how to look for them, the powerful and (mostly) benevolent Greek Muses can be seen uplifting creativity as they inspire humanity's major inventions throughout history.
In Mothers of Invention, the Greek Muses reveal how they meddled in mortal manners, from using astronomy to make sense of the universe to harnessing electricity to transform life on earth and on Olympus. They show the healing power of art through jazz, the equalizing power of science through healthcare and the communing power of creativity when we broadcast our stories to the world.
In sharing their perspectives on human history, the Muses offer insights into the origins of religion, democracy and physics, providing a decidedly mythical birds-eye view of these monumental developments. The result is a compelling call to creative action, recognizing the power of collaboration and reframing what it really means when inspiration strikes.
Notes of Deception: How a Quartet of American Musicians Outwitted the KGB (Original)
by Merryl Goldberg - Vince Houghton
How a Quartet of American Musicians Outwitted the KGB - The Untold History of a Daring Cold War Spy Mission
In 1985, while the United States engaged in a battle of nuclear brinkmanship, four Americans landed in Moscow on a mission to smuggle secret information in and out using music as their cipher. Under the watchful eye of the KGB, the group faced countless challenges and risks because they weren't trained in espionage. In fact, they were musicians with the New England-based Yiddish-music focused Klezmer Conservatory Band (KCB).
Now, the quartet's saxophonist, Merryl Goldberg, together with Vince Houghton, the Director of the National Security Agency's National Cryptologic Museum, tell the harrowing story of how Goldberg devised an ingenious plan to encode the intelligence within the group's sheet music.
FEATURED ON:
- People.com
- The Mark Thompson Show
- Now I've Heard Everything
- A Way with Words
The Wound Is Where the Light Enters: A Memoir of Resilience
by Chris Young
The inspiring memoir of a brilliant young man who, sentenced to life in prison, refused to surrender his future, a story so powerful that it transformed even the judge who handed down the sentence.
If our world were more just, Chris Young would have been crossing a stage at college graduation at the age of 22. Instead, he was marched into a maximum-security federal prison, facing life under mandatory drug sentencing laws. Like far too many young Black men from his neighborhood in Clarksville, Tennessee, this was where his story was supposed to end.
But one day in the prison library, a book caught his eye: an encyclopedia. As he began to turn the pages, Chris felt himself transported. Knowledge became a portal. He began to confront the nihilism around him, the trauma of his past and the cruelty of a system determined to confine him. From the library, his cell and even solitary confinement, Chris built an education from scratch, studying philosophy, art, anthropology, history, physics and politics. He learned to analyze the stock market and taught himself how to code without a computer.
He trained his mind and refused to let prison dictate the limits of his imagination. At his sentencing hearing, Chris gave such a moving speech that the judge resigned from his lifetime appointment to the bench and fought to free him.
Started in solitary confinement and finished beyond bars, The Wound Is Where the Light Enters is a powerful meditation on choice, consequence and human potential, told through the story of a man who was never given a chance and who fought until, at last, he was.
July Nonfiction New Releases
Dad, Love, Me: A Memoir
by Matthew Quick
Written in the form of a letter to his ailing father, this debut memoir from the bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook explores the complicated burden of caring for an abusive parent who is dying--here is Matthew Quick's most personal and potent work to date.
"This book will gut you and then, somehow, put you back together." --Scott Galloway - "Dad, Love, Me is a masterpiece....It will change people's lives." -- Lori Gottlieb - "A gut punch of a memoir...What a gift this book is." -- Catherine Newman - "For all its heavy subject matter, the book has a remarkably light touch and sense of grace." -- Kirkus Reviews
On the surface, Matthew Quick seemed to have it all -- a loving wife, a thriving career as a novelist and a beautiful home. He'd traveled all over the world advocating for mental health awareness, standing before crowds as a success story. But secretly, he was depressed and some days, he didn't want to live.
Years earlier, when he first told his father he wanted to be a novelist, the response was immediate and brutal: "Idiot!" That voice--angry and belittling--would echo through Quick's mind for years. He channeled his pain into his debut novel, The Silver Linings Playbook, crafting a complex father-son dynamic drawn straight from his own life. The book became a New York Times bestseller and was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. Still, the approval Quick longed for never came. His father remained cold and withholding. The deeper the rift between them grew, the deeper Quick sank into anxiety and addiction.
In this book, Quick takes readers deep into his psyche, as he wrestles with both his own mental health and his father's cognitive decline. A health scare finally forces Quick to get sober, but then, overcome by creative paralysis, writer's block threatens to end his career. The blank page is unbearable. As his desperation for healing peaks, Quick turns to a Jungian analyst he nicknames "Zeus." In the safety of analysis, as Quick's repressed pain and shame surface, he finally cracks. Just as he is putting himself back together, his father is diagnosed with dementia.
Suddenly, the clock is ticking. If there is ever going to be reconciliation, it has to happen now. Quick and his wife pack up their lives in coastal North Carolina, drive eight hours, and move into a house just around the corner from Quick's parents, on an island right outside of Beaufort, South Carolina. There, as his father slips further and further away, Quick races to make a healing connection.
Dad, Love, Me is Quick's raw, vulnerable and deeply moving account of what it means to forgive a parent who never really knew how to love you. It's about wounds that never fully heal, and the power of showing up anyway. This beautifully brave and life-affirming memoir is a must read for anyone who has been starved of love but wants to keep loving anyway.
Aging Out: An Exploration of Caregiving, Community, and How Americans Grow Old
by Lucy Schiller
A profoundly personal investigation into the current state of eldercare and what it means to grow old in America
"Schiller unpacks a complicated subject with curiosity and empathy ... [A] deeply human portrayal of what it means to get older in a society unprepared to care for its most vulnerable." -- Publishers Weekly
Unlike many other cultures, our collective stance toward older people in the United States has long been one of casual avoidance and neglect. This attitude became brutally clear during the height of the COVID pandemic, when too many people saw elderly deaths not as tragedies but as foregone conclusions.
Like many of us, Lucy Schiller experienced this callousness firsthand when her grandmother passed away during the pandemic. In the wake of this trauma, propelled by equal parts grief and curiosity about her own fear of aging, Schiller embarked on an investigative journey to understand why the prospect of aging is so frightening and how being "old" in America intersects with class, race, disability, and public policy.
From profit-driven networks of care facilities to systemic failures in economic support, the future of older Americans looks increasingly uncertain. In Aging Out, Schiller reports this crisis, sharing the human toll of inadequate housing, health care, and community, while simultaneously excavating her own complicated relationship with aging.
Combining the incisive reporting of Evicted with the beautifully rendered introspection of The Empathy Exams, Aging Out is an intimate and unflinching exploration of what it means to age in this country and why Americans, including Schiller herself, are so terrified of getting old.
American Alt: A True Story of Madness and Friendship in a Fractured Country
by Chris Lockhart
A glimpse into the mind of an American conspiracy theorist, the schizophrenia, trauma, and misinformation that drove him to the brink, and the friendship that brought him back.
"A mesmerizing, compassionate, and deeply meaningful exploration of a perilous corridor of American life." - Robert Kolker, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Hidden Valley Road
Named a Best Summer Read by The Los Angeles Times
On the eve of January 6, 2021, Michael Dodd and his three friends found themselves in a stolen vehicle on the grounds of the Washington State Capitol, armed to the teeth, and ready to kidnap Governor Jay Inslee. Only there weren't actually three others in the car-Michael was alone. Months later, the violent plan thwarted, Michael sat in a psychiatric hospital and learned that he was struggling with undiagnosed schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder. His knowledge of that fateful day was spotty, fractured by the different personality states he now knew were affecting his reality. Skeptical of a state mental health system, but anxious to find out how his world turned upside down, he reached out to a longtime friend, the author Chris Lockhart, for help.
American Alt is the odyssey of two friends trying to piece together the fragments of Michael's shattered memory and uncover the truth of what pushed him to the edge. Set against the beautiful but economically fractured Pacific Northwest where both men rambled in their youth, Lockhart delivers a suspenseful, profoundly moving story of discovery and affirmation.
Blow by Blow: The Jeff Beck Story
by Brad Tolinski - Chris Gill
From the house authors of the critically acclaimed oral history on Eddie Van Halen, Eruption, a revealing narrative biography of legendary British guitarist Jeff Beck featuring brand new interviews with the icon himself as well as his famous colleagues, collaborators, and loved ones
With his shag haircut and white Stratocaster guitar, Jeff Beck was an icon known and loved by millions. Yet somehow, he maintained the ineffable low profile cool of a cult hero as he glided through six decades of musical trends with nary a lapse in taste. Not to say he ever played it safe. What other guitarist can lay claim to performing with opera star Luciano Pavarotti, mainstream television personality Kelly Clarkson, and professional degenerates like Guns N' Roses with equal grace and wit? Or as Beck himself once quipped, "I'm an awkward son of a bitch when it comes to doing the expected."
In Blow by Blow: The Jeff Beck Story, Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill return to chart the unexplored life of rock's greatest and perhaps most enigmatic instrumentalist. Culled from approximately 30 hours of interviews with the late guitarist himself, numerous conversations with those closest to him, and extensive research, the book sheds new light on the genius that Jimmy Page once said, “shifted the whole sound and face of electric guitar music.”
Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War
by Jane Rogoyska
Since its opening in 1910, the Hotel Lutetia has been a grand Paris institution, a meeting place for artists, intellectuals, musicians, and politicians. André Gide took his lunch here, James Joyce lived in one of its rooms, Picasso and Matisse were regular guests. But the hotel has a darker history, too--from the years before, during, and after the second World War. In this short period, the Lutetia witnessed some of the most dramatic and terrible events in recent history.
In Hotel Exile, Jane Rogoyska evokes in novelistic prose the emotions, dilemmas, and fates of the hotel's patrons. In the 1930s, Europe's bohemian artists and political activists, forced to flee their homes when Hitler came to power, met at the Lutetia with the hope of forming an alternative government. But when war came, Paris was occupied, and the hotel became the headquarters of the German military intelligence service--and the center of their operation to root out enemies of the Reich. In 1945, the Lutetia was requisitioned once more, this time transformed into a reception center for Holocaust survivors who sought refuge after the Liberation. Rogoyska explores what it meant for these three profoundly different groups to live in exile, under the shadow of the dark ideology that dictated the course of their lives.
A masterpiece of empathy and concision, Hotel Exile is about what happens at the edges of a war, passing through the doors of a normally functioning hotel, a site under occupation, and, finally, a shelter and place of healing. Jane Rogoyska's extraordinary new book offers us a vision of individual human beings desperately trying to find a path through some of the twentieth century's most devastating events.
The Solo Honeymoon: A Brief Beautiful True Love Story
by Laura Murphy - Bret Witter
A romantic, life-affirming memoir about a young woman's solo honeymoon to Europe after her fiancé's sudden death weeks before their wedding, and the community of hope and wonder she built along the way
When Laura and Devon sat down to plan their honeymoon, Castellina in Chianti, Italy, was the obvious destination. Four months later, Laura found herself standing in a secret spot at the edge of the village watching the sunset. It would have been perfect, if Devon had been there with her. But Laura's fiancé, the love of her life, had died in her arms a month before their wedding.
The Solo Honeymoon follows Laura as she faces her fears and heartbreak by going alone on the honeymoon she had planned with Devon. From screaming from the mountaintops in Ireland to wandering the busy streets of London to dining on the French Riviera and watching the sun set over Castellina, Laura travels across Europe to find solid ground. Along the way, readers learn her unique love story and come to know Devon and what made their relationship so special.
The result is a beautiful exploration of what it means to choose life in the face of unimaginable pain. The Solo Honeymoon shines a light on the joy of love, the depths of grief, and all the beauty there is in the world.
They Stole a City: Wilmington's White Supremacist Coup and the Families Who Live with Its Legacy
by Lauren Collins
In this ambitious and groundbreaking history, Lauren Collins weaves together stories of four Wilmington, North Carolina, families over 125 years to create a full accounting of the long-term effects of the 1898 white supremacist massacre and coup and its critical role in subverting American democracy
After the Civil War, Reconstruction ushered in an era of political equality and economic opportunity for Black people, and it lasted longer in Wilmington than almost anywhere else. In 1898, Wilmington was a bastion of Black success: Black cultural life flourished, while a thriving Black middle class brimmed with lawyers, educators, and elected officials. The city became a symbol of Black hope--only for all of it to come to a violent end on November 10, 1898.
In this epic, multigenerational narrative, Lauren Collins traces the fates of four Wilmington families: the Howes, the Halseys, the Moores, and the Bellamy/MacRaes, all of whom were present on the day when a mob of white supremacists launched a murderous coup to "take the city." After issuing a "White Declaration of Independence," white men gunned down scores of Black men, chasing their families into hiding. Then they marched to city hall, where they overthrew the democratically elected, multiracial local government at gunpoint in what is thought to be the only successful coup d'état on American soil.
No one knows exactly how many Black citizens they murdered--surely dozens, likely hundreds--while driving thousands of survivors and their white allies out of town. Folklore among both Black and white Wilmingtonians holds that the Cape Fear River ran red. While the effects of this episode of racial terrorism would ricochet through the next century of our nation's history, no one was ever prosecuted or punished, and many of the details have been largely--and deliberately--forgotten.
In collaboration with living descendants of Black and white families, Collins seeks to create a more complete understanding of 1898 than can be drawn solely from the archives. She follows these four families and their descendants through the eras of segregation and Jim Crow, the Great Migration, the Civil Rights movement, and school desegregation, all the way up to the Black Lives Matter and racial justice protests in 2020, emphasizing the lasting and consequential effects of 1898 on the city and people of Wilmington.
Weaving together each generation's reckoning with their past and how it has imprinted on their present, They Stole a City is an ambitious and revelatory examination of American racial terror as it has played out in one Southern city, written in the conviction that the story of the 1898 Wilmington massacre and coup is, in fact, a story about America in 2025.
Unsayable: A Life in Writing
by Michael Cunningham
An intimate memoir portraying a life spent trying to describe the indescribable, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours and Day
Go ahead. Try using language to slit the skin of mortality to see what's on the other side.
At the age of 3, Michael Cunningham began obsessively collecting the names of things: oak, Chevrolet, finch, tulip, Tupperware ... Each word rendered the world ever so slightly more understandable, more describable, kicking off a lifelong love affair with language--one that would, eventually, maybe inevitably, lead him to become a writer.
In Unsayable, Cunningham's memories spill forth, and with them reflections on the craft of writing. He is fifteen, in a swimming pool at night, gazing at the first boy he ever fell in love with, who is lost in contemplative silence. He is a new college graduate, setting off for nowhere in a Dodge Dart, hoping to pull meaning (and a novel) from the expanse of America. He is on Cape Cod, regaling an elderly couple with invented tales of sexual escapades. He is in an art gallery, unwittingly having the first in a lifetime of conversations with the man he would marry. A thread ties each beautifully wrought moment to the next: what is unspoken, what won't yield to language, what is embellished beyond recognition, what is still left to say.
Luminous, perceptive, and powerful, Unsayable is an ode to literature, a meditation on craft, and an intimate account of a life spent trying to put into words that which resists depiction. This, it turns out, is the lifeblood of the fiction writer: the impossibility of capturing the human experience, and the relentless desire to try.
All My Dead Cats and Other Losses: Practicing Good Grief in a Culture That Fears Mourning
by S. E. Smith
Have you suffered a loss? How was your life changed by the grief you experienced? Did you feel like your grief was properly acknowledged? Mourning is a personal experience and shouldn't be judged. There are no do-overs in death, but there are do-betters.
All My Dead Cats is not a book about pet loss. You will meet award-winning journalist and debut author s.e. smith's cats and read small slices of their stories. Their vignettes serve as an opening to scary conversations about loss, so grief can feel less intimidating and more relatable.
This is a book about grief and mourning as collective activities best undertaken in community. S.e. interviews dozens of experts--from death doulas to funeral home directors to therapists and psychologists--and discusses the different stages of grief. The shared perspectives help us understand that grief is not fixable but it can be livable. They teach us that if we have the courage, which begins with honest conversations about how we navigate grief, then we can learn how to do better.
After reading you'll better understand:
Grief is not over once the body is neatly disposed of, the rubble of the house has been taken away in dumpsters, the final fit on the prosthesis is done, the law is passed and withstands legal challenges, or when the permanent peace is brokered. It is an ongoing shift in our relationship to the world, and one that deserves attention and care as well as time and space to be amongst fellow mourners, to whom we do not need to justify or explain, because they understand where we are.
Readers will feel seen rather than being chastised for how they grieve and better understand how to process mourning--and how to help others. All My Dead Cats provides an entry point, by beginning the conversation about a beloved pet, so readers can think about the larger stakes of death and live a more fulfilled life.
Bloodlines: A Story of Horses, Family, and Obsession
by Liza J Nicholas
Bloodlines: A Story of Horses, Family, and Obsession is a love story--of a mother's love for her husband and a father's love for horses. Combining memoir and social history with a journey into the world of horses, Liza J. Nicholas reveals how a parent's passions can determine the destiny of an entire family.
In the darkest days of the Depression, and still in high school, Nicholas's father, Chuck, escaped his fate on a failing Iowa farm and joined a local horse trainer on the nationwide county fair circuit. From the moment he fell in with the strutting strangers who passed through town at fair time, his life trajectory was set. He was ensorcelled by the thoroughbred, the most royal of equines. And even as he and his wife had children of their own, the menagerie of grooms, jockeys, trainers, and gamblers who made up the world of horse racing became his true family.
Set in western Montana, the Nebraska Sandhills, rural Iowa, and beyond, Bloodlines tells the story of how one man's passions ripple through generations. It is the story of a family who followed their father across the country in search of the fastest horse, the best deal, the promise of a payday.
June NonFiction New Releases
Monster of a Land: On the Road in Search of Modern America
by Lauren Hough
From The New York Times bestselling author of Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing comes an update of John Steinbeck's trip in Travels with Charley, a cross-country journey exploring modern America with Lauren Hough's signature observational wit, searing social commentary, and perspective as someone who knows what it's like to truly exist on the margins in this country.
"Monster of a Land is so much more than a road trip book. It's about the trips we never take, the people we lose before we get the chance, and what happens when you finally get in the goddamn car." -- Jennette McCurdy, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Half His Age and I'm Glad My Mom Died
Lauren Hough has always been haunted by the road trips she never got to take: no money, no vacation days, no car capable of making the trip. So, upon finally finding herself in a situation where such a trip might be possible--being a writer may not always pay better than being a bartender or a cable guy, but at least the schedule's flexible--she leaps at the chance, refurbishing a ramshackle 2001 Dodge van and setting off from Austin, Texas with her Husky mix Woody by her side.
Her influences feel obvious, but a lot has changed about the United States since the 1962 trip John Steinbeck chronicles in Travels with Charley. And Lauren Hough isn't John Steinbeck, unless the Noble Prize-winning author of The Grapes of Wrath had a secret past as a 6-foot lesbian and Air Force vet. But even better as a social lubricant than beer, a dog is the ultimate conversation starter.
With Woody as wingman, Lauren chats, at gas stations and restaurants and auto shops and bars, with an incredible cross-section of Americans from all walks of life and every possible political perspective. And as she circumnavigates the country, she documents, with all-too-rare empathy, what it means to be poor, to be marginalized and to be seen as Other in America.
Part travelogue, part social commentary and 100% Lauren Hough, Monster of a Land unites her poignant vulnerability, her hilarious narrative voice and her razor-sharp insights into a journey that will show us how far we've come as a country, and how far we still have to go.
Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me
by Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor
Part memoir by the daughter of the iconic comedian Richard Pryor, part exploration of the historical and contemporary use of the N-word, this hybrid book peels back the curtain on the life of Pryor and interrogates the most perplexing word in the American lexicon, a word he helped popularize.
The N-word is one of the most perplexing, controversial and misunderstood words in the American lexicon. It's a word that Elizabeth Pryor has not only contemplated, it's one that she has taught and observed up close.
When a white student quoted her father and blurted out the N-word in the middle of a class she was teaching, Professor Pryor's worlds collided. In that moment, she was forced to confront the history of the notorious slur in the United States, and her complicated relationship with her father Richard Pryor, who made the word a trademark of his comedy in the 1970s.
As she dives into her research, her own memories of the N-word come flooding back in unprocessed memories that she hadn't thought about for decades. In reckoning with those memories, Elizabeth goes on a more public journey of discovery of the messy and sometimes surprising legacies of racism in the United States.
A braided narrative that seamlessly integrates the history of the N-word with Elizabeth's own story of growing up the Black Jewish daughter of Richard Pryor, Something We Said follows Elizabeth as she becomes a leading scholar and teacher of the very word her father put on the pop culture map.
Speed: How It Explains the World
by Vaclav Smil
A data-driven, scientific account of our need for speed, exploring a wide range of topics including evolution, transportation, and technology
In a world obsessed with efficiency, perhaps nothing is valued as highly as being fast. Some of our greatest achievements include building planes that break the sound barrier and creating computers that process data at the touch of a button. With signature clarity, Smil offers accessible explanations of every major speed category, from wind erosion to hunting cheetahs, from Boeing 747s to America's war time industrial mobilization to the speed of global energy decarbonization.
But as Smil argues in this paradigm-shifting book, speed isn't just a metric to optimize. In Speed, Smil expands on our traditional, human-centric understanding of speed to explore phenomena of space and time, evolution and human achievement. What was the speed of planet formation? Of the development of different life forms? What happened in the collision of humans and the limits of natural speed, and what has emerged from our incessant desire to push those boundaries?
Lauded for his "compelling, fascinating, realistic" (Steven Pinker) portraits of the modern world, Smil knows that we can't, won't and shouldn't abandon our collective need for speed. But as good devotees of speed's eminence, we must understand it, its value and its cost. Rich in historical and contemporary data, the latest work by Smil is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary guidebook for science readers living in the fast lane.
The American School of Spies: The Archaeologists Who Fought the Nazis and Saved the Treasures of Ancient Greece
by Stephan Talty
From the New York Times bestselling author, the incredible true story of the American archaeologists and classicists who went undercover as OSS spies during World War II to fight the Nazis and protect the world's most precious relics
In 1942, as head of the newly formed OSS, Wild Bill Donovan deployed spies across Europe and around the world to try to thwart the Nazis. In Greece, Nazis weren't just taking over territory; they were seizing and threatening to destroy some of the world's most important and valuable historical monuments and artifacts. So, Donovan tapped a young Ivy League-trained archaeologist named Rodney Young to assemble and lead a team of spies to collect intel.
Young set about recruiting the most unlikely of spies--academics, classicists, epigraphers and other specialists and scholars--who would come to be known as "the Greek Desk." These men and women, along with their Greek allies, went undercover and tried desperately to protect some of the world's most significant treasures.
The archaeologists hid priceless artifacts in ancient caves, bank vaults and even underneath the city of Athens itself. They created fakes to give over to the Nazis to appease their lust for these remarkable works. Ultimately, when it became clear the cat-and- mouse game on its own wasn't going to save Athens, they brought in an army of Greek-American soldiers to beat back the Nazi regime and save their homeland.
The Beasts of the East: The Fall and Rise of America's Eastern Wilderness
by Andrew Moore
"An exemplary work of environmental journalism." ― Kirkus, starred review
A fresh and fascinating portrait of the eastern wilds, The Beasts of the East is a celebration of the extraordinary lost natural wonder of the eastern U.S. -- an astonishingly abundant landscape that was once the center of American wildness before its despoliation -- and a revelatory journey through recent efforts to return elk, bison, wolves, and other creatures to their native landscapes
Before skyscrapers and smokestacks rose across the eastern U.S., elk, bison, wolves and cougars roamed. Typically imagined as icons of the West, these large mammals are in fact native to what was once a kind of Eden, towering forests in the Northeast, rolling prairies in the Midwest and cypress swamps in the Deep South. But, in mere decades, industrialization and unregulated hunting brought these emblems of the East to the precipice of extinction; by the 1950s, squirrels were one of the few wild mammals an easterner was likely to encounter.
Now, even as the climate and biodiversity crises loom, eastern wildlife are staging an unlikely comeback. Herds of bison graze on Illinois prairies, red wolves lurk in North Carolina's coastal marshes and abandoned coal mines in Kentucky are now home to thousands of elk. Such rewilding promises to restore balance to eastern ecosystems and return one of the most biodiverse regions in the world to its former luster, but not without controversy.
In The Beasts of the East, we follow environmental writer and James Beard Award finalist Andrew Moore as he meets conservationists, hunters, biologists and nature lovers as they confront herculean challenges: How can we enable wildlife migration in the midst of suburban sprawl? Are these success stories viable in the long-term? When humans and wildlife come in close contact, how do we define wilderness?
The Hidden Nations of Animals: A Grand Tour of Earth's Wild Civilizations
by Ryan Huling - Oliver Uberti
An instant classic of nature writing and breathtaking blueprint for a more expansive view of animalkind, inspired by the profound sense of awe that accompanies an expedition into unknown lands
"Shatters the notion that humanity holds a monopoly on civilization." -- Joaquin Phoenix
"This book will leave you feeling like a vital member of the broader world of animals--a cosmopolitan citizen of the zoopolis." -- Robert Moor
From far-flung forest settlements in Canada's "beaver belt" to disputed territories of clashing Argentine ant armies, Ryan Huling's around-the-world odyssey takes us to places most people don't even know exist. Along the way, we meet renowned ecologists, anthropologists, geographers and historians whose work has uncovered vast sub-Saharan tunnel complexes, booming animal metropolises nestled within the urban sprawl of the American Southwest and ancient Silk Road-style migration routes that traverse the Eurasian Steppe.
When humans settle in an area, it is deemed, by definition, populated. By contrast, the millions of other species we share this planet with have long been viewed as fleeting ephemera, living brief and transitory lives in "uninhabited" wilderness. Over the course of a year, Huling investigates how technology is rapidly changing that perception by deepening humanity's understanding of our fellow animals and their unique relationships with the land, air and sea. His immersive account fuses with vivid full-color maps and hand-drawn sketches by award-winning cartographer Oliver Uberti, revealing a radically reimagined version of our world and illuminating its true contours for the first time.
The Kennedys and the Windsors: The Story of Two Dynasties, One Born, One Made
by Caroline Hallemann
Two iconic dynasties, the Kennedys and the Windsors, whose glamour and ambition defined an era.
* For fans of FX's new Ryan Murphy limited series Love Story. *
For nearly a century, two families an ocean apart have captured the world's collective imagination: the British Windsors and the American Kennedys. Much ink has been spilled on their individual trysts, tragedies and triumphs over the years, but no one has examined their powerful and intertwined legacies. Until now.
In The Kennedys and the Windsors, acclaimed journalist Caroline Hallemann unearths the story of two iconic families whose lives, ambitions and respective reigns have mirrored each other in surprising ways. Through rich archival research and fresh interviews from insiders on both sides of the Atlantic, Hallemann reveals how an upstart Irish Catholic family with little access into elite New England society came to host dinner parties for a King and Queen, and forge an eventual path to the White House.
In the process, she draws out some startling parallels between the two families: the style icons Princess Diana and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy (both tragically gone too soon), the frustrated "second sisters" Princess Margaret and Lee Radziwill, the scandal-plagued next generation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the man formerly known as Prince Andrew, and the current generation's shared struggle to figure out what a monarchy (actual or imagined) means in the 21st century.
From Queen Elizabeth's coronation to President Kennedy's historic London visit, from JFK Jr.'s shocking death to Prince Harry's decisive break with his family, Hallemann traces the key moments in the lives of these two dynasties through a fresh and fascinating lens, showing how they have intersected over the generations in ways that not only shaped their images and legacies, but history itself.
The Make-Believe: A Memoir of Magic and Madness
by Hannah Murray
From Skins and Games of Thrones star Hannah Murray, a deeply intimate, shockingly honest memoir about fame, mental illness and the struggle to leave a shadowy wellness organization whose belief in magic shattered her reality.
"Extraordinary, propulsive, immersive; like nothing I have ever read." -- Dolly Alderton
"A remarkable book about the cost of wanting to be saved." -- Ruth Wariner
I lost my mind. I lost my self. I got them back. But they are different … From her breakout role as a teen actor on the cult TV show Skins, to critically acclaimed movies, to the smash hit Game of Thrones, Hannah Murray built a career in Hollywood cracking open her own psychological foundations and pushing her body to its limits. But one day, the line between make-believe and reality disappeared, and she found herself confined to a psych ward, dangerously in love with the leader of a shadowy wellness organization and believing in magic. How she got there -- and how she managed to rebuild her life -- is the heart of this gripping, powerful memoir that asks: How far would you go to find enlightenment?
For Hannah, it was deceptively easy to fall down the rabbit hole. As she struggled with her mental health, she sought help in the form of wellness and self-care. After an eye-opening session with an energy healer, Hannah was introduced to an organization that she was told would bring her further spiritual rewards. Enthralled by its charismatic leader and his teachings of a world filled with magic and meaning, Hannah found herself sucked into a rigorous practice involving high control and financial outlay.
And as her sense of reality began to slip, eventually resulting in her hospitalization and diagnosis with bipolar disorder, she realized she had fully ceded control of her life to this mysterious organization. And, she thought, as she reckoned with the Hollywood career that conditioned her to give her body and soul over to others, maybe she'd been doing that her whole life.
Both a cautionary tale and a cry for radical empathy, Hannah's story of learning to trust herself will resonate with anyone who has struggled to find agency. The Make-Believe is a probing exploration of womanhood and mental health and a search for the healing that comes when we reclaim our own narratives.
Related: Looking to apply your vast knowledge to a business idea or hands-on project? See our curated book lists for Self-Starters or The Hobbyist. For more titles to add to your TBR, check our Spring Book Releases for Life Long Learners.