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The Price of Mercy: Unfair Trials, a Violent System, and a Public Defender's Search for Justice in America
by Emily Galvin Almanza
A former public defender takes us behind the closed doors of America's criminal courts, revealing how the institutions that claim to protect us are doing the exact opposite--and offering a blueprint for finally fixing it. A searing, compassionate, and utterly necessary book that pulls back the curtain with the clarity of a lawyer and the heart of someone who's seen the criminal legal system's devastating consequences up close.--Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow As Americans, we are told a rose-tinted story about our criminal courts--that these are the hallowed halls of justice, that the purpose of our legal process is to find the truth, and that those who enforce the law are both equitable and heroic. But what if the reality is purposefully obscured to hide something rotten at the system's core? In The Price of Mercy, attorney and former public defender Emily Galvin Almanza weaves hard data and unforgettable stories, dark humor and compelling evidence to tell us the truth about what's really going on behind the closed doors of America's criminal courts. She shows us how jails actually increase future crime, the dirty tricks police use to make millions in overtime pay, how a man could spend decades in prison because scientists mistook dog hair for his own, the perverse incentives that push prosecutors to seek convictions even when they themselves don't want to, and how judges may decide cases differently after lunch. We'll learn what's working, too: how public defenders can improve public health and even economic mobility, and how planting more trees can reduce a neighborhood's murder rates. But a lone defender winning a case won't change the system. Galvin Almanza argues that we need an engaged public to confront the stark reality of our crime-generating, poverty-entrenching, health-destroying legal apparatus and rebuild it into something that can save our collective present and prevent our future from being torn apart. Provocative and eye-opening, The Price of Mercy lifts the curtain on the way our laws really operate and presents a path forward for true transformation of the American criminal court system. Justice, and the law itself, is not some static thing. It is something enacted together, decision by decision, in acts of inhumanity or mercy.
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99 Ways to Die: And How to Avoid Them
by Ashely Alker
An illuminating, hilarious, and practical guide to 99 of the most terrifying ways to die and how to avoid them from an emergency medicine doctor.Dr. Ashely Alker is a self-described death escapologist--or, in more familiar terms, an emergency medicine doctor. She has seen it all, from flesh-eating bacteria to the work of a serial killer to the more mundane but no less deadly, and her work outwitting the end has uniquely prepared her to write this book. Dr. Alker manages to shock readers while making them laugh, educating them on how to outsmart a wide range of deadly situations and conditions. Many of the chapters include stories from her experiences in life and medicine, at times heartwarming, others heartbreaking. Sections include explorations of sex, poison, drugs, biological warfare, disease, animals, crime, the elements, and much more. An Anthony Bourdain-style greatest hits tour of death, 99 Ways to Die is entertaining while it informs. Full of valuable advice and wild stories, this riveting read might just save your life.
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The Company of Owls: A Memoir
by Polly Atkin
An observant, lyrical memoir exploring what owls can teach us about nature, chronic illness, and ourselves.
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Kennedy's Coup: A White House Plot, a Saigon Murder, and America's Descent Into Vietnam
by Jack Cheevers
Combining the dark intrigue of a Cold War thriller and the propulsive writing of a novel, Kennedy's Coup is a landmark work that will change your understanding of America's involvement in one of the most controversial and consequential wars in our history. Based on a decade of research and writing, enriched by eyewitness interviews and revealing documents obtained through dozens of freedom of information requests, Kennedy's Coup vividly recreates the Kennedy Administration's secret encouragement of the fatal 1963 military coup against South Vietnam's defiant president. The brutal assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem by his own generals--which capped weeks of bitter White House infighting amid JFK's wavering--led to dreadful consequences for the United States, opening the door to nine years of costly and futile warfare in Vietnam. A meticulous researcher and fluid writer, Jack Cheevers etches unforgettable portraits of the people behind this fascinating drama: the kindly, philosophy-loving American ambassador who tried to save Diem; the powerful Pentagon and State Department figures who battled for JFK's ear; the hard-driving young American journalists in Saigon who braved police beatings and death threats to dig out the story; the adder-tongued Madame Nhu, Diem's beautiful sister-in-law, who enraged critics with outrageous insults; the scheming South Vietnamese generals who slowly tightened a noose around their commander in chief; the hard-drinking CIA agent who carried secret US messages to the generals; and Diem and his Machiavellian brother Nhu, head of the feared secret police, who tried but failed to outwit both the Americans and their traitorous generals. While many Vietnam books mention Diem's murder in passing, this gripping account delves into the participants' personalities, motives, and actions in greater detail than ever before. The definitive history of one of the most catastrophic decisions ever made by a US president, shedding new light on events that altered the world, Kennedy's Coup will be a work of lasting importance.
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Moses and the Doctor: Two Men, One Championship, and the Birth of Modern Basketball
by Luke Epplin
The rousing story of two trailblazing superstars--Julius Dr. J Erving and Moses Malone--whose improbable alliance and unsung legacies shaped the wildest and most innovative era of basketball history. In the early 1970s, playground courts across the United States were jammed with hoops buffs experimenting with showy moves and aerial shots that were changing the look and feel of a sport once stubbornly earthbound. Out of this scene emerged a pair of incomparable yet dissimilar streetball sensations, both of whom would make their name in the American Basketball Association, an upstart professional league characterized as much by flamboyance as invention. Julius Erving, better known as Dr. J, became a mythic figure whose airborne acrobatics inspired an army of high-flying acolytes. Moses Malone, a down-and-dirty banger, scrambled basketball apprenticeships forever by skipping directly from high school to the pros. Into the 1980s, Erving and Malone switched leagues, won MVPs, shattered records, and led their respective clubs into the playoff's championship round. But one prize eluded them: an NBA title. After suffering perennial defeat at the hands of Magic Johnson's Los Angeles Lakers and Larry Bird's Boston Celtics, the two eventually joined forces on the Philadelphia 76ers, blending their contrasting talents into a seamless whole. Together, Erving and Malone set out to accomplish what no other NBA team fronted by ex-ABA superstars had managed. An enthralling social history as well as an uplifting underdog story, Moses and the Doctor intimately chronicles the hopes and heartbreaks of two basketball legends who revolutionized what was possible on the ground and in the air, and fueled one of the most thrilling and momentous championship seasons ever.
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Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Save Lives
by Daisy Fancourt
A groundbreaking exposé showing how the arts--alongside diet, sleep, exercise and nature--are the forgotten fifth pillar of health From cradle to grave, engaging in the arts has remarkable effects on our health and well-being. Music supports the architectural development of children's brains. Artistic hobbies help our brains to stay resilient against dementia. Dance and magic tricks build new neural pathways for people with brain injuries. Arts and music act just like drugs to decrease depression, stress, and pain, reducing our dependence on medication. Going to live music events, museums, exhibitions, and the theater decreases our risk of future loneliness and frailty. Engaging in the arts improves the functioning of every major organ system in the body, even helping us to live longer. This isn't sensationalism, it's science: the results of decades of studies gathering data from neuroimaging, molecular biomarkers, wearable sensors, cognitive assessments, and electronic health records. From professor Daisy Fancourt, an award-winning scientist and science communicator and director of the World Health Organization's Collaborating Centre for Arts and Health, this book will fundamentally change the way you value and engage with the arts in your daily life and give you the tools to optimize how, when, and what arts you engage in to achieve your health goals. The arts are not a luxury in our lives. They are essential.
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The Last Kings of Hollywood: Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg--And the Battle for the Soul of American Cinema
by Paul Fischer
In the summer of 1967, as the old Hollywood studio system was dying, an intense, uncompromising young film school graduate named George Lucas walked onto the Warner Bros backlot for his first day working as an assistant to another up-and-coming, largely-unknown filmmaker, a boisterous father of two called Francis Ford Coppola. At the exact same time, across town on the Universal Studios lot, a film-obsessed twenty-year-old from a peripatetic Jewish family, Steven Spielberg, longed to break free from his apprenticeship for the struggling studio and become a film director in his own right. Within a year, the three men would become friends. Spielberg, prioritizing security, got his seven-year contract directing television. Lucas and Coppola, hungry for independence, left Hollywood for San Francisco to found an alternative studio, American Zoetrope, and make films without answering to corporate capitalism. Based on extensive research and hundreds of original interviews with the inner circle of these Hollywood icons, The Last Kings of Hollywood tells the thrilling, dramatic inside story of how, over the next fifteen years, the three filmmakers rivalled and supported each other, fell out and reconciled, and struggled to reinvent popular American cinema. Along the way, Coppola directed The Godfather, then the highest-grossing film of all-time, until Spielberg surpassed it with Jaws -- whose record Lucas broke with Star Wars, which Spielberg surpassed again with E.T. By the early 1980s, they were the richest, best-known filmmakers in the world, each with an empire of their own. The Last Kings of Hollywood is an unprecedented chronicle of their rise, their dreams and demons, their triumphs and their failures -- intimate, extraordinary, and supremely entertaining.
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Mafia: A Global History
by Ryan Gingeras
A gripping and deeply researched exploration of the hidden influence of organized crime on the global economy that reveals the mafia as an uncredited architect of modern society. In Mafia: A Global History, Ryan Gingeras takes readers on a fascinating journey into the shadowy world of organized crime and its far-reaching impact on contemporary society. From backroom deals to global power plays, this compelling narrative spans two centuries, unraveling the complex ties between crime syndicates and law enforcement--and how these relationships have reshaped both sides in unexpected ways. Drawing on over a decade of in-depth research into the global drug trade, Gingeras profiles legendary figures like Al Capone, Pablo Escobar, El Chapo, and Dawood Ibrahim, bringing their stories to life while exposing how these mafias have tested the boundaries of state power. By challenging the law, these criminal networks force governments to adapt, leaving an indelible mark on governance, society, and the global economy. Gingeras identifies three key spheres of transformation: the legal limits tested by mafias, their economic activities reflecting the Western bloc's dominance in global trade, and their undeniable presence in pop culture. As crime syndicates continue to evolve in the 21st century, Gingeras highlights the alarming blurring of lines between gangsters, corporations, and political leaders--a trend that threatens to destabilize the global order. For true crime fans and history buffs alike, Mafia is a must-read. With echoes of Mark Bowden's Killing Pablo and Sam Quinones's Dreamland, Gingeras delivers a masterful blend of storytelling and meticulous analysis that will leave you questioning just how much of the world around us is shaped by those operating in the shadows.
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Crayfish, Crawfish, Crawdad: The Biology and Conservation of North America's Favorite Crustaceans
by Zackary A. Graham
Whatever you call them - crayfish, crawfish, or crawdads - these small crustaceans are a vital piece of the larger ecosystem, and though they're found nationwide, the American Southeast and Appalachia are among the most biodiverse places for these animals. Biologist and crayfish expert Zackary Graham takes readers on an informative journey, following crayfish from the coalfields of Central Appalachia to the spring-fed waters of Northern California, and in roadside ditches everywhere in between. He discusses crayfish habitats - the muddier the better - anatomy, and coloration, which runs the gamut from dull grays to vivid blues, reds, and even bright white. Most important, Graham shows how necessary crayfish are to our ecosystem and rallies a call for protection as nearly 200 of the 400 unique species of crayfish in the United States are threatened by development, pollution, and other human-made factors. A love letter to a common crustacean, this book shows nature lovers that crayfish are diverse, important, and in need of our help.
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How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature's Revolutionaries
by David George Haskell
An exquisite exploration of the power of flowers, placing them at the center of the story of how evolution created the world we know today We live on a floral planet, yet flowers don't get the credit they deserve. We admire them for their aesthetics, not their power. In this exquisite exploration of the role flowers played in creating the world we know today, David George Haskell observes, smells, and studies flowers such as magnolias, orchids, and roses, as well as fascinating but less celebrated flowers such as seagrasses and tea to show us what we've been missing. Flowers are beautiful revolutionaries. When they evolved, they remade the natural world: Gorgeous petals and alluring aromas transformed former enemies into cooperative partners. Flowers reinvented plant sexuality and motherhood, bringing male and female together in the same flower and amply provisioning seeds and fruits, innovations that also feed legions of animals, ourselves included. Through radical genetic flexibility, flowers turned past environmental upheavals into opportunities for renewal. This inventiveness allowed them to build and sustain rainforests, savannahs, prairies, and even ocean shores. Without flowers, human beings would not exist. We are a floral species. Flowers catalyzed our evolution, and we now depend on them for food and a healthy planet. When we perfume ourselves, give a loved one a bouquet, or use blooms in gardens and religious ceremonies, we honor the special bond between people and flowers. The study of flowers also shaped modern science and horticulture in ways both marvelous and, sometimes, unjust. Looking to the future, flowers offer us lessons on resilience and creativity in the face of rapid environmental change. We need floral creativity, beauty, and joy more than ever. How Flowers Made Our World combines lyrical writing, sensual exploration, and the latest in scientific research to explore some of the most consequential life forms ever to have evolved, showing how our planet came to be and how it thrives today.
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Citizenship: Notes on an American Myth
by Daisy Hernández
A provocative, personal, blazingly intelligent examination of one of the most vexing questions facing the United States today: Who is, and should be, a citizen? A] fascinating, urgently needed new book.--Chicago Tribune How did 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free' turn upside down to where we are today? Everyone needs to read this book, citizens and non-citizens alike. Brilliant --Sandra Cisneros The most comprehensive book on citizenship/immigration I've ever read. A must-read --Javier Zamora The book I have always wanted to read.--Jose Antonio VargasPersonal, profound, engaging, and comprehensive . . . this is an essential book for these contentious times.--Booklist (starred review) A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR: Chicago Review of Books, Autostraddle, Publishers LunchIn this one-of-a-kind book, Daisy Hern ndez fiercely interrogates one of the most complicated subjects of contemporary life and politics: citizenship. Braiding memoir, history, and cultural criticism, she exposes the truths and lies of how we define ourselves as a country and a people. Turning to her own family's stories--her mother arrived from Colombia, while her father was a political refugee from Castro's Cuba--Hern ndez shows how the very idea of citizenship is a myth, one of the stories we tell ourselves about the American soul and psyche. Reframing our understanding of what it means to be an American, Citizenship is an urgent and necessary account of the laws, customs, and language we use to include and exclude, especially those who come from Latin America. With her scholar's mind and memoirist's gift for narrative, Hern ndez weaves a story both personal and national, while reckoning with our country's ongoing debate about who belongs and providing fresh ways of thinking about citizenship. At once bracing, fearless, and tender, Citizenship is a powerful portrait of one family's experiences in the borderlands of citizenship and an honest illumination of the country in which we live.
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The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief
by Richard Holmes
In this dazzling new biography, Richard Holmes, critically acclaimed author of The Age of Wonder, discovers in Young Tennyson an astonishingly magnetic and mercurial personality, a secretly expressive and highly emotional man haunted by the great intellectual and scientific issues of his time.
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La Lucci
by Susan Lucci
The moving follow-up to Susan Lucci's New York Times bestseller, All My Life, this stunning new memoir includes nearly one hundred never-before-seen photos.The long-running Queen of Daytime television, Susan Lucci--who has gone by the endearment, La Lucci, since her earliest days on the set of All My Children--knows a thing or two about life, love, joy, adventure, and remaking oneself after loss, both personally and professionally.While Erica Kane, her character on the daytime drama All My Children, had married eleven times during her forty-one years on air, Susan had been married only once--to the love of her life, Helmut Huber. When Helmut passed away unexpectedly in March of 2022, she faced one of the greatest challenges of her life--overcoming grief and striving to live with hope and joy again while still honoring her memories.This is a book that celebrates love, friendships, those we admire up close or from afar, the influential teachers in our lives, the wonder of family, parenting and grandparenting, the magic of theatre, fulfilled dreams, grace, freshly baked apples, Alpine cheese, home renovations, modern medicine, faith, miracles large and small, mending one's heart, and moving forward. But most of all, this is a book written with gratitude.It is with a tender mix of candor, humor, and vulnerability that Lucci reflects on both her many life blessings and her biggest hurdles. At turns entertaining, funny, sad, healing, and genuinely informative, her stories are not just about mourning loss, they are about grabbing and living life with gusto at every stage ... on every stage.
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The Feather Wars: And the Great Crusade to Save America's Birds
by James H. McCommons
A definitive history of bird conservation in America. (Kirkus Reviews, starred)From the time the country was founded, early Americans assumed that the land's natural resources were infinite, including its birds, which were zealously hunted for food, game, and fashion. With the rapid extinction of the passenger pigeon--a bird once so numerous that its flocks darkened the sky in flight--many realized actions needed to be taken if other birds were to be saved. What followed was both a spiritual awakening and a great crusade to save birds and their habitat. The campaign took place on many battlefields: society teas in Boston, hunt clubs on the East Coast, the mangroves in the Everglades, and in the editorial pages of newspapers and periodicals. From many corners of the country the bird protection movement was born and brought together a remarkable coalition of people and organizations to save America's birds. The Feather Wars is an entertaining and expansive work of American history, an incredible story about how disparate characters--progressive politicians, free-thinking society belles, nature writers and artists, bird-loving U.S. presidents, gunmakers, business titans, and brave game wardens--came together to save hundreds of species of birds. Heroes, martyrs, villains, and conflicted do-gooders--the early bird conservation movement had them all. Together they transformed how Americans thought and cared about birds, forever altering the American landscape.
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Winter: The Story of a Season
by Val McDermid
Val McDermid delivers a dazzling ode to a lost world, ruminating on a single winter in her life as she journeys into the heart of the season's ever-evolving community-based traditions. First published in Great Britain in 2025 by Hodder Press.
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American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union: An Anthology
by Jon Meacham
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of America unites centuries of essential American voices to understand our national debates and divisions from 1619 to the present, with his signature commentary on the consequential speeches, letters, and essays that led us to this moment. Jon Meacham has done it again. If there is a soul in American history, it emerges--indeed, explodes--from these pages.--David W. Blight, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom In a polarized era, history can become a subject of political contention. Many see America as perfect; many others argue that the national experiment is fundamentally flawed. The truth, Meacham shows, likely lies between these extremes. America has had shining hours, and also dark ones. In American Struggle, Jon Meacham illuminates the nation's complicated past. This rich and diverse collection covers a wide spectrum of history, from 1619 to the twenty-first century, with primary-source documents that take us back to critical moments in which Americans fought over the meaning and the direction of the national experiment. From the founders to Lincoln to Obama, from Andrew Jackson to Theodore Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan, from Seneca Falls to the March on Washington, this chorus--sometimes discordant and always fascinating--tells the story of the country and of its people. As clashes over liberty and slavery, inclusion and exclusion, play out, these voices, brilliantly framed by Meacham's singular commentary, remind us that contentious citizenship and fair-minded observations are essential to bringing about the more perfect union envisioned in the Preamble to the Constitution, which Frederick Douglass called a glorious liberty document. Conflict is nothing new in our democracy; rather, as Meacham and these texts show, tensions are inherent, stubborn, and perennial. And American Struggle teaches us anew that to know what has come before, to watch as long-running disputes rise and fall, is to be armed against despair.
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When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America's Black Botanical Legacy
by Beronda L. Montgomery
This stunning cultural and personal reclamation of Black history and Black botanical mastery offers up lessons from the natural world shared through the stories of long-lived trees. The histories of trees in America are also the histories of Black Americans. Pecan trees were domesticated by an enslaved African named Antoine; sycamore trees were both havens and signposts for people trying to escape enslavement; poplar trees are historically associated with lynching; and willow bark has offered the gift of medicine. These trees, and others, testify not only to the complexity of the Black American narrative but also to a heritage of Black botanical expertise that, like Native American traditions, predates the United States entirely. In When Trees Testify, award-winning plant biologist Beronda L. Montgomery explores the ways seven trees--as well as the cotton shrub--are intertwined with Black history and culture. She reveals how knowledge surrounding these trees has shaped America since the very beginning. As Montgomery shows, trees are material witnesses to the lives of enslaved Africans and their descendants. Combining the wisdom of science and history with stories from her own path to botany, Montgomery talks to majestic trees, and in this unique and compelling narrative, they answer.
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Defiance: A Memoir of Awakening, Rebellion, and Survival in Syria
by Loubna Mrie
A stunning memoir of personal rebellion and political awakening from a young woman raised to be loyal to a brutal regime--and the unimaginable cost of choosing freedom Like any good Alawite girl, every day at school, Loubna Mrie pledged allegiance to Hafez al-Assad. When she complained about memorizing his speeches for class, she was told to shorten her tongue--without the president, her family believed, the Alawites would be persecuted by the Sunni majority, as they had been for centuries before the Assads came to power. A girl's role was to obey, not to question. Loubna's father, a mercurial businessman with close ties to the Assad regime, ruled over his wife and daughters with absolute authority. In their world, loyalty was sur-vival. Curiosity was blasphemy. Dissent was betrayal. But everything changed in 2011, when the pro-democracy uprisings of the Arab Spring reached Syria. Unable to suppress her curiosity, Loubna attended an anti-government protest. What she witnessed--the courage, the brutality, and the lies that followed--ignited something in her that would not be extinguished. She joined the resistance, risking her life by fearlessly proclaiming her Alawite heritage and, later, as a photojournalist documenting the war for Reuters and other outlets. Her defiance would come at a devastating cost: the loss of loved ones, her community, and ultimately her country. Leaving behind everything she knew, she would have to find a new home within herself. Defiance is the unforgettable account of one woman's fight for freedom--against a father, a dictator, and the weight of inherited belief. From the streets of Aleppo to exile in New York City, it offers an electrifying portrait of moral courage in the face of authoritarianism and violence. Told with clarity, fury, and grace, Defiance offers a rare ground-level portrait of what it means to wake up, to resist, and to become.
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Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery
by Gavin Newsom
From California Governor Gavin Newsom, an intimate and reflective memoir laying bare the defining moments of his liminal childhood splintered by his parents' divorce that shaped Newsom's visionary and relentless commitment to the state and nation.
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We the Women: The Hidden Heroes Who Shaped America
by Norah O'Donnell
A vivid portrait of the unsung American women from 1776 to today who changed the course of history in their fight for freedom and helped shape a more perfect unionThis terrific book reveals the central, though often hidden role that women have played at every stage of our country's history.--Doris Kearns Goodwin Over a decades-long, distinguished career, award-winning journalist Norah O'Donnell has made it her mission to shed light on untold women's stories. Now, in honor of America's 250th birthday, O'Donnell focuses that passion on the American heroines who helped change the course of history. We the Women presents a fresh look at American history through the eyes of women, introducing us to inspiring patriots who demanded that the country live up to the promises made 250 years ago in the Declaration of Independence: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Since the signing of that document, the pressing question from women has been: Why don't those unalienable rights apply to us? Through extensive research and interviews, as well as historical documents and old photos, O'Donnell curates a compelling portrait of these fierce fighters for freedom. From Mary Katherine Goddard, who printed the first signed Declaration of Independence, to the Forten family women, who were active in the abolition and suffrage movements and were considered the Black Founders of Philadelphia, to the first women who served in the armed forces even before they had the right to vote, O'Donnell brings these extraordinary women together for the first time, and in doing so writes the American story anew.
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Judy Blume: A Life
by Mark Oppenheimer
The highly anticipated biography of one of the world's most treasured literary voices, showcasing a life as triumphant and inspiring as the stories she crafted. To know the name Judy Blume is to know and love literature. Her influential novels turned classics--including Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret; Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing; Deenie; and Summer Sisters--touched the lives of tens of millions of readers. For more than fifty-five years her work has done something revolutionary: it rewired the world's expectations of what literature for young people can be--frank, candid, earthy, and unafraid to show the messier sides of humanity. But little is known about the real woman behind the iconic persona, and the unlikely journey of her literary ascension, until now. In Judy Blume, journalist, historian, and longtime Blume aficionado Mark Oppenheimer pens a beautiful, multidimensional portrait of the acclaimed author through extensive interviews with Blume herself, invaluable access to her papers and correspondence, and thoughtful analysis of Blume's beloved novels, including early, unpublished works that shed light on the pathbreaking writer she would become. Oppenheimer goes deep, exploring Blume's middle-class 1950s upbringing, complicated childhood, varied relationships and marriages, unabashed sexual experiences, bouts of heartache and loss, and enduring legacy as a champion of free speech and contemporary literature. Oppenheimer peels back the curtain to reveal the woman behind the literary empire in all her complex, multifaceted glory--a true gift for anyone who grew up reading and loving these extraordinary books.
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Freedom Lost, Freedom Won: A Personal History of America
by Eugene Robinson
Pulitzer Prize-winning former Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson tells our nation's torturous racial history through his own family's story, starting with his great-grandfather's freedom from slavery and threading his way to his own narrative and reaching today's Black Lives Matter movement, asking whether this time will be different. On March 27, 1829, a wealthy white planter and entrepreneur named Richard Fordham purchased four enslaved African Americans from a woman named Isabella Perman. One of them was journalist Eugene Robinson's great-great-grandfather, a boy called Harry. Starting from this transaction, which took place in Charleston, South Carolina, Freedom Lost, Freedom Won brings to life 200 years of our nation's history through the eyes of the remarkable family that Harry founded. Assigned a formal name--Henry Fordham--and put to work as a blacksmith, he achieved his own freedom a decade before the Civil War. He was there when victorious Union troops marched into Charleston in 1865, ending slavery and guaranteeing liberty for Black people--only on paper, though, and only for a time. Robinson traces the arc of his familial lineage through the repeated cycles in which African Americans have fought their way upward toward freedom and opportunity, been forced back down again, and renewed their determined climb. From his great-great-grandfather's achievement in becoming a free person of color before emancipation to his great-grandfather's Reconstruction-era success, from his father's odyssey of the Great Migration to his own coming-of-age during the civil rights movement, Robinson delves into a rich archive of Black narratives, arguing that we still have a long way to go before it is possible to speak of a post-racial America. Setting his extensive research within the larger historical context, Robinson provides both an indictment of structural racism and an illustration of how it has been fought and, at times, courageously overcome. Freedom Lost, Freedom Won tells our country's tortuous racial history through Robinson's family's story of struggle and survival, pushing us to consider how far the nation has come--willingly or not--and how far it still has to go.
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Bonfire of the Murdochs: How the Epic Fight to Control the Last Great Media Dynasty Broke a Family -- And the World
by Gabriel Sherman
The real succession story of the Murdoch empire is more shocking than the fictional TV series. When Rupert Murdoch made a fateful decision about who should inherit his media colossus, he believed that pitting his children against each other would produce the most capable heir. Twenty-five years later, that gamble would tear apart one of the world's most powerful families and trigger a multi-billion dollar reckoning in a succession battle featuring betrayals, lawsuits, and revenge plots. In Bonfire of the Murdochs, bestselling author Gabriel Sherman tells the inside story of this epic family war, one whose seeds were planted a half-century ago in Australia when the complicated patriarch left his homeland to conquer the world and please the ghost of his judgmental father. That quest culminated in a media empire that controlled Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and tabloids on three continents, which wielded more political and cultural power than any single company in modern times. But Rupert's plan to rip up the secret trust controlling his empire and anoint his conservative firstborn son Lachlan as successor set him on a collision course with his three more liberal children What price would Rupert pay to secure his legacy? For the aging patriarch, this would be his final and most personal deal. Based on interviews with more than 150 sources, Bonfire of the Murdochs is a richly textured narrative where each child plays their predestined role in a blood feud that explodes in a courtroom showdown. There, Murdoch's children weaponize his own secrets against him. It is a tragedy Shakespeare would have appreciated, where getting everything you want costs everything you love.
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El Paso: Five Families and One Hundred Years of Blood, Migration, Race, and Memory
by Jazmine Ulloa
From New York Times reporter Jazmine Ulloa, a sweeping human history of El Paso, revealing violence, power, and privilege at play in America's most famous border town. El Paso has been called the Ellis Island of America's southern border, a mountain pass cum border town cum bifurcated metropolis where past meets future, and disadvantage meets opportunity, or so the promise goes. El Paso is an extraordinary, can't-look-away reported history; it uses deep research and dozens of new interviews to blow away the myth of this place, where Mexico's Juarez and America's El Paso intertwine. It charts the history of El Paso through five families. From the Mexican Revolution and the Mexican Repatriation, to the shifting immigration laws under Reagan and Trump and the violence and bloodshed brought on by the drug war, El Paso captures a place often misunderstood or forgotten by the rest of the country, and the world. El Paso is a brave new work of narrative nonfiction that gives new voice and perspective to history that has long been checked at the border, or told through the lens of white men alone. Ulloa draws upon meticulous research and reporting and stunning historical detail to craft the intimate narratives of an unforgettable cast of characters.
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Morton Grove Public Library
6140 Lincoln Ave
Morton Grove, Illinois 60053
(847) 965-4220www.mgpl.org |
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