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New Nonfiction August 2026 |
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Auden
by Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd's compelling portrait of W. H. Auden, poet of a restless century. Of all the English poets born in the twentieth century, Wystan Hugh Auden is by far the most significant. This critical biography explores the evolution of his poetic voice in tandem with his shifting beliefs--existentialism, Marxism, Freudianism, and Anglo-Catholicism--reflecting the intellectual climate of the century. Rooted in English traditions, Auden's work reveals both public and personal histories, from the Depression and Spanish Civil War to his experiences as a gay man navigating repression and later liberation. The book traces his journeys from Oxford to Berlin, China, and America, bringing to life his turbulent era and the inner conflicts of his long relationship with Chester Kallman. This insightful and compelling account by acclaimed historian Peter Ackroyd captures Auden's genius as both a historical witness and an enduring poetic voice.
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On Courage: How to Be a Dissident in an Age of Fear
by Julia Angwin
From a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and a former White House senior advisor, a deeply reported manual about how anyone can defy an authoritarian - based on original interviews with more than 100 dissidents, activists, and theorists across the world.The United States is only the latest country to face a leader who wields fear as a weapon, punishes political enemies, disappears people off the street, and undermines free and fair elections. Today nearly three out of four people on earth live under authoritarianism, the highest rate since the late 1970s.But even under repressive conditions, each of us holds the power to help defeat autocrats. Based on their acclaimed The New Yorker essay So You Want to Be a Dissident?, veteran reporter Julia Angwin and political strategist Ami Fields-Meyer give us a captivating - and profoundly hopeful - guide to courage in an age of fear.Meet a student from Hong Kong who risked everything for democracy. A mom in a working-class neighborhood of Caracas who broke with the political movement that raised her. Cairo twentysomethings who staged a gutsy stunt to help bring down a dictator. A mild-mannered immigrant fighting to save a landmark U.S. civil rights law. People throughout the United States and across five continents who faced serious risks for dissenting in their workplace, their community, or their country. On Courage is the story of how they did it anyway - and how you can do it, too.Blending rich, previously untold narratives with history, spirituality, and movement research, Angwin and Fields-Meyer deliver a highly accessible book full of practical lessons - an inspiring resource for anyone, anywhere, who feel the walls of history closing in on them. On Courage is a roadmap to political courage and a powerful case for how taking personal risks can help save the free world.
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Fully Baked: A Messy Memoir
by Rosebud Baker
An astonishingly candid and funny memoir that will make you laugh and cry while it steals your heart, from a renowned stand-up comedian and veteran SNL writer who is an expert in making light of life's most devastating moments (Rolling Stone). Rosebud Baker grew up as a loudmouth who preferred to be honest than polite, which is another way of saying she was unemployable. She spent her twenties trying to make it as an actor in New York like every other privileged millennial transplant cosplaying Rent, while gigging as a barista and as the world's angriest yoga instructor. She was blackout drunk most of the time, struggling with alcoholism. She even tried to steal a bodega cat. Eventually, she harnessed the qualities she once saw as defects--her dark humor and insistence on saying the awkward thing out loud--into a comedy career. She got sober. And she went from dating NYC's most emotionally unavailable artists to falling in love, getting married, and becoming a new mom. Fully Baked is Rosebud's riotously funny and emotionally resonant memoir. Inspired by her pregnancy and early motherhood, it's also her quest to discover who she really is and how she wants to raise her daughter. Every chapter is smart, self-deprecating, and laugh-out-loud funny, and no subject is off limits, from her famous yet unknowable grandfather, White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III, to her youngest sister's sudden death. You'll speed through the pages to discover what happens next. Then, you'll look back on a remarkable book that felt like an intimate conversation with a friend who made you feel better by confessing all the ways they screwed up.
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The Double Dutch Fuss: A Memoir
by Phill Branch
In this raw and lyrical memoir as rich and insightful as How to Say Babylon and as vulnerable and provocative as Heavy, an Emmy Award-winning director chronicles his struggle to break free from--and live outside of--the prescribed paradigms of Blackness and masculinity that shaped him. Long before every moment of our lives was tracked by technology, Phill Branch was under surveillance. His father was a football-playing, weed-smoking, Army vet--the guy men wanted to be around, and women loved. Phill was different. His father treated him as if he were defective and continually searched for proof to support this belief. Phill paid greatly for his failures at boyhood, especially when he was caught playing jump rope with girls. This taught him there were standards to be met, codes that were not to be violated, and strict punishment for any deviation from a Black man's assigned position in the world.In this poignant, illuminating personal narrative, Branch reckons with the patriarchy and tradition of these social structures in Black America, their legacy, and how they molded and silenced him. Taking us from Newark, New Jersey, to Los Angeles, California, Branch writes unflinchingly about growing up as the queer black son of a complicated and often absent father with rigid ideas of masculinity. From early inappropriate relationships with men twice his age, to his successful rebranding at Hampton University, to the dichotomy of Hollywood--living in a world of wealthy celebrities while struggling to survive as a writer--Branch navigates his complex emotions surrounding success, perceptions of manhood, and ultimately his father.The Double Dutch Fuss recounts growing up under the heavy burden of expectation--to be a boy, to be Black, and to be queer in ways that conform to rigid, often unforgiving norms. It is about the knotted path of becoming, while navigating the always-present fear of emotional and physical violence, and the threat of isolation for simply being who you are. Branch explores the cosmic pull between fathers and sons, and how healing wounds can open a pathway toward freedom and wholeness. His is an insightful and surprisingly humorous reflection on identity, masculinity, and the quiet, radical act of choosing to exist on your own terms.
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Never Tell a Black Girl How to Black Girl: Essays
by Amena Brown
Amena Brown’s book Never Tell a Black Girl How to Black Girl blends storytelling, humor, and pop culture commentary to traverse the magic and wisdom she's gleaned from being raised by Southern Black women, and supported by the community of Black women who hold her down today.
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Smog and Sunshine: The Surprising Story of How Los Angeles Cleaned Up Its Air
by Ann Carlson
A stirring account of one of our greatest environmental success stories: cleaning up Southern California's air. Los Angeles and smog have been synonymous for decades. From the 1940s through the 1980s, children breathed air so heavy with lead that their blood was poisoned with it. In 1970 officials declared smog alerts on 235 days. But the last smog alert happened in 2003, and lead has virtually disappeared from the air. This is the story of how Los Angeles cleaned up its air. In Smog and Sunshine, environmental law expert and LA native Ann Carlson recounts the dramatic policy fights and the determined scientists, lawyers, and community members who worked alongside public officials to face off against major polluters and save their city. In a time of unprecedented climate change and skepticism about government and science, this book is an inspiring reminder of what concerned residents, individual leaders, and all levels of government can achieve by working together.
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The Price of Exclusion: The Pursuit of Healthcare in a Segregated Nation
by Nicole Carr
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Americans died at nearly twice the rate of their white counterparts—a disparity rooted not only in access to care but in a long history of exclusion, exploitation, and systemic racism. How did we get here, and why, despite generations of Black medical excellence, do these inequities persist? In The Price of Exclusion, journalist Nicole Carr uncovers that history and its urgent consequences, exposing the hidden toll of America’s refusal to value Black doctors and their patients.
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Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
by Pamela Colloff
The riveting, true story of an audacious con man who helped send another man to death row for a murder he did not commit Incendiary, emotionally devastating. This] is a feat of dogged reporting, bravura storytelling, and clear-eyed moral conscience.--Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Say Nothing and London Falling For more than three decades, Paul Skalnik roamed the Gulf Coast lying about who he was. He passed himself off as a fighter pilot, a high-rolling oilman, a criminal defense attorney, an undercover agent, and a terminal cancer patient. In these guises he married nine women--some at the same time. When Skalnik got caught, as he invariably did, he would run a different con. Locked up with other men awaiting trial, he claimed they confessed their crimes to him. Then he peddled those stories to prosecutors. In Pinellas County, Florida, he became a frequent witness for the state, thinking nothing of exaggerating men's wrongdoing or implicating the innocent to help prosecutors win convictions. In return, the state rewarded him with his freedom, fueling his growing sense of invincibility. Soon he was not just committing fraud; he was preying on girls in their teens or barely into adolescence. In 1985, Jim Dailey, a down-on-his-luck Vietnam veteran, was implicated in the murder of a fourteen-year-old girl and landed in the Pinellas County Jail with Skalnik. No forensic evidence or motive linked Dailey to the killing, but Skalnik's account of his confession helped put Dailey on death row. Skalnik, meanwhile, walked free. More than three decades later, after another man took responsibility for the killing, Pamela Colloff, reporting for the New York Times Magazine and ProPublica, visited Skalnik and asked him if he would recant his testimony. He refused. By then, Skalnik had caused untold damage: to the women and girls he exploited, to the dozens of men he helped imprison, and to Jim Dailey, who went on to receive an execution date. In this mesmerizing debut, Pamela Colloff spins a dark tale of a remorseless and brilliant liar made lethal by a system more concerned with winning convictions than finding the truth.
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Nightfaring: In Search of the Disappearing Darkness
by Megan Eaves-Egenes
A heartfelt exploration of the night on Earth, following a travel journalist and dark sky advocate around the globe as she seeks out dark places in our ever-brightening world. People, plants and animals all depend on the natural night--both its darkness and its starlight--for so much, from regulating our sleep cycles to providing the inspiration for myths and legends across the millennia. But darkness is disappearing, and with it, our view of the stars. The constant glow of streetlights, of headlights streaming down highways, and wasteful glare from skyscrapers left shining all night have created so much light pollution that the majority of Americans can no longer see the Milky Way or experience the restful embrace of a natural night. As the dark becomes ever more elusive, it is a critical moment to stop, look up, and consider what we lose with the disappearing stars. In Nightfaring, Megan Eaves-Egenes travels around the world to better understand our deep connection to the dark. Finding solace in the stars at a time of difficulty in her own life, she embarks on a journey from New Zealand to Uzbekistan, Italy to Japan, Germany to the Himalaya, exploring the many ways that humans have depended on, feared, and mythologized darkness. Blending travel and nature writing with history and self-discovery, Megan writes of how the stars have helped her chart the course of her own life--just as they've guided humankind for as long as we've slept beneath them.
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Catching Sight: How a Guide Dog Helped Me See Myself
by Deni Elliott
One woman's journey through progressive blindness and the extraordinary guide dog who kept her safe along the way When ethics scholar Deni Elliott, born with limited vision, realized she could no longer navigate the world safely alone, she turned to a guide dog--a decision that reshaped her understanding of disability and independence. Co-authored with master trainer Graham Buck, Catching Sight offers a behind-the-scenes look at the world of guide dog breeding and training, revealing the intelligence and decision-making skills these dogs develop from birth. Catching Sight is for readers interested in the transformative power of human relationships with animals. As Deni confronts her changing reality, she shares the hidden world of guide dog training and introduces Alberta, a yellow Lab whose quiet brilliance changed her interaction with the world and herself. Catching Sight offers a fresh and unforgettable perspective on disability, identity, and the power of partnership.
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The Cruelty of Nice Folks: Why Minneapolis Is the Story of America
by Justin Ellis
In writing a book about Minneapolis, Justin Ellis has really written a book about America's favorite lie--that good intentions lead to justice. Ellis is a rigorous historian and a visceral storyteller, and he has produced something essential: a reckoning with a city that wanted to be a safe haven for all and built a foundation that made this impossible. -Aaron Robertson, author of The Black UtopiansOne of The Millions' Most Anticipated Spring 2026 BooksA revelatory look at one of America's most progressive cities--Minneapolis--as journalist Justin Ellis returns to his hometown to grapple with the quiet history of white supremacy in the wake of George Floyd's murder, uncover his family's story of surviving Minnesota nice, and revisit the city years later as state violence again forces the question of what a real reckoning looks like. It's the North, they like to say, not the Midwest. It's different. Minneapolis is a city for everyone. But in 2020, George Floyd's murder by the city's police left many Americans stunned and wondering, How could this happen in Minneapolis? To Ellis, the real question is: What made people think it couldn't?The Minneapolis Justin Ellis grew up in is not the idealistic metropolis it claims to be. The City of Lakes was built on discrimination-- in its housing, its schools, its politics--much like all other American cities. Black families were systematically cut out of the prosperous neighborhoods, lush parks, and pristine lakes that make Minneapolis a haven of the heartland. Because of its image as a liberal ally in the fight for civil rights, Minneapolis has rarely been forced to confront this fact. But when George Floyd's murder sparks a global protest movement with the city as ground zero, its residents must finally ask what being a good neighbor actually means.In a powerful new epilogue, Ellis turns his gaze back to Minneapolis as the sweeping federal immigration operation once again thrusts the city into national headlines. If George Floyd's murder forced Minneapolis to confront questions of policing, power, and responsibility, the events of 2026 ask what those years of reckoning ultimately changed. Where fear once threatened to overwhelm the city's response to state violence, Ellis finds a community newly practiced in dissent and collective action. The crisis reveals a Minneapolis still wrestling with its identity, but also one transformed by experience--no longer shocked into awakening, but shaped by it.The Cruelty of Nice Folks stands to be a record of a moment in time as well as a definitive portrait of America, documenting: The Myth of Post-Racial America: Reveals how the promises of the George Floyd reckoning faded, exposing a nation still shaped by deep inequalityThe Hidden Cost of Nice Liberalism: Shows how progressive spaces can avoid real change, allowing injustice to persist beneath a veneer of goodwillMinneapolis as America in Microcosm: Uses one model city to uncover the deeper roots of segregation, policing failures, and systemic racismA Personal Story with National Stakes: Blends memoir and reporting to explore what it means to be Black in a place that sees itself as fair and just.
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The Madness Pill: One Doctor's Quest to Understand Schizophrenia
by Justin Garson
A rollicking history of the life and work of an unheralded genius: Dr. Solomon Snyder, whose experiments with mind-altering drugs helped change the way we think about the causes and treatments of schizophrenia.In the 1950s, the field of psychiatry had nothing to show for itself. While polio was being cured, antibiotics were being discovered, and cancer research was developing, the mental health world had no wins. Asylums were full and nobody had figured out how to fix insanity--specifically schizophrenia, the severest mental illness. Scientists became convinced that if they could engineer a pill to create madness, then they could cure it. Centered around Solomon Snyder, the psychiatrist who ultimately did identify the madness pill, and the community of doctors and researchers he worked with, THE MADNESS PILL recounts the drug-fueled quest to cure schizophrenia. A wunderkind who started medical school at 19, Snyder worked steadily for decades to replicate the illness, ultimately finding in 1970 that amphetamines could trigger a schizophrenia-like state by flooding the brain with dopamine. Five years later, he went on to discover the dopamine receptor and proved that antipsychotic drugs work by disabling dopamine neurons. Snyder's dopamine hypothesis inspired a generation of researchers to part ways with psychoanalysis and look for the biological basis of schizophrenia and other mental disorders. Using first-hand research and interviews, THE MADNESS PILL is at once a raucous history and insightful portrait of a remarkable scientist who turned psychiatry into a respected science by transforming how mental illness is treated.
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In Defense of Sunlight: The Surprising Science of Sun Exposure
by Rowan Jacobsen
Upending everything we thought we knew about sun exposure, this trenchant investigation into the zero-sun policy sounds the call on the many health benefits of the sun, and what we risk when we minimize our exposure. A quiet revolution is transforming our understanding of sunlight's effects on human health. For decades, a zero-sun policy has characterized our approach to sun protection, advising us to stay out of the sun whenever possible and apply sunscreen daily to any skin that might be exposed, rain or shine, summer or winter, indoors or out. But recent studies have proved that this policy is thoroughly mistaken and that this prolific misunderstanding is causing us to miss out on many of the health benefits of sun exposure. In this incisive work, acclaimed journalist Rowan Jacobsen presents the growing case for the importance of modest sun exposure for our health and well-being. Aided by the most up-to-date studies on the effects of sunlight on human health, Jacobsen presents a much-needed, lucid assessment of not only what the sun can do for us, but how a lack of sun could actively be harming us. In Defense of Sunlight sounds the call on what researchers have been sure of for years, and what health care providers and media outlets have been slow to take up: that sunlight is one of the simplest, and most equitable, treatments for a variety of health issues, from diabetes to dementia to multiple sclerosis. Laying out the new science of sunlight in a straightforward and responsible manner for mainstream readers, this book is an eye-opening story of scientific discovery, outlining not only best practices for sun exposure, but the story of how current recommendations became misguided, how a few inquisitive scientists glimpsed the truth and deciphered the mechanisms responsible, and how everyone can safely incorporate this new knowledge into their daily lives. It also exposes the implicit injustice underlying current approaches, which benefit the whitest people on earth (who are the most susceptible to skin cancer) at the expense of those with darker skin (who suffer extremely low rates of skin cancer and have the most to gain from sun exposure). A call for a return to common sense in our relationship with our local star, In Defense of Sunlight offers its own seven words of advice: Get sun. Not too much. Go outside.
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A Pox on Fools: The True Believers, Grifters, and Cynics Who Convinced Us to Reject Vaccines
by Thomas Levenson
An urgent and profound history of vaccine skepticism, seeking to understand how our three most common fears about vaccines hardened into a lethal ideology--from a leading science writer Brimming with righteous anger, this book should infuriate you for all the right reasons, and arm you to take on the grifters and their war against science.--Adam Rutherford, author of A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes Since the advent of smallpox inoculation in the eighteenth century, the idea that a disease introduced to the body in some lesser, weakened form might prevent full-blown infection has been one of the greatest public health insights of the modern era, inspiring the invention of numerous vaccines and saving countless human lives. But, just as humanity acquired the god-like power to stop infectious disease in its tracks, some feared we had gone too far, leading to the skepticism that has hijacked public health discourse today. In three sweeping essays written for our current moment of scientific mistrust, Thomas Levenson searches for the origins of the most common arguments against vaccines: that they are unnatural; that they are more dangerous than the illnesses they claim to prevent; and that they are an affront to freedom. Each arose from the earliest development of particular vaccines and the campaigns to distribute them. Even as the pattern repeats, Levenson reveals how innocent that skepticism initially was and, in each case, how very human fears and questions ultimately turned into something darker, where no truth would be enough to overcome the doubt. Searing but ultimately empathetic, A Pox on Fools explores the human impulse to question and wonder--sometimes past the point at which the very act of questioning turns deadly.
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The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, Deepmind, and the Quest for Superintelligence
by Sebastian Mallaby
An Instant New York Times Bestseller From one of our leading chroniclers of the intersection of innovation and capitalism, a landmark reckoning--based on unprecedented access--with one of the world's most brilliant and driven tech visionaries, and his game-changing company Even by the standard of a tech industry stacked with so-called geniuses, Demis Hassabis is a special case. Born poor in North London to immigrant parents, a chess prodigy by age five and wizard coder in his teens, he turned down a seven figure offer before turning 18 to feed his insatiable scientific curiosity at Cambridge. Later, he added a neuroscience PhD to his computer science skills to pursue the dream of artificial general intelligence, the ultimate goal being to unravel the mysteries of biology and theoretical physics and to usher in super-abundance. Alongside a small group of fellow travelers, that is the path he is still on, leading the AI research at Google, winning a Nobel Prize along the way, and imagining machines that will compound, or possibly supplant, the human understanding of the universe. Hassabis has given Sebastian Mallaby a great deal of his time, sitting for over thirty hours of conversation. But Mallaby has also drawn from Hassabis's detractors, such as his estranged cofounder Mustafa Suleyman; from his rivals, such as OpenAI's leading scientist Ilya Sutskever; and from academic pioneers who now fear for human survival, such as Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton. The result is a revelatory account of a singular figure and his company and a profound reckoning with this protean field as it leaps from the periphery to the center of our consciousness. No one questions Hassabis's brilliance. There are those who, like Elon Musk, have at times regarded him as an evil genius. He is in a game where the stakes are matched only by the exorbitant costs -- for talent, and for compute. Celebrated scientists pursue the technology because they cannot resist the sweetness of discovery. Others pursue it for money or power. The inventors believe they control their technology, but often, the technology controls them. Despite Hassabis's pivotal role inside Google's engine room, this is not a Silicon Valley story. Hassabis deals with the Valley and takes its money, but remains outside and furiously critical of it, lambasting its leaders in conversation with Mallaby. The end of this race cannot be known, but as this great book shows us, Hassabis's quest to will a new form of cognition into the world is a defining story for our era.
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Push the Wall: My Life, Writing, Drawing, and the Art of Storytelling
by Frank Miller
From the all-time bestselling mind behind Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Daredevil, 300, and Sin City, Push the Wall is part memoir, part master class for budding artists and writers by one of the greatest living creators whose work has influenced pop culture for decades. Frank Miller is our greatest living comic book writer and artist. Frank Miller shares his life, and through, his artistic process. Miller's artistic influence is evident in so very much of our popular culture, perhaps most notably with Batman--every film adaptation from the past forty years has been influenced by Miller's work with the dark knight. Simply, Frank Miller has transformed the way comics are told. Here, Frank's mix of autobiographical lessons evokes Patti Smith's Just Kids as it weaves his struggles as a seventeen-year-old kid fresh from Vermont into a seedy 1970s New York City with his eventual success on reimagining Daredevil and Wolverine. From there to Miller's rescue and revitalization of Batman, to his time in Hollywood, the Sin City comics and film adaptations he would codirect, and the retelling of the Spartans' last stand in 300. Miller, by constantly challenging himself as an artist and writer on his terms, built an iconoclastic career. With over a dozen illustrations of Miller's art, Push the Wall is the work of his career--it is a masterclass as it encapsulates his life in sixteen lessons for the aspiring creative reader.
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The Book of Cannabis: The History and Future of the Plant and the Drug
by Jeremy Narby
A revelatory journey through the tangled roots of cannabis--its ancient uses, political battles, and scientific renaissance--by acclaimed anthropologist Jeremy Narby In The Book of Cannabis, Jeremy Narby--renowned author of The Cosmic Serpent--delivers a sweeping, clear-eyed exploration of cannabis as both plant and cultural phenomenon. From its ancient medicinal and ritualistic roles to its vilification, Narby traces how cannabis became one of the most controversial plants in modern history. With the global shift toward legalization, Narby dives into the latest science on cannabis's therapeutic potential and risks, especially in the era of high-potency strains and edibles. He unpacks the plant's transformation through selective breeding and examines its evolving impact on health, society, and the environment. The book also explores the implications of cannabis's changing legal status and its intersection with issues of social justice and public policy. Accessible, nuanced, and deeply informed, this is essential reading for cannabis users, industry professionals, educators, and policymakers alike. Narby's anthropological lens offers a unique perspective on the plant's journey, making The Book of Cannabis a vital guide to understanding cannabis in all its complexity.
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Entangled States: A Life According to Quantum Physics
by Karmela Padavic-Callaghan
A young queer millennial physicist unveils some of the most mind-bending physics concepts in the universe--and uses them to illuminate their own fascinating life story I see physics everywhere, Karmela Padavic-Callaghan writes. It offers itself to me when I try to make sense of all the paths my life did and did not take, it reassures me when I try to reconcile all the identities that I feel describe me. Born in Croatia in 1991, Karmela grew up against the backdrop of the Yugoslav wars. They grew to love science and hair metal, and they began longing to see more of the world. At age 16, they received an offer to study at a boarding school in New York, setting them on a path to a physics PhD. Now a science writer in New York, Karmela uses physics to meditate on building a life in a new country, on being nonbinary in a field dominated by cishet men, and on cause, effect, future, and destiny. Each chapter examines a moment in Karmela's life through the lens of a physics concept. Knot theory becomes a lens for the story of Karmela visiting a Croatian healer. Ultracold atom labs lead to a meditation on societal expectations that women be unfailingly warm and nurturing. And the workings of an electron microscope become a framework for Karmela's evolving relationship with cosmetics as they realized they are nonbinary. Taking us from Croatia to New York, from quantum computing to Queen, Entangled States offers readers a unique and unforgettable journey--and shows how the world of physics and the world of humanity illuminate one another.
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Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War
by Jane Rogoyska
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NONFICTION From an award-winning historian, the story of World War II artists, intellectuals, and refugees, and one famed Paris hotel.
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When the Revolution Comes: A Fight for the Future of the Working Class
by Chris Smalls
From one of the most electric and consequential figures to emerge from the contemporary American labor movement, the remarkable story of his battle to create the first Amazon union in the U.S. and a powerful call to arms on behalf of the working class With candor and fierce moral clarity, Chris Smalls takes readers behind the scenes of the most consequential labor uprising in modern history--and it's one hell of a ride. --Jessica Bruder, author of Nomadland In the early days of the COVID pandemic, warehouse worker Chris Smalls and his colleagues continued showing up as the rest of the world was shutting down. A dedicated and experienced Amazon employee, increasingly frustrated by the inner workings of the retail giant, Smalls had already felt himself reaching a breaking point. So when coworkers around him began falling ill, and with no transparency or assurances of safety coming from those in charge, he made the only choice left available to him. He staged a walkout with friend Derrick Palmer, eventually finding himself on the picket line without a job. But what began as a demand to keep essential employees safe in a crisis would grow into a movement devoted to achieving dignity and security for the American wageworker, sparking a groundswell of organizers at the most notable companies across the nation--including Starbucks, Trader Joe's, and Apple--and leading to lasting change for labor. When the Revolution Comes is the riveting inside story of how a young Black man from Hackensack, New Jersey with few to no resources, led a scrappy band of Staten Island warehouse workers in an improbable fight against Amazon, the second largest private employer in the United States, and won. This epic David and Goliath tale follows Smalls from a childhood spent navigating his dad's stints in and out of prison, to his years of sacrifice and economic uncertainty as a father of three, to his ascension as the leader of a new generation's labor movement. A deeply personal and eye-opening account of the creation of the Amazon Labor Union, When the Revolution Comes offers both a searing expos of what it's like to be working class in America and inspiring evidence of what is possible when the overworked, underpaid, and disempowered join together, a movement born in community.
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The Housewives Underground: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the JFK Assassination Our Most Enduring Mystery
by Kaitlyn Tiffany
The untold story of the women who debunked the Warren Report--a riveting history of obsession, heartbreak, and the myth of the great American century An extraordinary account of a relentless search for truth.--Publishers Weekly (starred review) Kaitlyn Tiffany masterfully unspools a hidden history of the Kennedy assassination and its aftermath.--Liza Mundy, New York Times bestselling author of Code Girls and The Sisterhood In the winter of 1967, the official account of the Kennedy assassination was beginning to unravel. A scattered group of Americans had pointed to major problems with the report prepared by President Johnson's handpicked Warren Commission. Many of the most serious criticisms of the government's work came from a source that surprised some: women who, within the community of critics, outnumbered the men two to one. Politicians and reporters dismissed these women, referring to them as scavengers and suggesting they were eccentrics with murder-mystery fixations or crushes on the deceased President Kennedy. But inThe Housewives Underground, Kaitlyn Tiffany resurrects the story of Maggie Field, Shirley Martin, and Sylvia Meagher, whose collaboration and friendship reshaped both their own lives and our national memory. Field hosted screenings of the Zapruder film and raised money to pursue new leads. Martin traveled frequently to Dallas, enlisted her children to help interview witnesses, and irritated J. Edgar Hoover with her antagonistic attitude toward the FBI. And at the center of the story is Sylvia Meagher--a born-and-raised New Yorker who was devoted to the ballet and the Mets, cultivated fierce friendships and firm grudges, and dedicated twenty-five years to her conviction that the whole truth of JFK's assassination had not been told. Painstakingly researched and engrossing,The Housewives Underground takes readers back to the turbulent 1960s and 1970s--a time when Americans' belief in their government was eroding--introducing readers to the so-called housewives who asked the first, hardest questions about one of the most shocking events in American history.
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In Deep Water: A True Story of Sharks, Survival, and Courage
by Michael J. Tougias
The terrifying true story of a fight for survival for 28 hours in shark-infested waters. October, 8, 2022. Three friends are fishing for red snapper when their boat, tied to an oil rig, begins taking on water and sinks 15 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico. Suddenly, the three men find themselves in a struggle for their lives. Their vessel succumbs to the building seas so quickly that the fisherman are unable send out a radio Mayday call, and their cell phones have no reception. They only have time to don their life jackets and hold onto a cooler as they are swept further out to sea. They vow to stay together no matter what and must make several life or death decisions. Suffering from hypothermia and severe stings from giant jelly fish, the men desperately try to stay afloat as they realize there are circling sharks below. In Deep Water is an hour by hour account of a desperate and determined struggle for survival, as well as the Coast Guard's all-out effort to find the missing men. This fast-paced story has a number of surprising turns in both the survival ordeal and the rescue efforts. Based on interviews with the three survivors and the crew of the Jayhawk helicopter who rescue them, In Deep Water is a white-knuckle tale of bravery and brotherhood and a battle against the ocean's deadliest predators.
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I Eat the Stars: How to Live Fully and Beautifully in a Collapsing World
by Sarah Wilson
From New York Times bestselling author Sarah Wilson comes a deeply moving, wise guide to finding joy and meaning in a world that seems to be falling apart It's hard to escape the feeling that something is deeply wrong . . . that life has become precariously off-balance. We are hit hourly with headlines about catastrophic wildfires, unprecedented flooding, record heat waves, collapsing democracies, AI and nuclear threat, rising economic inequality, widespread unrest, and more. In I Eat the Stars, Sarah Wilson argues we are undergoing what every complex civilization before us has--systemic collapse. So how do we continue to live as sensitive humans amidst such a tumultuous shift? What does life look like when the systems we rely on deteriorate? Should we be having kids? How do we make financial decisions? Should we be prepping? And, most importantly, how do we avoid succumbing to doom and despair? In I Eat the Stars, Sarah Wilson delves into these pressing questions. Drawing on many years of research and wisdom gained from more than 200 conversations with philosophers, poets, game theorists, and spiritual leaders, Wilson takes readers on an intimate journey as she lays out a path for living fully, meaningfully, and beautifully through these troubled times. Our predicament, she argues, is ultimately an urgent call to us all to relish what is valuable to us--to eat the stars--and to return to our humanity once again. I Eat the Stars empowers readers to move beyond panic, doom, and despair. With her warm, incisively intelligent, wise, and down-to-earth voice, Wilson creates a space for readers to confront their fears and anxieties about an uncertain future, guiding them toward one rooted in truth, hope, justice, creativity, community, and to step up as warriors and meet the moment. We are in what we were warned about for decades. But from a crisis comes stunning possibility.
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