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New Nonfiction and Biography August 2025 |
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Into the Inferno: The Story of a B-17 Gunner over Nazi-occupied Europe
by Bill Ibelle
The temperature was 40 degrees below zero when fighter planes screamed out of the clouds, puncturing the fuselage with a spray of machinegun fire and sending the bomber beside them into a death spin. This was followed by intense flak, as a hundred cannons on the ground tried to blow them out of the sky.
When they finally made it back to the base, another enemy awaited them: homesickness, crushing boredom, relentless cold, and more mud than they could imagine.
Bert Ibelle was a 19-year-old freshman at Dartmouth College when he enlisted in the Army Air Corps to fly dozens of bomber missions over Nazi-occupied Europe and win the Purple Heart. His buddy, Fran Brighenti, served as an infantry marksman on the opposite side of the globe, slogging through the steaming jungles of the Philippine and the fiery hell of Okinawa.
Their wars couldn’t have been more different, nor could their approach to life. While the ever-exuberant Fran was a ladies man, Bert only had eyes for “Red,” the girl back home who was in love with another young man.
This is their story—one that combines terror, humor, friendship, and a son’s search for his elusive father.
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Ballroom : A History, a Movement, a Celebration
by Michael Roberson
A gorgeous, authoritative, and image-filled celebration of pageantry and community created by ballroom culture for Black and Brown LGBTQIA+ people.
The subculture of Ballroom emerged in Harlem in the '60s out of a need for safe and inclusive spaces for Black and Brown queer people, in which family-like "Houses" competed at performative balls, allowing members of this marginalized groups to shine. Thanks to shows like Pose and Legendary , it has grown into a global phenomenon. It offers refuge from the threats and violence against the LGBTQIA+ community while also serving as a testament to the radical nature of queer joy with its pageantry and commitment to chosen family.
Ballroom: A History, A Movement, A Celebration is an exhaustively researched tome honoring where Ballroom began and where it is now. It explores how Ballroom has served the Black and Brown LGBTQIA+ community. Bringing both a authoritative and entertaining sweep to this hugely important and influential cultural sensation, this book is filled with photos, interviews, and stories, presenting a captivating, well-documented narrative about not only how to survive but how to do so fashionably, glamorously, and in the company of one another.
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Valley of Forgetting: Alzheimer's Families and the Search for a Cure
by Jennie Erin Smith
The riveting account of a community from the remote mountains of Colombia whose rare and fatal genetic mutation is unlocking the secrets of Alzheimer's disease In the 1980s, a neurologist named Francisco Lopera traveled on horseback into the mountains seeking families with symptoms of dementia. For centuries, residents of certain villages near Medellâin had suffered memory loss as they reached middle age, going on to die in their fifties. Lopera discovered that a unique genetic mutation was causing their rare hereditary form of early onset Alzheimer's disease.
Over the next forty years of working with the "paisa mutation" kindred, he went on to build a world-class research program in a region beset by violence and poverty. In Valley of Forgetting, Jennie Erin Smith brings readers into the clinic, the laboratories, and the Medellâin trial center where Lopera's patients receive an experimental drug to see if Alzheimer's can be averted. She chronicles the lives of people who care for sick parents, spouses, and siblings, all while struggling to keep their own dreams afloat. These Colombian families have donated hundreds of their loved ones' brains to science and subjected themselves to invasive testing to help uncover how Alzheimer's develops and whether it can be stopped.
Findings from this unprecedented effort could hold the key to understanding and treating the disease, though it is unclear what, if anything, the families will receive in return. Smith's immersive storytelling brings this complex drama to life, inviting readers on a scientific journey that is as deeply moving as it is engrossing.
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And in The End : the Last Days of the Beatles
by Ken McNab
Ken McNab's in-depth look at The Beatles' acrimonious final year is a detailed account of the breakup featuring the perspectives of all four band members and their roles. A must to add to the collection of Beatles fans, And In the End is full of fascinating information available for the first time. McNab reconstructs for the first time the seismic events of 1969, when The Beatles reached new highs of creativity and new lows of the internal strife that would destroy them. Between the pressure of being filmed during rehearsals and writing sessions for the documentary Get Back, their company Apple Corps facing bankruptcy, Lennon's heroin use, and musical disagreements, the group was arguing more than ever before and their formerly close friendship began to disintegrate. In the midst of this rancour, however, emerged the disharmony of Let It Be and the ragged genius of Abbey Road, their incredible farewell love letter to the world.
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Matriarch: a Memoir
by Tina Knowles-Lawson
Tina Knowles, the mother of iconic singer-songwriters Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Solange Knowles, and bonus daughter Kelly Rowland, is known the world over as a Matriarch with a capital M: a determined, self-possessed, self-aware, and wise woman who raised and inspired some of the great artists of our time. But this story is about so much more than that. Matriarch begins with a precocious, if unruly, little girl growing up in 1950s Galveston, the youngest of seven. She is in love with her world, with extended family on every other porch and the sounds of Motown and the lapping beach always within earshot. But as the realities of race and the limitations of girlhood set in, she begins to dream of the world beyond. Her instincts and impulsive nature drive her far beyond the shores of Texas to discover the life awaiting her on the other side of childhood. That life's journey-through grief and tragedy, creative and romantic risks and turmoil, the nurturing of superstar offspring and of her own special gifts-is the remarkable story she shares with readers here. This is a page-turning chronicle of family love and heartbreak, of loss and perseverance, and of the kind of creativity, audacity, and will it takes for a girl from Galveston to change the world. It's one brilliant woman's intimate and revealing story, and a multigenerational family saga that carries within it the story of America-and the wisdom that women pass on to each other, mothers to daughters, across generations.
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Cher : The Memoir
by Cher
After more than seventy years of fighting to live her life on her own terms, Cher finally reveals her true story in intimate detail, in a two-part memoir. Her remarkable career is unique and unparalleled. The only woman to top Billboard charts in seven consecutive decades, she is the winner of an Academy Award, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Cannes Film Festival Award, and an inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who has been lauded by the Kennedy Center.
She is a lifelong activist and philanthropist. As a dyslexic child who dreamed of becoming famous, Cher was raised in often-chaotic circumstances, surrounded by singers, actors, and a mother who inspired her in spite of their difficult relationship.
With her trademark honesty and humor, Cher: The Memoir traces how this diamond in the rough succeeded with no plan and little confidence to become the trailblazing superstar the world has been unable to ignore for more than half a century.
Cher: The Memoir, Part One follows her extraordinary beginnings through childhood to meeting and marrying Sonny Bono—and reveals the highly complicated relationship that made them world-famous, but eventually drove them apart. Cher: The Memoir reveals the daughter, the sister, the wife, the lover, the mother, and the superstar.
It is a life too immense for only one book.
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Becoming Janet: Finding Myself in the Holocaust
by Janet Singer Applefield
AS A FOUR-YEAR-OLD IN NOWY TARG, POLAND, Gustawa Singer lived an idyllic life. Her parents doted on her, and she was always surrounded by loving relatives. Her father worked in the hardware store owned by her grandfather, and the family prospered. Then, in 1939, everything changed: Hitler's army invaded Poland, and Gustawa's carefree childhood days of petting her dog, going to the candy store with Uncle Artur, and savoring her grandmother's fresh-baked challah were gone forever. Ultimately, the Nazis killed 2,000 of the 2,200 Jews in her small hometown. Gustawa's mother was transported to the death camp at Belzec, her father was assigned to forced labor, and Gustawa became separated from everyone she had ever known. Amidst the Nazis' vile hatred and appalling savagery, a compassionate stranger spotted Gustawa after her "caretaker" cousin abandoned her in Krakow. This kindhearted woman took her in and fed, clothed, and loved her at terrible risk to her own family. For Gustawa's protection, her name had to be changed several times. She survived the seemingly endless ordeal of the Holocaust and was eventually reunited with her father, who had never stopped searching for her. They emigrated to the United States where Janet grew up. Believing that the world must never forget the horrors unleashed by Hitler's regime, the woman who was now Janet Singer Applefield began a series of talks to middle- and high-school students, telling them the moving story of all she had endured, teaching them the power of courage and resilience in the face of bigotry and hate, and encouraging them to stand up to every kind of discrimination and injustice.
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Hope: The Autobiography
by Francis
Pope Francis originally intended this book to appear only after his death, but the needs of our times and the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope have moved him to make this legacy available now.
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