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New! Adult Nonfiction Staff Picks |
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Unbearable: Five Women and the Perils of Pregnancy in America
by Irin Carmon
...introduces us to five women navigating pregnancy care--from that first positive pregnancy test through joy, loss, and the unforeseen--in a country that is at best indifferent and at worst willfully cruel, and to brave, outnumbered people fighting to make it better. Written with deep empathy and analytical rigor, Unbearable is at once a moving story of interconnection, a harrowing exposé, and assertion of humanity. Above all, it is a powerful call for solidarity, regardless of our circumstances or our decisions.
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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. 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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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 these 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.
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A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature
by Adam Morgan
Already under fire for publishing the literary avant-garde into a world not ready for it, Margaret C. Anderson's cutting-edge magazine The Little Review was a bastion of progressive politics and boundary-pushing writing from then-unknowns like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Butler Yeats, and Djuna Barnes. And as its publisher, Anderson was a target. From Chicago to New York and Paris, this fearless agitator helmed a woman-led publication that pushed American culture forward and challenged the sensibilities of early 20th century Americans dismayed by its salacious writing and advocacy for supposed extremism like women's suffrage, access to birth control, and LBGTQ rights. But then it went too far. In 1921, Anderson found herself on trial and labeled a danger to the minds of young girls by a government seeking to shut her down. Guilty of having serialized James Joyce's masterpiece Ulysses in her magazine, Anderson was now not just a publisher but also a scapegoat for regressives seeking to impose their will on a world on the brink of modernization. Author, journalist, and literary critic Adam Morgan brings Anderson and her journal to life anew in A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls, capturing a moment of cultural acceleration and backlash all too familiar today while shining light on an unsung heroine of American arts and letters. Bringing a fresh eye to a woman and a movement misunderstood in their time, this biography highlights a feminist counterculture that audaciously pushed for more during a time of extreme social conservatism and changed the face of American literature and culture forever.
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Cave Mountain: A Disappearance and a Reckoning in the Ozarks
by Benjamin Hale
...a compelling true crime story about two young girls who went missing in the same Arkansas woods twenty-three years apart and the strange circumstances connecting them. This story begins in 2001 on top of Cave Mountain in the Arkansas Ozarks. A six-year-old girl named Haley--Benjamin Hale's cousin--got lost on a mountain trail, prompting what was at the time the largest search and rescue mission in the state's history. Her disappearance--and her account, after she was found, of the imaginary friend she met in the woods--would eventually become connected to another story that took place in the same wilderness more than twenty years earlier: a dark and bizarre story of a cult, brainwashing, murder, and the apocalyptic visions of a teenage prophet. Enriched by Benjamin Hale's own family history and the lore of the Arkansas Ozarks, Cave Mountain is a gripping story about nature and survival, religion and skepticism, and good and evil. At its center are two young girls, years apart, both in danger in the verdant wilds of northern Arkansas.
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Give Her Credit: The Untold Account of a Women's Bank That Empowered a Generation
by Grace L. Williams
In the 1970s, a new wave of feminism was sweeping America. But in the boys' club of banking and finance, women were still infantilized--no credit without a male cosigner, and their income was dismissed as unreliable. If bankers weren't going to accommodate women, then women had to take control of their own futures. In 1978 in Denver, Colorado, the opening of the Women's Bank changed everything. It was helmed by bank officer B. LaRae Orullian and the brainchild of whip-smart entrepreneur Carol Green, who forged a groundbreaking path with their headstrong colleagues, among them: Judi Foster, investment research whiz; Edna Mosley, unyielding civil rights advocate with the NAACP; Mary Roebling, renowned financial executive; Betty Freedman, a socialite and fundraiser; and Gail Schoettler, a formidable Denver mover and shaker for social justice. Coming together and facing their own unique road to revolution, they built the most successful female-run bank in the nation. It wasn't easy. Give Her Credit follows the challenges, uphill battles, and achievements of some of the enterprising women of Denver who broke boundaries, inspired millions, and afforded opportunities for every marginalized citizen in the country. It's about time their untold story was told.
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