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New! Adult Nonfiction Staff Picks |
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Child X: A Memoir of Slavery, Poverty, Celebrity, and Scientology
by Jamie Mustard
Jamie Mustard was born into one of the most influential fringe movements in the 1970s: Scientology. Raised on a mythology of spaceships and made to believe that it was his life's purpose to help save the world, he was determined to survive--not only neglect but also the physical and psychological gauntlets of extreme poverty and illiteracy. This book tells the unfathomable story of a lost generation of children, who endured mass psychological indoctrination and captivity.
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All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation
by Elizabeth Gilbert
In 2000, Elizabeth Gilbert met Rayya. They became friends, then best friends, then inseparable. When tragedy entered their lives, the truth was finally laid bare: The two were in love. They were also a pair of addicts, on a collision course toward catastrophe.
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Bring Me the Head of Joaquin Murrieta: The Bandit Chief Who Terrorized California and Launched the Legend of Zorro
by John Boessenecker
The authoritative account of one of the most notorious outlaws of the West. Joaquin Murrieta's story is one for the ages. In myth, he embarked on a noble career as a rebel, fighting against injustice in the rough-and-tumble Wild West. However, though the 'Robin Hood of El Dorado' remains a folk hero to many, his extraordinarily dramatic and violent saga has been obscured by layers upon layers of legend -- until now. Through meticulous research and never-before-told stories of the bloody trail Murrieta and his band left in their wake, Bring Me the Head of Joaquin Murrieta chronicles their infamous escapades in this brilliant examination of the American story.
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Delivering for America: How the United States Postal Service Built a Nation
by James H. Bruns
The first official book to chronicle the rich, 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, told through captivating stories and stunning visuals.
Expertly guided by author James H. Bruns, the former director of the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum, this book is filled with rare photographs, documents, and artifacts--many never before seen in print. Captions, sidebars, and visual breakouts offer deeper insights into everything from postal uniforms and hand stamps to pneumatic mail systems and even post office-themed music. Through these captivating stories and stunning visuals, readers will gain a deeper understanding of not just the history of the mail, but of America itself--where we've been, who we are, and where we're headed.
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The Möbius Book
by Catherine Lacey
Adrift after a sudden breakup and its ensuing depression, the novelist Catherine Lacey began cataloguing the wreckage of her life and the beauty of her friendships, a practice that eventually propagated fiction both entirely imagined and painfully true. Betrayed by the mercurial partner she had trusted with a shared mortgage and suddenly catapulted into the unknown, Lacey's appetite vanished, a visceral reminder of the teenage emaciation that came when she stopped believing in God. But through relationships, travel, reading, and memories of her religious fanaticism, she charts the contours of faith's absence and reemergence. She and her characters recall gnostic experiences with animals, close encounters with male anger, grief-driven lust, and the redemptive power of platonic love and of narrative itself. The result is a book of uncommon vulnerability and wisdom, and a heartbreaking--and heart-mending--exploration of endings and beginnings. A hybrid work with no beginning or ending, readable from either side, The Möbius Book troubles the line between memory and fiction with an openhearted defense of faith's power, and inherent danger.
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On Muscle: The Stuff That Moves Us and Why It Matters
by Bonnie Tsui
Cardiac, smooth, skeletal--these three different types of muscle in our bodies make our hearts beat; push food through our intestines, blood through our vessels, babies out the uterus; attach to our bones and allow for motion. Tsui also traces how muscles have defined beauty--and how they have distorted it--through the ages, and how they play an essential role in our physical and mental health.
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The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America
by John Fabian Witt
From Pulitzer Prize finalist John Fabian Witt comes the captivating secret history of an epic experiment to remake American democracy. Before the dark money of the Koch Brothers, before the billions of the Ford Foundation, there was the Garland Fund. In 1922, a young idealist named Charles Garland rejected a million-dollar inheritance. In a world of shocking wealth disparities, shameless racism, and political repression, Garland opted instead to invest in a future where radical ideas--like working-class power, free speech, and equality--might flourish. Over the next two decades, the Garland Fund would nurture a new generation of wildly ambitious progressive projects. The men and women around the Fund were rich and poor, white and Black. They cooperated and bickered; they formed rivalries, fell in and out of love, and made mistakes. Yet shared beliefs linked them throughout. They believed that American capitalism was broken. They believed that American democracy (if it had ever existed) stole from those who had the least. And they believed that American institutions needed to be radically remade for the modern age. By the time they spent the last of the Fund's resources, their outsider ideas had become mass movements battling to transform a nation. A luminous testament to the power of visionary organizations and a meditation on the vexed role of money in American life, The Radical Fund is a hopeful book for our anxious, angry age--an empowering road map for how people with heretical ideas can bring about audacious change.
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Raising Brows: My Story of Building a Billion-Dollar Beauty Empire
by Anastasia Soare
An esthetician and single mother with no connections, Anastasia Soare risked her life escaping communist Romania to come to America. Raising Brows tells the remarkable story of how she built a billion-dollar beauty brand and went from watching Oprah's TV show to learn English, to shaping Oprah's eyebrows on the very same show years later. Anastasia disrupted the beauty industry by applying her art school training on the golden ratio of beauty to eyebrows. Helping women find harmony with their face, Anastasia put eyebrows on the map. She pioneered new makeup products and built a glittering roster of clients like Michelle Obama, Jennifer Lopez, Kim Kardashian, and Hailey Bieber. But beneath the glossy exterior, Anastasia's path wasn't easy. In this powerful memoir, she shares her extraordinary journey, putting her Romanian values of hard work, persistence, and optimism to the test in Los Angeles, ignoring the landlords and bank managers who laughed when she tried to open a salon focusing on brows. Anastasia's story serves as a powerful reminder that you can do anything you put your mind to so long as you are passionate and determined. As she says, It's the love and effort we put into our pursuits and relationships that truly define our success.
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The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation's Fight Over Its Future
by Carter Sherman
Equal parts investigative reporting and cultural criticism, this is a look at the sex lives of young adults in post-Roe v. Wade, post-#MeToo America--and how the challenges they face are harbingers of what's coming for the rest of us. As a college student, award-winning journalist Carter Sherman, along with several members of her sorority, was interviewed by a writer looking for salacious details about their sex lives. But the sex the girls were having--or the lack thereof--seemed disappointing, and their stories didn't make the book's final cut. A decade later, young Americans are having less sex than past generations, and the sex they are having is infinitely more complicated. Sherman, who has spent years traveling the country reporting on gender and sexuality, wanted to find out why. Based on more than one hundred interviews with teenagers and young adults, activists, and experts, The Second Coming reveals how (mis)education, the internet, and politics have not only reshaped relationships but also unleashed a nationwide power struggle over the future of sex. From abortion clinics crowded with young patients, to Dating with Dignity seminars at the National Pro-Life Summit, to school board battles over what students should read, think, and feel, we meet folks from both sides of the aisle who are well-informed, empowered, and active (even if not always sexually). And as measures are taken to limit Americans' access to rights and resources, they are fighting back. In the tradition of Rebecca Traister and Lisa Taddeo, The Second Coming explores how the ballot box has infiltrated the bedroom, and the breaking point as a nation we've reached as a result.
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Chronicles of Ori: An African Epic
by Harmonia Rosales
From the acclaimed fine artist Harmonia Rosales, a sweeping retelling of African myth illustrated throughout with Rosales's spectacular paintings.
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We Survived the Night
by Julian Brave Noisecat
Born to a Secwepemc father and Jewish-Irish mother, Julian Brave NoiseCat's childhood was full of contradictions. Despite living in the urban Native community of Oakland, California, he was raised primarily by his white mother. He was a competitive powwow dancer, but asked his father to cut his hair short, fearing that his white classmates would call him a girl if he kept it long. When his father, tormented by an abusive and impoverished rez upbringing, eventually left the family, NoiseCat was left to make sense of his Indigenous heritage and identity on his own. Now, decades later, Noisecat has set across the country to correct the erasure, invisibility, and misconceptions surrounding this nation's First Peoples, as he develops his voice as a storyteller and artist in his own right.
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