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Celebrate Pride Month in June
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Love is for All of Us : Poems of Tenderness and Belonging : From the LGBTQ+ Community and Friends
by James Crews
Edited by James Crews with his husband, Brad Peacock, and illustrated by Lisa Congdon, these compassionate poems of connection and affirmation are a celebration of all kinds of love-romantic, family, friendship, self-love, and love for nature. The poems are gathered from a diverse group of contemporary writers, both allied and part of the LGBTQIA+ community, with a special focus on queer, nonbinary, and transgender poets.
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Queer Enlightenments: A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers, and Homemakers
by Anthony Delaney
Queer people have always existed. In an era when this basic truth faces undue scrutiny, here is a dazzling work of restorative history that reveals the hard-won lives of those who dared to break the mold in the long eighteenth-century. At once an illuminating romp through the historical archive and an evocative new chapter in our shared history, Dr. Anthony Delaney's Queer Enlightenments uncovers the remarkable queer people of that complex, sometimes paradoxical time. Peopled with female husbands, midnight elopements, and one unforgettable soldier/diplomat/spy of ambiguous gender, Queer Enlightenments delves into the archives and emerges with new discoveries and a fresh view of the people who challenged society's expectations.
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So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color
by Caro de Robertis
De Robertis creates a collective coming-of-age story based on hundreds of hours of interviews, offering rare snapshots of ordinary life: kids growing up, navigating family issues and finding community, coming out and changing how they identify over the years, building movements and weathering the AIDS crisis, and sharing wisdom for future generations. Often narrating experiences that took place before they had the array of language that exists today to self-identify beyond the gender binary, this generation lived through remarkable changes in American culture, shaped American culture, and yet rarely takes center stage in the history books. Their stories feel particularly urgent in the current political moment, but also remind readers that their experiences are not new, and that young trans and nonbinary people today belong to a long lineage.
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The Queer Allies Bible : The Ultimate Guide to Being an Empowering LGBTQIA+ Ally
by N. V. Gay
Using the actual lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ individuals, The Queer Allies Bible provides a much-needed guide for how to be an effective and affirming LGBTQIA+ ally. Special emphasis is placed on three main pillars: learning and understanding; being respectful; and advocacy. Through these pillars, the book delves into activities and actions that allies can engage in, including conversation starters; responding to anti-LGBTQIA+ remarks; supporting the coming out process; religion; creating inclusive spaces, and more. A necessary book in the present climate, The Queer Allies Bible is a multi-generational resource designed to educate people to be inclusive, accepting, and affirming LGBTQIA+ allies.
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Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage
by Kelly Foster Lundquist
Through the retelling of a marriage that ended twenty years ago, a writer reckons with the bodily and spiritual impact of the beard trope as it manifests in literature, popular culture, and her own romantic history.
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Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Seven Little Words
by John McWhorter
The nature of language is to shift and evolve--but every so often, a new usage creates a whole lot of consternation. These days, pronouns are throwing curve balls, and it matters, because pronoun habits die hard. If you need a refresher from eighth grade English: pronouns are short, used endlessly, and serve to point and direct, to orient us as to what is meant about who. ... Pronouns get a heavy workout, and as such, they become part of our hardwiring. To mess with our pronouns is to mess with us. ... [But] the singular 'they' has been with us since the 1400s and appears in Shakespeare. In fact, many of the supposedly iron-clad rules of grammar are up for debate ('Billy and me went to the store' is perfectly acceptable!), and with tasty trivia, unexpected twists, and the weird quirks of early and contemporary English, McWhorter guides readers on a journey of how our whole collection of these little words emerged and has changed over time.
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The Mental Health Guide for Cis and Trans Queer Guys: Skills to Cope and Thrive as Your Authentic Self
by Rahim Thawer
Queer and trans men face unique and challenging circumstances, including homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, and rejection from family. In addition, the lingering effects of bigotry, discrimination, and hate crimes can have a traumatizing and devastating impact on both body and mind. The Mental Health Guide for Cis and Trans Queer Guys offers GBTQ men a powerful, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)-based approach to heal from systemic inequities and improve their mental health.
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The Beginner's Cut Flower Garden: Grow, Nourish, and Create Bliss Year-Round
by Elizabeth Brown
With the poetry of a classic horticultural guide and the accessibility of a contemporary garden club, Brown brings a collaborative, welcoming spirit to the process of growing flowers: we're all beginners here. In Winter, budding gardeners start simply by focusing on their vision, color palette, and floral style. Once a cohesive garden plan has been developed, it's time to take to the earth and install garden beds in Spring. High summer is for exploring floral design and creating arrangements with freshly cut flowers. Finally, there are various floral art activities for when the garden is more dormant, including dried and pressed flowers, natural dye projects, and making sun prints, expanding the range of how flowers can enrich and bring brightness and balance to everyone's daily life.
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Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better
by David Epstein
We live in a world that gives us seemingly infinite choices and prizes freedom above all else. We have an unprecedented number of options regarding what to do, who to be, and how to spend our time. All that choice is wonderful; it is also overwhelming. The irony is that total freedom can be paralyzing, and unlimited resources don't necessarily lead to the biggest breakthroughs. In fact, overvaluing complete freedom can be disastrous for everything from starting a company to harnessing creativity to finding personal satisfaction. David Epstein argues that all of us--individuals, businesses, institutions, even societies--can benefit from narrowing our options. He dives into the science and practice of constraints, exploring exactly when and how guardrails can be beneficial, whether we're working with limited resources or using self-imposed boundaries to tap unexpected wells of focus and innovation. Original, galvanizing, and deeply researched, Inside the Box tells absorbing stories of people and organizations that embraced constraints to transform themselves, and the world--as well as a few that struggled from a lack of limits. Epstein reveals how boundaries create breakthroughs, and how setting the right constraints can help you become the most creative, productive, and satisfied version of yourself.
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This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark
by Craig Fehrman
In 1806, when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark return from their journey--having led the Corps of Discovery across eight thousand miles of rapids, mountains, forests, and ravines--they bring an incredible tale starring themselves as courageous explorers, skilled survivalists, underrated scientists, and peaceful ambassadors. While there is truth in those descriptions, there is also distortion. From one of the most exciting new historians to emerge in the past decade, This Vast Enterprise offers a novel take on the expedition: a gripping narrative that draws on lost documents, stunning analysis, and Native perspectives. We all know Sacajawea, and some of us know York, the Black man Clark enslaved. But here we meet John Ordway, a working-class soldier who fought grizzlies and towed the captains' hulking barge. We hear from Wolf Calf, a Blackfoot teenager who watched his friend die in a battle with Lewis and his men. Clark is not a folksy Kentuckian but a student of the Enlightenment. (Fehrman discovered his college notebook; no previous biographer even realized that he went to college.) Lewis is someone willing to sacrifice everything for his country and his mentor, Jefferson. In the end, the captains are men who needed help--from Sacajawea, from the Corps, and from each other. Mile after mile, the expedition pushes on through hailstorms and flash floods, frostbite and infections, rattlesnakes and rabid wolves, with the Spanish cavalry in fierce pursuit. Fehrman balances the story's adventure with the humanity of its protagonists. The result is a thrilling reminder that even the most familiar moments in history can still surprise us.
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This Land Is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History
by Beverly Gage
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of G-Man and acclaimed historian Beverly Gage takes the ultimate road trip into the American past. Ride along with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Beverly Gage as she travels the country to see the museums, historic sites, roadside attractions, reenactments, and souvenir shops where Americans learn--and fight--about our history. From the birth of the nation in Philadelphia to Disneyland and the California dream, This Land Is Your Land offers a guided tour of thirteen places and thirteen key moments that define America's greatest successes and challenges. The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a document that proclaimed the liberty and equality of all human beings, but produced a country that often failed to agree upon--or live up to--those ideals. This Land Is Your Land is for everyone who wants to find that history--to experience it and confront it, to celebrate it and condemn it--in the places where it happened. Gage shows that Americans can face their past and still love their country. Toss the book in the back seat--or listen on audio with the windows down--and join the journey.
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Food Fix Uncensored: Inside the Food Industry's Biggest Cover-Ups
by Mark Hyman
This is not a diet book. It's an indictment. Food Fix Uncensored is the fully revised and expanded edition of Dr. Mark Hyman's bestselling 2020 wake-up call, now more revealing than ever. In a world where food is engineered more for profit than nourishment, every bite you take matters--not just for your health, but for the future of our planet. Dr. Hyman invites you to question: What if the chronic diseases we accept as normal... aren't? What if our broken food system was designed to protect power and profits rather the health of the American public? What if the solution to our biggest health crises isn't more medicine--but better food? The shocking stats you read about Americans' declining health are not the result of personal failures. They're policy failures by design - the result of a system rigged by Big Food, Big Ag, and Big Pharma to keep you sick and addicted. Food Fix Uncensored rips the veil off the multibillion-dollar machine hijacking our bodies, our brains, and our children's futures, and hands you the tools to take it all back. Balancing cutting-edge nutritional science with unflinching journalistic investigation, Food Fix Uncensored doesn't just ask you to eat differently. It dares you to see differently. After reading this, you'll never look at your food the same way again.
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In Sickness and in Health: Love Stories from the Front Lines of America's Caregiving Crisis
by Laura Mauldin
An urgent and deeply affecting account of America's failure to provide meaningful support to its chronically ill and disabled citizens and our resulting reliance on the unpaid caregiving labor of spouses and intimate partners. Sociologist and professor of disability studies, Dr. Mauldin turns her private pain into a searing public investigation. To better understand her own experience, she speaks with couples across the country navigating the brutal, lonely fallout of chronic illness and disability. These are heartbreaking stories of love under strain -- relationships full of extraordinary intimacy and resilience, but pushed to the edge by an ableist society that would rather look away from its most vulnerable citizens. At the heart of this investigation is a profound series of questions: What if love isn't enough? What if our most cherished romantic ideals--commitment, sacrifice, in sickness and in health -- have been weaponized to excuse the state from its responsibilities? And what happens to love when we ask it to do the work of an entire broken system? In Sickness and In Health is a rallying cry for a radical reimagining of care--not as an individual act of devotion, but as a collective responsibility. In connecting the care crisis to the politics of love and intimacy, Mauldin reframes the conversation, urging us to build a world where no one is left to do the work of love alone.
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The Feather Wars: And the Great Crusade to Save America's Birds
by James H. McCommons
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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Island at the Edge of the World: The Forgotten History of Easter Island
by Mike Pitts
A vital and timely work of historical adventure and reclamation by British archeological scholar Mike Pitts--a book that rewrites the popular yet flawed history of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and uses newly unearthed findings and documents to challenge the long-standing historical assumptions about the manmade ecological disaster that caused the island's collapse. Rapa Nui, known to Western cultures as Easter Island for centuries, has long been a source of mystery. While the massive stone statues that populate the island's landscape have loomed in the popular Western imagination since Europeans first set foot there in 1722, in recent years, the island has gained infamy as a cautionary tale of eco-destruction. The island's history as it's been written tells of Polynesians who carelessly farmed, plundered their natural resources, and battled each other, dooming their delicate ecosystem and becoming a warning to us all about the frailty of our natural world. But what if that history is wrong? A stunning work of revisionism, this book raises critical questions about who gets to write history and the stakes of ignoring that history's true authors. Provocative and illuminating, The Island at the Edge of the World will change the way people think about Easter Island, its colonial legacy, and where the blame for its devastation truly lies.
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