July 2025 list by Nanette Alderman |
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Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Age
by Frank Close
The thrilling and terrifying seventy-year story of the physics that deciphered the atom and created the hydrogen bomb. Although Henri Becquerel didn't know it at the time, he changed history in 1895 when he left photographic plates and some uranium rocks in a drawer. Charts the course of nuclear physics from simple curiosity to potential Armageddon.
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Face With Tears of Joy: A Natural History of Emoji
by Keith Houston
We are surrounded by emoji. They appear in politics, movies, drug deals, our sex lives, and more. But emoji's impact has never been explored in full. In this rollicking tech and pop culture history, Keith Houston follows emoji from its birth in 1990s Japan, traces its Western explosion in the 2000s, and considers emoji's ever-expanding lexicon. Named for the world's most popular pictogram, Face with Tears of Joy tells the whole story of emoji for the first time.
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Gouache for Beginners
by Kate Jarvik Birch
Gouache is a water-based paint that dries to a matte, opaque finish. Long used by illustrators, gouache is gaining popularity with artists of all styles and interests. For budding artists eager to explore painting or a more experienced artists looking to add gouache to your painting toolkit.
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Homework
by Geoff Dyer
The only child of a sheet-metal worker and a dinner lady who worked at the canteen of the local school, Geoff Dyer grew up in a world shaped by memories of the Depression and the Second World War. But far from being a story of hardship overcome, this loving memoir is a celebration of opportunities afforded by the postwar settlement, of which the author was an unconscious beneficiary.
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I Want to Burn This Place Down: Essays
by Maris Kreizman
A book for anyone who wishes they could go back in time to give their younger selves the real truth about the fractured country they have inherited--and the encouragement to rebuild something better in its place.
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Naming Bebe
by Colleen Slagen
A next-generation baby name book by a professional name consultant, full of activities, advice, and inspiration The first decision you make as a parent is what to name your child. Walks you through naming your baby step by step, considering style, popularity, and more. Inside you'll find: Interactive quizzes and activities to help you explore and refine your options and more.
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The Place of Tides
by James Rebanks
James Rebanks met an old woman on a remote Norwegian island. She lived and worked alone on a tiny rocky outcrop, caring for wild Eider ducks and gathering their down. He couldn't stop thinking about her. One day, he wrote her a letter, asking if he could return. Bring work clothes, she replied, and good boots, and come quickly: her health was failing. And so he travelled to the edge of the Arctic to witness her last season on the island. This is the story of that season.
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Rich Girl Nation
by Katie Gatti Tassin
Examines the unique financial challenges women face, offering practical strategies for building wealth, negotiating salaries, investing, planning for childcare, and securing independent retirements, while empowering women to navigate a system that often works against them.
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The Road That Made America
by James Dodson
The Great Wagon Road was the primary road of frontier America: a mass migration route that stretched more than eight hundred miles from Philadelphia to Augusta, Georgia. It opened the Southern frontier and wilderness east of the Appalachian Mountains to America's first settlers, and later served as the gateway for the exploration of the American West. James Dodson sets out to follow the road's original path from Philadelphia to Georgia.
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We Are Eating the Earth
by Michael Grunwald
Humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates a third of our carbon emissions. Grunwald shows how the world, after decades of ignoring the climate problem at the center of our plates, has pivoted to making it worse, embracing solutions that sound sustainable but could make it even harder to grow more food with less land.
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