August 2026 list by Donalee Jacobs |
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The 12 Levers
by Spencer Greenberg
The world of self-help is overflowing with advice. For Spencer Greenberg and Jeremy Stevenson, the most essential part of all this advice is the techniques. Techniques answer the million-dollar question: What do you actually do to fix your problem? After years of research -- analyzing 106 self-help books and 23 therapies -- they discovered that, from a bird's-eye view, all self-help techniques collapse into just 12 broad strategies: The 12 Levers. Together, the 12 Levers form the complete psychological toolkit for improving your life.
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Aging Out
by Lucy Schiller
Unlike many other cultures, our collective stance toward older people in the United States has long been one of casual avoidance and neglect. Lucy Schiller experienced this callousness firsthand when her grandmother passed away. In the wake of this trauma, propelled by equal parts grief and curiosity about her own fear of aging, Schiller embarked on an investigative journey to understand why the prospect of aging is so frightening and how being old in America intersects with class, race, disability, and public policy. Combining incisive reporting with introspection, Aging Out is an intimate and unflinching exploration of what it means to age in this country and why Americans are so terrified of getting old.
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All That's Unseen
by Emilee Hackney
Emilee Hackney was raised deep in the Appalachian Mountains of southwest Virginia. At fourteen, she meets Sam and they begin attending Deliverance Christian Church as a couple. Eager to make her relationship work, Emilee embraces the extremist doctrines of the church. Years later, isolated from friends, family, and her own sense of truth she applies to Harvard in a stunning act of defiance and hope, and is accepted. From the mountains of Tazewell to the halls of Cambridge, Emilee reinvents herself and her relationships with her home, faith, and values in this fiercely honest memoir about spiritual entrapment, hard-won liberation, and the courage to reclaim a voice taught to stay silent.
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American Alt
by Chris Lockhart
On the eve of January 6, 2021, Michael Dodd and his three friends found themselves at the Washington State Capitol, armed to the teeth, and ready to kidnap Governor Jay Inslee. Only there weren't three others in the car — Michael was alone. Months later, Michael sat in a psychiatric hospital struggling with schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder. Anxious to find out how his world turned upside down, he reached out to friend and author Chris Lockhart. The friends work to piece together the fragments of Michael's memory and uncover what pushed him to the edge. Set against the beautiful but economically fractured Pacific Northwest, Lockhart delivers a suspenseful, profoundly moving story of discovery and affirmation.
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Babylon
by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones
The first royal dynasty of Babylon was founded by an Amorite interloper named Sumu-la-El a thousand years after the fall of the Sumerian city states of Ur and Uruk. Clinging close to the River Euphrates, the city quickly grew in size and, thanks to its military prowess, soon expanded its territories, sweeping down to the Persian Gulf and advancing north into Syria. The kingdom of Babylonia came in to being and, governed from mighty Babylon, setting the agenda for what civilization meant. This fascinating book explores Babylon's reputation as a city with a dual legacy by exploring its rich ancient past and its astonishing mythic legacy.
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Big Time Off
by DJ Didonna
Integrating original research and compelling stories of sabbatical-takers from all walks of life, Big Time Off explores why extended time away from work has such a profound effect on people's identity, relationships, creativity, and direction.
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Biological War
by Annie Jacobsen
Following the gripping narrative style that launched Nuclear War: A Scenario to the bestseller list, Jacobsen looks deeply at a situation that is in some ways the opposite of a nuclear bomb: There is no mushroom cloud, no shock wave or blast. Instead, the scenario that could end the world as we know it begins with something so small, and something so malicious, that when used for evil, only evil can result. This is what could happen; a ticking-clock roadmap to the hours, days, and weeks following the release of a biological agent, that serves as the most essential, forward-looking journalism in preparation for urgent societal upheaval.
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Cat 5: The 2033 War
by Bing West
Bing West is the only historian to serve on the front lines in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan—and at the highest levels of government. He fought in the battles he writes about, and he explains with firsthand insight why our grunts won the fights, but our presidents lost the wars. The cause, he argues, was hubris. Presidents and policymakers believed the nation was too powerful to fail. That same conceit now threatens America itself. By 2033, two forces — our unsustainable debt and China's ambition — will collide in a Category 5 storm. Drawing on six decades of combat and policy experience, West shows how America arrived at this perilous moment and how to deal with a disaster of our own making.
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Country of Lords
by Kim Phillips-Fein
A Pulitzer-finalist historian charts a 250-year-old intellectual and political tradition -- the conviction that all Americans are NOT created equal. Kim Phillips–Fein tells the story of John Adams, William Graham Sumner, Andrew Carnegie, journalist Lothrop Stoddard, Henry Ford, Harvard psychologist Richard Herrnstein, Peter Thiel, and others who represent this counter-tradition of hostility to democratic government — that "all men are created equal." Phillips-Fein explores their ideas, and the aspirations they were reacting to, in order to understand our political life today — in hopes we might imagine a more egalitarian way forward.
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A Cruise to Nowhere
by James Renner
Gripping, suspenseful, and layered with insight, this is the first full account of the1988 disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley while onboard a cruise ship in the Caribbean -- from the acclaimed author of True Crime Addict. In a baffling case filled with false leads, rumors, and conflicting witness reports, the only certainty is that, nearly three decades later, the Bradleys' are still looking for Amy. Now, acclaimed investigative journalist James Renner provides a definitive account of Amy's disappearance. With empathy and a keen eye, Renner interviews witnesses who speak on record for the first time, offers new theories, and explores a little-known side of Amy's life that may explain her fate.
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Data Empire
by Roopika Risam
Every system of data is also a system of power. From clay tablets in Mesopotamia to colonial censuses to modern databases, data determines who is visible, who is legible, and who can be governed. For most of history, data infrastructures were largely state-driven. Today, they are increasingly owned and operated by private corporations, even as they structure public life. This shift raises urgent questions about accountability, sovereignty, and the future of public life. For readers of Nexus and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
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From Presence to Power
by Rashad Robinson
Why do some fights for justice hit a wall while others succeed? What does it take to win social change, especially now? It comes down to understanding one thing: the difference between presence and power. Rashad Robinson argues that achieving presence is not the same as gaining the leverage required to change the rules for how society works or change the decisions that politicians, corporate executives, and other people in authority make. This book offers a set of essential lessons about power for anyone who wants to understand it, gain it, and use it to win the progress we all deserve.
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The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby
by Michael Blanding
Hobby Lobby is a multibillion-dollar craft store chain, founded and owned by the Greens -- an evangelical Christian family committed to establishing the Bible as the ultimate authority behind our laws and society. Michael Blanding reveals how the Greens use their wealth to spread their beliefs throughout the US and beyond. And how, for their Museum of the Bible just blocks from the US Capitol building, they've acquired looted, stolen, and forged biblical antiquities from the Middle East. Captivating and disturbing, The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby exposes the pivotal role the Green family has played in America's Christian nationalist movement.
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Hotel Exile
by Jane Rogoyska
From an award-winning historian, the story of World War II exiles and one famed Paris hotel. Since it opened in 1910, the Hotel Lutetia has been a meeting place for artists, intellectuals, musicians, and politicians. But the hotel has a darker history and Jane Rogoyska relates the emotions, dilemmas, and fates of the hotel's patrons: from those fleeing Nazi Germany, to German counterintelligence officers, to Holocaust survivors who sought refuge after the Liberation. Hotel Exile offers us a vision of the edges of a war, and of the three groups connected to a place, to one another, and to the dark ideology that dictated some of the twentieth century's most devastating events.
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How to Kill a Language
by Sophia Smith Galer
Languages can be killed in many ways: war, the climate crisis, nationalism, and even quiet choices made at the dinner table. An unprecedented global shift is drawing speakers toward national and global lingua francas. For some, that means losing the language of parents or grandparents; for many, it is a permanent farewell to systems that carry knowledge, culture, and belonging. In How to Kill a Language, journalist Sophia Smith Galer travels across continents and generations to chart this phenomenon, while also reckoning with the unintended consequences of raising a language seemingly from the grave. Brought to life by vivid storytelling and Smith Galer's own experience with language loss, it's a fierce rallying cry for a multilingual future.
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Lost in Curiosity
by Roberta Kwok
The real story of science isn't a triumphant breakthrough. It's messy, mysterious, and deeply human. In Lost in Curiosity, award-winning journalist Roberta Kwok pulls back the curtain on what scientific discovery actually looks like. Through vivid reporting and moments of unexpected emotion, Kwok reveals the inner lives of researchers who care profoundly about understanding our world. From enigmatic fossils and mind-bending physics to the puzzling behavior of wild animals, Lost in Curiosity is a journey through the questions that keep scientists up at night -- and the sometimes strange, always illuminating paths they take to answer them.
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The Midnight Special
by Colin Asher
This innovative history explores the rich tradition of music behind bars and shows how policing and prisons have shaped our musical culture from blues to hip-hop.
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The Monk's Mindset
by Sam Yo
In The Monk's Mindset, former Buddhist monk and renowned Peloton instructor Sam Yo shares the transformative lessons that helped him move from chaos to clarity. Through vivid storytelling that draws on his monastic training, meditation practice, and experiences as a performer and coach, he reveals how anyone can weave ancient Buddhist wisdom into modern life to find calm, focus, and purpose, even in a world that never slows down.
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No Experience Necessary
by Ronnen Harary
The co-founder and former CEO of Spin Master, a children's entertainment powerhouse, reveals the secret business advantages of youth -- and how having no experience can be the keys to finding success in your twenties. Structured around eleven core principles, No Experience Necessary makes the case that Harary's success sprang from the incredibly powerful advantages of youth, and that we squander these advantages at our peril. In an age when technology threatens to impact entry-level jobs across the spectrum, Harary exhorts young readers to take control of their own destiny. No Experience Necessary is a rallying cry for dreamers to embrace the messy reality of building something meaningful from scratch.
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The Not-So-Scary Guide to Ghosts
by Rebekah Carmichael
TikTok favorite Rebekah the Ghost Guide makes the paranormal normal -- and a little less spooky -- for the growing number of folks who like their ghosts more friendly than frightening. With fun and easy-to-follow instructions for finding and communicating with spirits, along with real-life stories from Rebekah's paranormal investigations, this friendly ghost guide is perfect if you want to find out what goes bump in the night.
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Our Knives Will Save Us
by Nephi Craig
At just eighteen years old, Nephi Craig was facing a felony charge that could have put him in prison for years. When a judge ordered three years of probation with the condition he attend work or school, Craig enrolled in a culinary arts program and discovered a talent and passion for cooking, which led to a career working as a chef around the world. When faced with the choice between a career-defining executive chef job and an opportunity to serve his community back on the Rez, he realized his true vocation. Interweaving personal reflection with illuminating cultural insight, Our Knives Will Save Us offers a vision of hope: one where food is decolonized and cooking is a pathway to healing for all.
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Our Wild Familiars
by Dan Werb
A dazzling journey into the hidden lives of synanthropes, the wild animals who've found ingenious ways to survive and thrive in human communities--from award-winning writer and scientist Dan Werb. Through vivid storytelling, Our Wild Familiars brings to spectacular life the world's most successful synanthropes, from bats, raccoons, and crows, to some of its weirdest, including the Giant Pacific Octopus. Acting as a guide to the curious, Werb reveals how the cracks in our millennia-long efforts to shield ourselves against the outside world might just lead us to a new and necessary balance with nature -- or to an ever more savage future.
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Push the Wall
by Frank Miller
From the bestselling mind behind Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Daredevil, 300, and Sin City, comes this part memoir, part master class for budding artists and writers. Frank's mix of autobiographical lessons weaves his struggles as a seventeen-year-old kid fresh from Vermont into a seedy 1970s New York City with his eventual success. Miller, by constantly challenging himself as an artist and writer on his terms, built an iconoclastic career. Push the Wall is the work of his career -- it is a masterclass as it encapsulates his life in sixteen lessons for the aspiring creative reader.
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Rise Above
by Matthew Schnipper
Renzo Rollins Schnipper was born in February 2020, a split second before the beginning of the pandemic. To his parents, he was the reason for the universe's existence at a time when there was little hope to be found in the world. Then, on Christmas Eve 2021, a rare medical event suddenly took Renzo from them. Even as Rise Above is an account of grief, Matthew Schnipper's memoir is about resilience in the face of the unexpected turns life takes, and how to chart a path forward. Schnipper's candid prose and clear-eyed storytelling tackles the darkest, most unfathomable elements of living, but also the miracle of love and the shimmering moments that ultimately give life meaning.
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The Savage Landscape
by Cal Flyn
From the black sand beaches of Iceland, to river crossings deep in the Amazon jungle, to the barren beauty of Antarctica, wildernesses make up some of the world's more alluring natural landscapes. And for thousands of years, people have sought out uncontrolled, unknown, or uncharted nature in search of religious epiphany, self-actualization, and an escape from life. But as award-winning writer Cal Flyn traverses the most forbidding, untamed, and inhospitable wild lands she finds that such truly untouched lands don't exist. Nearly every wilderness has been or is actively inhabited by humans. The Savage Landscape takes us into these wilds asking provocative questions about the nature of wilderness, its preservation, and its meaning.
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The Solo Honeymoon
by Laura Murphy
A romantic, life-affirming memoir about a young woman's solo honeymoon to Europe after her fiancé's sudden death weeks before their wedding, and the community of hope and wonder she built along the way.
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This Is the Plan
by Ben Wikler
This Is the Plan is a hope-unleashing answer for anyone who has looked at the wreckage of American politics and asked: How the hell do we get out of this mess? Ben Wikler draws on decades of experience in everything from school-board races to presidential elections to bring listeners inside the hidden web of power that shapes our lives. At every step, he shows what individuals and small groups can do to help build a future where democracy thrives and our country works for everyone. With verve, infectious humor, and a rallying-cry energy that has inspired tens of thousands of volunteers, This Is the Plan is an idealistic yet practical guide to turning the present crisis into a better future.
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Tin Can Coast
by Joseph Ogilvy
Look west from San Francisco or Monterey, past the surfers and cargo ships. This is the California Current, 1,900 miles of the most productive waters on earth. It was here that 18th-century locals encountered frisbee-sized abalone mollusks, sardine schools the size of buses, and Yellowfin tuna, each the size of a man. But it was not to last. Over the next three centuries, the abalone, sardine, and tuna became resources. Along the way, they became drivers of geopolitical competition, catalysts for the dramatic rise and fall of Cannery Row aristocracy, and even surly muses for John Steinbeck and Fritz Lang. Collapsing the distinctions between human and natural history, Tin Can Coast brings the cautionary tale of the California shore to life.
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Unsayable
by Michael Cunningham
At the age of three Michael Cunningham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours and Day, began obsessively collecting the names of things, kicking off a lifelong love affair with language -- one that would, eventually lead him to become a writer. In Unsayable, Cunningham's memories spill forth, and with them reflections on the craft of writing. A thread ties each beautifully wrought moment to the next: what is unspoken, what won't yield to language, what is embellished beyond recognition, what is still left to say. Luminous, perceptive, and powerful, Unsayable is an ode to literature, a meditation on craft, and an intimate account of a life spent trying to put into words that which resists depiction.
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Why We Fight
by Kim Polinder
Anyone in a long-term relationship knows that fighting is inevitable. Our goal should be fighting well, fighting clean
— which is both shockingly hard to do and the basis of a successful partnership. In Why We Fight, relationship coach, couples' therapist, and former Fortune 500 tech engineer Kim Polinder offers a unique and practical process for couples to address the recurring conflicts in their relationships — by helping them understand why they fight in the first place.
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