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New & Noteworthy Nonfiction - September 2025 |
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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. What if your most beautiful love story turned into your biggest nightmare? What if the dear friend who taught you so much about your self-destructive tendencies became the unstable partner with whom you disastrously reenacted every one of them? And what if your most devastating heartbreak opened a pathway to your greatest awakening? All the Way to the River is a landmark memoir that will resonate with anyone who has ever been captive to love—or to any other passion, substance, or craving – and who yearns, at long last, for liberation..
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Jump and Find Joy : Embracing Change in Every Season of Life
by Hoda Kotb
"From #1 New York Times bestselling author and beloved former Today co-host Hoda Kotb comes her most personal, ambitious book yet-a guide to dealing with change and upheaval, even (and perhaps especially) when it's unexpected. Hoda Kotb didn't expect to join the Today show at age forty-four. Or to become a mother at fifty-two. Or to leave Today and embark on a new adventure at sixty! Change doesn't always arrive when we expect it, and its effects are anything but predictable. But Hoda believes that the benefits of change can be extraordinary...if we're willing to listen to and learn from them.
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Awake : A Memoir
by Jen Hatmaker
In Awake, Jen shares for the first time what happened when she found herself completely lost at sea—and how she made it to shore. In candid, surprisingly funny vignettes spanning forty years of girlhood, marriage, and parenting, Jen lays bare the disorienting upheaval of midlife—the implosion of a marriage, the unraveling of religious and cultural systems, and the grief that accompanies change you didn’t ask for. And, drawing on all her resources—from without and from within—Jen dares to question the systems beneath the whole house of cards, and to reckon with the myths, half-truths, and lies that brought her to this point.
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107 Days
by Kamala Harris
For the first time, and with surprising and revealing insights, Kamala Harris tells the story of one of the wildest and most consequential presidential campaigns in American history. Written with candor, a unique perspective, and the pace of a page-turning novel, 107 Days takes you inside the race for the presidency as no one has ever done before.
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Poems & Prayers
by Matthew McConaughey
"My prayers are my poems are my prayers.
I’ve always relied on logic to make sense of myself and the world.
A prescriptionist at heart, I’ve always looked to reason to find the rhyme, the practical to get to the mystical, the choreography to find the dance, the proof to get to the truth, and reality to get to the dream.
I’ve been finding that tougher to do lately. It’s more than hard to know what to believe in; it’s hard to believe.
But I don’t want to quit believing, and I don’t want to stop believing in . . . humanity, you, myself, our potential.
I think it’s time for us to flip the script on what’s historically been our means of making sense, and instead open our aperture to enchantment and look to faith, belief, and dreams for our reality.
Let’s sing more than we might make sense, believe in more than the world can conclude, get more impressed with the wow instead of the how, let inspiration interrupt our appointments, dream our way to reality, serve some soul food to our hungry heads, put proof on the shelf for a season, and rhyme our way to reason.
Forget logic, certainty, owning, or making a start-up company of it; let’s go beyond what we can merely imagine, and believe, in the poetry of life."
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Alchemy : An Illustrated History of Elixirs, Experiments, and the Birth of Modern Science
by Philip Ball
The craft of alchemy has intrigued and mystified people since antiquity. Many early cultures are known to have experimented with chemical transformations: from dyes, glazes, and cosmetics in Bronze Age Egypt to life-extending elixirs pursued by scholars in ancient China and India. Many have also attempted to transform lead, mercury, and other metals into gold-and some claim to have succeeded. In this visually stunning volume, Philip Ball sets alchemy within the context of the history of science and culture, showing that it was not simply an esoteric fantasy but an important phase in the development of experimental science and natural philosophy.
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The Blue Zones Kitchen One Pot Meals : 100 Recipes to Live to 100
by Dan Buettner
After more than 20 years spent uncovering the secrets of the blue zones—the happiest and healthiest places around the world—Dan Buettner puts the lessons he's learned into practice with 100 research-backed recipes designed to boost your longevity. Inside you'll find easier-than-ever plant-based breakfasts, dinners, snacks, and sides inspired by the blue zones, with grocery store-available ingredients and made with flavors Americans love best.
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Eternally Electric : The Message in My Music
by Debbie Gibson
A child actress who became the original pop princess, Debbie had full creative control over her music and, when that no longer aligned with a transitioning arts scene, she went on to star in Broadway’s Les Misérables, Beauty and the Beast, and Cabaret, as well as in the London production of Grease. Yet, for all the accolades and achievements, her success came at a high price. Anxiety, depression, financial struggles, illness—Debbie writes candidly about these and other challenges, and how she ultimately redesigned her life to overcome them. This is the story of her not only surviving, but thriving: returning to her musical roots, releasing new albums, going back out on tour, and living the best version of her authentic self to remain…Eternally Electric!.
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I Write to Find Out What I Am Thinking : Collected Nonfiction
by Joan Didion
In her essay “Why I Write” (included in this volume), Joan Didion explained what lies behind her iconic nonfiction writing: "I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” Across her long and prolific career, readers have been blessed time and again by her brilliance as a prose stylist and a social commentator. From her unforgettable reckonings with grief (for her husband in The Year of Magical Thinking and for her daughter in Blue Nights), to her exploration of two iconic regions of America in South and West, through the indelible pieces of reporting collected from across her career in Let Me Tell You What I Mean, the books collected here show Didion at her best: bearing witness to our history, illuminating our culture, and shedding light on the human condition..
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History Matters
by David McCullough
History Matters brings together selected essays by beloved historian David McCullough, some published here for the first time, written at different points over the course of his long career but all focused on the subject of his lifelong passion: the importance of history in understanding our present and future. Edited by McCullough’s daughter, Dorie McCullough Lawson, and his longtime researcher, Michael Hill, History Matters is a tribute to a master historian and offers fresh insights into McCullough’s enduring interests and writing life.
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Heartbeats : A Memoir
by Björn Borg
Hailed as one of the most talented players to ever step onto a tennis court, Borg collected the game's highest honors, including eleven Grand Slam titles - with five consecutive Wimbledon titles - establishing himself as one of the greatest of all time. Then he stunned the sporting world by announcing his retirement at the age of twenty-six and disappeared from tennis. After all these years of silence, Borg is ready to share everything. In this candid memoir, Borg takes us through all the major moments in his career, shares insights into his rivalry with John McEnroe and their legendary 1980 Wimbledon final, and explains his shock retirement. Borg writes candidly about his childhood, his early stardom, and his uncomfortable relationship with fame, alongside all the highs and lows of his unmatched career.
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Water Mirror Echo : Bruce Lee and The Making of Asian America
by Jeff Chang
More than a half-century after his passing, Bruce Lee is as towering a figure to people around the world as ever. On his path to becoming a global icon, he popularized martial arts in the West, became a bridge to people and cultures from the East, and just as he was set to conquer Hollywood once and for all, he died of cerebral edema at age thirty-two. It's no wonder that Bruce Lee's legend has only bloomed in the decades since. Yet, in so many ways, his legend has eclipsed the man. Forgotten is the stark reality of the baby boy born in segregated San Francisco, who spent his youth in war-ravaged, fight-crazy Hong Kong. Forgotten is the curious teenager who found his way back to America, where he embraced West Coast counterculture and meshed it with the Asian worldviews and philosophies that molded him. Forgotten is the man whose very presence broke barriers and helped shape the idea of what being an Asian in America is, at the very dawn of Asian America. Water Mirror Echo-a title inspired by Bruce Lee's own way of moving, being and responding to the world-is a page-turning and powerful reminder.
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