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New & Noteworthy Nonfiction March 2026 |
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Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done
by Rebecca Hinds
Meetings are broken. They are relics from a bygone era of top-down hierarchies and factory-like procedures--designed to issue orders, flaunt power, and keep the hierarchy intact. In today's digital, collaborate-or-bust era, this model isn't just inefficient, it actively harms employees and organizations. Drawing on decades of research and stories from leading companies like Google, Salesforce, Pixar, YouTube, and Dropbox, Your Best Meeting Ever provides a blueprint to transform your meetings from monotonous, soul-crushing time sinks into powerful tools for collaboration. The secret? Treat them like products. Using seven product design principles, you'll turn your meetings into well-designed products that actually drive work forward and serve your most important users--the people in your organization.
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DIY Spirituality: Chart Your Own Sacred Path
by Faith Freed
Create a spiritual practice that feels authentic and joyful. DIY Spirituality is a vibrant, approachable guide that helps you connect with self, nature, and the divine--on your own terms.
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Judy Blume: A Life
by Mark Oppenheimer
To know the name Judy Blume is to know and love literature. Her influential novels turned classics--including Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret ; Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing ; Deenie ; and Summer Sisters --touched the lives of tens of millions of readers. For more than fifty-five years her work has done something revolutionary: it rewired the world's expectations of what literature for young people can be--frank, candid, earthy, and unafraid to show the messier sides of humanity. But little is known about the real woman behind the iconic persona, and the unlikely journey of her literary ascension, until now.
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Everyone Hot Pot: Creating the Ultimate Meal for Gathering and Feasting
by Natasha Pickowicz
Hot pot is the ancient East Asian cookery method of rapidly poaching bite-size morsels of fresh vegetables, meats, seafood, and tofu in a tableside broth. This communal way of eating is perfect for home dinner parties where guests become active participants in cooking the meal. Though the hot pot table symbolizes bounty and feasting, at its core is frugality and thrift and accessibility to anyone. Four-time James Beard Award nominated chef Natasha Pickowicz provides more than fifty recipes for the broths, dumplings, sides, desserts, and drinks, along with a guide to the essential hot pot ingredients, equipment and tools, plus an explanation on how to pull it all together.
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Sharing the Light: Stories and Reflections
by Monique Gray Smith
This beautiful and welcoming book can be read cover to cover or used as a daily source of guidance, providing gentle wisdom that inspires and empowers. Through the lens of five transformative practices--gratitude, love, joy, happiness, and hope--bestselling author Monique Gray Smith weaves together short stories, poignant reflections, and thoughtful questions that invite readers to pause and reconnect with their inner light. And as an Indigenous author, Monique brings her cultural wisdom and unique perspective to each offering. Sharing the Light is a powerful reminder that when we embrace our light and share it with the world, that energy not only transforms us but ripples out to uplift everyone around us.
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99 Ways to Die: And How to Avoid Them
by Ashely Alker
An illuminating, hilarious, and practical guide to 99 of the most terrifying ways to die and how to avoid them from an emergency medicine doctor.Dr. Ashely Alker is a self-described death escapologist--or, in more familiar terms, an emergency medicine doctor. She has seen it all, from flesh-eating bacteria to the work of a serial killer to the more mundane but no less deadly, and her work outwitting the end has uniquely prepared her to write this book. Dr. Alker manages to shock readers while making them laugh, educating them on how to outsmart a wide range of deadly situations and conditions. Many of the chapters include stories from her experiences in life and medicine, at times heartwarming, others heartbreaking. Sections include explorations of sex, poison, drugs, biological warfare, disease, animals, crime, the elements, and much more. An Anthony Bourdain-style greatest hits tour of death, 99 Ways to Die is entertaining while it informs. Full of valuable advice and wild stories, this riveting read might just save your life.
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The Sock Obsession: Supercool Socks to Knit and Show Off
by Summer Lee
From Summer Lee, sock knitting guru and author of reader favorite The Sock Project, a fun new collection of patterns for making socks in every shape and size, all in her signature palette of neon bright colors This colorful volume presents a variety of sock styles, from boot socks and ankle socks to loafer and cuffed styles, and a universe of techniques. Try your hand at cables, colorwork, ribs, and textured knitting with 25 easy-to-follow patterns, then customize your designs to make dozens of different looks! Chapters offer traditional Scandinavian and European sock designs, mod designs that would make MoMA proud, and socks with whimsical motifs like mushrooms, sheep, and lobsters! Socks are perennial favorites because they're addictively quick to make, require far less yarn than scarves or sweaters, and can be easily customized to fit. This patten collection provides a fun way to learn all sorts of techniques, and the instructions are progressive, meaning new knitters can start at the beginning and learn the basics before advancing to harder projects. And experts can turn to the patterns they're most excited to make and dive right in.
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Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During World War II
by Evelyn Iritani
An untold story of idealism, betrayal, and behind-the-scenes American-Japanese contacts in World War II. In the fall of 1943, during some of the Pacific theater's bloodiest battles, the United States and Japan pulled off a diplomatic coup-- the exchange of civilians caught on the wrong side of the battlefield after Pearl Harbor. Nearly fifteen hundred Allied civilians trapped in Asia, mostly Americans, sailed through dangerous waters to an Indian port city where they were traded for an equivalent number of Japanese immigrants and their families sent from the Americas. The fate of the more than ten thousand Americans left behind rested on the success of this endeavor. In Safe Passage, the award-winning journalist Evelyn Iritani reveals the herculean efforts of the American diplomat James Keeley to engineer these wartime exchanges despite great resistance from within and outside his government; the shipboard conflicts among passengers, including missionaries, revelers, and sharp-tongued journalists; and the moral compromises involved in securing their safe passage. Faced with too few bodies to trade and desperate to free Americans from perilous conditions, the United States uprooted and repatriated Japanese citizens of Latin America, sometimes against their will, while Japanese imprisoned in camps, many of them American citizens, were forced to choose between expulsion to a war zone or an uncertain future behind barbed wire. The result is a revelatory account of the hurdles to pursuing humanitarian action in wartime.
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They Kill People: Bonnie and Clyde, a Hollywood Revolution, and America's Obsession with Guns and Outlaws
by Kirk Ellis
A deep dive into the grit and glamor of America's favorite criminal couple and the nation's love affair with guns. On May 23, 1934, two borderline inept but ruthless criminals named Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker met their end in a hail of semiautomatic gunfire on a rural road in the Louisiana backcountry. The duo had terrorized Depression-era Middle America with a string of robberies and a brazen daylight prison escape, killing nearly a dozen police officers along the way. A legend was born.
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Phases: A Memoir
by Brandy
The iconic, multiplatinum, Grammy Award(R)-winning performer Brandy brings us a raw, intimate portrait of her life, charting her growth to stardom from Mississippi churches to Hollywood spotlightsFrom the moment she first sang at church in McComb, Mississippi, Brandy knew her voice was special. At fourteen she landed her first record deal. At fifteen her album went platinum. At sixteen she was starring in the hit sitcom Moesha and became the first Black actress to play Cinderella on screen alongside fairy godmother, Whitney Houston. Yet as the accolades piled up, so too did the pressure to maintain a flawless image. To onlookers, she had crafted the blueprint for the teenage it girl. But behind closed doors The Vocal Bible as she was known, was struggling. Now, for the first time, Brandy reveals the real story behind her life in the spotlight, the stratospheric highs and the unimaginable lows, the groundbreaking moments and the relatable journey she had to take to discover her authentic self--as a woman, a mother, an artist--as Brandy. Brandy's debut memoir is a fearless and remarkable story of hope, resilience and the strength it takes to make peace with the past.
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