New Nonfiction
October 2024
New and Recently Released
Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir
by Ina Garten

In her long-awaited memoir, Ina Garten--aka the Barefoot Contessa, author of thirteen bestselling cookbooks, beloved Food Network personality, Instagram sensation, and cultural icon--shares her personal story with readers hungry for a seat at her table. Here, for the first time, Ina Garten presents an intimate, entertaining, and inspiring account of her remarkable journey. Ina's gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past and her process to life in a high-spirited and no-holds-barred memoir that chronicles decades of personal challenges, adventures (and misadventures) and unexpected career twists, all delivered with her signature combination of playfulness and purpose. From a difficult childhood to meeting the love of her life, Jeffrey, and marrying him while still in college, from a boring bureaucratic job in Washington, D.C., to answering an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons, from the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to author of bestselling cookbooks and celebrated television host, Ina has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Now, she invites them to come closer to experience her story in vivid detail and to share the important life lessons she learned along the way: do what you love because if you love it you'll be really good at it, swing for the fences, and always Be Ready When the Luck Happens.
Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering
by Malcolm Gladwell

Twenty-five years after the publication of his groundbreaking first book, Malcolm Gladwell returns with a brand-new volume that reframes the lessons of The Tipping Point in a startling and revealing light. Why is Miami...Miami? What does the heartbreaking fate of the cheetah tell us about the way we raise our children? Why do Ivy League schools care so much about sports? What is the Magic Third, and what does it mean for racial harmony? In this provocative new work, Malcolm Gladwell returns for the first time in twenty-five years to the subject of social epidemics and tipping points, this time with the aim of explaining the dark side of contagious phenomena. Through a series of riveting stories, Gladwell traces the rise of a new and troubling form of social engineering. He takes us to the streets of Los Angeles to meet the world's most successful bank robbers, rediscovers a forgotten television show from the 1970s that changed the world, visits the site of a historic experiment on a tiny cul-de-sac in northern California, and offers an alternate history of two of the biggest epidemics of our day: COVID and the opioid crisis. Revenge of the Tipping Point is Gladwell's most personal book yet. With his characteristic mix of storytelling and social science, he offers a guide to making sense of the contagions of modern world. It's time we took tipping points seriously.
Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions
by John Grisham

John Grisham is known worldwide for his bestselling novels, but it's his real-life passion for justice that led to his work with Jim McCloskey of Centurion Ministries, the first organization dedicated to exonerating innocent people who have been wrongly convicted. Together they offer an inside look at the many injustices in our criminal justice system. A fundamental principle of our legal system is a presumption of innocence, but once someone has been found guilty, there is very little room to prove doubt. These ten true stories shed light on Americans who were innocent but found guilty and forced to sacrifice friends, families, and decades of their lives to prison while the guilty parties remained free. In each of the stories, John Grisham and Jim McCloskey recount the dramatic hard-fought battles for exoneration. They take a close look at what leads to wrongful convictions in the first place and the racism, misconduct, flawed testimony, and corruption in the court system that can make them so hard to reverse. Impeccably researched and told with page-turning suspense as only John Grisham can deliver, Framed is the story of winning freedom when the battle already seems lost and the deck is stacked against you.
If We Are Brave: Essays from Black Americana
by Theodore R. Johnson

"The United States claims to be a nation founded on an idea," writes Theodore R. Johnson, "but Americans--even though we nod our heads to that assertion--do not agree on what that idea is, what it should do, or who it is for." The reality is that America is facing an existential quandary. Its citizens do not share a common vision for a democratic system in action, and even worse, do not share a common vision for what the country should be. We use the same words, but do not speak the same language.
If We Are Brave is a keen-eyed and sobering examination of this rift and how race exposes and challenges traditional conceptions of national identity, national mythology, and American democracy. It is both a cultural exploration and a consideration of the American experiment through the eyes and experiences of Americans of different generations that cuts across race, ethnicity, gender, region, religion, and class. Johnson reveals the subtle ways that racialized conceptions of the American identity and the imperfect culture of democracy have hindered our ability to connect with one another, carefully piecing together first-person accounts ranging from a Rust Belt diner to the back of a police car to a jail cell.
A beautiful but harsh indictment of a nation that aspires to be a more perfect union yet has consistently and painfully fallen short, If We Were Brave is a portrait of a nation at the precipice. It is an eye-opening, essential resource in a pivotal election year which will define America's future, and a much-needed beacon of truth that sheds a bright light on who we are.
American Teenager: How Trans Kids Are Surviving Hate and Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era
by Nico Lang

Media coverage tends to sensationalize the fight over how trans kids should be allowed to live, but what is incredibly rare are the voices of the people at the heart of this debate: transgender and gender nonconforming kids themselves. For their groundbreaking new book, journalist Nico Lang spent a year traveling the country to document the lives of transgender, nonbinary, and genderfluid teens and their families. Drawing on hundreds of hours of on-the-ground interviews with them and the people in their communities, American Teenager paints a vivid portrait of what it's actually like to grow up trans today. From the tip of Florida's conservative panhandle to vibrant queer communities in California, and from Texas churches to mosques in Illinois, American Teenager gives readers a window into the lives of Wyatt, Rhydian, Mykah, Clint, Ruby, Augie, Jack, and Kylie, eight teens who, despite what some lawmakers might want us to believe, are truly just kids looking for a brighter future.
Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show: While Also in an Actual Cult!
by Bethany Joy Lenz

In the early 2000s, after years of hard work and determination to breakthrough as an actor, Bethany Joy Lenz was finally cast as one of the leads on the hit drama One Tree Hill. Her career was about to take off, but her personal life was slowly beginning to unravel. What none of the show's millions of fans knew, hidden even from her costars, was her secret double life in a cult. An only child who often had to fend for herself and always wanted a place to belong, Lenz found the safe haven she'd been searching for in a Bible study group with other Hollywood creatives. However, the group soon morphed into something more sinister--a slowly woven web of manipulation, abuse, and fear under the guise of a church covenant called The Big House Family. Piece by piece, Lenz began to give away her autonomy, ultimately relocating to the Family's Pacific Northwest compound, overseen by a domineering minister who would convince Lenz to marry one of his sons and steadily drained millions of her TV income without her knowledge. Family "minders" assigned to her on set, "Maoist struggle session"-inspired meetings in the basement of a filthy house, and regular counseling with "Leadership" were just part of the tactics used to keep her loyal. Only when she became a mother did Lenz find the courage to leave and spare her child from a similar fate. After nearly a decade (and with the unlikely help of a One Tree Hill superfan), she finally managed to escape the family's grip and begin to heal from the deep trauma that forever altered her relationship with God and her understanding of faith. Written with powerful honesty and dark humor, Dinner for Vampires is an inspiring story about the importance of identity and understanding what you believe.
The Paranormal Ranger: A Navajo Investigator's Search for the Unexplained
by Stanley. Milford

As a Native American with parents of both Navajo and Cherokee descent, Stanley Milford Jr. grew up in a world where the supernatural was both expected and taboo, where shapeshifters roamed, witchcraft was a thing to be feared, and children were taught not to whistle at night.
In his youth, Milford never went looking for the paranormal, but it always seemed to find him. When he joined the fabled Navajo Rangers--a law enforcement branch of the Navajo Nation who are equal parts police officers, archeological conservationists, and historians--the paranormal became part of his job. Alongside addressing the mundane duties of overseeing the massive 27,000-square-mile reservation, Milford was assigned to utterly bizarre and shockingly frequent cases involving mysterious livestock mutilations, skinwalker and Bigfoot sightings, UFOs, and malicious hauntings. In The Paranormal Ranger, Milford recounts the stories of these cases from the clinical and deductive perspective of a law enforcement officer. Milford's Native American worldview and investigative training collide to provide an eerie account of what logic dictates should not be possible.
Low-Hanging Fruit: Sparkling Whines, Champagne Problems, and Pressing Issues from My Gay Agenda
by Randy Rainbow

Randy Rainbow has a few things on his mind that he wants to talk about. As a savvy social commentator tuned into the public discourse, his unfailing intuition tells him that the perspective everyone in America is clamoring for is that of a privileged white male complaining about a bunch of shit. While writing his New York Times bestseller Playing With Myself, Randy saw an America in crisis. He knew that what the country needed to get back on its high heels was a hard-hitting gay agenda and here it is - Low Hanging Fruit - a book filled with sparkling whines, a few flutes of champagne problems and a Birkin bag of the most pressing issues facing the US, from dancing TikTok grandmas, to Elon Musk, the GOP, and Donald Jessica Trump. On the down low, Randy dishes up some sex talk about life on the dating apps, Craigslist hookups and more. ("Gurl, wait till you hear the story about the fireman and the goggles...") Randy's longtime companion, the glamorous Chinchilla Silver Persian cat Tippi, makes an appearance as she dishes about her life Chez Randy. And, in the most highly anticipated sequel since Top Gun: Maverick, Randy continues the conversation with his mother, Gwen, because who knows better than the Jewish mother of a gay man about how to solve America's problems? Randy Rainbow's Low Hanging Fruit - a bold manifesto for a nation desperately in need of a makeover.
The Indian Card: Who Gets to Be Native in America
by Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz

To be Native American is to live in a world of contradictions. At the same time that the number of people in the US who claim Native identity has exploded--increasing 85 percent in just ten years--the number of people formally enrolled in Tribes has not. While the federal government recognizes Tribal sovereignty, being a member of a Tribe requires navigating blood quantum laws and rolls that the federal government created with the intention of wiping out Native people altogether. Over two million Native people are tribally enrolled, yet there are Native people who will never be. Native people who, for a variety of reasons ranging from displacement to disconnection, cannot be card-carrying members of their Tribe. In The Indian Card, Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz grapples with these contradictions. Through in-depth interviews, she shares the stories of people caught in the mire of identity-formation, trying to define themselves outside of bureaucratic processes. With archival research, she pieces together the history of blood quantum and tribal rolls and federal government intrusion on Native identity-making. Reckoning with her own identity--the story of her enrollment and the enrollment of her children--she investigates the cultural, racial, and political dynamics of today's Tribal identity policing. With this intimate perspective of the ongoing fight for Native sovereignty, The Indian Card sheds light on what it looks like to find a deeper sense of belonging.
A former Obama administration policy advisor presents a deeply personal exploration of Tribal enrollment and what it means to be Native American in the United States.
The Anti-Ableist Manifesto: Smashing Stereotypes, Forging Change, and Building a Disability-Inclusive World
by Tiffany Yu

As the Asian American daughter of immigrants, living with PTSD, and sustaining a permanent arm injury at age nine, Tiffany Yu is well aware of the intersections of identity that affect us all. She navigated the male-dominated world of corporate finance as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs before founding Diversability, an award-winning community business run by disabled people building disability pride, power, and leadership, and creating the viral Anti-Ableism series on TikTok. Organized from personal to professional, domestic to political, Me to We to Us, The Anti-Ableist Manifesto frames context for conversations, breaks down the language of ableism, identifies microaggressions, and offers actions that lead to authentic allyship.
- How do we remove ableist language from our daily vocabulary?
- How do we create inclusive events?
- What are the advantages of hiring disabled employees, and what market opportunities are we missing out on when we don't consider disabled consumers? With contributions from disability advocates, activists, authors, entrepreneurs, scholars, educators, and executives, Yu celebrates the power of stories and lived experiences to foster the proximity, intimacy, and humanity of disability identities that have far too often been "othered" and rendered invisible.
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