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New & Noteworthy Nonfiction - April 2025 |
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Stuff Every Adult Should Know
by Alyssa Favreau, et al
Do you ever feel like you missed the day in school when they taught you . . . literally everything you were going to need for a successful adulthood? How do you iron clothes? Where do friends come from? Why are there so many types of insurance? Does everyone else already know this stuff, and where did they learn it? Well, you don't have to flail around anymore, pretending like you know what you're doing. Here's the handbook for that day we all missed-and it fits right into your pocket!
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Delinquent Elementals : A Pagan News Anthology
by Phil Hine
Delinquent Elementals: The Very Best of Pagan News collects some of the finest articles, news reports, interviews, and humor that appeared in this singular publication, providing a fascinating glimpse into the pagan counterculture. It charts the historical timeline of the Satanic Panic scandal of the late 1980s, documents previously uncollected information, and provides a wide selection of practical knowledge and insight into occult practice. It reveals how occult practitioners interacted with the wider culture--bringing about what is now termed "occulture": the intersection of esoteric themes with popular culture, political activism, and the struggle for LGBTQ rights and recognition. Wonderfully unpretentious and absurdly funny, this is the definitive guide to the magazine that redefined the nature of late-twentieth century occultism.
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Miracles and Wonder : The Historical Mystery of Jesus
by Elaine H. Pagels
An extraordinary new account of the life of Jesus that explores the mystery of how a poor young man inspired a religion that reshaped the world. Over the past two thousand years, countless personalities have been projected onto the enigma we know as Jesus: a first-century rabbi, capable of miraculous healing, or a magician faking cures; a Prophet, or a deluded visionary; a heretical Jew, or God in human form. In this groundbreaking work of accessible scholarship, Princeton University professor and bestselling author Elaine Pagels explores a wide range of sources-including the Bible, the earliest reports of Jesus's life, and the secret "gnostic gospels," discovered in the 20th century-to break down these contradictions and paint a richer and more complex portrait of Jesus in his own time than ever before.
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No New Things : A Radically Simple 30-day Guide to Saving Money, the Planet, and Your Sanity
by Ashlee Piper
For nearly two years, Ashlee Piper challenged herself to buy nothing new. And in the process, she got out of debt, cut clutter, crushed her goals, and became healthier and happier than ever--all the things she'd always wanted to do but "never had time to" (because she was mindlessly scrolling, shopping, spending, and stressing). After a decade of fine-tuning, No New Things guides readers through the same revolutionarily simple challenge that has helped thousands of global participants find freedom and fulfillment in just thirty days.
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The 10 : A Memoir of Family and the Open Road
by E. A. Hanks
From Vanity Fair and The New York Times contributor comes a beautifully written, deeply felt memoir recounting the solo, cross-country journey she made along the Ten across the American southwest: a mission to uncover both what harrowing violence may or may not have happened to her late mother, but also, to look within and discover who she herself is--where her mother ends and she begins. In her trusted loaded-up minivan "Minnie," E.A. Hanks follows the same route as a long-ago road trip with her mother in an attempt to better understand the complicated woman who gave her life. Along the way, as she follows her mother's diaries and her own recollections of the route, she begins to uncover secrets--some unexpectedly wonderful, and others darker and more violent than she ever imagined--that bring more questions than answers.
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Slither : How Nature's Most Maligned Creatures Illuminate Our World
by Stephen S. Hall
For millennia, depictions of snakes as alternatively beautiful and menacing creatures have appeared in religious texts, mythology, poetry, and beyond. From the foundational deities of ancient Egypt to the reactions of squeamish schoolchildren today, it is a historically commonplace belief that snakes are devious, dangerous, and even evil. But where there is hatred and fear, there is also fascination and reverence. How is it that creatures so despised and sinister, so foreign of movement and ostensibly devoid of sociality and emotion, have fired the imaginations of poets, prophets, and painters across time and cultures? In SLITHER, science writer Stephen S. Hall presents a naturalistic, cultural, ecological, and scientific meditation on these loathed yet magnetic creatures.
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Sketch Every Damn Day : 52 Weeks of Lessons, Demos, Prompts, and Challenges to Improve Your Drawing Skills
by Spencer Nugent
When it comes to improving your drawings nothing beats consistent practice. Committing to sketching a little bit every day will go a long way to getting closer to being the best illustrator, artist, or designer you can be. In this book, popular YouTube teacher Spencer Nugent gives simple lessons and prompts explaining how to draw complex objects as well as basic fundamentals and practice exercises to keep skills sharp.
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Mythocracy : How Stories Shape Our Worlds
by Yves Citton
Mythocracy examines the narrative mechanisms that script our lives through the stories we tell one another. Digging beneath common anxieties about fake news, Yves Citton looks at the attention economy, which organizes our political perceptions around affective attractors. These are much more powerful than the truth value of any given narrative. The time has come for the left to reclaim the power of myth from reactionary populism.
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The Cherokees : In War and at Peace, 1670–1840
by David Narrett
A sweeping new history reveals how the Cherokees became a nation as they navigated a century and a half of intertribal conflicts and colonial expansion that threatened their way of life. Rich in detail and insight, and told through captivating personal stories, The Cherokees offers a portrait of the perseverance that built a nation. Amid an onslaught of struggle and change, the Cherokees became a people who survived against all odds.
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The Occult Elvis : The Mystical and Magical Life of The King
by Miguel Conner
An esoteric and magical portrait of Elvis Presley. Draws on firsthand accounts from Elvis's wife, Priscilla, his friends and family, the Memphis Mafia, and his spiritual advisors. Looks at key teachers who influenced him, including Yogananda, H. P. Blavatsky, and Manly P. Hall. Examines Elvis's efforts as a natural healer, the significance of his UFO encounters, and his telekinetic, psychic, and astral traveling abilities.
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Children of Radium : A Buried Inheritance
by Joe Dunthorne
This subversive family memoir investigates the dark legacy of the author's great-grandfather, a talented German-Jewish chemist who wound up developing chemical weapons and gas mask filters for the Nazis. Children of Radium is a witty and wry, deeply humane and endlessly surprising meditation on individual and collective inheritance that considers the long half-life of trauma, the weight of guilt, and the ever-evasive nature of the truth.
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