June Picks - Nonfiction

Crashing the Party: From the Bernie Sanders Campaign to a Progressive Movement By Heather Gautney, Adolph L. Reed, Jr. (Introduction by) Cover Image
By Heather Gautney, Adolph L. Reed, Jr. (Introduction by)
$16.95
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ISBN: 9781786634320
Published: Verso - May 1st, 2018

A leading activist-scholar on what’s next in the Sanders revolution

Bernie Sanders shocked the political establishment by winning 13 million votes and a majority of young voters in the 2016 Democratic primary. Since that upset, repeated polls have judged this democratic socialist to be the most popular politician in the United States. What lessons can be drawn from his surprising insurgent campaign?

Longtime author and activist Heather Gautney was a Policy Fellow in Sanders’s Washington, DC, office and a volunteer researcher and organizer on his presidential campaign. In reviewing what enabled Sanders to reach out to an unprecedented number with a socialist message—and what stalled his progress—she draws lessons on the prospects and perils of building a progressive movement in the United States.

Gautney’s poignant account of the role that race and class played in this election cycle, her anatomy of the conflicting dynamics of movement and electoral ambitions, and her clear-eyed analysis of the Democratic position following Trump’s victory will serve as a useful starting point for many readers newly aware of the limitations of the Democratic Party and the immensity of the challenges ahead.


Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis By J. D. Vance Cover Image
$17.99
ISBN: 9780062300553
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Published: Harper Paperbacks - May 1st, 2018

“You will not read a more important book about America this year.”—Economist

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility.

But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history.

A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.


The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World By Simon Winchester Cover Image
$29.99
ISBN: 9780062652553
Availability: Backordered. On Order at the Warehouse.
Published: Harper - May 8th, 2018

The rise of manufacturing could not have happened without an attention to precision. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in eighteenth-century England, standards of measurement were established, giving way to the development of machine tools—machines that make machines. Eventually, the application of precision tools and methods resulted in the creation and mass production of items from guns and glass to mirrors, lenses, and cameras—and eventually gave way to further breakthroughs, including gene splicing, microchips, and the Hadron Collider.

Simon Winchester takes us back to origins of the Industrial Age, to England where he introduces the scientific minds that helped usher in modern production: John Wilkinson, Henry Maudslay, Joseph Bramah, Jesse Ramsden, and Joseph Whitworth. It was Thomas Jefferson who later exported their discoveries to the fledgling United States, setting the nation on its course to become a manufacturing titan. Winchester moves forward through time, to today’s cutting-edge developments occurring around the world, from America to Western Europe to Asia.

As he introduces the minds and methods that have changed the modern world, Winchester explores fundamental questions. Why is precision important? What are the different tools we use to measure it? Who has invented and perfected it? Has the pursuit of the ultra-precise in so many facets of human life blinded us to other things of equal value, such as an appreciation for the age-old traditions of craftsmanship, art, and high culture? Are we missing something that reflects the world as it is, rather than the world as we think we would wish it to be? And can the precise and the natural co-exist in society?


Those Turbulent Sons of Freedom: Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys and the American Revolution By Christopher S. Wren Cover Image
$26.00
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ISBN: 9781416599555
Published: Simon & Schuster - May 8th, 2018

The story of Ethan Allen and the much-loved Green Mountain Boys of Vermont and their role in the American Revolution—the myth and the reality. 

In Those Turbulent Sons of Freedom, Wren overturns the myth of Ethan Allen as a legendary hero of the American Revolution and a patriotic son of Vermont and offers a different portrait of Allen and his Green Mountain Boys. They were ruffians who joined the rush for cheap land on the northern frontier of the colonies in the years before the American Revolution. Allen did not serve in the Continental Army but he raced Benedict Arnold for the famous seizure of Britain’s Fort Ticonderoga. Allen and Arnold loathed each other. General George Washington, leery of Allen, refused to give him troops. In a botched attempt to capture Montreal against specific orders of the commanding American general, Allen was captured in 1775 and shipped to England to be hanged. Freed in 1778, he spent the rest of his time negotiating with the British but failing to bring Vermont back under British rule.

Based on original archival research, this is a groundbreaking account of an important and little-known front of the Revolutionary War, of George Washington (and his good sense), and of a major American myth. Those Turbulent Sons of Freedom is an important contribution to the history of the American Revolution.


The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels By Jon Meacham Cover Image
$30.00
ISBN: 9780399589812
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Published: Random House - May 8th, 2018

We have been here before. In this timely and revealing book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history when hope overcame division and fear.

With clarity and purpose, Meacham explores contentious periods and how presidents and citizens came together to defeat the forces of anger, intolerance, and extremism. Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson, and illuminating the courage of such influential citizen activists as Martin Luther King, Jr., early suffragettes Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt, civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and John Lewis, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Army-McCarthy hearings lawyer Joseph N. Welch, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. He writes about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the birth of the Lost Cause; the backlash against immigrants in the First World War and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s; the fight for women’s rights; the demagoguery of Huey Long and Father Coughlin and the isolationist work of America First in the years before World War II; the anti-Communist witch-hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy; and Lyndon Johnson’s crusade against Jim Crow. Each of these dramatic hours in our national life has been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back, to assert hope over fear—a struggle that continues even now. While the American story has not always—or even often—been heroic, we have been sustained by a belief in progress even in the gloomiest of times. In this inspiring book, Meacham reassures us, “The good news is that we have come through such darkness before”—as, time and again, Lincoln’s better angels have found a way to prevail.
 


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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind By Yuval Noah Harari Cover Image
$24.99
ISBN: 9780062316110
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Published: Harper Perennial - May 15th, 2018


“Yuval Noah Harari is an emerging rock-star lecturer at the nexus of history and science…. Sapiens takes readers on a sweeping tour of the history of our species…. Harari’s formidable intellect sheds light on the biggest breakthroughs in the human story…important reading for serious-minded, self-reflective sapiens.”—Washington Post

One hundred thousand years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations, and human rights; to trust money, books, and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables, and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?

In Sapiens, Professor Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical—and sometimes devastating—breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural, and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, paleontology, and economics, and incorporating full-color illustrations throughout the text, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Can we ever free our behavior from the legacy of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come?

Bold, wide-ranging, and provocative, Sapiens integrates history and science to challenge everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our heritage...and our future.


Choose Wonder Over Worry: Move Beyond Fear and Doubt to Unlock Your Full Potential By Amber Rae Cover Image
$25.99
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ISBN: 9781250175250
Published: St. Martin's Essentials - May 15th, 2018

From the powerhouse Mind Body Green calls "the Brené Brown of Wonder" comes a self-help book that will reframe the way we look at ourselves and the world, and help us reach our full potential.

Wonder is what we’re born with. Worry is what we learn.

Has fear or worry ever stopped you from doing something you love? Has that pesky voice in the back of your mind ever told you that you aren’t good enough, smart enough, or talented enough to realize your dreams? Have you ever felt like an imposter in your own life?

Now is the time to stop letting worry define you. Amber Rae—a world-traveling motivational speaker, teacher, and artist who has inspired countless people across the globe—wants you to reclaim your sense of wonder, live courageously, speak your truth, and unlock your full potential.

Choose Wonder Over Worry is your official invitation to face your fears, navigate your discomfort, and rewrite the "worry" narratives in your mind that keep you from being your best and truest self. This guide walks you through the origins of worry and wonder, teaches you to listen to your emotions rather than silence them, and encourages you to rethink the ways in which you view yourself and the world. Through a thoughtful blend of vulnerability, soulfulness, and science, Amber Rae teaches you how to express the fullness of who you are and everything you have to offer the world.

You don’t have to be held back by worry when wonder awaits you every moment of every day.

Worry or Wonder: which will you choose?


The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters By Priya Parker Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9781594634925
Availability: Not in stock. At Our Partner Warehouse: Usually Ships in 4-7 Days
Published: Riverhead Books - May 15th, 2018

“Hosts of all kinds, this is a must-read!”—Chris Anderson, owner and curator of TED

A bold new approach to how we gather that will transform the ways we spend our time together—at work, at home, in our communities, and beyond.


In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive—which they don’t have to be. We rely too much on routine and the conventions of gatherings when we should focus on distinctiveness and the people involved. At a time when coming together is more important than ever, Parker sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play.

Drawing on her expertise as a facilitator of high-powered gatherings around the world, Parker takes us inside events of all kinds to show what works, what doesn’t, and why. She investigates a wide array of gatherings—conferences, meetings, a courtroom, a flash-mob party, an Arab-Israeli summer camp—and explains how simple, specific changes can invigorate any group experience.

The result is a book that’s both journey and guide, full of exciting ideas with real-world applications. The Art of Gathering will forever alter the way you look at your next meeting, industry conference, dinner party, and backyard barbecue—and how you host and attend them.


Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier By Mark Adams Cover Image
$28.00
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ISBN: 9781101985106
Published: Dutton - May 15th, 2018

From the acclaimed, bestselling author of Turn Right at Machu Picchu, a fascinating and funny journey into Alaska, America’s last frontier, retracing the historic 1899 Harriman Expedition.

In 1899, railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman organized a most unusual summer voyage to the wilds of Alaska: He converted a steamship into a luxury “floating university,” populated by some of America’s best and brightest scientists and writers, including the anti-capitalist eco-prophet John Muir. Those aboard encountered a land of immeasurable beauty and impending environmental calamity. More than a hundred years later, Alaska is still America’s most sublime wilderness, both the lure that draws a million tourists annually on Inside Passage cruises and a natural resources larder waiting to be raided. As ever, it remains a magnet for weirdos and dreamers.

Armed with Dramamine and an industrial-strength mosquito net, Mark Adams sets out to retrace the 1899 expedition. Using the state’s intricate public ferry system, the Alaska Marine Highway System, Adams travels three thousand miles, following the George W. Elder’s itinerary north through Wrangell, Juneau, and Glacier Bay, then continuing west into the colder and stranger regions of the Aleutians and the Arctic Circle. Along the way, he encounters dozens of unusual characters (and a couple of very hungry bears) and investigates how lessons learned in 1899 might relate to Alaska’s current struggles in adapting to climate change.


Calypso By David Sedaris Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9780316392389
Availability: Not in stock. At Our Partner Warehouse: Usually Ships in 4-7 Days
Published: Little, Brown and Company - May 29th, 2018

David Sedaris returns with his most deeply personal and darkly hilarious book.

If you've ever laughed your way through David Sedaris's cheerfully misanthropic stories, you might think you know what you're getting with Calypso. You'd be wrong.

When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realization: it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself.

With Calypso, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation toward middle age and mortality. Make no mistake: these stories are very, very funny--it's a book that can make you laugh 'til you snort, the way only family can. Sedaris's powers of observation have never been sharper, and his ability to shock readers into laughter unparalleled. But much of the comedy here is born out of that vertiginous moment when your own body betrays you and you realize that the story of your life is made up of more past than future.

This is beach reading for people who detest beaches, required reading for those who loathe small talk and love a good tumor joke. Calypso is simultaneously Sedaris's darkest and warmest book yet--and it just might be his very best.