New on the Shelves at Albert Wisner Public Library: Non-Fiction & Biography
New adult and children's materials that are in high demand or which have received critical acclaim.
NON-FICTION TITLES OF PARTICULAR INTEREST
- Over the Influence byISBN: 9781639106684Publication Date: 2024-03-05Communication professor and CNN Opinion contributor Kara Alaimo reveals how social media is affecting every aspect of the lives of women and girls - from our relationships and our parenting to our physical and mental well-being. Alaimo shows why you're likely to get fewer followers if you're a woman. She explains how fake news is crafted to prey on women's vulnerabilities. She reveals why so much of the content we find in our feeds is specifically designed to hold us back. And she explains how social media has made the offline world an uglier place for women. But we can change this. Alaimo offers up brilliant advice for how to get over the influence - how to handle our daughters' use of social media, use dating apps to find the partners we're looking for, use social networks to bolster our careers, and protect ourselves from sextortionists, catfishers, and trolls. She also explains what we need to demand from lawmakers and tech companies. “Over the Influence” calls on women to recognize and call out the subtle (and not-so-subtle) sexism and misogyny we find online, reject misinformation that is targeted to us because of our gender, and use our platforms to empower ourselves and other women.
- LatinoLand byISBN: 9781982184896Publication Date: 2024-02-20At present, Latinos comprise 20 percent of the US population, a number that is growing. By 2050, census reports project that one in every three Americans will claim Latino heritage. But Latinos are not a monolith. They do not represent a single group. The largest numbers are Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Salvadorans, and Cubans - each has a different cultural and political background. As “LatinoLand” demonstrates, Latinos were some of the earliest immigrants to what is now the US - some of them arriving in the 1500’s. They are racially diverse - a random fusion of White, Black, Indigenous and Asian. They range from domestic workers and day laborers to successful artists, corporate CEO’s, and US senators. Formerly solidly Democratic, they now vote Republican in growing numbers. They are as varied culturally as any immigrants from Europe or Asia. Marie Arana draws on her own experience as the daughter of an American mother and Peruvian father who came to the US at age nine, straddling two worlds, as many Latinos do. “LatinoLand“ unabashedly celebrates Latino resilience and character and shows us why we must understand the fastest-growing minority in America.
- It's Hard for Me to Live with Me byISBN: 9781982197773Publication Date: 2024-02-27Rex Chapman is considered by many the greatest basketball player ever produced by the hoops-crazy state of Kentucky. In two years at the University of Kentucky, he scored over 1,000 points, led the Wildcats to a Sweet Sixteen appearance and was nicknamed "King Rex." The first player ever drafted by the Charlotte Hornets, he spent 12 seasons in the NBA - but by the end of his career, Chapman was harboring a destructive secret. He developed a dependency on Vicodin and Oxycontin, ultimately ingesting 50 painkillers a day. In addition, he developed a severe gambling addiction. All this would cost him his family as well as most of the $40 million fortune he'd made in basketball, leaving him to live in his car and shoplift. Only when he was arrested and his mugshot made national news, did he finally commit to getting clean. In his memoir, Chapman tells the story of his addiction and recovery in unflinching detail. With equal frankness, he describes his history with depression; the racism he witnessed growing up and how that shaped his outspokenness on matters of social justice; and his complex and volatile relationship with his father, also a former professional basketball player.
- Filterworld byISBN: 9780385548281Publication Date: 2024-01-16Algorithmic recommendations dictate our experiences and choices, and over the last decade, this network of mathematically determined decisions has taken over, almost unnoticed. This ever-tightening web woven by algorithms is called "Filterworld." Kyle Chayka shows us how online and offline spaces alike have been engineered for seamless consumption, becoming a source of pervasive anxiety in the process. Chayka’s book traces this creeping, machine-guided curation as it infiltrates the furthest reaches of our digital, physical, and psychological spaces. With algorithms increasingly influencing not just what culture we consume, but what culture is produced, urgent questions arise: What happens when shareability supersedes messiness, innovation and creativity - the qualities that make us human? What does it mean to make a choice when the options have been so carefully arranged for us? Is personal freedom possible on the Internet? To the last question, Filterworld argues yes - but to escape Filterworld, and even transcend it, we must first understand it.
- Cloistered byISBN: 9781250323514Publication Date: 2024-03-12“Cloistered” takes us into the hidden world of a traditional Carmelite monastery and tells the story of an intense personal journey into and out of an enclosed life of poverty, chastity and obedience. Finding an apparently perfect world at Akenside Priory, in Northumberland, Catherine trusts herself to a group of 20 silent women; as the beauty and mystery of an ancient way of life enfold her, she surrenders herself wholly to its power, quite unaware of the complexity and dangers that lie ahead. Cut off from the wider world for decades, the community has managed to evade accountability to any authority beyond itself. When Sister Catherine realizes that a mesmerizing cult of the personality has replaced the ancient ideal of religious obedience, she is faced with a dilemma. Will she submit to this, or will she be forced to speak out? An exploration of the limits of trust, “Cloistered” shows us how far youthful idealism can take us along the road of self-surrender, and of how much harm is done when institutional flaws go unacknowledged. Catherine's honest account of her time in the monastery - and her dramatic flight from it - is both a love song to a lost community and an exploration of what is most compelling, yet most potentially destructive when closed human groups become laws unto themselves.
- One Way Back byISBN: 9781250289650Publication Date: 2024-03-19On September 27, 2018, Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee which was considering the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. She described an alleged sexual assault by the Supreme Court nominee that took place at a high school party in the 1980’s. Her words and courage on that day provided some of the most credible and unforgettable testimony our country has ever witnessed. In “One Way Back,” Ford recounts the months she spent trying to get information into the right hands without exposing herself and her family to dangerous backlash. Drawing parallels to her life as a surfer, she explains the process of paddling out into unknown waters despite the risks and fears, knowing there is only one way back to shore. The book reveals riveting new details about the leadup to her testimony and its overwhelming aftermath and describes how she continues to navigate her way out of the storm. This is the real story behind the headlines and the soundbites, a complex, page-turning memoir of a scientist, a surfer, a mother, a patriot and an unlikely whistleblower.
- An Unfinished Love Story byISBN: 9781982108663Publication Date: 2024-04-16“An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960’s” by Doris Kearns Goodwin artfully weaves together biography, memoir and history. She takes you along on the emotional journey she and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin embarked upon in the last years of his life. The Goodwin’s were married for 42 years and, their last great adventure involved finally opening the more than 300 boxes of letters, diaries, documents and memorabilia that Dick had saved for more than 50 years. They soon realized they had before them an unparalleled personal time capsule of the 1960’s, illuminating public and private moments of a decade when individuals were powered by the conviction they could make a difference; a time, like today, marked by struggles for racial and economic justice, a time when lines were drawn and loyalties tested. Their expedition gave Dick renewed purpose and determination, and Doris the opportunity to connect and reconnect with participants and witnesses of pivotal moments of the 1960’s. It also gave them both an opportunity to make fresh assessments of the central figures of the time including John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy and Lyndon Johnson.
- The Manicurist's Daughter byISBN: 9781250835048Publication Date: 2024-03-12Susan Lieu has long been searching for answers. About her family's past and about her own future. Refugees from the Vietnam War, Susan's family escaped to California in the 1980’s after five failed attempts. Upon arrival, Susan's mother was their savvy, charismatic North Star, setting up two successful nail salons and orchestrating every success - until Susan was eleven. That year, her mother died from a botched tummy tuck. After the funeral, no one was ever allowed to talk about her or what had happened. For the next twenty years, Susan navigated a series of cascading questions alone - why did the most perfect person in her life want to change her body? Why would no one tell her about her mother's life in Vietnam? And how did this surgeon, who preyed on Vietnamese immigrants, go on operating after her mother's death? Sifting through depositions, tracking down the surgeon's family, and enlisting the help of spirit channelers, Susan uncovers the painful truth of her mother, herself, and the impossible ideal of beauty. “The Manicurist's Daughter” is much more than a memoir about grief, trauma, and body image. It is a story of fierce determination, strength in shared culture, and finding your place in the world.
- The Observable Universe byISBN: 9780593596470Publication Date: 2024-03-19In the early 1990’s, Heather McCalden lost both her parents to AIDS. She was seven when her father died, ten when she lost her mother. Raised by her grandmother, Nivia, she grew up in Los Angeles, also known as ground zero for the virus and its destruction. Years later, she begins researching online the history of HIV as a way to deal with her loss, which leads her to the unexpected realization that the AIDS crisis and the internet developed on parallel timelines. By accumulating whatever fragments she could about both phenomena - images, anecdotes and scientific entries - alongside her own personal history, McCalden forms a synaptic journey of what happened to her family, one that leads to an equally unexpected discovery about who her parents might have been. Entwining this personal search with a wider cultural narrative of what the virus and virality mean in our times - interrogating what it means to "go viral" in an era of explosive biochemical and virtual contagion. “The Observable Universe” is at once a history of our viral culture and a prismatic account of grief in the internet age.
- In True Face byISBN: 9781541703124Publication Date: 2024-03-05Jonna Hiestand Mendez began her CIA career as a "contract wife" performing secretarial duties for the CIA as a convenience to her husband, a young officer stationed in Europe. She needed his permission to open a bank account or shut off the gas to their apartment. Yet Mendez had a talent for espionage, too, and she soon took on bigger and more significant roles at the Agency. She parlayed her interest in photography into an operational role overseas, an unlikely area for a woman in the CIA. Often underestimated, occasionally undermined, she lived under cover and served tours of duty all over the globe, rising first to become an international spy and ultimately to Chief of Disguise at CIA's Office of Technical Service. “In True Face” recounts not only the drama of Mendez's high-stakes work - how this savvy operator parlayed her "everywoman" appeal into incredible subterfuge - but also the grit and good fortune it took for her to navigate a misogynistic world. This is the story of an incredible spy career and what it took to achieve it.
- Lessons for Survival byISBN: 9781250809766Publication Date: 2024-03-12Award-winning author and critic Emily Raboteau crafts a powerfully moving meditation on race, climate, environmental justice - and what it takes to find shelter. “Lessons for Survival” is a probing series of pilgrimages from the perspective of a mother struggling to raise her children to thrive without coming undone in an era of turbulent intersecting crises. With camera in hand, Raboteau goes in search of birds, fluttering in the air or painted on buildings, and city parks where her children may safely play while avoiding pollution, pandemics and the police. She ventures abroad to learn from Indigenous peoples, and in her own family and community, she discovers the most intimate examples of resilience. Raboteau bears witness to the inner life of Black womanhood, motherhood, the brutalities and possibilities of cities, while celebrating the beauty and fragility of nature. This innovative work of reportage and autobiography stitches together multiple stories of protection, offering a profound sense of hope.
- Sito byISBN: 9781538740323Publication Date: 2024-02-20In September of 2019, Luis Alberto Quiñonez - known as Sito - was shot to death as he sat in his car in the Mission District of San Francisco. He was nineteen. His killer, Julius Williams, was seventeen. It was the second time the teens had encountered one another. The first, five years before, also ended in tragedy, when Julius watched as his brother was stabbed to death by an acquaintance of Sito's. The two murders merited a few local news stories, and then the rest of the world moved on. But for the families of the slain teenagers, it was impossible to move on. And for Laurence Ralph, the stepfather of Sito's half-brother who had dedicated much of his academic career to studying gang-affiliated youth, Sito's murder forced him to revisit a subject of scholarly inquiry in a profoundly different, deeply personal way. Written from Ralph's perspective as both a person enmeshed in Sito's family and as an Ivy League professor and expert on the entanglement of class and violence, “SITO” is an intimate story with an message about the lived experience of urban danger - and about anger, fear, grief, vengeance and ultimately grace.
- Knife byISBN: 9780593730249Publication Date: 2024-04-16A searing, deeply personal account of enduring - and surviving - an attempt on his life 30 years after the fatwa that was ordered against him; On the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black (black clothes and black mask) rushed down the aisle toward him, wielding a knife. His first thought was “So it's you. Here you are.” What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey toward physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists and his community of readers worldwide. “Knife” is Rushdie at the peak of his powers, writing with urgency, with gravity, with unflinching honesty. It is also a deeply moving reminder of literature's capacity to make sense of the unthinkable, an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art - and finding the strength to stand up again.
- Ghost Town Living byISBN: 9780593578445Publication Date: 2024-03-19The siren song of Cerro Gordo, a desolate ghost town perched high above Death Valley, has seduced thousands since the 1800’s, but few fell harder for it than Brent Underwood, who moved there in March of 2020, only to be immediately snowed in and trapped for weeks. It had once been the largest silver mine in California. Over $500 million worth of ore was pulled from the miles of tunnels below the town. Butch Cassidy, Mark Twain and other infamous characters of the American West were rumored to have stayed there. Newspapers reported a murder a week. But that was over 150 years ago. Underwood bet his life savings - and his life - on this majestic, hardscrabble town. What followed were fires, floods, earthquakes and perhaps strangest, fame. “Ghost Town Living” tells the story of a man against the elements, a forgotten historic place against the modern world, and a dream against all odds - one that has captured millions of followers around the world. He came looking for a challenge different from the traditional 9-5 job but discovered something much more fulfilling - an undertaking that would call on all of himself and push him beyond what he knew he was capable of.