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
- Rabbit Heart byISBN: 9781640096370Publication Date: 2024-03-26A beautiful, brutal memoir documenting one woman's search for identity alongside her family's decades-long quest to identify the two men who abducted and murdered her mother; Kristine S. Ervin was just eight years old when her mother, Kathy Sue Engle, was abducted from an Oklahoma mall parking lot and violently murdered in an oil field. First, there was grief. Then the desire to know: what happened to her, what she felt in her last terrible moments, and all she was before these acts of violence defined her life. In her mother's absence, Ervin tries to reconstruct a woman she can never fully grasp - from her own memory, from letters she uncovers, and from the stories of other family members. As more information about her mother's death comes to light, Ervin's drive to know her mother only intensifies, winding into her own fraught adolescence. She reckons with contradictions of what a woman is allowed to be - a self beyond the roles of wife, mother, daughter, victim - what a "true" victim is supposed to look like, and, finally, how complicated and elusive justice can be.Ervin's memoir weaves together themes of power, gender, and justice into a manifesto of grief and reclamation.
- Music and Mind byISBN: 9780593653197Publication Date: 2024-04-09A compelling and growing body of research has shown music and arts therapies to be effective tools for addressing a widening array of conditions, from providing pain relief, to enhancing speech recovery after stroke or traumatic brain injury through singing, to improving mobility of individuals with Parkinson's disease using rhythm. In “Music and Mind” Renee Fleming draws upon her own experience as an advocate to showcase the breadth of this booming field, inviting leading experts to share their discoveries. In addition to describing therapeutic benefits, the book explores evolution, brain function, childhood development, and technology as applied to arts and health. Much of this area of study is relatively new, made possible by recent advances in brain imaging, supported by the National Institutes of Health, major hospitals, and universities. This work is sparking an explosion of public interest in the arts and health sector. Fleming has presented on this material in over fifty cities across North America, Europe and Asia, collaborating with leading researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners. With essays from notable musicians, writers, and artists, as well as leading neuroscientists, this is a groundbreaking book, the perfect introduction and overview of this exciting new field.
- Life byISBN: 9780063387522Publication Date: 2024-03-19“Life is the story of a man and a world in dramatic change. Pope Francis recalls his life through memories and observations of the most significant occurrences of the past eight decades. The book opens with 3 year-old Jorge in the kitchen with his mother in Argentina as World War II breaks out, and he goes on to witness several historic events: the fall of the Berlin Wall, Videla's coup in Argentina, the moon landing in 1969 and even the 1986 World Cup in which Maradona scored the unforgettable "hand of God" goal. Here are the frank assessments and intimate insights of a pastor reflecting on the Nazi extermination of the Jews, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the 2001 terrorist attack on America, the great economic recession of 2008, the Covid-19 pandemic, the retirement of Pope Benedict XVI, and the subsequent conclave that elected him Pontiff. The "pope callejero" recounts these world-changing moments with the candor and compassion that distinguishes him, and offers important messages on major crises confronting us now, including social inequalities, climate change, international war, atomic weapons, racial discrimination, and the battles over social and cultural issues.
- God, Guns, and Sedition byISBN: 9780231211222Publication Date: 2024-01-02Shocking acts of terrorism have erupted from violent American far-right extremists in recent years, including the 2015 mass murder at a historic Black church in Charleston and the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. These incidents, however, are neither novel nor unprecedented. They are the latest flashpoints in a process that has been unfolding for decades, in which vast conspiracy theories and radical ideologies such as white supremacism, racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, and hostility to government converge into a deadly threat to democracy. “God, Guns, and Sedition” offers the definitive account of the rise of far-right terrorism in the United States - and how to counter it. Leading experts Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware trace the historical trajectory and assess the present-day dangers of this violent extremist movement, along with the harm it poses to U.S. national security. They combine authoritative, nuanced analysis with gripping storytelling and portraits of the leaders behind this violence and their followers.An unparalleled examination of one of today's great perils, the book ends with an array of essential practical recommendations to halt the growth of violent far-right extremism and address this global terrorist threat.
- Fi byISBN: 9780802161048Publication Date: 2024-04-09It's midsummer in Wyoming and Alexandra is barely hanging on. Grieving her father and pining for her home country of Zimbabwe, reeling from a midlife breakup, freshly sober and piecing her way uncertainly through a volatile new relationship with a younger woman, Alexandra vows to get herself back on even keel. And then - suddenly and incomprehensibly - her son Fi, at twenty-one years old, dies in his sleep. No stranger to loss - young siblings, a parent, a home country - Alexandra is nonetheless leveled. At the same time, she is painfully aware that she cannot succumb and abandon her two surviving daughters as her mother before her had done. From a sheep wagon deep in the mountains of Wyoming to a grief sanctuary in New Mexico to a silent meditation retreat in Alberta, Canada, Alexandra journeys up and down the spine of the Rocky Mountains in an attempt to find how to grieve herself whole. There is no answer, and there are countless answers - in poetry, in rituals and routines, in nature and in the indigenous wisdom she absorbed as a child in Zimbabwe. By turns disarming, devastating and unexpectedly, blessedly funny, Alexandra recounts the wild medicine of painstakingly grieving a child in a culture that has no instructions for it.
- 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 Wives byISBN: 9781982178499Publication Date: 2024-04-09A captivating memoir that tells the story of one woman's experience of joining a community of army wives after leaving her New York City job - a profoundly intimate look at marriage, friendship, and the power of human connection. When her new husband joins an elite Army unit, Simone Gorrindo is uprooted from New York City and dropped into Columbus, Georgia. With her husband frequently deployed, Simone is left to find her place in this new world, alone - until she meets the wives. Gorrindo gives us an intimate look into the inner lives of a remarkable group of women and a tender, unflinching portrait of a marriage. A love story, an unforgettable coming-of-age tale, and a bracing tour of the intractable divisions that plague our country today, “The Wives” offers a rare and powerful gift: a hopeful stitch in the fabric of a torn America.
- Puerto Rico byISBN: 9780691231273Publication Date: 2024-04-02For centuries, Puerto Ricans have crafted and negotiated complex ideas about nationhood. Jorell Meléndez-Badillo provides a new history of Puerto Rico that gives voice to the archipelago's people while offering a lens through which to understand the political, economic, and social challenges confronting them today. In this masterful work of scholarship, Meléndez-Badillo sheds light on the vibrant cultures of the archipelago in the centuries before the arrival of Columbus and captures the full sweep of Puerto Rico's turbulent history in the centuries that followed, from the first indigenous insurrection against colonial rule in 1511 - led by the powerful chieftain Agüeybaná II - to the establishment of the Commonwealth in 1952. He deftly portrays the contemporary period and the intertwined though unequal histories of the archipelago and the continental United States. “Puerto Rico” is an engaging, sometimes personal, and consistently surprising history of colonialism, revolt, and the creation of a national identity, offering new perspectives not only on Puerto Rico and the Caribbean but on the United States and the Atlantic world more broadly.
- The Age of Magical Overthinking byISBN: 9781668007976Publication Date: 2024-04-09A delicious blend of cultural criticism and personal narrative that explores our cognitive biases and the power, disadvantages, and highlights of magical thinking. “Magical thinking" can be broadly defined as the belief that one's internal thoughts can affect unrelated events in the external world: Think of the conviction that one can manifest their way out of poverty, stave off cancer with positive vibes, thwart the apocalypse by learning to can their own peaches, or transform an unhealthy relationship to a glorious one with loyalty alone. In all its forms, magical thinking works in service of restoring agency amid chaos, but in The Age of Magical Overthinking, Montell argues that in the modern information age, our brain's coping mechanisms have been overloaded, and our irrationality turned up to an eleven. In a series of razor sharp, deeply funny chapters, the author delves into a cornucopia of the cognitive biases that run rampant in our brains. As she illuminates these concepts with her signature brilliance and wit, Montell's prevailing message is one of hope, empathy, and ultimately forgiveness for our anxiety-addled human selves. If you have all but lost faith in our ability to reason, Montell aims to make some sense of the senseless.
- The Rulebreaker byISBN: 9781982197926Publication Date: 2024-04-23Barbara Walters was a force from the time TV was exploding on the American scene in the 1960’s to its waning dominance in a new world of competition from streaming services and social media half a century later. She was not just a groundbreaker for women, but also expanded the big TV interview and then dominated the genre. By the end of her career, she had interviewed more of the famous and infamous than any other journalist in history. Then at 67 (when most would retire), she pioneered a new form of talk TV called “The View.” She is on the short list of those who have left the biggest imprints on television news and on our culture - so, who was the woman behind the legacy? In “The Rulebreaker,” Susan Page conducts 150 interviews and extensive archival research to discover that Walters was driven to keep herself and her family afloat after her mercurial and famous impresario father attempted suicide. But she never lost the fear of an impending catastrophe, which is what led her to ask for things no woman had ever asked for before, to ignore the rules of misogynistic culture, to outcompete her most ferocious competitors, and to protect her complicated marriages and love life from scrutiny. Page breaks news on every front - from the daring things Walters did to the secrets she kept until her death.
- My Black Country byISBN: 9781668018408Publication Date: 2024-04-09Alice Randall, award-winning professor, songwriter and author with an engaging voice, offers a lyrical, introspective, and unforgettable account of her past and her search for the first family of Black country music. Country music had brought Randall and her activist mother together and even gave Randall a singular distinction in American music history: she is the first Black woman to cowrite a number one country hit, Trisha Yearwood's "XXX's and OOO's". Randall found inspiration and comfort in the sounds and history of the first family of Black country music: DeFord Bailey, Lil Hardin, Ray Charles, Charley Pride and Herb Jeffries who, together, made up a community of Black Americans rising through hard times to create simple beauty, true joy, and sometimes profound eccentricity. What emerges in “My Black Country” is a celebration of the most American of music genres and the radical joy in realizing the power of Black influence on American culture. As country music goes through a fresh renaissance today, with a new wave of Black artists, this book is perfect for longtime country fans and a vibrant introduction to a new generation of listeners who previously were not invited to give the genre a chance.
- 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.
- You Never Know byISBN: 9780062945761Publication Date: 2024-05-07An intimate memoir from Tom Selleck, one of the most beloved actors of our time; In his own voice and uniquely unpretentious style, the famed actor brings readers on his uncharted but serendipitous journey to the top in Hollywood, his temptations and distractions, his misfires and mistakes and over time, his well-earned success. Along the way, he clears up an armload of misconceptions and shares dozens of never-told stories from all corners of his personal and professional life. His rambunctious California childhood. His clueless arrival as a good-looking college jock in Hollywood and what it was like to emerge as a mega-star in his mid-thirties and remain so for decades to come. Hollywood is never easy, even for stars who make it look that way. In his memoir, Selleck explains how he's struggled to balance his personal and professional lives, frequently adjusting his career to protect his family's privacy and normalcy. His journey offers a truly fresh perspective on a changing industry and a changing world. Beneath all the charm and talent and self-deprecating humor, Selleck's memoir reveals an American icon who has reached remarkable heights by always insisting on being himself.