New Nonfiction Releases
July 2010

These books are being published and released this month. They have been ordered by the Library and will be available soon.

(Do you need more information on how to place a hold? )

• Biography and Memoir 
• General Nonfiction

Biography & Memoir

The Bucolic Plague:  How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers:  An Unconventional Memoir
By Josh Kilmer-Purcell
The best-selling author of I Am Not Myself These Days chronicles his laugh-out-loud journey from Manhattan urbanite to mansion-owning goat farmer, an endeavor he undertook with his life partner, Brent, and which blossomed into a successful soap business, Beekman 1802, as well as inspiring a forthcoming reality TV show.

Confessions of a Prairie Bitch:  How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated
By Alison Arngrim
The woman who played the memorable villain Nellie Oleson on “Little House on the Prairie” shares behind-the-scenes stories from the show and discusses her life, from her bohemian childhood in West Hollywood to her recent charity work involving abused children and HIV awareness.

Denial:  A Memoir of Terror
By Jessica Stern
A scientist and expert on terrorism and post-traumatic-stress disorder describes her own journey through trauma and its lingering effects after repressing and disassociating her own ordeal as the victim of an unsolved sexual assault as a teenager.

Every Other Monday:  Twenty Years of Life, Lunch, Faith, and Friendship
By John Kasich
A nine-term congressman and author of the best-selling Stand for Something traces his twenty years in a Bible study group with a circle of friends and a Methodist minister with whom he shared passionate and affectionate exchanges on some of life’s most compelling questions.

The Gilded Lily:  Lily Safra:  the Making of One of the World’s Wealthiest Widows
By Isabel Vincent
This biography of philanthropist and socialite Lily Safra describes her rise from a lower middle class life in Brazil to fabled wealth, and discusses the circumstances of the loss of two millionaire husbands to tragic, but mysterious, circumstances.

Lyndon B. Johnson:  1963-1969 (The American Presidents Series)
By Charles Peters
Peters documents the 36th president’s time in office and the legacy of his achievements, revealing the insights he gained while serving in the Senate and throughout the Kennedy-Johnson administration, and discussing how factors including the Vietnam war drove him from office.

My Appetite for Destruction
By Steven Adler
The original drummer for Guns N’ Roses describes his rock-and-roll lifestyle, including financial ruin, a suicide attempt, and health problems such as two heart attacks and a debilitating stroke, plus a twenty-year addiction to crack and heroin.

No Place Like Home:  A Memoir in 39 Apartments
By Brooke Berman
An award-winning playwright describes her twenty-year search for a sense of belonging, an effort marked by her residences in dozens of New York apartments, a struggle to establish herself as a writer, and her quest to reconcile her past.

Pearl Buck in China:  Journey to the Good Earth
By Hilary Spurling
The Whitbread Book of the Year-winning author of Matisse the Master presents a tribute to the life and work of the Pulitzer-winning author known for such works as The Good Earth, and covers such topics as her fundamentalist upbringing, witness to the Boxer Revolution, and two marriages.

Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man
By Bill Clegg
The author chronicles the dark secret life he led when, despite building a respectable career as a literary agent, he embraced crack cocaine, went on a two-month binge, and lost his home, his job, and all his money.

Remembering Smell
By Bonnie Blodgett
The award-winning author of The Garden Letter describes how she lost her sense of smell after using a caustic nasal spray and experienced hallucinations before her brain adjusted to the destruction of her olfactory nerve, a loss that brought her into an awareness of the role of smell in taste, mood, and health.

Sonia Sotomayor:  The True American Dream
By Antonia Felix
The national best-selling biographer of the lives of Condoleeza Rice and Laura Bush depicts the life of the first Latina and third woman ever appointed to the Supreme Court, from her South Bronx childhood through her legal career.

William Golding:  The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies
By John Carey
Drawing on materials that have previously not been made public – including intimate letters and Golding’s own journals – the author explores the life of the scribe who penned Lord of the Flies, a man who all at once was a recluse, a family man, an alcoholic, a war hero, and an imaginative 20th-century writer.

General Nonfiction

Being the Change:  How National Service and Social Entreprenuership Can Empower Us All
By Alan Khazei
A social entrepreneur explains how an act of shared national service would greatly benefit the United States, sharing his own experience building national-service organizations and offering advice on organizing people and resources for a purpose.

Black Ops:  The Rise of Special Forces in the C.I.A., the S.A.S., and Mossad
By Tony Geraghty
At a time when special forces have become a key weapon in the war against terror, the author explores the evolution of these elite soldiers, from their roots in anti-guerilla warfare in Ireland and Palestine, to the creation of the CIA, SAS, the Green Berets, and many others, including Israel’s special forces.

The Facebook Effect:  Dominating the Way People Communicate
By David Kirkpatrick
An insider’s history of the online social network traces the collaborations and conflicts among its founders, the personalities that shaped its development, and the ways in which the site has become an integral part of today’s culture.

The Fever:  How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years
By Sonia Shah
A call-to-arms history of malaria traces centuries-long battles to treat and prevent the disease in numerous regions of the world while revealing how hundreds of millions of people are infected annually in spite of available preventions.

Freedom Summer:  The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy
By Bruce Watson
Watson analyzes a critical shift in American race relations during the summer of 1964, documenting how civil rights demonstrations by hundreds of college students triggered African-American voter registries and violent uprisings that also served as the basis for the film “Mississippi Burning.”

Hamlet’s Blackberry:  A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age
By William Powers
A former staff writer for the Washington Post draws upon ideas from Socrates, Shakespeare, and Ben Franklin to describe a new philosophy to manage digital addictions to Blackberries and the Internet and strike a healthy balance between connectedness and disconnectedness.

How Pleasure Works:  the New Science of Why We Like What We Like
By Paul Bloom
Drawing on insights from child development, philosophy, neuroscience, as well as other disciplines, Bloom examines the science behind humans’ strange and curious desires, attractions, and tastes, covering everything from the animal instincts of sex and food to the uniquely human taste for art, music, and stories.

Original Gangster:  The Real Life Story of One of America’s Most Notorious Drug Lords
By Frank Lucas
A former heroin dealer and Harlem crime boss whose life inspired the 2007 film, “American Gangster,” describes his illicit training by an old-world Mafioso and his successful smuggling operation before he was captured and sentenced to 70 years in prison.

Pacific Rims:  Beermen Ballin’ in Flip-Flops and the Philippines’ Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball
By Rafe Bartholomew
An American journalist explores the intense national love of basketball in the Philippines, spending a season in the locker room of a professional team in Manila, and dining with politicians who exploit the sport for electoral success.

Reset:  Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future
By Stephen Kinzer
The best-selling author of Overthrow outlines a vision for rebuilding America’s strategic partnerships in the Middle East, proposing specific recommendations for alliances with Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other candidates while citing the examples of historical figures.

Scoundrels in Law:  The Trials of Howe and Hummel, Counsel to the Gangsters, Cops, Starlets, and Rakes Who Made the Gilded Age
By Cait N. Murphy
The author of Crazy ’08 describes the personal and professional lives of William Howe and Abraham Hummel, New York’s most famous lawyers in the late 19th century, who built their careers defending outrageous, violent cases while living flamboyant lifestyles.

Sex at Dawn:  The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality
By Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha
Two psychologists aim to reframe our understanding of lust, monogamy, and family through a discussion on human sexuality based on research in anthropology, primatology, and anatomy, and defends their theory that humans evolved in interdependent, promiscuous groups.

Spiritual Formation:  Following the Movements of the Spirit
By Henri Nouwen
The second book based on the teachings of spiritual guide and counselor Henri Nouwen describes the five classical stages of spiritual development in the journey of faith:  Awakening, Purgation, Illumination, Dark Night (of the Soul) and Unification (with God).

Thrillers:  100 Must-Reads
By David Morrell and Hank Wagner, eds.
Members of the International Thriller Writers organization – including David Baldacci, Sandra Brown, Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver, Tess Gerritsen, Heather Graham, John Lescroart, James Rollins, R. L. Stine, and many others – contribute essays on their favorite thrillers.

The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy:  How the New World Order, Man-Made Diseases, and Zombie Banks are Destroying America
By Jim Marrs
The author of Rise of the Fourth Reich argues that a global conspiracy has enslaved Americans with poor education, a misguided mass media, and a buffet of prescription drugs, and issues a call to break free from this catatonic state and reclaim what America once stood for.

The Troubled Empire:  China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties
By Timothy Brook
Brook explores the history of China between the Mongal reunification of China in 1279 under the Yuan dynasty and the Manchu invasion four centuries later, explaining how climate changes profoundly affected the empire during this period.

What Women Want
By Paco Underhill
The author of Why We Buy and Call of the Mall reveals the qualities that make products, spaces, and services relevant to women consumers while tracing how the modern roles of women have evolved, citing the successful examples of major companies.

Wrong:  Why Experts (Scientists, Finance Wizards, Doctors, Relationship Gurus, Celebrity CEOs, High-Powered Consultants, Health Officials and More) Keep Failing Us – and How to Know When Not to Trust Them
By David H. Freedman
In a book that offers a way out of this destructive cycle, Freedman explains why experts often give wrong information, the reasons that bad advice gets the most attention, and how this has adversely affected society.

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