Nonfiction

A Most Beautiful Thing

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A Most Beautiful Thing: The True Story of America's First All-Black High School Rowing Team Cover Image

A Most Beautiful Thing: The True Story of America's First All-Black High School Rowing Team (Hardcover)

By Arshay Cooper
$22.39
ISBN: 9781250754769
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Flatiron Books - June 30th, 2020

 

Inspiring true story from Chicago's West Side in the turbulent 1990s. A group of young Black men from Manley High form the first black rowing team to save themselves. They are utterly transformed by the experience. Survivors, they reunite 20 years later to make a difference by offering the same opportunity to young black kids in their hometown. They also invite white members of the Chicago Police Department to join them in bringing people together to make a difference one stroke at a time. You will be moved to tears. Now available as a documentary on Peacock TV.

Ellen

Fermentation as Metaphor

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Fermentation as Metaphor (Hardcover)

By Sandor Ellix Katz
$20.00
ISBN: 9781645020219
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Chelsea Green Publishing Company - October 15th, 2020

 

Fermentation is about breaking down to build up, whether that be bacteria and yeast breaking down sugars to make delicious food, or concepts being broken apart, examined, and put together in new ways. Katz is the expert in fermentation practices. Here, he uses fermentation as a metaphor fo  life, examining how we can draw inspiration from fermentation processes in order to live a more balanced, supportive, and aware life.

Marika

Grieving

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Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country Cover Image

Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country (Paperback)

By Cristina Rivera Garza, Sarah Booker (Translator)
$13.56
ISBN: 9781936932931
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Feminist Press - October 6th, 2020

 

Grieving is a hard read, but the central idea is so beautiful, the heart-punches you take along the way are worth it. To be human is to be vulnerable but we can envelop that vulnerability in community so that no one is helpless. Though directly about the tragedies surrounding the drug war in Mexico, Grieving illuminates more general human experiences of trauma, national myth, and politics. And I might read the last chapter, "Keep Writing," once a month to help me keep going.

Josh

Action Park

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Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park Cover Image

Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park (Paperback)

By Andy Mulvihill, Jake Rossen
$17.00
ISBN: 9780143134510
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Penguin Books - June 30th, 2020

Long ago, back when theme parks were open, back when crowds would fill them up,  was a park so wild and so dangerous people wore the scars it inflicted like badges of honor. This is the story of someone who worked there over the summers.

John

X + Y

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x + y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender Cover Image

x + y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender (Hardcover)

By Eugenia Cheng
$28.00
ISBN: 9781541646506
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Basic Books - August 25th, 2020

Reasons I want you to buy this book:

Ingressive: if you buy my staff pick, I gain power and prestige as a bookseller.

Congressive: Separating gender out allows us to approach behavior without getting into the technicalities of "not all men". I want everyone to read this book so we can start using the vocabulary Cheng introduces (ingressive and congressive). Her mathematical approach to gender has the potential to be truly groundbreaking, and I want to see where it leads!

 

Shana

A Year in Nature

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A Year In Nature: A Memoir of Solace Cover Image

A Year In Nature: A Memoir of Solace (Paperback)

By Clare Walker Leslie
$24.95
ISBN: 9781733653435
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Green Writers Press - May 7th, 2020

 

Cambridge resident Clare Walker Leslie’s latest book is a selection from the nature journals she has kept for many years arranged to follow our year-long journey around our Sun. With her keen eye for observation and delightful sketches and watercolors she inspires us to slow down enough to savor the world around us.

 

Dale

Two Trees Make a Forest

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Two Trees Make a Forest: In Search of My Family's Past Among Taiwan's Mountains and Coasts Cover Image

Two Trees Make a Forest: In Search of My Family's Past Among Taiwan's Mountains and Coasts (Paperback)

By Jessica J. Lee
$16.95
ISBN: 9781646220007
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Catapult - August 4th, 2020

 

The best nonfiction doesn't just illuminate unfamiliar places and ideas in beautiful prose, doesn't just pose questions to the reader about family, identity, & culture while leading them towards possible answers. It also presents the reader with a path towards their own discovery. Lee's new book does all of the above as she tries to understand her place in the world by understanding her relationship to Taiwan, while also guiding the reader towards the question: What if I explored my home as if it were a foreign country?

Josh 

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