Nonfiction

Sometimes the bravest thing we can do while facing an existential crisis is imagine life on the other side. This provocative and joyous book maps an inspiring landscape of possible climate futures. Through clear-eyed essays and vibrant conversations, infused with data, poetry, and art, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson guides us through solutions and possibilities at the nexus of science, policy, culture, and justice.

Nikkya Hargrove spent a good portion of her childhood in prison visiting rooms. When her mother--addicted to cocaine and just out of prison--had a son and then died only a few months later, Nikkya was faced with an impossible choice. Although she had just graduated from college, she decided to fight for custody of her half brother, Jonathan. And fight she did. Nikkya vividly recounts how she is subjected to preconceived notions that she, a Black queer young woman, cannot be given such responsibility.

NPR Music's acclaimed, groundbreaking series Turning the Tables, launched in 2017, has revolutionized recognition of female artists, whether it be in best album lists or in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This volume brings this impressive reshaping to the page and includes material from more than fifty years of NPR's coverage plus newly commissioned work. A must-have for music fans, songwriters, feminist historians, and those interested in how artists think and work, including information on Joan Baez, Dolly Parton, Patti Smith, Nina Simone, Taylor Swift, Odetta, and others.

"She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order."--Toni Morrison, Beloved

For Glory Edim, that "friend of my mind" is books. Edim, who grew up in Virginia to Nigerian immigrant parents, started the popular Well-Read Black Girl book club at age thirty, eventually reaching a community of half a million readers. But her own love of books stretches far back.

One evening in 2009, April Balascio was searching online, as she had been every night, for unsolved murders in the towns her family had lived growing up, when she stumbled across the latest investigations into the "Sweetheart Murders" cold case. All at once, the buried memories of her father's dark history were awakened, and she knew she had to take action. She picked up the phone to call a detective and the rest is infamous true crime history. In her unflinching memoir, Balascio bravely reveals an astonishing tale of a lifetime of manipulation, unexplained upheavals, and silent fear.

From the adolescent thrill of getting a driver's license to the dreaded commutes of adulthood, from vintage muscle cars to electric vehicles, this groundbreaking book documents the outsized impact the car has had--and will continue to have-- on the lives of women.

Germany, 1918: a country in flux. The First World War is over, the nation defeated. Revolution is afoot, the monarchy has fallen and the victory of democracy beckons. Everything must change with the times. Out of the ashes of the First World War, Germany launches an unprecedented political project- its first democratic government. The Weimar Republic is established. The years that follow see political extremism, economic upheaval, revolutionary violence and the transformation of Germany. Tradition is shaken to its core as a triumphant procession of liberated lifestyles emerges.

A rich and compelling introduction to the history of Asian Pacific American communities as told through 101 objects from the Smithsonian collections.

The Holocaust is much discussed, much memorialized, and much portrayed. But there are major aspects of its history that have been overlooked. Spanning the entirety of the Holocaust, this sweeping history deepens our understanding. Dan Stone-Director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London-reveals how the idea of "industrial murder" is incomplete: many were killed where they lived in the most brutal of ways.

In the beginning was the Word," reads the Gospel of John. This sentence and the words of all four gospels are central to the teachings of the Christian church and have shaped Western art, literature, and language, and the Western mind. Yet in the years after the death of Christ, there was not merely one word, nor any consensus as to who Jesus was or why he had mattered. There were many different Jesuses: the Jesus who scorned his parents and harmed those who opposed him; the Jesus who sold his twin into slavery; the Jesus who had someone crucified in his stead.