Featured Non-Fiction & Biography
SOCIOPATH
by Partic Gagne, PhD
REBEL RISING
by Rebel Wilson
From the scene-stealing star of Pitch Perfect and Bridesmaids comes a refreshingly candid, hilarious, and inspiring book about her unconventional journey to Hollywood success and loving herself.
For decades, Rebel Wilson had single-mindedly focused on her career, making a name for herself through her iconic roles in Pitch Perfect, Bridesmaids, and Isn’t It Romantic. Now, she’s ready to chronicle the emotional and physical lessons she learned, as well as her most embarrassing experiences. A malaria-induced hallucination? An all-style martial arts fighting tournament? Junior handling at dog shows? And this was all BEFORE she moved to Hollywood!
Rebel Rising follows Rebel Wilson’s incredible journey of “making it,” constantly questioning, “Am I good enough? Will I ever find love? Will I ever change and become healthy?” Rebel writes for the first time about the most personal and important moments in her life—from fertility issues, weight gain and loss, sexuality, overcoming shyness, rejections, and, well…okay there’s at least one story thrown in about Brad Pitt! It’s all here. This memoir shows us how to love ourselves while making us laugh uncontrollably.
THINGS ARE TOO SMALL
by Becca Rothfeld
A glorious call to throw off restraint and balance in favor of excess, abandon, and disproportion, in essays ranging from such topics as mindfulness, decluttering, David Cronenberg, and consent.
In her debut essay collection, “brilliant and stylish” (The Washington Post) critic Becca Rothfeld takes on one of the most sacred cows of our time: the demand that we apply the virtues of equality and democracy to culture and aesthetics. The result is a culture that is flattened and sanitized, purged of ugliness, excess, and provocation.
Our embrace of minimalism has left us spiritually impoverished. We see it in our homes, where we bring in Marie Kondo to rid them of their idiosyncrasies and darknesses. We take up mindfulness to do the same thing to our heads, emptying them of the musings, thoughts, and obsessions that make us who we are. In the bedroom, a new wave of puritanism has drained sex of its unpredictability and therefore true eroticism. In our fictions, the quest for balance has given us protagonists who aspire only to excise their appetites. We have flipped our values, Rothfeld argues: while the gap between rich and poor yawns hideously wide, we strive to compensate with egalitarianism in art, erotics, and taste, where it does not belong and where it quashes wild experiments and exuberance.
Lush, provocative, and bitingly funny, All Things Are Too Small is a subversive soul cry to restore imbalance, obsession, gluttony, and ravishment to all domains of our lives.
OUR FIGHT
by Ronda Rousey
From New York Times bestselling author and trailblazing athlete Ronda Rousey, an unfiltered chronicle of loss, resilience and finding meaning in life’s journey.
From the moment she burst onto the MMA scene, Ronda Rousey was unbeatable. She repeatedly strung together back-to-back flawless victories, racking up a collection of records and forever changing the face of sports as the UFC’s first female champion. A superstar in her sport, she transcended athletics, appearing in blockbuster films and becoming a role model for women everywhere. Then, on November 15, 2015, it all came crashing down.
In OUR FIGHT, Rousey explores the greatest challenge of her life and, ultimately, how she rebuilt her life into something better in the aftermath. She recounts how she replaced her pursuit of perfection with the pursuit of happiness and found an opportunity in disguise amongst the wreckage. Following Rousey’s relatable journey, OUR FIGHT is a courageous narrative of career changes, marriage, motherhood, and facing your fears.
NEVER LEAVE THE DOGS BEHIND
by Brianna Madia
The author of the New York Times bestseller Nowhere for Very Long continues her story with this deeply honest, moving account of a woman walking the line between independence and isolation when she moves to the Southwest desert with nothing and no one but her four dogs.
In her debut memoir, Nowhere for Very Long, Brianna Madia reflected on her life as a nomad, free to roam some of the most beautiful land in America. Now, in Never Leave the Dogs Behind, the van life adherent faces the unfathomable darkness that comes from a life blown apart, her only solace the support of her dogs.
In the wake of a painful, public divorce and the ensuing fallout, Brianna moves from a pared-down van into a pared-down trailer. She reckons with her decision to be alone in the desert, living on a nine-acre plot of undeveloped land on the dusty outskirts of a small town in Utah, accompanied only by her four precious dogs: Bucket, Dagwood, Birdie, and Banjo. As she grapples with the anger, despair, and delicious freedom that comes from being wholly on her own, Brianna wonders where, exactly, the road less traveled has led her.
A powerful and poignant portrait of rebuilding and surviving, Never Leave the Dogs Behind is about finding the courage to start over when the dream life you thought you were living collapses around your feet.
LIVING AND WORKING WITH AI
by Ethan Mollick
From Wharton professor and author of the popular One Useful Thing Substack newsletter Ethan Mollick comes the definitive playbook for working, learning, and living in the new age of AI
Something new entered our world in November 2022 — the first general purpose AI that could pass for a human and do the kinds of creative, innovative work that only humans could do previously. Wharton professor Ethan Mollick immediately understood what ChatGPT meant: after millions of years on our own, humans had developed a kind of co-intelligence that could augment, or even replace, human thinking. Through his writing, speaking, and teaching, Mollick has become one of the most prominent and provocative explainers of AI, focusing on the practical aspects of how these new tools for thought can transform our world.
In Co-Intelligence, Mollick urges us to engage with AI as co-worker, co-teacher, and coach. He assesses its profound impact on business and education, using dozens of real-time examples of AI in action. Co-Intelligence shows what it means to think and work together with smart machines, and why it’s imperative that we master that skill.
Mollick challenges us to utilize AI’s enormous power without losing our identity, to learn from it without being misled, and to harness its gifts to create a better human future. Wide ranging, hugely thought-provoking, optimistic, and lucid, Co-Intelligence reveals the promise and power of this new era.
SWAMP KINGS
by Jason Ryan
The stranger-than-fiction story of the now-notorious Lowcountry clan, in all its Southern Gothic intensity—by an author with unparalleled access to and knowledge of the players, the history, and the place.
The most famous man in South Carolina lives in prison. He stands convicted of a staggering amount of wrongdoing—more than 100 crimes and counting. Once a high-flying, smooth-talking, pedigreed Southern lawyer, Alex Murdaugh is now disbarred and disgraced. For more than a decade, prosecutors asserted that Alex was secretly a fraud, a thief, a drug trafficker, and an all-around phony. On the night of June 7, 2021, they claimed, he also became a killer, shooting dead his wife and son in a desperate bid to escape accountability.
The many crimes of Alex Murdaugh, exposed piecemeal over the last two years, have appalled the general public. Yet his implosion—the spectacular manner in which he has turned his vaunted family name to mud—has also proved mesmerizing. With every revelation, Alex Murdaugh has been shown to be a man without bottom, though he insists he never harmed his family.
Remarkably, all of his misdeeds have precedent. In Swamp Kings, Jason Ryan reveals Alex’s evil actions are only the tip of the iceberg. When it comes to the Murdaugh family of Hampton County, history has a way of repeating itself. For every alleged, headline-grabbing crime associated with Alex Murdaugh, mirror-image incidents have played out within his family’s past, including parallel instances of fraud, theft, illicit trafficking of babies and booze, calamitous boat crashes, and even alleged murder. There were some crimes committed by Alex’s kin that even he would not dare mimic.
Covering a century of depravity in an impoverished and isolated stretch of the Deep South, Swamp Kings weaves together the jaw-dropping narratives of generations of Murdaughs before culminating in the telling of a murder trial for the ages. Page after page the family’s legacy is laid bare as a spotlight is finally trained on the Murdaugh men who have long lorded over the South Carolina Lowcountry.
FROM THE MOMENT THEY MET IT WAS MURDER
by Alain Silver & James Ursini
The behind-the-scenes story of the quintessential film noir and cult classic, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity—its true crime origins and crucial impact on film history—is told for the first time in this riveting narrative published for the film’s 80th anniversary.
From actual murder to magazine fiction to movie, the history of Double Indemnity is as complex as anything that hit the screen during film noir’s classic period. A 1927 tabloid sensation “crime of the century” inspired journalist and would-be crime-fiction writer James M. Cain to pen a novella. Hollywood quickly bid on the film rights, but throughout the 1930s a strict code of censorship made certain that no studio could green-light a murder melodrama based on real events. Then in 1943 veteran scriptwriter and newly minted director Billy Wilder wanted the story for his third movie. With tentative approval from the studio he hired hardboiled novelist Raymond Chandler to co-write a script that would be acceptable to industry censors.
Director Wilder then cajoled a star cast into coming aboard: the incomparable Barbara Stanwyck in her unforgettable turn as the ultimate femme fatale; alongside Fred MacMurray, going against type as her accomplice; and Edward G. Robinson as a dogged claims investigator. Wilder kept Chandler on for the entire shoot, and other key collaborators were cinematographer John Seitz, costume designer Edith Head, and composer Miklôs Rôzsa. With all these talented contributors, the final film became one of the earliest studio noirs to gain critical and commercial success, including being nominated for seven Oscars. It powerfully influenced the burgeoning noir movement, spawned many imitators, and affected the later careers of all its cast and crew. Double Indemnity’s impact on filmmakers and audiences is still felt eight decades since its release.
Authors Alain Silver and James Ursini tell the complete, never-before-told history of writing, making, and marketing of Double Indemnity in their latest and most provocative work on film noir: From the Moment They Met It Was Murder.
SECOND CLASS
by Batya Ungar-Sargon
Second Class is the most important book you will read all year. A political realignment is coming, and it’s my hope that the end result will work in favor of our all-too-neglected American working class. When that realignment comes, Batya and her book will help lead the way.
— Greg Lukianoff, CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind
Who is the American working class? Do they still have a fair shot at the American Dream? What do they think about their chances to secure the hallmarks of a middle-class life?
While writing this book, Batya Ungar-Sargon visited states across the nation to speak with members of the American working-class fighting tooth and nail to survive. In Second Class, working-class Americans of all races, political orientations, and occupations share their stories—cleaning ladies, health care aides, cops, truck drivers, fast food workers, electricians, and more. In their own words, these working-class Americans explain the struggles and triumphs of their increasingly precarious lives—as well as what policies they think would improve them. Second Class combines deep reporting with a look at the data and expert opinion on America’s emergent class divide, in which the most basic elements of a secure and stable life are increasingly out of reach for those without a college education.
America has broken its contract with its laboring class. So, how do we get back to the American Dream? How do we once again become the land of opportunity, the promised land where hard work and commitment to family are enough to protect you from poverty?It’s not that hard actually. All it would take, as this book illustrates, is for those in power to once again respect the dignity of work—and the American worker.
Still Hot in Non-Fiction & Biography
THE RETURN OF GREAT POWERS
by Jim Sciutto
Instant New York Times Bestseller
The essential new book by CNN anchor and chief national security analyst Jim Sciutto, identifying a new, more uncertain global order with reporting on the frontlines of power from existing wars to looming ones across the globe.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 dawned what Francis Fukuyama called “The End of History.” Three decades later, Jim Sciutto said on CNN’s air as the Ukraine war began, that we are living in a “1939 moment.” History never ended—it barely paused—and the global order as we long have known it is now gone. Powerful nations are determined to assert dominance on the world stage. And as their push for power escalates, a new order will affect everyone across the globe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a part of it, but in reality, this power struggle impacts every corner of our world—from Helsinki to Beijing, from Australia to the North Pole. This is a battle with many fronts: in the Arctic, in the oceans and across the skies, on man-made islands and redrawn maps, and in tech and cyberspace.
Through globe-spanning, exclusive interviews with dozens of political, military, and intelligence leaders, Sciutto defines our times as a return of great power conflict, “a definitive break between the post–Cold War era and an entirely new and uncertain one.” With savvy, thorough, in-person reporting, he follows-up his 2019 bestseller, The Shadow War: Inside Russia’s and China’s Secret Operations to Defeat America, which focused on the covert tactics of a hidden conflict.
The Return of Great Powers analyzes a historic and visible shift in real time. It details the realities of this new post–post–Cold War era, the increasingly aligned Russian and Chinese governments, and the flashpoint of a new, global nuclear arms race. And it poses a question: As we consider uncertain, even terrifying, outcomes, will it be possible for the West and Russia and China to prevent a new World War?
THE FORMULA
by Joshua Robinson & Jonathan Clegg
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Wall Street Journal reporters and authors of The Club, Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg tell the riveting saga of how Formula 1 broke through in America, detailing the eclectic culture of racing obsessives, glamorous settings, gearheads, engineering geniuses, dashing racers, and bitter rivalries that have made F1 the world’s fastest growing sport.
For decades in America, car racing meant NASCAR, and to a lesser extent IndyCar, with Formula 1—the wealthiest racing league in the world—a distant third. Fast forward to 2023, and F1 has emerged at the front of the pack powered by a passionate yet nascent American fanbase. The F1 juggernaut has arrived, but this checkered flag was far from inevitable.
In The Formula, Wall Street Journal reporters Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg tell the epic story of how F1 saved itself from collapse and finally conquered America through guile, fearlessness, and above all, reinvention. With fast cars, big money, glamorous locales, and beautiful people as the backdrop, The Formula reveals how F1’s sudden arrival in the US was actually decades in the making, a product of the sport’s near-constant state of transformation and experimentation. Bringing unique insight and access to F1’s most storied teams and personalities—from Ferrari to Bernie Ecclestone to Christian Horner to Lewis Hamilton—The Formula offers a riveting portrait of the drivers, corporations, cars, rivalries, and audacious gambles that have shaped the sport for half a century.
The end result is a high-octane history of how modern F1 racing came to be—the first book to tell the story of the outrageous successes and spectacular crashes that led F1 to this extraordinary yet precarious moment. More than just a sports story, The Formula is the tale of a disrupter that broke into the crowded American sports marketplace and claimed its place through cash, personality, and a new understanding of what a sport needs to be in the age of wall-to-wall entertainment.
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