Below I’m highlighting some nonfiction books coming out in December. All of the mentioned titles are available to put on hold in our catalog and will also be made available via the library’s Overdrive website on the day of publication in eBook and downloadable audiobook format (as available). For a more extensive list of new nonfiction books coming out this month, check our online catalog.
Top Picks
“Agent Zo: The Untold Story of a Fearless World War II Resistance Fighter” by Clare Mulley (Dec 3)
During World War II, Elzbieta Zawacka — the WWII female resistance fighter known as Agent Zo — was the only woman to reach London as an emissary of the Polish Home Army command. In Britain, she became the only woman to join the Polish elite Special Forces, known as the “Silent Unseen.” She was secretly trained in the British countryside, and then she was the only female member of these forces to be parachuted back behind enemy lines to Nazi-occupied Poland. There, while being hunted by the Gestapo (who arrested her entire family), she took a leading role in the Warsaw Uprising and the liberation of Poland. After the war, she was discharged as one of the most highly decorated women in Polish history. Yet the Soviet-backed post-war Communist regime not only imprisoned (and tortured) her, but also ensured that her remarkable story remained hidden for over 40 years.
“The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women’s Lives Forever” by Lydia Reeder (Dec 3)
After Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to graduate from medical school, more women demanded a chance to study medicine. Barred entrance to universities like Harvard, women built their own first-rate medical schools and hospitals. Their success spurred a chilling backlash from elite, white male physicians who were obsessed with eugenics and the propagation of the white race. Distorting Darwin’s evolution theory, these haughty physicians proclaimed in bestselling books that women should never be allowed to attend college or enter a profession because their menstrual cycles made them perpetually sick. Motherhood was their constitution and duty. Into the midst of this turmoil marched tiny, dynamic Mary Putnam Jacobi, daughter of New York publisher George Palmer Putnam and the first woman to be accepted into the world-renowned Sorbonne medical school in Paris. As one of the best-educated doctors in the world, she returned to New York for the fight of her life. Aided by other prominent women physicians and suffragists, Jacobi conducted the first-ever data-backed, scientific research on women’s reproductive biology. The results of her studies shook the foundations of medical science and higher education. Full of larger than life characters and cinematically written, “The Cure for Women” documents the birth of a sexist science still haunting us today as the fight for control of women’s bodies and lives continues.
“Sisters in Science: How Four Women Physicists Escaped Nazi Germany and Made Scientific History” by Olivia Campbell (Dec 31)
In the 1930s, Germany was a hotbed of scientific thought. But after the Nazis took power, Jewish and female citizens were forced out of their academic positions. Hedwig Kohn, Lise Meitner, Hertha Sponer and Hildegard Stücklen were eminent in their fields, but they had no choice but to flee due to their Jewish ancestry or anti-Nazi sentiments. Their harrowing journey out of Germany became a life-and-death situation that required Herculean efforts of friends and other prominent scientists. Lise fled to Sweden, where she made a groundbreaking discovery in nuclear physics, and the others fled to the United States, where they brought advanced physics to American universities. No matter their destination, each woman revolutionized the field of physics when all odds were stacked against them, galvanizing young women to do the same.
More Notable Releases for December
- “Raised by a Serial Killer: Discovering the Truth About My Father” by April Balascio (Dec 3)
- “Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman” by Patrick Hutchison (Dec 3)
- “Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive” by Eliot Stein (Dec 10)
- “Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Made Midieval Europe” by Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry (Dec 10)
