Another month, another list of new nonfiction books to check out! 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 eAudiobook format (as available). For a more extensive list of new nonfiction books coming out this month, check our online catalog.
Top Picks
“Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019” edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain (Feb 2)
Curated by Ibram X. Kendi, author of the number one bestseller “How To Be an Antiracist,”and fellow historian Keisha N. Blain, “Four Hundred Souls” begins with the arrival of 20 enslaved Ndongo people on the shores of the British colony in mainland America in 1619, the year before the arrival of the Mayflower. In eighty chronological chapters, the book charts the tragic and triumphant four-hundred-year history of Black American experience in a choral work of exceptional power and beauty. Contributors include some of the best-known scholars, writers, historians, journalists, lawyers, poets and activists of contemporary America who together bring to vivid life countless new facets to the drama of slavery and resistance, segregation and survival, migration and self-discovery, cultural oppression and world-changing artistic, literary and musical creativity. In these pages are dozens of extraordinary lives and personalities, rescued from the archives and restored to their rightful place in America’s narrative, as well as the ghosts of millions more. “Four Hundred Souls” is an essential work of story-telling and reclamation that redefines America and changes our notion of how history is written.
“Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know” by Adam M. Grant (Feb 2)
Why do we refresh our wardrobes every year, renovate our kitchens every decade, but never update our beliefs and our views? Why do we laugh at people using computers that are 10 years old, but yet still cling to opinions we formed 10 years ago? For too many of us, our ways of thinking become habits that we don’t bother to question, and mental laziness leads us to prefer the ease of old routines to the difficulty of new ones. We fail to update the beliefs we formed in the past for the challenges we face in the present. But in a rapidly changing world, we need to spend as much time rethinking as we do thinking. “Think Again” is a book about the benefit of doubt, and about how we can get better at embracing the unknown and the joy of being wrong. Evidence has shown that creative geniuses are not attached to one identity, but constantly willing to rethink their stances and that leaders who admit they don’t know something and seek critical feedback lead more productive and innovative teams. New evidence shows us that as a mindset and a skilllset, rethinking can be taught and Grant explains how to develop the necessary qualities to do it. In the end, learning to rethink may be the secret skill to give you the edge in a world changing faster than ever.
“Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future” by Elizabeth Kolbert (Feb 9)
In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a super coral that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth. One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. In “The Sixth Extinction,” she explored the ways in which our capacity for destruction has reshaped the natural world. Now she examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation.
More Notable Releases for February
- “Surviving the White Gaze: A Memoir” by Rebecca Carroll (Feb 2)
- “Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal” by Mark Bittman (Feb 2)
- “How to Avoid Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need” by Bill Gates (Feb 16)
- “The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice” by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon (Feb 16)
