Below I’m highlighting some nonfiction books coming out in February. 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
“The Wise Hours: A Journey Into the Wild and Secret World of Owls” by Miriam Darlington (Feb 7)
Owls have existed for over sixty million years, and in the relatively short time we have shared the planet with these majestic birds they have ignited the human imagination. But even as owls continue to captivate our collective consciousness, celebrated British nature writer Miriam Darlington finds herself struck by all she doesn’t know about the true nature of these enigmatic creatures. Darlington begins her fieldwork in the British Isles with her teenage son, Benji. As her avian fascination grows, she travels to France, Serbia, Spain, Finland, and the frosted Lapland borders of the Arctic for rare encounters with the Barn Owl, Tawny Owl, Long-eared Owl, Pygmy Owl, Snowy Owl and more. But when her son develops a mysterious illness, her quest to understand the elusive nature of owls becomes entangled with her search for finding a cure. In “The Wise Hours,” Darlington watches and listens to the natural world and to the rhythms of her home and family, inviting readers to discover the wonders of owls alongside her while rewilding our imagination with the mystery, fragility and magnificence of all creatures.
“The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration” by Jake Bittle (Feb 21)
Even as climate change dominates the headlines, many of us still think about it in the future tense — we imagine that as global warming gets worse over the coming decades, millions of people will scatter around the world fleeing famine and rising seas. What we often don’t realize is that the consequences of climate change are already visible, right here in the United States. In communities across the country, climate disasters are pushing thousands of people away from their homes. From half-drowned Louisiana to fire-scorched California, from the dried-up cotton fields of Arizona to the soaked watersheds of inland North Carolina, people are moving. In the last few decades, the federal government has moved tens of thousands of families away from flood zones, and tens of thousands more have moved of their own accord in the aftermath of natural disasters. Insurance and mortgage markets are already shifting to reflect mounting climate risk, pricing people out of risky areas. Over the next 50 years, millions of Americans will be caught up in this churn of displacement, forced inland and northward in what will be the largest migration in our country’s history. Bittle compassionately tells the stories of those who are already experiencing life on the move, while detailing just how radically climate change will transform our lives — erasing historic towns and villages, pushing people toward new areas, and reshaping the geography of the United States.
“Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt’s Ancient Temples from Destruction” by Lynne Olson (Feb 28)
In the 1960s, the world’s attention was focused on a nail-biting race against time: 50 countries contributed nearly a billion dollars to save a dozen ancient Egyptian temples, built during the height of the pharaohs’ rule, from drowning in the floodwaters of the gigantic new Aswan High Dam. But the massive press coverage of this unprecedented rescue effort completely overlooked the gutsy French archaeologist who made it all happen. Without the intervention of Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, the temples — including the Metropolitan Museum’s Temple of Dendur — would be at the bottom of a huge reservoir. It was a project of unimaginable size and complexity that required the fragile sandstone temples to be dismantled, stone by stone, and rebuilt on higher ground. A willful, real-life version of Indiana Jones, Desroches-Noblecourt refused to be cowed by anyone or anything. As a member of the French Resistance in World War II she had survived imprisonment by the Nazis; in her fight to save the temples she defied two of the most daunting leaders of the postwar world, Egyptian President Abdel Nasser and French President Charles de Gaulle. As she told one reporter, “You don’t get anywhere without a fight, you know.” Yet Desroches-Noblecourt was not the only woman who played a crucial role in the endeavor. The other was Jacqueline Kennedy, America’s new First Lady, who persuaded her husband to call on Congress to help fund the rescue effort. After a century and a half of Western plunder of Egypt’s ancient monuments, Desroches-Noblecourt had done the opposite. She had helped preserve a crucial part of its cultural heritage and, just as important, made sure it remained in its homeland.
More Notable Releases for February
- “Reading the Glass: A Captain’s View of Weather, Water, and Life on Ships” by Elliot Rappaport (Feb 14)
- “All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me” by Patrick Bringley (Feb 14)
- “The Diary Keepers: World War II in the Netherlands, as Written by the People Who Lived Through It” by Nina Siegal (Feb 21)
- “Drama Free: A Guide to Managing Unhealthy Family Relationships” by Nedra Glover Tawwab (Feb 28)
