Below I’m highlighting some nonfiction books coming out in May. 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 Power of Trees: How Ancient Forests Can Save Us if We Let Them” by Peter Wohlleben, Jane Billinghurst (translator) (May 2)
An illuminating manifesto on ancient forests and how they adapt to climate change by passing their wisdom through generations, and why our future lies in protecting them. In his beloved book “The Hidden Life of Trees,” Peter Wohlleben revealed astonishing discoveries about the social networks of trees and how they communicate. Now, in “The Power of Trees,” he turns to their future, with a searing critique of forestry management, tree planting, and the exploitation of old growth forests. As human-caused climate change devastates the planet, forests play a critical role in keeping it habitable. While politicians and business leaders would have us believe that cutting down forests can be offset by mass tree planting, Wohlleben offers a many tree planting schemes lead to ecological disaster. Not only are these trees more susceptible to disease, flooding, fires, and landslides, we need to understand that forests are more than simply a collection of trees. Instead, they are ecosystems that consist of thousands of species, from animals to fungi and bacteria. The way to save trees, and ourselves? Step aside and let forests — which are naturally better equipped to face environmental challenges — to heal themselves. With the warmth and wonder familiar to readers from his previous books, Wohlleben also shares emerging scientific research about how forests shape climates both locally and across continents; that trees adapt to changing environmental conditions through passing knowledge down to their offspring; and how old growth may in fact have the most survival strategies for climate change. At the heart of “The Power of Trees” lies Wohlleben’s passionate that our survival is dependent on trusting ancient forests, and allowing them to thrive.
“King: A Life” by Jonathan Eig (May 16)
The first full biography in decades, “King” mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge the definitive life for our times. Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. — and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father and fellow activists. “King” reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father — as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr. In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.
“Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World” by Theresa MacPhail (May 30)
An eye-opening exploration of allergies, from their first medical description in 1819 to the cutting-edge science that is illuminating the changes in our environment and lifestyles that are making so many of us sick. Hay fever. Peanut allergies. Eczema. Either you have an allergy or you know someone who does. Billions of people worldwide — an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the global population — have some form of allergy. Even more concerning, over the last decade the number of people diagnosed with an allergy has been steadily increasing, placing an ever-growing medical burden on individuals, families, communities and healthcare systems. Medical anthropologist Theresa MacPhail, herself an allergy sufferer whose father died of a bee sting, set out to understand why. In pursuit of answers, MacPhail studied the dangerous experiments of early immunologists as well as the mind-bending recent development of biologics and immunotherapies that are giving the most severely impacted patients hope. She scaled a roof with an air-quality controller who diligently counts pollen by hand for hours every day; met a mother who struggled to use WIC benefits for her daughter with severe food allergies; spoke with doctors at some of the finest allergy clinics in the world; and discussed the intersecting problems of climate change, pollution, and pollen with biologists who study seasonal respiratory allergies. This is the story of what they are, why we have them, and what that might mean about the fate of humanity in a rapidly changing world.
More Notable Releases for May
- “Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism” by Jeffrey Toobin (May 2)
- “Quietly Hostile: Essays” by Samantha Irby (May 16)
- “A Life of One’s Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again” by Joanna Biggs (May 16)
- “When the World Didn’t End: A Memoir” by Guinevere Turner (May 23)
