Below I’m highlighting some nonfiction books coming out in September. 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
“Connie: A Memoir” by Connie Chung (Sep 17)
Connie Chung is a pioneer. In 1969 at the age of 23, this once-shy daughter of Chinese parents took her first job at a local TV station in her hometown of Washington, D.C. and soon thereafter began working at CBS news as a correspondent. Profoundly influenced by her family’s cultural traditions, yet growing up completely Americanized in the United States, Chung describes her career as an Asian woman in a white male-centered world. Overt sexism was a way of life, but Chung was tenacious in her pursuit of stories — battling rival reporters to secure scoops that ranged from interviewing Magic Johnson to covering the Watergate scandal — and quickly became a household name. She made history when she achieved her dream of being the first woman to co-anchor the CBS Evening News and the first Asian to anchor any news program in the U.S. Chung pulls no punches as she provides a behind-the-scenes tour of her singular life. From showdowns with powerful men in and out of the newsroom to the stories behind some of her career-defining reporting and the unwavering support of her husband, Maury Povich, nothing is off-limits — good, bad, or ugly. So be sure to tune in for an irreverent and inspiring exclusive: this is CONNIE like you’ve never seen her before.
“She-Wolves: The Untold History of Women on Wall Street” by Paulina Bren (Sep 17)
First came the secretaries from Brooklyn and Queens — the “smart cookies” who saw that making money, lots of it, might be within their grasp. Then came the first female Harvard Business School graduates, who were in for a rude awakening because an equal degree did not mean equal opportunity. But by the 1980s, as the market went into turbodrive, women were being plucked from elite campuses to feed the belly of a rapidly expanding beast, playing for high stakes in Wall Street’s bad-boy culture by day and clubbing by night. In “She-Wolves,” award-winning historian Paulina Bren tells the story of how women infiltrated Wall Street from the swinging sixties to 9/11 — starting at a time when “No Ladies” signs hung across the doors of its luncheon clubs and (more discretely) inside its brokerage houses and investment banks. If the wolves of Wall Street made a show of their ferocity, the she-wolves did so with subtlety and finesse. Research analysts signed their reports with genderless initials. Muriel “Mickie” Siebert, the first woman to buy a seat on the NYSE, threatened she’d have port-a-potties delivered if the exchange didn’t finally install a ladies’ room near the dining room. The infamous 1996 Boom-Boom Room class action lawsuit, filed by women at Smith Barney, pulled back the curtain on a bawdy subculture where unapologetic sexism and racism were the norm. An illuminating deep dive into the collision of women, finance and New York.
“Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II” by Elyse Graham (Sep 24)
At the start of WWII, the U.S. found itself in desperate need of an intelligence agency. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to today’s CIA, was quickly formed — and, in an effort to fill its ranks with experts, the OSS turned to academia for recruits. Suddenly, literature professors, librarians and historians were training to perform undercover operations and investigative work — and these surprising spies would go on to profoundly shape both the course of the war and our cultural institutions with their efforts. In “Book and Dagger,” Elyse Graham draws on personal histories, letters, and declassified OSS files to tell the story of a small but connected group of humanities scholars turned spies. Among them are Joseph Curtiss, a literature professor who hunted down German spies and turned them into double agents; Sherman Kent, a smart-mouthed history professor who rose to become the head of analysis for all of Europe and Africa; and Adele Kibre, an archivist who was sent to Stockholm to secretly acquire documents for the OSS. These unforgettable characters would ultimately help lay the foundations of modern intelligence and transform American higher education when they returned after the war.
More Notable Releases for September
- “Confronting the Presidents: No Spin Assessments from Washington to Biden” by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard (Sep 10)
- “Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI” by Yuval Noah Harari (Sep 10)
- “The Third Gilmore Girl: A Memoir” by Kelly Bishop (Sep 17)
- “The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement” by Sharon McMahon (Sep 24)
