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New Nonfiction Releases August 2016
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Adnan's Story: The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial
by Rabia Chaudry
A full-length account of the story investigated by the award-winning Serial podcast draws on some 170 documents and letters to trace the experiences of Adnan Syed, who in 2000 was sentenced to life for the murder of his ex-girlfriend and who the author and other supporters are certain is innocent.
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The Age of Bowie
by Paul Morley
An author and cultural critic describes the greatest moments of the life of pioneering musician David Bowie and explores how he worked, played, aged, structured his ideas, influenced others, invented the future and became someone who will never be forgotten.
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All at Sea: A Memoir
by Decca Aitkenhead
A memoir from an award-winning journalist at The Guardian describes how her life changed forever when her boyfriend was swept out to sea attempting to save her four-year old son from a rogue wave in Jamaica.
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The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art
by Sebastian Smee
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe art critic traces the stories of four pairs of artists whose relationships shaped and spurred their achievements and the cultural world, profiling the psychologically tense relationships of Picasso and Matisse, Manet and Degas, Pollack and de Kooning, and Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon.
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Avalanche: A Love Story
by Julia Leigh
An intensely personal account of the author's failed efforts to have a child discusses the agonizing realities of infertility and today's scientific approaches, recounting her desperate struggles through various therapies before making the decision to end treatment and redirect her love elsewhere.
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The Boy Who Runs: The Odyssey of Julius Achon
by John Brant
Describes the life of world-class Ugandan runner, Julius Achon, who was kidnapped by the Lord's Resistance Army as a 12-year-old and forced into fighting and being a soldier, before escaping and discovering his talent for running.
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The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo
by Amy Schumer
An uproarious collection of no-holds-barred personal essays by the Emmy Award-winning comedian reflects on her raucous childhood antics, her hard-won rise in the entertainment industry and her struggles to maintain the courage to approach the world in unstintingly honest ways.
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The Hero's Body: A Memoir
by William Giraldi
Part memoir and part contemplation on what it means to be masculine in the modern world, the author examines his life growing up in a blue collar New Jersey town, where he lost his father in a terrible motorcycle accident and sought solace in bodybuilding.
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I'm Supposed to Protect You From All This: A Memoir
by Nadja Spiegelman
The daughter of Maus creator Art Spiegelman and New Yorker art director Francoise Mouly describes the coming-of-age discovery of her mother's complicated childhood, her investigation into four generations of family women and her own efforts to reinvent herself in New York.
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Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness and Family Secrets
by Luke Dittrich
A first book by a National Magazine Award-winning investigative journalist explores the scientific, ethical and human dimensions of the 1953 brain operation by William Beecher Scoville that transformed understandings of memory science and triggered profound legal and medical debates.
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Riverine: A Memoir from Anywhere but Here
by Angela Palm
An award-winning collection of essays on place, young love and crime reflects on the author's upbringing on the banks of the Kankakee River in rural Indiana, where annual floods shaped community dreams and her love for a boy who was sentenced to prison for life for murder.
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Ruined
by Ruth Everhart
Told with candor and unflinching honesty, Ruined is an emotional and spiritual journey that begins with an unspeakable act of violence but ends with tremendous healing and profound spiritual insights about faith and forgiveness.
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Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal
by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
A nonlinear memoir from the best-selling author of Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life features her relatable and intimate memories, moments and insights from her own life, divided into classic study subjects like Social Studies, Music and Language Arts.
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Beyond Human: How Cutting-edge Science Is Extending Our Lives
by Eve Herold
Examining the medical technologies taking shape at the nexus of computing, microelectronics, engineering, nanotechnology, cellular and gene therapies and robotics, an in-depth look at how scientific breakthroughs and technology can help us overcome our failings, while still allowing us to hold onto our humanity.
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Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy
by Heather Ann Thompson
An all-encompassing account of the infamous 1971 Attica prison uprising, the state's violent response and the victims' decades-long quest for justice draws on previously unreleased information while detailing how the event has influenced civil rights practices in the criminal justice system.
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The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time
by Keith Houston
The author of Shady Characters reveals how books and the materials that make them reflect the rich history and culture of human civilization, tracing the development of writing, printing, illustrating and binding to demonstrate the transition from cuneiform tablets and papyrus scrolls to the mass-distributed books of today.
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A Call to Mercy: Hearts to Love, Hands to Serve
by Mother Teresa
A collection of unpublished material from the Nobel Peace Prize-winning holy woman who is being canonized as a Saint by the Vatican in September 2016 offers her wisdom on showing compassion in our daily lives and working to create a heaven on earth.
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The Fire this Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race
by Jesmyn Ward
The National Book Award-winning author of Salvage the Bones presents a continuation of James Baldwin's 1963 The Fire Next Time that examines race issues from the past half century through essays, poems and memoir pieces by some of her generation's most original thinkers and writers.
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The Glamour of Strangeness: Artists and the Last Age of the Exotic
by Jamie James
An examination of the historical role of exotic world regions in shaping the achievements of artists draws on archival research to illuminate six artists including German painter Walter Spies, French master Paul Gauguin and American experimental filmmaker Maya Deren.
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Known and Strange Things: Essays
by Teju Cole
The award-winning author of Open City and Every Day Is for the Thief presents a collection of more than 50 essays on politics, photography, travel, history and literature that provide a fresh new interpretation of art, people and historical moments.
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Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt
by Sarah Jaffe
A narrative chronicle of the political uprisings, labor demonstrations and peaceful protests that have helped America to recover from the 2008 financial crisis details how the Tea Party, the Occupy Wall Street movement and workers in and out of labor unions have challenged the nation's power holders to advance real-life improvements.
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Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud
by Elizabeth Greenwood
Explores whether it is still possible to fake your own death in the 21st century and describes the author's probe of the world of death fraud, visiting message boards for people plotting pseudocide and buying her own death certificate in the Philippines.
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Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood's Creative Artists Agency
by James Andrew Miller
An oral history by the best-selling co-author of Those Guys Have All the Fun chronicles the revolutionary role of the forefront Hollywood talent agency through the stories of its influence on major film, television, sports, music and business ventures throughout the past half century.
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Seven Skeletons: The Evolution of the World's Most Famous Human Fossils
by Lydia V Pyne
A science historian describes seven famous ancestral fossils that have become known around the world, including the three-foot tall “hobbit” from Flores, the Neanderthal of La Chapelle, the Taung Child, the Piltdown Man hoax, Peking Man, Australopithecus sediba, and Lucy.
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The Story of Egypt: The Civilization That Shaped the World
by Joann Fletcher
An archaeologist and author describes the complete story of the rise and fall of the ancient Egyptians and how their civilization influenced and shaped the world with their contributions, including their building of the first Suez Canal and allowing women to become pharaohs.
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Tastes Like Chicken: A History of America's Favorite Bird
by Emelyn Rude
A food writer for TIME and Vice and media manager for some of New York City's most acclaimed chefs and restaurateurs, drawing on meticulous research, details the ascendancy of chicken from its humble origins to its centrality on grocery store shelves and in restaurants and kitchens, revealing shocking key points in history along the way.
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The Terror Years: From al-Qaeda to the Islamic State
by Lawrence Wright
Ten powerful pieces first published in The New Yorker recall the path terror in the Middle East has taken from the rise of al-Qaeda in the 1990s to the recent beheadings of reporters and aid workers by ISIS.
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Troubled Refuge: Struggling for Freedom in the Civil War
by Chandra Manning
In a riveting examination of the escaped-slave refugee camps at the end of the Civil War, the author, drawing on first-hand accounts, reveals what these camps were really like and how former slaves and Union soldiers warily united there, shaping the course of emancipation and black citizenship.
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Wild Sex: The Science Behind Mating in the Animal Kingdom
by Carin Bondar
An ecologist who has worked with Scientific American, PBS Digital Studios and Discovery World describes the difficult, varied, often violent and utterly fascinating mating and reproductive habits of the animal kingdom in their natural habitats.
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Writings on the Wall: A New Equality Beyond Black and White
by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
The NAACP Award-winning writer, sports legend and U.S. Cultural Ambassador traces the evolution of his views on social justice, from his youth in the Civil Rights era to his current role as a cultural commentator on topics ranging from race and economic inequality to music and the influence of the media.
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