Carroll, Foner, Klein, Power: Barbara’s Nonfiction Picks, Sept. 2019, Pt. 2 | Prepub Alert

A theoretical physicist, a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, a crusading journalist in environmental mode, and a former U.S. ambassador to the UN make for strong nonfiction reading in September. 

Carroll, Sean. Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime. Dutton. Sept. 2019. 400p. ISBN 9781524743017. $29; ebk. ISBN 9781524743024. Downloadable. SCIENCE
As you have likely heard, physics is in crisis regarding quantum mechanics, which has led to a Many Worlds theory positing that with every quantum cover of Carroll's Something Deeply Hiddenevent a parallel world is spun off, giving us a multiplicity of universes. Carroll argues for accepting that seemingly  unimaginable outcome and getting on with it: Einstein’s general theory of relativity, i.e., spacetime, which we’ve been trying to reconcile with quantum mechanics, emerges with the concept of gravity from a deeper reality called the wave function we should really be pondering. New York Times best-selling Caltech physicist Carroll (The Particle at the End of the Universe) knows how to make difficult science go down easy. 

Foner, Eric. The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution. Norton. Sept. 2019. 288p. ISBN 9780393652574. $26.95. HISTORY
While equality was enshrined by the Declaration of Independence as America’s ideal, the Civil War moved it closer to reality—and the law. The three Reconstruction amendments abolished slavery, guaranteed due process and the equal protection of the law, and gave black men the right to vote, with the federal government charged with enforcement. Thus was equality linked to the Constitution, making for what Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Foner calls our “second founding.”

Klein, Naomi. On Fire: The (Burning) Case for the Green New Deal. S. & S. Sept. 2019. 288p. ISBN 9781982129910. $27; ebk. ISBN 9781982129934. POLITICAL SCIENCE
Moving from the threatened Great Barrier Reef, West Coast forest fires, and hurricane-devastated Puerto Rico to the environmental consequences of cover of Klein's On Firerapid human evolution and the difference between ecological time and our live-in-the-moment culture, journalist/crusader Klein argues for bold new moves that will counteract climate change while assuring social justice. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

Power, Samantha. The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir. Dey Street: HarperColllins. Sept. 2019. 400p. ISBN 9780062820693. $29.99; ebk. ISBN 9780062820716. lrg. prnt. CD. MEMOIR/POLITICAL SCIENCE
Irish-born Power has moved from war correspondent to founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School to President Barack Obama’s administration and United States Ambassador to the UN, and she’s a Pulitzer Prize winner for her book “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide. So she’s got some story to tell. With a 250,000-copy first printing. 
 

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Barbara Hoffert

Barbara Hoffert (bhoffert@mediasourceinc.com, @BarbaraHoffert on Twitter) is Editor, LJ Prepub Alert; winner of ALA's Louis Shores Award for reviewing; and past president, awards chair, and treasurer of the National Book Critics Circle, which awarded her its inaugural Service Award in 2023.

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