Current Concerns | Nonfiction Previews, Oct. 2018

Addario, Lynsey. Of Love & War. Penguin Pr. Oct. 2018. 272p. ISBN 9780525560029. $40; ebk. ISBN 9780525560036. Downloadable. PHOTOJOURNALISM Pulitzer Prize–winning photojournalist Addario stuns us into awareness with 200-plus photographs featuring the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. With essays by Dexter Filkins, Suzy Hansen, Christy Turlington, and more. Asim, Jabari. We Can’t Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival. Picador. Oct. 2018. 208p. ISBN 9781250174536. pap. $17; ebk. ISBN 9781250174512. AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES The author of The N Word upends the standard narrative of African American history and culture in America, told from the perspective of whites, and offers a more accurate understanding of that culture by emphasizing its vibrancy. Bradlee, Ben, Jr. The Forgotten: How the People of One Pennsylvania County Elected Donald Trump and Changed America. Little, Brown. Oct. 2018. 368p. ISBN 9780316515733. $28; ebk. ISBN 9780316515719. lib. ebk. ISBN 9780316418966. CD/downloadable. POLITICAL SCIENCE Acclaimed journalist Bradlee takes Luzerne County, PA, which swung the state for Donald Trump, as a microcosm of the country, showing that its residents feel alienated by stagnant wages, swift demographic change, and the challenges they feel to their faith and patriotism. With a 50,000-copy first printing. Butterfield, Fox. In My Father's House: A New View of How Crime Runs in the Family. Knopf. Oct. 2018. 288p. ISBN 9781400041022. $26.95; ebk. 9780525521631. Downloadable. SOCIAL SCIENCE Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times journalist Butterfield considers one Oregon family to get at a terrible truth we’re not addressing in the day of mass incarceration: five percent of American families account for half of all crime and only ten percent account for two-thirds. As he further points out, the family he investigates is white, and we need to separate our ideas of criminality from race. With a 25,000-copy first printing. Cornett, Mick & Jayson White. The Next American City: The Big Promise of Our Midsize Metros. Putnam. Sept. 2018. 352p. ISBN 9780399575099. $27; ebk. ISBN 9780399575105. Downloadable. URBAN SOCIOLOGY Oklahoma City mayor Cornett, ranked second best in the world by the London-based World Mayors, has reinvigorated his city through an $800 million investment in infrastructure, a diet plan that had residents losing weight, and more. Here he argues that midsize cities are the future. Cullen, Art. Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper. Viking. Oct. 2018. 336p. ISBN 9780525558873. $28; ebk. ISBN 9780525558880. Downloadable. PUBLIC POLICY Half the ownership and a quarter of the news staff of the small Iowa biweekly the Storm Lake Times, Cullen won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing for his tossed gauntlet to agrobusiness and how it has poisoned his state. Here he celebrates America’s heartland—and shows us what small newspapers can do. Daoud, Kamel. Chroniques. Other. Oct. 2018. 336p. tr. from French by Elisabeth Zerofsky. ISBN 9781590519561. $28.95; ebk. ISBN 9781590519578. POLITICAL SCIENCE/COMMENTARY Author of the Prix Goncourt finalist The Meursault Investigation, an Arab’s-eye retelling of Albert Camus’s The Stranger, Algerian journalist Daoud wrote nearly 2,000 pieces in the years 2010–16. Here are the best, with topics ranging from radical Islam to women’s rights to basic issues of liberty. Daughtry, Leah & others. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics. St. Martin’s. Oct. 2018. 288p. ISBN 9781250137715. $28.99; ekb. ISBN 9781250137722. CD. POLITICAL SCIENCE/MEMOIR Among the most powerful African American women in American politics, calling themselves  The Colored Girls, Daughtry, Donna Brazile, Yolanda Caraway, and Minyon Moore share stories and give inspiration to other women of color interested in public service. Hargrave, Courtney. Burden: A Preacher, a Klansman, and a True Story of Redemption in the Modern South. Convergent: Random. Oct. 2018. 304p. ISBN 9781524762704. pap. $16; ebk. ISBN 9781984823342. Downloadable. SOCIAL SCIENCE/RACE RELATIONS The story of a white supremacist who broke away from hatred and found shelter with an African American preacher, this book is a tie-in to a forthcoming movie starring Forest Whitaker and Usher. The hardcover, originally scheduled for May, will be published in August. Kaplan David A. The Most Dangerous Branch: Inside the Supreme Court’s Assault on the Constitution. Crown. Oct. 2018. 464p. ISBN 9781524759902. $28; ebk. ISBN 9781524759926. Downloadable. POLITICAL SCIENCE Senior editor and legal affairs correspondent at Newsweek for 20 years, Kaplan offers a behind-the-scenes look at the Supreme Court while arguing that it currently subverts democracy and the Constitution. Kornacki, Steve. The Red and the Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism. Ecco. Oct. 2018. 400p. ISBN 9780062438980. $29.99; ebk. ISBN 9780062438997. POLITICAL SCIENCE A national political correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC, Kornacki argues that Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich took advantage of weaknesses in their respective parties to climb to the top, thus paving the way for the political tribalism we see today. With a 100,000-copy first printing. Lyons, Dan. Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us. Hachette. Oct. 2018. 304p. ISBN 9780316561860. $28; ebk. ISBN 9780316561853. lib. ebk. ISBN 9780316561846. CD/downloadable. BUSINESS/WORKPLACE After publishing the New York Times best-selling Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble, Lyons received hundreds of responses from readers distraught by their toxic work environments. Here he investigates why Americans are increasingly unhappy on the job and how much Silicon Valley values and practices have to do with it. With a 100,000-copy first printing. Marshall, Tim. The Age of Walls: How Barriers Between Nations Are Changing Our World. Scribner. Oct. 2018. 288p. ISBN 9781501183904. $26; ebk. ISBN 9781501183928. POLITICAL SCIENCE It’s not just Brexit and the wall Donald Trump proposes to build between America and Mexico; more than a third of the world’s nation-states have barriers along their borders. Foreign affairs expert Marshall, author of the New York Times best-selling Prisoners of Geography, gives us the facts and considers the consequences. Riley, Jack with Mitch Weiss. Drug Warrior: Inside the Hunt for El Chapo and the Rise of America’s Opioid Crisis. Hachette. Oct. 2018. 256p. ISBN 9781602865839. $27; ebk. ISBN 9781602865846. lib. ebk. ISBN 9780316488310. CD. TRUE CRIME With the help of Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Weiss, Riley, the highest ranking career special agent at the DEA, recalls his efforts to bring down notorious drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera and discusses what’s really behind America’s opioid epidemic. Sasse, Ben. Them: Why We Hate Each Other—and How to Heal. St. Martin’s. Oct. 2018. 272p. ISBN 9781250193681. $28.99; ekb. ISBN 9781250193674. CD. POLITICAL SCIENCE U.S. Senator Sasse (R-Nebraska) looks at our political divisiveness today and sees the cause as the destabilization of local communities, with our traditional “tribes” of family, friends, and work failing and no new tribes taking their place. He’s got solutions to offer. Traister, Rebecca. Good and Mad: How Women’s Anger Is Reshaping America. S. & S. Oct. 2018. 352p. ISBN 9781501181795. $27; ebk. ISBN 9781501181801. HISTORY Writer at large for New York magazine and a contributing editor at Elle, Traister looks at events from suffragettes chaining themselves to the White House to office workers walking their off jobs after Clarence Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court to show that women’s anger is a potent force for political change. With an eight-city tour. Young, RJ. Let It Bang: A Young Black Man’s Reluctant Odyssey into Guns. Houghton Harcourt. Oct. 2018. 192p. ISBN 9781328826336. $25; ebk. ISBN 9781328826329. CD. MEMOIR A black writer whose work has appeared in venues like Grantland and Reuters, Young has always been uncomfortable with guns. Yet, hoping to bond, he accepted the gift of a Glock from his white father-in-law, eventually becoming an NRA-certified pistol instructor. With that background, he examines the endless cycle of white fear leading to white violence leading to black fear and how gun ownership by blacks is rising today.
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