-----NOT RUNNING AS A BOOK GROUP-----

The 21 : the true story of the youth who sued the U.S. government over climate change by Elizabeth Rusch

From the Publisher 

Compelling and timely, award-winning author Elizabeth Rusch's The Twenty-One tells the gripping inside story of the ongoing landmark federal climate change lawsuit, Juliana vs. United States of America. The Twenty-One is for readers of Christina Soontornvat's All Thirteen, fans of Steve Sheinkin's books, and anyone interested in the environment and climate change, as well as youth activism, politics and government, and the law.

From severe flooding in Louisiana to wildfires in the Pacific Northwest to melting permafrost in Alaska, catastrophic climate events are occurring more frequently--and severely--than ever. And these events are having a direct impact on the lives (and futures) of young people and their families.

In the ongoing landmark case Juliana vs. United States, twenty-one young plaintiffs claim that the government's support of the fossil-fuel industry is actively contributing to climate change, and that all citizens have a constitutional right to a stable climate--especially children and young adults, because they cannot vote and will inherit the problems of the future.

Elizabeth Rusch's The Twenty-One is a gripping legal and environmental thriller that tells the story of twenty-one young people and their ongoing case against the U.S. government for denying their constitutional right to life and liberty. A rich, informative, and multifaceted read, The Twenty-One stars the young plaintiffs and their attorneys; illuminates the workings of the United States's judicial system and the relationship between government, citizens' rights, and the environment; and asks readers to think deeply about the future of our planet.

Features extensive backmatter, including a timeline, glossary, call to action, additional resources, and photographs.

All-American murder : the rise and fall of Aaron Hernandez, the superstar whose life ended on murderers' row by James A. Patterson

From the Publisher 

Discover the shocking #1 New York Times bestseller: the true story of a young NFL player's first-degree murder conviction and untimely death -- and his journey from the Patriots to prison.

Aaron Hernandez was a college All-American who became the youngest player in the NFL and later reached the Super Bowl. His every move as a tight end with the New England Patriots played out the headlines, yet he led a secret life -- one that ended in a maximum-security prison. What drove him to go so wrong, so fast?

Between the summers of 2012 and 2013, not long after Hernandez made his first Pro Bowl, he was linked to a series of violent incidents culminating in the death of Odin Lloyd, a semi-pro football player who dated the sister of Hernandez's fiancee, Shayanna Jenkins.

All-American Murder is the first book to investigate Aaron Hernandez's first-degree murder conviction and the mystery of his own shocking and untimely death.

Born to be Hanged : the epic story of the gentlemen pirates who raided the South Seas, rescued a princess, and stole a fortune by Keith Thompson

From the Publisher 

Discover the "fascinating and outrageously readable" account of the roguish acts of the first pirates to raid the Pacific in a crusade that ended in a sensational trial back in England--perfect for readers of Nathaniel Philbrick and David McCullough (Douglas Preston, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lost City of the Monkey God)

The year is 1680, in the heart of the Golden Age of Piracy, and more than three hundred daring, hardened pirates--a potent mix of low-life scallywags and a rare breed of gentlemen buccaneers--gather on a remote Caribbean island. The plan: to wreak havoc on the Pacific coastline, raiding cities, mines, and merchant ships. The booty: the bright gleam of Spanish gold and the chance to become legends. So begins one of the greatest piratical adventures of the era--a story not given its full due until now.

Inspired by the intrepid forays of pirate turned Jamaican governor Captain Henry Morgan--yes, that Captain Morgan--the company crosses Panama on foot, slashing its way through the Darien Isthmus, one of the thickest jungles on the planet, and liberating a native princess along the way. After reaching the South Sea, the buccaneers, primarily Englishmen, plunder the Spanish Main in a series of historic assaults, often prevailing against staggering odds and superior firepower. A collective shudder racks the western coastline of South America as the English pirates, waging a kind of proxy war against the Spaniards, gleefully undertake a brief reign over Pacific waters, marauding up and down the continent.

With novelistic prose and a rip-roaring sense of adventure, Keith Thomson guides us through the pirates' legendary two-year odyssey. We witness the buccaneers evading Indigenous tribes, Spanish conquistadors, and sometimes even their own English countrymen, all with the ever-present threat of the gallows for anyone captured. By fusing contemporaneous accounts with intensive research and previously unknown primary sources, Born to Be Hanged offers a rollicking account of one of the most astonishing pirate expeditions of all time. 

-----NOT RUNNING AS A BOOK GROUP-----

Coming Home by Brittney Griner and Michelle Burford

From the Publisher

From the nine-time women's basketball icon and two-time Olympic gold medalist a raw, revelatory account of her unfathomable detainment in Russia and her journey home. 

On February 17, 2022, Brittney Griner arrived in Moscow ready to spend the WNBA offseason playing for the Russian women's basketball team where she had been the centerpiece of previous championship seasons. Instead, a security checkpoint became her gateway to hell when she was arrested for mistakenly carrying under one gram of medically prescribed hash oil. Brittneys world was violently upended in a crisis she has never spoken in detail about publicly until now.

In Coming Home, Brittney finally shares the harrowing details of her sudden arrest days before Russia invaded Ukraine; her bewilderment and isolation while navigating a foreign legal system amid her trial and sentencing; her emotional and physical anguish as the first American woman ever to endure a Russian penal colony while the #WeAreBG movement rallied for her release; the chilling prisoner swap with Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout; and her remarkable rise from hostage to global spokesperson on behalf of Americas forgotten. In haunting and vivid detail, Brittney takes readers inside the horrors of a geopolitical nightmare spanning ten months.

And yet Coming Home is more than Brittneys journey from captivity to freedom. In an account as gripping as it is poignant, she shares how her deep love for Cherelle, her college sweetheart and wife of six years, anchored her during their greatest storm; how her family's support pulled her back from the brink; and how hundreds of letters from friends and neighbors lent her resolve to keep fighting. Coming Home is both a story of survival and a testament to love the bonds that brought Brittney home to her family, and at last, to herself. 

-----NOT RUNNING AS A BOOK GROUP-----

Filterworld : how algorithms flattened culture by Kayla Chayka

From the Publisher 

From New Yorker staff writer and author of The Longing for Less Kyle Chayka comes a timely history and investigation of a world ruled by algorithms, which determine the shape of culture itself.

From trendy restaurants to city grids, to TikTok and Netflix feeds the world round, algorithmic recommendations dictate our experiences and choices. The algorithm is present in the familiar neon signs and exposed brick of Internet cafes, be it in Nairobi or Portland, and the skeletal, modern furniture of Airbnbs in cities big and small. Over the last decade, this network of mathematically determined decisions has taken over, almost unnoticed--informing the songs we listen to, the friends with whom we stay in touch--as we've grown increasingly accustomed to our insipid new normal.

This ever-tightening web woven by algorithms is called "Filterworld." Kyle Chayka shows us how online and offline spaces alike have been engineered for seamless consumption, becoming a source of pervasive anxiety in the process. Users of technology have been forced to contend with data-driven equations that try to anticipate their desires--and often get them wrong. What results is a state of docility that allows tech companies to curtail human experiences--human lives--for profit. But to have our tastes, behaviors, and emotions governed by computers, while convenient, does nothing short of call the very notion of free will into question.

In Filterworld, Chayka traces this creeping, machine-guided curation as it infiltrates the furthest reaches of our digital, physical, and psychological spaces. With algorithms increasingly influencing not just what culture we consume, but what culture is produced, urgent questions arise: What happens when shareability supersedes messiness, innovation, and creativity--the qualities that make us human? What does it mean to make a choice when the options have been so carefully arranged for us? Is personal freedom possible on the Internet?

To the last question, Filterworld argues yes--but to escape Filterworld, and even transcend it, we must first understand it. 

-----NOT RUNNING AS A BOOK GROUP-----

The Hard Parts : a memoir of courage and triumph by Oksana Masters

From the Publisher 

An inspirational and powerful memoir from the United States’s most decorated winter Paralympic or Olympic athlete, The Hard Parts is Oksana Masters’s gripping account of overcoming extraordinary Chernobyl disaster–caused physical challenges to create a life that challenges everyone to push through what is holding them back.

Oksana Masters was born in Ukraine—in the shadow of Chernobyl—seemingly with the odds stacked against her. She came into the world with one kidney, a partial stomach, six toes on each foot, webbed fingers, no right bicep, and no thumbs. Her left leg was six inches shorter than her right, and she was missing both tibias.

Relinquished to the orphanage system by birth parents daunted by the staggering cost of what would be their child’s medical care, Oksana encountered numerous abuses, some horrifying. Salvation came at age seven when Gay Masters, an unmarried American professor who saw a photo of the little girl and became haunted by her eyes, waged a two-year war against stubborn adoption authorities to rescue Oksana from her circumstances.

In America, Oksana endured years of operations that included a double leg amputation. Still, how could she hope to fit in when there were so many things making her different?

As it turned out, she would do much more than fit in. Determined to prove herself and fueled by a drive to succeed that still smoldered from childhood, Oksana triumphed in not just one sport but four—winning against the world’s best in elite rowing, biathlon, cross-country skiing, and road cycling competitions. Now considered one of the world’s top athletes, she is the recipient of seventeen Paralympic medals, the most of any US athlete of the Winter Games, Paralympic or Olympic.

Oksana’s astonishing story of journeying through a series of dark tunnels is “as true a tale of grit as I’ve ever heard, with a message filled with triumph and beauty—that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, if we are loved” (Angela Duckworth, New York Times bestselling author of Grit). 

-----NOT RUNNING AS A BOOK GROUP-----

Hyperbole and a half : unfortunate situations, flawed coping mechanisms, mayhem, and other things that happened by Allie Brosh

From the Publisher 

Every time Allie Brosh posts something new on her hugely popular blog Hyperbole and a Half the internet rejoices.

This full-color, beautifully illustrated edition features more than fifty percent new content, with ten never-before-seen essays and one wholly revised and expanded piece as well as classics from the website like, “The God of Cake,” “Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving,” and her astonishing, “Adventures in Depression,” and “Depression Part Two,” which have been hailed as some of the most insightful meditations on the disease ever written.

Brosh’s debut marks the launch of a major new American humorist who will surely make even the biggest scrooge or snob laugh. We dare you not to.

FROM THE AUTHOR:

This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative—like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it—but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book:

Pictures

Words

Stories about things that happened to me

Stories about things that happened to other people because of me

Eight billion dollars*

Stories about dogs

The secret to eternal happiness*

*These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness! 

-----NOT RUNNING AS A BOOK GROUP-----

An Immense World : how animal senses reveal the hidden realms around us by Ed Young

* Winner of the Carnegie Medal * Finalist for the Kirkus Prize * Finalist for the national Book Critics Circle Award * Longlisted for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Award *

From the Publisher 

A "thrilling" (The New York Times), "dazzling" (The Wall Street Journal) tour of the radically different ways that animals perceive the world that will fill you with wonder and forever alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Ed Yong

The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world.

In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth's magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile's scaly face is as sensitive as a lover's fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries that remain unsolved.

Funny, rigorous, and suffused with the joy of discovery, An Immense World takes us on what Marcel Proust called "the only true voyage . . . not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes."

-----NOT RUNNING AS A BOOK GROUP-----

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

* Winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Science Books & Film Prize for Excellence in Science Books * Finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award * Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography * A New York Times Notable Book *

From the Publisher 

Geobiologist Hope Jahren has spent her life studying trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Lab Girl is her revelatory treatise on plant life--but it is also a celebration of the lifelong curiosity, humility, and passion that drive every scientist. In these pages, Hope takes us back to her Minnesota childhood, where she spent hours in unfettered play in her father's college laboratory. She tells us how she found a sanctuary in science, learning to perform lab work "with both the heart and the hands." She introduces us to Bill, her brilliant, eccentric lab manager. And she extends the mantle of scientist to each one of her readers, inviting us to join her in observing and protecting our environment. Warm, luminous, compulsively readable, Lab Girl vividly demonstrates the mountains that we can move when love and work come together.

Money Out Loud : all the financial stuff no one taught us by Berna Anat

From the Publisher

So no one taught you about money, either Let's figure this me$$ out together.

In this illustrated, deeply unserious guide to money, Berna Anat -- aka the Financial Hype Woman -- freaks out her immigrant parents by doing the unthinkable: Talking about money. Loudly.

Because we're done staying silent, anxious, and ashamed about our money. It's time to join the party and finally learn about all the financial stuff that always felt too confusing. Stuff like:

• How to actually budget, save, and invest (but also make it fun)

• How our traumas shape our most toxic money habits, and how to create new patterns

• How to build wealth in a system designed to keep us broke

• How to use money to fund our biggest dreams--and change the world

No more keeping our money on mute. It's time to grab the mic.

-----NOT RUNNING AS A BOOK GROUP-----

Nearer My Freedom : the interesting life of Olaudah Equiano by Himself by Monica Edinger

* YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults-Nominee *

From the Publisher 

Millions of Africans were enslaved during the transatlantic slave trade, but few recorded their personal experiences. Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano is perhaps the most well known of the autobiographies that exist. Using this narrative as a primary source text, authors Monica Edinger and Lesley Younge share Equiano's life story in "found verse," supplemented with annotations to give readers historical context. This poetic approach provides interesting analysis and synthesis, helping readers to better understand the original text. Follow Equiano from his life in Africa as a child to his enslavement at a young age, his travels across the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea, his liberation, and his life as a free man. 

-----NOT RUNNING AS A BOOK GROUP-----

Our history is the Future : Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the long tradition of indigenous resistance by Nick Estes

* Winner of the Oakland “Blue Collar” PEN Award *

From the Publisher 

A work of history, a manifesto, and an intergenerational story of resistance that shows how two centuries of Indigenous struggle created the movement proclaiming “Water is Life”.

In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century, attracting tens of thousands of Indigenous and non-Native allies from around the world. Its slogan “Mni Wiconi”—Water is Life—was about more than just a pipeline. Water Protectors knew this battle for Native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that, even after the encampment was gone, their anti-colonial struggle would continue.

In Our History is the Future, Nick Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance leading to the #NoDAPL movement from the days of the Missouri River trading forts through the Indian Wars, the Pick-Sloan dams, the American Indian Movement, and the campaign for Indigenous rights at the United Nations. While a historian by trade, Estes also draws on observations from the encampments and from growing up as a citizen of the Oceti Sakowin (the Nation of the Seven Council Fires), making Our History is the Future at once a work of history, a personal story, and a manifesto. 

-----NOT RUNNING AS A BOOK GROUP-----

The Shallows : what the Internet is doing to our brains by Nicholas G. Carr

From the Publisher 

* Finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction *
*Finalist for the 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Award *

"Is Google making us stupid?" When Nicholas Carr posed that question, in a celebrated Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us.

Nicholas Carr’s bestseller The Shallows has become a foundational book in one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the internet’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply? This 10th-anniversary edition includes a new afterword that brings the story up to date, with a deep examination of the cognitive and behavioral effects of smartphones and social media. 

-----NOT RUNNING AS A BOOK GROUP-----

Supercommunicators  : the power of conversation and hidden language of connection by Charles Duhigg

From the Publisher 

From the author of The Power of Habit, a fascinating exploration of what makes conversations work--and how we can all learn to be supercommunicators at work and in life

Come inside a jury room as one juror leads a starkly divided room to consensus. Join a young CIA officer as he recruits a reluctant foreign agent. And sit with an accomplished surgeon as he tries, and fails, to convince yet another cancer patient to opt for the less risky course of treatment. In Supercommunicators, Charles Duhigg blends deep research and his trademark storytelling skills to show how we can all learn to identify and leverage the hidden layers that lurk beneath every conversation.

Communication is a superpower and the best communicators understand that whenever we speak, we're actually participating in one of three conversations: practical (What's this really about?), emotional (How do we feel?), and social (Who are we?). If you don't know what kind of conversation you're having, you're unlikely to connect.

Supercommunicators know the importance of recognizing--and then matching--each kind of conversation, and how to hear the complex emotions, subtle negotiations, and deeply held beliefs that color so much of what we say and how we listen. Our experiences, our values, our emotional lives--and how we see ourselves, and others--shape every discussion, from who will pick up the kids to how we want to be treated at work. In this book, you will learn why some people are able to make themselves heard, and to hear others, so clearly.

With his storytelling that takes us from the writers' room of The Big Bang Theory to the couches of leading marriage counselors, Duhigg shows readers how to recognize these three conversations--and teaches us the tips and skills we need to navigate them more successfully.

In the end, he delivers a simple but powerful lesson: With the right tools, we can connect with anyone.

-----NOT RUNNING AS A BOOK GROUP-----

There's Always this Year : on basketball and ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib

From the Publisher 

A poignant, personal reflection on basketball, life, and home--from the author of the National Book Award finalist A Little Devil in America.

Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1990s, Hanif Abdurraqib witnessed a golden era of basketball, one in which legends like LeBron James were forged and countless others weren't. His lifelong love of the game leads Abdurraqib into a lyrical, historical, and emotionally rich exploration of what it means to make it, who we think deserves success, the tension between excellence and expectation, and the very notion of role models, all of which he expertly weaves together with intimate, personal storytelling. "Here is where I would like to tell you about the form on my father's jump shot," Abdurraqib writes. "The truth, though, is that I saw my father shoot a basketball only one time."

There's Always This Year is a triumph, brimming with joy, pain, solidarity, comfort, outrage, and hope. No matter the subject of his keen focus--whether it's basketball, or music, or performance--Hanif Abdurraqib's exquisite writing is always poetry, always profound, and always a clarion call to radically reimagine how we think about our culture, our country, and ourselves.

Why We Love Baseball : a history in 50 moments by Joe Posnanski

From the Publisher 

New York Times bestselling author Joe Posnanski is back with a masterful ode to the game- a countdown of 50 of the most memorable moments in baseball's history, to make you fall in love with the sport all over again.

Posnanski writes of major moments that created legends, and of forgotten moments almost lost to time. It's Willie Mays's catch, Babe Ruth's called shot, and Kirk Gibson's limping home run; the slickest steals; the biggest bombs; and the most triumphant no-hitters. But these are also moments raw with the humanity of the game, the unheralded heroes, the mesmerizing mistakes drenched in pine tar, and every story, from the immortal to the obscure, is told from a unique perspective. Whether of a real fan who witnessed it, or the pitcher who gave up the home run, the umpire, the coach, the opposing player-these are fresh takes on moments so powerful they almost feel like myth.

Posnanski's previous book, The Baseball 100, portrayed the heroes and pioneers of the sport, and now, with his trademark wit, encyclopedic knowledge, and acute observations, he gets at the real heart of the game. From nineteenth-century pitchers' duels to breaking the sport's color line in the '40s, all the way to the greatest trick play of the last decade and the slide home that became a meme, Posnanski's illuminating take allows us to rediscover the sport we love-and thought we knew.

Why We Love Baseball is an epic that ends too soon, a one-of-a-kind love letter to the sport that has us thrilled, torn, inspired, and always wanting more.