New Non-Fiction
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Let’s Explore Diabetes
With Owls
by David Sedaris
From the unique perspective of David Sedaris comes a new book of essays taking his readers on a bizarre and stimulating world tour. From the perils of French dentistry to the eating habits of the Australian kookaburra, from the squat-style toilets of Beijing to the particular wilderness of a North Carolina Costco, we learn about the absurdity and delight of a curious traveler’s experiences. Whether railing against the habits of litterers in the English countryside or marveling over a disembodied human arm in a taxidermist’s shop, Sedaris takes us on side-splitting adventures that are not to be forgotten.
Sedaris got his start in radio after This American Life producer Ira Glass saw him perform at Club Lower Links in Chicago. In addition to his NPR commentaries, Sedaris now writes regularly for Esquire.
Sedaris’s younger sister Amy is also a writer and performer; the two have collaborated on plays under the moniker “The Talent Family.” Amy Sedaris has appeared onstage as a member of the Second City improv troupe and on Comedy Central in the series Strangers with Candy.
“If I weren’t a writer, I’d be a taxidermist,” Sedaris said in a chat on Barnes and Noble.com. According to the Boston Phoenix, his collection of stuffed dead animals includes a squirrel, two fruit bats, four Boston terriers and a baby ostrich.
Available 4/23/13.
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Making Good Habits,
Breaking Bad Habits
by Joyce Meyer
Habits are things we learn to do through repetition and eventually do either unconsciously or with very little effort. First we form habits and then they form us. We are what we repeatedly do. Don’t be deceived by thinking that you just can’t help what you do, because the truth is that you can do or not do anything if you really want to. At least you can do anything that is God’s will, and those are the things we will discuss in this book.
I have learned that concentrating on the good things I want and need to do helps me overcome the bad things that I don’t want to do. The Bible says in Romans 12:21 that we overcome evil with good. I believe that should be one of our foundation Scriptures for this book and the journey we are embarking on. The other Scripture I want you to remember as you work toward your goals is found in Galatians.
“But I say, walk and live [habitually] in the [Holy] Spirit [responsive to and controlled and guided by the Spirit]; then you will certainly not gratify the cravings and desires of the flesh (of human nature without God.)!” ~ Galatians 5:16
Concentrating on the evil things you are doing will never help you do the good things that you desire to do. This is a very important biblical truth. Good has more power than evil. Darkness is swallowed up in light, and death is overcome by life. Whatever God offers is always more powerful than what Satan desires for us. The devil wants us to have bad habits, but God’s desire is that we follow the Holy Spirit and let Him lead us into the good life that Jesus died for us to enjoy. And a good life is a life with good habits.
Available Now.
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Give and Take
by Adam Grant
Give and Take changes our fundamental ideas about how to succeed—at work and in life. For generations, we have focused on the individual drivers of success: passion, hard work, talent, and luck. But in today’s dramatically reconfigured world, success is increasingly dependent on how we interact with others. Give and Take illuminates what effective networking, collaboration, influence, negotiation, and leadership skills have in common.
Using his own groundbreaking research as the youngest tenured professor at Wharton, Grant examines the surprising forces that shape why some people rise to the top of the success ladder while others sink to the bottom. In professional interactions, it turns out that most people operate as eithertakers, matchers, or givers. Whereas takers strive to get as much as possible from others and matchers aim to trade evenly, givers are the rare breed of people who contribute to others without expecting anything in return.
These styles have a dramatic impact on success. Although some givers get exploited and burn out, the rest achieve extraordinary results across a wide range of industries. Combining cutting-edge evidence with captivating stories, this landmark book shows how one of America’s best networkers developed his connections, why the creative genius behind one of the most popular shows in television history toiled for years in anonymity, how a basketball executive responsible for multiple draft busts transformed his franchise into a winner, and how we could have anticipated Enron’s demise four years before the company collapsed—without ever looking at a single number.
Praised by bestselling authors such as Dan Pink, Tony Hsieh, Dan Ariely, Susan Cain, Dan Gilbert, Gretchen Rubin, Bob Sutton, Robert Cialdini, David Allen, and Seth Godin—as well as senior leaders from Google, McKinsey, Merck, Estée Lauder, Nike, and NASA—Give and Take opens up an approach to work, interactions, and productivity that is nothing short of revolutionary. This visionary approach to success has the power to transform not just individuals and groups, but entire organizations and communities.
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The Little Way
of Ruthie Leming
by Rod Dreher
Here’s the thing I want you to know about my sister.
A long time ago—I must have been about seven years old, which would have made Ruthie five—I did something rotten to her. What it was, I can’t remember. I teased her all the time, and she spent much of her childhood whaling the tar out of me for it.
Whatever happened that time, though, must have been awful, because our father told me to go lie down on my bed and wait for him. That could mean only one thing: that he was going to deliver one of his rare but highly effective spankings, with his belt.
I cannot recall what my offense was, but I well remember walking down the hallway and climbing onto the bed, knowing full well that I deserved it. I always did. Nothing to be done but to stretch out, facedown, and take what I had coming.
And then it happened. Ruthie ran into the bedroom just ahead of Paw and, sobbing, threw herself across me.
“Whip me!” she cried. “Daddy, whip me!”Paw gave no spankings that day. He turned and walked away. Ruthie left too.
There I sat, on the bed, wondering what had just happened.
Forty years later, I still do.
Available 4/9/13.
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Way of the Knife
by Mark Mazzetti
A Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter’s riveting account of the transformation of the CIA and America’s special operations forces into man-hunting and killing machines in the world’s dark spaces: the new American way of war
The most momentous change in American warfare over the past decade has taken place away from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, in the corners of the world where large armies can’t go. The Way of the Knife is the untold story of that shadow war: a campaign that has blurred the lines between soldiers and spies and lowered the bar for waging war across the globe. America has pursued its enemies with killer drones and special operations troops; trained privateers for assassination missions and used them to set up clandestine spying networks; and relied on mercurial dictators, untrustworthy foreign intelligence services, and proxy armies.
This new approach to war has been embraced by Washington as a lower risk, lower cost alternative to the messy wars of occupation and has been championed as a clean and surgical way of conflict. But the knife has created enemies just as it has killed them. It has fomented resentments among allies, fueled instability, and created new weapons unbound by the normal rules of accountability during wartime.
Mark Mazzetti tracks an astonishing cast of characters on the ground in the shadow war, from a CIA officer dropped into the tribal areas to learn the hard way how the spy games in Pakistan are played to the chain-smoking Pentagon official running an off-the-books spy operation, from a Virginia socialite whom the Pentagon hired to gather intelligence about militants in Somalia to a CIA contractor imprisoned in Lahore after going off the leash.
At the heart of the book is the story of two proud and rival entities, the CIA and the American military, elbowing each other for supremacy. The CIA, created as a Cold War espionage service, is now more than ever a paramilitary agency ordered by the White House to kill off America’s enemies—in the mountains of Pakistan and the deserts of Yemen, in the tumultuous civil wars of North Africa and the chaos of Somalia. For its part, the Pentagon has become more like the CIA, dramatically expanding spying missions everywhere. Sometimes, as with the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, their efforts have been perfectly coordinated. Other times, including the failed operations disclosed here for the first time, they have not. For better or worse, their struggles will define American national security in the years to come.
Available 4/9/13.
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Cooked
by Michael Pollan
In Cooked, Michael Pollan explores the previously uncharted territory of his own kitchen. Here, he discovers the enduring power of the four classical elements—fire, water, air, and earth— to transform the stuff of nature into delicious things to eat and drink. Apprenticing himself to a succession of culinary masters, Pollan learns how to grill with fire, cook with liquid, bake bread, and ferment everything from cheese to beer. In the course of his journey, he discovers that the cook occupies a special place in the world, standing squarely between nature and culture. Both realms are transformed by cooking, and so, in the process, is the cook.
Each section of Cooked tracks Pollan’s effort to master a single classic recipe using one of the four elements. A North Carolina barbecue pit master tutors him in the primal magic of fire; a Chez Panisse–trained cook schools him in the art of braising; a celebrated baker teaches him how air transforms grain and water into a fragrant loaf of bread; and finally, several mad-genius “fermentos” (a tribe that includes brewers, cheese makers,
and all kinds of picklers) reveal how fungi and bacteria can perform the most amazing alchemies of all. The reader learns alongside Pollan, but the lessons move beyond the practical to become an investigation of how cooking involves us in a web of social and ecological relationships: with plants and animals, the soil, farmers, our history and culture, and, of course, the people our cooking nourishes and delights. Cooking, above all, connects us.
The effects of not cooking are similarly far reaching. Relying upon corporations to process our food means we consume large quantities of fat, sugar, and salt; disrupt an essential link to the natural world; and weaken our relationships with family and friends. In fact, Cooked argues, taking back control of cooking may be the single most important step anyone can take to help make the American food system healthier and more sustainable. Reclaiming cooking as an act of enjoyment and self-reliance, learning to perform the magic of these everyday transformations, opens the door to a more nourishing life.
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Frozen in Time
by Mitchell Zuckoff
In November, 1942, a U.S. cargo plane on a routine flight smashed into the Greenland Ice Cap.
Four days later, the B-17 assigned to the search and rescue missue became lost in a blinding storm and also crashed. Miraculously, all nine men on the B-17 survived.
With the weather worsening, the U.S. military launched a daring rescue mission, sending a Grumman Duck amphibious plane to find them. After picking up one member of the B-17 crew, the Duck flew into a severe storm, and the plane and the three men aboard vanished.
In this thrilling, true-life adventure, Mitchell Zuckoff, author of Lost in Shangri-La, offers a spellbinding account of these harrowing crashes and the fate of the survivors and would-be saviors. He also recounts the efforts of a modern-day adventurer, Lou Sapienza, who worked for years with the Coast Guard and Commander Jim Blow to solve the mystery of the Duck’s last flight and recover the remains of its crew.
Available 4/23/13
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Jumpstart to Skinny
by Bob Harper
LOSE UP TO 10 POUNDS OR MORE IN 21 DAYS!
In his instant #1 New York Times bestseller The Skinny Rules, celebrity trainer and coach of NBC’s The Biggest Loser Bob Harper delivers the ultimate strategy for healthy, long-term weight loss and “thin maintenance.” But what if you have a big event looming—a reunion, wedding, beach vacation, or other special occasion—and need a fast-acting plan to meet your short-term goals?
Jumpstart to Skinny features thirteen short-term Rules (no one gets thin on mere suggestions) that will supercharge your weight loss. Taking any confusion or decision making out of the equation, Harper also provides a day-by-day plan for success, including his body-toning “Jumpstart Moves” and deliciously slimming recipes specially designed for your get-skinny needs.
Jumpstart to Skinny lets you in on the secrets Bob shares with his red-carpet celebrity clients. This is not a marathon diet; it’s a quick sprint to the finish line. And the victory lap comes when you slip into that sexy dress or swimsuit and feel fantastic. Get started today!
THE FOUR-PART JUMPSTART PLAN TO A SKINNIER YOU
• Your Jumpstart Rules: Thirteen must-follow principles to get you ready for your own “big reveal,” including Rule #1, a precise breakdown of the proper protein/carbohydrate/fat proportions for every meal, and Rule #3, which explains why you need to just say no to complex carbs after breakfast during this three-week plan. These are the Rules that Bob Harper and his celebrity clients use to get ready for their big events—and now you’re in on the secrets, too.
• Your Jumpstart Day-by-Day: No decisions, no confusion! Here is the simple, three-week game plan: the food to buy and prepare ahead each week, when and how much to eat each day, and the when and how of your exercise schedule.
• Your Jumpstart Moves: Bob’s unique, twenty-minute, at-home exercise routines. From sit-ups, push-ups, and squats to jumping rope, lateral jumps, and simple chair dips, choose one of the seven “packages” of body-toning moves when your day calls for Bob’s “metabolic conditioning.”
• Jumpstart Recipes: Cleansing or juice fasting? No way! You need to eat to lose weight, so here are twenty-one days of slimmingly delicious recipes—including “Peanut Butter and Jelly” Oatmeal, Sweet Potato Hash, Spaghetti Squash Bolognese, Buffalo Chicken Salad, and Bob’s signature Shrimp Skimpy—formulated with your Jumpstart protein/carb/fat proportions (see Rule #1!) and calorie maximums in mind.
Available 4/23/13.
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My Next Step
by Dave Liniger
Dave Liniger had it all: four successful children, a lifetime filled with adventure, and a company he’d founded, RE/MAX, that became one of the most prominent real estate brands in the world and made him a success beyond his wildest dreams. He had served in the Vietnam War, parachuted out of planes, raced cars and once even attempted to circumnavigate the world in a balloon. And then overnight his full and varied life almost came to an abrupt end.
In January 2012, Dave woke up in the middle of the night to discover that he was paralyzed from the neck down and in excruciating pain. He had a history of back problems, so he thought his back had gone out. In fact, something much worse was happening to his body. Doctors discovered he had a horrific staph infection along his spine. As he teetered on the edge of the final abyss, Dave slipped into a drug-induced coma.
MY NEXT STEP: AN EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY OF HEALING AND HOPE is a remarkable memoir of one man coming face to face with the darkest moments of his life and how, through his own drive and the unwavering support of family and friends, he never succumbed to despair. The engrossing medical drama is told through Dave’s voice, as well as those of his children, wife, doctors and friends, who lend an intimate and sometimes humorous view of Dave’s illness. MY NEXT STEP will inspire those facing tragedy to find the courage to accept their situation and then do what’s necessary to return to a meaningful life.
Available 4/30/13.
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Bunker Hill
by Nathaniel Philbrick
More than five thousand people waited inside the Old South Meetinghouse, the largest gathering place in Boston. On that evening in the middle of December 1773, they were impatient to hear what Governor Thomas Hutchinson had to say about the three ships bearing East India tea currently tied up to Griffin’s Wharf. After several unsatisfactory meetings, in which they debated about how to respond to the governor’s stubborn insistence that the tea must be landed, many of them, particularly those who had traveled from towns outside Boston, wanted to go home. It was then, just as frustration and exhaustion began to push increasing numbers of people out the door, that the most eloquent lawyer in this town of eloquent lawyers rose from his seat in the east gallery and was given permission to speak.
Josiah Quincy Jr. was only thirty-one years old and dying of tuberculosis. He was cross-eyed and pale and yet burned with a frightening ferocity in the cold air of the unheated meetinghouse. He’d just returned from a tour of the colonies that had taken him from South Carolina to Rhode Island (suggested by his physician, Dr. Joseph Warren, who had hoped the milder temperatures might improve his rapidly deteriorating health). Quincy knew firsthand that a surprising consensus was emerging among the inhabitants of British North America—a consensus that was bound to have astounding and yet frightening consequences.
He began by referring to the way their cumulative breaths rose like smoke toward the ceiling several stories above their heads. He called it “the spirit that vapors within these walls” and warned that it would take more than hot air—“popular resolves, popular harangues, popular acclamations, and popular vapor”—to “vanquish our foes.” Given Great Britain’s military strength, it behooved them all to think carefully about what they were about to do: “Let us weigh and consider before we advance to those measures which must bring on the most trying and terrific struggle this country ever saw.”
Available 4/30/13.
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Control
by Glenn Beck
When our founding fathers secured the Constitutional “right of the people to keep and bear arms,” they also added the admonition that this right SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.
It is the only time this phrase appears in the Bill of Rights. So why aren’t more people listening?
History has proven that guns are essential to self-defense and liberty—but tragedy is a powerful force and has led many to believe that guns are the enemy, that the Second Amendment is outdated, and that more restrictions or outright bans on firearms will somehow solve everything.
They are wrong.
In CONTROL, Glenn Beck presents a passionate, fact-based case for guns that reveals why gun control isn’t really about controlling guns at all; it’s about controlling us. In doing so, he takes on and debunks the common myths and outright lies that are often used to vilify guns and demean their owners:
The Second Amendment is ABOUT MUSKETS . . . GUN CONTROL WORKS in other countries. . . 40 percent of all guns are sold without BACKGROUND CHECKS . . . More GUNS MEAN more MURDER . . . Mass shootings are becoming more common . . . These awful MASSACRES ARE UNIQUE TO AMERICA . . . No CIVILIAN needs a “weapon of war” like the AR-15 . . . ARMED GUARDS in schools do nothing, just look at Columbine . . . Stop FEARMONGERING, no one is talking about TAKING YOUR GUNS AWAY.
Backed by hundreds of sources, this handbook gives everyone who cares about the Second Amendment the indisputable facts they need to reclaim the debate, defeat the fear, and take back their natural rights.
(opinion does not reflect that of Ukazoo Books or its staff)
Available 4/30/13.
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Waiting to be Heard
by Amanda Knox
Amanda Knox spent four years in a foreign prison for a crime she did not commit.
In the fall of 2007, the 20-year-old college coed left Seattle to study abroad in Italy, but her life was shattered when her roommate was murdered in their apartment.
After a controversial trial, Amanda was convicted and imprisoned. But in 2011, an appeals court overturned the decision and vacated the murder charge. Free at last, she returned home to the U.S., where she has remained silent, until now.
Filled with details first recorded in the journals Knox kept while in Italy, Waiting to Be Heard is a remarkable story of innocence, resilience, and courage, and of one young woman’s hard-fought battle to overcome injustice and win the freedom she deserved.
With intelligence, grace, and candor, Amanda Knox tells the full story of her harrowing ordeal in Italy—a labyrinthine nightmare of crime and punishment, innocence and vindication—and of the unwavering support of family and friends who tirelessly worked to help her win her freedom.
Waiting to Be Heard includes 24 pages of color photographs.
Available 4/30/13.
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Weight Watchers
50th Anniversary Cookbook
Delicious and low in fat — could you ask for anything more? From the name you trust, a new chapter in YUM — without the chub.
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