In My TBR Stack:

Free and Clear: 7 Steps to Declutter Your Home and Your Head
by Karin Kiser
Camino Chronicles Press
Trade Paperback


Have you ever spring cleaned your house, or donated some of your unwanted stuff to charity? That’s decluttering. 

The problem is, if you’re like most people, you’ve probably accumulated plenty of new stuff since your last closet purging or trip to the donation center. You’re not alone.

The U.S. Department of Energy revealed that more than 25% of households with two-car garages have too much stuff to fit their cars inside them!

The truth is, your stuff isn’t the problem. It’s not even your fault. You’ve simply picked up the habit of re-cluttering.

Free and Clear will help you break the re-cluttering habit, and finally be free of the anxiety and exasperation that excess physical clutter can provoke. 

If you are looking for the perfect method for folding your shirts or rearranging your stuff, this book is probably not for you. It won’t help you rearrange your current stuff in a new way. Moving stuff around doesn’t get to the real issue of why you accumulated all that stuff in the first place. 

This book does.

Using the 7-step Free and Clear system, you’ll discover..
•Why you wear the same 20% of your wardrobe over and over 
•How to declutter your closet, kitchen, living spaces – and even your mind
•How to capture a renewed sense of freedom, appreciation, and ease with your physical stuff 
•The secret to breaking the re-cluttering habit once and for all 

Inside Free and Clear you’ll also discover how to create some much-needed space in your home and your head, so you can have more of what you really want in life.

So if you’re ready to finally get to the root cause of your clutter, and become free and clear, you must get this book now. 

Get the simple, actionable approach to decluttering your home and your head, creating more time, space, and happiness in your life. It’s all revealed inside Free and Clear, book two in the Dare To Be AwareTM series. 

Don’t let another day go by with excess stuff you don’t need and rarely use. Take control and follow the simple 7-step system to finally be free and clear. 

In My TBR Stack:

Be the Parent, Please: Stop Banning Seesaws and Start Banning Snapchat — Strategies for Solving the Real Parenting Problems
by Naomi Schaefer Riley
Templeton Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Toddlers on tablets. Pre-teens on Tumblr. Thanks to a variety of factors—from tech companies hungry for new audiences, to school administrations bent on making education digital, to a culture that promotes everyone as the star of their own reality shows—technology is irrevocably a part of childhood, and parents are struggling to keep up. What should be allowed? What should be denied? And, given the ubiquity of technology and its inherent usefulness, what do sensible boundaries even look like?

A noted columnist and mother of three, Naomi Schaefer Riley fully understands the seductive nature of screens. For example, an after­noon of finger painting equals enormous cleanup of both house and hands. But an afternoon of iPad games? Just a swipe and a charger. Or what about car rides around town? Always having toys and books on hand isn’t a given, but your game-loaded smart phone is.

Riley draws us into her story and then walks us through the research on technology’s encroachment into each stage of childhood. She then offers “tough mommy tips”: realistic, practical, applicable advice for parents who recognize that unlimited technology access is a problem, but who don’t know where to start in taking back control. These tips cover everything from placating an antsy toddler at your local favorite restaurant to best practices for keeping your teens safe from unsavory sites.

Any parent knows the effects of screens on their distracted, cranky, sedentary, and incessantly anxious-about-what-might-be-going-on-without-them kids. Naomi Schaefer Riley brings her experience, research, and no-nonsense candor to help parents prevent the children from falling under the destructive spell of technology.

In My TBR Stack:

Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean
by Jonathan White
Trinity University Press
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

In Tides, writer, sailor, and surfer Jonathan White takes readers across the globe to discover the science and spirit of ocean tides. In the Arctic, White shimmies under the ice with an Inuit elder to hunt for mussels in the dark cavities left behind at low tide; in China, he races the Silver Dragon, a twenty-five-foot tidal bore that crashes eighty miles up the Qiantang River; in France, he interviews the monks that live in the tide-wrapped monastery of Mont Saint-Michel; in Chile and Scotland, he investigates the growth of tidal power generation; and in Panama and Venice, he delves into how the threat of sea level rise is changing human culture—the very old and very new. Tides combines lyrical prose, colorful adventure travel, and provocative scientific inquiry into the elemental, mysterious paradox that keeps our planet’s waters in constant motion. Scientific figures, line drawings, black and white photography throughout, and a color photo insert dramatically illustrate this engaging, expert tour of the tides.

In My TBR Stack:

Up On Game: From Robbing Banks to Stacking Bitcoin
by Richard Stanley
Melrose & Main Publishing
Trade Paperback

From the book publicity:

"Put the money on the counter"

The bank robber known on his wanted  posters as the Skinny Bandit, a street kid from the side of the river in South San Diego known as Otay — a rough Hispanic neighborhood — grew up running game from petty shoplifting to grand theft auto and brazenly robbing banks.

This is the inside story of Richard Stanley's neighborhood struggle with gangs and chronicles his life and crimes (and redemption). A whiter-than-cocaine kid, Stanley did the crimes and did the time.

Today, he's up on game as a legit entrepreneur and shares a vital message: people do change.

On My Radar:

The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin andHhis Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West
by Malcolm Nance
Hachette Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In the greatest intelligence operation in the history of the world, Donald Trump was made President of the United States with the assistance of a foreign power. For the first time, The Plot to Destroy Democracy reveals the dramatic story of how blackmail, espionage, assassination, and psychological warfare were used by Vladimir Putin and his spy agencies to steal the 2016 U.S. election–and attempted to bring about the fall of NATO, the European Union, and western democracy. It will show how Russia and its fifth column allies tried to flip the cornerstones of democracy in order to re-engineer the world political order that has kept most of the world free since 1945. 

Career U.S. Intelligence officer Malcolm Nance will examine how Russia has used cyber warfare, political propaganda, and manipulation of our perception of reality–and will do so again–to weaponize American news, traditional media, social media, and the workings of the internet to attack and break apart democratic institutions from within, and what we can expect to come should we fail to stop their next attack.

Nance has utilized top secret Russian-sourced political and hybrid warfare strategy documents to demonstrate the master plan to undermine American institutions that has been in effect from the Cold War to the present day. Based on original research and countless interviews with espionage experts, Nance examines how Putin’s recent hacking accomplished a crucial first step for destabilizing the West for Russia, and why Putin is just the man to do it. 

Nance exposes how Russia has supported the campaigns of right-wing extremists throughout both the U.S. and Europe to leverage an axis of autocracy, and how Putin’s agencies have worked since 2010 to bring fringe candidate Donald Trump into elections.

Revelatory, insightful, and shocking, The Plot To Destroy Democracy puts a professional spy lens on Putin’s plot and unravels it play-by-play. In the end, he provides a better understanding of why Putin’s efforts are a serious threat to our national security and global alliances–in much more than one election–and a blistering indictment of Putin’s puppet, President Donald J. Trump.

In My TBR Stack:

The Duck and the Butterfly: Coaching Questions for Leaders at Work
by Natalie Michael
Trifold
Trade Paperback

BE A BETTER COACH

More than 1000 Coaching Questions For You

An amazing question can transform a life, a team, or a company. If you’re seeking to improve yourself, coach high-potential talent, boost the value of a team meeting, or energize a strategy session, you simply need to ask the right question. And now there’s a resource to help you do exactly that.

After a decade of executive coaching, Natalie Michael has handpicked, developed, and tested more than 1,000 of the most powerful coaching questions, which she shares in The Duck and the Butterfly. Inside, you’ll discover queries to help you lead your life, lead others, lead organizations, and create a positive difference in the world. Throughout the book, you’ll also find ducks (tips on how to be a better listener) and butterflies (tips on how to deliver questions in a transformative way).

This book is more than just coaching questions.

It’s a tool kit for changing lives for the better.

In My TBR Stack:

ten cultures, twenty lives: refugee life stories
by Daina Jurika-Owen
Amaya Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Most people don’t realize everything it takes for refugees to navigate the path to resettlement. A refugee faces years of waiting and countless hurdles before arriving in a strange new land with few possessions and little knowledge of a new community's language and culture.

How did a diverse group of refugees make their way to the US and settle in Abilene, Texas? Who helped them through the resettlement process as they embarked on their new lives?

In Ten Cultures, Twenty Lives, refugee storytellers from a broad swath of cultures—Rwanda, Congo, Liberia, Cuba, Iraq, Bhutan, and more—reveal their compelling, sometimes humorous, and often bittersweet tales of resettlement in West Texas. Through their life stories, refugees share their powerful experiences about the long, hard road they took to get to the US.

Ten Cultures, Twenty Lives guides us through their journeys and draws us into the world of refugees and resettlement staff, describing the passion and energy needed to help these courageous storytellers resettle in the US and the challenges they faced.

In My TBR Stack:

I Am Alfonso Jones
by Tony Medina
Illustrated by Stacey Robinson & John Jennings
Foreword by Bryan Stevenson
TU Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Alfonso Jones can’t wait to play the role of Hamlet in his school’s hip-hop rendition of the classic Shakespearean play. He also wants to let his best friend, Danetta, know how he really feels about her. But as he is buying his first suit, an off-duty police officer mistakes a clothes hanger for a gun, and he shoots Alfonso.

When Alfonso wakes up in the afterlife, he’s on a ghost train guided by well-known victims of police shootings, who teach him what he needs to know about this subterranean spiritual world. Meanwhile, Alfonso’s family and friends struggle with their grief and seek justice for Alfonso in the streets. As they confront their new realities, both Alfonso and those he loves realize the work that lies ahead in the fight for justice.

In the first graphic novel for young readers to focus on police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement, as in Hamlet, the dead shall speak—and the living yield even more surprises.

Foreword by Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of Just Mercy

Check out Tony Medina's article in the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Journal, Language Arts, titled, "Alfonso Jones Matters." This is a personal narrative detailing Tony's construction of a protagonist for a graphic novel that captures the quest for justice at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement. 

In My TBR Stack:

Beyond the Bright Lights: Memoirs of a Public Servant
by Charleston Hartfield
Create Space
Trade Paperback

Note:  Mr. Hartfield died in the Las Vegas mass shooting

From the book publicity:

Documenting the thoughts, feelings, and interactions of one Police Officer in the busiest and brightest city in the world, Las Vegas. This memoir takes you through the personal interactions experienced by a Police Officer with not only the community he seeks to serve but with his partners and their personalities. Some calls are over in an instant while others stick with you forever. Take a sneak peek into this Pandora's box and see if perception really is reality.

On My Radar:

Yes We (Still) Can: Politics in the Age of Obama, Twitter, and Trump
by Dan Pfeiffer
Twelve Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

On November 9th, 2016, Dan Pfeiffer woke up like most of the world wondering WTF just happened. How had Donald Trump won the White House? How was it that a decent and thoughtful president had been succeeded by a buffoonish reality star, and what do we do now?

Instead of throwing away his phone and moving to another country (which were his first and second thoughts), Pfeiffer decided to tell this surreal story, recounting how Barack Obama navigated the insane political forces that created Trump, explaining why everyone got 2016 wrong, and offering a path for where Democrats go from here.

Pfeiffer was one of Obama’s first hires when he decided to run for president, and was at his side through two presidential campaigns and six years in the White House. Using never-before-heard stories and behind-the-scenes anecdotes, YES WE (STILL) CAN examines how Obama succeeded despite Twitter trolls, Fox News (and their fake news), and a Republican Party that lost its collective mind.

An irreverent, no-BS take on the crazy politics of our time, YES WE (STILL) CAN is a must-read for everyone who is disturbed by Trump, misses Obama, and is marching, calling, and hoping for a better future for the country.

In My TBR Stack:

Treating the Traumatized Child: A Step-by-Step Family Systems Approach
by Scott P. Sells and Ellen Souder
Springer Publishing Company
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

This is the first book that addresses trauma treatment for child and adolescents using a Family Systems Trauma (FST) model which goes beyond individual therapy to include the child and their entire family.

Co-written by a renowned family therapist who created the Parenting with Love and Limits® model, it delivers a research-based , step-by-step approach that incorporates the child’s immediate family along with their extended family to treat the traumatized child or adolescent.

Using a "stress chart," the child or adolescent's trauma symptoms are quickly identified. This strategy guides therapists in accurately diagnosing root causes of the child's trauma and culminates in the creation of co-created "wound playbooks" to heal trauma in both the child as well as other family members.

Additional helpful features include extensive case examples, a menu of trauma techniques, wound playbook examples, evaluation forms, client handouts, and other practical tools to provide the therapist with a complete guide to implementing this approach. Child and family therapists, social workers, mental health counselors, and psychologists working in a variety of settings will find this book a valuable resource.

Key Features:

• Provides a step-by-step, practice focused, time-limited model
• Uses a family systems approach for addressing child and adolescent trauma--the only book of its kind
• Includes useful tools such as checklists, client handouts, and evaluation forms

On My Radar:

The Traveling Feast: On the Road and at the Table with My Heroes
by Rick Bass
Little Brown and Company
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

From his bid to become Eudora Welty’s lawn boy to the time George Plimpton offered to punch him in the nose, lineage has always been important to Rick Bass. Now at a turning point–in his midfifties, with his long marriage dissolved and his grown daughters out of the house–Bass strikes out on a journey of thanksgiving. His aim: to make a memorable meal for each of his mentors, to express his gratitude for the way they have shaped not only his writing but his life.

The result, an odyssey to some of America’s most iconic writers, is also a record of self-transformation as Bass seeks to recapture the fire that drove him as a young man. Along the way we join in escapades involving smuggled contraband, an exploding grill, a trail of blood through Heathrow airport, an episode of dog-watching with Amy Hempel in Central Park, and a near run-in with plague-ridden prairie dogs on the way to see Lorrie Moore, as well as heartwarming and bittersweet final meals with the late Peter Matthiessen, John Berger, and Denis Johnson. Poignant, funny, and wistful, The Traveling Feast is a guide to living well and an unforgettable adventure that nourishes and renews the spirit.

- - - - -

On My Radar:

Outside the Jukebox: How I Turned My Vintage Music Obsession into My Dream Gig
by Scott Bradlee
Hachette Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

With student loan debt piling up and no lucrative gigs around the corner, Scott Bradlee found himself in a situation all too familiar to struggling musicians and creative professionals, unsure whether he should use the little income he had to pay the rent on his basement apartment on the fringes of New York City or to avoid defaulting on his loans. 

It was under these desperate circumstances that Bradlee began experimenting, applying his passion for jazz, ragtime, and doo wop styles to contemporary hits by singers like Macklemore and Miley Cyrus–and suddenly an idea was born. The bands Bradlee went on to launch–from A Motown Tribute to Nickelback to Postmodern Jukebox, the rotating supergroup devoted to period covers of pop songs for which he is best known–borrowed from and refined the initial idea he had arrived at to bring genres now sometimes considered arcane to wide audiences. Today, the success he has had is astonishing, with Postmodern Jukebox collecting upwards of three million subscribers on YouTube, selling out major venues around the world, and developing previously unknown talent into superstar singers.

Taking readers through the false starts, absurd failures, and unexpected breakthroughs of Bradlee’s journey from a lost musician to a musical kingmaker headlining Radio City Music Hall–and presenting all the insights he learned along the way to becoming an entrepreneur like no other–OUTSIDE THE JUKEBOX is an inspiring memoir about how one musician found his rhythm and launched a movement that would forever change how people make, distribute, and enjoy their favorite songs.

- - - - -

http://postmodernjukebox.com/outside-the-jukebox/


https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/8459600/outside-the-jukebox-scott-bradlee-postmodern-jukebox-book

On My Radar:

Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein
by Jamie Bernstein
Harper Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

The composer of On the Town and West Side Story, chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic, television star, humanitarian, friend of the powerful and influential, and the life of every party, Leonard Bernstein was an enormous celebrity during one of the headiest periods of American cultural life, as well as the most protean musician in twentieth century America.  

But to his eldest daughter, Jamie, he was above all the man in the scratchy brown bathrobe who smelled of cigarettes; the jokester and compulsive teacher who enthused about Beethoven and the Beatles; the insomniac whose 4 a.m. composing breaks involved spooning baby food out of the jar. He taught his daughter to love the world in all its beauty and complexity. In public and private, Lenny was larger than life.

In Famous Father Girl, Bernstein mines the emotional depths of her childhood and invites us into her family’s private world. A fantastic set of characters populates the Bernsteins’ lives, including: the Kennedys, Mike Nichols, John Lennon, Richard Avedon, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, and Betty (Lauren) Bacall.

An intoxicating tale, Famous Father Girl is an intimate meditation on a complex and sometimes troubled man, the family he raised, and the music he composed that became the soundtrack to their entwined lives. Deeply moving and often hilarious, Bernstein’s beautifully written memoir is a great American story about one of the greatest Americans of the modern age.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

On My Radar:

The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House
by Ben Rhodes
Random House
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

From one of Barack Obama’s closest aides comes a revelatory behind-the-scenes account of his presidency—and how idealism can confront harsh reality and still survive—in the tradition of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House.
 
For nearly ten years, Ben Rhodes saw almost everything that happened at the center of the Obama administration—first as a speechwriter, then as deputy national security advisor, and finally as a multipurpose aide and close collaborator. He started every morning in the Oval Office with the President’s Daily Briefing, traveled the world with Obama, and was at the center of some of the most consequential and controversial moments of the presidency. Now he tells the full story of his partnership—and, ultimately, friendship—with a man who also happened to be a historic president of the United States.
 
Rhodes was not your typical presidential confidant, and this is not your typical White House memoir. Rendered in vivid, novelistic detail by someone who was a writer before he was a staffer, this is a rare look inside the most poignant, tense, and consequential moments of the Obama presidency—waiting out the bin Laden raid in the Situation Room, responding to the Arab Spring, reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran, leading secret negotiations with the Cuban government to normalize relations, and confronting the resurgence of nationalism and nativism that culminated in the election of Donald Trump.
 
In The World as It Is, Rhodes shows what it was like to be there—from the early days of the Obama campaign to the final hours of the presidency. It is a story populated by such characters as Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Hillary Clinton, Bob Gates, and—above all—Barack Obama, who comes to life on the page in moments of great urgency and disarming intimacy. This is the most vivid portrayal yet of Obama’s worldview and presidency, a chronicle of a political education by a writer of enormous talent, and an essential record of the forces that shaped the last decade.



Advance praise for The World as It Is

“Ben Rhodes is one of the most brilliant minds and powerful storytellers I've ever known. In The World as It Is, he doesn't just bring you inside the room for key moments of Obama's presidency, he captivates you with the journey of an idealistic young staffer who becomes the president's closest friend and advisor—a journey that both cynics and believers will find riveting and hopeful.”—Jon Favreau

On My Radar:

Black Klansman: A Memoir
by Ron Stallworth
Flatiron Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

When detective Ron Stallworth, the first black detective in the history of the Colorado Springs Police Department, comes across a classified ad in the local paper asking for all those interested in joining the Ku Klux Klan to contact a P.O. box, Detective Stallworth does his job and responds with interest, using his real name while posing as a white man. He figures he’ll receive a few brochures in the mail, maybe even a magazine, and learn more about a growing terrorist threat in his community. 

A few weeks later the office phone rings, and the caller asks Ron a question he thought he’d never have to answer, “Would you like to join our cause?” This is 1978, and the KKK is on the rise in the United States. Its Grand Wizard, David Duke, has made a name for himself, appearing on talk shows, and major magazine interviews preaching a “kinder” Klan that wants nothing more than to preserve a heritage, and to restore a nation to its former glory.

Ron answers the caller’s question that night with a yes, launching what is surely one of the most audacious, and incredible undercover investigations in history. Ron recruits his partner Chuck to play the "white" Ron Stallworth, while Stallworth himself conducts all subsequent phone conversations. During the months-long investigation, Stallworth sabotages cross burnings, exposes white supremacists in the military, and even befriends David Duke himself. 

Black Klansman is an amazing true story that reads like a crime thriller, and a searing portrait of a divided America and the extraordinary heroes who dare to fight back.

- - - - - - - - -

How a Black Cop Joined the KKK (NPR)

The Black Undercover Cop Who Infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado (Vice)

That Time a Black Cop Went Undercover with the KKK (New York Post)

Watch the First Trailer for Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman (slate)

On My Radar:

Long Players: A Love Story in Eighteen Songs
by Peter Coviello
Penguin Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Have you ever fallen in love—exalting, wracking, hilarious love—with a song? Long Players is a book about that everyday kind of besottedness—and, also, about those other, more entangling sorts of love that songs can propel us into. We follow Peter Coviello through his happy marriage, his blindsiding divorce, and his fumbling post marital forays into sex and romance. 
 
Above all we travel with him as he calibrates, mix by mix and song by song, his place in the lives of two little girls, his suddenly ex-stepdaughters. In his grief, he considers what keeps us alive (sex, talk, dancing) and the limitless grace of pop songs.

In My TBR Stack:

Everything Is Here to Help You: A Loving Guide to Your Soul's Evolution
by Matt Kahn
Hay House
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Everything Is Here to Help You offers an emotionally supportive way to shift out of the inner war of ego, and into the illuminated presence of your soul. 

In this book, spiritual teacher and intuitive Matt Kahn redefines the spiritual path for the modern-day seeker, and offers original, innovative ways to resolve fear, unravel judgments, and learn how to view life from a clear, expanded perspective. By redefining our understanding of the spiritual journey from the point of view of the soul, Matt breathes fresh life into all aspects of the healing journey to usher in a revolutionary and loving approach to personal growth. 

Each chapter highlights Matt’s most cutting-edge teachings and loving wisdom. From teaching you how to unravel blame by exploring the four stages of surrender, to providing step-by-step energy clearings and recited activations to amplify the power of your consciousness, this book offers a clear road map to explore the magic, mysteries, and miracles that reside in every heart. 

This book also includes engaging questions to contemplate, as well as energetically encoded mantras to experience our unlimited spiritual potential. 

Get ready to explore a deeper reality, daring to view your life through the loving eyes of Source and opening yourself up to life’s miracles! 

“No matter how anything seems or appears—everything is here to help you become the one you were born to be.”

In My TBR Stack:

Goodbye, Sweet Girl: A Story of Domestic Violence and Survival
by Kelly Sundberg
Harper Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In this brave and beautiful memoir, written with the raw honesty and devastating openness of The Glass Castle and The Liar’s Club, a woman chronicles how her marriage devolved from a love story into a shocking tale of abuse—examining the tenderness and violence entwined in the relationship, why she endured years of physical and emotional pain, and how she eventually broke free.

"You made me hit you in the face," he said mournfully. "Now everyone is going to know." "I know," I said. "I’m sorry."

Kelly Sundberg’s husband, Caleb, was a funny, warm, supportive man and a wonderful father to their little boy Reed. He was also vengeful and violent. But Sundberg did not know that when she fell in love, and for years told herself he would get better. It took a decade for her to ultimately accept that the partnership she desired could not work with such a broken man. In her remarkable book, she offers an intimate record of the joys and terrors that accompanied her long, difficult awakening, and presents a haunting, heartbreaking glimpse into why women remain too long in dangerous relationships.

To understand herself and her violent marriage, Sundberg looks to her childhood in Salmon, a small, isolated mountain community known as the most redneck town in Idaho. Like her marriage, Salmon is a place of deep contradictions, where Mormon ranchers and hippie back-to-landers live side-by-side; a place of magical beauty riven by secret brutality; a place that takes pride in its individualism and rugged self-sufficiency, yet is beholden to church and communal standards at all costs.

Mesmerizing and poetic, Goodbye, Sweet Girl is a harrowing, cautionary, and ultimately redemptive tale that brilliantly illuminates one woman’s transformation as she gradually rejects the painful reality of her violent life at the hands of the man who is supposed to cherish her, begins to accept responsibility for herself, and learns to believe that she deserves better.

In My TBR Stack:

ORCA: How We Came to Know and Love the Ocean's Greatest Predator
by Jason M. Colby
Oxford University Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Since the release of the documentary Blackfish in 2013, millions around the world have focused on the plight of the orca, the most profitable and controversial display animal in history. Yet, until now, no historical account has explained how we came to care about killer whales in the first place. 

Drawing on interviews, official records, private archives, and his own family history, Jason M. Colby tells the exhilarating and often heartbreaking story of how people came to love the ocean's greatest predator. Historically reviled as dangerous pests, killer whales were dying by the hundreds, even thousands, by the 1950s--the victims of whalers, fishermen, and even the US military. In the Pacific Northwest, fishermen shot them, scientists harpooned them, and the Canadian government mounted a machine gun to eliminate them. But that all changed in 1965, when Seattle entrepreneur Ted Griffin became the first person to swim and perform with a captive killer whale. The show proved wildly popular, and he began capturing and selling others, including Sea World's first Shamu.

Over the following decade, live display transformed views of Orcinus orca. The public embraced killer whales as charismatic and friendly, while scientists enjoyed their first access to live orcas. In the Pacific Northwest, these captive encounters reshaped regional values and helped drive environmental activism, including Greenpeace's anti-whaling campaigns. Yet even as Northwesterners taught the world to love whales, they came to oppose their captivity and to fight for the freedom of a marine predator that had become a regional icon. 

This is the definitive history of how the feared and despised "killer" became the beloved "orca"--and what that has meant for our relationship with the ocean and its creatures.

On My Radar:

Reporter: A Memoir
by Seymour M. Hersh
Knopf
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

“Reporter is just wonderful. Truly a great life, and what shines out of the book, amid the low cunning and tireless legwork, is Hersh’s warmth and humanity. This book is essential reading for every journalist and aspiring journalist the world over.” —John le Carré 

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling author and preeminent investigative journalist of our time—a heartfelt, hugely revealing memoir of a decades-long career breaking some of the most impactful stories of the last half-century, from Washington to Vietnam to the Middle East.

Seymour Hersh’s fearless reporting has earned him fame, front-page bylines in virtually every major newspaper in the free world, honors galore, and no small amount of controversy. Now in this memoir he describes what drove him and how he worked as an independent outsider, even at the nation’s most prestigious publications. He tells the stories behind the stories—riveting in their own right—as he chases leads, cultivates sources, and grapples with the weight of what he uncovers, daring to challenge official narratives handed down from the powers that be. In telling these stories, Hersh divulges previously unreported information about some of his biggest scoops, including the My Lai massacre and the horrors at Abu Ghraib. There are also illuminating recollections of some of the giants of American politics and journalism: Ben Bradlee, A. M. Rosenthal, David Remnick, and Henry Kissinger among them. This is essential reading on the power of the printed word at a time when good journalism is under fire as never before.

On My Radar:

Ghostbuster's Daughter: Life With My Dad, Harold Ramis
by Violet Ramis Stiel
Blue Rider Press
Hardcover
Available 6/5/18

From the publisher's website:

Most of us know Harold Ramis as the writer, director, and actor who brought warmth and humor to the big screen in classics like Animal House, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, National Lampoon’s Vacation, and Groundhog Day. To his daughter, Violet, he was best known as an amazing father, confidant, and friend. In Ghostbuster’s Daughter, Violet reflects on the life and legacy of her father, providing readers with an extraordinarily candid and insightful look into the man who helped shape modern American comedy. 

Funny, endearing, and vulnerable, Ghostbuster’s Daughter takes readers into the private life of the American comedy icon, from his humble roots in Chicago and ascension into Hollywood stardom to his personal philosophies on life, love, and filmmaking. While the book offers a comprehensive history of her father’s career, Ghostbuster’s Daughter also provides a profound homage to their special father-daughter relationship. Violet weaves anecdotes about her father’s unique and devoted parenting style among stories of her own unconventional upbringing, creating a vivid and dynamic portrait of the man behind the movies. A distinctly offbeat memoir as well as a charming family story for the ages, Ghostbuster’s Daughter is an intimate look at one of America's preeminent comedy filmmakers. 

In My TBR Stack:

Straight Talk for Startups
by Randy Komisar and Jantoon Reigersman
Harper Business
Hardcover
(Available June 5th)

From the publisher's website:

Veteran venture capitalist Randy Komisar and finance executive Jantoon Reigersman share no-nonsense, counterintuitive guidelines to help anyone build a successful startup.

Over the course of their careers, Randy Komisar and Jantoon Reigersman continue to see startups crash and burn because they forget the timeless lessons of entrepreneurship.

But, as Komisar and Reigersman show, you can beat the odds if you quickly learn what insiders know about what it takes to build a healthy foundation for a thriving venture. In Straight Talk for Startupsthey walk budding entrepreneurs through 100 essential rules—from pitching your idea to selecting investors to managing your board to deciding how and when to achieve liquidity. Culled from their own decades of experience, as well as the experiences of their many successful colleagues and friends, the rules are organized under broad topics, from "Mastering the Fundamentals" and "Selecting the Right Investors," to "The Ideal Fundraise," "Building and Managing Effective Boards," and "Achieving Liquidity."

Vital rules you’ll find in Straight Talk for Startups include: 

• The best ideas originate from founders who are users
• Create two business plans: an execution plan and an aspirational plan
• Net income is an option, but cash flow is a fact
• Don’t accept money from strangers
• Personal wealth doesn’t equal good investing
• Small boards are better than big ones
• Add independent board members for expertise and objectivity
• Too many unanimous board decisions are a sign of trouble
• Choose an acquirer, don’t wait to be chosen
• Learn the rules by heart so you know when to break them

Filled with helpful real-life examples and specific, actionable advice, Straight Talk for Startups is the ideal handbook for anyone running, working for, or thinking about creating a startup, or just curious about what makes high-potential ventures tick.

On My Radar:

Soul of a Democrat: The Seven Core Ideas That Made Our Party — And Our Country — Great
by Thomas B. Reston
All Points Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In 2016 the Democratic Party lost control of every branch of government. Countless explanations and excuses have been offered, but in this heartfelt, evocative book longtime Democratic activist Thomas B. Reston illuminates the true cause: the Party has lost its soul. In Reston’s view the Party has abandoned any unifying idealistic message. Instead of crafting policies and platforms that appeal to the nation as a whole, Democrats target specific blocs of voters –and change their talking points accordingly.

This divisive approach will not end well for Democrats, or the country as a whole. If they want to remain competitive on the national stage, Reston argues, Democrats need a coherent, blunt set of American ideals. The good news is, they already have one.

In Soul of a Democrat, Reston takes us on a journey through the history of the Party with thumbnail portraits of its most important figures, illuminating the core ideals and principles they fought for. Thomas Jefferson founded the Democratic Party to lift up the people as a whole by empowering each individual citizen. Andrew Jackson committed the party to always fight for outsiders. Woodrow Wilson insisted on a progressive respect for ideas. William Jennings Bryan introduced the altruistic Social Gospel. Franklin D. Roosevelt promised economic security for all. Lyndon B. Johnson championed the ongoing struggle for civil rights.

These Democratic statesmen knew that a successful party needs strong idealistic roots, an understandable message, and an emphatic focus on the purpose of what it is doing, instead of on the mechanics. Reston’s concise and elegant book shows modern Democrats how to learn from their own past, and once again become The Party of The People.