In My TBR Stack:

I Did It My Ways: An 86-Year-Old Standup Comedian's Lifelong Journey from Prudish Bostonian to Scandalous Parisienne
by D'yan Forest with Stephen Clarke
pAf
Trade Paperback


From the author's website:

D'yan Forest has always done things her way — or her ways, because she's lived a dozen different lives.

She's been a desperate Boston housewife, a New York nightclub singer and a Paris swinger.

She's been the only Jewish girl in a Christian choir and the female pianist in a transvestite cabaret.

She had day jobs teaching basketball, piano, and sex education.

She dated Paris's second-ever female bus driver, a transsexual rock guitarist, and a defrocked nun.

She also managed to get German friends to visit Nazi concentration camps, on her personal quest to understand why her European relatives were massacred.

At 86, D'yan is still a working standup comedian and musician, but she's much, much more than that, as this hilarious but heartfelt memoir reveals...

On My Radar:

The AOC Generation: How Millennials Are Seizing Power and Rewriting the Rules of American Politics
by David Freedlander
Beacon Press
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

The AOC Generation examines the resurgent young left—including groups like Justice Democrats, the Democratic Socialists of America and Brand New Congress—and documents how and why they got active and energized in political organizing, the success and limitations of their approaches—and through their stories, it tells the history and the future of a generation.

In 2018, the country watched as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rose from unknown part-time bartender to the halls of Congress at the age of 29 and became a household name for her progressive, passionate politics. With firsthand accounts detailing the final days of her campaign, which he spent beside her as she fought for every last vote, Freedlander connects her ample political talents and ability to command the media and the public’s attention to the newfound political awakening of millennial activists. Inspired in part by the Bernie Sanders campaign, and furthered by a series of critical issues including catastrophic climate change, a rigid political system, and widening income inequality, these young people organized into new groups that became a conduit for their energy, ideas, and passions. And all of their activity isn’t just political. They’ve created their own media eco-system, with podcasts, streaming networks, and even dating sites that cater to their interests.

With this new generation gaining traction, with little signs of backing down and securing crucial political seats as Ocasio-Cortez did in 2018, The AOC Generation presents a thoughtful analysis of how they came of age in an America they are determined to reshape.

On My Radar:

The Beauty of Living Twice
by Sharon Stone
Knopf
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

Sharon Stone, one of the most renowned actresses in the world, suffered a massive stroke that cost her not only her health, but her career, family, fortune, and global fame. In The Beauty of Living Twice, Stone chronicles her efforts to rebuild her life and writes about her slow road back to wholeness and health. In a business that doesn’t accept failure, in a world where too many voices are silenced, Stone found the power to return, the courage to speak up, and the will to make a difference in the lives of men, women, and children around the globe.

Over the course of these intimate pages, as candid as a personal conversation, Stone talks about her pivotal roles, her life-changing friendships, her worst disappointments, and her greatest accomplishments. She reveals how she went from a childhood of trauma and violence to a career in an industry that in many ways echoed those same assaults, under cover of money and glamour. She describes the strength and meaning she found in her children, and in her humanitarian efforts. And ultimately, she shares how she fought her way back to find not only her truth, but her family’s reconciliation and love.

Stone made headlines not just for her beauty and her talent, but for her candor and her refusal to “play nice,” and it’s those same qualities that make this memoir so powerful. The Beauty of Living Twice is a book for the wounded and a book for the survivors; it’s a celebration of women’s strength and resilience, a reckoning, and a call to activism. It is proof that it’s never too late to raise your voice and speak out.

On My Radar:

A Curious History of Sex
by Kate Lister
Unbound Books
Trade Paperback


From the book publicity:

This is not a comprehensive study of every sexual quirk, kink and ritual across all cultures throughout time, as that would entail writing an encyclopaedia. Rather, this is a drop in the ocean, a paddle in the shallow end of sex history, but I hope you will get pleasantly wet nonetheless. The act of sex has not changed since people first worked out what went where, but the ways in which society dictates how sex is culturally understood and performed have varied significantly through the ages. Humans are the only creatures that stigmatise particular sexual practices, and sex remains a deeply divisive issue around the world. Attitudes will change and grow – hopefully for the better – but sex will never be free of stigma or shame unless we acknowledge where it has come from. Drawing upon extensive research from Dr Kate Lister’s Whores of Yore website and written with her distinctive humour and wit, A Curious History of Sex covers topics ranging from twentieth- century testicle thefts to Victorian doctors massaging the pelvises of their female patients, from smutty bread innuendos dating back to AD 79, to the new and controversial sex doll brothels. It is peppered with surprising and informative historical slang and illustrated by eye-opening, toe- curling and hilarious images. In this fascinating book, Lister deftly debunks myths and stereotypes and gives unusual sexual practices an historical framework, as she provides valuable context for issues facing people today, including gender, sexual shame, beauty and language.

In My TBR Stack:

Recovery from Lyme Disease: The Integrative Medicine Guide to Diagnosing and Treating Tick-Borne Illness
by Daniel A. Kinderlehrer, MD
Skyhorse Publishing
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

Lyme Disease is a substantial problem. While the CDC reported 427,000 new cases in 2017 based on surveillance criteria, actual numbers based on clinical diagnosis put that number at over one million. It is now well accepted that 10 to 20 percent of these cases go on to become a chronic illness, and these numbers don't even include those people who became chronically ill without ever witnessing a tick attachment or a bulls-eye rash. In other words, hundreds of thousands of people develop a chronic illness every year.
 
This is why Dr. Dan Kinderlehrer’s book is so important and timely and has the potential to help millions who are victims of this epidemic. His integrative approach offers the most up-to-date and comprehensive plan available for treating and beating this disease. It will discuss brand new treatments such as disulfiram, which is being hailed as a major breakthrough, as well as the use of cannabis to treat pain and anxiety, among other developments in the field. With the staggering growth we are seeing in numbers of people afflicted, this book becomes more important every day.
 
Kinderhlehrer is in a unique position to write this book. After completing a residency in Internal Medicine in 1979, he opened one of the first practices in the US in what was then called Holistic Medicine. After becoming an expert in nutrition and environmental illness, he became ill himself with Lyme disease complex. His long road to recovery has given him insights into what patients are going through; his background in internal medicine trained him to understand the complexities of his multi-systemic illness; his knowledge of environmental illness has enabled him to evaluate immune dysregulation; and his study of energetic medicine, spiritual alignment, and healing from trauma has yielded insights into how to help patients shift their belief systems to being well.
  
Recovery from Lyme Disease is by far the most thorough book available on Lyme Disease Complex. It will provide patients with information that will guide them on their healing journeys, as well as supplying doctors with instruction on appropriate diagnosis and treatment approaches.

In My TBR Stack:

The Essential Guide to CBD: Everything You Need to Know About What It Helps, Where to Buy, and How to Take It
by Editors of Reader's Digest & Project CBD
Reader's Digest Books
Trade Paperback



From the publisher's website:

The editors of Reader’s Digest have teamed up with the experts at Project CBD to bring you a reliable, easy-to-understand guide to all things CBD. Drawing from peer-reviewed research and medical studies, as well as interviews with neuroscientists and doctors, this book debunks common myths and rebuffs pseudoscience. Divided into three sections, you’ll learn the basics of what CBD is and how it works, how it can be helpful against more than 30 health conditions, and how to pick the type of product that will work best for your needs. Complete with recipes and first-person accounts from real people who have used it, The Essential Guide to CBD tells you everything you need to know about the all-natural treatment that’s sweeping the nation—and why it’s worth the hype. 

On My Radar:

When Women Invented Television: The Untold Story of the Female Powerhouses Who Pioneered the Way We Watch Today
by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
Harper Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

It was the Golden Age of Radio and powerful men were making millions in advertising dollars reaching thousands of listeners every day. When television arrived, few radio moguls were interested in the upstart industry and its tiny production budgets, and expensive television sets were out of reach for most families. But four women—each an independent visionary— saw an opportunity and carved their own paths, and in so doing invented the way we watch tv today.

Irna Phillips turned real-life tragedy into daytime serials featuring female dominated casts. Gertrude Berg turned her radio show into a Jewish family comedy that spawned a play, a musical, an advice column, a line of house dresses, and other products. Hazel Scott, already a renowned musician, was the first African American to host a national evening variety program. Betty White became a daytime talk show fan favorite and one of the first women to produce, write, and star in her own show.

Together, their stories chronicle a forgotten chapter in the history of television and popular culture.

But as the medium became more popular—and lucrative—in the wake of World War II, the House Un-American Activities Committee arose to threaten entertainers, blacklisting many as communist sympathizers. As politics, sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, and money collided, the women who invented television found themselves fighting from the margins, as men took control. But these women were true survivors who never gave up—and thus their legacies remain with us in our television-dominated era. It's time we reclaimed their forgotten histories and the work they did to pioneer the medium that now rules our lives.

This amazing and heartbreaking history, illustrated with photos, tells it all for the first time. 

On My Radar:

I Catch Killers: The Life and Many Deaths of a Homicide Detective
by Gary Jubelin with Dan Box
Harper Collins
Trade Paperback


From the publisher's website:

Here I am: tall and broad, shaved head, had my nose broken three times fighting. Black suit, white shirt, the big city homicide detective. I've led investigations into serial killings, child abductions, organised crime hits and domestic murders. But beneath the suit, I've got an Om symbol in the shape of a Buddha tattooed on my right bicep. It balances the tattoo on my left ribs: Better to die on your feet than live on your knees. That's how I choose to live my life.

As a cop, I got paid to catch killers and I learned what doing it can cost you. It cost me marriages and friendships. It cost me my reputation. They tell you not to let a case get personal, but I think it has to. Each one has taken a piece out of me and added a piece, until there's only pieces. 

I catch killers - it's what I do. It's who I am.

Gary Jubelin was one of Australia's most celebrated detectives, leading investigations into the disappearance of preschooler William Tyrrell, the serial killing of three Aboriginal children in Bowraville and the brutal gangland murder of Terry Falconer. During his 34-year career, Detective Chief Inspector Jubelin also ran the crime scene following the Lindt Cafe siege, investigated the death of Caroline Byrne and recovered the body of Matthew Leveson. Jubelin retired from the force in 2019. This is his story.

Now in Paperback:

Swing Kings: The Inside Story of Baseball's Home Run Revolution
by Jared Diamond
William Morrow Books
Trade Paperback



From the publisher's website:

We are in a historic era for the home run. The 2019 season saw the most homers ever, obliterating a record set just two years before. It is a shift that has transformed the way the game is played, contributing to more strikeouts, longer games, and what feels like the logical conclusion of the analytics era. In Swing Kings, Wall Street Journal national baseball writer Jared Diamond reveals that the secret behind this unprecedented shift isn’t steroids or the stitching of the baseballs, it’s the most elemental explanation of all: the swing. In this lively narrative romp, he tracks a group of baseball’s biggest stars—including Aaron Judge, J.D. Martinez, and Justin Turner—who remade their swings under the tutelage of a band of renegade coaches, and remade the game in the process. 

These coaches, many of them baseball washouts who have reinvented themselves as swing gurus, for years were one of the game’s best-kept secrets. Among their ranks are a swimming pool contractor, the owner of a billiards hall, and an ex-hippie whose swing insights draw from surfing and the technique of Japanese samurai. Now, as Diamond artfully charts, this motley cast has moved from the baseball margins to its center of power. They are changing the way hitting is taught to players of all ages, and major league clubs are scrambling for their services, hiring them in record numbers as coaches and consultants. And Diamond himself, whose baseball career ended in high school, enlists the tutelage of each swing coach he profiles, with an aim toward starring in the annual Boston-New York media game at Yankee Stadium.

Swing Kings is both a rollicking history of baseball’s recent past and a deeply reported, character-driven account of a battle between opponents as old as time: old and new, change and stasis, the establishment and those who break from it. Jared Diamond has written a masterful chronicle of America’s pastime at the crossroads.

On My Radar:

Sidelined: Sports, Culture, and Being a Woman in America
by Julie DiCaro
Dutton Books
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

In a society that is digging deep into the misogyny underlying our traditions and media, the world of sports is especially fertile ground. From casual sexism, like condescending coverage of women’s pro sports, to more serious issues, like athletes who abuse their partners and face only minimal consequences, this area of our culture is home to a vast swath of gender issues that apply to all of us—whether or not our work and leisure time revolve around what happens on the field.

No one is better equipped to examine sports through this feminist lens than sports journalist Julie DiCaro. Throughout her experiences covering professional sports for more than a decade, DiCaro has been outspoken about the exploitation of the female body, the covert and overt sexism women face in the workplace, and the male-driven toxicity in sports fandom. Now through candid interviews, personal anecdotes, and deep research, she’s tackling these thorny issues and exploring what America can do to give women a fair and competitive playing field in sports and beyond.

Covering everything from the abusive online environment at Barstool Sports to the sexist treatment of Serena Williams and professional women’s teams fighting for equal pay and treatment, and looking back at pioneering women who first took on the patriarchy in sports media, Sidelined will illuminate the ways sports present a microcosm of life as a woman in America—and the power in fighting back.

On My Radar:

So Many Ways to Lose: The Amazin' True Story of the New York Mets — the Best Worst Team in Sports
by Devin Gordon
Harper Books
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

In So Many Ways to Lose, author and lifelong Mets fan Devin Gordon sifts through the detritus of Queens for a baseball history like no other. Remember the time the Mets lost an All-Star after he got charged by a wild boar? Or the time they blew a six-run ninth-inning lead at the peak of a pennant race? Or the time they fired their manager before he ever managed a game? Sure you do. It was only two years ago, and it was all in the same season. The Mets have an unrivaled gift for getting it backward, doing the impossible, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, and then snatching defeat right back again.  

And yet, just ask any Mets fan: amazing and/or miraculous postseason runs are as much a part of our team's identity as losing 120 games in 1962. The DNA of seasons like 1969, the original Miracle Mets, and the 1973 “Ya Gotta Believe” Mets, who went from last place to Game 7 of the World Series in two months, and the powerhouse 1986 Mets, has encoded in us this hapless instinct that a reversal of fortune is always possible. It’s happened before. It’s kind of our thing. And now we've got Steve Cohen's hedge-fund billions to play with! What could go wrong?

In this hilarious history of the Mets and love letter to the art of disaster, Devin Gordon presents baseball the way it really is, not in the wistful sepia tones we've come to expect from other sportswriters. Along the way, he explains the difference between being bad and being gifted at losing, and why this distinction holds the key to understanding the true amazin’ magic of the New York Mets. 

In My TBR Stack:

How My Brain Works: A Guide to Understanding It Better and Keeping It Healthy
by Dr. Barbara Koltuska-Haskin
Golden Word Books
Trade Paperback


From the publisher's website:

The wide range of useful information contained in How My Brain Works can help the reader in many ways: basic understanding of this unique organ, advice for anyone concerned about the possibility of a cognitive problem, and the wisdom of the author’s experience in helping her many patients and others to keep their brains healthy and working at their highest level.

Students with learning problems, young people considering varied career paths, victims of brain injuries or mental disorders, the middle-aged and elderly at risk of dementia—all can gain from the knowledge Dr. Barbara Koltuska-Haskin has gained in her many years as a practicing neuropsychologist. In easy-to-understand language, she explains the countless ways the evaluation process she uses can help people in a wide variety of situations, and how the results can be used for maximum benefit.

Plus, building on this information, Dr. Koltuska-Haskin offers a wealth of advice and tips on how to build and maintain optimum brain health. Reaching widely into the physical, psychological, nutritional, and spiritual worlds, she pulls together new research as well as age-old treasured learning to create an everyday guide to harnessing our most powerful mental tools in shaping the healthful and successful lives we all seek. 

In My TBR Stack:

Radical Humility: Essays on Ordinary Acts
Edited by Rebekah Modrak and Jamie Vander Broek
Belt Publishing
Trade Paperback


From the publisher's website:

What does humility mean and why does it matter in an age of golden escalators and billionaire entrepreneurs? How can the cultivation of humility empower us to see success in failure, to fight against injustice, to stretch beyond our usual ways of thinking, and to foster a culture of listening in an age of digital shouting? With contributions from renowned scholars as well as psychologists, artists, and many others, Radical Humility: Essays on Ordinary Acts offers guidance.

Edited by Rebekah Modrak and Jamie Vander Broek, Radical Humility explores what we can learn from philosophers about why Socrates chose to question everyone—even the Oracle who proclaimed him to be the wisest of men. New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow examines the corrosive effect of Donald Trump’s arrogance on our democracy. Artist Ruth Nicole Brown describes lessons learned from her aunt about living a life of "you before me," and how this informed her work celebrating Black girls. Journalist Lynette Clemetson lays out the conflicts for journalists trained to recede into the background but now urged to be social media presences. And scholars Aric Rindfleisch and Nadia Danienta describe why maker cultures are as good at celebrating failure as they are at championing success. Having witnessed the personal and civic costs of narcissism and arrogance, these and other writers consider humility as a valuable process—a state of being—with the power to impact institutions, systems, families, and individuals, and give voice to the ways in which humility is practiced in many ordinary but extraordinary actions. 

In My TBR Stack:

Hot, Hot Chicken: A Nashville Story
by Rachel Louise Martin
Vanderbilt University Press
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

These days, hot chicken is a “must-try” Southern food. Restaurants in New York, Detroit, Cambridge, and even Australia advertise that they fry their chicken “Nashville-style.” Thousands of people attend the Music City Hot Chicken Festival each year. The James Beard Foundation has given Prince’s Chicken Shack an American Classic Award for inventing the dish.

But for almost seventy years, hot chicken was made and sold primarily in Nashville’s Black neighborhoods—and the story of hot chicken says something powerful about race relations in Nashville, especially as the city tries to figure out what it will be in the future.

Hot, Hot Chicken recounts the history of Nashville’s Black communities through the story of its hot chicken scene from the Civil War, when Nashville became a segregated city, through the tornado that ripped through North Nashville in March 2020.

On My Radar:

Nothin' But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion
by Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock
St. Martin's Press
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

Hard rock in the 1980s was a hedonistic and often intensely creative wellspring of escapism that perfectly encapsulated—and maybe even helped to define—a spectacularly over-the-top decade. Indeed, fist-pumping hits like Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls,” and Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” are as inextricably linked to the era as Reaganomics, Pac-Man, and E.T.

From the do-or-die early days of self-financed recordings and D.I.Y. concert productions that were as flashy as they were foolhardy, to the multi-Platinum, MTV-powered glory years of stadium-shaking anthems and chart-topping power ballads, to the ultimate crash when grunge bands like Nirvana forever altered the entire climate of the business, Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock's Nothin' But a Good Time captures the energy and excess of the hair metal years in the words of the musicians, managers, producers, engineers, label executives, publicists, stylists, costume designers, photographers, journalists, magazine publishers, video directors, club bookers, roadies, groupies, and hangers-on who lived it. 

Featuring an impassioned foreword by Slipknot and Stone Sour vocalist and avowed glam metal fanatic Corey Taylor, and drawn from over 200 new interviews with members of Van Halen, Mötley Crüe, Poison, Guns N’ Roses, Skid Row, Bon Jovi, Ratt, Twisted Sister, Winger, Warrant, Cinderella, Quiet Riot and others, as well as Ozzy Osbourne, Lita Ford and many more, this is the ultimate, uncensored, and often unhinged chronicle of a time where excess and success walked hand in hand, told by the men and women who created a sound and style that came to define a musical era—one in which the bands and their fans went looking for nothin’ but a good time…and found it.

In My TBR Stack:

Your Body is Not an Apology Workbook: Tools for Living Radical Self-Love
by Sonya Renee Taylor
Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc.
Trade Paperback


From the publisher's website:

Readers of The Body Is Not an Apology have been clamoring for guidance on how to do the work of radical self-love. After crowdsourcing her community, Sonya Renee Taylor found her readers wanted more concrete ideas on how to apply this work in their everyday lives. Your Body Is Not an Apology Workbook is the action guide that gives them tools and structured frameworks they can begin using immediately to deepen their radical self-love journey—such as Taylor's four pillars of practice, which help readers dismantle body shame and give them access to a lifestyle rooted in love. Taylor guides readers to move beyond theory and into doing and being radical self-love change agents in the world. 

“In this book, you will be asked to draw, color, doodle, talk to friends, take risks, and perhaps step outside of what feels like your natural gifts and talents,” Taylor writes. “I encourage you to release the need to be ‘good' at what you are doing and instead strive to be authentic. Perfection is the enemy of radical self-love because it is an impossible illusion. When the voice of perfectionism chimes in, take a deep breath, remember that the work is about the process, not about the product, and give yourself permission to be fabulously unapologetically imperfect.”

On My Radar:

Hateland: A Long, Hard Look at America's Extremist Heart
by Daryl Johnson
Prometheus Books
Trade Paperback


From the publisher's website:

A former Department of Homeland Security analyst takes a long view on the domestic terrorism threat from radicalized individuals and hate groups of various ideologies.America is a land in which extremism no longer belongs to the country's shadowy fringes, but comfortably exists in the national mainstream. That is the alarming conclusion by intelligence analyst Daryl Johnson, an expert on domestic extremism with more than twenty-five years of experience tracking radicalized groups for the US government. In this book, Johnson dissects the rapidly expanding forms of American hatred and radicalization, including white nationalists, antigovernment militias, antifascists (Antifa), militant black nationalists, and extremist Islamic groups. The author develops a concise model that explains how extremists on both the far right and the far left use the same techniques to recruit and to radicalize individuals, turning them into violent offenders. He also examines the political forces that fuel this threat and have kept the US government from properly identifying and developing countermeasures to deal with it, including a disproportional emphasis on Islamic terrorism.Johnson concludes by recounting individual stories of deradicalization, each of which was the result of personal reevaluations of formerly held extremist convictions. He recommends more resources at the state and federal levels for combatting radical movements and urges greater communication and coordination between law enforcement agencies. This in-depth analysis of a growing menace that has taken America hostage throws a stark light on the darkest segments of American society and provides practical means for dealing with their violent threats.

On My Radar:

Initiated: Memoir of a Witch
by Amanda Yates Garcia
Grand Central Publishing
Trade Paperback



From the publisher's website:

Starting with her initiation into her mother's coven, through years in the underworld of poverty, sex work and endless misogyny, Amanda Yates-Garcia describes her journey to come back to her body, harness her power, and create the world she deserved through witchcraft. 

Full of incredible stories of being hailed by crows, seduced by magicians and haunted by ancestors broken under the wheels of patriarchy, INITIATED is also a call to action: it's time for powerful women to come out of the broom closet. Declaring oneself a witch and practicing magic has everything to do with claiming authority and power for oneself. It's time to be brave, stand up, describe the world you want and create it like a witch.

This book will follow Amanda's quest for self-discovery and empowerment but the story is so much bigger. Squarely at the intersection of witchiness and feminism, the lessons in this book will resonate with any woman who feels enraged by a culture built to disempower and subjugate them. To better arm the reader, each chapter is accompanied by a deeper exploration of a witch's trials - healing ancestral wounds, setting psychic boundaries, building an altar to change your life - along with fables and tales of the goddesses and empowered witches throughout history.

On My Radar:

The Hospital: Life, Death, and Dollars in a Small American Town
by Brian Alexander
St. Martin's Press
Hardcover



From the publisher's website:

By following the struggle for survival of one small-town hospital, and the patients who walk, or are carried, through its doors, The Hospital takes readers into the world of the American medical industry in a way no book has done before. Americans are dying sooner, and living in poorer health. Alexander argues that no plan will solve America’s health crisis until the deeper causes of that crisis are addressed. 

Bryan, Ohio's hospital, is losing money, making it vulnerable to big health systems seeking domination and Phil Ennen, CEO, has been fighting to preserve its independence. Meanwhile, Bryan, a town of 8,500 people in Ohio’s northwest corner, is still trying to recover from the Great Recession. As local leaders struggle to address the town’s problems, and the hospital fights for its life amid a rapidly consolidating medical and hospital industry, a 39-year-old diabetic literally fights for his limbs, and a 55-year-old contractor lies dying in the emergency room. With these and other stories, Alexander strips away the wonkiness of policy to reveal Americans’ struggle for health against a powerful system that’s stacked against them, but yet so fragile it blows apart when the pandemic hits. Culminating with COVID-19, this book offers a blueprint for how we created the crisis we're in.

On My Radar:

How to Lose Everything: A Memoir
by Christa Couture
Douglas & McIntyre
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

Christa Couture has come to know every corner of grief—its shifting blurry edges, its traps, its pulse of love at the centre and the bittersweet truth that sorrow is a powerful and wise emotion.

From the amputation of her leg as a cure for bone cancer at a young age to her first child’s single day of life, the heart transplant and subsequent death of her second child, the divorce born of grief and then the thyroidectomy that threatened her career as a professional musician, How to Lose Everything delves into the heart of loss. Couture bears witness to the shift in perspective that comes with loss, and how it can deepen compassion for others, expand understanding, inspire a letting go of little things and plant a deeper feeling for what matters. At the same time, Couture's writing evokes the joy and lightness that both precede and eventually follow grief, as well as the hope and resilience that grow from connections with others.

Evoking Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work, Couture explores the emotional and psychological experiences of motherhood, partnership and change. Deftly connecting the dots of sorrow, reprieve and hard-won hope, How to Lose Everything contains the advice Couture is often asked for, as well as the words she wishes she could have heard many years ago. It is also an offering of kinship and understanding for anyone experiencing a loss.

On My Radar:

Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York
by Elon Green
Celadon Books
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

The Townhouse Bar, midtown, July 1992: The piano player seems to know every song ever written, the crowd belts out the lyrics to their favorites, and a man standing nearby is drinking a Scotch and water. The man strikes the piano player as forgettable.

He looks bland and inconspicuous. Not at all what you think a serial killer looks like. But that’s what he is, and tonight, he has his sights set on a gray haired man. He will not be his first victim.

Nor will he be his last.

The Last Call Killer preyed upon gay men in New York in the ‘80s and ‘90s and had all the hallmarks of the most notorious serial killers. Yet because of the sexuality of his victims, the skyhigh murder rates, and the AIDS epidemic, his murders have been almost entirely forgotten.

This gripping true-crime narrative tells the story of the Last Call Killer and the decades-long chase to find him. And at the same time, it paints a portrait of his victims and a vibrant community navigating threat and resilience.

On My Radar:

You're History: The Twelve Strangest Women in Music
by Lesley Chow
Repeater Books
Trade Paperback


From the publisher's website:

From Kate Bush to Nicki Minaj, from Janet Jackson to TLC and Taylor Swift, pop’s greatest female pioneers are simply strange: smashing notions of taste and decorum, and replacing them with new ideals of pleasure.

 

Instead of rehashing biographies, Lesley Chow dives deep into the music of these groundbreaking performers, identifying the ecstatic moments in their songs and finding out what makes them unique.

 

You’re History is a love letter to pop’s most singular achievements, celebrating the innovations of women who are still critically underrated. It’s a ride that includes tributes to Chaka Khan, Rihanna, Neneh Cherry, Sade, Shakespears Sister, Azealia Banks, Janet Jackson, Kate Bush, Michelle Gurevich, TLC, Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj.

On My Radar:

Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency
by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes
Crown Publishing
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

Almost no one thought Joe Biden could make it back to the White House—not Donald Trump, not the two dozen Democratic rivals who sought to take down a weak front-runner, not the mega-donors and key endorsers who feared he could not beat Bernie Sanders, not even Barack Obama. The story of Biden’s cathartic victory in the 2020 election is the story of a Democratic Party at odds with itself, torn between the single-minded goal of removing Donald Trump and the push for a bold progressive agenda that threatened to alienate as many voters as it drew.
 
In Lucky, #1 New York Times bestselling authors Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes use their unparalleled access to key players inside the Democratic and Republican campaigns to unfold how Biden’s nail-biting run for the presidency vexed his own party as much as it did Trump. Having premised his path on unlocking the Black vote in South Carolina, Biden nearly imploded before he got there after a relentless string of misfires left him freefalling in polls and nearly broke.
 
Allen and Parnes brilliantly detail the remarkable string of chance events that saved him, from the botched Iowa caucus tally that concealed his terrible result, to the pandemic lockdown that kept him off the stump, where he was often at his worst. More powerfully, Lucky unfolds the pitched struggle within Biden’s general election campaign to downplay the very issues that many Democrats believed would drive voters to the polls, especially in the wake of Trump’s response to nationwide protests following the murder of George Floyd. Even Biden’s victory did not salve his party’s wounds; instead, it revealed a surprising, complicated portrait of American voters and crushed Democrats’ belief in the inevitability of a blue wave.
 
A thrilling masterpiece of political reporting, Lucky is essential reading for understanding the most important election in American history and the future that will come of it.

On My Radar:

The Outside Man (A Matt Drake Thriller)
by Don Bentley
Berkley Books
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

The fight for freedom has sent Matt Drake to some of the world’s most dangerous spots. This time the war is coming to his front door. 

Broad daylight on an Austin, Texas, street and DIA operative Matt Drake is fighting for his life against a highly trained team of assassins. Who are they? Why do they want him dead? How will he protect those closest to him?

The answers will take him into some of the most dangerous spots in the Middle East and will put him in the clutches of an old foe known simply as the Devil. It’s a world of double crosses, with no boundaries between the guilty and the innocent. It will take all of Drake’s wiles to get out alive.

In My TBR Stack:

After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Live and Beyond
by Bruce Greyson, M.D.
St. Martin's Essentials
Hardcover



From the publisher's website:

Cases of remarkable experiences on the threshold of death have been reported since ancient times, and are described today by 10% of people whose hearts stop. The medical world has generally ignored these “near-death experiences,” dismissing them as “tricks of the brain” or wishful thinking. But after his patients started describing events that he could not just sweep under the rug, Dr. Bruce Greyson began to investigate.

As a physician without a religious belief system, he approached near-death experiences from a scientific perspective. In After, he shares the transformative lessons he has learned over four decades of research. Our culture has tended to view dying as the end of our consciousness, the end of our existence—a dreaded prospect that for many people evokes fear and anxiety.

But Dr. Greyson shows how scientific revelations about the dying process can support an alternative theory. Dying could be the threshold between one form of consciousness and another, not an ending but a transition. This new perspective on the nature of death can transform the fear of dying that pervades our culture into a healthy view of it as one more milestone in the course of our lives. After challenges us to open our minds to these experiences and to what they can teach us, and in so doing, expand our understanding of consciousness and of what it means to be human.

On My Radar:

Footsteps of Federer: A Fan's Pilgrimage Across 7 Swiss Cantons in 10 Acts
by Dave Seminara
Post Hill Press
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Roger Federer could live anywhere in the world, but he always returns to the place he loves most: Switzerland. Dave Seminara is a mad traveler and tennis lifer who has written about Federer for The New York Times and other publications. A pair of autoimmune diseases and a knee surgery kept Dave from playing tennis for years, but as he inched toward recovery, he had a bright idea: why not start his tennis comeback on hallowed ground—courts that his hero Roger Federer graced in Switzerland.

Footsteps of Federer is a funny, novella-length account of Seminara’s travels across seven Swiss cantons in search of insights into Federer’s character, which is inextricably linked to his deep roots in, and love for, his country. Seminara timed his unique pilgrimage to the 2019 Swiss Indoors, where he had a chance to ask Roger a number of offbeat questions before and after Federer hoisted his record tenth title there. Seminara’s Federer pilgrimage took him to Switzerland’s most important abbey, where he prayed with Abbot Urban Federer; to the vineyard of Jakob Federer from Berneck, where the Federer clan originated from; to the stunning villa where Roger and Mirka were married; and to many of the neighborhoods and tennis clubs where Roger has lived and trained at over the years.

In My TBR Stack:

Fatal Intent
by Tammy Euliano
Oceanview Publishing
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

When her elderly patients start dying at home days after minor surgery, anesthesiologist Dr. Kate Downey wants to know why. The surgeon, not so much. “Old people die, that’s what they do,” is his response. When Kate presses, surgeon Charles Ricken places the blame squarely on her shoulders. Kate is currently on probation and the chief of staff sides with the surgeon, leaving Kate to prove her innocence and save her own career. With her husband in a prolonged coma, it’s all she has left.

Aided by her eccentric Great Aunt Irm, a precocious medical student, and the lawyer son of a victim, Kate launches her own unorthodox investigation of these unexpected deaths. As she comes closer to exposing the culprit’s identity, she faces professional intimidation, threats to her life, a home invasion, and, tragically, the suspicious death of someone close. The stakes escalate to the breaking point when Kate, under violent duress, is forced to choose which of her loved ones to save—and which must be sacrificed.

On My Radar:

The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer
by Liza Rodman and Jennifer Jordan
Atria Books
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

Growing up on Cape Cod in the 1960s, Liza Rodman was a lonely little girl. During the summers, while her mother worked days in a local motel and danced most nights in the Provincetown bars, her babysitter—the kind, handsome handyman at the motel where her mother worked—took her and her sister on adventures in his truck. He bought them popsicles and together, they visited his “secret garden” in the Truro woods. To Liza, he was one of the few kind and understanding adults in her life. Everyone thought he was just a “great guy.”

But there was one thing she didn’t know; their babysitter was a serial killer.

Some of his victims were buried—in pieces—right there, in his garden in the woods. Though Tony Costa’s gruesome case made screaming headlines in 1969 and beyond, Liza never made the connection between her friendly babysitter and the infamous killer of numerous women, including four in Massachusetts, until decades later.

Haunted by nightmares and horrified by what she learned, Liza became obsessed with the case. Now, she and cowriter Jennifer Jordan reveal the chilling and unforgettable true story of a charming but brutal psychopath through the eyes of a young girl who once called him her friend.