There’s a Book for That
THE INVENTION OF RUSSIA: FROM GORBACHEV'S FREEDOM TO PUTIN'S WAR by Arkady Ostrovsky
A highly original narrative history by The Economist’s Moscow Bureau Chief is a breathtakingly ambitious book that reaches back to the darkest days of the cold war to tell the story of the fight for the soul of a nation. With the deep insight only possible of a native son, Arkady Ostrovsky introduces us to the propagandists, oligarchs and fixers who have set Russia’s course since the collapse of the Soviet Union, inventing a new and more ominous identity for a country where ideas are all too often wielded like a cudgel.
THE PERFECT WEAPON: WAR, SABOTAGE, AND FEAR IN THE CYBER AGE by David E. Sanger
From the premiere New York Times national security correspondent, a stunning and incisive look into how cyberwarfare is influencing elections, threatening national security, and changing diplomacy and war.
THE FUTURE IS HISTORY: HOW TOTALITARIANISM RECLAIMED RUSSIA by Masha Gessen
Winner of the 2017 National Book Award for Nonfiction: The essential journalist and bestselling biographer of Vladimir Putin reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia surrendered to a virulent new strain of autocracy. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time.
A VERY EXPENSIVE POISON: THE ASSASSINATION OF ALEXANDER LITVINENKO AND PUTIN'S WAR WITH THE WEST by Luke Harding
A true story of murder and conspiracy that points directly to Vladimir Putin, by The Guardian’s former Moscow bureau chief. On November 1, 2006, journalist and Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London. He died twenty-two days later. The cause of death? Polonium—a rare, lethal, and highly radioactive substance. Here Luke Harding unspools a real-life political assassination story—complete with KGB, CIA, MI6, and Russian mobsters. From his investigations of the downing of flight MH17 to the Panama Papers, Harding sheds a terrifying light on Russia’s fracturing relationship with the West.
THE NEW TSAR: THE RISE AND REIGN OF VLADIMIR PUTIN by Steven Lee Myers
Former New York Times Moscow bureau chief Steven Lee Myers has followed Vladimir Putin’s journey for many years, and gives us the fullest, most absorbing account we have of his rise to power: The epic tale of Putin’s path to power—detailing the current Russian president’s emergence from shrouded obscurity and deprivation to become one of the most consequential and complicated leaders in modern history.
TRUMP AND A POST-TRUTH WORLD: AN EVOLUTIONARY SELF-CORRECTION by Ken Wilber
The world is in turmoil. As populist waves roil the Brexit-bound U.K., along with Europe, Turkey, Russia, Asia—and most visibly, the U.S. with the election of Donald Trump—nationalist and extremist political forces threaten the progress made over many decades. Democracies are reeling in the face of nihilism and narcissism. How did we get here? And how, with so much antagonism, cynicism, and discord, can we mend the ruptures in our societies? A cutting-edge philosopher of our times, Ken Wilber, offers a provocative and balanced examination of our current social and political situation: It is only when members of society’s leading edge can heal themselves that a new, Integral evolutionary force can emerge to move us beyond the social and political turmoil of our current time to offer genuine leadership toward greater wholeness.
PUTIN'S LABYRINTH: SPIES, MURDER, AND THE DARK HEART OF THE NEW RUSSIA by Steve Levine
For politicos, dissidents, and Eastern European buffs, a brazen book about the culture of murder in Russia.
THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE: THE UNLIKELY RISE OF VLADIMIR PUTIN by Masha Gessen
The Man Without a Face is the chilling account of how a low- level, small-minded KGB operative ascended to the Russian presidency and, in an astonishingly short time, destroyed years of progress and made his country once more a threat to her own people and to the world. As a journalist living in Moscow, Masha Gessen experienced this history firsthand and has drawn on information and sources no other writer has tapped.
COLLUSION: SECRET MEETINGS, DIRTY MONEY, AND HOW RUSSIA HELPED DONALD TRUMP WIN by Luke Harding
From the author of The Snowden Files comes an explosive exposé that lays out the Trump administration’s ties to Moscow, and Russia’s decades-in-the-making political game that upended the 2016 election.
FACTS AND FEARS: HARD TRUTHS FROM A LIFE IN INTELLIGENCE by James R. Clapper, Trey Brown
The former Director of National Intelligence’s candid and compelling account of the intelligence community’s successes—and failures—in facing some of the greatest threats to America.
Coming in September:
HOUSE OF TRUMP, HOUSE OF PUTIN: THE UNTOLD STORY OF DONALD TRUMP AND THE RUSSIAN MAFIA by Craig Unger
House of Trump, House Of Putin offers the first comprehensive investigation into the decades-long relationship among Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Russian Mafia that ultimately helped win Trump the White House.
For more on these and related titles, visit the collection: Russia
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WITHOUT PRECEDENT: CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN MARSHALL AND HIS TIMES by Joel Richard Paul
This is the astonishing true story of how a rough-cut frontiersman - born in Virginia in 1755 and with little formal education - invented himself as one of the nation’s preeminent lawyers and politicians who then reinvented the Constitution to forge a stronger nation. Without Precedent is the engrossing account of the life and times of this exceptional man, who with cunning, imagination, and grace shaped America’s future as he held together the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the country itself.
DISSENT AND THE SUPREME COURT: ITS ROLE IN THE COURT'S HISTORY AND THE NATION'S CONSTITUTIONAL DIALOGUE by Melvin I. Urofsky
In Dissent and the Supreme Court, acclaimed historian Melvin Urofsky examines the great dissents throughout the Court’s history. Urofsky looks at the many aspects of American constitutional life that were affected by the Earl Warren Court, the rise of conservatism, and the present age of incivility. Yet within the Marble Palace, the members of the Supreme Court continue to hear arguments, vote, and draft majority opinions, while the minority continues to “respectfully dissent.” The Framers understood that if a constitution doesn’t grow and adapt, it atrophies and dies, and if it does, so does the democratic society it has supported.
THE COURT AND THE WORLD: AMERICAN LAW AND THE NEW GLOBAL REALITIES by Stephen Breyer
A fascinating account of how an increasingly globalized and interdependent world influences the deliberations of America’s highest court, by the sitting justice and author of Making Our Democracy Work and Active Liberty.
SHOWDOWN: THURGOOD MARSHALL AND THE SUPREME COURT NOMINATION THAT CHANGED AMERICA by Wil Haygood
An authoritative biography of the first African American Supreme Court justice—one of the giants of the civil rights movement, and one of the most transforming Supreme Court justices of the twentieth century.
THE U.S. SUPREME COURT DECISION ON MARRIAGE EQUALITY, as delivered by Justice Anthony Kennedy
A beautifully packaged gift edition of Obergefell et al. v. Hodges, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s landmark Supreme Court decision on marriage equality
SUPREME COURT DECISIONS by Richard Beeman, Jay M. Feinman
The Supreme Court is one of America's leading expositors of and participants in debates about American values. Legal expert Jay M. Feinman introduces and selects some of the most important Supreme Court Decisions of all time, which touch on the very foundations of American society. These cases cover a vast array of issues, from the powers of government and freedom of speech to freedom of religion and civil liberties. Feinman offers commentary on each case and excerpts from the opinions of the Justices that show the range of debate in the Supreme Court and its importance to civil society.
THE NINE: INSIDE THE SECRET WORLD OF THE SUPREME COURT by Jeffrey Toobin
In this gripping and definitive account of the modern Supreme Court, acclaimed journalist Jeffrey Toobin pulls back the curtain on one of the least well-known - and most important - forces shaping contemporary America.
Coming in September…
THE MOST DANGEROUS BRANCH: INSIDE THE SUPREME COURT'S ASSAULT ON THE CONSTITUTION by David A. Kaplan
In the bestsellling tradition of The Nine and The Brethren, David A. Kaplan, the former legal affairs editor of Newsweek, takes us into the secret world of the Supreme Court. Never before has the Court been more central in American life. It is the nine justices who too often now decide the controversial issues of our time—from abortion and same-sex marriage, to gun control, campaign finance and voting rights. Kaplan shows how too often the nine justices subvert the role of other branches of government—and how we’ve come to accept that at our peril.
For more on these and related titles, visit the collection: Supreme Court
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THE LINE BECOMES A RIVER: DISPATCHES FROM THE BORDER by Francisco Cantú
For Francisco Cantú, the border is in the blood: his mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. Haunted by the landscape of his youth, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners are posted to remote regions crisscrossed by drug routes: They haul in the dead and deliver to detention those they find alive. Cantú tries not to think where the stories go from there. Plagued by nightmares, he abandons the Patrol for civilian life. But when an immigrant friend travels to Mexico to visit his dying mother and does not return, Cantú must know the whole story. Searing and unforgettable, The Line Becomes a River goes behind the headlines, making urgent and personal the violence our border wreaks on both sides of the line.
WE BUILT THE WALL: HOW THE US KEEPS OUT ASYLUM SEEKERS FROM MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA AND BEYOND by Eileen Truax
A Mexican-American lawyer exposes corruption in the US asylum procedure and despotism in the Mexican government
We Built the Wall is an immersive look at the new front in the immigration wars. It follows the gripping stories of people like Saúl Reyes, forced to flee his home after a drug cartel murdered several members of his family, and Delmy Calderón, a forty-two-year-old woman leading an eight-woman hunger strike in an El Paso detention center. Truax tracks the heart-wrenching trials of refugees like Yamil, the husband and father who chose a prison cell over deportation to Mexico, and Rocío Hernández, a nineteen-year-old who spent nearly her entire life in Texas and is now forced to live in a city where narcotraffickers operate with absolute impunity.
DETAINED AND DEPORTED: STORIES OF IMMIGRANT FAMILIES UNDER FIRE by Margaret Regan
Compelling and heart-wrenching, Detained and Deported offers a rare glimpse into the lives of people ensnared in America’s immigration dragnet.
MIDNIGHT IN MEXICO: A REPORTER’S JOURNEY THROUGH A COUNTRY’S DESCENT INTO DARKNESS by Alfredo Corchado
In a country where the powerful are rarely scrutinized, noted Mexican American journalist Alfredo Corchado refused to shrink from reporting on government corruption, murders in Juarez, or the ruthless drug cartels of Mexico. A paramilitary group spun off from the Gulf cartel, the Zetas, controls key drug routes in the north of the country. In 2007, Corchado received a tip that he could be their next target—and he had twenty four hours to find out if the threat was true. Rather than leave his country, Corchado went out into the Mexican countryside to investigate the threat.
Midnight in Mexico is the story of one man’s quest to report the truth of his country—as he raced to save his own life.
THE DEATH OF JOSSELINE: IMMIGRATION STORIES FROM THE ARIZONA BORDERLANDS by Margaret Regan
Dispatches from Arizona—the front line of a massive human migration—including the voices of migrants, Border Patrol, ranchers, activists, and others.
COYOTES: A JOURNEY ACROSS BORDERS WITH AMERICA'S MEXICAN MIGRANTS by Ted Conover
To discover what becomes of Mexicans who come illegally to the United States, Conover disguised himself as an illegal alien, traveling and working across America for more than a year. This is the chronicle of his journey.
For more on these and related titles, visit the collection: U.S.-Mexico Border
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SOMETHING IN THE WATER: A NOVEL by Catherine Steadman
Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick for June!
Erin and Mark seem to have it all: he’s a successful banker, she’s a documentary filmmaker on the brink of a professional breakthrough; they’re young and in love, about to embark on their dream honeymoon to Bora Bora. But when, after a blissful day of scuba diving, they discover a mysterious bag filled with incalculable riches, their subsequent choices trigger a sequence of events that will change their lives—and their marriage—forever.
INTO THE WATER: A NOVEL by Paula Hawkins
When a single mother and a teenage girl each turn up dead at the bottom of the river, just weeks apart, the ensuing investigation dredges up a complicated history. Like she did in The Girl on the Train, Hawkins’s Into the Water hinges on a powerful understanding of human instincts and the damage they can inflict.
THE WATERS & THE WILD: A NOVEL by DeSales Harrison
A debut novel about a New York City psychoanalyst, and single dad of a teenage daughter, haunted by a past crime and a past lover—a story that examines what it means to love, to betray, and to forgive.
THE WATER KNIFE by Paolo Bacigalupi
In the near future, the Colorado River has dwindled to a trickle. Detective, assassin, and spy, Angel Velasquez “cuts” water for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, ensuring that its lush archology developments can bloom in Las Vegas. When rumors of a game-changing water source surface in Phoenix, Angel is sent south, hunting for answers that seem to evaporate as the heat index soars and the landscape becomes more and more oppressive.
THE SHAPE OF WATER by Andrea Camilleri, Stephen Sartarelli (translator)
The Shape of Water is the first book in the sly, witty, and engaging Inspector Montalbano mystery series with its sardonic take on Sicilian life.
SONG OF THE WATER SAINTS: A NOVEL by Nelly Rosario
This vibrant, provocative début novel explores the dreams and struggles of three generations of Dominican women.
OUR TOWNS: A 100,000-MILE JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF AMERICA by James Fallows, Deborah Fallows
For the last five years, James and Deborah Fallows have been traveling across America in a single-engine prop airplane. Visiting dozens of towns, they have met hundreds of civic leaders, workers, immigrants, educators, environmentalists, artists, public servants, librarians, business people, city planners, students, and entrepreneurs to take the pulse and understand the prospects of places that usually draw notice only after a disaster or during a political campaign. Their view of the country is as complex and contradictory as America itself, but it also reflects the energy, the generosity and compassion, the dreams, and the determination of many who are in the midst of making things better. Our Towns is the story of their journey—and an account of a country busy remaking itself.
THE SOUL OF AMERICA: THE BATTLE FOR OUR BETTER ANGELS by Jon Meacham
We have been here before. In this timely and revealing book, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history when hope overcame division and fear. With clarity and purpose, Meacham explores contentious periods and how presidents and citizens came together to defeat the forces of anger, intolerance, and extremism.
FANTASYLAND: HOW AMERICA WENT HAYWIRE: A 500-YEAR HISTORY by Kurt Andersen
From a razor-sharp thinker, a new understanding of our post-truth world—the American instinct to believe in make-believe, from the Pilgrims to P.T. Barnum to Disneyland to zealots of every stripe…to Donald Trump.
SCARS OF INDEPENDENCE: AMERICA'S VIOLENT BIRTH by Holger Hoock
The American Revolution is often portrayed as an orderly, restrained rebellion, with brave patriots defending their noble ideals against an oppressive empire. But as historian Holger Hoock shows in this deeply researched and elegantly written account of America’s founding, the Revolution was also a profoundly violent civil war—one that shaped the nation, and the British Empire, in ways we have only begun to understand. Vivid and authoritative, Scars of Independence offers a new origins story that is both relevant and necessary—an important reminder that forging a nation is rarely bloodless.
TALES OF TWO AMERICAS: STORIES OF INEQUALITY IN A DIVIDED NATION by John Freeman
Thirty-four major contemporary writers—including Anthony Doerr, Ann Patchett, Roxane Gay, Edwidge Danticat, Rebecca Solnit, Joyce Carol Oates, Hector Tobar, and Karen Russell—examine life in a deeply divided America. Tales of Two Americas demonstrates how boundaries can break down when experiences are shared, and that in sharing our stories we can help to alleviate a suffering that touches us all.
ONE SUMMER: AMERICA, 1927 by Bill Bryson
The summer of 1927 began with Charles Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic. Meanwhile, Babe Ruth was closing in on the home run record. In Newark, New Jersey, Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly sat atop a flagpole for twelve days, and in Chicago, the gangster Al Capone was tightening his grip on bootlegging. The first true “talking picture,” Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer, was filmed, forever changing the motion picture industry. All this and much, much more transpired in the year Americans attempted and accomplished outsized things—and when the twentieth century truly became the American century. One Summer transforms it all into narrative nonfiction of the highest order.
THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS: THE EPIC STORY OF AMERICA'S GREAT MIGRATION by Isabel Wilkerson
In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.
THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA'S BEST IDEA by Dayton Duncan, Ken Burns
America’s national parks spring from an idea as radical as the Declaration of Independence: that the nation’s most magnificent and sacred places should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone. In this evocative and lavishly illustrated narrative, Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan delve into the history of the park idea, from the first sighting by white men in 1851 of the valley that would become Yosemite and the creation of the world’s first national park at Yellowstone in 1872, through the most recent additions to a system that now encompasses nearly four hundred sites and 84 million acres.
TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY IN SEARCH OF AMERICA by John Steinbeck
An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers. To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.
FOR YOUNGER READERS
WORDS THAT BUILT A NATION: VOICES OF DEMOCRACY THAT HAVE SHAPED AMERICA’S HISTORY by Marilyn Miller, Ellen Scordato and Dan Tucker; Illustrated by Mary Kate Mcdevitt
Words that Built a Nation was hailed for bringing together the United States’ most important historical essays, speeches, and documents into one accessible collection for kids. This history lovers’ must-have has been revised, revamped, and expanded for the 21st century.
WE CAME TO AMERICA by Faith Ringgold
From the Native Americans who first called this land their home, to the millions of people who have flocked to its shores ever since, America is a country rich in diversity. Some of our ancestors were driven by dreams and hope. Vividly expressed in Faith Ringgold’s sumptuous colors and patterns, We Came to America is an ode to every American who came before us, and a tribute to each child who will carry its proud message of diversity into our nation’s future.
THE CAMPING TRIP THAT CHANGED AMERICA: THEODORE ROOSEVELT, JOHN MUIR, AND OUR NATIONAL PARKS by Barb Rosenstock; Illustrated by Mordecai Gerstein
Caldecott medalist Mordicai Gerstein captures the majestic redwoods of Yosemite in this little-known but important story from our nation's history. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt joined naturalist John Muir on a trip to Yosemite. Camping by themselves in the uncharted woods, the two men saw sights and held discussions that would ultimately lead to the establishment of our National Parks.
For more on these and other great books for dad, visit the collection: America
There’s a Book for That! is brought to you by Penguin Random House’s Sales department. Please follow our Tumblr by clicking here—and share this link with your accounts: theresabookforthat.tumblr.com. Thank you! Did you see something on the news or read about something on your commute? Perhaps you noticed something trending on Twitter? Did you think: “There’s a book for that!”? Then please, send it our way at theresabookforthat@penguinrandomhouse.com
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ROOM TO DREAM: A LIFE by David Lynch, Kristine McKenna; Read by David Lynch and Kristine McKenna
An unprecedented look into the personal and creative life of the visionary auteur David Lynch, through his own words and those of his closest colleagues, friends, and family — adapted by David Lynch from the print book especially for this audio program. With insights into…Eraserhead; The Elephant Man; Dune; Blue Velvet; Twin Peaks; Mulholland Drive and more!
YOU CAN'T SPELL AMERICA WITHOUT ME: THE REALLY TREMENDOUS INSIDE STORY OF MY FANTASTIC FIRST YEAR AS PRESIDENT Donald J. Trump (A So-Called Parody) by Alec Baldwin, Kurt Andersen
Political satire as deeper truth: Donald Trump’s presidential memoir, as recorded by two world-renowned Trump scholars, and experts on greatness generally
UNCOMMON TYPE: SOME STORIES by Tom Hanks; Read by Tom Hanks
A collection of seventeen wonderful short stories showing that two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor. Featuring additional performances by Peter Gerety, Peter Scolari, Cecily Strong, Holland Taylor, and Wilmer Valderrama on “Stay With Us.”
HEARTBURN by Nora Ephron; Read by Meryl Streep
Is it possible to write a sidesplitting novel about the breakup of the perfect marriage? If the writer is Nora Ephron, the answer is a resounding yes. For in this inspired confection of adultery, revenge, group therapy, and pot roast, the creator of “Sleepless in Seattle” reminds us that comedy depends on anguish as surely as a proper gravy depends on flour and butter.
M TRAIN by Patti Smith; Read by Patti Smith
From the National Book Award–winning author of Just Kids: an unforgettable odyssey of a legendary artist, told through the prism of the cafés and haunts she has worked in around the world. It is a book Patti Smith has described as “a roadmap to my life.”
FOR ALL AGES
GOOD NIGHT STORIES FOR REBEL GIRLS
The beloved New York Times bestsellers and Kickstarter crowdfunding sensations are available on audio for the first time, read by a star-studded fierce female cast including Alicia Keys, Ashley Judd, Danai Gurira, Esperanza Spalding, Janeane Garofalo, Mozhan Marnò, Phillipa Soo, Rowan Blanchard, and Samira Wiley! Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls reinvents fairy tales, inspiring listeners with the stories of 100 heroic women, from Elizabeth I to Serena Williams. Painters, scientists, dancers, chefs, astronauts, jazz singers, pharaohs, boxers, writers, political leaders…from every corner of the globe!
THE PURLOINING OF PRINCE OLEOMARGARINE by Mark Twain, Philip C. Stead, Erin Stead; Read by Keegan-Michael Key and Philip Stead
A never-before-published, previously unfinished Mark Twain children’s story is brought to life by Caldecott Medal winners Philip Stead and Erin Stead.
In a hotel in Paris one evening in the 1879, Mark Twain sat with his young daughters, who begged their father for a story. Choosing a picture from a magazine to get started, Twain began telling them the tale of Johnny, a poor boy in possession of some magical seeds, who finds himself on a quest to rescue a stolen prince. Later, Twain would jot down some rough notes about the story, but the tale was left unfinished…until now. With Mark Bramhall as the voice of Mark Twain, Julia Whelan as Susy Clemens, and an Editor’s Note read by Frances Gilbert.
APPLEBLOSSOM THE POSSUM by Holly Goldberg Sloan: Read by Dustin Hoffman
Fans of E.B. White and Dick King-Smith will adore this heartwarming and funny animal adventure by the award-winning author of Counting by 7s.
A WRINKLE IN TIME by Madeleine L'Engle; Read by Hope Davis
Madeleine L’Engle’s ground-breaking, Newbery Medal-winning science fiction and fantasy classic was adapted into a major motion picture earlier this year. This movie tie-in audiobook includes an introduction read by director Ava DuVernay, a foreword read by the author, and an afterword read by Madeleine L’Engle’s granddaughter Charlotte Jones Voiklis.
THE WATSONS GO TO BIRMINGHAM - 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis; Read by LeVar Burton
Enter the hilarious world of ten-year-old Kenny and his family, the Weird Watsons of Flint, Michigan. There's Momma, Dad, little sister Joetta, Kenny, and Byron, Kenny's older brother, who, at thirteen, is an "official juvenile delinquent." When Momma and Dad decide it's time for a visit to Grandma, Dad comes home with the amazing Ultra-Glide, and the Watsons set out on a trip like no other. Heading South, they're going to Birmingham, Alabama, and toward one of the darkest moments in America's history. By turns comic, tragic, and touching, this remarkable Newbery Honor work, delightfully performed by LeVar Burton in this unabridged production, will delight listeners young and old as they meet Christopher Paul Curtis, a storyteller of bold ambition and a true and original voice and his inimitable Watsons.
For more on these and other great audiobooks, visit the collection: June is Audiobook Month
There’s a Book for That! is brought to you by Penguin Random House’s Sales department. Please follow our Tumblr by clicking here—and share this link with your accounts: theresabookforthat.tumblr.com. Thank you! Did you see something on the news or read about something on your commute? Perhaps you noticed something trending on Twitter? Did you think: “There’s a book for that!”? Then please, send it our way at theresabookforthat@penguinrandomhouse.com
A FRENCH WEDDING by Hannah Tunnicliffe
The Big Chill meets The Little French Bistro in this sumptuous novel about six college friends reuniting on the coast of Brittany to celebrate one of their own’s fortieth birthday. With delicious food and plenty of wine, the table is set for tricky romantic entanglements and the spilling of longheld secrets.
A NANTUCKET WEDDING: A NOVEL by Nancy Thayer
It’s summer on Nantucket and Alison is finally engaged to the love of her life. Things would be perfect—if only she could make peace between her daughters. Felicity, wild at heart yet a loving mother to her own children, and Jane, the extremely organized and high-earning businesswoman, arrive on the island hoping to get through these next few weeks without ruining their mother’s big day. But when Felicity’s husband reveals a long-term affair and Jane falls for her soon-to-be step-brother, everyone gets way more drama than they bargained for.
THE WEDDING DATE by Jasmine Guillory
“What a charming, warm, sexy gem of a novel….One of the best books I’ve read in a while.”—Roxane Gay
A groomsman and his last-minute guest are about to discover if a fake date can go the distance in this fun and flirty multicultural romance debut.
WEDDING STORIES by Diana Secker Tesdell
A bouquet of great wedding stories—by turns funny, passionate, bittersweet, and romantic—by famous writers from across the past two centuries. From F. Scott Fitzgerald to Lorrie Moore, and from Stephen Crane to Edwidge Danticat. EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY POCKET CLASSICS. The stories collected here—including such gems as Stephen Crane’s “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” O. Henry’s “The Marry Month of May,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Bridal Party,” Joy Williams’s “The Wedding,” and Lorrie Moore’s “Thank You For Having Me”—encompass comic wedding mishaps, engagements broken and mended, honeymoon adventures, and scenes both heartwarming and heartbreaking.
SAVE THE DATE: THE OCCASIONAL MORTIFICATIONS OF A SERIAL WEDDING GUEST by Jen Doll
An “engaging and disarmingly honest” (People) examination of the search for love and the meaning of marriage in a time of anxiety, independence, and indecision.
Wedding experiences come in as varied an assortment as the gowns at any bridal shop, and Doll turns a keen eye to each, delivering a heartfelt exploration of contemporary relationships. Funny, honest, and affecting, Save the Date is a fresh and spirited look at the many ways in which we connect to one another.
WEDDING NIGHT: A NOVEL by Sophie Kinsella
Lottie is thirty-three and sick of long-term boyfriends who don’t want to commit to marriage. When her old boyfriend Ben reappears after fifteen years and reminds her of their pact to get married if they were both still single at thirty, she jumps at the chance. There will be no dates and no engagement—just a straight wedding march to the altar! Next comes the honeymoon on the Greek island where they first met. But not everyone is thrilled with Lottie and Ben’s rushed marriage, and family and friends are determined to intervene. Will Lottie and Ben have a wedding night to remember or one to forget?
THE WEDDING: A NOVEL by Dorothy West
In her final novel, Dorothy West offers an intimate glimpse into African American middle class. Set on bucolic Martha's Vineyard in the 1950s, The Wedding tells the story of life in the Oval, a proud, insular community made up of the best and brightest of the East Coast's black bourgeoisie. With elegant, luminous prose, Dorothy West crowns her literary career by illustrating one family's struggle to break the shackles of race and class.
For more on these and other great books for dad, visit the collection: Wedding Lit
There’s a Book for That! is brought to you by Penguin Random House’s Sales department. Please follow our Tumblr by clicking here—and share this link with your accounts: theresabookforthat.tumblr.com. Thank you! Did you see something on the news or read about something on your commute? Perhaps you noticed something trending on Twitter? Did you think: “There’s a book for that!”? Then please, send it our way at theresabookforthat@penguinrandomhouse.com
GHOSTBUSTER'S DAUGHTER: LIFE WITH MY DAD, HAROLD RAMIS by Violet Ramis Stiel
From the daughter of comedy legend Harold Ramis (and featuring a Foreword by Seth Rogen) comes a hilarious and heartwarming account of his life, work, and legacy.
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.
DAD IS FAT by Jim Gaffigan
In his New York Times bestseller, popular comedian—and father of five!—Jim Gaffigan shares his fresh and hilarious observations on family life. Dad Is Fat is sharply observed, explosively funny, and a cry for help from a man who has realized he and his wife are outnumbered in their own home.
NINE LESSONS I LEARNED FROM MY FATHER by Murray Howe
Part Tuesdays with Morrie, part Mr. Hockey, Nine Lessons I Learned from My Father is a son’s intimate account of all that lies behind the towering legacy of the beloved Gordie Howe.
AN ODYSSEY: A FATHER, A SON, AND AN EPIC by Daniel Mendelsohn
From award-winning memoirist and critic, and bestselling author of The Lost comes a deeply moving tale of a father and son’s transformative journey in reading—and reliving—Homer’s epic masterpiece.
THE RETURN: FATHERS, SONS AND THE LAND IN BETWEEN by Hisham Matar
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
In 2012, after the overthrow of Qaddafi, the acclaimed novelist Hisham Matar journeys to his native Libya after an absence of thirty years. The Return is the memoir of a son’s search for the truth behind his father’s disappearance.
THE FATHER: POEMS by Sharon Olds
The Father is a sequence of poems, a daughter’s vision of a father’s illness and death. It chronicles these events in a connected narrative, from the onset of the illness to reflections in the years after the death. The book is, most of all, a series of acts of understanding. The poems are impelled by a passion to know, and a freedom to follow wherever the truth may lead. The book goes into area of feeling and experience rarely entered in poetry.
FATHER AND SON: A STUDY OF TWO TEMPERAMENTS by Edmund Gosse, Peter Abbs
Father and Son, a memoir first published anonymously in 1907, focuses on the relationship between a sternly religious father who rejects the new evolutionary theories of his scientific colleague Charles Darwin and the son's gradual coming of age and rejection of his father's fundamentalist religion. It was immediately acclaimed for its courage in flouting the conventions of Victorian autobiography and is still a moving account of self-discovery.
RENOIR, MY FATHER by Jean Renoir
In this delightful memoir, Jean Renoir, the director of such masterpieces of the cinema as Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game, tells the life story of his father, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the great Impressionist painter. Jean Renoir’s book is both a wonderful double portrait of father and son and, in the words of the distinguished art historian John Golding, it "remains the best account of Renoir, and, furthermore, among the most beautiful and moving biographies we have."
FATHER AND SON by E.O Plauen; Afterword by Elke Schulze; Translated from the German by Joel Roteberg
Father and Son is one of the most beloved comic strips ever drawn—an uproarious, timeless ode to the pleasures, pitfalls, and endless absurdity of family life.
FOR YOUNGER READERS
MY DAD IS THE BEST PLAYGROUND by Luciana Navarro Powell
This joyful story celebrates Dad as the most fun person in the world and the best playground ever! He’s the highest swing and a great climbing wall, he’s a bouncing trampoline and merry as a merry-go-round. And then, when playtime is over, Dad is the best for reading and snuggling with before bed. Luciana Navarro Powell’s spirited writing is perfectly paired with her colorful, energetic, and very humorous artwork. Dads and their kids will love reading and rereading this glorious celebration of fathers.
MY DAD USED TO BE SO COOL by Keith Negley
Keith Negley’s playful and emotional art tells this story of a new father who is no longer the cool guy he once was. He looks back wistfully on his crazy times playing in a band, riding a motorcycle, and getting tattoos. Those days may be behind him, but his young son still thinks he’s the coolest guy in the world.
PET DAD by Elanna Allen
Plum wants the perfect pet, but instead realizes she has the perfect dad in this charming and hilarious picture book that’s great for father’s day.
For more on these and other great books for dad, visit the collection: Fathers Day 2018
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HOW TO CHANGE YOUR MIND: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan
A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpected new frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world. The true subject of Pollan’s “mental travelogue” is not just psychedelic drugs, but the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both struggle and beauty, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives.
TRIP: PSYCHEDELICS, ALIENATION, AND CHANGE by Tao Lin
Part memoir, part history, part journalistic exposé, Trip is a look at psychedelic drugs, literature, and alienation from one of the twenty-first century’s most innovative novelists—The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for a new generation.
A REALLY GOOD DAY: HOW MICRODOSING MADE A MEGA DIFFERENCE IN MY MOOD, MY MARRIAGE, AND MY LIFE by Ayelet Waldman
A memoir of a renowned writer’s struggle with mood storms that led her to try a remedy as drastic as it is forbidden: microdoses of LSD. The quest to have “a really good day” provides a window into the complex world of a once-infamous drug seen through new eyes.
As Waldman charts her experience over the course of a month, during which she achieved a newfound feeling of serenity, she also explores the history and mythology of LSD, the cutting-edge research into the drug, and the byzantine policies that control it. Drawing on her experience as a federal public defender, and as the mother of teenagers, and her research into the therapeutic value of psychedelics, Waldman has produced a book that is candid, revealing and completely enthralling.
THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE: A MANUAL BASED ON THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD by Timothy Leary
The Psychedelic Experience, created in the movement’s early years by the prophetic shaman-professors Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), is a foundational text that serves as a model and a guide for all subsequent mind-expanding inquiries. In this wholly unique book, the authors provide an interpretation of an ancient sacred manuscript, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, from a psychedelic perspective. The Psychedelic Experience describes their discoveries in broadening spiritual consciousness through a combination of Tibetan meditation techniques and psychotropic substances.
ACID TEST: LSD, ECSTASY, AND THE POWER TO HEAL by Tom Shroder
“A book that should start a long-overdue national conversation.” —Dave Barry
While LSD and MDMA have proven extraordinarily effective in treating anxiety disorders such as PTSD, they still remain off-limits to the millions who might benefit from them. Through the stories of three very different men, award-winning journalist Tom Shroder covers the drugs’ roller-coaster history from their initial reception in the 1950s to the negative stereotypes that persist today. At a moment when popular opinion is rethinking the potential benefits of some illegal drugs, and with new research coming out every day, Acid Test is a fascinating and informative must-read.
HALLUCINATIONS by Oliver Sacks
Here, with his usual elegance, curiosity, and compassion, Dr. Sacks weaves together stories of his patients and of his own mind-altering experiences to illuminate what hallucinations tell us about the organization and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture’s folklore and art, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all, a vital part of the human condition.
BREAKING OPEN THE HEAD: A PSYCHEDELIC JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF CONTEMPORARY SHAMANISM by Daniel Pinchbeck
Breaking Open the Head is brave participatory journalism at its best, a vivid account of psychic and intellectual experiences that opened doors in the wall of Western rationalism and completed Daniel Pinchbeck's personal transformation from a jaded Manhattan journalist to shamanic initiate and grateful citizen of the cosmos.
TRIPPING: AN ANTHOLOGY OF TRUE-LIFE PSYCHEDELIC ADVENTURES by Charles Hayes
In Tripping, Charles Hayes has gathered fifty narratives about unforgettable psychedelic experiences from an international array of subjects representing all walks of life—respectable Baby Boomers, aging hippies, young ravers, and accomplished writers such as John Perry Barlow, Anne Waldman, Robert Charles Wilson, Paul Devereux, and Tim Page. Taking a balanced, objective approach, the book depicts a broad spectrum of altered states, from the sublime to the terrifying.
For more on these and related titles visit Psychedelics
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PRIDE: THE STORY OF HARVEY MILK AND THE RAINBOW FLAG by Rob Sanders, Steven Salerno
Celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Rainbow Pride Flag with the very first picture book to tell its remarkable and inspiring history!
In this deeply moving and empowering true story, young readers will trace the life of the Gay Pride Flag, from its beginnings in 1978 with social activist Harvey Milk and designer Gilbert Baker to its spanning of the globe and its role in today’s world. Award-winning author Rob Sanders’s stirring text, and acclaimed illustrator Steven Salerno’s evocative images, combine to tell this remarkable - and undertold - story. A story of love, hope, equality, and pride.
ELEANOR AND HICK: THE LOVE AFFAIR THAT SHAPED A FIRST LADY by Susan Quinn
In 1932, as her husband assumed the presidency, Eleanor Roosevelt entered the claustrophobic, duty-bound existence of the First Lady with dread. A lifeline came to her in the form of a feisty campaign reporter for the Associated Press: Lorena Hickok. Over the next thirty years, until Eleanor’s death, the two women carried on an extraordinary relationship: They were, at different points, lovers, confidantes, professional advisors, and caring friends, and at every turn, the bond these women shared was grounded in their determination to better their troubled world.
BOY ERASED: A MEMOIR OF IDENTITY, FAITH, AND FAMILY by Garrard Conley
A beautiful, raw and compassionate memoir about identity, love, and understanding from a survivor of ’ex-gay’ therapy. Soon to be a feature film this Fall.
BECOMING NICOLE: THE TRANSFORMATION OF AN AMERICAN FAMILY by Amy Ellis Nutt
The Maines were a middle-class, hard-working, politically conservative New England couple whose lives felt complete when they adopted identical twin sons. As toddlers, Jonas was the son Kelly and Wayne Maines expected, but Wyatt was only interested in girls’ clothes and toys. By age five, this conflict was tearing Wyatt—and the family—apart. Today, Wyatt is Nicole. She and Jonas are now in college. This is the story of a journey that could have destroyed a family, but instead united them. It’s the story of a mother whose instincts told her her child needed love and help. It’s the story of a father who overcame confusion and fear to become a vocal advocate of trans rights. It’s the story of a brother who always loved and accepted his sister. And, especially, it’s the story of a young girl who found the courage to be herself.
BEING JAZZ: MY LIFE AS A (TRANSGENDER) TEEN by Jazz Jennings
Jazz Jennings is one of the youngest and most prominent voices in the national discussion about gender identity. At the age of five, Jazz transitioned to life as a girl, with the support of her parents. A year later, her parents allowed her to share her incredible journey in her first Barbara Walters interview, aired at a time when the public was much less knowledgeable or accepting of the transgender community. This groundbreaking interview was followed over the years by other high-profile interviews, a documentary, the launch of her YouTube channel, a picture book, and her own reality TV series—I Am Jazz—making her one of the most recognizable activists for transgender teens, children, and adults. In her remarkable memoir, Jazz reflects on these very public experiences and how they have helped shape the mainstream attitude toward the transgender community. But it hasn’t all been easy. Jazz has faced many challenges, bullying, discrimination, and rejection, yet she perseveres as she educates others about her life as a transgender teen.
HOW I LEARNED TO SNAP: A SMALL TOWN COMING-OUT AND COMING-OF-AGE STORY by Kirk Read
With bold Southern humor, journalist and performer Kirk Read takes readers on a guided tour of his precocious and courageous adolescence. Recalling his years as an openly gay high school student, Read describes how he navigated the hallways with his sense of humor and dignity intact. How I Learned to Snap is a refreshingly victim-free story in which queer teenagers are creative, resilient, and ultimately heroic.
BEFORE NIGHT FALLS: A MEMOIR by Reinaldo Arenas, Dolores M. Koch
The basis of Julian Schnabel's film of the same name, this is the shocking memoir by visionary Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas. It "is a book above all about being free," said The New York Review of Books--sexually, politically, artistically. Arenas recounts a stunning odyssey from his poverty-stricken childhood in rural Cuba and his adolescence as a rebel fighting for Castro, through his supression as a writer, imprisonment as a homosexual, his flight from Cuba via the Mariel boat lift, and his subsequent life and the events leading to his death in New York.
For more on these and related titles visit Pride 2018
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There's a Book for That: Russia, Putin and Trump
July 18, 2018
This week’s dominant story is President Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the time of this post, news and social media is abuzz with reactions to the summit on the heels of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report indicting 12 Russian officers. To add context, we offer the following expertly researched titles full of trenchant analysis and narrative history by world-renowned journalists and insiders:
THE INVENTION OF RUSSIA: FROM GORBACHEV'S FREEDOM TO PUTIN'S WAR by Arkady Ostrovsky
A highly original narrative history by The Economist’s Moscow Bureau Chief is a breathtakingly ambitious book that reaches back to the darkest days of the cold war to tell the story of the fight for the soul of a nation. With the deep insight only possible of a native son, Arkady Ostrovsky introduces us to the propagandists, oligarchs and fixers who have set Russia’s course since the collapse of the Soviet Union, inventing a new and more ominous identity for a country where ideas are all too often wielded like a cudgel.
THE PERFECT WEAPON: WAR, SABOTAGE, AND FEAR IN THE CYBER AGE by David E. Sanger
From the premiere New York Times national security correspondent, a stunning and incisive look into how cyberwarfare is influencing elections, threatening national security, and changing diplomacy and war.
THE FUTURE IS HISTORY: HOW TOTALITARIANISM RECLAIMED RUSSIA by Masha Gessen
Winner of the 2017 National Book Award for Nonfiction: The essential journalist and bestselling biographer of Vladimir Putin reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia surrendered to a virulent new strain of autocracy. Powerful and urgent, The Future Is History is a cautionary tale for our time and for all time.
A VERY EXPENSIVE POISON: THE ASSASSINATION OF ALEXANDER LITVINENKO AND PUTIN'S WAR WITH THE WEST by Luke Harding
A true story of murder and conspiracy that points directly to Vladimir Putin, by The Guardian’s former Moscow bureau chief. On November 1, 2006, journalist and Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London. He died twenty-two days later. The cause of death? Polonium—a rare, lethal, and highly radioactive substance. Here Luke Harding unspools a real-life political assassination story—complete with KGB, CIA, MI6, and Russian mobsters. From his investigations of the downing of flight MH17 to the Panama Papers, Harding sheds a terrifying light on Russia’s fracturing relationship with the West.
THE NEW TSAR: THE RISE AND REIGN OF VLADIMIR PUTIN by Steven Lee Myers
Former New York Times Moscow bureau chief Steven Lee Myers has followed Vladimir Putin’s journey for many years, and gives us the fullest, most absorbing account we have of his rise to power: The epic tale of Putin’s path to power—detailing the current Russian president’s emergence from shrouded obscurity and deprivation to become one of the most consequential and complicated leaders in modern history.
TRUMP AND A POST-TRUTH WORLD: AN EVOLUTIONARY SELF-CORRECTION by Ken Wilber
The world is in turmoil. As populist waves roil the Brexit-bound U.K., along with Europe, Turkey, Russia, Asia—and most visibly, the U.S. with the election of Donald Trump—nationalist and extremist political forces threaten the progress made over many decades. Democracies are reeling in the face of nihilism and narcissism. How did we get here? And how, with so much antagonism, cynicism, and discord, can we mend the ruptures in our societies? A cutting-edge philosopher of our times, Ken Wilber, offers a provocative and balanced examination of our current social and political situation: It is only when members of society’s leading edge can heal themselves that a new, Integral evolutionary force can emerge to move us beyond the social and political turmoil of our current time to offer genuine leadership toward greater wholeness.
PUTIN'S LABYRINTH: SPIES, MURDER, AND THE DARK HEART OF THE NEW RUSSIA by Steve Levine
For politicos, dissidents, and Eastern European buffs, a brazen book about the culture of murder in Russia.
THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE: THE UNLIKELY RISE OF VLADIMIR PUTIN by Masha Gessen
The Man Without a Face is the chilling account of how a low- level, small-minded KGB operative ascended to the Russian presidency and, in an astonishingly short time, destroyed years of progress and made his country once more a threat to her own people and to the world. As a journalist living in Moscow, Masha Gessen experienced this history firsthand and has drawn on information and sources no other writer has tapped.
COLLUSION: SECRET MEETINGS, DIRTY MONEY, AND HOW RUSSIA HELPED DONALD TRUMP WIN by Luke Harding
From the author of The Snowden Files comes an explosive exposé that lays out the Trump administration’s ties to Moscow, and Russia’s decades-in-the-making political game that upended the 2016 election.
FACTS AND FEARS: HARD TRUTHS FROM A LIFE IN INTELLIGENCE by James R. Clapper, Trey Brown
The former Director of National Intelligence’s candid and compelling account of the intelligence community’s successes—and failures—in facing some of the greatest threats to America.
Coming in September:
HOUSE OF TRUMP, HOUSE OF PUTIN: THE UNTOLD STORY OF DONALD TRUMP AND THE RUSSIAN MAFIA by Craig Unger
House of Trump, House Of Putin offers the first comprehensive investigation into the decades-long relationship among Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Russian Mafia that ultimately helped win Trump the White House.
For more on these and related titles, visit the collection: Russia
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There's a Book for That: The Supreme Court
July 11, 2018
Given Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s decision to retire, President Trump announced this week his nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh currently serves on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He will now make “courtesy calls” with senators though his confirmation hearings are yet to be announced.
The Supreme Court has also entered popular culture this summer with the hit documentary, RBG, about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. At 85 years-old, Justice Ginsburg is the eldest on the court. As testament to her popularity, FCTRY, a Brooklyn-based product design company, has raised more than $600,000 for a Ruth Bader Ginsburg life-like action figure, exceeding its funding goal of $15,000 by over 4,000%.
With public interest percolating, we’re highlighting books about the highest court in the land – its history, landmark cases, personalities and its crucial role in American democracy.
WITHOUT PRECEDENT: CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN MARSHALL AND HIS TIMES by Joel Richard Paul
This is the astonishing true story of how a rough-cut frontiersman - born in Virginia in 1755 and with little formal education - invented himself as one of the nation’s preeminent lawyers and politicians who then reinvented the Constitution to forge a stronger nation. Without Precedent is the engrossing account of the life and times of this exceptional man, who with cunning, imagination, and grace shaped America’s future as he held together the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the country itself.
DISSENT AND THE SUPREME COURT: ITS ROLE IN THE COURT'S HISTORY AND THE NATION'S CONSTITUTIONAL DIALOGUE by Melvin I. Urofsky
In Dissent and the Supreme Court, acclaimed historian Melvin Urofsky examines the great dissents throughout the Court’s history. Urofsky looks at the many aspects of American constitutional life that were affected by the Earl Warren Court, the rise of conservatism, and the present age of incivility. Yet within the Marble Palace, the members of the Supreme Court continue to hear arguments, vote, and draft majority opinions, while the minority continues to “respectfully dissent.” The Framers understood that if a constitution doesn’t grow and adapt, it atrophies and dies, and if it does, so does the democratic society it has supported.
THE COURT AND THE WORLD: AMERICAN LAW AND THE NEW GLOBAL REALITIES by Stephen Breyer
A fascinating account of how an increasingly globalized and interdependent world influences the deliberations of America’s highest court, by the sitting justice and author of Making Our Democracy Work and Active Liberty.
SHOWDOWN: THURGOOD MARSHALL AND THE SUPREME COURT NOMINATION THAT CHANGED AMERICA by Wil Haygood
An authoritative biography of the first African American Supreme Court justice—one of the giants of the civil rights movement, and one of the most transforming Supreme Court justices of the twentieth century.
THE U.S. SUPREME COURT DECISION ON MARRIAGE EQUALITY, as delivered by Justice Anthony Kennedy
A beautifully packaged gift edition of Obergefell et al. v. Hodges, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s landmark Supreme Court decision on marriage equality
SUPREME COURT DECISIONS by Richard Beeman, Jay M. Feinman
The Supreme Court is one of America's leading expositors of and participants in debates about American values. Legal expert Jay M. Feinman introduces and selects some of the most important Supreme Court Decisions of all time, which touch on the very foundations of American society. These cases cover a vast array of issues, from the powers of government and freedom of speech to freedom of religion and civil liberties. Feinman offers commentary on each case and excerpts from the opinions of the Justices that show the range of debate in the Supreme Court and its importance to civil society.
THE NINE: INSIDE THE SECRET WORLD OF THE SUPREME COURT by Jeffrey Toobin
In this gripping and definitive account of the modern Supreme Court, acclaimed journalist Jeffrey Toobin pulls back the curtain on one of the least well-known - and most important - forces shaping contemporary America.
Coming in September…
THE MOST DANGEROUS BRANCH: INSIDE THE SUPREME COURT'S ASSAULT ON THE CONSTITUTION by David A. Kaplan
In the bestsellling tradition of The Nine and The Brethren, David A. Kaplan, the former legal affairs editor of Newsweek, takes us into the secret world of the Supreme Court. Never before has the Court been more central in American life. It is the nine justices who too often now decide the controversial issues of our time—from abortion and same-sex marriage, to gun control, campaign finance and voting rights. Kaplan shows how too often the nine justices subvert the role of other branches of government—and how we’ve come to accept that at our peril.
For more on these and related titles, visit the collection: Supreme Court
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There's a Book for That: U.S.- Mexico Border
July 5, 2018
Mexico has a new President: Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, won Mexico’s presidential election by a large margin last Sunday. López Obrador’s party, Morena, is new and he defeated two candidates from parties that have ruled Mexico for a century. He ran on a message of tackling corruption and more government aid to the poor.
The United States’ current border issues with Mexico draw attention to the hardships of life there. CNN reports that nearly 35,000 individuals were arrested crossing the southern US border illegally in June. The separation of children from their families created public outcry and nationwide human rights protests. To educate ourselves further, here is a selection of books about Mexico and border crossing:
THE LINE BECOMES A RIVER: DISPATCHES FROM THE BORDER by Francisco Cantú
For Francisco Cantú, the border is in the blood: his mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. Haunted by the landscape of his youth, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners are posted to remote regions crisscrossed by drug routes: They haul in the dead and deliver to detention those they find alive. Cantú tries not to think where the stories go from there. Plagued by nightmares, he abandons the Patrol for civilian life. But when an immigrant friend travels to Mexico to visit his dying mother and does not return, Cantú must know the whole story. Searing and unforgettable, The Line Becomes a River goes behind the headlines, making urgent and personal the violence our border wreaks on both sides of the line.
WE BUILT THE WALL: HOW THE US KEEPS OUT ASYLUM SEEKERS FROM MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA AND BEYOND by Eileen Truax
A Mexican-American lawyer exposes corruption in the US asylum procedure and despotism in the Mexican government
We Built the Wall is an immersive look at the new front in the immigration wars. It follows the gripping stories of people like Saúl Reyes, forced to flee his home after a drug cartel murdered several members of his family, and Delmy Calderón, a forty-two-year-old woman leading an eight-woman hunger strike in an El Paso detention center. Truax tracks the heart-wrenching trials of refugees like Yamil, the husband and father who chose a prison cell over deportation to Mexico, and Rocío Hernández, a nineteen-year-old who spent nearly her entire life in Texas and is now forced to live in a city where narcotraffickers operate with absolute impunity.
DETAINED AND DEPORTED: STORIES OF IMMIGRANT FAMILIES UNDER FIRE by Margaret Regan
Compelling and heart-wrenching, Detained and Deported offers a rare glimpse into the lives of people ensnared in America’s immigration dragnet.
MIDNIGHT IN MEXICO: A REPORTER’S JOURNEY THROUGH A COUNTRY’S DESCENT INTO DARKNESS by Alfredo Corchado
In a country where the powerful are rarely scrutinized, noted Mexican American journalist Alfredo Corchado refused to shrink from reporting on government corruption, murders in Juarez, or the ruthless drug cartels of Mexico. A paramilitary group spun off from the Gulf cartel, the Zetas, controls key drug routes in the north of the country. In 2007, Corchado received a tip that he could be their next target—and he had twenty four hours to find out if the threat was true. Rather than leave his country, Corchado went out into the Mexican countryside to investigate the threat.
Midnight in Mexico is the story of one man’s quest to report the truth of his country—as he raced to save his own life.
THE DEATH OF JOSSELINE: IMMIGRATION STORIES FROM THE ARIZONA BORDERLANDS by Margaret Regan
Dispatches from Arizona—the front line of a massive human migration—including the voices of migrants, Border Patrol, ranchers, activists, and others.
COYOTES: A JOURNEY ACROSS BORDERS WITH AMERICA'S MEXICAN MIGRANTS by Ted Conover
To discover what becomes of Mexicans who come illegally to the United States, Conover disguised himself as an illegal alien, traveling and working across America for more than a year. This is the chronicle of his journey.
For more on these and related titles, visit the collection: U.S.-Mexico Border
There’s a Book for That! is brought to you by Penguin Random House’s Sales department. Please follow our Tumblr by clicking here—and share this link with your accounts: theresabookforthat.tumblr.com. Thank you! Did you see something on the news or read about something on your commute? Perhaps you noticed something trending on Twitter? Did you think: “There’s a book for that!”? Then please, send it our way at theresabookforthat@penguinrandomhouse.com
Friday Reads: Water
June 29, 2018
Welcome summer! As many of us seek bodies of water to refresh ourselves in the heat… refreshing reads with “water” in the title have become conspicuous to us. Water doesn’t only sustain, it entertains! So dip into this glimmering selection of fiction – including mysteries, thrillers, historical tales, and children’s classics – which take readers to exotic and domestic locales… Care for a ticket to Nevada or Bora Bora?
SOMETHING IN THE WATER: A NOVEL by Catherine Steadman
Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick for June!
Erin and Mark seem to have it all: he’s a successful banker, she’s a documentary filmmaker on the brink of a professional breakthrough; they’re young and in love, about to embark on their dream honeymoon to Bora Bora. But when, after a blissful day of scuba diving, they discover a mysterious bag filled with incalculable riches, their subsequent choices trigger a sequence of events that will change their lives—and their marriage—forever.
INTO THE WATER: A NOVEL by Paula Hawkins
When a single mother and a teenage girl each turn up dead at the bottom of the river, just weeks apart, the ensuing investigation dredges up a complicated history. Like she did in The Girl on the Train, Hawkins’s Into the Water hinges on a powerful understanding of human instincts and the damage they can inflict.
THE WATERS & THE WILD: A NOVEL by DeSales Harrison
A debut novel about a New York City psychoanalyst, and single dad of a teenage daughter, haunted by a past crime and a past lover—a story that examines what it means to love, to betray, and to forgive.
THE WATER KNIFE by Paolo Bacigalupi
In the near future, the Colorado River has dwindled to a trickle. Detective, assassin, and spy, Angel Velasquez “cuts” water for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, ensuring that its lush archology developments can bloom in Las Vegas. When rumors of a game-changing water source surface in Phoenix, Angel is sent south, hunting for answers that seem to evaporate as the heat index soars and the landscape becomes more and more oppressive.
THE SHAPE OF WATER by Andrea Camilleri, Stephen Sartarelli (translator)
The Shape of Water is the first book in the sly, witty, and engaging Inspector Montalbano mystery series with its sardonic take on Sicilian life.
SONG OF THE WATER SAINTS: A NOVEL by Nelly Rosario
This vibrant, provocative début novel explores the dreams and struggles of three generations of Dominican women.
There’s a Book for That: America
June 27, 2018
As we ready ourselves for the festivities of July 4th, Independence Day, The people of the United States of America are in the throes of declaring their values while grappling with many complex issues. For the occasion, we’ve selected contemporary and classic titles which showcase our country’s vast natural beauty and history alongside portraits of current communities and people’s lives here in America:
OUR TOWNS: A 100,000-MILE JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF AMERICA by James Fallows, Deborah Fallows
For the last five years, James and Deborah Fallows have been traveling across America in a single-engine prop airplane. Visiting dozens of towns, they have met hundreds of civic leaders, workers, immigrants, educators, environmentalists, artists, public servants, librarians, business people, city planners, students, and entrepreneurs to take the pulse and understand the prospects of places that usually draw notice only after a disaster or during a political campaign. Their view of the country is as complex and contradictory as America itself, but it also reflects the energy, the generosity and compassion, the dreams, and the determination of many who are in the midst of making things better. Our Towns is the story of their journey—and an account of a country busy remaking itself.
THE SOUL OF AMERICA: THE BATTLE FOR OUR BETTER ANGELS by Jon Meacham
We have been here before. In this timely and revealing book, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history when hope overcame division and fear. With clarity and purpose, Meacham explores contentious periods and how presidents and citizens came together to defeat the forces of anger, intolerance, and extremism.
FANTASYLAND: HOW AMERICA WENT HAYWIRE: A 500-YEAR HISTORY by Kurt Andersen
From a razor-sharp thinker, a new understanding of our post-truth world—the American instinct to believe in make-believe, from the Pilgrims to P.T. Barnum to Disneyland to zealots of every stripe…to Donald Trump.
SCARS OF INDEPENDENCE: AMERICA'S VIOLENT BIRTH by Holger Hoock
The American Revolution is often portrayed as an orderly, restrained rebellion, with brave patriots defending their noble ideals against an oppressive empire. But as historian Holger Hoock shows in this deeply researched and elegantly written account of America’s founding, the Revolution was also a profoundly violent civil war—one that shaped the nation, and the British Empire, in ways we have only begun to understand. Vivid and authoritative, Scars of Independence offers a new origins story that is both relevant and necessary—an important reminder that forging a nation is rarely bloodless.
TALES OF TWO AMERICAS: STORIES OF INEQUALITY IN A DIVIDED NATION by John Freeman
Thirty-four major contemporary writers—including Anthony Doerr, Ann Patchett, Roxane Gay, Edwidge Danticat, Rebecca Solnit, Joyce Carol Oates, Hector Tobar, and Karen Russell—examine life in a deeply divided America. Tales of Two Americas demonstrates how boundaries can break down when experiences are shared, and that in sharing our stories we can help to alleviate a suffering that touches us all.
ONE SUMMER: AMERICA, 1927 by Bill Bryson
The summer of 1927 began with Charles Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic. Meanwhile, Babe Ruth was closing in on the home run record. In Newark, New Jersey, Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly sat atop a flagpole for twelve days, and in Chicago, the gangster Al Capone was tightening his grip on bootlegging. The first true “talking picture,” Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer, was filmed, forever changing the motion picture industry. All this and much, much more transpired in the year Americans attempted and accomplished outsized things—and when the twentieth century truly became the American century. One Summer transforms it all into narrative nonfiction of the highest order.
THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS: THE EPIC STORY OF AMERICA'S GREAT MIGRATION by Isabel Wilkerson
In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.
THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA'S BEST IDEA by Dayton Duncan, Ken Burns
America’s national parks spring from an idea as radical as the Declaration of Independence: that the nation’s most magnificent and sacred places should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone. In this evocative and lavishly illustrated narrative, Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan delve into the history of the park idea, from the first sighting by white men in 1851 of the valley that would become Yosemite and the creation of the world’s first national park at Yellowstone in 1872, through the most recent additions to a system that now encompasses nearly four hundred sites and 84 million acres.
TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY IN SEARCH OF AMERICA by John Steinbeck
An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers. To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.
FOR YOUNGER READERS
WORDS THAT BUILT A NATION: VOICES OF DEMOCRACY THAT HAVE SHAPED AMERICA’S HISTORY by Marilyn Miller, Ellen Scordato and Dan Tucker; Illustrated by Mary Kate Mcdevitt
Words that Built a Nation was hailed for bringing together the United States’ most important historical essays, speeches, and documents into one accessible collection for kids. This history lovers’ must-have has been revised, revamped, and expanded for the 21st century.
WE CAME TO AMERICA by Faith Ringgold
From the Native Americans who first called this land their home, to the millions of people who have flocked to its shores ever since, America is a country rich in diversity. Some of our ancestors were driven by dreams and hope. Vividly expressed in Faith Ringgold’s sumptuous colors and patterns, We Came to America is an ode to every American who came before us, and a tribute to each child who will carry its proud message of diversity into our nation’s future.
THE CAMPING TRIP THAT CHANGED AMERICA: THEODORE ROOSEVELT, JOHN MUIR, AND OUR NATIONAL PARKS by Barb Rosenstock; Illustrated by Mordecai Gerstein
Caldecott medalist Mordicai Gerstein captures the majestic redwoods of Yosemite in this little-known but important story from our nation's history. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt joined naturalist John Muir on a trip to Yosemite. Camping by themselves in the uncharted woods, the two men saw sights and held discussions that would ultimately lead to the establishment of our National Parks.
For more on these and other great books for dad, visit the collection: America
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There's an Audiobook for That! Celebrity Readers
June 21, 2018
Happy Summer Solstice! The longest day of the year allows for more listening, and June is Audiobook Month! We congratulate this year’s Audie Award winners, view them here. We’d also like to draw attention to this week’s new release, BEDTIME STORIES FOR REBEL GIRLS, as well as other outstanding audiobooks brought to vivid life by celebrity narrators. These adult and children’s titles, available in the CD format and as audio downloads, are ideal for vacations, commutes or while walking the dog! So turn up the volume…your Summer listening may commence!
ROOM TO DREAM: A LIFE by David Lynch, Kristine McKenna; Read by David Lynch and Kristine McKenna
An unprecedented look into the personal and creative life of the visionary auteur David Lynch, through his own words and those of his closest colleagues, friends, and family — adapted by David Lynch from the print book especially for this audio program. With insights into…Eraserhead; The Elephant Man; Dune; Blue Velvet; Twin Peaks; Mulholland Drive and more!
YOU CAN'T SPELL AMERICA WITHOUT ME: THE REALLY TREMENDOUS INSIDE STORY OF MY FANTASTIC FIRST YEAR AS PRESIDENT Donald J. Trump (A So-Called Parody) by Alec Baldwin, Kurt Andersen
Political satire as deeper truth: Donald Trump’s presidential memoir, as recorded by two world-renowned Trump scholars, and experts on greatness generally
UNCOMMON TYPE: SOME STORIES by Tom Hanks; Read by Tom Hanks
A collection of seventeen wonderful short stories showing that two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor. Featuring additional performances by Peter Gerety, Peter Scolari, Cecily Strong, Holland Taylor, and Wilmer Valderrama on “Stay With Us.”
HEARTBURN by Nora Ephron; Read by Meryl Streep
Is it possible to write a sidesplitting novel about the breakup of the perfect marriage? If the writer is Nora Ephron, the answer is a resounding yes. For in this inspired confection of adultery, revenge, group therapy, and pot roast, the creator of “Sleepless in Seattle” reminds us that comedy depends on anguish as surely as a proper gravy depends on flour and butter.
M TRAIN by Patti Smith; Read by Patti Smith
From the National Book Award–winning author of Just Kids: an unforgettable odyssey of a legendary artist, told through the prism of the cafés and haunts she has worked in around the world. It is a book Patti Smith has described as “a roadmap to my life.”
FOR ALL AGES
GOOD NIGHT STORIES FOR REBEL GIRLS
The beloved New York Times bestsellers and Kickstarter crowdfunding sensations are available on audio for the first time, read by a star-studded fierce female cast including Alicia Keys, Ashley Judd, Danai Gurira, Esperanza Spalding, Janeane Garofalo, Mozhan Marnò, Phillipa Soo, Rowan Blanchard, and Samira Wiley! Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls reinvents fairy tales, inspiring listeners with the stories of 100 heroic women, from Elizabeth I to Serena Williams. Painters, scientists, dancers, chefs, astronauts, jazz singers, pharaohs, boxers, writers, political leaders…from every corner of the globe!
THE PURLOINING OF PRINCE OLEOMARGARINE by Mark Twain, Philip C. Stead, Erin Stead; Read by Keegan-Michael Key and Philip Stead
A never-before-published, previously unfinished Mark Twain children’s story is brought to life by Caldecott Medal winners Philip Stead and Erin Stead.
In a hotel in Paris one evening in the 1879, Mark Twain sat with his young daughters, who begged their father for a story. Choosing a picture from a magazine to get started, Twain began telling them the tale of Johnny, a poor boy in possession of some magical seeds, who finds himself on a quest to rescue a stolen prince. Later, Twain would jot down some rough notes about the story, but the tale was left unfinished…until now. With Mark Bramhall as the voice of Mark Twain, Julia Whelan as Susy Clemens, and an Editor’s Note read by Frances Gilbert.
APPLEBLOSSOM THE POSSUM by Holly Goldberg Sloan: Read by Dustin Hoffman
Fans of E.B. White and Dick King-Smith will adore this heartwarming and funny animal adventure by the award-winning author of Counting by 7s.
A WRINKLE IN TIME by Madeleine L'Engle; Read by Hope Davis
Madeleine L’Engle’s ground-breaking, Newbery Medal-winning science fiction and fantasy classic was adapted into a major motion picture earlier this year. This movie tie-in audiobook includes an introduction read by director Ava DuVernay, a foreword read by the author, and an afterword read by Madeleine L’Engle’s granddaughter Charlotte Jones Voiklis.
THE WATSONS GO TO BIRMINGHAM - 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis; Read by LeVar Burton
Enter the hilarious world of ten-year-old Kenny and his family, the Weird Watsons of Flint, Michigan. There's Momma, Dad, little sister Joetta, Kenny, and Byron, Kenny's older brother, who, at thirteen, is an "official juvenile delinquent." When Momma and Dad decide it's time for a visit to Grandma, Dad comes home with the amazing Ultra-Glide, and the Watsons set out on a trip like no other. Heading South, they're going to Birmingham, Alabama, and toward one of the darkest moments in America's history. By turns comic, tragic, and touching, this remarkable Newbery Honor work, delightfully performed by LeVar Burton in this unabridged production, will delight listeners young and old as they meet Christopher Paul Curtis, a storyteller of bold ambition and a true and original voice and his inimitable Watsons.
For more on these and other great audiobooks, visit the collection: June is Audiobook Month
There’s a Book for That! is brought to you by Penguin Random House’s Sales department. Please follow our Tumblr by clicking here—and share this link with your accounts: theresabookforthat.tumblr.com. Thank you! Did you see something on the news or read about something on your commute? Perhaps you noticed something trending on Twitter? Did you think: “There’s a book for that!”? Then please, send it our way at theresabookforthat@penguinrandomhouse.com
Friday Reads: Summer Weddings
June 15, 2018
Have your Facebook and Instagram feeds begun to fill with glorious wedding photos from romantic locales? Perhaps you are the one getting married this summer or are in the wedding party or a guest. Whatever the case, Summer is high season for matrimony. This weekend, catch our book bouquet – great for gifts or reading on the way to the wedding.
A FRENCH WEDDING by Hannah Tunnicliffe
The Big Chill meets The Little French Bistro in this sumptuous novel about six college friends reuniting on the coast of Brittany to celebrate one of their own’s fortieth birthday. With delicious food and plenty of wine, the table is set for tricky romantic entanglements and the spilling of longheld secrets.
A NANTUCKET WEDDING: A NOVEL by Nancy Thayer
It’s summer on Nantucket and Alison is finally engaged to the love of her life. Things would be perfect—if only she could make peace between her daughters. Felicity, wild at heart yet a loving mother to her own children, and Jane, the extremely organized and high-earning businesswoman, arrive on the island hoping to get through these next few weeks without ruining their mother’s big day. But when Felicity’s husband reveals a long-term affair and Jane falls for her soon-to-be step-brother, everyone gets way more drama than they bargained for.
THE WEDDING DATE by Jasmine Guillory
“What a charming, warm, sexy gem of a novel….One of the best books I’ve read in a while.”—Roxane Gay
A groomsman and his last-minute guest are about to discover if a fake date can go the distance in this fun and flirty multicultural romance debut.
WEDDING STORIES by Diana Secker Tesdell
A bouquet of great wedding stories—by turns funny, passionate, bittersweet, and romantic—by famous writers from across the past two centuries. From F. Scott Fitzgerald to Lorrie Moore, and from Stephen Crane to Edwidge Danticat. EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY POCKET CLASSICS. The stories collected here—including such gems as Stephen Crane’s “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” O. Henry’s “The Marry Month of May,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Bridal Party,” Joy Williams’s “The Wedding,” and Lorrie Moore’s “Thank You For Having Me”—encompass comic wedding mishaps, engagements broken and mended, honeymoon adventures, and scenes both heartwarming and heartbreaking.
SAVE THE DATE: THE OCCASIONAL MORTIFICATIONS OF A SERIAL WEDDING GUEST by Jen Doll
An “engaging and disarmingly honest” (People) examination of the search for love and the meaning of marriage in a time of anxiety, independence, and indecision.
Wedding experiences come in as varied an assortment as the gowns at any bridal shop, and Doll turns a keen eye to each, delivering a heartfelt exploration of contemporary relationships. Funny, honest, and affecting, Save the Date is a fresh and spirited look at the many ways in which we connect to one another.
WEDDING NIGHT: A NOVEL by Sophie Kinsella
Lottie is thirty-three and sick of long-term boyfriends who don’t want to commit to marriage. When her old boyfriend Ben reappears after fifteen years and reminds her of their pact to get married if they were both still single at thirty, she jumps at the chance. There will be no dates and no engagement—just a straight wedding march to the altar! Next comes the honeymoon on the Greek island where they first met. But not everyone is thrilled with Lottie and Ben’s rushed marriage, and family and friends are determined to intervene. Will Lottie and Ben have a wedding night to remember or one to forget?
THE WEDDING: A NOVEL by Dorothy West
In her final novel, Dorothy West offers an intimate glimpse into African American middle class. Set on bucolic Martha's Vineyard in the 1950s, The Wedding tells the story of life in the Oval, a proud, insular community made up of the best and brightest of the East Coast's black bourgeoisie. With elegant, luminous prose, Dorothy West crowns her literary career by illustrating one family's struggle to break the shackles of race and class.
For more on these and other great books for dad, visit the collection: Wedding Lit
There’s a Book for That! is brought to you by Penguin Random House’s Sales department. Please follow our Tumblr by clicking here—and share this link with your accounts: theresabookforthat.tumblr.com. Thank you! Did you see something on the news or read about something on your commute? Perhaps you noticed something trending on Twitter? Did you think: “There’s a book for that!”? Then please, send it our way at theresabookforthat@penguinrandomhouse.com
There's a Book for That: Fathers
June 13, 2018
Anyone who tells you fatherhood is the greatest thing that can happen to you, they are understating it.―Mike Myers
Sunday, June 17, is Father’s Day. As is true for all relationships, the Hallmark card model doesn’t necessarily speak to the complexities between father and child. Penguin Random House titles do though! To honor the role of fatherhood in our lives – the joys and hurts of the bond, whether present or missing – take a look at our wide range of subjects (including the famous), voices and perspectives on fathers. Add to those, some great titles for kids!
GHOSTBUSTER'S DAUGHTER: LIFE WITH MY DAD, HAROLD RAMIS by Violet Ramis Stiel
From the daughter of comedy legend Harold Ramis (and featuring a Foreword by Seth Rogen) comes a hilarious and heartwarming account of his life, work, and legacy.
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.
DAD IS FAT by Jim Gaffigan
In his New York Times bestseller, popular comedian—and father of five!—Jim Gaffigan shares his fresh and hilarious observations on family life. Dad Is Fat is sharply observed, explosively funny, and a cry for help from a man who has realized he and his wife are outnumbered in their own home.
NINE LESSONS I LEARNED FROM MY FATHER by Murray Howe
Part Tuesdays with Morrie, part Mr. Hockey, Nine Lessons I Learned from My Father is a son’s intimate account of all that lies behind the towering legacy of the beloved Gordie Howe.
AN ODYSSEY: A FATHER, A SON, AND AN EPIC by Daniel Mendelsohn
From award-winning memoirist and critic, and bestselling author of The Lost comes a deeply moving tale of a father and son’s transformative journey in reading—and reliving—Homer’s epic masterpiece.
THE RETURN: FATHERS, SONS AND THE LAND IN BETWEEN by Hisham Matar
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
In 2012, after the overthrow of Qaddafi, the acclaimed novelist Hisham Matar journeys to his native Libya after an absence of thirty years. The Return is the memoir of a son’s search for the truth behind his father’s disappearance.
THE FATHER: POEMS by Sharon Olds
The Father is a sequence of poems, a daughter’s vision of a father’s illness and death. It chronicles these events in a connected narrative, from the onset of the illness to reflections in the years after the death. The book is, most of all, a series of acts of understanding. The poems are impelled by a passion to know, and a freedom to follow wherever the truth may lead. The book goes into area of feeling and experience rarely entered in poetry.
FATHER AND SON: A STUDY OF TWO TEMPERAMENTS by Edmund Gosse, Peter Abbs
Father and Son, a memoir first published anonymously in 1907, focuses on the relationship between a sternly religious father who rejects the new evolutionary theories of his scientific colleague Charles Darwin and the son's gradual coming of age and rejection of his father's fundamentalist religion. It was immediately acclaimed for its courage in flouting the conventions of Victorian autobiography and is still a moving account of self-discovery.
RENOIR, MY FATHER by Jean Renoir
In this delightful memoir, Jean Renoir, the director of such masterpieces of the cinema as Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game, tells the life story of his father, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the great Impressionist painter. Jean Renoir’s book is both a wonderful double portrait of father and son and, in the words of the distinguished art historian John Golding, it "remains the best account of Renoir, and, furthermore, among the most beautiful and moving biographies we have."
FATHER AND SON by E.O Plauen; Afterword by Elke Schulze; Translated from the German by Joel Roteberg
Father and Son is one of the most beloved comic strips ever drawn—an uproarious, timeless ode to the pleasures, pitfalls, and endless absurdity of family life.
FOR YOUNGER READERS
MY DAD IS THE BEST PLAYGROUND by Luciana Navarro Powell
This joyful story celebrates Dad as the most fun person in the world and the best playground ever! He’s the highest swing and a great climbing wall, he’s a bouncing trampoline and merry as a merry-go-round. And then, when playtime is over, Dad is the best for reading and snuggling with before bed. Luciana Navarro Powell’s spirited writing is perfectly paired with her colorful, energetic, and very humorous artwork. Dads and their kids will love reading and rereading this glorious celebration of fathers.
MY DAD USED TO BE SO COOL by Keith Negley
Keith Negley’s playful and emotional art tells this story of a new father who is no longer the cool guy he once was. He looks back wistfully on his crazy times playing in a band, riding a motorcycle, and getting tattoos. Those days may be behind him, but his young son still thinks he’s the coolest guy in the world.
PET DAD by Elanna Allen
Plum wants the perfect pet, but instead realizes she has the perfect dad in this charming and hilarious picture book that’s great for father’s day.
For more on these and other great books for dad, visit the collection: Fathers Day 2018
There’s a Book for That! is brought to you by Penguin Random House’s Sales department. Please follow our Tumblr by clicking here—and share this link with your accounts: theresabookforthat.tumblr.com. Thank you! Did you see something on the news or read about something on your commute? Perhaps you noticed something trending on Twitter? Did you think: “There’s a book for that!”? Then please, send it our way at theresabookforthat@penguinrandomhouse.com
There's a Book for That: Psychedelics
June 6, 2018
It’s been more than 50 years since Timothy Leary popularized the phrase “turn on, tune in, drop out,” promoting LSD use during the Summer of Love. Considering Penguin Press’ current New York Times bestseller, HOW TO CHANGE YOUR MIND, by Michael Pollan, talk (and research) has now turned to the therapeutic uses of psychedelic drugs in treating anxiety and depression, among other mood disorders. And this week, Newsweek reported that “men who have previously used psychedelic drugs are less likely to act violently against their intimate partners, according to a new study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology”. Penguin Random House publishes a range of entertaining fiction and compelling nonfiction about psychedelics. With Pollan’s book as the centerpiece, we invite you to tune in to books, personal and scientific, which educate readers by exploring treatment possibilities as well as drug myths and stereotypes:
HOW TO CHANGE YOUR MIND: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan
A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpected new frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world. The true subject of Pollan’s “mental travelogue” is not just psychedelic drugs, but the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both struggle and beauty, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives.
TRIP: PSYCHEDELICS, ALIENATION, AND CHANGE by Tao Lin
Part memoir, part history, part journalistic exposé, Trip is a look at psychedelic drugs, literature, and alienation from one of the twenty-first century’s most innovative novelists—The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for a new generation.
A REALLY GOOD DAY: HOW MICRODOSING MADE A MEGA DIFFERENCE IN MY MOOD, MY MARRIAGE, AND MY LIFE by Ayelet Waldman
A memoir of a renowned writer’s struggle with mood storms that led her to try a remedy as drastic as it is forbidden: microdoses of LSD. The quest to have “a really good day” provides a window into the complex world of a once-infamous drug seen through new eyes.
As Waldman charts her experience over the course of a month, during which she achieved a newfound feeling of serenity, she also explores the history and mythology of LSD, the cutting-edge research into the drug, and the byzantine policies that control it. Drawing on her experience as a federal public defender, and as the mother of teenagers, and her research into the therapeutic value of psychedelics, Waldman has produced a book that is candid, revealing and completely enthralling.
THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE: A MANUAL BASED ON THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD by Timothy Leary
The Psychedelic Experience, created in the movement’s early years by the prophetic shaman-professors Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), is a foundational text that serves as a model and a guide for all subsequent mind-expanding inquiries. In this wholly unique book, the authors provide an interpretation of an ancient sacred manuscript, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, from a psychedelic perspective. The Psychedelic Experience describes their discoveries in broadening spiritual consciousness through a combination of Tibetan meditation techniques and psychotropic substances.
ACID TEST: LSD, ECSTASY, AND THE POWER TO HEAL by Tom Shroder
“A book that should start a long-overdue national conversation.” —Dave Barry
While LSD and MDMA have proven extraordinarily effective in treating anxiety disorders such as PTSD, they still remain off-limits to the millions who might benefit from them. Through the stories of three very different men, award-winning journalist Tom Shroder covers the drugs’ roller-coaster history from their initial reception in the 1950s to the negative stereotypes that persist today. At a moment when popular opinion is rethinking the potential benefits of some illegal drugs, and with new research coming out every day, Acid Test is a fascinating and informative must-read.
HALLUCINATIONS by Oliver Sacks
Here, with his usual elegance, curiosity, and compassion, Dr. Sacks weaves together stories of his patients and of his own mind-altering experiences to illuminate what hallucinations tell us about the organization and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture’s folklore and art, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all, a vital part of the human condition.
BREAKING OPEN THE HEAD: A PSYCHEDELIC JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF CONTEMPORARY SHAMANISM by Daniel Pinchbeck
Breaking Open the Head is brave participatory journalism at its best, a vivid account of psychic and intellectual experiences that opened doors in the wall of Western rationalism and completed Daniel Pinchbeck's personal transformation from a jaded Manhattan journalist to shamanic initiate and grateful citizen of the cosmos.
TRIPPING: AN ANTHOLOGY OF TRUE-LIFE PSYCHEDELIC ADVENTURES by Charles Hayes
In Tripping, Charles Hayes has gathered fifty narratives about unforgettable psychedelic experiences from an international array of subjects representing all walks of life—respectable Baby Boomers, aging hippies, young ravers, and accomplished writers such as John Perry Barlow, Anne Waldman, Robert Charles Wilson, Paul Devereux, and Tim Page. Taking a balanced, objective approach, the book depicts a broad spectrum of altered states, from the sublime to the terrifying.
For more on these and related titles visit Psychedelics
There’s a Book for That! is brought to you by Penguin Random House’s Sales department. Please follow our Tumblr by clicking here—and share this link with your accounts: theresabookforthat.tumblr.com. Thank you! Did you see something on the news or read about something on your commute? Perhaps you noticed something trending on Twitter? Did you think: “There’s a book for that!”? Then please, send it our way at theresabookforthat@penguinrandomhouse.com
Friday Reads: Pride
June 1, 2018
In June we celebrate Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month (LGBT Pride Month), which honors the 1969 Stonewall riots in Manhattan. First, President Bill Clinton declared June “Gay & Lesbian Pride Month” on June 2, 2000. In 2009, President Barack Obama declared June Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month.
LGBT Pride Month events attract millions of participants around the world. The purpose of the commemorative month is to recognize the impact that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals have had on history locally, nationally, and internationally.
For this Friday Reads installment, we bring you some of the best biographies and memoirs on the topic, including historical perspectives and young readers titles:
PRIDE: THE STORY OF HARVEY MILK AND THE RAINBOW FLAG by Rob Sanders, Steven Salerno
Celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Rainbow Pride Flag with the very first picture book to tell its remarkable and inspiring history!
In this deeply moving and empowering true story, young readers will trace the life of the Gay Pride Flag, from its beginnings in 1978 with social activist Harvey Milk and designer Gilbert Baker to its spanning of the globe and its role in today’s world. Award-winning author Rob Sanders’s stirring text, and acclaimed illustrator Steven Salerno’s evocative images, combine to tell this remarkable - and undertold - story. A story of love, hope, equality, and pride.
ELEANOR AND HICK: THE LOVE AFFAIR THAT SHAPED A FIRST LADY by Susan Quinn
In 1932, as her husband assumed the presidency, Eleanor Roosevelt entered the claustrophobic, duty-bound existence of the First Lady with dread. A lifeline came to her in the form of a feisty campaign reporter for the Associated Press: Lorena Hickok. Over the next thirty years, until Eleanor’s death, the two women carried on an extraordinary relationship: They were, at different points, lovers, confidantes, professional advisors, and caring friends, and at every turn, the bond these women shared was grounded in their determination to better their troubled world.
BOY ERASED: A MEMOIR OF IDENTITY, FAITH, AND FAMILY by Garrard Conley
A beautiful, raw and compassionate memoir about identity, love, and understanding from a survivor of ’ex-gay’ therapy. Soon to be a feature film this Fall.
BECOMING NICOLE: THE TRANSFORMATION OF AN AMERICAN FAMILY by Amy Ellis Nutt
The Maines were a middle-class, hard-working, politically conservative New England couple whose lives felt complete when they adopted identical twin sons. As toddlers, Jonas was the son Kelly and Wayne Maines expected, but Wyatt was only interested in girls’ clothes and toys. By age five, this conflict was tearing Wyatt—and the family—apart. Today, Wyatt is Nicole. She and Jonas are now in college. This is the story of a journey that could have destroyed a family, but instead united them. It’s the story of a mother whose instincts told her her child needed love and help. It’s the story of a father who overcame confusion and fear to become a vocal advocate of trans rights. It’s the story of a brother who always loved and accepted his sister. And, especially, it’s the story of a young girl who found the courage to be herself.
BEING JAZZ: MY LIFE AS A (TRANSGENDER) TEEN by Jazz Jennings
Jazz Jennings is one of the youngest and most prominent voices in the national discussion about gender identity. At the age of five, Jazz transitioned to life as a girl, with the support of her parents. A year later, her parents allowed her to share her incredible journey in her first Barbara Walters interview, aired at a time when the public was much less knowledgeable or accepting of the transgender community. This groundbreaking interview was followed over the years by other high-profile interviews, a documentary, the launch of her YouTube channel, a picture book, and her own reality TV series—I Am Jazz—making her one of the most recognizable activists for transgender teens, children, and adults. In her remarkable memoir, Jazz reflects on these very public experiences and how they have helped shape the mainstream attitude toward the transgender community. But it hasn’t all been easy. Jazz has faced many challenges, bullying, discrimination, and rejection, yet she perseveres as she educates others about her life as a transgender teen.
HOW I LEARNED TO SNAP: A SMALL TOWN COMING-OUT AND COMING-OF-AGE STORY by Kirk Read
With bold Southern humor, journalist and performer Kirk Read takes readers on a guided tour of his precocious and courageous adolescence. Recalling his years as an openly gay high school student, Read describes how he navigated the hallways with his sense of humor and dignity intact. How I Learned to Snap is a refreshingly victim-free story in which queer teenagers are creative, resilient, and ultimately heroic.
BEFORE NIGHT FALLS: A MEMOIR by Reinaldo Arenas, Dolores M. Koch
The basis of Julian Schnabel's film of the same name, this is the shocking memoir by visionary Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas. It "is a book above all about being free," said The New York Review of Books--sexually, politically, artistically. Arenas recounts a stunning odyssey from his poverty-stricken childhood in rural Cuba and his adolescence as a rebel fighting for Castro, through his supression as a writer, imprisonment as a homosexual, his flight from Cuba via the Mariel boat lift, and his subsequent life and the events leading to his death in New York.
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