"Before Jodie Rattler became a star, she was a girl growing up in St. Louis. One day in 1955, when she was just six years old, her Uncle Drew took her to the racetrack, where she got lucky - and that roll of two-dollar bills she won has never since left her side. Jodie thrived in the warmth of her extended family, and then - through a combination of hard work and serendipity - started a singing career, which catapulted her from St. Louis to New York...

A scathing reexamination of the lives of nine female celebrities in the 2000s, and the sexist, exploitative culture that took them down. Welcome to celebrity culture in the early aughts: the reign of Perez Hilton, celebrity sex tapes, and dueling tabloids fed by paparazzi who were willing to do anything to get the shot. It was a time when the Internet was still the Wild West, and when slut-shaming, fat-shaming, and revenge porn were all considered...

"When Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore dies, she's not only North Carolina's richest woman, she's also its most notorious. The victim of a famous kidnapping as a child and a widow four times over, Ruby ruled the tiny town of Tavistock from Ashby House, her family's estate high in the Blue Ridge mountains. In the aftermath of her death, that estate-along with a nine-figure fortune and the complicated legacy of being a McTavish-pass to...

Discussion of the climate crisis has always suffered from a problem of abstraction. Data points and warnings of an overheated future struggle to break through the noise of everyday life. Deniers often portray climate solutions as inconvenient, expensive, and unnecessary. And many politicians, cloistered by status and focused always on their next election, do not yet see climate as a winning issue in the short run, so they don't take any action at...

"From New York Times bestselling author Hampton Sides, an epic account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook's death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this day On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach...

"The gloriously simple practice of choosing one thing to do, when to do it, and getting it done. Every day, a billion knowledge workers wake up, gravitate towards a pixelated screen and process information for eight hours or more, facing an endless and bewildering array of work and life choices. We're confronted with countless always-on options; untimely, unsolicited notifications; and a constant competition for our attention. This depletes our faculty...

"From Instagram's snarkiest Enneagram expert comes a hilarious and insightful book that shows how embracing our shadow side is our best path toward greater self-awareness and compassion. Most Enneagram books today focus on stroking ego rather than challenging it. These pages are filled with a no-frills, hilarious reckoning with the ways we cope when facing stress or fear--aka our shadow sides--while unlocking the life-changing wisdom of the Enneagram....

"Between 1975 and 2008 the Catholic Church in the United States lost just over 18,000 priests. In ecclesiastical parlance these men were defectors, malcontents, and pariahs. But they weren't. These men were the heroes of their generation in the church. They struggled for civil rights, they tried to implement the changes of Vatican II, and they refused to call 'birth control' a sin. Never before have they told their stories - conflict with their bishops,...

"A riveting journey down Theodore Roosevelt's "river of doubt" with a diverse crew of adventurers, scientists, and Indigenous leaders who shine light on the past, present, and future of a natural wonder. Sam Moses took part in the adventure of a lifetime when he, along with seventeen men and two women, embarked on the Rio Roosevelt Expedition. They would follow the former president's wake down five-hundred miles of extreme whitewater into the dark...

In East Jerusalem Noir--published simultaneously with West Jerusalem Noir--the Akashic Noir Series turns its gaze to one of the world's most fascinating locales, in this volume from the perspective of Palestinian writers; translated from Arabic. When you move through the streets of Jerusalem today, you will notice that history surrounds you from all sides. You hear Adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, recited by the muezzin from the Dome of the Rock;...