Nonfiction
Cork dork : a wine-fueled adventure among the obsessive sommeliers, big bottle hunters, and rogue scientists who taught me to live for taste
Bianca Bosker
641.22 /Bosker
Nonfiction
A tech reporter describes her introduction to the world of master sommeliers and her in-depth investigation into the source of their interests and skills, an effort marked by work with elite tasting groups, encounters at exclusive New York restaurants, visits to California winemakers and more. --Publsiher's description.
The Wager : a tale of shipwreck, mutiny and murder
David Grann
910.9164 /Grann
Literary Nonfiction, Nonfiction, History
"From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Lost City of Z, a mesmerizing story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty's Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as "the prize of all the oceans," it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing 2500 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes. But then ... six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they had a very different story to tell. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes - they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous captain and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death-for whomever the court found guilty could hang. The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Grann's recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O'Brian, his portrayal of the castaways' desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann's work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound. Most powerfully, he unearths the deeper meaning of the events, showing that it was not only the Wager's captain and crew who were on trial - it was the very idea of empire"--
I actually bought my own copy of this book because I just couldn't wait...it was worth the splurge! It's no secret that I'm already a fan of David Grann's writing, so it should come as no surprise that I'm loving this book. It's not even like seafaring and wrecks are my thing, but the way he writes about it, they might as well be. The story comes alive, through the details of the souls on board the ships and everything they went through, their dreams, emotions, fears, and actions. The ships and the environments even become characters of a sort in the story, as they have their own powers over the fates of everyone on board and waiting at home. Thrilling history here! -Candice
The moon tonight : our moon's journey around earth
Chang-hoon Jung
j523.3 Jung
Picture Books, Nonfiction, Science, Nature
"Astronomer Jung Chang-hoon provides easy-to-follow scientific explanations of first- and last-quarter Moons, ebb and flow tides, where the new Moon goes, and more."--
Another new picture book nonfiction title! "The Moon Tonight" is gorgeously illustrated, and the breadth of information is perfect for sharing with younger elementary students. I'm excited to try the included science experiment at home as well! Don't miss this title if you like creative nonfiction or have a little one interested in celestial bodies. -Casey
Lost places : images of bygone America
Heribert Niehues
779.4 /Niehues
Nonfiction, Travel
The United States has been shaped by mobility like no other nation on Earth. The automobile made possible almost limitless development, but there was a dark side: ghost towns and deserted regions emerged due to economic crises, cultural shifts, and catastrophic weather. Heribert Niehues's award-winning photographs trace these lonely places, which elicit strange fascination mixed with melancholy for a bygone era. His Hopperesque images of gas stations, diners, motels, houses, and cars document the rise and former glory of a legendary America. Over the decades, only nature has changed their visage, and the old pioneering spirit is still tangible. Hauntingly beautiful, the photos portray the poetry of transience: from east to west, America as it is rarely seen.
Armchair travelers, take heed! Let me amend that: Armchair Americana-loving road-trippers, take heed! The destination? The middle of nowhere. This photography book takes you around the rural U.S., a "decay porn" tour, if you will. The book satisfies one's fascination with abandoned cars, gas stations, and rural buildings. The subtitle for one chapter reads, "Melancholy you can reach out and touch," but melancholy can be fun, gosh darmit. Each of these photographs has picture-perfect composition and could be picked up and used as a movie still. After flipping through this book, I feel like I need to re-watch Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show or take a trip to the Kill Bill church. Who needs to build up airline miles? This book will take you places. -Melody
Numb to this : memoir of a mass shooting
Kindra Neely
371.782 /Neely
Nonfiction, Graphic Novels
Kindra Neely never expected it to happen to her. No one does. Sure, she'd sometimes been close to gun violence, like when the house down the street from her childhood home in Texas was targeted in a drive-by shooting. But now she lived in Oregon, where she spent her time swimming in rivers with friends or attending classes at the bucolic Umpqua Community College. And then, one day, it happend: a mass shooting shattered her college campus. Over the span of a few minutes, on October 1, 2015, eight students and a professor lost their lives. And suddenly, Kindra became a survivor. This empathetic and ultimately hopeful graphic memoir recounts Kindra's journey forward from those few minutes that changed everything. It wasn't easy. Every time Kindra took a step toward peace and wholeness, a new mass shooting devastated her again. Las Vegas. Parkland. She was hopeless at times, feeling as if no one was listening. Not even at the worldwide demonstration March for Our Lives. But finally, Kindra learned that--for her--the path toward hope wound through art, helping others, and sharing her story.
The brilliance of nonfiction in graphic novel form is the depth of emotion that only images can convey. It's one thing to read a paragraph written with literary lusciousness, words that catapult you to a scene and a feeling, but its a completely different experience to look into a character's illustrated eyes and read the expression on her face. While I am a sucker for survivors' tales, I also tend to turn away from horrific news, unable to take in the violence and tragedy and still get my work done. But ignorance isn't healthy! What is healthy is taking time to sit with a survivor's story and absorb it into yourself, learning what panic attacks and PTSD look like up close. It's really hard to put this book down once you pick it up. -Melody
Your cabin in the woods
Conrad Meinecke
690.872 /Meinecke
Nonfiction, Home
"If you've ever imagined a cozy home far from the bustle of a hyperconnected life, you have found a soul mate in Conrad Meinecke. His two classic handbooks, Your Cabin in the Woods and Cabin Craft and Outdoor Living, filled with timeless practical advice and thoughtful philosophy, are combined here for the first time in an heirloom edition. From simple shelters to complex dwellings, from expert guidance on location, materials, and tools to hearty meals to cook in your handcrafted fireplace, Your Cabin in the Woods is both a step-by-step guide to realizing your dream and a vintage escape into the great outdoors for the armchair explorer. " -- Page 4 of cover.
The design of this book is pure nostalgia--the sepia pages, hand drawn illustrations, and a classic camping color scheme. It's been a fantasy of mine to live in a mountain cabin the woods since I was in high school, with 5 dogs. That's not likely to happen (expensive real estate! wildfires!! TICKS!!!), but I *can* live that fantasy out by looking through this fabbo cabin building book. This book tells me all I need to build a 12x14' cabin is 14 softwood logs that are 8" thick and 26' long. I will need a draw shave to strip the bark. Nothing to it! Ah, a girl can dream... -Melody
The devil and Sherlock Holmes : tales of murder, madness, and obsession
David Grann
364.1 /Grann
Nonfiction, True Crime
Collection of the journalist's articles previously published in varous periodicals.
I love David Grann's long-form writing (Lost City of Z, Killers of the Flower Moon), and the short pieces in this collection are like delicious little snacks to tide me over while waiting for my hold on his newest work (The Wager: A tale of shipwreck, mutiny and murder) to come up. I think a lot of folks who find themselves in the business of libraries are really just interested in a little bit of everything, and Grann shows himself to be of a similar ilk here, chasing down random, elusive, interesting stories that he'd heard about and taken note of. His writing is both detailed and effusive, and of course, well-researched. Reading this book is like being told the best stories from a super-smart, congenial friend! -Candice
Beatles '66 : the revolutionary year
Steve Turner
781.66092 /Beatles
Music, Nonfiction
On the fiftieth anniversary of this seminal year, music journalist and Beatles expert Steve Turner slows down the action to investigate in detail the enormous changes that took place in the Beatles’ lives and work during 1966. He looks at the historical events that had an impact on the group, the music they made that in turn profoundly affected the culture around them, and the vision that allowed four young men from Liverpool to transform popular music and serve as pioneers for artists from Coldplay to David Bowie, Jay-Z to U2.
Since the release of the Get Back series I've been on a Beatles kick. This book covers one of their pivotal years and contains a lot of primary source interview quotes. Turner describes local and global cultural and political landscapes to help ground us in what they were dealing with as artists at the time. -Jason
Empress of the Nile : the daredevil archaeologist who saved Egypt's ancient temples from destruction
Lynne Olson
932 /Olson
Nonfiction, History
"In the 1960s, the world's attention was focused on a nail-biting race against time--an international campaign to save over a dozen ancient Egyptian temples, built during the height of the pharaohs' rule, from drowning in the floodwaters of the gigantic new Aswan High Dam. But the massive press coverage of this unprecedented rescue effort completely overlooked the feisty French archaeologist who made it all happen. Without the intervention of Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, the temples--including the Met Museum's Temple of Dendur--would now be at the bottom of a gigantic reservoir. It was a project of unimaginable size and complexity that required the fragile sandstone temples to be dismantled, stone by stone, and rebuilt on higher ground. A willful, real-life version of Indiana Jones, Desroches-Noblecourt refused to be cowed by anyone or anything. As a brave member of the French Resistance in WWII she had survived imprisonment by the Nazis; in her fight to save the temples she had to face down two of the most daunting leaders of the postwar world, Egyptian President Abdel Nasser and French President Charles de Gaulle. As she told one reporter, "You don't get anywhere without a fight, you know." Yet Desroches-Noblecourt was not the only woman who played a crucial role in the endeavor. The other one was Jacqueline Kennedy, America's new First Lady, who persuaded her husband to call on Congress to help fund the rescue effort. After a century and a half of Western plunder of Egypt's ancient monuments, Desroches-Noblecourt had done the opposite. She had helped preserve a crucial part of its cultural heritage and, just as important, made sure it remained in its homeland"--
An energetic and astute account of someone I'd never heard of before, but who exhibits all the intellect, daring, humanism, and bravery of the heroic Indiana Jones! No doubt, part of the appeal of this story is seeing a woman blaze her path in a man's world, while also leaving that world better than she found it. But there's also the historical intrigue of exploration and discovery, of war-time cunning, of the changing worlds of academia and societal norms. I'll be first in line to admit that it takes a romantic gaze to look back with enjoyment on this time period and it's colonial trappings, but the author is careful to work in acknowledgment alongside a healthy dose of the understandings of historical cultural relativism. Christaine Desroches-Noblecourt's story deserves to be told, and this book does it well. If you like this, you might be interested in reading the very excellent "The Riddle of the Labyrinth" by Margalit Fox, which recounts Alice Kober's work in deciphering the Linear B script that was used in Mycenaean civilization. -Candice
Tree, wildflower, and mushroom spotting
Mary Kay Carson
j582.13 Carson
Nonfiction, Nature, Science
"With 448 full-color, highly illustrated pages, Outdoor School is your indispensable tool for the outdoors. This interactive field guide to plant and mushroom spotting includes: immersive activities to get you exploring, write-in sections to journal about experiences, next-level adventures to challenge even seasoned nature lovers. No experience is required--only curiosity and courage. Inside you'll find easy-to-follow instructions on how to: grow mushrooms with cardboard, compare bark types, count tree rings, survey leaf patterns, create fern spore prints, press and preserve wildflowers--and so much more!"--
It's spring! Get out there and look at some flowers! I recommend Turkey Creek Nature Preserve (Bur Oak Land Trust) for bluebells. There's a whole series of these Outdoor School books that are worth your time. -Anne W
This is the May read for the library's book group, BYOBook, and it's very enlightening and entertaining! I'm going to say upfront that, based on this book, there is a big mess of snark (against each other, against regular ol' wine drinkers, against restaurant-goers) and the icky feel of a boys' club about the world of wine and sommeliers, but if you're willing to get past that there's a lot in here to learn and enjoy. (If you've read Bourdain, that's not anything new, right?) I applaud the author's desire and willingness to dive into this world, and I'm appreciative of the scientific and historical info she serves up. This behind-the-scenes look at wine in our daily lives--from learning about the doings of vendors and sommeliers, to all the ways one might determine what makes wine good--is truly interesting, and while it might make me want to hop on downtown for a glass to test my skills on, it also makes me really glad it's not my job to taste and choose SO. MUCH. WINE. If you like fun schtick-lit, if you like a little science in the vein of Mary Roach, and whether or not you imbibe, this is a really good read. -Candice