Nine Nonfiction Titles to Enjoy in May

Booksellers and librarians are superheroes, saving lives every single day. Here are their amazing, inspiring true stories as told to the greatest storyteller of our time, James Patterson. To be a bookseller or librarian…You have to play detective. Be a treasure hunter. A matchmaker. An advocate. A visionary. A person who creates “book joy” by pulling a book from a shelf, handing it to someone and saying, “You’ve got to read this. You’re going to love it.”

People love to keep score. Managers keep score of a range of business market share, revenue, profit margin, growth rate. In our personal lives, social media has us keeping score by likes and followers. These external scores are outcome-driven and serve as proof of our success—money, fame, material possessions, wins—but this constant chase for more validation often leaves us feeling exhausted and empty. In The Score That Matters, Ryan Hawk and Brook Cupps show that the internal score is what matters most—it reveals whether we are living in alignment with our purpose and values.

It’s often said that China is in a cold war with America. The reality is far the war is hot, and the body count is one-sided. China is killing Americans and working aggres­sively to maximize the carnage while our leaders remain passive and, in some cases, compliant. Why? If anyone could crack the code, it’s the renowned nonpartisan investigator Peter Schweizer. Schweizer’s previous three number one New York Times bestsellers sent shock waves through official Wash­ington, sparking FBI investigations and congres­sional probes that continue to this day.

Do you think mainstream America needs to find its voice? If so, you’re not alone. The country is under attack by extremists at the fringes who put ideology before sanity and stoke division for their own gain. They are trying to rob America of its common sense and deny empirical truths, and we’re all suffering the consequences. In We’ve Got How You Can Stand Strong for America’s Soul and Sanity, Dr. Phil employs his signature no-nonsense approach to analyze America’s cultural crisis and offers strategies to restore and support our country’s collective mental health.

Our current definition of “productivity” is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices? In this timely and provocative book, Cal Newport harnesses the wisdom of these traditional knowledge workers to radically transform our modern jobs.

Menopause and perimenopause are still a black box to most doctors, leaving patients exasperated as they grapple with symptoms ranging from hot flashes to insomnia to brain fog. As a leading neuroscientist and women’s brain health specialist, Dr. Mosconi unravels these mysteries by revealing how menopause doesn’t just impact the ovaries—it’s a hormonal show in which the brain takes center stage. To conquer these challenges successfully, Dr. Mosconi brings us the latest approaches.

In 1977, in an Ohio Amish community, pregnant wife and mother Ida Stutzman perished during a barn fire. The coroner’s natural causes. Ida’s husband, Eli, was never considered a suspect. But when he eventually rejected the faith and took his son, Danny, with him, murder followed. What really happened to Ida? The dubious circumstances of the tragic blaze were willfully ignored and Eli’s shifting narratives disregarded. Could Eli’s subsequent cross-country journey of death—including that of his own son—have been prevented if just one person came forward?

Aged just seven, Suzanne Heywood set sail with her parents and brother on a three-year voyage around the world. What followed turned instead into a decade-long way of life, through storms, shipwrecks, reefs and isolation, with little formal schooling. No one else knew where they were most of the time and no state showed any interest in what was happening to the children. Suzanne fought her parents, longing to return to England and to education and stability. This memoir covers her astonishing upbringing.

What happens when we can’t joke about some of the most important stuff in life? In a 2019 study, 40% of people reported censoring themselves out of fear that voicing their views would alienate them from the people they care about most.  In You Can’t Joke About That, Kat Timpf shows why much of the way we talk about sensitive subjects is wrong. We’ve created all the wrong rules. We push ourselves into unnecessary conflicts when we should feel like we’re all in this together.

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