Books You May Have Missed 2021: Adult Nonfiction

"100 of the most moving and inspiring poems of the last 200 years from around the world, a collection that will comfort and enthrall anyone trapped by grief or loneliness, selected by the award-winning, best-selling, and beloved author of How to Read a Poem"--

"A heartbreaking and inspiring true story of a New Orleans high school football team and their head coach's mission to protect his players' lives"-- Short on hope but big on dreams, the mostly poor and marginalized residents of the New Orleans neighborhood of Algiers find joy on Friday nights when the Cougars of Edna Karr High School take the field. For years, this football program has brought glory to Algiers, winning three consecutive state championships...

"A radically inclusive, intersectional, and transnational approach to the fight for women's rights. Elite white women have branded feminism, promising an apolitical individual empowerment along with sexual liberation and satisfaction, LGBTQ inclusion, and racial solidarity. As Rafia Zakaria expertly argues, those promises have been proven empty and white feminists have leant on their racial privilege and sense of cultural superiority. Drawing on her...

"A criminal defense attorney specializing in appeals, Brien introduces us to nine defendants convicted of various crimes and explores the circumstances that informed their sentences, including inherent racial bias, socioeconomic disparity, the "War on Drugs," and a criminal code replete with inconsistent arrest, prosecutorial, and sentencing guidelines."--Booklist.

"In this rich, fascinating history, John Ghazvinian traces the complex story of the relations of these two powers back to the Persian Empire of the eighteenth century--the subject of great admiration of Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams--and an America seen by Iranians as an ideal to emulate for their own government." -- Amazon.com. "A history of the relationship between Iran and America from the 1700s through the current day"--

Joyce Carol Oates is one of our most insightful observers of the human heart and mind, and, with her acute social consciousness, one of the most insistent and inspired witnesses of a shared American history. Oates is perhaps best known for her prodigious output of novels and short stories, many of which have become contemporary classics. However, Oates has also always been a faithful writer of poetry. American Melancholy showcases some of her finest...

"A thought-provoking and brilliantly entertaining work of nonfiction, from one of the most acclaimed conjurors and gifted sleight-of-hand artists in a generation, the creator and star of the astonishing one-man show, In and of Itself. Conscious of his own rather mind-boggling ability to deceive others professionally, Derek DelGaudio believed that the artifice in his life was always reserved exclusively for the stage. But when irrefutable evidence...

"As the tragic murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement has demonstrated, not being racist is not enough. To fulfill the American ideal, to ensure that all people are equal, you must be actively anti-racist. In this essential guide, Sophie Williams, goes beyond her popular Instagram @officialmillennialblack, providing sharp, simple, and insightful steps anyone can take to be a better ally in the fight against racism. While the book's...