Books You Might Have Missed 2023: Adult Nonfiction

This stunning package offers a rich, intimate, and highly entertaining look at the remarkable life and work of the television pioneer, the First Lady of Comedy, the legend, Lucille Ball-AKA Lucy. Full of fresh perspective, gorgeously designed, and richly informative, this is a book on Lucille Ball like none other. With profiles spotlighting the many different facets of the woman, AKA Lucy details how Ball changed the face of comedy and the entertainment...

"From the celebrated film critic and author of The Biographical Dictionary of Film comes an essential work on some of the cinema's finest actors and how they have approached their craft"--

"When bioethicist and professor Ashley Shew became a self-described "hard-of-hearing chemobrained amputee with Crohn's disease and tinnitus," there was no returning to "normal." Suddenly well-meaning people called her an "inspiration" while grocery shopping or viewed her as a needy recipient of technological wizardry. Most disabled people don't want what the abled assume they want-nor are they generally asked. Almost everyone will experience disability...

"At the end of the 1960s, the mysterious Tom Forcade suddenly appeared on the scene, insinuated himself into the top echelons of the political counterculture, and took over operations of the Underground Press Syndicate, a coalition of newspapers across the country. Even as he weathered government surveillance and harassment, he embarked on a landmark court battle to obtain White House press credentials. But his outrageous stunts-like pieing Congressional...

"Life on Earth depends on the busy activities of insects, but global populations of these teeming creatures are currently under threat, with grave consequences for us all. Alien Worlds presents insects and other arthropods as you have never seen them before, explaining how they conquered the planet and why there are so many of them, and shedding light on the evolutionary marvels that enabled them to thrive. Blending glorious imagery with entertaining...

"An examination of some of New York rock'n'roll's most iconic figures--The Velvet Underground & Andy Warhol--and the relationship that distorted their lives and changed pop culture. Born from the iconic NY art and music scene of the late '60s and the brilliant, untamed minds of its founding members Lou Reed and John Cale, The Velvet Underground are now considered rock 'n' roll royalty...but that wasn't always so. From surviving off oatmeal and donating...

"Atlanta is widely considered to be America's Black Mecca. It has a higher concentration of black millionaires, black-owned businesses, and HBCUs than any other city in the United States. African Americans are overrepresented in every strata of Atlanta's governance. In 2020, more black voters in the Atlanta area cast ballots than those in any other state's metro, evincing a political power that flipped a once deeply red state blue. However, 150 years...

In 1993, Michael Azerrad published Come as you are: the story of Nirvana, which stands as the definitive biography of Nirvana, the legendary band that upended the pop cultural landscape with Nevermind, the landmark album that became the soundtrack of Generation X, capturing its confusion, frustration, and passion. Written with the band's complete cooperation--the only book to feature interviews with singer-guitarist Kurt Cobain, bassist Krist Novoselic,...

"The four-time winner of the Emmy for outstanding reality series, RuPaul's Drag Race never set out to win over conventional America or climb the ladder of mainstream pop culture success. Its first season was classic counterculture, developed and filmed while President G.W. Bush was in office but launched at a time when Obama fever was at a national high. Over thirteen years and about 160 drag queen contestants later, everything from its language and...

"A book that shows us how to work through thorny moral questions by examining their parts in broad daylight, equipping us to not only identify our own positions but to defend them as well. It demonstrates the relevance of philosophy to our everyday lives, and offers some clear-eyed tools to those who want to learn how to better fight for justice and liberation for all"--