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Nonfiction Views: This week's notable new nonfiction [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-09-09
Hello everyone. Had to take my wife to the hospital again this afternoon, so it’s a bit of a truncated offering this evening. Fortunately, I already had most of the books in place, but no book cover illustration this week.
People have noticed that the first line of Trumps’s infamous birthday card to Epstein had an unusual provenance:
Here’s the link to the full post on Bluesky. The comments have some interesting points to make as well.
THIS WEEK’S NOTABLE NEW NONFICTION
Dirtbag Billionaire: How Yvon Chouinard Built Patagonia, Made a Fortune, and Gave It All Away, by David Gelles. This is the inside story of one of the most extraordinary brands in the corporate world, the rare company that is driven by environmental activism instead of cutthroat capitalism. Founded in 1973, Patagonia has grown into a wildly popular producer of jackets, hats, and fleece vests, with a cultlike following among hardcore alpinists and Wall Street traders alike, posting sales of more than $1 billion a year.
But it’s not just the clothes that make Patagonia unique. For decades, the company has distinguished itself as a singular beacon for socially responsible business, the rare company that can legitimately claim to be doing its damnedest to make the world a better place. At the heart of the story is Patagonia’s founder, the legendary rock climber Yvon Chouinard. Guided by his anti-authoritarian streak and his unwavering commitment to preserving the natural world, Patagonia paved the way for a new era of social and environmental responsibility. He started out as a dirtbag—a term affectionately bestowed on poor, itinerant outdoorsmen so uninterested in material possessions they are happy to sleep in the dirt—and he became a billionaire.
Chouinard also proved that there was another way to be a philanthropist. In the twilight of his career, he gave away Patagonia, renouncing his wealth and committing all its future profits to fighting the climate crisis. “Chouinard’s—and Patagonia’s—stories are inspirational, and the reader will come away wishing that more of today’s über-rich people and corporations would follow his example.” —Booklist
All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now, by Ruby Tandoh. Our tastes have been radically refashioned, painstakingly engineered in the depths of food factories, and hacked by craveable Instagram recipes. They’ve been pulled into supermarket aisles and seduced by Michelin stars, transfixed by Top Chefs and shaped by fads. A deep dive into the social, economic, cultural, legislative, and demographic forces that have reshaped our relationship with food, All Consuming questions how our tastes have been shaped—and how much they are, in fact, our own. “A brilliant and engrossing investigation of what really shapes our desires when it comes to food. By following the shifting currents of restaurant criticism, the explosive rise of bubble tea, and the ‘delusion economy’ of wellness drinks, Ruby Tandoh offers a sharp riposte to culinary romanticism.” — Fuschia Dunlop, author of Invitation to a Banquetnew novel
All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation, by Elizabeth Gilbert. I was a complete sucker for Eat Pray love, and have enjoyed a number of Elizabeth Gilbert’s novels (and am still a little annoyed by her pulling imminent new novel The Snow Forest shortly before publication in 2023, under pressure because it was set in Russia, which had just invaded Ukraine. I hope it gets rescheduled at some point.) This sounds like a very different memoir from her. In 2000, Elizabeth Gilbert met Rayya. They became friends, then best friends, then inseparable. When tragedy entered their lives, the truth was finally laid bare: The two were in love. They were also a pair of addicts, on a collision course toward catastrophe. What if your most beautiful love story turned into your biggest nightmare? What if the dear friend who taught you so much about your self-destructive tendencies became the unstable partner with whom you disastrously reenacted every one of them? And what if your most devastating heartbreak opened a pathway to your greatest awakening? “Gilbert rips open her life to share all the painful moments and grief … in a story of despair and courage that … must have been unimaginable to write… Fans of her more lighthearted memoir and novels may be shocked by this book’s intensity, but it’s a brave story with an ultimately hopeful outcome. Anyone who has faced addiction—or loved someone who has—will recognize and be moved by Gilbert’s journey.” –Booklist, Starred Review
The New Age of Sexism: How AI and Emerging Technologies Are Reinventing Misogyny, by Laura Bates. In The New Age of Sexism, acclaimed author and activist Laura Bates exposes how misogyny is being coded into the very fabric of our future. From the biases embedded in artificial intelligence to the alarming rise of sex robots and the toxic dynamics of the metaverse, Bates takes readers on a shocking journey into a world where technology is weaponized against women.This isn't a dystopian warning about what might happen. It's a harrowing account of what's happening now and the dangers we face if we don't act. With clarity and urgency, Bates reveals how these advancements are dragging society backward, reinforcing harmful stereotypes, and jeopardizing decades of progress in the fight for gender equality. "An urgent call to action regarding the misogyny being hard-wired into our future. This is an eye-opening and terrifying read that demonstrates that artificial intelligence isn't the technology of some far off, science fiction tomorrow, it's already here. And the sexist, dehumanizing attitudes on social media and the Internet are its training ground. Women should really just be screaming all the time. I'll be adding Laura Bates' research and recommendations to my scream list." — Rebecca Little, co-author of I'm Sorry for My Loss: An Urgent Examination of Reproductive Care in America
Science Under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces that Threaten Our World, by Michael E. Mann and Peter J. Hotez. From pandemics to the climate crisis, humanity faces tougher challenges than ever. Whether it’s the health of our people or the health of our planet, we know we are on an unsustainable path. But our efforts to effectively tackle these existential crises are now hampered by a common threat: politically and ideologically motivated opposition to science.
Michael E. Mann and Peter J. Hotez are two of the most respected and well-known scientists in the world and have spent the last twenty years on the front lines of the battle to convey accurate, reliable, and trustworthy information about science in the face of determined and nihilistic opposition.
In this powerful manifesto, they reveal the five main forces threatening science: plutocrats, pros, petrostates, phonies, and the press. It is a call to arms and a road map for dismantling the forces of anti-science. Armed with the information in this book, we can be empowered to promote scientific truths, shine light on channels of dark money, dismantle the corporations poisoning the planet, and ultimately avert disaster.
Peacemaker: U Thant and the Forgotten Quest for a Just World, by Thant Myint-U. In the early 1960s, a peaceful world was an imaginable goal. The still-young United Nations was widely respected and regarded as humankind’s best hope for resolving global conflicts. African and Asian nations, having recently won their freedom from colonial domination, sought dignity and influence on the world stage. At the helm of their international efforts was U Thant, a practicing Buddhist from a remote town in Burma who, as the UN’s first non-Western secretary-general, became the Cold War era’s preeminent ambassador of peace. From the moment of his predecessor’s mysterious death in 1961, Thant faced a deluge of violent conflicts in Congo, Yemen, Cyprus, and Nigeria, as well as one between India and Pakistan, that threatened larger conflagrations. Drawing on newly declassified documents, Thant’s grandson, historian Thant Myint-U, gives a riveting account of how his grandfather’s gentle yet willful disposition shaped his determination to avoid a third world war, give voice to the newly decolonized world, create a fairer international economy, and safeguard the environment. Rather than a vestige of an idealistic past, U Thant’s fight for peace is central to a fresh understanding of our world today. “A wonderful subject, beautifully written, evoking a world startlingly like and unlike our own. Essential reading for anyone interested in the origins and possibilities of our current global crisis.”—Rory Stewart, author of Politics on the Edge
Facing Infinity: Black Holes and Our Place on Earth, by Jonas Enander. Humanity’s relationship with black holes began in 1783 in a small English village, when clergyman John Michell posed a startling question: What if there are objects in space that are so large and heavy that not even light can escape them? Almost 250 years later, in April 2019, scientists presented the first picture of a black hole. Profoundly inspired by that image, physicist Jonas Enander has traveled the world to investigate how our understanding of these elusive celestial objects has evolved since the days of Michell. With the particular goal of discovering our human connection to black holes, Enander visits telescopes and observatories, delves deeply into archives, and interviews over 20 world-leading experts, including several Nobel laureates. Along the way Enander discovers how our desire to understand black holes inadvertently paved the way for the invention of Wi-Fi and the calibration of our global navigation satellites, how astronomical discovery became entangled with colonial conflicts, and how our looking outward gave us critical evidence of the impact of climate change. Facing Infinity helps us appreciate and understand as never before these mysterious celestial objects and our surprising connections to them.
The Genius of Trees: How They Mastered the Elements and Shaped the World, by Harriet Rix. For a supposedly stationary life-form, trees have demonstrated an astonishing mastery over the environment around them. In The Genius of Trees, tree scientist Harriet Rix reveals the inventive ways trees sculpt their environment and explains the science of how they achieve these incredible feats. Taking us on an awe-inspiring journey through deep history and unseen biochemistry across the globe, Rix restores trees to their rightful station, not as victims of our negligence but as ingenious, stunningly inventive agents in a grand ecological narrative. Trees manipulate fundamental elements, plants, animals, bacteria, fungi, and even humankind to achieve their ends, as seen with oaks in Devon, England, shaping ecosystems through root networks and fungi, and in Amedi, Iraq, changing sexes as they age; laurel rainforests in the Canary Islands regulating water cycles; and metasequoias in California influencing microclimates. “You will forever love trees after you read this wonderful book. Not only is the text brilliant, but the author is genius. Harriet Rix’s stories range from why sloths are shaped by trees to be greenish in color to the chemical secrets of chocolate trees to how one fragile moth pollinates Joshua trees. You will want to read this book again and again.”—Meg Lowman, author of The Arbornaut
The Last Extinction: The Real Science Behind the Death of the Dinosaurs, by Dr. Gerta Keller. The story behind Dr. Gerta Keller’s world-shattering scientific discovery that dinosaur extinction was NOT caused by asteroid impact, but rather by volcanic eruptions on the Indian peninsula, a discovery that highlights today’s existential threat of greenhouse gasses and climate change—and one that sparked an all-out war waged by the scientific establishment. For decades, the dominant theory held that an asteroid impact caused the dinosaurs’ extinction. But Princeton Geologist Dr. Gerta Keller followed the evidence to the truth: Deccan volcanism, a series of massive volcanic eruptions in India, triggered a long-term climate catastrophe and Earth’s fifth mass extinction. Her findings upended the field and ignited a bitter feud in modern science—what became known as the “Dinosaur Wars.” “A fascinating look at the process of researching scientific questions and the power of entrenched theory; Keller was often belittled and blocked from sharing her discoveries. She perseveres in this compelling tale, of interest to readers who enjoy books about scientific study, mass extinction theories, and the work and struggles of women scientists.” –Library Journal
Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist, by Daniel Pollack-Pelzner. How did Lin-Manuel Miranda, the sweet, sensitive son of Puerto Rican parents from an immigrant neighborhood in Manhattan, rise to become the preeminent musical storyteller of the 21st century? Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist is his incredible story as never told before, tracing Miranda’s path from an often isolated child to the winner of multiple Tonys and Grammys for his Broadway hits Hamilton and In the Heights; a global chart-topping sensation for his songs in Disney’s Moana and Encanto; and the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur Genius Grant.
Miranda’s journey is a testament to the power of creativity, collaboration, and cultural synthesis. He was not a musical prodigy, but an insatiable drive to create art and learn from those around him propelled him to fuse his Latino heritage with pop, hip-hop, and the musical styles of Broadway. His was a new way of telling American stories, and of speaking to new audiences.
Drawing on interviews with Miranda’s family, friends, and mentors—and many conversations with Miranda himself—Daniel Pollack-Pelzner delves into the formative experiences that shaped Miranda as an artist. “This insightful biography of the most life enhancing musical theatre figure of his generation is essential reading, and not just for theatre nuts. I couldn't put it down.”
—Andrew Lloyd Webber
Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival, by Stephen Greenblatt. In repressive Elizabethan England, artists are frightened into dull conventionality; foreigners are suspect; popular entertainment largely consists of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world of government censorship and religious authoritarianism comes an ambitious cobbler’s son from Canterbury with a daring desire to be known—and an uncanny ear for Latin poetry. A torment for most schoolboys, yet for a few, like Christopher Marlowe, a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire, and dangerous skepticism. What Marlowe seizes in his rare opportunity for a classical education, and what he does with it, brings about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language, and culture. His astonishing literary success will, in turn, nourish the talent of a collaborator and rival, William Shakespeare. Meanwhile, he explores how the people Marlowe knew, and the transformations they wrought, gave birth to the economic, scientific, and cultural power of the modern world including Faustian bargains with which we reckon still. "A vivid back-stage tour of the turbulent world from which Marlowe emerged and what may have been his enduring impact on early modern culture. Essential reading." — Farah Karim-Cooper, director, Folger Shakespeare Library
A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever: The Story of Spinal Tap, by Rob Reiner, with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer. Since its original release in 1984, This Is Spinal Tap has evolved from a beloved cult film into a cinematic landmark: an all-time comedy classic that pioneered an entire genre, the mockumentary. Now, director Rob Reiner and his cowriters and costars, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer, tell the complete story of the movie and its fictitious band—how they met, how Spinal Tap came to be, and how their low-budget indie film took on a life of its own.
Reiner, Guest, McKean, and Shearer provide the backstories to the movie’s famous lines—among them “Hello, Cleveland!,” “None more black,” “You can’t dust for vomit,” and “These go to eleven”—and to such Tap anthems as “Big Bottom” and “Stonehenge.” Featuring never-before-seen photographs, band memorabilia, and personal reminiscences of their enduring creative partnership, A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever will delight Tap-heads of all ages—just as the long-awaited Spinal Tap sequel is hitting theaters.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever also comes with a bonus memoir by Reiner’s directorial alter ego, Marty DiBergi, in which he interviews Tap band members Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins, and Derek Smalls about their musical journey and their drummers who paid the ultimate sacrifice to the rock gods.
American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback, by Seth Wickersham. When I was a kid and young adult, I had absolutely zero interest is sports. Then, in my mid-twenties to mid-thirties in Philadelphia, I became a huge sports fan following football, baseball, basketball and hockey, watching on television, listening on radio, reading the sports pages, and occasionally attending a game. It didn’t hurt that those years in the late Seventies and early Eighties were very successful years for Philly sports. But then I steadily lost interest again. Hockey was the first to go, then basketball, then football, and finally baseball. It just seemed so repetitive to me, you’ve seen it all before. Now, I have zero interest in sports, and no inkling of what’s going on. Still, sports is big, so here is a book for you football fans. The quarterback: the American equivalent of royalty, long glamorized, mythologized, and worshipped. Still, long before the Super Bowl trophies, massive contracts, brand deals, and millions of social media followers comes the dream. From the backyard to Pop Warner, from high school to college, from the NFL to the Hall of Fame, becoming the country’s ultimate idol requires single-minded focus while navigating a maze of bad breaks, insecurities, jealousy, pressure, and fame.
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