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Mood Machine

"An unsparing investigation into Spotify's origins and influence on music, weaving unprecedented reporting with incisive cultural criticism, illuminating how streaming is reshaping music for listeners and artists alike. Drawing on over one hundred interviews with industry insiders, former Spotify employees, and musicians, Mood Machine takes us to the inner workings of today's highly consolidated record business, showing what has changed as music has become increasingly playlisted, personalized, and autoplayed. Building on her years of wide-ranging reporting on streaming, music journalist Liz Pelly details the consequences of the Spotify model by examining both sides of what the company calls its two-sided marketplace: the listeners who pay with their dollars and data, and the musicians who provide the material powering it all. The music business is notoriously opaque, but here Pelly lifts the veil on major stories like streaming services filling popular playlists with low-cost stock music and the rise of new payola-like practices. For all of the inequities exacerbated by streaming, Pelly also finds hope in chronicling the artist-led fight for better models, pointing toward what must be done collectively to revalue music and create sustainable systems. A timely exploration of a company that has become synonymous with music, Mood Machine will change the way you think about and listen to music."-- Publisher's website

Cher

"There is only one Cher... And for seven decades she has been showing us why. With a life too big for one volume, Cher holds the attention of the world with her voice, her acting, her style, her wit, and her unstoppable spirit. Now, for the first time, she tells her story in her own voice -- a voice that is as honest as it is hilarious, as powerful as it is perceptive. Cher: The Memoir, Part One recounts Cher's origin, backtracking through her mother's childhood to trace how the choices Georgia made influenced Cher's personality. Chasing fame, love, and stability for her children, with movie-star looks and a knockout voice, Georgia married and moved over and over again. Surrounded by artists, actors, and glamorous women, Cher's childhood was anything but normal. When her mom told her not to worry about her trouble in school, that she was going to become somebody when she grew up, she believed her, practicing her autograph for future stardom. Whether on her tricycle, a train, or behind the wheel on the streets of Los Angeles, Cher had a powerful desire to keep moving, eventually landing her in the arms of Sonny Bono. The duo became famous beyond their wildest dreams. Cher: The Memoir, Part One charts her career -- from singing backup in Phil Spector's studio to pop stardom with Sonny and Cher, to the Vegas lounge act that gave birth to the television show that brought them into America's living room and made her a fashion icon and household name. As time passed, fame changed the dynamic of their relationship and Cher evolved from a wide-eyed teenager into a woman. She started fighting for herself, breaking away from his control and realizing things were not as they seemed. Taking risks, making headlines, falling in love -- first with David Geffen, who showed her the truth and then took care of her and her entire family, and then with Gregg Allman -- Cher struggled and stumbled while trying to become her own woman, charting her own path, and taking her own place in the world. Cher: The Memoir, Part One brings us to the brink of her next chapter, a remarkable acting and recording career that cemented her legacy for the ages." -- Jacket flap

Playworld

"A big and bighearted novel-one enthralling, transformative year in the life of a child actor coming of age in a bygone Manhattan. Griffin Hurt is in over his head. His role as Peter Proton on the hit TV show The Nuclear Family and high school at Boyd Prep on New York's Upper West Side-along with the increasingly compromising demands of his wrestling coach-have him teetering on the edge of collapse. Then comes Naomi Shah, twenty-two years Griffin's senior. Unwilling to lay his burdens on his shrink-whom he shares with his father, mother, and younger brother, Oren-Griffin soon finds himself in the back of Naomi's Mercedes sedan, again and again, confessing all to the one person who might do him the most harm. Less a bildungsroman than a story of miseducation, Playworld is a novel of epic proportions, bursting with laughter and heartache. Adam Ross immerses us in the life of Griffin and his loving (yet disintegrating) family while seeming to evoke the entirety of Manhattan and the ethos of an era-with Jimmy Carter on his way out and a B-list celebrity named Ronald Reagan on his way in. Surrounded by adults who embody the age's excesses-and who seem to care little about what their children are up to-Griffin is left to himself to find the line between youth and maturity, dependence and love, acting and truly grappling with life."-- Provided by publisher

The Rest Is Memory

"First glimpsed riding on the back of a boy's motorcycle, fourteen-year-old Czeslawa comes to life in this mesmerizing novel by Lily Tuck, who imagines her upbringing in a small Polish village before her world imploded in late 1942. Stripped of her modest belongings, shorn, and tattooed number 26947 on arriving at Auschwitz, Czeslawa is then photographed. Three months later, she is dead. How did this happen to an ordinary Polish citizen? This is the question that Tuck grapples with in this haunting novel, which frames Czeslawa's story within the epic tragedy of six million Poles who perished during the German occupation. A decade prior to writing The Rest Is Memory, Tuck read an obituary of the photographer Wilhelm Brasse, who took more than 40,000 pictures of the Auschwitz prisoners. Included were three of Czeslawa Kwoka, a Catholic girl from rural southeastern Poland. Tuck cut out the photos and kept them, determined to learn more about Czeslawa, but she was only able to glean the barest facts: the village she came from, the transport she was on, that she was accompanied by her mother and her neighbors, her tattoo number, and the date of her death. From this scant evidence, Tuck's novel becomes a remarkable kaleidoscopic feat of imagination, something only our greatest novelists can do."-- Provided by publisher

The World with Its Mouth Open

"In eleven stories, The World With Its Mouth Open follows the inner lives of people in Kashmir as they navigate the uncertain terrain of their days, fractured from years of war. From a shopkeeper's encounter with a mannequin, to an expectant mother walking on a precarious road, to a young boy wavering between dreams and reality, to two dogs wandering the city, these stories weave in larger, devastating themes of loss, grief, violence, longing, and injustice with the threads of smaller realities that confront the characters' lives in profound ways. Although the stories circle the darker aspects of everyday living, they are-at the same time-an attempt to run into life, into humor, into beauty, into another person who can offer refuge, if momentarily. Zahid Rafiq's The World With Its Mouth Open is an original and powerful debut collection announcing the arrival of an important voice that bears witness to the human condition with nuance, heart, and incredible insight."-- Provided by publisher

This Is Why We Can't
Have Nice Things

"A woman has an unexpected outburst at a corporate therapy session for working mothers. A couple find some long-overdue time to rekindle their relationship and make an ill-advised home movie. A pregnant film director plots revenge on the actress who betrayed her. An ex-wife deliberately causes conflict at her ex-husband's wedding. ...[This short story collection] illuminates the lives of malicious, subversive, and untamed women. Exploring failed sisterhood, dubious parenting, and the dark side of modern love, this powerful and funny collection exposes how society wants women to behave, and shows what happens when they refuse."-- Provided by publisher

Shakespeare in Bloomsbury

"For the men and women of the Bloomsbury Group, Shakespeare was a constant presence and a creative benchmark. Not only the works they intended for publication - the novels, biographies, economic and political writings, stage designs and reviews - but also their diaries and correspondence, their gossip and small talk turned regularly on Shakespeare. They read his plays for pleasure in the evenings, and on sunny summer afternoons in the country. They went to the theater, discussed performances, and speculated about Shakespeare's mind. As poet, as dramatist, as model and icon, as elusive 'life,' Shakespeare haunted their imaginations and made his way, through phrase, allusion, and oblique reference, into their own lives and art. This is a book about Shakespeare in Bloomsbury - about the role Shakespeare played in the lives of a charismatic and influential cast, including Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes and Lydia Lopokova Keynes, Desmond and Molly MacCarthy, and James and Alix Strachey. All are brought to sparkling life in Marjorie Garber's intimate account of how Shakespeare provided them with a common language, a set of reference points, and a model for what they did not hesitate to call genius. Among these brilliant friends, Garber shows, Shakespeare was in effect another, if less fully acknowledged, member of the Bloomsbury Group." -- Provided by publisher

Science and Politics

"The recent coronavirus pandemic proved that the time-old notion seems now truer than ever: that science and politics represent a clash of cultures. But why should scientists simply "stick to the facts" and leave politics to the politicians when the world seems to be falling down around us?Drawing on his experience as both a research scientist and an expert advisor at the centre of government, Ian Boyd takes an empirical approach to examining the current state of the relationship between science and politics. He argues that the way politicians and scientists work together today results in a science that is on tap for ideological (mis)use, and governance that fails to serve humanity's most fundamental needs. Justice is unlikely--perhaps impossible--while science is not a fully integrated part of the systems for collective decision-making across society.In Science in Politics, Boyd presents an impassioned argument for a series of conceptual and structural innovations that could resolve this fundamental tension, revealing how a radical intermingling of these (apparently contradictory) professions might provide the world with better politics and better science." -- book jacket

Ingrained

"For fans of H Is for Hawk and Shop Class as Soulcraft comes a captivating literary memoir, immersing readers in the life of a Scottish carpenter as he perfects his craft, builds a business, and reflects on what inheritance and shared responsibility really mean. The eldest son of a master woodworker, Callum Robinson spent his childhood surrounded by wood and trees, absorbing craft lessons in his father's workshop and playing among the sycamore, oak, and Scots pine that bordered his home. In time he became his father's apprentice, helping to create exquisite bespoke objects. But eventually the need to find his own path led him to establish his own workshop; to chase ever bigger and more commercial projects; to business meetings, bright lights, and bureaucracy; to lose touch with his roots--until the devastating loss of one major job threatened to bring it all crashing down. Faced with the end of his business, his team, and everything he had worked so hard to build, he was forced to question what mattered most. In beautifully wrought prose, Callum tells the story of returning to the workshop and to the wood; to handcrafting furniture for people who will love it and then pass it on to the next generation--an antidote to a culture where everything seems so easily disposable. As he does so, he brings us closer to nature and the physical act of creation. Close enough to smell the sawdust, see the wood's grain and character, and feel the magic of furniture coming to life. At the same time, we begin to understand how he has been shaped, as both a craftsman and a son. Blending memoir and nature writing at its finest, Ingrained is an uplifting meditation on the challenges of working with your hands in our modern age, on community, consumerism, and the beauty of the natural world-one that asks us to see our local trees, and our own wooden objects, in a new and revelatory light."-- Provided by publisher

Havoc

"A fast-paced literary thriller for fans of The Bad Seed, set in a crumbling luxury hotel in Egypt, in which an elderly widow and an 8 year old boy find themselves rivals, locked in a gleefully criminal psychological game of cat-and-mouse."-- Provided by publisher

The Genetic Book of the Dead

"In this groundbreaking exploration of the power of Darwinian evolution and what it can reveal about the past, Richard Dawkins shows how the body, behavior, and genes of every living creature can be read as a book--an archive of the worlds of its ancestors. In the future, a zoologist presented with a hitherto unknown animal will be able to decode its ancestral history, to read its unique "book of the dead." Such readings are already uncovering the remarkable ways animals overcome obstacles, adapt to their environments, and, again and again, develop remarkably similar ways of solving life's problems. From the author of The Selfish Gene comes a revolutionary, richly illustrated book that unlocks the door to past more vivid, nuanced, and fascinating than anything we have seen." -- dust jacket

For Such a Time as This

"For Jews today, the attack on Israel on October 7th has drawn a clear and irreversible demarcation in time. On that day, the Jewish community woke up to an unrecognizable new reality, witnessing the stark rise in antisemitism, the world's oldest hatred, in its wake. But even in this dark hour, the Jewish community is experiencing something profound and beautiful: a deep, abiding connection to community, culture, and faith. Drawing on the rich trove of Jewish history and tradition, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, one of today's most influential thought leaders and spiritual guides, helps readers make sense of this fraught time. With warmth and wisdom, Rabbi Cosgrove explores the challenging questions embedded in the soul of contemporary Jewry. Where did all this antisemitism come from, and was it always there? How have Israel and Zionism shaped American Judaism, and what binds us and divides us today? How do we practice Judaism and understand our place in a world that has, without fail, in every century, turned against us? Knitting together storytelling with ancient teachings, Rabbi Cosgrove helps us navigate and understand the landscape of this new reality, turning over questions that have no clear or easy answer in the way only a very good rabbi can. For thousands of years, the Jewish people have wrestled with what it means to be Jewish. In this often divisive era, Rabbi Cosgrove reminds us of how we can come together despite--and even because of--our differences. For Such a Time as This is a guide for a new generation that is reconciling the past with the present and facing the unknown future with courage, spirit, and unwavering hope." -- From jacket flyleaf

Every Arc Bends Its Radian

"Every Arc Bends Its Radian is an existential detective novel about a private investigator who flees New York City for Colombia after a personal tragedy and finds himself entangled in a young woman's strange disappearance--which may be connected to one of the world's most ruthless criminal organizations."-- Provided by publisher

Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada = Anna He Apoorna Brahma

"'This is the food my parents ate and their parents ate ... It is an acquired taste, especially one acquired through centuries of discrimination.' A landmark publication in Marathi, Shahu Patole's book Anna He Apoorna Brahma was the first ever to document Dalit food history through the culinary practices of two Maharashtrian communities--Mahar and Mang. Fashioned as a memoir with recipes, it explores the politics of maintaining social divisions through food along with a commentary on caste-based discrimination--what food is sattvic (pure) or rajasic (fit for a king), what is tamasic (sinful) and why. Now translated as Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada, this book presents the poor man's patchwork plate, one devoid of oil, ghee and milk, and comprising foods not known to savarna dictionaries. It also examines Hindu scriptures that prescribed what each varna should eat--and questions the idea that one becomes what one eats. From humble fare to festive feasts, the recipes carefully woven into the narrative show you the transformative power of food in connecting communities and preserving cultural identity." -- Google Books

All the Years Combine

"A dazzling tour of the fifty best and most important Grateful Dead concerts A Grateful Dead concert, argues Ray Robertson, is life: alternately compelling and lackluster; familiar and foreign; occasionally sublime and sometimes insipid. And usually all in the same show. Although the Grateful Dead stopped the same day Jerry Garcia's heart did, what the band left behind is the next best thing to being there in the third row. Courtesy of their unorthodox early decision to record every one of their concerts, it's now possible to follow the band's evolution (and devolution) through nearly thirty years of shows, from the R&B-based garage band at the beginning, to the jazz-rock conjurers at their creative peak, to the lumbering, MIDI-manacled monolith of their decline. In All the Years Combine: The Grateful Dead in Fifty Shows, Robertson listens to and writes about fifty of the band's 's most important and memorable concerts in order to better understand who the Grateful Dead were, what they became, and what they meant--and what they continue to mean."-- Provided by publisher

2025 Pushcart Prize XLIX

Presents a collection of short stories, essays, and poems from throughout the year, culled from small presses and literary journals.

How to Build a Fashion Icon

"Law Roach is the mastermind behind looks that have broken the Internet time and again--from Zendaya at the Met Gala to Anya Taylor-Joy at the Golden Globes, from Lewis Hamilton's iconic streetwear to Céline Dion's style renaissance. Nobody knows better than Law how to turn an outfit into a moment of fashion history. In a little over a decade, he's gone from industry outsider to the most celebrated name in style, having been honored two consecutive years with the Hollywood Reporter's prestigious Stylist of the Year award and receiving the Council of Fashion Designers of America's inaugural Stylist Award in 2022. Now, for the first time ever, Law shares the secrets of his approach. With How to Build a Fashion Icon, he takes readers behind the scenes of his process and journey, revealing his tips, tricks, and most memorable styling moments to show readers how to live their most iconic and fashionable lives. Part self-help guide, part manifesto, this book guides readers step-by-step through that process, and along the way, Law weaves in personal anecdotes--from his childhood in the Southside of Chicago to the first time he styled Zendaya--with practical exercises to help readers cultivate the most essential feature of iconic style: confidence." -- Amazon.com

The White Ladder

"A sweeping history of mountaineering before Everest, and the epic human quest to reach the highest places on Earth."-- Provided by publisher

States of Emergency

"In the summer of 2015, a young couple--an American and his French wife--undergo fertility treatment in Paris. They settle in to wait for the results as a heatwave paralyzes the city. As the heat rises, a state of emergency is declared and tempers flare, leaving cracks in the foundation of their marriage. In the months that follow, they find themselves navigating a confluence of world crises and historical forces that affect each in ways the other struggles to understand. Against this backdrop of existential dread, the fissures in their marriage widen as they confront their everyday apocalypse. An ongoing conversation begins: one that moves backward and forward in time, swings between hope and despair, dry laughter and hard fury, all in an effort toward reconciliation. How will their conflicting ideas about how to build a life together--how to love each other--survive in the face of a future that's collapsing before their eyes?" -- Publisher's description

Second Chances

A powerful exploration of the human capacity for renewal, as seen through Shakespeare and Freud.

Private Rites

"From the award-winning author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a speculative reimagining of King Lear, centering three sisters navigating queer love and loss in a drowning world. It's been raining for a long time now, so long that the land has reshaped itself and arcane rituals and religions are creeping back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their father dies. An architect as cruel as he was revered, his death offers an opportunity for the sisters to come together in a new way. In the grand glass house they grew up in, their father's most famous creation, the sisters sort through the secrets and memories he left behind, until their fragile bond is shattered by a revelation in his will. More estranged than ever, the sisters' lives spin out of control: Irene's relationship is straining at the seams; Isla's ex-wife keeps calling; and cynical Agnes is falling in love for the first time. But something even more sinister might be unfolding, something related to their mother's long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always seemed unusually interested in the sisters' lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperiled world."-- Provided by publisher

The Name of This Band Is R.E.M.

"In the spring of 1980, an unexpected group of musical eccentrics came together to play their very first performance at a college party in Athens, Georgia. Within a few short years, they had taken over the world -- with smash records like Out of Time, Automatic for the People, Monster and Green. Raw, outrageous, and expressive, R.E.M.'s distinctive musical flair was unmatched, and a string of mega-successes solidified them as generational spokesmen. In the tumultuous transition between the wide-open 80s and the anxiety of the early 90s, R.E.M. challenged the corporate and social order, chasing a vision and cultivating a magnetic, transgressive sound. In this rich, intimate biography, critically acclaimed author Peter Ames Carlin looks beyond the sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll to open a window into the fascinating lives of four college friends -- Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry -- who stuck together at any cost, until the end. Deeply descriptive and remarkably poetic, steeped in 80s and 90s nostalgia, The Name of This Band is R.E.M. paints a cultural history of the commercial peak and near-total collapse of a great music era, and the story of the generation that came of age at the apotheosis of rock."-- Provided by publisher

Monsieur Teste

"Although not autobiographical in any usual sense, Valéry's novel is profoundly personal. Monsieur Teste reflects Valéry's preoccupation with the phenomenon of a mind detached from sensibility, yet he is also an ordinary fictional character. This volume includes 'Snapshots of Monsieur Teste,' excerpts from Valéry's Cahiers."-- Provided by publisher

The Migrant's
Jail

"This book is a history of a century of migrant detention, showing how immigration bureaucracy and the criminal justice system gave rise to this peculiar form of imprisonment in the United States. Historian Brianna Nofil tracks the political evolution of immigration policy but also follows the money, uncovering the network of individuals, municipalities, and private corporations that profited from immigrant detention. From the incarceration of Chinese migrants in the furthest reaches of New York at the turn of the twentieth century to the jailing of Caribbean asylum seekers in Gulf South lockups in the 1980s and 90s, Detention Power uncovers how the criminal justice system and immigration law enforcement have long collaborated, shared resources, and pursued a common project of incarceration and racial control. As Nofil shows, sheriffs and city commissions throughout the U.S. capitalized on contracts with the immigration service by expanding their jails and, in some cases, building separate "migrant jails" to secure federal detainees, effectively transforming incarcerated migrants into local commodities. Nofil's archives include records of district courts, presidential administrations, the immigration service, and legal aid groups, as well as overlooked local sources from communities at the heart of the detention business. At stake is the history of how immigrants who have been unwanted as citizens and workers were nevertheless coveted for their value in a "detention market" that brought federal money to local communities. Nofil is attentive to the backlash this form of imprisonment sparked even as she shows the longstanding role of immigration policing in the building of our mass incarceration society."-- Provided by publisher