Nonfiction Roundup: August 2020

Below I will be sharing some of the new nonfiction titles that will be released in August. All the titles are available to put on hold from our catalog and will also be made available on the library’s Overdrive account on the day of publication. For a more extensive list of new nonfiction books coming out this month check our online catalog.

Top Picks

“Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson (Aug 11)
The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of “The Warmth of Other Suns” examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions. In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma and more. Using riveting stories about people — including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others — she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

“Superman’s Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis and What We the People Can Do About It” by Erin Brockovich (Aug 25)
In Erin Brockovich’s long-awaited book — her first to reckon with conditions on our planet — she makes clear why we are in the trouble we’re in, and how, in large and practical ways, we each can take actions to bring about change. She shows us what’s at stake, and writes of the fraudulent science that disguises these issues, cancer clusters not being reported. She writes of the saga of PG&E that continues to this day, and of the communities and people she has worked with who have helped to make an impact. She writes of the water operator in Poughkeepsie, New York, who responded to his customers’ concerns and changed his system to create some of the safest water in the country; of the moms in Hannibal, Missouri, who became the first citizens in the nation to file an ordinance prohibiting the use of ammonia in their public drinking water; and about how we can protect our right to clean water by fighting for better enforcement of the laws, for new legislation and better regulations. She cannot fight all battles for all people and gives us the tools to take actions ourselves, and have our voices be heard and know that steps are being taken to make sure our water is safe to drink and use.

“Vesper Flights” by Helen MacDonald (Aug 25)
Animals don’t exist to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves. From the internationally acclaimed author of “H is for Hawk” comes “Vesper Flights,” a transcendent collection of essays about the human relationship to the natural world. Helen MacDonald brings together a collection of her best loved pieces, along with new essays on topics and stories ranging from nostalgia and science fiction to the true account of a refugee’s flight to the UK. Her pieces ranges from accounts of swan upping on the Thames to watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary to seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk’s poplar forests. She writes about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds’ nests, what we do when we watch wildlife and why. This is a book about observation, fascination, time, memory, love and loss and how we make the world around us, by one of this century’s most important and insightful nature writers.