NONFICTION
Released: June 5, 2012
"In each chapter, Blackwell finds he loves the polluted places for all the ways they aren't ruined. With great verve, and without sounding preachy, he exposes the essence and interconnectedness of these environmental problems."
Humor and dry wit lighten a travelogue of the most polluted and ravaged places in the world.
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NONFICTION
Released: June 4, 2012
"A timely portrait of Texas delivered with Collins' unique brand of insightful humor."
New York Times political columnist Collins (When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, 2009, etc.) zeroes in on what makes Texas so important and why the rest of the country needs to know and care about what's happening there.
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NONFICTION
Released: June 1, 2012
"As exciting, sprawling and multifarious as a shining city on a hill."
Smith (
Doomsday Men: The Real Dr. Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon, 2007, etc.) composes a polyphonic paean to our urban past, present and future.
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NONFICTION
Released: May 29, 2012
"Still, the best portrait of Cronkite--that legendary journalist, certainly worthy of a big biography--that we have."
Oversized biography of the larger-than-life newscaster, still a byword for a TV anchor, at least among viewers of a certain age.
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NONFICTION
Released: May 22, 2012
"A deeply argued call to action from a lucid, impassioned polemicist."
A concise, cogent assessment of the 2008 banking disaster and how the fallout has affected the country.
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NONFICTION
Released: May 8, 2012
"In a well-researched, disinterested analysis, the authors show that collisions of ego, personality and politics can often result in creation, not destruction."
Two
Time magazine editors chart the zigzag arc of relationships among the men who have occupied the White House since the mid-20th century.
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NONFICTION
Released: May 8, 2012
"Though he's a little too enamored with "angel-headed hipsters" and "fairy dust," Talbot takes the reader much deeper than cliché, exploring a San Francisco that tourists never discover."
An ambitious, labor-of-love illumination of a city's soul, celebrating the uniqueness of San Francisco without minimizing the price paid for the city's free-spiritedness.
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NONFICTION
Released: May 1, 2012
"The Johnson project deserves equal praise."
The fourth volume of one of the most anticipated English-language biographies of the past 30 years.
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NONFICTION
Released: May 1, 2012
"Leaks, reserves, PACs, hydrofracking, bloated corporate profits and more: all pertinent concerns nicely handled by Coll in this engaging, hard-hitting work."
NONFICTION
Released: May 1, 2012
"A report of a fascinating new theory on the Earth's origins written in a sparkling style with many personal touches."
Hazen (Earth Science/George Mason Univ.;
Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origins, 2005, etc.) offers startling evidence that "Earth's living and nonliving spheres" have co-evolved over the past 4 billion years.
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NONFICTION
Released: May 1, 2012
"Subtitled "A Comic Drama," the narrative provides even fewer laughs than its predecessor but deeper introspection."
A psychologically complex, ambitious, illuminating successor to the author's graphic-memoir masterpiece.
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NONFICTION
Released: May 1, 2012
"A wide-ranging, marvelously complete overview of a diverse, teeming civilization poised for ruin."
A bright, hard glimpse at the final thriving days of European Jewry and the first edges of its unraveling.
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NONFICTION
Released: April 26, 2012
"The author's compelling argument for Laguna Honda's philosophy of "slow medicine" will make readers contemplate if perhaps the body should be viewed more as a garden to be tended rather than a machine to be fixed."
NONFICTION
Released: April 24, 2012
"An exquisitely reasoned, skillfully written treatise on big issues of everyday life."
Sandel (Government/Harvard Univ.;
Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?, 2010, etc.) sounds the alarm that the belief in a market economy diminishes moral thought.
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NONFICTION
Released: April 11, 2012
"A vital, essential addition to the shelf of great books about New Orleans."
A vital, loving chronicle of the colorful life and frequently hard times of the New Orleans R&B singer and self-styled "Emperor of the Universe."
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NONFICTION
Released: April 10, 2012
"Stellar cultural writing--Bissell has the knowledge and wit to earn his provocations."
A whip-smart, occasionally pugnacious collection of essays on culture from a wide-ranging critic.
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NONFICTION
Released: April 9, 2012
"Wilson succeeds in explaining his complex ideas, so attentive readers will receive a deeply satisfying exposure to a major scientific controversy."
Never shy about tackling big questions, veteran evolutionary biologist Wilson (The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, 2006, etc.) delivers his thoughtful if contentious explanation of why humans rule the Earth.
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NONFICTION
Released: April 3, 2012
"With humor and verve, Maddow lays a solid basis for that hoped-for interview with Cheney (fingers crossed)."
In her hard-hitting debut, popular MSNBC host Maddow examines how the country has lost control of its national-security policy.
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NONFICTION
Released: April 1, 2012
"A bracing cooperative effort taking readers as close to war as humanly possible."
NONFICTION
Released: March 27, 2012
"Keeping a critical eye on the evidence and a skeptical one on theories, Tattersall confirms his status among world anthropologists by delivering a superior popular explanation of human origins."
A veteran anthropologist writes a superb overview of how our species developed (a long process) and how we grew smart enough to dominate the planet (a short process in which evolution played little part).
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