What’s New – Non-Fiction
All The Beauty in the World
A fascinating, revelatory portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its treasures by a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum guard.
Millions of people climb the grand marble staircase to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art every year. But only a select few have unrestricted access to every nook and cranny. They’re the guards who roam unobtrusively in dark blue suits, keeping a watchful eye on the two million square foot treasure house. Caught up in his glamorous fledgling career at The New Yorker, Patrick Bringley never thought he’d be one of them. Then his older brother was diagnosed with fatal cancer and he found himself needing to escape the mundane clamor of daily life. So he quit The New Yorker and sought solace in the most beautiful place he knew.
To his surprise and the reader’s delight, this temporary refuge becomes Bringley’s home away from home for a decade. We follow him as he guards delicate treasures from Egypt to Rome, strolls the labyrinths beneath the galleries, wears out nine pairs of company shoes, and marvels at the beautiful works in his care. Bringley enters the museum as a ghost, silent and almost invisible, but soon finds his voice and his tribe: the artworks and their creators and the lively subculture of museum guards—a gorgeous mosaic of artists, musicians, blue-collar stalwarts, immigrants, cutups, and dreamers. As his bonds with his colleagues and the art grow, he comes to understand how fortunate he is to be walled off in this little world, and how much it resembles the best aspects of the larger world to which he gradually, gratefully returns.
In the tradition of classic workplace memoirs like Lab Girl and Working Stiff, All The Beauty in the World is a surprising, inspiring portrait of a great museum, its hidden treasures, and the people who make it tick, by one of its most intimate observers.
My What If Year
An exuberant, hilarious memoir about a woman who pauses her successful career for a year and explores the “What If” jobs of her dreams.
On the cusp of turning forty, Alisha Fernandez Miranda has climbed to the peak of personal and professional success, but at a price; she’s overworked and exhausted.
Bravely, Alisha decides to give herself a break, temporarily pausing her stressful career as the CEO of high-powered consulting firm. With the tentative blessing of her husband and eight-year-old twins, she leaves her home in London to spend one year exploring the dream jobs of her youth, seeking answers to the question, “What If?”
What follows is a spirited and hilarious journey for Alisha – and the reader. Contending with her lack of experience (and the onset of a global pandemic), Alisha gofers for two high-profile Broadway productions (and nearly tramples Stephen Sondheim), attempts to master a fitness regimen called Voga (a cross between yoga and “voguing”), feigns confidence while handling multi-million-dollar artwork at Christie’s, and literally sets her shirt on fire while serving rack of lamb in a posh hotel on Scotland’s remote Isle of Skye. Her experiences are at once challenging and humbling, and push the boundaries of what Alisha thought she was physically, mentally, and emotionally capable of. Alisha’s “What If” year reveals that she can achieve success on her own terms by embodying the spirit of the intern: never stop learning, be flexible, and understand that failure is a prerequisite for growth.
For anyone who’s ever felt stuck in a rut, My What If Year proves that it’s never too late to say yes to second chances and explore the roads untraveled throughout your life.
8 Rules of Love
The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Think Like a Monk offers a revelatory guide to every stage of romance, drawing on ancient wisdom and new science.
Nobody sits us down and teaches us how to love. So we’re often thrown into relationships with nothing but romance movies and pop culture to help us muddle through. Until now.
Instead of presenting love as an ethereal concept or a collection of cliches, Jay Shetty lays out specific, actionable steps to help you develop the skills to practice and nurture love better than ever before. He shares insights on how to win or lose together, how to define love, and why you don’t break in a break-up. Inspired by Vedic wisdom and modern science, he tackles the entire relationship cycle, from first dates to moving in together to breaking up and starting over. And he shows us how to avoid falling for false promises and unfulfilling partners.
By living Jay Shetty’s eight rules, we can all love ourselves, our partner, and the world better than we ever thought possible.
Sin City Gangsters
Sin City Gangsters: The Rise and Decline of the Mob in Las Vegas is a fast-paced account of how the mob created and controlled Las Vegas. It contains accounts of how the most powerful mobsters in the country built, bought, and controlled not only gambling casinos in Vegas, but also many important politicians, who did the mob’s bidding. Some of the more notorious mobsters were Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Moe Dalitz, Sam Giancana, Tony Accardo, and Nick Civella, as well as the men they chose to carry out their plans, such as Tony Spilotro, Lefty Rosenthal, and Donald Angelini. Sin City Gangsters devotes a chapter to Jimmy Hoffa, and how the Teamsters Pension Fund financed the mob’s casinos. The book also offers fascinating accounts of the roles of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley in Vegas. Another chapter is devoted to Howard Hughes, who arrived in the dead of night in a sealed, germ-free railroad car and did not leave his suite at the Desert Inn for years. During that time he bought one casino after another as if playing Monopoly. Following his exit and that of the mob, Vegas became the domain of Jay Sarno, Kirk Kerkorian, Steve Wynn, and Sheldon Adelson. They were visionaries who transformed Vegas into the entertainment capital of the world by building billion-dollars-plus resorts and hiring the most popular contemporary entertainers. Sin City Gangsters is the only book that charts Vegas from the first modest mob-owned casinos to the present billion-dollar-resorts; its cast of characters is an assembly of exceedingly ambitious risk takers who let nothing stand in their way of turning their dreams into stunning realities.
A Hacker's Mind
It’s not just computers―hacking is everywhere.
Legendary cybersecurity expert and New York Times best-selling author Bruce Schneier reveals how using a hacker’s mindset can change how you think about your life and the world.
A hack is any means of subverting a system’s rules in unintended ways. The tax code isn’t computer code, but a series of complex formulas. It has vulnerabilities; we call them “loopholes.” We call exploits “tax avoidance strategies.” And there is an entire industry of “black hat” hackers intent on finding exploitable loopholes in the tax code. We call them accountants and tax attorneys.
In A Hacker’s Mind, Bruce Schneier takes hacking out of the world of computing and uses it to analyze the systems that underpin our society: from tax laws to financial markets to politics. He reveals an array of powerful actors whose hacks bend our economic, political, and legal systems to their advantage, at the expense of everyone else.
Once you learn how to notice hacks, you’ll start seeing them everywhere―and you’ll never look at the world the same way again. Almost all systems have loopholes, and this is by design. Because if you can take advantage of them, the rules no longer apply to you.
Unchecked, these hacks threaten to upend our financial markets, weaken our democracy, and even affect the way we think. And when artificial intelligence starts thinking like a hacker―at inhuman speed and scale―the results could be catastrophic.
But for those who would don the “white hat,” we can understand the hacking mindset and rebuild our economic, political, and legal systems to counter those who would exploit our society. And we can harness artificial intelligence to improve existing systems, predict and defend against hacks, and realize a more equitable world.
Finale
An intimate portrait of a genius: the late Stephen Sondheim in a series of illuminating and deeply personal interviews from the last years of his life—conversations that show the composer-lyricist as he has likely never been seen before.
In 2017, New Yorker staff writer D.T. Max began working on a major profile of Stephen Sondheim that would be timed to the eventual premiere of a new musical Sondheim was writing. Sadly , that process – and the years of conversation – was cut short by Sondheim’s own hesitations, then the global pandemic, and finally by the great artist’s death in November 2021.
Now, Max has taken the raw version of these conversations and knit them together into an unforgettable work of literature and celebration. Finale reveals Sondheim—a star who disliked the spotlight—at his most relaxed, thoughtful, sardonic, and engaging, as he talks about work, music, movies, family, New York City, aging, the creative process, and much more.
Max brings you into the room and gives you a front row seat for their unusual and intimate three-year-long “pas de deux.” The two bond, spar, separate, and reunite, as Max elicits from Sondheim a candor and vulnerability he seldom displayed in public.
This is a unique portrait of an artist in his twilight, offering remarkable insight into the mind and heart of a genius whose work changed American musical theater and popular culture forever.
Outsmart Your Brain
In this revolutionary, comprehensive, and accessible guide on how the brain learns, discover how to study more efficiently and effectively, shrug away exam stress, and most of all, enjoy learning.
When we study, we tend to focus on the tasks we can most easily control—such as highlighting and rereading—but these practices only give the illusion of mastery. As Dan Willingham, professor of psychology and bestselling author, explains, familiarity is not the same as comprehension.
Perfect for teachers and students of all ages, Outsmart Your Brain provides real-world practices and the latest research on how to train your brain for better learning. Each chapter provides clear and specific strategies while also explaining why traditional study processes do not work. Grounded in scientifically backed practical advice, this is the ultimate guide to improving grades and better understanding the power of our own brains.
Straight Shooter
America’s most popular sports media figure tells it like it is in this surprisingly personal book, not only dishing out his signature, uninhibited opinions but also revealing the challenges he overcame in childhood as well as at ESPN, and who he really is when the cameras are off.
Stephen A. Smith has never been handed anything, nor was he an overnight success. Growing up poor in Queens, the son of Caribbean immigrants and the youngest of six children, he was a sports-obsessed kid who faced a number of struggles, from undiagnosed dyslexia to getting enough cereal to fill his bowl. As a basketball player at Winston-Salem State University, he got a glimmer of his true calling when he wrote a newspaper column arguing for the retirement of his own Hall of Fame coach, Clarence Gaines.
Smith hustled and rose up from a high school reporter at Daily News (New York) to a general sports columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer in the 1990s, before getting his own show at ESPN in 2005. After he was unceremoniously fired from the network in 2009, he became even more determined to fight for success. He got himself rehired two years later and, with his razor-sharp intelligence and fearless debate style, found his role on the show he was destined to star in: First Take, the network’s flagship morning program.
In Straight Shooter, Smith writes about the greatest highs and deepest lows of his life and career. He gives his thoughts on Skip Bayless, Ray Rice, Colin Kaepernick, the New York Knicks, the Dallas Cowboys, and former President Donald Trump. But he also pulls back the curtain and talks about life beyond the set, sharing authentic stories about his negligent father, his loving mother, being a father himself, his battle with life-threatening COVID-19, and what he really thinks about politics and social issues. He does it all with the same intelligence, humor, and charm that has made him a household name.
Provocative, moving, and eye-opening, this book is the perfect gift for lovers of sports, television, and anyone who likes their stories delivered straight to the heart.
Your Table Is Ready
A front-of-the-house Kitchen Confidential from a career maître d’hotel who manned the front of the room in New York City’s hottest and most in-demand restaurants.
From the glamorous to the entitled, from royalty to the financially ruined, everyone who wanted to be seen—or just to gawk—at the hottest restaurants in New York City came to places Michael Cecchi-Azzolina helped run. His phone number was passed around among those who wanted to curry favor, during the decades when restaurants replaced clubs and theater as, well, theater in the most visible, vibrant city in the world.
Besides dropping us back into a vanished time, Your Table Is Ready takes us places we’d never be able to get into on our own: Raoul’s in Soho with its louche club vibe; Buzzy O’Keefe’s casually elegant River Café (the only outer-borough establishment desirable enough to be included in this roster), from Keith McNally’s Minetta Tavern to Nolita’s Le Coucou, possibly the most beautiful room in New York City in 2018, with its French Country Auberge-meets-winery look and the most exquisite and enormous stands of flowers, changed every three days.
From his early career serving theater stars like Tennessee Williams and Dustin Hoffman at La Rousse right through to the last pre-pandemic-shutdown full houses at Le Coucou, Cecchi-Azzolina has seen it all. In Your Table Is Ready, he breaks down how restaurants really run (and don’t), and how the economics work for owners and overworked staff alike. The professionals who gravitate to the business are a special, tougher breed, practiced in dealing with the demanding patrons and with each other, in a very distinctive ecosystem that’s somewhere between a George Orwell “down and out in….” dungeon and a sleek showman’s smoke-and-mirrors palace.
Your Table Is Ready is a rollicking, raunchy, revelatory memoir.
Motherland
A cookbook charting 500 years of influence on the vibrant cuisine of Jamaica, written by acclaimed food writer Melissa Thompson.
Acclaimed food writer and chef Melissa Thompson takes us on a journey to this Caribbean jewel through 80 recipes and more than 500 years of history and influences. The recipes include classic Jamaican favorites, such as Jerk Pork, Braised Oxtail, Ackee & Saltfish, and Peanut Punch, as well as original dishes created with Jamaica’s abundant natural larder and twists on classics.
This beautiful cookbook features in-depth research into the evolution of Jamaica’s food. It charts the contribution of indigenous Jamaicans, the Taino. It follows the impact of colonization, and how the periods under Spanish and British rule left an indelible mark on the nation’s gastronomy, without shying away from their brutality: Eyewitness accounts describe the barbarity of the colonial powers. And it recounts how enslaved men and women from West and Central Africa brought inspiration from home and familiar cooking techniques to create legacy dishes that are still celebrated today. The contribution of Indian and Chinese indentured workers is also examined. These stories are woven into the recipes, so the reader is invested in the dishes they cook.
Have I Told You This Already?
“Graham is fast and furiously funny in her latest collection of essays. . . . Where Graham leads, we will definitely follow.”—E! Online
Lauren Graham has graced countless television screens with her quick-witted characters and hilarious talk show appearances, earning a reputation as a pop culture icon who always has something to say. In her latest book, Have I Told You This Already?, Graham combines her signature sense of humor with down-to-earth storytelling. Graham shares personal stories about her life and career—from her early days spent pounding the pavement while waitressing in New York City, to living on her aunt’s couch during her first Los Angeles pilot season, to thoughts on aging gracefully in Hollywood.
In “R.I.P. Barneys New York” Graham writes about an early job as a salesperson at the legendary department store (and the time she inadvertently shoplifted from it); in “Ryan Gosling Cannot Confirm,” she attempts to navigate the unspoken rules of Hollywood hierarchies; in “Boobs of the ’90s” she worries her bras haven’t kept up with the times; and in “Actor-y Factory” she recounts what a day in the life of an actor looks like (unless you’re Brad Pitt).
Filled with surprising anecdotes, sage advice, and laugh-out-loud observations, these all-new, original essays showcase the winning charm and wry humor that have delighted Graham’s millions of fans.
Good For a Girl
Fueled by her years as an elite runner and advocate for women in sports, Lauren Fleshman offers her inspiring personal story and a rallying cry for reform of a sports landscape that is failing young female athletes
“Women’s sports have needed a manifesto for a very long time, and with Lauren Fleshman’s Good for a Girl we finally have one.” —Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers and David and Goliath
“Good for a Girl is simultaneously a moving memoir and a call to action in how we think about—and train—girls and women in elite sports. It’s a must-read—for anyone who loves running, for anyone who has a daughter, and for anyone who cares about creating a better future for young women.” —Emily Oster, author of Expecting Better, Cribsheet, and The Family Firm
Lauren Fleshman has grown up in the world of running. One of the most decorated collegiate athletes of all time and a national champion as a pro, she was a major face of women’s running for Nike before leaving to shake up the industry with feminist running brand Oiselle and now coaches elite young female runners. Every step of the way, she has seen the way that our sports systems—originally designed by men, for men and boys—fail young women and girls as much as empower them. Girls drop out of sports at alarming rates once they hit puberty, and female collegiate athletes routinely fall victim to injury, eating disorders, or mental health struggles as they try to force their way past a natural dip in performance for women of their age.
Part memoir, part manifesto, Good for a Girl is Fleshman’s story of falling in love with running as a girl, being pushed to her limits and succumbing to devastating injuries, and daring to fight for a better way for female athletes. Long gone are the days when women and girls felt lucky just to participate; Fleshman and women everywhere are waking up to the reality that they’re running, playing, and competing in a world that wasn’t made for them. Drawing on not only her own story but also emerging research on the physiology and psychology of young athletes, of any gender, Fleshman gives voice to the often-silent experience of the female athlete and argues that the time has come to rebuild our systems of competitive sport with women at their center.
Written with heart and verve, Good for a Girl is a joyful love letter to the running life, a raw personal narrative of growth and change, and a vital call to reimagine sports for young women.
Finding the Way
A tale of mentorship, hard truths, and the path to success
In this fictional account of an entrepreneur’s rollercoaster ride to the top, Cap Treeger crafts a series of dynamic, well-drawn lessons for anyone that wants to start or build a business. The hero of the story, Ren, is fired up with ambition and has a strategic dream in place to build his own startup from the ground up, but he has a lot to learn about how this particular sector of the business world works. Fortunately, Ren has the guidance of generous and invested mentors, and their sound recommendations and warnings are chronicled as Ren makes decision after decision. With their advice, as well as his own encounters with trial and error, he discovers that who he chooses to employ and partner with, and how he engages with them, makes all the difference.
Ren’s journey guides readers through numerous factors necessary for success, including building a solid team with strategic placement of individuals in carefully selected roles appropriate to their skill sets and crafting the all-important business model. Ren navigates the daunting process with grace and hands readers an account loaded with insight-rendering Finding the Way, told in a straightforward and reader-friendly manner, a valuable gem amidst business-building literature.
The Way They Were
Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of “The Way We Were,” this intriguing and impeccably researched book is the first ever account of the making of the classic film starring Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford, revealing the full story behind its genesis and continued controversies, its many deleted scenes, its much-anticipated but never-filmed sequel, and the real-life romance that inspired this groundbreaking love story…
It’s one of the greatest movie romances of all time. Fifty years on, the chemistry between Barbra Streisand as Jewish working-class firebrand Katie Worosky and Robert Redford as all-American golden boy Hubbell Gardiner remains potent. Yet the friction and controversy surrounding The Way We Were was so enormous, the movie was nearly never made at all.
Screenwriter Arthur Laurents wrote the role of Katie with Streisand in mind. Casting Hubble was another matter. Redford, already a superstar, was reluctant to play what he perceived as the “Ken doll” to Streisand’s lead, and demanded his role be changed and expanded. Laurents resisted, telling director Sydney Pollack, “You’ll ruin the movie if it ends up being about two people. It’s Katie’s story, not Hubbell’s.” Despite his protests, ten writers—among them Francis Ford Coppola—were brought on to rework the script.
Laurents’s fears were well founded, and the first preview was disastrous. Producer Ray Stark and Pollack, with Redford’s approval, cut several scenes, upsetting Streisand and Laurents. Yet the edits worked. Such was the movie’s success that Redford was open to making a sequel, though Laurents’s script was never greenlit. Some of those “lost” scenes are now being restored to the film for its 50th anniversary.
It’s also the deep, surprising love story at the heart of The Way They Were that makes it so memorable, and Robert Hofler explores its inspiration—the relationship between Laurents, a Jewish Brooklyn-born college leftist, and his longtime partner, Tom Hatcher. Drawing on a vast trove of Laurents’s and Pollack’s unpublished writings, as well as interviews with Streisand, Redford, and other key players, this is the definitive account of a film that changed the rules of moviemaking and defined romance ever since.
One Hundred Saturdays
One of Wall Street Journal’s Ten Best Books of the Year * Winner of the National Jewish Book Awards for Holocaust Memoir and Sephardic Culture * Recipient of the Jewish Book Council’s Natan Notable Book Award * Winner of the Sophie Brody Medal
The remarkable story of ninety-nine-year-old Stella Levi whose conversations with the author over the course of six years bring to life the vibrant world of Jewish Rhodes, the deportation to Auschwitz that extinguished ninety percent of her community, and the resilience and wisdom of the woman who lived to tell the tale.
With nearly a century of life behind her, Stella Levi had never before spoken in detail about her past. Then she met Michael Frank. He came to her Greenwich Village apartment one Saturday afternoon to ask her a question about the Juderia, the neighborhood on the Greek island of Rhodes where she’d grown up in a Jewish community that had thrived there for half a millennium.
Neither of them could know this was the first of one hundred Saturdays over the course of six years that they would spend in each other’s company. During these meetings Stella traveled back in time to conjure what it felt like to come of age on this luminous, legendary island in the eastern Aegean, which the Italians conquered in 1912, began governing as an official colonial possession in 1923, and continued to administer even after the Germans seized control in September 1943. The following July, the Germans rounded up all 1,700-plus residents of the Juderia and sent them first by boat and then by train to Auschwitz on what was the longest journey—measured by both time and distance—of any of the deportations. Ninety percent of them were murdered upon arrival.
Probing and courageous, candid and sly, Stella is a magical modern-day Scheherazade whose stories reveal what it was like to grow up in an extraordinary place in an extraordinary time—and to construct a life after that place has vanished. One Hundred Saturdays is a portrait of one of the last survivors drawn at nearly the last possible moment, as well as an account of a tender and transformative friendship between storyteller and listener, offering a powerful “reminder that the ability to listen thoughtfully is a rare and significant gift” (The Wall Street Journal).