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Monday, August 3, 2015

Don't miss out on these new bestsellers, available now!


Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer



“[M]eticulously reported, fascinating and deeply disturbing.... By probing the specific, Krakauer illuminates upsetting generalities..... Krakauer—a journalist who is also a compelling writer—artfully keeps the books from becoming a compendium of facts..... It’s an important, difficult and timely subject.”




American Wife: A Memoir of Love, War, Faith, and Renewal by Taya Kyle and Jim DeFelice

Kyle relates the story of her life with her husband, Chris Kyle, of American Sniper fame. With the assistance of DeFelice, who also co-authored American Sniper, Kyle gives readers an inside view of life in their early years of marriage, the moments of tenderness and romance that drew them together, the births of their two children, and the sadness, disappointment, and anger she felt when Kyle was deployed repeatedly to various locations in the Middle East. …  The story is gritty, romantic, and bittersweet, as only a story of this nature can be. It may not have a happy ending, but it is filled with a love, a strong faith in God, family, and country, and the determination of a woman to carry on as best she can under the strain of fame and the burden of grief. … A straightforward, honest, and humble memoir.


Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead by Bill Kreutzmann and Benjy Eisen

… Readers dropping into Grateful Dead drummer Kreutzmann's stream of memory may be surprised by only one overriding theme: namely, the frequency of bitter episodes of discord, always roiling under the surface of a good-time psychedelic jug band that slowly emerged as a stadium-filler. Kreutzmann himself isn't shy of dishing and of sharing wounded feelings. …  Drugs, the reader will not be surprised to learn, form another overriding theme: "So, for the record, the drummer from the Grateful Dead smokes weed and thinks it should be legal," he writes. "Is that any surprise?" Not in the least, and the chief problem with this unenergetic memoir is that there are no surprises, just a kind of grandfatherly "let me tell you, kid, back in the day we…" approach to events, repetitive, fuzzy, full of dropped names (Dylan, Belushi, Joplin), and mostly good-natured—though sometimes surprisingly peevish. Die-hard Deadheads will be curious though not richly rewarded for their troubles.

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

 [Not] the first biography we've had of Mr. Musk, nor will it be the last. But it is easily the richest to date. It's also the first one Mr. Musk has cooperated with…The result is a book that is smart, light on its feet and possesses a crunchy thoroughness…[Vance] delivers a well-calibrated portrait of Mr. Musk, so that we comprehend both his friends and his enemies. It's a book with many ancillary pleasures. Mr. Vance brings us up to date on the states of green energy and space launches. He also veers away from his subject just often enough, offering profiles of the frequently brilliant people who work alongside Mr. Musk…The best thing Mr. Vance does in this book, though, is tell Mr. Musk's story simply and well. It's the story of an intelligent man, for sure. But more so it is the story of a determined one.



It's a Long Story: My Life by Willie Nelson with David Ritz



"A smooth-spoken recollection of the country legend's childhood and his eight-decade-long musical career.... Just like this book -- and its subject -- direct and genuine."



The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 by Joseph J. Ellis

A brilliant account of six years during which four Founding Fathers, "in disregard of public opinion, carried the American story in a new direction." … Ellis delivers a convincing argument that it was a massive political transformation led by men with impeccable revolutionary credentials. The indispensable man was George Washington, whose miserable eight years begging support for the Revolutionary army convinced him that America needed a central government. Its intellectual mastermind, James Madison, not only marshaled historical arguments, but performed political legerdemain in setting the Constitutional Convention agenda, orchestrating the debates and promoting ratification… This is Ellis' ninth consecutive history of the Revolutionary War era and yet another winner.

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