New For Fall: Nonfiction Books To Add To Your Reading List

Fall has officially arrived and the chilly weather just makes us want to curl up by the crackling fire with a great book. So put the hot chocolate on the stove and cut yourself a slice a pie because our sister company Simon & Schuster is at it again with these riveting true stories to help pass the long autumn evenings.

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League
By Jeff Hobbs

Robert Peace’s young life was spent on the drug-infested, crime-ridden streets of Newark, New Jersey, with an imprisoned father and his mother earning less than $15,000 a year. A brilliant student, he went on to graduate from Yale with degrees in molecular biochemistry and biophysics before he was murdered at age 30, the victim of a gang-related drug assassination. Written by his friend and college roommate, this intimate portrait of Robert Peace’s life encompasses America’s most enduring conflicts: race, poverty, drugs, education, friendship, family, and the collision of two irreconcilable worlds. But most all, it is the story of one brilliant young man whose violent end is heartbreaking, powerful and unforgettable.

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
By Walter Isaacson

Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson delves into the talents and traits that allowed certain inventors to turn their visionary ideas into revolutionary realities. Beginning with Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter, who pioneered computer programming in the 1840s, Isaacson documents the contributions of innovators from Alan Turing to Bill Gates to Steve Wozniak. The Innovators reveals how collaboration – amongst peers, between generations, and across disciplines – has driven the digital revolution and transformed our world.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
By Naomi Klein

New from Naomi Klein, the award-winning and bestselling author of The Shock Doctrine and No Logo, This Changes Everything makes the brilliant argument that climate change isn’t just another political issue, but an urgent crisis that challenges us to abandon the “free market” ideology of our time. Klein meticulously argues that massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best opportunity to simultaneously restructure the global economy, reduce gaping inequalities, and re-imagine our political systems and broken democracies.

Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
By Sam Harris

Ever increasing numbers of Americans describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious.” Waking Up, written by neuroscientist, philosopher, and the bestselling author Sam Harris, is for them. Marrying contemplative wisdom with modern science, Harris reveals how virtues such as compassion, moral goodness, and self-transcendence are understood in the context of neuroscience, psychology, and related fields. Waking Up demonstrates how we can achieve spiritual satisfaction and a sense of higher purpose without the confines of traditional religion.

Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson
By S. C. Gwynne

General “Stonewall” Jackson has long been an American legend. An undistinguished Confederate general in April 1862, by June, he had engineered and executed the Valley Campaign, one of the great military campaigns in American history. His strategic innovations shattered the conventional wisdom of warfare and threatened the ultimate success of the Union army. Despite his combative and cantankerous character, he was regarded as the war’s most charismatic general. From the author of the prizewinning New York Times bestseller Empire of the Summer Moon, Rebel Yell is a thrilling account of a remarkable American hero whose brilliance at the art of war transcends the Civil War itself.

The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
By Doris Kearns Goodwin

Chosen by The New York Times and The Washington Post as one of 2013's best books, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit is a major work of history. Told through the friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, it is the story of the Progressive Era’s muckraking press, which helped Roosevelt push the government to crack down on the era’s robber barons, corrupt politicians, and corporate exploiters. Demonstrating Goodwin’s distinctive ability to combine scholarly rigor with accessibility, The Bully Pulpit is an examination of leadership in a rare moment of activism and reform that brought the country closer to its founding ideals.