Named one of the 10 best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review.

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding America's history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of "race," a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men-bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?

Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates's attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son - and readers - the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children's lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

Hammer Head: the Making of a Carpenter by Nina MacLaughlin

Publisher: WW Norton (March 17 2015)
ISBN-10: 0393239136
ISBN-13: 978-0393239133
Memoir

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Nina MacLaughlin spent her twenties working at a Boston newspaper, sitting behind a desk and staring at a screen. Yearning for more tangible work, she applied for a job she saw on Craigslist - Carpenter's Assistant: Women strongly encouraged to apply - despite being a Classics major who couldn't tell a Phillips from a flathead screwdriver. She got the job, and in Hammer Head she tells the rich and entertaining story of becoming a carpenter.

Writing with infectious curiosity, MacLaughlin describes the joys and frustrations of making things by hand, reveals the challenges of working as a woman in an occupation that is 99 percent male, and explains how manual labor changed the way she sees the world. We meet her unflappable mentor, Mary, a petite but tough carpenter-sage ("Be smarter than the tools!"), as well as wild demo dudes, foul-mouthed plumbers, grizzled hardware store clerks, and the colorful clients whose homes she and Mary work in.Throughout, she draws on the wisdom of Ovid, Annie Dillard, Studs Terkel, and Mary Oliver to illuminate her experience of work. And, in a deeply moving climax, MacLaughlin strikes out on her own for the first time to build bookshelves for her own father.

Hammer Head is a passionate book full of sweat, swearing, bashed thumbs, and a deep sense of finding real meaning in work and life.

This Idea Must Die edited by John Brockeman

Publisher: Harper Perennial (Feb. 17 2015)
ISBN-10: 0062374346
ISBN-13: 978-0062374349
Science / Social Science / Essays

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Each year, John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org - "The world's smartest website" (The Guardian) - challenges some of the world's greatest scientists, artists, and philosophers to answer a provocative question crucial to our time. In 2014 he asked 175 brilliant minds to ponder: What scientific idea needs to be put aside in order to make room for new ideas to advance? The answers are as surprising as they are illuminating. In :

Steven Pinker dismantles the working theory of human behavior
Richard Dawkins renounces essentialism
Sherry Turkle reevaluates our expectations of artificial intelligence
Geoffrey West challenges the concept of a "Theory of Everything"
Andrei Linde suggests that our universe and its laws may not be as unique as we think
Martin Rees explains why scientific understanding is a limitless goal
Nina Jablonski argues to rid ourselves of the concept of race
Alan Guth rethinks the origins of the universe
Hans Ulrich Obrist warns against glorifying unlimited economic growth
and much more.

Profound, engaging, thoughtful, and groundbreaking, This Idea Must Die will change your perceptions and understanding of our world today . . . and tomorrow.

The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor by Mark Schatzker

Publisher: Simon & Schuster (May 5 2015)
ISBN-10: 1501116134
ISBN-13: 978-1501116131

Food / Nutrition
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A lively and important argument from an award-winning journalist proving that the key to reversing North America's health crisis lies in the overlooked link between nutrition and flavor.

In The Dorito Effect, Mark Schatzker shows us how our approach to the nation's number one public health crisis has gotten it wrong. The epidemics of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes are not tied to the overabundance of fat or carbs or any other specific nutrient. Instead, we have been led astray by the growing divide between flavor-the tastes we crave-and the underlying nutrition.

Since the late 1940s, we have been slowly leeching flavor out of the food we grow. Those perfectly round, red tomatoes that grace our supermarket aisles today are mostly water, and the big breasted chickens on our dinner plates grow three times faster than they used to, leaving them dry and tasteless. Simultaneously, we have taken great leaps forward in technology, allowing us to produce in the lab the very flavors that are being lost on the farm. Thanks to this largely invisible epidemic, seemingly healthy food is becoming more like junk food: highly craveable but nutritionally empty. We have unknowingly interfered with an ancient chemical language-flavor-that evolved to guide our nutrition, not destroy it.

The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson

Publisher: Doubleday Canada (Oct. 13 2015)
ISBN-10: 0385685718
ISBN-13: 978-0385685719
Travel / Memoir

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In 1995, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to celebrate the green and kindly island that had become his home. The hilarious book he wrote about that journey, Notes from a Small Island, became one of the most loved books of recent decades.

Now, in this hotly anticipated new travel book, his first in fifteen years and sure to be greeted as the funniest book of the decade, Bryson sets out on a brand-new journey, on a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis on the south coast to Cape Wrath on the northernmost tip of Scotland.

Once again, he will guide us through all that's best and worst about Britain today--while doing that incredibly rare thing of making us laugh out loud in public.

Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise Parker

Publisher: Scribner (Nov. 10 2015)
ISBN-10: 1501107836
ISBN-13: 978-1501107832
Memoir / Correspondence

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A wonderfully unconventional literary debut from the award-winning actress Mary-Louise Parker.

An extraordinary literary work, Dear Mr. You renders the singular arc of a woman's life through letters Mary-Louise Parker composes to the men, real and hypothetical, who have informed the person she is today. Beginning with the grandfather she never knew, the letters range from a missive to the beloved priest from her childhood to remembrances of former lovers to an homage to a firefighter she encountered to a heartfelt communication with the uncle of the infant daughter she adopted. Readers will be amazed by the depth and style of these letters, which reveal the complexity and power to be found in relationships both loving and fraught.

Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe by Lisa Randall

Publisher: Ecco (Oct. 27 2015)
ISBN-10: 0062328476
ISBN-13: 978-0062328472
Science

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In this brilliant exploration of our cosmic environment, the renowned particle physicist and New York Times bestselling author of Warped Passages and Knocking on Heaven's Door uses her research into dark matter to illuminate the startling connections between the furthest reaches of space and life here on Earth.

Sixty-six million years ago, an object the size of a city descended from space to crash into Earth, creating a devastating cataclysm that killed off the dinosaurs, along with three-quarters of the other species on the planet. What was its origin? In Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, Lisa Randall proposes it was a comet that was dislodged from its orbit as the Solar System passed through a disk of dark matter embedded in the Milky Way. In a sense, it might have been dark matter that killed the dinosaurs.

Randall tells a breathtaking story that weaves together the cosmos' history and our own, illuminating the deep relationships that are critical to our world and the astonishing beauty inherent in the most familiar things.

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert

Publisher: Riverhead Books (Sept. 22 2015)
ISBN-10: 1594634718
ISBN-13: 978-1594634710
Creativity / Self-Help
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From the worldwide bestselling author of Eat Pray Love: the path to the vibrant, fulfilling life you've dreamed of.

Readers of all ages and walks of life have drawn inspiration and empowerment from Elizabeth Gilbert's books for years. Now this beloved author digs deep into her own generative process to share her wisdom and unique perspective about creativity. With profound empathy and radiant generosity, she offers potent insights into the mysterious nature of inspiration. She asks us to embrace our curiosity and let go of needless suffering. She shows us how to tackle what we most love, and how to face down what we most fear. She discusses the attitudes, approaches, and habits we need in order to live our most creative lives. Balancing between soulful spirituality and cheerful pragmatism, Gilbert encourages us to uncover the "strange jewels" that are hidden within each of us. Whether we are looking to write a book, make art, find new ways to address challenges in our work, embark on a dream long deferred, or simply infuse our everyday lives with more mindfulness and passion, Big Magic cracks open a world of wonder and joy.

Road Trip Rwanda: a Journey Into the New Heart of Africa by Will Ferguson

Publisher: Viking (Sept. 29 2015)
ISBN-10: 0670066427
ISBN-13: 978-0670066421
Travel / Memoir

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Hope lives in Africa. Twenty years after the genocide that left Rwanda in ruins, Giller Prize-winning author Will Ferguson travels deep into the once-mysterious "Land of a Thousand Hills" with his friend and cohort Jean-Claude Munyezamu, a man who escaped Rwanda just months before the killings began.

From the legendary source of the Nile to Dian Fossey's famed "gorillas in the mist," from innovative refugee camps along the Congolese border to the world's most escapable prison, from tragic genocide sites to open savannahs and a bridge to freedom, from schoolyard soccer pitches to a cunning plan to get rich on passion fruit, Ferguson and Munyezamu discover a country reborn.

Funny, engaging, poignant, and at times heartbreaking, Road Trip Rwanda is the lively tale of two friends, the open road, and the hidden heart of a continent.

Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling

Publisher: Crown Archetype (Sept. 15 2015)
ISBN-10: 0804138141
ISBN-13: 978-0804138147
Comedy / Memoir
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In Why Not Me?, Kaling shares her ongoing journey to find contentment and excitement in her adult life, whether it's falling in love at work, seeking new friendships in lonely places, attempting to be the first person in history to lose weight without any behavior modification whatsoever, or most important, believing that you have a place in Hollywood when you're constantly reminded that no one looks like you.

Mindy turns the anxieties, the glamour, and the celebrations of her second coming-of-age into a laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays that anyone who's ever been at a turning point in their life or career can relate to. And those who've never been at a turning point can skip to the parts where she talks about meeting Bradley Cooper.

The Art of Grace: On Moving Well Through Life by Sarah L. Kaufman

Publisher: WW Norton (Nov. 17 2015)
ISBN-10: 0393243958
ISBN-13: 978-0393243956
Movement / Self-Help

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Grace has long been taught as essential to civilized living. The Three Graces - goddesses of charm, beauty, and creativity - exemplify ease and harmony with one another and the world around them. But what has happened to this simple, marvelous concept of being at ease in the world?

With warmth, humor, and an ever-perceptive eye, Sarah L. Kaufman sifts the graceful from the graceless, celebrating heart-catching moments of physical elegance in sports, movies, dance, fashion, and music; rare sightings of celebrity grace; the secrets of gracious hosts; and grace found unexpectedly, in the kitchen of a high-end restaurant and among strippers in a basement bar. Kaufman's thought-provoking reflections on these physical and social acts of grace offer hope for even the clumsiest, most awkward among us.

Guided by the muse of Cary Grant (with further inspiration from Smokey Robinson, Roger Federer, Nelson Mandela, Margot Fonteyn, Amy Purdy, Beyoncé, and others), Kaufman illuminates the importance of grace in the small moments of everyday life. In The Art of Grace, she inspires us to walk taller, spend time on unnecessary kindnesses, and celebrate the grace notes in our lives and those of others.

Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own by Kate Bolick

Publisher: Crown (April 21 2015)
ISBN-10: 0385347138
ISBN-13: 978-0385347136

Memoir / Social Commentary
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"Whom to marry, and when will it happen - these two questions define every woman's existence."

So begins Spinster, a revelatory and slyly erudite look at the pleasures and possibilities of remaining single. Using her own experiences as a starting point, journalist and cultural critic Kate Bolick invites us into her carefully considered, passionately lived life, weaving together the past and present to examine why she - along with over 100 million American women, whose ranks keep growing-remains unmarried.

This unprecedented demographic shift, Bolick explains, is the logical outcome of hundreds of years of change that has neither been fully understood, nor appreciated. Spinster introduces a cast of pioneering women from the last century whose genius, tenacity, and flair for drama have emboldened Bolick to fashion her life on her own terms: columnist Neith Boyce, essayist Maeve Brennan, social visionary Charlotte Perkins Gilman, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, and novelist Edith Wharton. By animating their unconventional ideas and choices, Bolick shows us that contemporary debates about settling down, and having it all, are timeless - the crucible upon which all thoughtful women have tried for centuries to forge a good life.

Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll by Peter Guralnick

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (Nov. 10 2015)
ISBN-10: 0316042749
ISBN-13: 978-0316042741
Music Industry / Biography

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The author of the critically acclaimed Elvis Presley biography Last Train to Memphis brings us the life of Sam Phillips, the visionary genius who singlehandedly steered the revolutionary path of Sun Records.

The music that he shaped in his tiny Memphis studio with artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Ike Turner, Howlin' Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash, introduced a sound that had never been heard before. He brought forth a singular mix of black and white voices passionately proclaiming the vitality of the American vernacular tradition while at the same time declaring, once and for all, a new, integrated musical day. With extensive interviews and firsthand personal observations extending over a 25-year period with Phillips, along with wide-ranging interviews with nearly all the legendary Sun Records artists, Guralnick gives us an ardent, unrestrained portrait of an American original as compelling in his own right as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, or Thomas Edison.

Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson

Publisher: Flatiron Books (Sept. 22 2015)
ISBN-10: 1250077001
ISBN-13: 978-1250077004
Memoir / Mental Health

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In Furiously Happy, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jenny Lawson explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. A hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety? That sounds like a terrible idea.

But terrible ideas are what Jenny does best.

As Jenny says:

"Some people might think that being 'furiously happy' is just an excuse to be stupid and irresponsible and invite a herd of kangaroos over to your house without telling your husband first because you suspect he would say no since he's never particularly liked kangaroos. And that would be ridiculous because no one would invite a herd of kangaroos into their house. Two is the limit. I speak from personal experience. My husband says that none is the new limit. I say he should have been clearer about that before I rented those kangaroos."

Lawson is beloved around the world for her inimitable humor and honesty, and in Furiously Happy, she is at her snort-inducing funniest. This is a book about embracing everything that makes us who we are - the beautiful and the flawed - and then using it to find joy in fantastic and outrageous ways.

Between You & Me: Confessions Of A Comma Queen by Mary Norris

Publisher: WW Norton (April 7 2015)
ISBN-10: 0393240185
ISBN-13: 978-0393240184
Memoir / Writing & Grammar

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Mary Norris has spent more than three decades in The New Yorker's copy department, maintaining its celebrated high standards. Now she brings her vast experience, good cheer, and finely sharpened pencils to help the rest of us in a boisterous language book as full of life as it is of practical advice.

Between You & Me features Norris's laugh-out-loud descriptions of some of the most common and vexing problems in spelling, punctuation, and usage-comma faults, danglers, "who" vs. "whom," "that" vs. "which," compound words, gender-neutral language-and her clear explanations of how to handle them.

Down-to-earth and always open-minded, she draws on examples from Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, and the Lord's Prayer, as well as from The Honeymooners, The Simpsons, David Foster Wallace, and Gillian Flynn. She takes us to see a copy of Noah Webster's groundbreaking Blue-Back Speller, on a quest to find out who put the hyphen in Moby-Dick, on a pilgrimage to the world's only pencil-sharpener museum, and inside the hallowed halls of The New Yorker and her work with such celebrated writers as Pauline Kael, Philip Roth, and George Saunders.

Readers-and writers-will find in Norris neither a scold nor a softie but a wise and witty new friend in love with language and alive to the glories of its use in America, even in the age of autocorrect and spell-check. As Norris writes, "The dictionary is a wonderful thing, but you can't let it push you around."