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Hello, Grass Roots Readers,
This final special edition newsletter features select new non-fiction titles covering a variety of topics and interests, from history to biography to reference, for everyone on your gift list! The books listed are just the tip of the iceberg, so stop in the store to see what else is new and gift-worthy.
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A School for the People tells the story of OSU's nearly 150 years as a land grant institution through more than 500 photographs, maps, documents, and extensive captions. A capsule history includes many of the iconic photographs associated with the university. Other chapters focus on themes such as campus development, the growth of academics, the evolution of research as a major focus of the university, campus life and organizations, and, of course, athletics. Overflowing with visual riches, it will appeal to OSU alumni, faculty and staff, and anyone with an interest in the history of higher education in Oregon or land grant institutions generally.
Price: $50.00
Publisher: Oregon State University Press; ISBN: 9780870718229
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". . .When [Buck] found out that the Oregon Trail is meticulously preserved and traversable. . .[he] and his foul-mouthed handyman brother, Nick, set out to follow the 2,000-mile path, with only a covered wagon and mule team as their mode of transportation. The ensuing tale combines the brothers' personal narrative with the remarkable history of the trail, including written accounts from the pioneers who braved it. . .Buck's enthusiasm for the often arduous trip, coupled with his honest assessment of poor judgments and mistakes along the way, makes for an entertaining and enlightening account of one of America's most legendary migrations. . ." - Publishers Weekly
Price: $28.00 Publisher: Simon & Schuster; ISBN: 9781451659160
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Winchester tackles the Pacific Ocean by focusing on key moments since 1950 that speak to the greater trends and larger truths about its significance to us today. He tells the story of the little transistor radio and how it sparked the digital revolution, from Japan to Silicon Valley, altering the ocean's destiny. He examines the geopolitical shifts that shaped the ocean's vast land areas, and addresses the environmental degradation and climate shifts that now threaten this majestic body of water. Calling upon Winchester's formidable historical understanding and his singular talent for storytelling, Pacific is a paean to this magnificent sea of beauty and myth.
Price: $28.99 Publisher: Harper; ISBN: 9780062315410
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Biography, Memoir, and Essays
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From 2005 to 2008, Pat Wray chronicled life in Oregon's mid-Willamette Valley in a twice-monthly column in the Corvallis Gazette-Times with wry humor, homespun wisdom and unabashed fondness for his adopted hometown. Wray celebrated what was best in our community and poked gentle fun at our foibles. Corvallis Reflections is, at its heart, a celebration of a community and its people. But Wray's reflective lens looks forward also, and into the deepest realms of human nature. His ever-present good humor masks a willingness to explore, satirize and when necessary confront, people, organizations and ideas he considers inimical to the best interests of his beloved Corvallis, Oregon.
Price: $20.00 Publisher: Outdoor Insights; ISBN: 9780974292328
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Joan Didion lived a life in the public and private eye with her late husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, having become wildly successful writing partners when they moved to Los Angeles, co-writing screenplays and adaptations together. Didion is well-known for her literary journalistic style in both fiction and non-fiction, including The Year of Magical Thinking, a National Book Award winner and shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize. Daugherty takes readers on a journey back through time, following a young Didion in Sacramento, through to her adult life as a writer interviewing those who know and knew her personally, while maintaining a respectful distance from the reclusive literary great.
Price: $35.00 Publisher: St. Martin's Press; ISBN: 9781250010025
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No writer has succeeded in capturing the medical and human drama of illness as honestly and as eloquently as Oliver Sacks. During the last few months of his life, he wrote a set of essays in which he movingly explored his feelings about completing a life and coming to terms with his own death. "It is the fate of every human being," Sacks writes, "to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death." Together, these four essays form an ode to the uniqueness of each human being and to gratitude for the gift of life.
Price: $17.00 Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group; ISBN: 9780451492937
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Have you ever tried to learn more about some incredible thing, only to be frustrated by incomprehensible jargon? Randall Munroe is here to help. In Thing Explainer, he uses common words to provide simple explanations for some of the most interesting stuff there is, including: food-heating radio boxes (microwaves), computer buildings (datacenters), and the other worlds around the sun (the solar system). How do these things work? Where do they come from? What would life be like without them? Funny, interesting, and always understandable, this book is for anyone age 5 to 105 who has ever wondered.
Price: $24.95 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; ISBN: 9780544668256
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Price: $24.95 Publisher: Oregon State University Press; ISBN: 9780870717802
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Price: $14.95 Publisher: Mariner Books; ISBN: 9780544286740
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Price: $24.95 Publisher: Penguin Press; ISBN: 9781594206764
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Price: $29.99 Publisher: St. Martin's Press; ISBN: 9781250058904
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Coloring Books for All Ages
Price: $15.99 |
The latest addition to the celebrated Best American series, featuring the most creative and effective visualizations of data from the past year, introduced by Brain Pickings creator Maria Popova.
The Best American Infographics 2015 showcases visualizations from the worlds of politics, social issues, health, sports, arts and culture, and more. From an elegant graphic comparison of first sentences in classic novels to a startling illustration of the world's deadliest animals, You'll come away with more than your share of. . .mind-bending moments and a wide-ranging view of what infographics can do." - Harvard Business Review
Price: $20.00 Publisher: Mariner Books; ISBN: 9780544542709
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America's top-selling reference book of all time, with more than 82 million copies sold. Since 1868, this compendium of information has been "the" authoritative source for all your entertainment, reference, and learning needs. The 2016 edition of The World Almanac reviews the events of 2015 and will be your go-to source for any questions on any topic in the upcoming year. Praised as a "treasure trove of political, economic, scientific and educational statistics and information" by The Wall Street Journal, The World Almanac and Book of Facts will answer all of your trivia needs from history and sports to geography, pop culture, and much more.
Price: $14.99 Publisher: World Almanac Books; ISBN: 9781600572012
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Jack's favorite non-fiction title of the year!
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"Dartnell, a U.K. Space Agency research fellow and award-winning science writer, specializes in the field of astrobiology, including how microorganisms could survive on Mars. It's no wonder, then, that this renowned young scientist is fascinated by survival tactics, the underlying theme of this ambitious inquiry into how people might be able to rebuild the world as we know it if an apocalypse came to pass. As much as any writer could cover the history of technology in 300 pages, Dartnell presents a good case. His account quickly progresses from raising crops to making soap, shearing and spinning wool, mining coal, generating electricity, and building radios. . . " - Booklist
Price: $17.00 Publisher: Penguin Books; ISBN: 9780143127048
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