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Week of November 15, 2020

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GREENLIGHTS
Matthew McConaughey
Cover of GREENLIGHTS

GREENLIGHTS

by Matthew McConaughey · Crown

2 wks at #1 · 2 on list

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 6 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE! Discover the life-changing memoir that has inspired millions of readers through the Academy Award–winning actor’s unflinching honesty, unconventional wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction. “The No. 1 celebrity memoir of the past 10 years.”—USA Today “McConaughey’s book invites us to grapple with the lessons of his life as he did—and to see that the point was never to win, but to understand.”—Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck I’ve been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me. Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life’s challenges—how to get relative with the inevitable—you can enjoy a state of success I call “catching greenlights.” So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops. Hopefully, it’s medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot’s license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears. It’s a love letter. To life. It’s also a guide to catching more greenlights—and to realizing that the yellows and reds eventually turn green too. Good luck. The short dust jacket included with this hardcover edition is an intentional design choice.

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UNTAMED
Glennon Doyle
Cover of UNTAMED

UNTAMED

by Glennon Doyle · Dial Press

34 wks on list

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OVER THREE MILLION COPIES SOLD! “Packed with incredible insight about what it means to be a woman today.”—Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club Pick) In her most revealing and powerful memoir yet, the activist, speaker, bestselling author, and “patron saint of female empowerment” (People) explores the joy and peace we discover when we stop striving to meet others’ expectations and start trusting the voice deep within us. “Untamed will liberate women—emotionally, spiritually, and physically. It is phenomenal.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of City of Girls and Eat Pray Love A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Oprah Daily, The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Bloomberg, Parade This is how you find yourself. There is a voice of longing inside each woman. We strive so mightily to be good: good partners, daughters, mothers, employees, and friends. We hope all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed. We look at our lives and wonder: Wasn’t it all supposed to be more beautiful than this? We quickly silence that question, telling ourselves to be grateful, hiding our discontent—even from ourselves. For many years, Glennon Doyle denied her own discontent. Then, while speaking at a conference, she looked at a woman across the room and fell instantly in love. Three words flooded her mind: There She Is. At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high. But she soon realized they had come to her from within. This was her own voice—the one she had buried beneath decades of numbing addictions, cultural conditioning, and institutional allegiances. This was the voice of the girl she had been before the world told her who to be. Glennon decided to quit abandoning herself and to instead abandon the world’s expectations of her. She quit being good so she could be free. She quit pleasing and started living. Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call. It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live. It is the story of navigating divorce, forming a new blended family, and discovering that the brokenness or wholeness of a family depends not on its structure but on each member’s ability to bring her full self to the table. And it is the story of how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honor our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest, wildest instincts so that we become women who can finally look at ourselves and say: There She Is. Untamed shows us how to be brave. As Glennon insists: The braver we are, the luckier we get.

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CASTE
Isabel Wilkerson
Cover of CASTE

CASTE

by Isabel Wilkerson · Random House

13 wks on list

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NEW YORK TIMES READERS PICK: 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions—now with a new Afterword by the author. #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, O: The Oprah Magazine, NPR, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, New York Post, The New York Public Library, Fortune, Smithsonian Magazine, Marie Claire, Slate, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • Winner of the Carl Sandburg Literary Award • Dayton Literary Prize Finalist • PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Finalist • Kirkus Prize Finalist “As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.” Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Isabel Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

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ONE VOTE AWAY
Ted Cruz
Cover of ONE VOTE AWAY

ONE VOTE AWAY

by Ted Cruz · Regnery

5 wks on list

** WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER **USA TODAY BESTSELLER ** PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY BESTSELLER ** NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ** With a simple majority on the Supreme Court, the left would have the power to curtail or even abolish the freedoms that have made America a beacon to the world. We are one vote away from losing our most precious constitutional rights. As a Supreme Court clerk, solicitor general of Texas, and private litigator, Ted Cruz played a key role in some of the most important legal cases of the past two decades. In One Vote Away, you will discover how often the high court decisions that affect your life have been decided by the narrowest of margins. One vote preserves your right to speak freely, to bear arms, and to exercise your faith. One vote will determine whether your children enjoy their full inheritance as American citizens. God may endow us with "certain unalienable rights," but whether we enjoy them depends on nine judges—the "high priests" who have the last say in our system of government. Drawing back the curtain of their temple, Senator Cruz reveals the struggles, arguments, and strife that have shaped the fate of those rights. No one who reads One Vote Away can ever again take a single seat on the Supreme Court for granted.

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KILLING CRAZY HORSE
Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard
Cover of KILLING CRAZY HORSE

KILLING CRAZY HORSE

by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard · Holt

8 wks on list

The latest installment of the multimillion-selling Killing series is a gripping journey through the American West and the historic clashes between Native Americans and settlers. The bloody Battle of Tippecanoe was only the beginning. It’s 1811 and President James Madison has ordered the destruction of Shawnee warrior chief Tecumseh’s alliance of tribes in the Great Lakes region. But while General William Henry Harrison would win this fight, the armed conflict between Native Americans and the newly formed United States would rage on for decades. Bestselling authors Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard venture through the fraught history of our country’s founding on already occupied lands, from General Andrew Jackson’s brutal battles with the Creek Nation to President James Monroe’s epic “sea to shining sea” policy, to President Martin Van Buren’s cruel enforcement of a “treaty” that forced the Cherokee Nation out of their homelands along what would be called the Trail of Tears. O’Reilly and Dugard take readers behind the legends to reveal never-before-told historical moments in the fascinating creation story of America. This fast-paced, wild ride through the American frontier will shock readers and impart unexpected lessons that reverberate to this day.

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GROUP
Christie Tate
Cover of GROUP

GROUP

by Christie Tate · Avid Reader

1 wks on list

A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The refreshingly original and “startlingly hopeful” (Lisa Taddeo) debut memoir of an over-achieving young lawyer who reluctantly agrees to group therapy and gets psychologically and emotionally naked in a room of six complete strangers—and finds human connection, and herself. Christie Tate had just been named the top student in her law school class and finally had her eating disorder under control. Why then was she driving through Chicago fantasizing about her own death? Why was she envisioning putting an end to the isolation and sadness that still plagued her despite her achievements? Enter Dr. Rosen, a therapist who calmly assures her that if she joins one of his psychotherapy groups, he can transform her life. All she has to do is show up and be honest. About everything—her eating habits, childhood, sexual history, etc. Christie is skeptical, insisting that that she is defective, beyond cure. But Dr. Rosen issues a nine-word prescription that will change everything: “You don’t need a cure. You need a witness.” So begins her entry into the strange, terrifying, and ultimately life-changing world of group therapy. Christie is initially put off by Dr. Rosen’s outlandish directives, but as her defenses break down and she comes to trust Dr. Rosen and to depend on the sessions and the prescribed nightly phone calls with various group members, she begins to understand what it means to connect. “Often hilarious, and ultimately very touching” (People), Group is “a wild ride” (The Boston Globe), and with Christie as our guide, we are given a front row seat to the daring, exhilarating, painful, and hilarious journey that is group therapy—an under-explored process that breaks you down, and then reassembles you so that all the pieces finally fit.

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OBAMA
Pete Souza

OBAMA

by Pete Souza · Little, Brown

24 wks on list

A biography of Barack Obama.

8
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BLACKOUT
Candace Owens
Cover of BLACKOUT

BLACKOUT

by Candace Owens · Threshold Editions

7 wks on list

It’s time for a black exit. Political activist and social media star Candace Owens addresses the many ways that Democrat Party policies hurt, rather than help, the African American community, and why she and many others are turning right. Black Americans have long been shackled to the Democrats. Seeing no viable alternative, they have watched liberal politicians take the black vote for granted without pledging anything in return. In Blackout, Owens argues that this automatic allegiance is both illogical and unearned. She contends that the Democrat Party has a long history of racism and exposes the ideals that hinder the black community’s ability to rise above poverty, live independent and successful lives, and be an active part of the American Dream. Instead, Owens offers up a different ideology by issuing a challenge: It’s time for a major black exodus. From dependency, from victimhood, from miseducation—and the Democrat Party, which perpetuates all three. Owens explains that government assistance is a double-edged sword, that the Left dismisses the faith so important to the black community, that Democrat permissiveness toward abortion disproportionately affects black babies, that the #MeToo movement hurts black men, and much more. Weaving in her personal story, which ushered her from a roach-infested low-income apartment to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, she demonstrates how she overcame her setbacks and challenges despite the cultural expectation that she should embrace a victim mentality. Well-researched and intelligently argued, Blackout lays bare the myth that all black people should vote Democrat—and shows why turning to the right will leave them happier, more successful, and more self-sufficient.

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SHADE
Pete Souza
Cover of SHADE

SHADE

by Pete Souza · Little, Brown

13 wks on list

As Chief Official White House Photographer, Pete Souza spent more time alongside President Barack Obama than almost anyone else. His years photographing the President gave him an intimate behind-the-scenes view of the unique gravity of the Office of the Presidency, and the tremendous responsibility that comes with it. Now, as a concerned citizen observing the Trump administration, he is standing up and speaking out. Shade is a portrait in Presidential contrasts, telling the tale of the Obama and Trump administrations through a series of visual juxtapositions. Here, more than one hundred of Souza's unforgettable images of President Obama deliver new power and meaning when framed by the tweets, news headlines, and quotes that defined the first 500 days of the Trump White House. What began with Souza's Instagram posts soon after President Trump's inauguration in January 2017 has become a potent commentary on the state of the Presidency, and the USA. Some call this 'throwing shade'. Souza calls it telling the truth. In Shade, Souza's photographs are more than a rejoinder to the chaos, abuses of power, and destructive policies that now define America's highest office. They are a reminder of a President we could believe in, and a courageous defense of American values.

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AMERICAN CRISIS
Andrew Cuomo
Cover of AMERICAN CRISIS

AMERICAN CRISIS

by Andrew Cuomo · Crown

2 wks on list

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Governor Andrew Cuomo tells the riveting story of how he took charge in the fight against COVID-19 as New York became the epicenter of the pandemic, offering hard-won lessons in leadership and his vision for the path forward. “An impressive road map to dealing with a crisis as serious as any we have faced.”—The Washington Post When COVID-19 besieged the United States, New York State emerged as the global “ground zero” for a deadly contagion that threatened the lives and livelihoods of millions. Quickly, Governor Andrew Cuomo provided the leadership to address the threat, becoming the standard-bearer of the organized response the country desperately needed. With infection rates spiking and more people dying every day, the systems and functions necessary to combat the pandemic in New York—and America—did not exist. So Cuomo undertook the impossible. He unified people to rise to the challenge and was relentless in his pursuit of scientific facts and data. He quelled fear while implementing an extraordinary plan for flattening the curve of infection. He and his team worked day and night to protect the people of New York, despite roadblocks presented by a president incapable of leadership and addicted to transactional politics. Taking readers beyond the candid daily briefings that became must-see TV across the globe, and providing a dramatic, day-by-day account of the catastrophe as it unfolded, American Crisis presents the intimate and inspiring thoughts of a leader at an unprecedented historical moment. In his own voice, Andrew Cuomo chronicles the ingenuity and sacrifice required of so many to fight the pandemic, sharing the decision-making that shaped his policy as well as his frank accounting and assessment of his interactions with the federal government, the White House, and other state and local political and health officials. Real leadership, he shows, requires clear communication, compassion for others, and a commitment to truth-telling—no matter how frightening the facts may be. Including a game plan for what we as individuals—and as a nation—need to do to protect ourselves against this disaster and those to come, American Crisis is a remarkable portrait of selfless leadership and a gritty story of difficult choices that points the way to a safer future for all of us.

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IS THIS ANYTHING?
Jerry Seinfeld
Cover of IS THIS ANYTHING?

IS THIS ANYTHING?

by Jerry Seinfeld · Simon & Schuster

4 wks on list

The first book in twenty-five years from Jerry Seinfeld features his best work across five decades in comedy. Since his first performance at the legendary New York nightclub “Catch a Rising Star” as a twenty-one-year-old college student in fall of 1975, Jerry Seinfeld has written his own material and saved everything. “Whenever I came up with a funny bit, whether it happened on a stage, in a conversation, or working it out on my preferred canvas, the big yellow legal pad, I kept it in one of those old school accordion folders,” Seinfeld writes. “So I have everything I thought was worth saving from forty-five years of hacking away at this for all I was worth.” For this book, Jerry Seinfeld has selected his favorite material, organized decade by decade. In page after hilarious page, one brilliantly crafted observation after another, readers will witness the evolution of one of the great comedians of our time and gain new insights into the thrilling but unforgiving art of writing stand-up comedy.

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HOW TO BE AN ANTIRACIST
Ibram X. Kendi
Cover of HOW TO BE AN ANTIRACIST

HOW TO BE AN ANTIRACIST

by Ibram X. Kendi · One World

35 wks on list

Not being racist is not enough. We have to be antiracist. *THE GLOBAL MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER - NOW REVISED AND UPDATED* In HOW TO BE AN ANTIRACIST Ibram X. Kendi, one of the world's most influential scholars on racism, demolishes the idea of a post-racial society, punctures the myths and taboos that cloud our understanding of racism and presents a radically new approach to tackling it. He shows how everyone is, at times, complicit in maintaining the structure of racism though we rarely realise it, and gives us the tools to identify and change those behaviours. Uncompromising but essential, HOW TO BE AN ANTIRACIST sparked a new conversation about being antiracist around the world, showing that until we become part of the solution, we can only be part of the problem. 'Transformative and revolutionary' ROBIN DIANGELO, author of White Fragility 'So vital' IJEOMA OLUO, author of So You Want to Talk About Race 'It feels like a light switch being flicked on' OWEN JONES

13
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RAGE
Bob Woodward
Cover of RAGE

RAGE

by Bob Woodward · Simon & Schuster

7 wks on list

Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, is an unprecedented and intimate tour de force of new reporting on the Trump presidency facing a global pandemic, economic disaster and racial unrest. Woodward, the #1 international bestselling author of Fear: Trump in the White House, has uncovered the precise moment the president was warned that the Covid-19 epidemic would be the biggest national security threat to his presidency. In dramatic detail, Woodward takes readers into the Oval Office as Trump’s head pops up when he is told in January 2020 that the pandemic could reach the scale of the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed 675,000 Americans. In 17 on-the-record interviews with Woodward over seven volatile months—an utterly vivid window into Trump’s mind—the president provides a self-portrait that is part denial and part combative interchange mixed with surprising moments of doubt as he glimpses the perils in the presidency and what he calls the “dynamite behind every door.” At key decision points, Rage shows how Trump’s responses to the crises of 2020 were rooted in the instincts, habits and style he developed during his first three years as president. Revisiting the earliest days of the Trump presidency, Rage reveals how Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats struggled to keep the country safe as the president dismantled any semblance of collegial national security decision making. Rage draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand witnesses as well as participants’ notes, emails, diaries, calendars and confidential documents. Woodward obtained 25 never-seen personal letters exchanged between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who describes the bond between the two leaders as out of a “fantasy film.” Trump insists to Woodward he will triumph over Covid-19 and the economic calamity. “Don’t worry about it, Bob. Okay?” Trump told the author in July. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get to do another book. You’ll find I was right.”

14
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HUMANS
Brandon Stanton
Cover of HUMANS

HUMANS

by Brandon Stanton · St. Martin's

3 wks on list

The Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller "Just when we need it, Humans reminds us what it means to be human . . . one of the most influential art projects of the decade.” —Washington Post Brandon Stanton’s new book, Humans—his most moving and compelling book to date—shows us the world. Brandon Stanton created Humans of New York in 2010. What began as a photographic census of life in New York City, soon evolved into a storytelling phenomenon. A global audience of millions began following HONY daily. Over the next several years, Stanton broadened his lens to include people from across the world. Traveling to more than forty countries, he conducted interviews across continents, borders, and language barriers. Humans is the definitive catalogue of these travels. The faces and locations will vary from page to page, but the stories will feel deeply familiar. Told with candor and intimacy, Humans will resonate with readers across the globe—providing a portrait of our shared experience.

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A REPUBLIC UNDER ASSAULT
Tom Fitton
Cover of A REPUBLIC UNDER ASSAULT

A REPUBLIC UNDER ASSAULT

by Tom Fitton · Threshold Editions

2 wks on list

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In this explosive book, New York Times bestselling author and president of Judicial Watch Tom Fitton explains how the Radical Left and the Deep State destroyed the Trump presidency. With his trademark “readable, engaging, persuasive” (The Washington Times) writing, Tom Fitton identifies the major forces posing a continued threat to American democracy. Hillary Clinton Email Scandal: How the Clinton team and senior officials at the Obama State Department conspired to cover up Hillary Clinton’s secret email system—and shocking revelations that tie the Obama White House to the cover-up! Voter Fraud: How Soros-funded groups attack states that seek to protect clean elections by challenging voter ID laws, and how the Left is cynically peddling COVID-19 crisis electoral “reforms,” such as mail-in voting, which could increase voter fraud and election chaos. And shocking numbers about dirty voting rolls across the nation! Illegal Immigration: How deadly illegal “sanctuary” policies are exploding across America, and how our nation’s sovereignty has been under assault by radical open-border advocates. Subversive Deep State collaborators with ties to the Clinton and Obama machines not only launched countless—often illegal—operations to stop and then remove Trump, but even more alarmingly, are working to transform the United States into something truly unrecognizable to all who believe in liberty and the rule of law. “This is must reading for every American who wants to save our nation” (Sean Hannity, #1 New York Times bestselling author).

Historical bestseller data sourced from the New York Times Book Review, archived by Hawes Publications.