TheBestseller
Observatory

Best Sellers

Hardcover Nonfiction

Week of October 16, 2022

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I'M GLAD MY MOM DIED
Jennette McCurdy
Cover of I'M GLAD MY MOM DIED

I'M GLAD MY MOM DIED

by Jennette McCurdy · Simon & Schuster

7 wks at #1 · 8 on list

"A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor--including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother--and how she retook control of her life"--]cProvided by publisher.

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LIVE WIRE
Kelly Ripa
Cover of LIVE WIRE

LIVE WIRE

by Kelly Ripa · Dey Street

1 wks on list

An instant New York Times bestseller from Kelly Ripa—a sharp, funny, and honest collection of real-life stories showing the many dimensions and crackling wit of the beloved daytime talk show host. In Live Wire, her first book, Kelly shows what really makes her tick. As a professional, as a wife, as a daughter and as a mother, she brings a hard-earned wisdom and an eye for the absurdity of life to every minute of every day. It is her relatability in all of these roles that has earned her fans worldwide and millions of followers on social media. Whether recounting how she and Mark really met, the level of chauvinism she experienced on set, how Jersey Pride follows her wherever she goes, and many, many moments of utter mortification (whence she proves that you cannot, in fact, die of embarrassment) Kelly always tells it like it is. Ms. Ripa takes no prisoners. Surprising, at times savage, a little shameless and always with humor… Live Wire shows Kelly as she really is offscreen—a very wise woman who has something to say.

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KILLING THE LEGENDS
Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard
Cover of KILLING THE LEGENDS

KILLING THE LEGENDS

by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard · St. Martin's

1 wks on list

In the next book in the multimillion-selling Killing Series, Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard tell the larger-than-life stories of Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and Muhammad Ali. The King is dead. The Walrus is shot. The Greatest is no more. Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and Muhammad Ali. These three icons changed not only the worlds of music, film, and sports, but the world itself. Their faces were known everywhere, in every nation, across every culture. And their stories became larger than life—until their lives spun out of control at the hands of those they most trusted. In Killing the Legends, Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard explore the lives, legacies, and tragic deaths of three of the most famous people of the 20th century. Each experienced immense success, then failures that forced them to change; each faced the challenge of growing old in fields that privilege youth; and finally, each became isolated, cocooned by wealth but vulnerable to the demands of those in their innermost circles. Dramatic, insightful, and immensely entertaining, Killing the Legends is the twelfth book in O’Reilly and Dugard’s Killing series: the most popular series of narrative history books in the world, with more than 18 million copies in print.

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STARRY MESSENGER
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Cover of STARRY MESSENGER

STARRY MESSENGER

by Neil deGrasse Tyson · Holt

2 wks on list

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Bringing his cosmic perspective to civilization on Earth, Neil deGrasse Tyson shines new light on the crucial fault lines of our time—war, politics, religion, truth, beauty, gender, and race—in a way that stimulates a deeper sense of unity for us all. In a time when our political and cultural views feel more polarized than ever, Tyson provides a much-needed antidote to so much of what divides us, while making a passionate case for the twin chariots of enlightenment—a cosmic perspective and the rationality of science. After thinking deeply about how science sees the world and about Earth as a planet, the human brain has the capacity to reset and recalibrates life’s priorities, shaping the actions we might take in response. No outlook on culture, society, or civilization remains untouched. With crystalline prose, Starry Messenger walks us through the scientific palette that sees and paints the world differently. From insights on resolving global conflict to reminders of how precious it is to be alive, Tyson reveals, with warmth and eloquence, an array of brilliant and beautiful truths that apply to us all, informed and enlightened by knowledge of our place in the universe.

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THE DIVIDER
Peter Baker and Susan Glasser
Cover of THE DIVIDER

THE DIVIDER

by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser · Doubleday

2 wks on list

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • "The most comprehensive and detailed account of the Trump presidency yet published."—The Washington Post "A sumptuous feast of astonishing tales...The more one reads, the more one wishes to read."—NPR.com The inside story of the four years when Donald Trump went to war with Washington, from the chaotic beginning to the violent finale, told by revered journalists Peter Baker of The New York Times and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker—an ambitious and lasting history of the full Trump presidency that also contains dozens of exclusive scoops and stories from behind the scenes in the White House, from the absurd to the deadly serious. The bestselling authors of The Man Who Ran Washington argue that Trump was not just lurching from one controversy to another; he was learning to be more like the foreign autocrats he admired. The Divider brings us into the Oval Office for countless scenes both tense and comical, revealing how close we got to nuclear war with North Korea, which cabinet members had a resignation pact, whether Trump asked Japan’s prime minister to nominate him for a Nobel Prize and much more. The book also explores the moral choices confronting those around Trump—how they justified working for a man they considered unfit for office, and where they drew their lines. The Divider is based on unprecedented access to key players, from President Trump himself to cabinet officers, military generals, close advisers, Trump family members, congressional leaders, foreign officials and others, some of whom have never told their story until now.

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THE MOSQUITO BOWL
Buzz Bissinger
Cover of THE MOSQUITO BOWL

THE MOSQUITO BOWL

by Buzz Bissinger · Harper

3 wks on list

Instant New York Times Bestseller · Winner of the General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award from the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation “Buzz Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights is an American classic. With The Mosquito Bowl, he is back with a true story even more colorful and profound. This book too is destined to become a classic. I devoured it.” — John Grisham An extraordinary, untold story of the Second World War in the vein of Unbroken and The Boys in the Boat, from the author of Friday Night Lights and Three Nights in August. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, college football was at the height of its popularity. As the nation geared up for total war, one branch of the service dominated the aspirations of college football stars: the United States Marine Corps. Which is why, on Christmas Eve of 1944, when the 4th and 29th Marine regiments found themselves in the middle of the Pacific Ocean training for what would be the bloodiest battle of the war – the invasion of Okinawa—their ranks included one of the greatest pools of football talent ever assembled: Former All Americans, captains from Wisconsin and Brown and Notre Dame, and nearly twenty men who were either drafted or would ultimately play in the NFL. When the trash-talking between the 4th and 29th over who had the better football team reached a fever pitch, it was decided: The two regiments would play each other in a football game as close to the real thing as you could get in the dirt and coral of Guadalcanal. The bruising and bloody game that followed became known as “The Mosquito Bowl.” Within a matter of months, 15 of the 65 players in “The Mosquito Bowl” would be killed at Okinawa, by far the largest number of American athletes ever to die in a single battle. The Mosquito Bowl is the story of these brave and beautiful young men, those who survived and those who did not. It is the story of the families and the landscape that shaped them. It is a story of a far more innocent time in both college athletics and the life of the country, and of the loss of that innocence. Writing with the style and rigor that won him a Pulitzer Prize and have made several of his books modern classics, Buzz Bissinger takes us from the playing fields of America’s campuses where boys played at being Marines, to the final time they were allowed to still be boys on that field of dirt and coral, to the darkest and deadliest days that followed at Okinawa.

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ADRIFT
Scott Galloway
Cover of ADRIFT

ADRIFT

by Scott Galloway · Portfolio

1 wks on list

From bestselling author, CNN+ host of No Mercy, No Malice, and NYU business school professor Scott Galloway comes an urgent examination of the future of our nation – and how we got here. We are only just beginning to reckon with our post-pandemic future. As political extremism intensifies, the great resignation affects businesses everywhere, and supply chain issues crush bottom lines, we’re faced with daunting questions – is our democracy under threat? How will Big Tech change our lives? What does job security look like for me? America is on the brink of massive change – change that will disrupt the workings of our economy and drastically impact the financial backbone of our nation: the middle class. In Adrift, Galloway looks to the past – from 1945 to present day – to explain just how America arrived at this precipice. Telling the story of our nation through 100 charts, Galloway demonstrates how crises such as Jim Crow, World War II, and the Stock Market Crash of 2008, as well as the escalating power of technology, an entrenched white patriarchy, and the socio-economic effects of the pandemic, created today’s perfect storm. Adrift attempts to make sense of it all, and offers Galloway’s unique take on where we’re headed and who we’ll become, touching on topics as wide-ranging as online dating to minimum wage to the American dream. Just as in 1945 and 1980, America is once again a nation at a crossroads. This time, what will it take for our nation to keep up with the fast and violent changes to our new world?

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THE MYTH OF NORMAL
Gabor Maté with Daniel Maté

THE MYTH OF NORMAL

by Gabor Maté with Daniel Maté · Avery

3 wks on list

In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Mate eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really "normal" when it comes to health?

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AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS
David Corn
Cover of AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS

AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS

by David Corn · Twelve

2 wks on list

#1 New York Times bestselling author and investigative reporter David Corn tells the wild and harrowing story of the Republican Party’s decades-long relationship with far-right extremism, bigotry, and paranoia.​ A fast-paced, rollicking, behind-the-scenes account of how the GOP since the 1950s has encouraged and exploited extremism, bigotry, and paranoia to gain power, American Psychosis offers readers a brisk, can-you-believe-it journey through the netherworld of far-right irrationality and the Republican Party’s interactions with the darkest forces in America. In a compelling and thoroughly-researched narrative, Corn reveals the hidden history of how the Party of Lincoln forged alliances with extremists, kooks, racists, and conspiracy-mongers and fostered fear, anger, and resentment to win elections—and how this led to Donald Trump’s triumph and the transformation of the GOP into a Trump personality cult that foments and bolsters the crazy and dangerous excesses of the right. The Trump-incited insurrectionist attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was no aberration. American Psychosis shows it was a continuation of the long and deep-rooted Republican practice of boosting and weaponizing the rage and derangement of the right. The gripping tale in American Psychosis covers the last seven decades. From McCarthyism to the John Birch Society to segregationists to the New Right to the religious right to Rush Limbaugh to Newt Gingrich to the militia movement to Fox News to Sarah Palin to the Tea Party to Trumpism, the Republican Party has deliberately nurtured and exploited rightwing fear and loathing fueled by paranoia, grievance, and tribalism. This powerful and important account explains how one political party has harnessed the worst elements in politics to poison the nation’s discourse and threaten American democracy. "[Corn is] a great journalist. I love the way he thinks. I love the way he writes. I'm so glad he's done a super-readable, modern history of the right...We just need smart, digestible history about this stuff right now...[American Psychosis] is perfectly timed...Relevant history for where we are right now." —Rachel Maddow, host, The Rachel Maddow Show "With American Psychosis, David Corn 'did the full homework to take us all the way back to where it really begins.’" —Lawrence O'Donnell, host, The Last Word

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SOLITO
Javier Zamora
Cover of SOLITO

SOLITO

by Javier Zamora · Hogarth Press

4 wks on list

New York Times Bestseller • Read With Jenna Book Club Pick as seen on Today • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiography • Winner of the American Library Association Alex Award • A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century A young poet tells the inspiring story of his migration from El Salvador to the United States at the age of nine in this “gripping memoir” (NPR) of bravery, hope, and finding family. Finalist for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction • One of the New York Public Library’s Ten Best Books of the Year Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence and the PEN/Open Book Award “I read Solito with my heart in my throat and did not burst into tears until the last sentence. What a person, what a writer, what a book.”—Emma Straub “A riveting tale of perseverance and the lengths humans will go to help each other in times of struggle.”—Dave Eggers ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Vulture, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews Trip. My parents started using that word about a year ago—“one day, you’ll take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure.” Javier Zamora’s adventure is a three-thousand-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border. He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling alone amid a group of strangers and a “coyote” hired to lead them to safety, Javier expects his trip to last two short weeks. At nine years old, all Javier can imagine is rushing into his parents’ arms, snuggling in bed between them, and living under the same roof again. He cannot foresee the perilous boat trips, relentless desert treks, pointed guns, arrests and deceptions that await him; nor can he know that those two weeks will expand into two life-altering months alongside fellow migrants who will come to encircle him like an unexpected family. A memoir as gripping as it is moving, Solito provides an immediate and intimate account not only of a treacherous and near-impossible journey, but also of the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most unexpected moments. Solito is Javier Zamora’s story, but it’s also the story of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home.

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THE BREACH
Denver Riggleman with Hunter Walker
Cover of THE BREACH

THE BREACH

by Denver Riggleman with Hunter Walker · Holt

1 wks on list

"As the US capital was attacked on January 6, 2021, the White House went dark for seven hours and thirty-seven minutes. It was my job to turn the lights on. The void happened to overlap with the hours when supporters of former President Trump brawled with police, smashed windows, and rampaged through the halls of Congress as his loss to Joe Biden was being certified. Why the White House went dark, I didn't know, and, in fact, I didn't really care. In my time as an Air Force intelligence officer embedded with the National Security Agency, I learned not to make assumptions. It might have been an innocent mistake; it could have been a cover-up. What mattered to me -- as the senior technical advisor to the House select committee tasked with investigating the attack, as a former Republican congressman who'd become deeply disturbed by my own party, and as an American -- was why they stopped tracking the calls, what happened next, and who was in charge. The answers I found shocked me to my core."--

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FINDING ME
Viola Davis
Cover of FINDING ME

FINDING ME

by Viola Davis · HarperOne

23 wks on list

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'A mind-blowing and emotionally honest tale of survival against all odds.' BERNARDINE EVARISTO 'A breathtaking memoir...I was so moved by this book.' Oprah 'It is startlingly honest and, at times, a jaw-dropping read, charting her rise from poverty and abuse to becoming the first African-American to win the triple crown of an Oscar, Emmy and Tony for acting.' BBC News THE DEEPLY PERSONAL, BRUTALLY HONEST ACCOUNT OF VIOLA'S INSPIRING LIFE In my book, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life changing decision to stop running forever. This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path I took to finding my purpose and my strength, but also to finding my voice in a world that didn't always see me. As I wrote Finding Me, my eyes were open to the truth of how our stories are often not given close examination. They are bogarted, reinvented to fit into a crazy, competitive, judgmental world. So I wrote this for anyone who is searching for a way to understand and overcome a complicated past, let go of shame, and find acceptance. For anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades and be...you. Finding Me is a deep reflection on my past and a promise for my future. My hope is that my story will inspire you to light up your own life with creative expression and rediscover who you were before the world put a label on you.

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LIKE A ROLLING STONE
Jann S. Wenner
Cover of LIKE A ROLLING STONE

LIKE A ROLLING STONE

by Jann S. Wenner · Little, Brown

3 wks on list

In this New York Times bestseller, Rolling Stone founder, co-editor, and publisher Jann Wenner offers a "touchingly honest" and "wonderfully deep" memoir from the beating heart of classic rock and roll (Bruce Springsteen). Jann Wenner has been called by his peers “the greatest editor of his generation.” His deeply personal memoir vividly describes and brings you inside the music, the politics, and the lifestyle of a generation, an epoch of cultural change that swept America and beyond. The age of rock and roll in an era of consequence, what will be considered one of the great watersheds in modern history. Wenner writes with the clarity of a journalist and an essayist. He takes us into the life and work of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Bono, and Bruce Springsteen, to name a few. He was instrumental in the careers of Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and Annie Leibovitz. His journey took him to the Oval Office with his legendary interviews with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, leaders to whom Rolling Stone gave its historic, full-throated backing. From Jerry Garcia to the Dalai Lama, Aretha Franklin to Greta Thunberg, the people Wenner chose to be seen and heard in the pages of Rolling Stone tried to change American culture, values, and morality. Like a Rolling Stone is a beautifully written portrait of one man’s life, and the life of his generation.

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