|
Dear Friends & Neighbors,
Below you will find a small sampling of some of the many Adult Nonfiction books that are part of our Holiday Picks - books that make ideal gifts.
This continues our holiday tradition of hand-selecting over 100 titles to satisfy a wide range of tastes and interests, all at 20% off through the month of December!
Don't forget that we offer more than just books: We have a great selection of gifts, including boxed holiday cards, calendars and datebooks, tree ornaments, art supplies, jigsaw puzzles, wood blocks, board games, Eco-friendly toys for little ones - just to name a few!
Our friendly and knowledgeable staff can help you find the right gifts for the more challenging folks on your list. We also special-order titles, which usually arrive within a day or two.
Gift wrapping is, as always, free of charge.
Your support of independent businesses in our neighborhood and throughout San Francisco is vital to the continued character of our city. Locally-owned businesses bring in more jobs, keep dollars in our community, support local schools and non-profits, and deliver sales tax revenue.
Thank you for keeping our great city vibrant by shopping local! It is a privilege to be your neighborhood bookstore.
We wish you all a wonderful, peaceful holiday season!
Neal Sofman, Kevin Atkin and the Staff at Bookshop West Portal
|
|
The 60s: The Story of a Decade
THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE
The third installment of a fascinating decade-by-decade series, this anthology collects historic New Yorker pieces from the most tumultuous years of the twentieth century. Includes work by James Baldwin, Pauline Kael, Sylvia Plath, Roger Angell, Muriel Spark, and John Updike, alongside new assessments of the 1960s by some of today's finest writers.
"...any anthology containing such pieces as James Baldwin's Letter from a Region of My Mind, an excerpt from Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, Jacob R. Brackman's classic The Put-On, or Roger Angell on the '69 Mets (still thrilling) deserves a lasting place on one's shelves." - Booklist
|
|
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate -Discoveries From a Secret World
PETER WOHILEBEN
Are trees social beings?
In this international bestseller, forester and author Peter Wohlleben makes the case that, yes, the forest is indeed a social network. He draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families: tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, support them as they grow, share nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers.
After reading this book, a walk in the woods will never be the same again.
|
|
Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South
BETH MACY
Beth Macy, author of the New York Times bestseller Factory Man, tells the shocking true story of George and Willie Muse from Truevine, Virginia, two African American albino boys who were kidnapped from a tobacco field by a white man in 1899, and displayed as circus freaks. Their mother spent nearly three decades trying to get them back.
This is an unforgettable story that Macy now has, with tenacity and sensitivity, given its due, "offering these 'Ambassadors from Mars' a remarkable, deeply affecting afterlife." - Stacy Schiff, author of The Witches
|
|
The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War
H.W. BRANDS
History lovers will relish this compelling new book by Pulitzer Prize finalist H.W. Brands. A professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, and author of Reagan: The Life, Brands expounds on President Truman's decision, in April 1951, to fire Gen. Douglas MacArthur, then the UN commander in Korea, after months of listening to him threaten to expand the war. At the height of the war, President Truman committed a gaffe that sent shock waves around the world. When asked about the possible use of atomic weapons in response to China's entry into the war, Truman replied, 'The military commander in the field will have charge of the use of the weapons, as he always has,' suggesting that Gen. MacArthur, the fearless, highly decorated commander of the American and U.N. forces, had his finger on the nuclear button. Although a correction quickly followed, the damage was done: two visions for America's path forward were clearly in opposition, and only one man would have his way.
"An exciting, well-written comparison study of two American leaders at loggerheads during the Korean War crisis." - Kirkus Reviews
|
|
Upstream: Selected Essays
MARY OLIVER
This Pulitzer Prize-winning poet lovingly reflects on her relationship to nature and the written word in her new book.
As a child, Mary Oliver found her greatest solace in "two...blessings--the natural world and the world of writing." In this collection, she provides readers glimpses into the solitary but rich world she has inhabited as a poet. She emphasizes the significance of her childhood "friend" Walt Whitman, through whose work she first understood that a poem is a temple, "a place to enter, and in which to feel," and who encouraged her to vanish into the world of her writing.
|
|
ON SALE TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6TH:
The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
MICHAEL LEWIS
Bestselling author Michael Lewis has written a book about a compelling collaboration between two men that became one of the greatest partnerships in the history of science. Their Nobel Prize-winning theory of the mind has altered our perception of reality.
Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of original studies about the workings of the human mind, defeating our assumptions about the decision-making process. Their papers showed the ways in which the human mind erred, systematically, when forced to make judgments in uncertain situations. Lewis explores their work - which created the field of behavioral economics, revolutionized Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, and led to a new approach to government regulation - and their unlikely friendship as opposites, whose collaboration may well have changed mankind's view of its own mind for good.
|
|
Welcome to the Universe: An Astrophysical Tour
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON, MICHAEL A. STRAUSS & J. RICHARD GOTT
Stargazers and astronomers will enjoy this personal guided tour of the cosmos by three of today's leading astrophysicists. Inspired by the popular introductory astronomy course that Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss, and J. Richard Gott taught together at Princeton, this book covers it all - from planets, stars, and galaxies to black holes, wormholes, and time travel.
Describing the latest discoveries in astrophysics - with stunning illustrations throughout - the authors propel readers from our home solar system to the outermost frontiers of space, and address questions such as: How do stars live and die? Why did Pluto lose its planetary status? What are the prospects of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? How did the universe begin? Why is it expanding and why is its expansion accelerating?
"Readers will love the big ideas in this lively and enjoyable book."--Robert P. Kirshner, author of The Extravagant Universe
|
|
Victoria: The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire
JULIA BAIRD
Australian journalist and historian Julia Baird dedicates her biography of Queen Victoria to undoing the myths that continue to surround the woman whose era bears her name, such as: she was eclipsed by her husband, Albert, in matters of state; was incapable of loving her children; and was an absentee monarch after Albert's untimely death. Instead, in Baird's elegant prose, Victoria emerges as a figure to be reckoned with in her own right, a passionate wife as well as an unbending ruler who defied no fewer than seven assassination attempts.
"Baird writes with such spirit and well-founded authority that readers will feel as though the story of the famous British queen is being told for the first time." - Booklist, starred review
|
Forward this email to a friend
|
|
