Collection: Adult

An untold story of idealism, betrayal, and behind-the-scenes American-Japanese contacts in World War II.

Safe Passage tells one of World War II's great and neglected stories. In the fall of 1943, amid the Pacific theater's bloodiest battles, the United States and Japan pulled off an unlikely diplomatic coup: the warring nations agreed to exchange civilian nationals via two ocean liners. Nearly fifteen hundred Allied civilians who'd been trapped in Asia since the attack on Pearl Harbor sailed through dangerous waters to the port city of Goa, India, where they were traded for an equivalent number of Japanese diplomats and immigrants, sent from the Americas. The future return of some ten thousand Americans still in Japan would depend on the mission's success.

In this revelatory history, Evelyn Iritani tells a dramatic tale of humanitarian action in wartime and its darker complications. She reveals the herculean efforts of the U.S. diplomat James Keeley to repatriate civilians despite stiff resistance from within and outside his government; the shipboard adventures of passengers, including hymn-singing missionaries, drunken revelers, and sharp-tongued journalists such as the New Yorker's celebrated Emily Hahn; and the fraught compromises involved in securing their safe passage. Faced with too few bodies to trade and desperate to free Americans from perilous conditions, the United States uprooted and repatriated Latin American citizens of Japanese descent, sometimes against their will, while also forcing some Japanese Americans who had been held in internment camps to choose between expulsion to a war zone or remaining behind barbed wire. Intimate, energetic, and enriched by previously untapped archives and sources, Safe Passage is a crucial addition to the moral history of World War II.

Holler's photographic time capsule of Seattle's music scene captures the early years of Interpol, Fleet Foxes, Death Cab for Cutie, Foo Fighters and more

As an avid fan of Seattle's music scene during the late 1990s and early 2000s, photographer Bootsy Holler created a remarkable portfolio documenting the little-known bands who later defined a decade in music history. She captured live gigs, band portraits, backstage moments, rapt audiences and more, chronicling the formative years of artists such as Death Cab for Cutie, Fleet Foxes, Interpol, Modest Mouse, Gossip, Beck, Moby, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Foo Fighters. Says Holler: "I was documenting my life. The musicians, promoters and bouncers were my friends, and I went to see bands I enjoyed and places I could get in for free. I didn't know I was in the middle of something new."
With open spine binding and cold glue bright orange thread, this collection of Holler's energetic, raw images, together with her own personal recollections, reflects on the second generation of Seattle's music scene, as the world transitioned from celluloid to digital, grunge to indie. It is a pilgrimage back in time, a nostalgic trip for anyone who cherishes music or yearns for a time when nobody texted or had a camera in their pocket. The book opens with a nod to a truly independent woman, with a foreword from Megan Jasper, CEO of Sub Pop Records.
Bootsy Holler was born in Washington in 1969 and moved to Seattle as a young adult. Her editorial and art photography has been featured in Vogue, House & Garden and NPR. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

A stunning visual journey through four millennia of jewelry as told through the exemplary collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

From ancient Egyptian broad collars to contemporary studio pieces, jewelry has been used as a powerful communication tool across millennia--and around the world. The renowned collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, showcases global stories of human ingenuity through an incredible array of jewelry designs, materials and techniques. Each object boasts a unique history of its own; when considered side by side, however, they speak to one another, these cross-cultural and multigenerational conversations inviting the reader to consider new insights and fresh perspectives on the art form.
Brilliance explores jewelry as a messenger, a decorative art and an object of adornment over the course of four thousand years. This catalog features more than 100 works in the MFA's collection, exploring their makers, their uses and their meanings in three curatorial chapters complete with gorgeous reproductions of the works. Object spotlights written by celebrated art historians and artists working in the field today accompany these essays, with writing by Joyce J. Scott, Helen Drutt, Melanie Grant and many more. In championing the breadth and depth of the MFA's collection, Brilliance includes both exquisitely humble and extraordinarily detailed objects that together illustrate the timeless human desires to self-fashion, collect and create. Included are works by Alexander Calder, Art Smith, Elsa Peretti, René Boivin, Bulgari, Tiffany & Co. and many others. Whether in silver or gold, pearls or plastic, jewelry tells many multifaceted stories about its makers, wearers, collectors and, ultimately, human nature as a whole.

A Short History of Stupidity

We are living, it is often said, in a golden age of stupidity, in which boneheaded, mendacious politicians get elected by voters who've become too mindless to realize their interests are ill served by narcissists, while vapid social media influencers corrupt their no less witless followers with groundless conspiracy theories and eye-wateringly foolish takedowns of scientific expertise. Our time, one might be forgiven for thinking, is one in which the fool's gold of stupidity has become a desirable commodity, a must-have, with bumbling celebrities venerated more than those who have more than two brain cells to rub together.

In this book, Stuart Jeffries analyses how we got into this parlous state and wonders if the stupid, like the poor, are always with us, or if, rather, stupidity is like Japanese knotweed, difficult to root out but to be exterminated with extreme prejudice. He considers what some of the greatest of minds -- Socrates, Buddha, Voltaire, Arendt, and others -- have to tell us about the slippery nature of stupidity.

During a narrative that takes us from ancient Greece to artificial intelligence, and accompanied by such heroes of stupidity as Flaubert's double act Bouvard and Pécuchet, Jeffries casts a sceptical eye on attempts to root out stupidity by such means as IQ tests, eugenics, gene editing, and racist education policies, finding each attempt to be more stupid than the stupidity they were ostensibly devised to eradicate. If today we are living in a fool's paradise, has our species become too dim to learn anything from its rich history of folly?

Now available as an audiobook

Gen. George Washington anticipated his return to the army as spring approached in 1782. He had been in Philadelphia since the fall to exchange thoughts with government officials about financial, military, and diplomatic policies. Arriving at his headquarters in Newburgh, N.Y., on 31 March, Washington soon learned that the laboriously negotiated provision contracts to supply the officers and troops had caused dissatisfaction. Combined with a continued lack of pay, the complaints threatened already fragile morale. Washington ordered investigations that demonstrated concern for his troops.

A lack of money and recruits likewise troubled Washington. He feared that the army would not be prepared to take the field. The outlook appeared equally bleak in the southern department, where Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene's army also experienced poor morale, inadequate equipment, and frustration over the slow arrival of reinforcements.

A complete change in the British ministry and a new parliamentary policy to end offensive operations against the Continental forces complicated planning. Unlike many, Washington hesitated to believe that peace was at hand, and he urged John Hanson, president of Congress, on 10 May "that instead of relaxing we ought to improve the present Moment."

A failed prisoner-exchange negotiation diverted Washington's attention from his usual tasks, as did an extended ordeal that centered on British captain Charles Asgill and the military and moral implications of retaliation to avenge or check atrocities. He also quashed a suggestion that he declare himself king because of congressional ineffectiveness, noting in his reply to Col. Lewis Nicola that "no occurrence in the course of the War, has given me more painful sensations" than to read such a notion from one of his officers.

Despite his leadership responsibilities, Washington showed love for his family through engagement with the John Parke Custis estate settlement and efforts to launch the legal education of his nephew Bushrod Washington. Such actions manifested Washington's optimism that there would be a future after the war that fulfilled the promise of the revolutionary cause.

Freakonomics for criminal justice, The Science of Second Chances presents a groundbreaking approach to criminal justice reform, revealing how small-scale interventions can reduce people's chances of reoffending and break the incarceration cycle.

When criminal justice expert Jennifer Doleac thinks about reform, she's not just hopeful, she's optimistic that second chances are possible--for the justice-involved population and the system as a whole. In The Science of Second Chances, she reveals her powerful approach to reducing crime and incarceration. Drawing on cutting-edge economic research and real-world experiments, the book presents a blueprint for reform that runs all the way through the system. Doleac shows how economists like herself approach big, complicated problems as if they were scientists in a lab, carefully testing different approaches and following the data to maximize impact. She explains how shifting the incentives people face can produce dramatic changes in the decisions they make, significantly reducing the number of people cycling through the prison system. From DNA databases that increase the likelihood of catching reoffenders to leniency programs for first-time defendants, she reveals a series of surprising interventions that actually work, along with cautionary tales about great ideas that never panned out.

Doleac doesn't have a "burn it all down" mentality but seeks to empower readers with practical, achievable solutions. She demonstrates that we can have both public safety and a smaller, less intrusive justice system--without waiting for big, structural reforms that might never come. By shifting focus from the enormity of the problem to the power of small, evidence-based changes, she offers a transformative approach to prosecution and punishment. The Science of Second Chances is essential reading for anyone seeking data-driven strategies to revolutionize the criminal justice system and create the society we want and need.

An extraordinary crime novel from a rising star, that follows the ripple effects of a tragic shooting throughout a Chicago community from the view of the teachers, police officers, and students impacted

"A deeply satisfying story with as much, heart, grit and history as the city that it's set in." --Xochitl Gonzalez, New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming

Buddy Mack has been caught in the middle of two worlds at war.

As an English teacher at a South Side, Chicago, high school lauded for its football team, but at risk in every other way, he tries to instill a love of literature. While all of his students face challenges, he's especially concerned with a trio of boys who test him to no end but are full of promise and heart: Zeke, the football star; Truth, the sweet-talking charmer; and Dontell, Buddy's most promising student.

At home, his wife, Chrissy, a successful corporate lawyer, is ready to upgrade to a big house on the North Side and start a family, but Buddy's torn over the implications. And the closest person he has in his life to talk to is Chrissy's little brother, Curtis, a corrupt Chicago cop.

When the two worlds collide in a shocking moment that rocks the school, Buddy has to choose a side and fight for all he holds dear. Hard Times takes stock of what it means to be there for your people whether you want to or not and unflinchingly confronts the American Dream--a moving, engrossing, and necessary read.

Undimmed is a revolutionary guide to help you break free from the habits that dim your life.

When Cecily Mak decided to take a break from drinking, the most common response she got was "Oh, I didn't know you had a problem." A problem? She was not an addict, or even committing to sobriety. She had simply realized that alcohol helped her avoid difficult feelings--but that it dimmed the good parts of her life along with the bad. She wanted to live her life with clarity, not avoid it.

Many of us are taught to believe that escapist and addictive behaviors are fine as long as they are not "problems" or wholesale addictions. But this binary mindset robs us of a more present life and our ability to make changes before the behavior becomes an unshakeable habit. What you use to dim your life may not be a substance--it might even be something healthy, like exercise, food, or work. And every dimmer exists on a spectrum from use, to heavy use, to potential abuse or worse. It's not about what you do, but how and why you do it. While leaving her unwanted habits behind, Mak developed the Eight Awarenesses--a set of principles we can use for inspiration and guidance on the path to embodying a clear life. Each one serves as an invitation to explore a deeper understanding of ourselves and our choices, and the empowerment that comes with choosing to live a life undimmed.

Undimmed is an invitation to choose freedom from the habits that dim our lives and to embrace the full spectrum of experiences that life has to offer.

A terribly funny and lovably louche novel about five friends growing older, if not always up, from Andrew Martin, author of Early Work and Cool for America.

Without Cassandra, Aaron would probably be dead. Fortunately, she won't leave him--despite the drinking, flirting, solipsism, armchair socialism, overspending, infidelity, catastrophic depression, and disparate but increasingly frequent spells of drug- and booze-addled debauchery. Unfortunately, she might be reaching the end of her rope.

Cass and Aaron, like the other neurotic, ambivalent intellectuals in their orbit, are getting older. There's Malcolm, with his own alcoholism and marginally more successful writing career; his partner, Violet, a doctor with little patience for either; Antonia, a teaching fellow whose book about ecocide may get her tenure at a prestigious university near Harvard Square--yes, that one. When Sam, a charming trust-fund punk at the center of this loose network, dies suddenly and a global pandemic takes hold, all five must contend with the lives they've made: their desires and disappointments, habits and hang-ups, pathologies and addictions, and the possibilities of making art and being good as the earth whirls to its end.

Down Time marks the delightful return of Andrew Martin, the author of the pitch-perfect slacker classics Early Work and Cool for America. Compulsively readable and contagiously intelligent, this is a wryly comic novel of settling down, selling out, growing up, and getting out that turns a terrifically funny and hyperliterate eye on our most desperately guarded ambitions: to love and be loved, to know and be known, to stay sane, if only just.

New York City, 1992. The city is rough. Parker Snow is rougher.
"Standout debut... LaMothe is a startling and original talent." --CrimeReads

Parker Snow is the best crime reporter at her tabloid, The New York Street. Or at least she was. Since a colossal screwup landed her on the sidelines, she's been demoted to covering the Russian mob that's flooded Brighton Beach after the fall of the USSR.

When Parker stumbles on the body of a 20-year-old woman in Brooklyn with no witnesses or suspects, the cops want to write off as just another pin in the crime map. But Parker doesn't buy it--especially when a second woman turns up dead under nearly identical circumstances, this time in Chinatown.

Will Parker stay in her lane?

Doubtful.

Now she's running down two stories at once: a simmering mafia turf war, and a possible serial murderer stalking the city. Fighting the pull of the little orange pill bottle she always has in her pocket, Parker will stop at nothing to find out the truth.

That is, if her demons--or the killer--don't get to her first.

A CrimeReads 2026 Most Anticipated Thriller - "A bold debut befitting its bold heroine." --Kirkus (starred review) - "A razor-sharp debut." -- Lauren Nossett, ITW Thriller Award-winning author - "Vibrating with heart, grit, and an uncompromising moral clarity." -- Alafair Burke, NYT bestselling author

After years spent outrunning her past, Cecília reexamines the case of a close family friend killed by a colleague and rival: her father.

In 1988, shortly after Brazil reestablishes democratic rule, a state congressman is shot and killed in Porto Alegre. The main suspect: a close friend and colleague in congress, Representative Raul Matzenbacher.

Many years later, Cecília Matzenbacher, his daughter, migrates from Southern Brazil to California, where she finds work as a taxidermist. Her temperament is ideally suited to this type of restoration and the careful reconstruction of a world frozen in time. But as Cecília confronts her own history and the memories of the investigation surrounding her father, her knack for composition frays.

When news arrives that Raul has suffered a stroke and Cecília's chances to see him again may be limited, her past can no longer stay put, posed like a specimen behind glass. Her story emerges, the past stalking her present, threatening to derail the life she's made for herself in the United States.

In sleek, arresting prose imbued with the suspense-filled edge of a true-crime thriller, Diorama cements Carol Bensimon's status as one of the most dynamic voices in contemporary Brazilian literature and demonstrates her narrative gifts at their apex. Fusing police procedural, coming-of-age story, and family drama, Diorama is a moving mystery about what and how we remember, a novel that endangers our notions of what is or isn't still alive inside all of us.

In this sequel to McMahon's electrifying series debut, Head Cases, Gardner Camden and the PAR team return to investigate potentially connected cases.

FBI Agent Gardner Camden is an analytical genius with an affinity for puzzles. He and his squad of brilliant yet quirky agents make up the Patterns and Recognition (PAR) unit, the FBI's hidden edge, brought in for cases that no one else can solve.

PAR's latest case involves a militia group stockpiling weapons. When their confidential informant in the case is killed, it quickly becomes clear that the militia did not kill him.

As the squad looks into the evidence surrounding his murder, an unidentified man is caught on camera with their informant. This mystery man's picture is connected to another case at the FBI, an unsolved series of murdered women, buried in the ground in north Florida. Could they have uncovered a serial killer? And if so, what is his connection to their C.I.?

As PAR juggles an investigation into both the dead women and the militia, they enroll a new informant, only to find the case escalating in dangerous ways. How will PAR handle a case that increasingly looks like a terrorist plot? And in the serial case, with no puzzles or witnesses, and few leads, how will a group set up to decode riddles be successful?

INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER - "A stunning debut with razor sharp tension and surprising twists." --Jeneva Rose, #1 bestselling author

Even the best of intentions can grow into obsession...

On the surface, Cady has the perfect life. She has a thriving luxury event-planning business, the man she's loved since she was seventeen, and a social calendar she can barely keep up with. She also has Dana, her identical twin, her most trusted confidante. But when Dana dies suddenly, before Cady can say goodbye, everything shatters.

Yet to her family's alarm, it isn't grief for Dana that consumes her. It's Morgan, a stranger Cady meets in the hospital waiting room that same day--a grieving mother whose tragedy mirrors her own. Cady doesn't believe in coincidences. She becomes convinced that helping Morgan is the key to facing her sister's death.

But is that really what she wants? Or is Cady drawn to Morgan for reasons far more complicated--and dangerous--than she's willing to admit?

Sly, twisted, and irresistibly provocative, Good Intentions explores the moral gray zones we enter when the unthinkable happens--and the dark places obsession can take us.

There's never been a more important time to care about birth control.

Birth control is the silent workhorse in our lives. It's also something most of us take for granted. But in the face of attacks on reproductive health, we simply can't afford for birth control to be a taboo topic any longer.

Protected explores questions such as, how has birth control changed over the years? Will there ever be a birth control pill for men? Why is birth control so politically controversial? Why are Black women more likely to prefer methods they can start and stop without a visit to the doctor? Are hormones in birth control safe? What impact will the overturn of Roe v. Wade have on the ability to get birth control? What does religion really say about it? Are there better methods out there, either right now or coming in the future?

On an individual level, birth control changes lives. It means finishing school before starting a family. It means managing pain to make daily activities bearable. The benefits accrued across the millions of individuals using birth control have added up to huge societal impacts. When societies have greater access to birth control, women obtain more education, get better jobs, and earn higher wages. Greater economic mobility for women contributes to a more gender equal society. Societies need birth control. We need birth control.

Protected tells the story of birth control, it's past, present, and future, with the goal that after you read it, you will help spread the word about the essential role of birth control in empowering individuals and shaping society.

How housing policy failed the people it was designed to help -- and how to fix it

As the US struggles to provide affordable housing, millions of Americans live in deteriorating public housing projects, enduring the mistakes of past housing policy. In The Projects, Howard A. Husock explains how we got here, detailing the tragic rise and fall of public housing and the pitfalls of other subsidy programs. He takes us inside a progressive movement led by a group of New York City philanthropists, politicians, and business magnates who first championed public housing as a solution to urban blight. From First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to the controversial city planner Robert Moses, many well-known historical figures made a convincing case for affordable housing in America.

Despite the movement's lofty ideals, the creation of the Projects led to the destruction of low-income communities across the country. From the Hill District in Pittsburgh to Black Bottom in Detroit, predominantly Black neighborhoods were judged only by the quality of their housing. Husock looks beyond these neighborhoods' physical conditions to their uncounted riches, from local artists like August Wilson to vital community institutions. As he shares residents' stories, he honors what they crafted through their own plans, rather than those of city planners.

Husock traces the history of public housing to contemporary debates on the government's role in the housing market. Through interviews with residents, he reveals how public housing transformed the lives of Americans and the physical faces of cities and towns. He ultimately critiques "repair and reform" efforts, making policy recommendations that address the core failings of public housing for the people it was once designed to help. Mapping out a better path for policy-makers, he lays a new foundation for upward mobility in America.