New Nonfiction | August 2026 – Bloomfield Township Public Library

These nonfiction titles are being released this month. Use your Bloomfield Township Public Library card to place a hold by selecting the linked title.

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Are They Dead Yet?: The Art of the Obit / Sam Roberts
With wit, wisdom, and behind-the-scenes intrigue, Roberts examines the practice of writing advance obituaries, of which there are more than 2,000 on hold and regularly updated at The New York Times, America’s relationship to death in the wake of 9/11 and the pandemic, classic euphemistic language, and more.
Coffee Shop at Home: The Ultimate Guide to Making Your Favorite Coffee Drinks / Katerina Diaz
Say goodbye to your pricey coffee shop habit with the ultimate beginner’s guide to making delicious, creative lattes, mochas, cold brews, and more at home—with 60 recipes for your favorite classic and seasonal drinks plus approachable info about the basics of brewing.
The Cruelest Game: Chasing Greatness in Professional Tennis / Matthew Futterman
This riveting exposé of professional tennis offers never-before-reported access to the daily routines, mindsets, and personal trials faced by today’s major stars and tomorrow’s rising newcomers.
Daylight Come: Harry Belafonte and the World He Made / Joshua Jelly-Schapiro
Jelly-Schapiro brings Belafonte’s personality and music vibrantly to life, following him from rags to riches and from Harlem to Jamaica to the March on Washington. At the heart of the story is Belafonte’s bond with Martin Luther King Jr., whose cause Belafonte would champion for the rest of his life.
Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland / Ashley Kahn
The first book to tell the full story of Graceland offers windows into Simon’s creative process, the technical innovations that brought his songs to life, the people and places that made the album possible, the forces that helped the album achieve mainstream reach, and the controversies that the music raised—and that remain today. This is an informed, heartfelt celebration of Simon’s magnum opus, a recording forged in a tense cultural moment, but suffused with hope, change, and a sense of global connection.
Easy Indian Food Anyone Can Make: Delicious Everyday Recipes for Rice, Curries, Snacks and More! / Shadi Faleel
A great introduction to Indian cooking that blends quicker weeknight recipes with more complex, time-intensive recipes.
Fed Up: What Evolution Reveals About Food, Diet, Health, and Eating Well / Daniel E. Lieberman
A Harvard paleoanthropologist explores the costs and benefits of cheap, energy-rich, tempting, and often unhealthy ultra-processed foods; the tangled roots of weight gain; how diet influences obesity, heart disease, and cancer; and the claims of benefits offered by high- and low-fat diets, meal replacements, intermittent fasting, carnivorism, vegetarianism, and veganism—while also showing how over centuries most cultures evolved ingenious ways to grow and cook healthy, delicious food.
The Ghost of the Mountains: Unraveling the Secrets of the Snow Leopard / Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi
Thrilling, illuminating, and filled with transportive storytelling, The Ghost of the Mountains reveals the challenges facing a beautiful, fragile ecosystem in the midst of a major transition. As Suryawanshi describes his crucial work as a conservationist in a rapidly changing world, he also conveys an infectious sense of wonder. For him, every snow leopard encounter is still a transcendent experience, offering a renewed sense of meaning and purpose.
A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving: Lessons on Love, Care, and Survival: A Memoir / Virginia Eubanks
Disarmingly funny and quietly wise, this is the story—heart-wrenching and all too relatable—of how one woman tried to rescue her beloved and learned that she would also have to rescue herself. Built from both loss and connection, it is a moving, hopeful love story about two people caught in their own kind of wilderness, trying not just to survive but to truly care for each other. It asks that we reconsider the ways in which we tend to our loved ones and ourselves, and remember the communities of care that sustain us. It reminds us: no one survives the wilderness alone.
Nobody Broke Your Heart: An Intimate Biography of Elliott Smith / Jamie Fisher
Starting with the musician’s childhood in Texas, following his making as an artist in Portland and New York, and reckoning honestly with his unmaking in Los Angeles, Fisher uses never-before-seen archival evidence (unheard recordings, draft lyrics, photos, and correspondence) alongside extensive interviews with friends, family, girlfriends, and collaborators to shed light on the real Elliott Smith, in all his complexity.
The People’s Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn / Dave Zirin
A biography of iconic radical historian Howard Zinn, examining his life and work as a progressive icon and thought leader through the story of the times that shaped him as well as the United States of America.
Plants for Pollinators: Create a Pollinator-Friendly Haven with More Than 200 Flowering Plants / DK Publishing
This fully illustrated, curated, seasonal guide tells you which plants to grow to help bring your garden to life how to boost your garden’s biodiversity. From favorites to wildflowers, more than 150 plants are profiled. Each includes the plant’s attraction for wildlife and advice on how to care for it.
The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything / Kathryn Jezer-Morton
Jezer-Morton examines how algorithm-driven platforms not only change the way we share information but also shape the content itself. What stories do we choose to tell, and how do these choices reflect and shape our evolving identities? Smart, funny, and sharply observant, The Story of Your Life delivers an original and revealing look at our lives online and off and offers us a fresh perspective on the ways social media shapes the very arcs of our lives.
This Book May Cause Side Effects: The Curious and Dangerous Power of the Nocebo Effect, Placebo’s Evil Twin / Helen Pilcher
Dr. Pilcher, a noted science writer, explores the “nocebo” effect—the shadow side of the placebo—and shows how our convictions can sometimes quite literally harm us. Smart, surprising, and full of unforgettable true stories, it reveals the hidden ways our expectations influence our bodies—and what we can do to take back control.
Triage / Claudia Rankine
In this memoir/novel hybrid, the poet and essayist follows the turbulent friendship between two characters, the narrator and “the theorist,” self-identified sisters struggling to define their histories and their shared but separate understanding of the current political landscape. Whenever they met, the two would acknowledge each other’s distress by simultaneously collapsing—”the easiest way to keep from breaking apart.”
The Vanishing Earth: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Extraction / James Crawford
Over the last half-century, humanity has taken more from the Earth than in all prior history combined. The planet is littered with the vast scars of extraction—yet, ironically, it is only by confronting the ruins of our ‘old’ world that we can find the path toward the ‘new.’ A journey to the ravaged frontiers of extractive industry and the promising, often radical alternatives emerging just as we reach the point of exhausting the earth’s natural resources.