July Non-Fiction New Releases
This July, we’re spotlighting stories and voices that cross borders—literal and personal. From globe-trotting travel guides to powerful accounts of women on the soccer field, from sharp explorations of colorism to a behind-the-scenes look at the billionaire family behind Hobby Lobby, these books dig into how place, power, and identity shape our lives.
Women’s soccer has come a long way. The first organized games on record — which took place three hundred years ago in the Scottish Highlands — were exhibition matches, where single women played against married women while available men looked on, seeking a potential mate.
Today, champions like Mia Hamm, Abby Wambach, Brazil’s Marta and China’s Sun Wen, have inspired girls around the world to pick up the beautiful game for love of the sport. Inevitably, given the hardships and discrimination they face, women who play soccer professionally are so much more than elite athletes. They are survivors, campaigners, political advocates, feminists, LGBTQ activists, working moms, staunch opponents of racial discrimination and inspirational role models for many.
Based on original interviews with over 50 current and former players and coaches, this book celebrates these remarkable women and their achievements against all odds.
Racism is easy to spot these days; we know its script, its favorite media tropes, its legislative tactics, and how it makes us feel. But there is another societal ill hiding in racism’s shadow: colorism. Colorism is a social hierarchy that favors people with lighter skin tones and stigmatizes people with darker skin tones. More than a debate on social media about who’s most attractive, colorism frays the fabric of our homes and communities and jeopardizes the lives and livelihoods of individuals most impacted. Dr. Sarah L. Webb’s Colorism arrives as a fresh perspective on how we move toward a world free from harmful stigma and discord—a more liberated, more loving world.
In Colorism, Dr. Sarah shows us how colorism goes unrecognized by most even as it contours our every day lives. She leads us through cultural myths, client testimonies and her own personal stories to demonstrate colorism’s global stronghold on communities of color and white communities alike. She dissects how dating and pop culture can be hotbeds of discrimination. And she lifts the veil on how colorism can determine our access to education, work, social services, and politics. Soulfully told and richly informational, Colorism rounds out with revisions we can all make to show up for one another. After all, bias may be based on what’s on the outside, but true healing starts from within.
“A bracing, essential corrective to startup mythology.” —Tom Eisenmann, professor of entrepreneurship, Harvard Business School
Rob Snyder followed all the traditional advice for launching a startup—he did his research, ran experiments, raised millions in venture capital—but his company struggled to get off the ground. It wasn’t until he left the standard playbooks behind that he was able to quickly scale to millions of dollars in revenue. Now he’s a successful serial entrepreneur whose advice has helped hundreds of founders get unstuck and start scaling.
In The Power of Pull, Snyder strips entrepreneurship down to one counterintuitive principle: Customer demand is all that matters. When entrepreneurs find real demand, they stop pushing their product onto an indifferent market, and instead customers pull the product out of the entrepreneur’s hands. Yet most founders misunderstand what demand is and how it works. With examples from early-stage founders, this book shows how to find real demand and create a fast-growing business. If you’re beginning a startup journey, The Power of Pull is the guide you need.
With his shag haircut and white Stratocaster guitar, Jeff Beck was an icon known and loved by millions. Yet somehow, he maintained the ineffable low profile cool of a cult hero as he glided through six decades of musical trends with nary a lapse in taste. Not to say he ever played it safe. What other guitarist can lay claim to performing with opera star Luciano Pavarotti, mainstream television personality Kelly Clarkson, and professional degenerates like Guns N’ Roses with equal grace and wit? Or as Beck himself once quipped, “I’m an awkward son of a bitch when it comes to doing the expected.”
In Blow by Blow: The Jeff Beck Story, Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill return to chart the unexplored life of rock’s greatest and perhaps most enigmatic instrumentalist. Culled from approximately 30 hours of interviews with the late guitarist himself, numerous conversations with those closest to him, and extensive research, the book sheds new light on the genius that Jimmy Page once said, “shifted the whole sound and face of electric guitar music.”
“Blanding’s gripping narrative exposes the damage that has been wrought by a single family devoted to both God and profit.” —Joshua Hammer, New York Times bestselling author of The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu
Hobby Lobby is a multibillion-dollar craft store chain with more than a thousand US locations, founded and owned by the Greens—an evangelical Christian family committed to establishing the Bible as the ultimate authority behind our laws and society.
In The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby, Michael Blanding reveals how the Greens have quietly yet effectively used their vast wealth to spread their beliefs throughout the US and beyond. They have run expensive, wide-reaching ad campaigns to inculcate biblical values and have propped up evangelical education through donations of money and land. They successfully fought a Supreme Court case to deny their employees insurance coverage for contraception and funneled millions of dollars to organizations working to overturn Roe v. Wade and to undermine LGBTQ rights. And, for their multimillion-dollar Museum of the Bible just blocks from the US Capitol building, they’ve acquired looted, stolen, and forged biblical antiquities from the Middle East. In a riveting exposé, Blanding traces the Greens’ efforts to sell their evangelical mission.
Captivating and disturbing, The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby exposes the pivotal role the Green family has played in funding and empowering America’s dangerous, ascendant Christian nationalist movement.
The world of self-help is overflowing with advice. Countless books, podcasts, therapies, and videos talk about how to build a better life.. For Spencer Greenberg and Jeremy Stevenson, the most essential part of all this advice is the techniques. Techniques answer the million-dollar question: What do you actually do to fix your problem? What do you do to overcome anxiety, maximize productivity, and find inner peace?
After years of research—analyzing 106 self-help books and 23 therapies—they discovered that, from a bird’s-eye view, all self-help techniques collapse into just 12 broad strategies: The 12 Levers.
Knowing these Levers can prepare you for so many of the challenges that life will throw at you. You’ll learn how to…
- Clarify your intrinsic values to give your life direction
- Overcome fear by using the most scientifically validated anxiety approach in the world
- Alleviate insomnia and out-of-sync sleep routines with techniques largely known only to sleep therapists
- Enrich your downtime by doing more glad-you-did-it activities
- Get more done by understanding the three factors of The Productivity Equation
- Interrupt spirals of self-consciousness using the Attention Training Technique
…and much more.
Together, the 12 Levers form the complete psychological toolkit for improving your life.
- Fully updated, comprehensive coverage for planning a multi-week trip to Spain
- Rick’s strategic advice on how to get the most out of your time and money, with rankings of his must-see favorites
- Top sights and hidden gems, from El Escorial and the great mosque of Córdoba to medieval bars serving house-made madroño liqueur
- How to connect with local culture: Enjoy a flamenco show in Sevilla, chat with fans about the latest fútbol match, or meander down winding streets in search of the best tapas
- Beat the crowds, skip the lines, and avoid tourist traps with Rick’s candid, humorous insight
- The best places to eat, sleep, and relax with a glass of sangria
- Self-guided walking tours of lively neighborhoods and incredible museums
- Vital trip-planning tools, like how to link destinations, build your itinerary, and get from place to place
- Detailed maps, plus a fold-out map for exploring on the go
- Over 1,000 bible-thin pages include everything worth seeing without weighing you down
- Coverage of Barcelona, Basque Country, San Sebastián, Bilbao, Santiago de Compostela, León, Salamanca, Madrid, Toledo, Granada, Sevilla, Córdoba, Andalucía, Cádiz, the South Coast, Gibraltar, Morocco, and more
Planning a one-week trip? Check out Rick Steves Best of Spain.
- Fully updated, comprehensive coverage for planning a multi-week trip through Ireland
- Rick's strategic advice on how to get the most of your time and money, with rankings of his must-see favorites
- Top sights and hidden gems, from the Rock of Cashel and the Ring of Kerry to distilleries making whiskey with hundred-year-old recipes
- How to connect with local culture: Hoist a pint at the corner pub, enjoy traditional fiddle music, and jump into conversations buzzing with brogue
- Beat the crowds, skip the lines, and avoid tourist traps with Rick's candid, humorous insight
- The best places to eat, sleep, and relax with a Guinness
- Self-guided walking tours of atmospheric neighborhoods and awe-inspiring sights
- Trip-planning tools, like how to link destinations, build your itinerary, and get from place to place
- Detailed maps, including a fold-out map for exploring on the go
- Complete, up-to-date coverage of Dublin, Kilkenny, Waterford, County Wexford, Kinsale, Cobh, Kenmare, The Ring of Kerry, Dingle Peninsula, County Clare, the Burren, Galway, the Aran Islands, Connemara, County Mayo, Belfast, Portrush, the Antrim Coast, Derry, County Donegal, and much more
Planning a shorter trip? Check out Rick Steves Best of Ireland.