Archives de catégorie : Nonfiction

FOUNDERING de Cameron Yarbrough

A manifesto for anyone who has risked everything, failed, and found the courage to start again. It celebrates the journeys of individuals with mental health conditions who succeeded because of these conditions, not despite them. It inspires those who feel marginalized to turn their weaknesses into strengths.

FOUNDERING:
How Silicon Valley’s Greatest Entrepreneurs Go Deep to Rise High
by Cameron Yarbrough
Grand Central Publishing, November 2026
(via DeFiore and Co.)

Cameron Yarbrough knows the best-kept secret in Silicon Valley: nobody takes that brilliant idea from the proverbial back of the napkin to the stratosphere without enduring painful growth and seismic psychological breakthroughs. As a therapist and coach, he has helped founders of the most successful startups in tech achieve the impossible without sacrificing their well-being in the process. Renowned figures like Garry Tan, the president of the famous startup incubator Y Combinator, Steve Huffman, the CEO of Reddit, and Justin Kan, cofounder of Twitch. Yarbrough not only witnessed their spectacular highs and desperate lows from the sidelines; he walked in their shoes when he himself started his own company. In this book, he offers that unique expertise and guidance to aspiring leaders everywhere.

FOUNDERING is about what happened behind the scenes to this generation of founders and how they learned what it takes to survive and thrive as business leaders and human beings in the brutal world of growth-stage startups. It is about the existential crises, breakdowns, and self-reinventions that turn out to be unavoidable features of the process – the emotional crucible that no entrepreneur can avoid, and that no would-be entrepreneur can afford not to master. It’s about the takeaways–secrets, lessons, and tools to help every leader redefine success on their own terms.

FOUNDERING is a manifesto for anyone who has risked everything, failed, and found the courage to start again. It celebrates the journeys of individuals with mental health conditions who succeeded because of these conditions, not despite them. It inspires those who feel marginalized to turn their weaknesses into strengths. In a world obsessed with success, this book dares to explore psychological crisis as the birthplace of resilience, innovation, and meaning. It is an invitation to anyone who is contemplating a bold move, in the thick of an entrepreneurial crisis, or ready to rise from the ashes to join the ranks of these elite founders.

Cameron Yarbrough is an executive coach, therapist, and entrepreneur who has worked with some of Silicon Valley’s most influential founders and leaders. He was invited to productize his approach by Silicon Valley’s famous tech incubator, Y Combinator. Now, Yarbrough is the co-founder and Executive Chair of Torch, a preferred coaching vendor of LinkedIn, Roche, Alphabet, FICO, AirBnB, Stripe, and many other companies. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Business Insider, Inc, and TechCrunch.

WHEN THE STONES SPEAK de Doron Spielman

This is the untold story of the rediscovery of the ancient City of David in Jerusalem and the powerful evidence that proves the Jewish people’s historical and indigenous connection to the Holy Land.

WHEN THE STONES SPEAK:
The Remarkable Discovery of the City of David and What Israel’s Enemies Don’t Want You To Know
by Doron Spielman
Center Street, May 2025
(via Javelin)

Since the founding of Israel in 1948, the Jewish people have faced nine wars against multiple enemies. Yet, beyond the physical conflicts, a deeper ideological battle has been waged against Israel and the Jewish people. This war, crafted by certain Arab leaders and echoed by international organizations like the United Nations, seeks to erase the Jewish people’s ancestral ties to the land, casting them as outsiders, imposters, and “settlers.”

One thing, however, stands in the way of the denialists: the 3,800-year history of the City of David, a site lying just south of the Old City. Archeologists at the site are unearthing evidence that proves the Jewish people’s origin story in the land for over three millennia. Every shovel of dirt reveals that while others may claim to be indigenous to Jerusalem, the Jewish people are, in fact, more indigenous to the Land of Israel than perhaps any other group living anywhere in the world.

This is the timely story of those who transformed City of David from a neglected hilltop village into one of the most important archeological heritage sites in the world, while facing powerful global institutions and terror groups that would do almost anything to keep this truth hidden. Highly relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this book foreshadows the events and historical denialism that unfolded with Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Born and educated in the United States, Doron Spielman moved to Israel in 2000, where he serves as an international spokesperson in the Israel Defense Forces Reserves with the rank of Major. For over two decades, he has worked to transform the City of David into one of the world’s most significant archaeological and historical sites. He is a graduate of the Churchill National Security Program, a Senior Fellow at the Herut Center in Jerusalem, and a graduate of the University of Michigan.

THE CARPENTER AND THE CATHEDRAL de Hank Silver

At once an insider account of the historic restoration and a celebration of craft and what the act of making and building reveals about being human in our modern world. For readers of Patrick Hutchison’s Cabin (St. Martin’s Press), Callum Robinson’s Ingrained (Ecco), and Matthew B. Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft (Penguin).

THE CARPENTER AND THE CATHEDRAL:
The Meaning of Craft and the Reconstruction of Notre-Dame de Paris
by Hank Silver
Viking, Spring 2028
(via DeFiore and Company)

Six hundred logs. When American carpenter Hank Silver arrived at a workshop in Normandy, he was surrounded by heaping piles of oak logs. His small, international team’s task was to hew all them by hand, using reproductions of medieval axes, into more than a thousand individual beams, then lay out and cut fifty-seven roof trusses and framing that would become the nave of the Notre-Dame de Paris. They had just eight months.

When fire engulfed the iconic Notre-Dame Cathedral on April 15, 2019, few believed it could be restored to its former glory using the original materials and methods of the thirteenth century. But thanks to a small group of traditional craftsman, the restoration was indeed possible. THE CARPENTER AND THE CATHEDRAL: The Meaning of Craft and the Reconstruction of Notre-Dame de Paris, is Silver’s behind-the-scenes account of one of the most significant architectural restorations of all time. But it is so much more.

Hank Silver was the only American who worked on site at the cathedral, and his path to Notre-Dame was anything but traditional. Born and raised in an observant Jewish family in New York City, he came to carpentry in college when he happened upon a stash of woodworking books at his grandmother’s house. After graduating, he pursued carpentry and learned traditional timber framing—and what it means to work with one’s hands and with centuries-old tools that have been worn smooth by countless hands before. In captivating prose, he reflects on the connection between the maker and the materials, between craftsmanship and what endures.

For readers of Patrick Hutchison’s Cabin (St. Martin’s Press), Callum Robinson’s Ingrained (Ecco), and Matthew B. Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft (Penguin), THE CARPENTER AND THE CATHEDRAL is at once an insider account of the historic restoration and a celebration of craft and what the act of making and building reveals about being human in our modern world.

Hank Silver is a master carpenter and the founder of Ironwood Timberworks. He built custom timber frame structures throughout New England for more than 10 years. Since 2018, he has been a member of the volunteer crew Carpenters Without Borders, whose mission is the restoration of world carpentry heritage and the transmission of traditional skills and techniques to future generations of craftspeople. Silver has been featured in two documentaries and was awarded the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art’s 2025 Arthur Ross Award in Artisanship & Craftsmanship. He has been featured in The New York Times, National Geographic, and GQ and on CBS News, NBC’s Weekend Nightly News, and Good Day New York. This is his first book.

SONITA de Sonita Alizada

Nearly 15 million girls, including many in the U.S., are forced into marriage each year. Each of these girls has a price tag—and a story. Sonita Alizada was almost sold twice. Her price tag was $9,000. The money her family received for selling her would pay for her brother’s wife.

SONITA:
My Fight Against Tyranny and My Escape to Freedom
by Sonita Alizada
HarperOne, July 2025

The first time Sonita was put up for sale, she was 10 years old and she thought that she was participating in a dress-up game. She quickly realized that, in her culture, a wedding is a kind of funeral for the bride. Sonita says, “It represents the loss of a future. The loss of a voice.” After the marriage fell through, she was placed on sale again. She was expected to form a family, sleep with a man she never met, and then repeat the terrible cycle with her own children. But Sonita wanted more.

In SONITA, the Afghan rap artist and activist shares the story of how she fled Afghanistan to pursue her dreams and evolved into a woman who is changing the world. She shares incredible highs, like winning the song writing contest that gave her the opportunity of a lifetime, and unimaginable lows, like when the cruel Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, and how some of her family escaped, and how some were left behind.

Sonita teaches us all to hold to hope. You were chosen to be part of this world and your dreams have power, too. You can be a difference maker. In these pages, Sonita shares her pictures, poems, and songs. Readers are invited to scan QR codes so they can listen to Sonita’s music. This book is more than Sonita’s story. It is a love letter for anyone who has ever dreamed of more and held onto hope that their story would be different than the ones that came before them.

Sonita Alizada is an Afghan rapper and activist who escaped child marriage in 2015, when her viral music video, “Daughters for Sale,” helped her secure a scholarship to study in the United States. Through her music and advocacy work, Sonita has campaigned for women’s rights and against child marriage, partnering with organizations like the Malala Fund, Global Partnership for Education, and Girls Not Brides. She has received the U.S. Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Award, the MTV Europe Music Generation Change Award, and was included in BBC’s 100 Women in 2015. Sonita, who learned English upon coming to the U.S., graduated from Bard College in 2023; she is currently pursuing a master’s degree at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

HOW TO BE A GOOD GIRL de Jamie Hood

The ambitious and experimental debut by Jamie Hood, author of Trauma Plot, interrogating the “good girl” archetype and the price one pays to embody it.

HOW TO BE A GOOD GIRL
by Jamie Hood
Vintage, March 2025
(via Frances Goldin Literary)

In the thick of winter 2020, when so many books were buried beneath the catastrophe of the COVID-19 news cycle, one unlikely debut seemed to cut through the noise. Jamie Hood’s How to Be a Good Girl was an inventive and hybrid work of self-making, mingling diary entries, poetry, literary criticism, and love letters to interrogate the archetype of the “good girl,” and the ideas of femininity, passivity, desire, and trauma that come with it. Journeying from the ice age to our modern-day climate crisis, it devoured texts as expansive as Levinas and Plath to the Ronettes and after-school specials, all the while asking: what pound of flesh must a woman pay to be seen as “good.”

How to Be a Good Girl was a critical darling when it was first published by Grieveland. The Rumpus praised its “bold vulnerability,” and Vogue named it a Best Book of 2020. Now, Vintage is proud to reissue this provocative and genre-bending debut and find new readers for an exciting, new literary voice.

Jamie Hood is a critic, memoirist, and poet. Her work has appeared in Bookforum, The Baffler, The Nation, Los Angeles Review of Books, The New Inquiry, Observer, The Drift, SSENSE, Bookforum, Vogue, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn.