THE UNMAKING de Stephanie Foo

In this science-based, remarkably candid account of what it’s like to heal from Complex PTSD, journalist Stephanie Foo offers a fascinating exploration of a psychological phenomenon we’re only beginning to understand and a relevant and powerful narrative of reckoning and healing.

THE UNMAKING
by Stephanie Foo
Ballantine, pub. date TBD

Stephanie Foo was an accomplished journalist, a producer at This American Life, won an Emmy, and launched a podcasting app, but behind her office door she was having panic attacks. At the age of 30 she was diagnosed with Complex PTSD. Finding few resources to help her heal, Stephanie set out to write her own guide, THE UNMAKING. With the determination and curiosity of an award-winning journalist, Stephanie investigates the science behind Complex PTSD and how it has shaped her own life. She interviews experts and tries a variety of therapies. She also dives into her past of extreme child abuse and neglect and uncovers family secrets.
While someone can develop PTSD from a single traumatic event, Complex PTSD blooms when the trauma happens over and over and over, over the course of years. Risk factors include being hit or verbally abused by a caretaker, having mentally ill, alcoholic or addict parents, or even facing poverty. Those numbers alone add up to around 50 million people. And that’s not including the large populations of those who may have developed Complex PTSD through domestic abuse, continual health issues, or POC and queer people living in threatening and discriminatory environments. They need help. And yet…nobody is talking about it. THE UNMAKING describes how C-PTSD is, essentially, brain damage, and the tragic impact it has on bodies and minds. But unlike the academic books on C-PTSD, Stephanie Foo also shares how it feels to learn that science as a survivor. She writes about her doubts, anguish, terrible setbacks, and ultimately, successes.

Stephanie Foo is a writer and radio producer. She most recently was a producer at the radio show This American Life, which reaches 5 million listeners every week. Before that, she helped create the public radio show Snap Judgment, where she produced nearly 200 stories in 4 years. Foo is an acclaimed advocate for diversity in all forms. She wrote a viral article for Transom about the importance of diverse workplaces, particularly in newsrooms, and speaks frequently on the topic of diversity and inclusion. She’s an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University and has spoken at Columbia, Vassar, Yale, Berkeley and CUNY.

ASK A PHILOSOPHER de Ian Olasov

For several years Ian Olasov has set up “Ask-a-Philosopher” booths around New York City, answering questions from passers-by. Now in this book he offers answers to the real-life questions on people’s minds.

ASK A PHILOSOPHER:
Answers to Your Most Important—and Most Unexpected—Questions
by Ian Olasov
Thomas Dunne Books, September 2020

Ian Olasov answers questions such as:
– Are people innately good or bad?
– Is it okay to have a pet fish?
– Is it okay to have kids?
– Is color subjective?
– If humans colonize Mars, who will own the land?
– Is there life after death?
– Should I give money to homeless people?

ASK A PHILOSOPHER shows that there’s a way of making philosophy work for each of us, and that philosophy can be both perfectly continuous with everyday life, and also utterly transporting. From questions that we all wrestle with in private to questions that you never thought to ask, ASK A PHILOSOPHER will get you thinking.

Ian Olasov is an adjunct professor and doctoral candidate at the City University of New York, Graduate Center. He won the American Philosophical Association’s Public Philosophy Op-Ed Prize in 2016 and 2018. His Ask-a-Philosopher series has received a lot of publicity coverage over the years including in Newsweek, The New York Times, qz.com, and WNYC.

BERLIN RECKONING de Alexander Wolff

From acclaimed journalist and former Sports Illustrated staff writer Alexander Wolff comes the fascinating story—part history, part memoir—of the author’s exiled grandfather and émigré father, who survived the turmoil of both World Wars and led fascinating lives as immigrants in America.

BERLIN RECKONING:
My German American Family’s Story of War, Flight, Exile and Emigration
by Alexander Wolff
Atlantic Monthly, Winter 2021

In 2017 acclaimed journalist Alexander Wolff moved to Berlin to ta explore the lives of his exile grandfather Kurt Wolff and émigré father Niko Wolff—two part-Jewish, German-born men who became American citizens. Kurt Wolff broke into the book business in 1909 as partner of Ernst Rowohlt in Leipzig; four years later, at age 26, he went out on his own, publishing Franz Kafka, Heinrich Mann, Franz Werfel, Joseph Roth, and other writers whose books would be burned by the Nazis. Just after the Reichstag fire in 1933, he and his wife Helen fled to France and Italy, and eight years later in New York they founded Pantheon Books, which went on to publish Gift from the Sea, Doctor Zhivago, and The Tin Drum. Kurt left behind a son from his first marriage, who served in the Wehrmacht before being captured by the Americans, emigrating to the U.S. only in 1948. This was Alexander’s father Niko. Drawing on family letters, diaries, reminiscences and photographs, many never before seen by anyone outside the family, Alexander weaves intimate detail of his father and grandfather into a tapestry of history. An absorbing journey that is part memoir and part historical narrative, BERLIN RECKONING is the saga of a far-flung family navigating wartime and its aftershocks. The book evokes the perils, triumphs, and setbacks at the heart of the refugee experience. And it paints a vivid portrait of the life and times of a titanic literary figure who went from having his books burned by the Nazis to winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Alexander Wolff spent 36 years on staff at Sports Illustrated. He is author or editor of nine books, including the New York Times bestseller Raw Recruits and Big Game, Small World, which was named a New York Times Notable Book. A former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton, from which he graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in History, he lives with his family in Vermont.

BEE MUSIC de Eileen Garvin

A novel about the families we choose for ourselves, by masterful storyteller Eileen Garvin

BEE MUSIC
by Eileen Garvin
Dutton, pub. date TBD

Alice Holtzman is demographically unfashionable: middle-aged, childless, introverted, and more concerned with a job well done than how she looks doing it. After the sudden death of her husband, she starts having panic attacks. It’s in the grips of one of these attacks that she hits Jake—a troubled, paraplegic teenager with the tallest mohawk in the Pacific Northwest—with her pickup truck. Oh, and did we mention that truck was full of 120,000 restless honeybees? Everyone is surprised when Alice lets Jake move onto her farm, and even more surprised when she hires Harry, a bumbling twenty-something with a sketchy past, to help her with her apiary. When a nefarious pesticide company threatens the local honeybee population, this unlikely trio unites to defend the bees, and, in the process, forge a path out of their respective griefs.

Eileen Garvin was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. She completed her B.A. in English at Seattle University, and her M.A. in English at the University of New Mexico. She writes for newspapers, magazines, and websites from Hood River, Oregon, where she lives with her husband.

LABYRINTH de Ben Argon

An original look at the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre—told in cartoons.

LABYRINTH:
An existential Odyssey With Jean-Paul Sartre
by Ben Argon
Abrams ComicArts, April 2020

As graduates embark on the next phase of their lives, what better way to get them accustomed to the rat race they are about to enter than by introducing them to the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre? Cleverly told through the story of a pair of rats trapped in the labyrinth of existence, this allegory humorously conveys the key ideas of Sartre’s existential philosophy in graphic novel form—accessible for students and readers of all ages. In addition, two reputable Sartre scholars have contributed the introduction and afterword: Gary Cox, a British philosopher with a doctorate from the University of Birmingham, and Christine Daigle, professor of philosophy at Brock University in Canada.

Ben Argon grew up in France surrounded by artists, authors, and philosophers of all kinds. It was then that he started making comics. At the age of reason, his attraction to science led him to embark on a corporate career, where he now leads teams of scientists and knowledge workers. He lives in Amsterdam.