July 9
July 9, 2021: AMANDA M. FAIRBANKS
The Lost Boys of Montauk: The True Story of the Wind Blown, Four Men Who Vanished at Sea, and the Survivors They Left Behind
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An immersive account of a tragedy at sea whose repercussions haunt its survivors to this day, lauded by New York Times bestselling author Ron Suskind as “an honest and touching book, and a hell of a story.”
In March of 1984, the commercial fishing boat Wind Blown left Montauk Harbor on what should have been a routine offshore voyage. Its captain, a married father of three young boys, was the boat’s owner and leader of the four-man crew, which included two locals and the blue-blooded son of a well-to-do summer family. After a week at sea, the weather suddenly turned, and the foursome collided with a nor’easter. They soon found themselves in the fight of their lives. Tragically, it was a fight they lost. Neither the boat nor the bodies of the men were ever recovered.
Amanda M. Fairbanks examines the profound shift of Montauk from a working-class village—“a drinking town with a fishing problem”—to a playground for the ultra-wealthy, seeking out the reasons that an event more than three decades old remains so startlingly vivid in people’s minds. She explores the ways in which deep, lasting grief can alter people’s memories. And she shines a light on the powerful and sometimes painful dynamics between fathers and sons, as well as the secrets that can haunt families from beyond the grave.
The story is a universal tale of family and brotherhood; it’s about what happens when the dreams and ambitions of affluent and working-class families collide. Captivating and powerful, The Lost Boys of Montauk explores one of the most important questions we face as humans: how do memories of the dead inform the lives of those left behind?
AMANDA M. FAIRBANKS is a journalist and writer who has worked in the editorial department of the New York Times, as a higher education reporter at HuffPost, and as a staff writer at the East Hampton Star. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Newsweek, the Atlantic, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. The California native lives in Sag Harbor, New York with her husband and two children.
July 16
July 16, 2021: STEVEN PETROW
Stupid Things I Won’t Do When I Get Old: A Highly Judgmental, Unapologetically Honest Accounting of all the Things Our Elders are Doing Wrong
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For fans of David Sedaris and Nora Ephron, a humorous, irreverent, and poignant look at the gifts, stereotypes, and inevitable challenges of aging.
Soon after his 50th birthday, Petrow began assembling a list of “things I won’t do when I get old”—mostly a catalog of all the things he thought his then 70-something year old parents were doing wrong. That list, which included “You won’t have to shout at me that I’m deaf,” and “I won’t blame the family dog for my incontinence,” became the basis of this rousing collection of do’s and don’ts, wills and won’ts that is equal parts hilarious, honest, and practical.
The fact is, we don’t want to age the way previous generations did. “Old people” hoard. They bore relatives—and strangers alike—with tales of their aches and pains. They insist on driving long after they’ve become a danger to others (and themselves). They eat dinner at 4pm. They swear they don’t need a cane or walker (and guess what happens next). They never, ever apologize. But there is another way...
In Stupid Things I Won’t Do When I Get Old, Petrow candidly addresses the fears, frustrations, and stereotypes that accompany aging. He offers a blueprint for the new old age, and an understanding that aging and illness are not the same. As he writes, “I meant the list to serve as a pointed reminder—to me—to make different choices when I eventually cross the threshold to ‘old.’”
Getting older is a privilege. This essential guide reveals how to do it with grace, wisdom, humor, and hope. And without hoarding.
Praise for Stupid Things I Won't Do When I Get Old:
"Unbelievably witty and relatable, I alternated bursting into laughter and placing my hand over my face in horror thinking, Oh my God, is that me?” — Suzanne Somers, New York Times bestselling author of A New Way to Age
"My advice in a nutshell: Read this book and keep it handy.” — “Dear Abby” (Jeanne Phillips), nationally syndicated advice columnist
Steven Petrow is an award-winning journalist and book author who is best known for his Washington Post and New York Times essays on aging, health, and civility. He's also an opinion columnist for USA Today, where he writes about civil discourse and manners. Steven's 2019 TED Talk, "3 Ways to Practice Civility" has been viewed more than 1.8 million times and translated into 13 languages.
July 23
July 23, 2021: DAVID S. REYNOLDS
Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times
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From one of the great historians of nineteenth-century America, a revelatory and enthralling new biography of Lincoln that brings him to life within his turbulent age.
It was a country growing up and being pulled apart at the same time, with a democratic popular culture that reflected the country's contradictions. Lincoln's lineage was considered auspicious by Emerson, Whitman, and others who prophesied that a new man from the West would emerge to balance North and South. From New England Puritan stock on his father's side and Virginia Cavalier gentry on his mother's, Lincoln was linked by blood to the central conflict of the age. And an enduring theme of his life, Reynolds shows, was his genius for striking a balance between opposing forces.
What emerges from Reynolds's masterful reckoning is a man who at each stage in his life managed to arrive at a broader view of things than all but his most enlightened peers. As a politician, he moved too slowly for some and too swiftly for many, but he always pushed toward justice while keeping the whole nation in mind. Abe culminates, of course, in the Civil War, the defining test of Lincoln and his beloved country.
Reynolds shows us the extraordinary range of cultural knowledge Lincoln drew from as he shaped a vision of true union, transforming, in Martin Luther King Jr.'s words, "the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood."
One of the Wall Street Journal's Ten Best Books of the Year | A Washington Post Notable Book | A Christian Science Monitor and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2020.
""A marvelous cultural biography that captures Lincoln in all his historical fullness... using popular culture in this way, to fill out the context surrounding Lincoln, is what makes Mr. Reynolds's biography so different and so compelling ...” — Gordon Wood, Wall Street Journal
DAVID S. REYNOLDS a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, is the author or editor of 15 books, including "Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America," "Walt Whitman's America," "John Brown, Abolitionist," "Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson," "George Lippard," "Faith in Fiction," and "Beneath the American Renaissance." He is the winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Christian Gauss Award, the Ambassador Book Award, the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
July 30
July 30, 2021: MELISSA GOULD
Widowish: A Memoir
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Melissa Gould’s hopeful memoir of grieving outside the box and the surprising nature of love.
When Melissa Gould’s husband, Joel, was unexpectedly hospitalized, she could not imagine how her life was about to change. As Joel’s condition tragically worsened, she offered him the only thing she could: her love and devotion. Her dedication didn’t end with his death.
Left to resume life without her beloved husband and raise their young daughter on her own, Melissa soon realized that she didn’t fit the typical mold of widowhood or meet the expectations of mourning. She didn’t look like a widow or act like a widow, but she felt like one. Melissa was widowish.
Melissa’s personal journey through grief and beyond includes unlikely inspiration from an evangelical preacher, the calming presence of some Real Housewives, and the unexpected attention of a charming musician. A modern take on loss, Widowish illuminates the twists of fate that break our world, the determination that keeps us moving forward, and the surprises in life we never see coming.
MELISSA GOULD'S
essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and more. She's an award-winning screenwriter whose credits include Bill Nye, the Science Guy; Party of Five; Beverly Hills, 90210; and Lizzie McGuire.
August 6th
August 6, 2021: TOM CLAVIN
Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier
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The explosive true saga of the legendary figure Daniel Boone and the bloody struggle for America's frontier
It is the mid-eighteenth century, and in the 13 colonies founded by Great Britain, anxious colonists desperate to conquer and settle North America’s “First Frontier” beyond the Appalachian Mountains commence a series of bloody battles. These violent conflicts are waged against the Native American tribes whose lands they covet, the French, and finally against the mother country itself in an American Revolution destined to reverberate around the world.
This is the setting of Blood and Treasure, and the guide to this epic narrative is America’s first and arguably greatest pathfinder, Daniel Boone—not the coonskin cap-wearing caricature of popular culture but the flesh-and-blood frontiersman and Revolutionary War hero whose explorations into the forested frontier beyond the great mountains would become the stuff of legend. Now, thanks to painstaking research by two award-winning authors, the story of the brutal birth of the United States is told through the eyes of both the ordinary and larger-than-life men and women, white and red, who witnessed it.
This fast-paced and fiery narrative, fueled by contemporary diaries and journals, newspaper reports, and eyewitness accounts, is a stirring chronicle of the conflict over America’s “First Frontier” that places the reader at the center of this remarkable epoch and its gripping tales of courage and sacrifice.
TOM CLAVIN,
whose most recent book is TOMBSTONE, is a bestselling author who has worked as a newspaper and web site editor, magazine writer, TV and radio commentator, and a reporter for The New York Times covering entertainment, sports, and the environment. He has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, and National Newspaper Association. Four of his books have been New York Times best sellers: THE HEART OF EVERYTHING THAT IS, DODGE CITY, HALSEY'S TYPHOON, and THE LAST STAND OF FOX COMPANY.
