New Book Releases for the Week of August 19
Featuring new releases by Johnathan Walton, Giri Nathan, Laura Bates, and Cordelia Fine.
Books can offer just what we need at just the right time. If you're looking for something interesting to add to your list, consider one of these upcoming releases!
The Porchlight staff members choosing books each week include Porchlight's Managing Director, Sally Haldorson, and the marketing team of Gabbi Cisneros, Jasmine Gonzalez, and Dylan Schleicher. As expert booksellers, we browse publisher catalogs and explore new titles from across the book industry to discover what captures our interest, and we're excited to share our findings with readers like you.
Unless otherwise noted, all book descriptions are provided by their respective publishers.
Our Recommended Books This Week
Gabbi's pick: Anatomy of a Con Artist: The 14 Red Flags to Spot Scammers, Grifters, and Thieves by Johnathan Walton, published by Rodale Books
“Some people play golf on the weekends,” Johnathan Walton says. “I hunt con artists.”
Con artists are everywhere—your new boyfriend or girlfriend, your new neighbor or coworker, your new friend—and they don’t outsmart you; they out-feel you to get their hands on your money. In Anatomy of a Con Artist, Walton lays out “the tells” based on hundreds of real-life cases he’s investigated, including:
- Red Flag #1—A Stranger Offering Help: Someone new and overly helpful insinuates themselves into your life.
- Red Flag #3—Drama, Drama, Drama: Constant dramatic “emergencies” to pull you in.
- Red Flag #8—Beak Wetting: Faux generosity—gifts, money, or favors to bring your guard down.
After being scammed out of nearly $100,000 by a devious con artist, Walton was turned away by police. Infuriated and armed with the investigative skills he’d gained from years as a TV reporter, Walton launched his own investigation and built a compelling criminal case authorities could not ignore. Walton got his con artist charged, prosecuted, and convicted, then devoted his life to helping other victims do the same. This book packs in all he has learned.
Some con artists scheme for money, some for attention, some just for the thrill of lying. And if you think it can’t happen to you, then you are exactly the kind of “mark” a professional con artist is looking for. With this insightful guide in your hands, you are far less likely to get conned and far more likely to spot these nefarious manipulators from a mile away—and cross the street when you see them coming.
Sally's pick: Changeover: A Young Rivalry and a New Era of Men's Tennis by Giri Nathan, published by Gallery Books
For more than two decades, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, and Roger Federer dominated men’s tennis so thoroughly that it became difficult to imagine how the game would keep its shine once they retired.
Then came 2024—the first year since 2002 that none of them won a Grand Slam tournament—and a technicolor future was revealed. The major titles were divided between a pair of prodigies in their early twenties: the effervescent showman Carlos Alcaraz, whose infinite variety of shots won him the French Open and Wimbledon; and the relentlessly cool Jannik Sinner, whose power and precision secured him the Australian Open and US Open even amid a doping controversy. Though other young contenders jostled for the spotlight, and Djokovic tried to hold his ground, the transcendentally gifted Alcaraz and Sinner just kept installing their new regime.
Punctuated with humor, brimming with insight, and rooted in a true fan’s love of the game, this work of elevated sports journalism is a captivating primer to the rivalry poised to define the next decade of the sport.
Dylan's pick: The New Age of Sexism: How Emerging Technologies Are Reinventing Misogyny by Laura Bates, published by Sourcebooks
Gender equality is something that has been a constant battle. With the advent of ever more high-tech equipment at our fingertips, there is a new wave of technologies that threaten this notion. With misogyny baked into their design, these technologies are dragging women back to the dark ages.
The New Age of Sexism will take the reader deep into the heart of this strange new world. It will dive into where and what the dangers are, exploring everything from AI to sex robots and the metaverse. This is not a book about the future. This is happening right now, and it could become part of our daily lives much sooner than we realize.
Jasmine's pick: Patriarchy Inc.: What We Get Wrong About Gender Equality—and Why Men Still Win at Work by Cordelia Fine, published by W.W. Norton & Company
Work remains much as it always has: men occupy the vast majority of leadership roles and are overrepresented in positions from engineer to plumber. We see many jobs as “male” or “female,” with women dominating in healthcare and childcare professions. Pretending that this is the natural state of things—or that, instead, both sexes should submit to working 24/7—is just not right.
In Patriarchy Inc., Cordelia Fine examines with razor-sharp and quick-witted analysis why gender inequality is embedded in the workplace and why it has to change. Drawing on theories from evolutionary science, psychology, economics, and sociology, she examines two of the most prominent movements in the corporate world. The Different But Equal viewpoint espouses that women are in the jobs they want despite their lower status and salaries. In the meantime, DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) has become a slogan that emphasizes productivity and profit, not fair play. Fine shows how both are wrong and the bad effects on everyone when men are still stuck in traditional breadwinner roles and women are having to fight for their due.
Offering perceptive and much-needed insight into the current state of work, Patriarchy Inc. explores how we can get closer to achieving equality, even if it means upturning business as usual.
Buy these recommended new book releases and more directly from Porchlight Book Company.
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