Three New Non-Fiction Releases From Local Authors

There are three new non-fiction releases from local authors either already out, or set to be released this month.  Here is the rundown:

My favorite progressive radio host, Portland’s own Thom Hartmann, has a new book set to be released July 23rd, entitled Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture (Viking Books).  Here is the book’s publishers description:

An urgent look at our world as looming crises and what we must do to avert them

In Threshold, writer and Air America host Thom Hartmann looks at the deteriorating state of our planet, where the dynamics of environmental, economic, and population change are boiling over the limits within which society can function. In clear and impassioned prose, Hartmann busts the myths and ideologies of religious fundamentalism, capitalism run amok, male domination, and militarism that are draining our world of its natural and human resources and engendering the suffering of millions for the benefit of the few.

No mere jeremiad, Threshold examines cultures that have thrived, from the mother city of Caral, Peru, to modern Denmark, and targets five areas of policy: national, religious, economic, corporate, and environmental for specific and immediate reform. Radical in its scope and boldness but simple in its commonsense logic, Threshold illustrates the mistakes we have made as a culture, as a country, and as individuals and provides the inspiration and motivation readers are looking for to build a better, more sustainable world for all. Part prophecy, part call to arms, part policy prescription, Threshold is, for readers of Jared Diamond, Thomas Friedman, and Paul Hawken, the wake-up call our society so badly needs.

Oregon’s current Attorney General, John Kroger, will be at Powell’s City of Books this Thursday at 7:30 to promote his new memoir, Convictions: A Prosecutor’s Battles Against Mafia Killers, Drug Kingpins, and Enron Thieves (Farrar Straus Giroux).  Convictions publisher description:

Convictions is a spellbinding story from the front lines of the fight against crime. Most Americans know little about the work of assistant United States attorneys, the federal prosecutors who possess sweeping authority to investigate and prosecute the nations most dangerous criminals. John Kroger pursued high-profile cases against Mafia killers, drug kingpins, and Enron executives.Starting from his time as a green recruit and ending at the peak of his career, he steers us through the complexities of life as a prosecutor, where the battle in the courtroom is only the culmination of long and intricate investigative work. He reveals how to flip a perp, how to conduct a cross, how to work an informant, how to placate a hostile judge. Kroger relates it all with a novelists eye for detail and a powerful sense of the ethical conflicts he faces. Often dissatisfied with the system, he explains why our law enforcement policies frequently fail in critical areas like drug enforcement and white-collar crime. He proposes new ways in which we can fight crime more effectively, empowering citizens to pressure their lawmakers to adopt more productive policies.

This is an unflinching portrait of a crucial but little-understood part of our justice system, and Kroger is an eloquent guide.

Lastly, Bibi Gaston, a landscape architect who splits her time between New York and The Columbia River Gorge, has a new book out entitled The Loveliest Woman in America: A Tragic Actress, Her Lost Diaries, and Her Granddaughter’s Search for Home (Harper Perennial), which is part biography of her grandmother, and part memoir of Bibi’s journey to discover the story behind her grandmother’s tragically short life.  Loveliest Woman‘s description:

In 1927, at the age of twenty-three, Rosamond Pinchot was hailed as The Loveliest Woman in America. At thirty-three, in a sudden, shocking, and highly public act, Rosamond took her own life, setting in motion generations of confusion in the family she left behind.

Nearly seventy years after her demise, her granddaughter Bibi received a box of more than 1,500 pages of Rosamond’s diaries and embarked on a seven-year journey to make sense of the silence that surrounded Rosamond’s death and to discover the grandmother she never knew. An acclaimed beauty, actress, socialite, and outdoorswoman, Rosamond became the key to Bibi’s understanding of her enigmatic and adventurous father, her glamorous but painfully divided family, and herself.

Through the silent labyrinth of a brilliant but troubled family, Bibi pieced together Rosamond’s life story–her magical embrace of nature, her love for two compelling but difficult men, and her circle of on tops, intimates, and mentors, including Elizabeth Arden, Eleanor Roosevelt, George Cukor, and David O. Selznick. Bibi also discovered the tragic legacy of the women in her family, including Rosamond’s cousin Edie Sedgwick and her half sister, Mary Pinchot Meyer, whose murder in 1964 has never been solved.

As if looking in a mirror, Bibi found parts of herself in the complex, tragic, yet beautiful story of the high-spirited Rosamond Pinchot and designed a mission at midlife: to outlive the often difficult, but exuberant and passionate, lives of her ancestors.

Any other new releases, non-fiction or otherwise, from local authors you are aware of and would like to share with us in the comments below?