New Releases | March 21, 2023

Looking for your next great read? We're here to help! Each week, our marketing team—Dylan Schleicher (DJJS), Gabbi Cisneros (GMC), Emily Porter (EPP), and Jasmine Gonzalez (JAG)—highlights four newly released books we are most excited about. 

Book descriptions are provided by the publisher unless otherwise noted.

This week, our choices are:

Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories, and Secrets from the Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry by Kelly Richmond Pope, Harvard Business Review Press (JAG) 

Have you ever wondered why Bernie Madoff thought he could brazenly steal his clients' money? Or why investors were so easily duped by Elizabeth Holmes? Or how courageous people like Jeffrey Wigand are willing to become whistleblowers and put their careers on the line? 

Fraud is everywhere, from Nigerian "princes," embezzlers, and Ponzi schemers to corporate giants like Enron and Volkswagen. And fraud is costly. Each year, consumers, small businesses, governments, and corporations lose trillions of dollars to financial crime. 

We're so accustomed to hearing about fraud that our abilities to identify it and speak about it are limited. 

No more. In Fool Me Once, renowned forensic accounting expert Kelly Richmond Pope shows fraud in action, uncovering what makes perps tick, victims so gullible, and whistleblowers so morally righteous, while also encouraging us to look at our own behaviors and motivations in the hope of protecting ourselves and our companies. 

By the time you finish this book, you'll have a better understanding of—and perhaps even compassion for—perpetrators, a renewed connection to victims, and an appreciation for those who blow the whistle. 

Filled with fascinating stories and insightful analysis, Fool Me Once will open your eyes and challenge your thinking. It will inspire you to question your own preconceived notions about fraud. It will challenge your beliefs about yourself and other people. And it will help you understand a phenomenon that most of us fail to grasp—until it's too late. 

Guardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship that Saved Yosemite by Dean King, Scribner (EPP) 

In June of 1889 in San Francisco, John Muir—iconic environmentalist, writer, and philosopher—meets face-to-face for the first time with his longtime editor Robert Underwood Johnson, an elegant and influential figure at The Century magazine. Before long, the pair, opposites in many ways, decide to venture to Yosemite Valley, the magnificent site where twenty years earlier, Muir experienced a personal and spiritual awakening that would set the course of the rest of his life. 
 
Upon their arrival the men are confronted with a shocking vision, as predatory mining, tourism, and logging industries have plundered and defaced “the grandest of all the special temples of Nature.” While Muir is consumed by grief, Johnson, a champion of society’s most pressing debates via the pages of the nation’s most prestigious magazine, decides that he and Muir must fight back. The pact they form marks a watershed moment, leading to the creation of Yosemite National Park, and launching an environmental battle that captivates the nation and ushers in the beginning of the American environmental movement. 
 
Beautifully rendered, deeply researched, and inspiring, Guardians of the Valley is a moving story of friendship, the written word, and the transformative power of nature. It is also a timely and powerful “origin story” as the toweringly complex environmental challenges we face today become increasingly urgent. 

Lost Places: and Other Stories by Sarah Pinsker, Small Beer Press (GMC) 

A half-remembered children's TV show. A hotel that shouldn't exist. A mysterious ballad. A living flag. Nebula and Hugo Award-winning author Sarah Pinsker's second collection brings together a seemingly eclectic group of stories that unite behind certain themes: her touchstones of music and memory are joined by stories about secret subversions and hidden messages in art. Her stories span and transcend genre labels, looking for the truth in strange situations from possible futures to impossible pasts. 

Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond, Crown (DJJS) 

The United States is the richest country on earth, yet it has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in five of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay workers poverty wages? 
 
In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond sets forth a new and hard-won answer to this question, revealing that there is so much poverty in America not in spite of our wealth but because of it. Drawing on history, research, and original reporting, he argues that affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly work to keep poor people poor. The well-off exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. Those of us who are financially secure prioritize the subsidization of affluence over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside zones of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow. 
 
This fiercely argued and compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original case for eliminating poverty in America and shows how we can all be part of that effort. His book calls on us to become true poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of equity.