According to Amazon the following books are some of the best nonfiction books for January – April 2024. You can find these “best” books at the New Ulm Public Library on the new nonfiction shelf near the railing on the second level.

“The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality” by Amanda Montell (153.42 Montell). “Montell argues that in the modern information age, our brain’s coping mechanisms have been overloaded, and our irrationality turned up to an eleven.”

“Sociopath: A Memoir” by Patric Gagne (921 Gagne). “Emotions like fear, guilt, and empathy eluded her. For the most part, she felt nothing. And she didn’t like the way that “nothing” felt. So Patric stole. She lied. She was occasionally violent. She became an expert lock-picker and home-invader. All with the goal of replacing the nothingness with…something.”

“Wives: A Memoir” by Simone Gorrindo (355.1086 Gorrind). “When her new husband joins an elite Army unit, Simone Gorrindo is uprooted from New York City and dropped into Columbus, Georgia. With her husband frequently deployed, Simone is left to find her place in this new world, alone–until she meets the wives.”

“Whiskey Tender: A Memoir” by Deborah Jackson Taffa (921 Taffa). “This book, never anything less than mesmerizing, is full of family stories and vital Native history. It pulses and it aches, and it lifts, consistently.”

“House of Hidden Meanings: A Memoir” by RuPaul (921 RuPaul). “Here in RuPaul’s singular and extraordinary story is a manual for living–a personal philosophy that testifies to the value of chosen family, the importance of harnessing what makes you different, and the transformational power of facing yourself fearlessly.”

“American Dreamer: Life in a Divided Country” by David Finkel (921 Finkel). “An American Dreamer illuminates, with the deepest empathy, the feelings and lives of many people in America today, and it is a brilliant chronicle of one person’s everyday experiences of frustration, confusion, and hope.”

“Super Communicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection” by Charles Duhigg (153.6 Duhigg). “Charles Duhigg blends deep research and his trademark storytelling skills to show how we can all learn to identify and leverage the hidden layers that lurk beneath every conversation.”

“Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity” by Michele Norris (305.8009 Norris). “The prompt seemed simple: Race. Your Thoughts. Six Words. Please Send. Even at just six words, the micro-essays can pack quite a punch, revealing, fear, pain, triumph, and sometimes humor.”

“Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum” by Antonia Hylton (362.2109 Hylton). “Antonia Hylton tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the last segregated asylums with surviving records and a campus that still stands to this day in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. She blends the intimate tales of patients and employees whose lives were shaped by Crownsville with a decade-worth of investigative research and archival documents.”

You might also want to take a look at these bestsellers that have arrived on our shelves recently. “An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s” by Doris Kearns Goodwin (920 Goodwin), “An Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness” by Jonathan Haidt (618.9285 Haidt), “The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of Reading” by James Patterson (028.9 Patterson) and “Wide, Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook” by Hampton Sides (921 Cook).

If you would like to place a request for any of these titles, visit www.newulmlibrary.org and choose the Library Catalog or call 507-359-8331 to speak to a staff member. New Ulm Public Library is located at 17 North Broadway and is open Monday-Thursday from 9:30 a.m.-8 p.m. and Friday-Saturday from 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m.