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In Mo Rocca and Jonathan Greenberg’s latest collective biography (after Mobituaries, 2019), Rocca turns his gaze to people (and animals) who accomplished great things after they reached a certain age.

Raised by a Serial Killer (2024) by April Balascio is a memoir by the daughter of Edward Wayne Edwards, whose crimes went unpunished for decades until April, who long suspected that her father was a murderer, called a cold case line in 2009, and helped finally bring her father to justice.

I really enjoyed The Official Stardew Valley Cookbook by ConcernedApe!

I thoroughly enjoyed John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed (2021). He can take the most obscure topic (Diet Dr. Pepper) and make it so interesting and relevant, and, very often, humorous. Also, he has the most beautiful prose – I just love listening to him.  

Sharon McMahon, host of the podcast Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, debuts with a compelling blend of biography and history that sheds light on little known figures who made a difference. The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Foun

American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI (2020) by Kate Winkler Dawson recounts the life and career of Edward Oscar Heinrich (1881-1953), one of the founding fathers of forensic science in the United States.

Organizational psychologist Adam Grant (Think Again, 2021 and Originals, 2016) returns with a readable, engaging work on potential, success, and talent.

The Feather Thief (2018) is a fascinating combination of true crime and natural history which reads like a novel. Its author, Kirk Wallace Johnson, was on a fishing trip when his guide told him an anecdote about an unusual heist: the 2009 theft of hundreds of dead birds from a British natural history museum.

For the last twenty years, record executive and producer Rick Rubin has significantly shaped the course of hip hop, rock, and popular music, among other music genres. Thanks to his impact on the industry, he was named as one of Time's "100 Most Influential People in the World."

In 1938, Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter were the first botanists to run the river rapids of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon to Lake Mead. At the time women in science were a rarity. While botany was considered acceptable for women, it was news-making and controversial for women to go on the actual expeditions to collect plant samples. 

Local Chicagoan, Mike Evans, founder of the startup 'GrubHub', brings us his inspiring story in Hangry (2022). He details the grit and determination it takes to be an entrepreneur and build up your business, but along with success comes burnout and disillusionment.

On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles’s radio program Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast a radio play based on the H.G. Wells novel War of the Worlds. The original novel, set in 1890s England, told the story of a Martian invasion of Earth.