Member-Owner Book Club

Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age

By Ibram X. Kendi, $34.99, hardcover

The National Book Award-winning historian of “Stamped from the Beginning” charts how “great replacement theory” has moved from the margins to become the most dominant political theory of our time — and what we can do to safeguard democracy from this insidious threat.

True Color: The Strange and Spectacular History of Defining Color – from Azure to Zinc Pink

By Kory Stamper, $31.99, hardcover

What could “bluer than fiesta” possibly mean? While editing dictionaries for Merriam-Webster, Kory Stamper found herself drawn again and again to the whimsical color definitions in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary–especially when compared to the dry and impersonal entries that filled the rest of the volume. Stamper couldn’t help but wonder: Who was the voice behind these peculiar definitions?

Meet I. H. Godlove, an erratic but brilliant up-and-coming scientist who was one of the experts Merriam-Webster hired in 1930 to help revise the dictionary to reflect a rapidly modernizing world. His fascinating life mirrors the wild and winding journey that color science, color psychology, and color production took through the twentieth century. Stamper tracks these industries as they move into the atomic age and intertwine in strange and surprising ways, spanning two world wars and involving chemical explosions, an unexpected suicide, dramatic office politics, and an extraordinary love story.

Filled with captivating facts about color words and colors themselves–did you know that the word “puke” used to refer to a fashionable shade of reddish-brown before it was associated with vomit?–and fueled by Stamper’s inexhaustible curiosity, True Color will transform the way you see the world, from black-and-white to Technicolor.

When the Forest Breathes: Renewal and Resilience in the Natural World

By Suzanne Simard, $24.99, hardcover

The trailblazing scientist who pioneered the concept of sophisticated communication between trees returns with a book that places nature’s own cycles of renewal at the center of a powerful vision for the future of our forests. Animated by wonder for our forests and the intricate practices of caretaking that have long sustained them, “When the Forest Breathes” is a vital reminder of all the natural world has to teach us about adaptability, resilience, and community.