The Baby Chase: How Surrogacy Is Transforming the American Family

Leslie Morgan Steiner (Get this book)
Even though Steiner notes that babies conceived through assisted reproductive technologies represent only an estimated one percent of all U.S. births, it is still important for the public to understand the processes. A traditional surrogate uses her own egg to conceive and carry a baby she won't raise, whereas a gestational surrogate is not biologically related to the fetus inside of her. Steiner covers all the psychological and medical complications and changing attitudes pertaining to surrogacy and shares her belief that everyone who wants a baby deserves a baby.--Booklist

Fellow Mortals

Dennis Mahoney (Get this book)
Carefully yet implacably drawing upon the theme that we are all connected, Mahoney's quietly powerful debut snapshots the lives of suburban neighbors who become bound to one another through an almost unbearably banal yet utterly real tragedy. As the characters warily orbit one another, hidden desperation, longings, and demons rear up and spark further tragedy. With the barest glimmer of hope to buoy the calamities of his deeply earnest, lyrical story, Mahoney can share shelf space with Dave Eggers and Stewart O'Nan.--Booklist

Reign of error : the hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to America's public schools

Diane Ravitch (Get this book)
Education scholar Ravitch follows "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" (2010) with a well-researched and insightful critique of current efforts at public education reform. Putting the current privatization movement in the broader historical context of public school reform, Ravitch argues that there never was an ideal time when social inequities didn't fall hardest on poor and minority students. Ravitch advocates for more rigorous preschools, smaller class sizes, better teacher training, and comprehensive social services, among other initiatives, in this passionate plea to protect the nation's public schools from privatization.--Booklist

The Valley of Amazement

Amy Tan (Get this book)
Tan blends two favorite settings, Shanghai and San Francisco, in a tale that spans generations. Granted that courtesans and the places that sheltered them were (and in some places still are) culturally significant in East Asia, Tan takes what might seem an unnecessary risk by setting her latest novel in that too-familiar demimonde. Tan's story sometimes suffers from longueurs, but the occasional breathless, steamy scene evens the score: "He lifted my hips and my head soared and I lost all my senses except for the one that bound us and could not be pulled apart." A satisfyingly complete, expertly paced yarn.--Kirkus

Informing the News: The Need for Knowledge-Based Journalism

Thomas E. Patterson (Get this book)
Patterson delivers an impressive evaluation of a crisis he identifies as just as bad, if not worse, than that associated with the "yellow journalism" of the early 1900s. The author reports on the Carnegie-Knight Initiative, which was launched in 2005 with the purpose of strengthening the education and practices of journalism. Reviving truth-based standards will not be a simple matter, writes the author. Technological change and demographic shifts each have compounding effects, and news companies are often bound by the desires and requirements of profit-driven corporate executives. A well-organized and detailed book that underlines the need for remedial policy action and effective oversight.--Kirkus

Lies You Wanted to Hear

James Whitfield Thomson (Get this book)
In this surprisingly effective debut novel (from a 67-year-old author), the story is told from two perspectives. Lucy and Matt meet on a blind date in 1979, and straight-arrow Matt, a police officer, is immediately smitten. Lucy is just coming off a bad breakup with Griffin, the love of her life who left her the day after she got an abortion at his insistence. She sees in Matt a reliable man who makes a nice contrast to her elusive ex. Thomson lays out the moral complexities underlying acrimonious divorces, taking care to make each side credible, but Lucy's plight will win the greater measure of sympathy.--Booklist

Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

Eric Schlosser (Get this book)
The chilling, concise history of America's precarious nuclear arsenal. Investigative journalist Schlosser's vivid and unsettling treatise spreads across a 70-year span of the development and control of nuclear weaponry. At the core of the author's scrutiny is the suspensefully narrated back story of the Arkansas-based Titan II military missile silo. A disastrous mishap in 1980 involving an accidentally punctured fuel tank caused a near-detonation and collapse of the missile, killing a young repairman and sparking an investigation into the hazardous nature of all military nuclear armaments. An exhaustive, unnerving examination of the illusory safety of atomic arms--Kirkus

Orphan Train: Novel

Christina Baker Kline (Get this book)
A long journey from home and the struggle to find it again form the heart of the intertwined stories that make up this moving novel. Foster teen Molly is performing community-service work for elderly widow Vivian, and as they go through Vivian's cluttered attic, they discover that their lives have much in common. When Vivian was a girl, she was taken to a new life on an orphan train. These trains carried children to adoptive families for 75 years, from the mid-nineteenth century to the start of the Great Depression. Kline illuminates a largely hidden chapter of American history, while portraying the coming-of-age of two resilient young women.--Booklist

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Brene Brown (Get this book)
Brown exposes and challenges some of the common myths surrounding vulnerability. After more than a decade of research and hundreds of interviews, the author presents her findings on the concepts of shame, weakness and vulnerability. Defining vulnerability "as exposure, uncertainty, and emotional risk," the author maintains that this feeling is the crux of most of our meaningful experiences. Ultimately, she writes, it is not a weakness; everyone is vulnerable, we all need support via friends and family. Trust and vulnerability go hand in hand. A straightforward approach to revamping one's life from an expert on vulnerability.--Kirkus