Raymond Arsenault’s mesmerizing biography of John Lewis chronicles the life of the Civil Rights icon and congressman whose vision of a just and equitable society has inspired generations.
Antonia Hylton’s Madness offers an unsparing reckoning with history as it excavates an infamous mental hospital for Black patients.
Leslie Jamison is back with a memoir about her first years of parenting and the unraveling of her marriage, rendered in her signature elegant, sensuous prose.
Novelist, essayist, humorist and critic Sloane Crosley shows a remarkable willingness to face the dark questions that follow a suicide.
In his refreshing memoir, drag superstar and pop culture icon RuPaul tells his life story with a tender clarity that renders a larger-than-life figure unforgettably human.
History will remember the four hours that a woman testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee as it considered the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. In her long-awaited memoir, Christine Blasey Ford recounts her decision to publicly accuse the justice of sexual assault, the overwhelming aftermath and how she’s continued to persevere since.
The provocative No Judgment will have readers nodding in agreement on one page and shaking their heads vigorously on the next.
Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s passionate and compelling The Black Box documents the ways in which American writers have illustrated the rich diversity of the Black experience.
Persepolis author Marjane Satrapi’s new anthology offers a look at the human toll of Iran’s authoritarian regime, and a people’s heroic, ongoing movement against it.
The election of Donald Trump to the highest office in the land had many Americans questioning their choices. Sarah McCammon, NPR political correspondent and co-host of “The NPR Politics Podcast,” found herself at a tipping point. In The Exvangelicals, she writes about growing up in an evangelical church and leaving it. Intertwining journalism with memoir, McCammon sheds light on a religious movement that is on the brink.
Hanif Abdurraqib’s captivating There’s Always This Year is a powerful meditation on place and community.
More than 30 years after an Iranian leader called for his assassination, master storyteller and literary icon Salman Rushdie was repeatedly stabbed at a public appearance in 2022, suffering life-threatening wounds. He describes the attack and his recovery in Knife. Rushie has called it “a necessary book for me to write: a way to take charge of what happened, and to answer violence with art.”
Biographer Susan Page paints a colorful portrait of trailblazer Barbara Walters in her compulsively readable The Rulebreaker.
Journalist Tracie McMillan’s latest investigates how five families—including her own—benefit from systemic white privilege.
In The Demon of Unrest, Erik Laron crafts a tale of hold-your-breath suspense about the crucial three months leading up to the Civil War.
Aarathi Prasad’s entertaining and enlightening history of silk brims with story and scientific detail, revealing a surprising history well worth knowing.
In The Dead Don’t Need Reminding, Chicago poet Julian Randall braids memoir, history and cultural criticism, revealing himself to be a gifted storyteller.
You know it, we know it: Most dating books belong in the trash. Clouded by old-fashioned, patriarchal norms and expectations, they seem to hold little value to those of us dating in 2024. But proven matchmaker Lily Womble’s Thank You, More Please promises something more: A fresh perspective on dating that advises you to trust your gut and find joy.
Ann Powers’ biography of Joni Mitchell is a travelogue of one of the greatest artistic journeys ever taken, and it’s a pleasure to go along for the ride.
Comedy writer Chelsea Devantez romps through personal embarrassments, traumas and triumphs in her memoir, I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This.
James Patterson and Peter de Jonge have collaborated before on Miracle at St. Andrews and other novels about golf, and they join forces again with a biography that documents the rise and fall of Tiger Woods.
Eliza Griswold’s Circle of Hope is the intimate story of one small, progressive church, but it carries profoundly relevant lessons for all people of faith.
Kate Winkler Dawson’s deftly handled The Sinners All Bow examines the birth of the true crime genre and the murder that inspired The Scarlet Letter.
Adam Chandler’s history of labor can make readers question their own relationship to work, what their jobs mean to them, and why employment is so integral to our identity.
Douglas R. Egerton’s magnificent, exhaustively researched and beautifully written A Man on Fire charts the extraordinary life of multitalented abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
The stunning, adventurous Embers of the Hands examines the lives of everyday Vikings who otherwise might have been lost to history.
Irvin Weathersby Jr.’s indispensable In Open Contempt examines how we bear witness to sites and perpetrators of racial trauma.
Who owns the wind? A fifth-generation rancher and billionaire go to court over the matter in Amy Gamerman’s captivating The Crazies.
The Forgotten Sense is a passionate, enthusiastic guide to learning how the understudied, underappreciated sense of smell shapes us.
Flipping through any given section of the exceptional photography tome Magnum America is like watching history pass before your eyes.
Deborah Derrickson Kossmann reckons with family trauma and her mother’s hoarding disorder in her piercing, empathetic debut memoir, Lost Found Kept.
Ellen Hendriksen’s chatty, accessible How to Be Enough shows how to quit being your own toughest critic, and is a great addition to the self-help bookshelf.
Ellen Hendriksen offers ways to tune out your inner critic and tune in to your true self in her insightful self-help book, How to Be Enough.
Stephen Ellcock returns with his signature visual alchemy in a compendium of images related to the elements of the natural world.
You’d be hard-pressed to come up with a more complete history of everyday fashion than Josh Sims’ Icons of Style.
Matty Matheson’s new cookbook highlights the chef’s (and The Bear actor’s) unfussy nature and enthusiasm for no-frills tasty food.
Three loving tributes to the history of the makers and the shakers, the undersung and the unseen.