We’re easing out of one of the biggest-fiction-books-falls I’ve ever encountered. It was nearly relentless, the huge, hotly anticipated novels that were flying off printing presses and into our waiting hands. We’re tapering off, slightly, at least in that genre, and this week we welcome a slew of fascinating nonfiction works. Meghan O’Rourke, Zaina Arafat, Blake J. Harris, and Lawrence Wright are just a few of the accomplished authors who have new releases this week. Read on for the full list below, and have a great Tuesday!
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Meghan O’Rourke, The Story of the Body: Poems of Illness and Recovery
(W. W. Norton)
“This is essential reading for all.”
–Ocean Vuong
Zaina Arafat, Our Arab: On Longing, Belonging, and Hope
(Little Brown)
“A book poignant in passion and electric in expression.”
–Jay Griffiths
Philippa Gregory, Royal Witch
(William Morrow)
“Richly researched … Reveals a number of surprising truths.”
–New York Post
Blake J. Harris, Emperor of Nothing: The Making of Larry David
(Dey Street Books)
“This is detailed, delectable, and invaluable television history and a vibrant living portrait of a brilliant comedian.”
–Booklist
Lawrence Wright, Redemption: Faith, Justice, and Sisterhood
(Knopf)
“Redemption gripped me like the best crime novel and left me fundamentally changed.”
–Belle Burden
Pol Guasch, trans. by Mara Faye Lethem, Paradise Burns
(FSG)
“Seems certain to go down as one of the greatest, most perceptive novels about friendship to be published in recent years. Heartbreaking and true: a major achievement from a young writer.”
–Kirkus
Thomas Frank, The Creativity Con: How Innovation Became America’s Biggest Racket
(Penguin Press)
“A sharp look at how prized American values mask inequality.”
–Publishers Weekly
Lisa Kleypas, Queen of Lombard Street
(Avon)
“Dazzling and transformative.”
–Cosmopolitan
Laurence Leamer, Ladies Man: The Careless Heart of John F. Kennedy
(Putnam)
“The book is both a fascinating journey into character and an important historical contribution to our mature understanding of that glittering era known as Camelot.”
–Mark Olshaker
Sam Riviere, Doppelgänger
(Catapult)
“What holds this enormous amount of whimsy and information together is the gloriously individual and specific imagination of author Riviere.”
–Kirkus
Paris Marx, Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech’s Data Empires
(Riverhead)
“Timely and persuasive, this revelatory account is difficult to ignore.”
–Publishers Weekly
Alex Woodroe, Tatratea
(Clash)
“Readers of weird horror will devour this surreal snack of a story.”
–Library Journal
Isabella Weber, Anti-Fascist Economics: In Defense of Affordability, Dignity, and Democracy
(Random House)
“Offers an urgent reminder of how economic precarity threatens democracy and masterfully explains why we must focus on securing the material preconditions of freedom. A vital read for these troubled times.”
–Lina M. Khan
J. Vanessa Lyon, Blackness Thirteen Ways: Art, Life, & the Revisions of a Mulatta Lesbian
(Pantheon)
“A work of chiaroscuro genius. J. Vanessa Lyon’s prose is as pleasurable as it is inimitable.”
–Myriam Gurba
Lindsay Turner, Middle Slope: Poems
(FSG)
“These poems, like the mountains they describe, are meandering yet precise, humble yet masterly, concrete yet ethereal.”
–Maggie Milner
Lindsey Fitzharris, Sleuth-Hound: The Case of the Real Sherlock Holmes
(FSG)
“With just the right amount of delightfully lurid detail, Fitzharris brings to life the first murder cases wherein science took a seat in the courtroom. Fascinating and fabulous.”
–Mary Roach
K-Ming Chang, Needlemouth
(Simon and Schuster)
“Chang delivers another audaciously grotesque coming-of-age tale…as lyrical and disorienting as ever.”
–Publishers Weekly
Helen Betya Rubinstein, Feels Like Trouble: Provocations on Writing, Teaching & Power
(University of New Orleans Press)
“A riveting indictment, shocking in its revelations of the pressure to conform to what the culture identifies as ‘good writing.'”
–Vivian Gornick
Chase Twichell, The World it Was: Poems
(Copper Canyon)
“An elegiacal collection looks unflinchingly at the degradations of the planet and the human body with an urgent appeal to live fully and presently.”
–From the publisher
Thaddeus Russell, Savior and Seducer: A Renegade History of the United States in the World
(Atlantic Monthly Press)
“A well-argued, fresh way to look at America’s role in the world from the founding until today.”
–Kirkus