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Most anticipated nonfiction of 2024

From stirring investigations to dazzling memoirs, searing cultural criticism to deeply researched histories, our nonfiction cups overfloweth in 2024.
Available 1/16/2024
Biography

John Lewis

By Raymond Arsenault

The newest title in the Yale University Press Black Lives series, John Lewis: In Search of the Beloved Community is the first comprehensive biography of the titular civil rights icon and congressman. Drawing on archival materials and interviews with Lewis and his friends, family and associates, Raymond Arsenault offers an essential, mesmerizing narrative of a man who never lost sight of his vision for a just society, and whose legacy continues to inspire generations to “get in the way.”

Available 1/23/2024
American History, Black History, History

Madness

By Antonia Hylton

In 1911, 12 Black men were delivered to the forest in rural Maryland and began building their new residence, the State Hospital for the Negro Insane. During its near century of existence, the hospital (re-named Crownsville) held patients in prisonlike conditions without offering them adequate medical attention, food, space or safety. In Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum, Emmy-winning journalist Antonia Hylton summoned extensive archival research and conducted dozens of interviews with former patients and staff, as well as their descendants, to offer an unsparing reckoning with history.

Book jacket image for Splinters by Leslie Jamison
Available 2/20/2024
Memoir

Splinters

By Leslie Jamison

Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams and The Recovering, is back with a new memoir, Splinters, in which she reflects on early motherhood in tandem with her relationship with her own mother. Sharp and honest, Jamison tries to reconcile the person she is with the stories she has internalized about herself, and in doing so, she shares a perspective on motherhood that teems with insight.

Available 2/27/2024
Memoir

Grief Is for People

By Sloane Crosley

Novelist, essayist, humorist and critic Sloane Crosley shows a remarkable willingness to face the dark questions that follow a suicide.

Book jacket image for The House of Hidden Meanings by RuPaul
Available 3/05/2024
Memoir

The House of Hidden Meanings

By RuPaul

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. 

Book jacket image for One Way Back by Christine Blasey Ford
Available 3/19/2024
Memoir

One Way Back

By Christine Blasey Ford

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.

Book jacket image for No Judgment by Lauren Oyler
Available 3/19/2024
Essays

No Judgment

By Lauren Oyler

Saying “no judgment” is a cover for our desire to judge, posits Lauren Oyler. As a cultural critic for the New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper’s and other such publications, Oyler is in the business of judging, and she doesn’t hold back in her debut collection of essays. TED Talks, Goodreads reviewers, the “vulnerability” trend, that thing Martin Scorsese said about Marvel—her takes would be dizzying if she were not so skilled in constructing solid arguments that deepen our understanding of cultural criticism. No Judgment is deeply funny and wise.

Book jacket image for The Black Box by Henry Louis Gates
Available 3/19/2024
Black History, History

The Black Box

By Henry Louis Gates

Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s Harvard introductory course in African American Studies is legendary. Who among us would hesitate to attend a lecture with the award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist and cultural critic? The Black Box distills the lessons of the seminar as Gates tracks the Black authors who have sought self-definition through writing across genres to create places of belonging.

Book jacket image for Woman
Available 3/19/2024
History, Middle Eastern History, Women's History

Woman, Life, Freedom

By Una Dimitrijevic, By Marjane Satrapi

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.

Book jacket image for The Exvangelicals by Sarah McCammon
Available 3/19/2024
Memoir

The Exvangelicals

By Sarah McCammon

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.

Book jacket image for There's Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib
Available 3/26/2024
Memoir

There’s Always This Year

By Hanif Abdurraqib

Hanif Abdurraqib’s captivating There’s Always This Year is a powerful meditation on place and community.

Book jacket image for Knife by Salman Rushdie
Available 4/16/2024
Memoir

Knife

By Salman Rushdie

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.”

Book jacket image for The Rulebreaker by Susan Page
Available 4/23/2024
Biography

The Rulebreaker

By Susan Page

Biographer Susan Page paints a colorful portrait of trailblazer Barbara Walters in her compulsively readable The Rulebreaker.

Book jacket image for The White Bonus by Tracie McMillan
Available 4/23/2024
Social Science

The White Bonus

By Tracie McMillan

Journalist Tracie McMillan’s latest investigates how five families—including her own—benefit from systemic white privilege.

Book jacket image for The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson
Available 4/30/2024
History

The Demon of Unrest

By Erik Larson

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.

Book jacket image for Silk by Aarathi Prasad
Available 4/30/2024
Cultural History, History

Silk

By Aarathi Prasad

Aarathi Prasad’s entertaining and enlightening history of silk brims with story and scientific detail, revealing a surprising history well worth knowing.

Book jacket image for The Dead Don't Need Reminding by Julian Randall
Available 5/7/2024
Memoir

The Dead Don’t Need Reminding

By Julian Randall

In The Dead Don’t Need Reminding, Chicago poet Julian Randall braids memoir, history and cultural criticism, revealing himself to be a gifted storyteller.

Available 6/11/2024
Self-Help

Thank You, More Please

By Lily Womble

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.

Book jacket image for Traveling by Ann Powers
Available 6/11/2024
Biography

Traveling

By Ann Powers

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.

Book jacket image for I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This by Chelsea Devantez
Available 6/4/2024
Memoir

I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This

By Chelsea Devantez

Comedy writer Chelsea Devantez romps through personal embarrassments, traumas and triumphs in her memoir, I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This.

Book jacket image for Tiger
Available 7/15/2024
Biography

Tiger, Tiger

By Peter de Jonge, By James Patterson

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.

Available 8/06/2024
Social Science

Circle of Hope

By Eliza Griswold

Eliza Griswold won a 2019 Pulitzer for Amity and Prosperity, which chronicled the devastating impact of fracking in a small Pennsylvania town. Now, the journalist and poet turns her attention to Circle of Hope, a progressive Anabaptist church that relies on both scripture and public protest as articles of faith. Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church follows the congregation’s reckoning with the pandemic, our country’s religious landscape and internal rifts as it fights for its survival.

Most anticipated by genre

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Recent nonfiction reviews

Book jacket image for The Way You Make Me Feel by Nina Sharma

The Way You Make Me Feel

With writing that is at once humorous and profound, Nina Sharma’s memoir unfurls the chronicle of her love affair and calls for greater unity among Asian and Black Americans.

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Koreaworld

Anyone interested in exploring the wild, exciting new frontiers of Korean food will find Koreaworld a fresh delight.

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Book jacket image for Tits Up by Sarah Thornton

Tits Up

After reading Sarah Thornton’s revelatory Tits Up, you’ll never look at boobs the same way again.

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Book jacket image for Out in the World by Amy B. Scher

Out in the World

Out in the World is an LGBTQ+ travel guide packed with unexpected and delightful new places to explore while unabashedly being exactly who you are.

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Book jacket image for The Internet of Animals by Martin Wikelski

The Internet of Animals

The bonkers and delightful The Internet of Animals tells the story of author-scientist Martin Wikelski’s efforts to connect animal researchers across the globe, and understand animals anew.

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