Author: Kim Ukura

Hello and happy Friday, readers! I would usually greet you as “fellow readers,” but I am in the middle of a massive reading slump that I don’t see ending any time soon. I just haven’t been in the mood to pick up a book since I got back from vacation, which is a bummer when your side hustle is all about talking books!

Luckily, not being able to read doesn’t mean I haven’t been paying attention to the nonfiction news that’s coming out this month. This week I’ve got a bubbling conversation on citations, an update on Elizabeth Holmes, and news about adaptations. Onward!

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Sponsored by Shadow Mountain Publishing

World War II famously gave rise to human atrocities such as the Holocaust and the atomic bomb, but it also became a proving ground for heroes who refused to back down from the fight against evil. This title tells the stories of many of these brave soldiers and noncombatants…. Each story … gives readers a chance to see what elements led up to their heroic acts and service during the conflict. A solid primer for those just learning about World War II, this collection also offers new stories that will interest even the most avid history buff.” -School Library Journal

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I’m not really sure how to sum up this story, other than the great headline from The Lily: “A female historian wrote a book. Two male historians went on NPR to talk about it. They never mentioned her name. It’s Sarah Milov.” While this is a pretty shocking example of not giving credit, the more general issues it raises – obligations for citations, the way it results in erasing women’s work, to name just two – are really interesting. I’m still noodling on all of it. But for now, take a peek at Milov’s book, The Cigarette, due out in October.

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is set to stand trial for fraud and conspiracy in July 2020. In the interim, Holmes and her lawyers are looking to mount a defense that reporter John Carreyrou had “an undue influence on federal regulators” who forced the company to close down its labs. I cannot get enough of this story! I’m also required to tell you to read Bad Blood because it’s amazing.

Lakeith Stanfield will star in a film adaptation of Chef Kwame Onwuachi’s memoir Notes from a Young Black Chef! The memoir follows “Onwuachi’s unprecedented journey from childhood in the Bronx with a mostly single mother to opening a fine-dining restaurant in Washington D.C. at the age of 26.” This is so exciting!

A book about “black athletes, a divided America, and the politics of patriotism” is set to be adapted for television. The Heritage by Howard Bryant is being made into a “multi-part docuseries.” According to Deadline, producer Sacha Jenkins will direct an episode and “each subsequent episode will be helmed by a different African-American filmmaker to provide a unique and personal perspective on the story.” The book, published in 2018, “is a powerful chronology of black athletes’ activism within a tense American political climate.”

And that, fellow nonfiction nerds, is all for this week! Until this reading slump ends, I’ll be spending a lot of time watching Veronica Mars, playing Wizards Unite, browsing knitting patterns for the fall, and checking out books wish I was in the mood to read from the library.

You can also find me on Twitter @kimthedork, on email at kim@riotnewmedia.com, and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. Happy reading! – Kim

Hello and welcome to a new week, nonfiction readers! This week’s most exciting new nonfiction title connects contemporary politics to a shameful moment in American history. Learn what title I’m talking about, plus a collection of essays by Native writers and a traveling guide/manifesto. Let’s go!

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Sponsored by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, publishers of Reckoning: The Epic Battle Against Sexual Abuse and Harassment by Linda Hirshman.

Linda Hirshman, acclaimed historian of social movements, delivers the sweeping story of the struggle leading up to #MeToo and beyond: from the first tales of workplace harassment percolating in the 1970s, to the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal—when liberal women largely forgave Clinton, giving men a free pass for two decades. And yet, legal, political, and cultural efforts were quietly paving the way for the takedown of abusers and harassers. Reckoning delivers the stirring tale of a movement catching fire as pioneering women in the media exposed the Harvey Weinsteins of the world, women flooded the political landscape, and the walls of male privilege finally began to crack. This is revelatory, essential social history.

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They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, and Steven Scott, illustrated by Harmony Becker – This graphic memoir tells the story of George Takei’s time spent imprisoned in American concentration camps during World War II. Beginning in 1942, Takei and his family were sent to a “relocation center” where they spent the remainder of the war.

Further Watching: Takei spoke about his experience in an internment camp and why he’s still proud of being an American back in a 2014 TED Talk. It’s a totally different context now, but the story is similar.

Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers, edited by Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton – This collection uses the techniques of basketweaving as organizing principles for essays by Native writers “from tribal nations across Turtle Island.” It includes established and emerging writers who “demonstrate the slippery, shape-changing possibilities of Native stories.”

Further Reading: Editors Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton were interviewed by Pen America about their favorite books, their process as editors, and their favorite bookstores.

Ten Years a Nomad: A Traveler’s Journey Home by Matthew Kepnes – In 2005, Matthew Kepnes decided to go on a year-long trip around the world. That trip turned into 10 years, for a total of 500,000 miles traveled in 90 different countries. This book is a collection of those stories, experiences, and insights to explore what it means for us to travel.

Further Reading: Kepnes’ blog, Nomadic Matt’s Travel Site, has some great content where you can get a sense of his writing style.

And finally, a few other titles that piqued my interest this week:

• The Weil Conjectures: On Math and the Pursuit of the Unknown by Karen Olsson
• A Beginner’s Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death by BJ Miller and Shoshana Berger
• Body Leaping Backward: Memoir of a Delinquent Girlhood by Maureen Stanton
• Everything Below the Waist: Why Health Care Needs a Feminist Revolution by Jennifer Block

Before I wrap this up, I’d like to make an addendum from last week. A reader correctly pointed out that my brief description of one of the stories in Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women didn’t give the story the gravity it deserves. So, I wanted to include some more information from the book jacket about Maggie’s story:

In North Dakota we meet Maggie, a seventeen-year-old high school student who finds a confidant in her handsome, married English teacher. By Maggie’s account, supportive nightly texts and phone calls evolve into a clandestine physical relationship, with plans to skip school on her eighteenth birthday and make love all day; instead, he breaks up with her on the morning he turns thirty. A few years later, Maggie has no degree, no career, and no dreams to live for. When she learns that this man has been named North Dakota’s Teacher of the Year, she steps forward with her story—and is met with disbelief by former schoolmates and the jury that hears her case. The trial will turn their quiet community upside down.

And that’s all for this week! You can find me on Twitter @kimthedork, on email at kim@riotnewmedia.com, and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. Happy reading! – Kim

Happy Friday, nonfiction nerds, and congrats on making it through another week! The post-vacation let down is always rough, but I’ve been nursing my back-to-work hangover with plenty of books and Instagram videos of the United States women’s national soccer team celebrating their World Cup victory.

For this week’s newsletter, I rounded up some of Book Riot’s best nonfiction content over the last several weeks — I’m sure you’ll find something great. Let’s dive in!

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Sponsored by Book Riot’s Amazon store. Shop our favorite summer reads (including some of our favorite books of 2019 so far), bookish accessories, deals, and more.

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If you want a bite-sized dose of nonfiction, check out these essays you can read online for free right now. It’s a great mix of classic and contemporary writing.

Want to read some Brené Brown? We’ve got a reading pathway to help you get started. And there’s a link to her TED Talk, if you aren’t ready to read yet.

If you are as obsessed with women’s soccer as I am, grab one of these five great books about the sport in celebration of the Women’s World Cup. Under the Lights and In the Dark by Gwendolyn Oxenham is on my list now!

Get some career advice for artists, thinkers, makers, and founders in these modern-day business books. Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert was one of my favorite books last year.

Watched Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us? We’ve got books on police corruption, brutality, and the prison industrial complex to read when you’re done.

I’m in the middle of a podcast kick at the moment, but when I shift back to audiobooks I am going to be looking into some of these audiobook memoirs narrated by the author.

Interested in reading more criticism? These books by Pulitzer Prize-winning critics are a great place to start.

If you’re digging (or totally horrified) by Chernobyl on HBO, we’ve got six recommended reads to pick up next. I’ve heard great things about Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham.

I feel like we read a lot of Victorian-era true crime, but the Edwardian era was pretty grisly too. Here are 11 great recommended reads of true crime from approximately 1902 to 1910.

Or, try reading some true crime books with your book club (we’ve got recs).

One of my nonfiction blind spots in history, but of course there’s a Book Riot post for that. I’m going to be looking through several of these fascinating and readable history books.

In the time of “fake news,” it can be difficult to separate truth from nonsense. Get some help with these 10 good books about bad information.

Thanks for hanging with me this week! You can find me on Twitter @kimthedork, on email at kim@riotnewmedia.com, and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. Happy reading! – Kim

Hello and happy Wednesday, dear nonfiction readers! I am freshly back from a vacation, which mostly meant time spent reading by the lake or lounging around on the couch. I also watched a bunch of women’s soccer – count me among the women’s national team’s newest fans.

July seems like a bit of a slowdown for new releases, but there are still plenty of books out this week that will help topple your TBR. Let’s dive in!

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Sponsored by Book Riot’s Amazon store. Shop our favorite summer reads (including some of our favorite books of 2019 so far), bookish accessories, deals, and more.

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Three Women by Lisa Taddeo – Journalist Lisa Taddeo spent eight years crisscrossing the United States to profile real women and explore female sexual desire. The three women at the center of the story are Maggie, a high school student who had an affair with a teacher; Lina, a housewife in a passionless marriage; and Sloan, a woman whose husband likes to watch her have sex with other people. This is one of the most highly-anticipated nonfiction books of the year.

Further Reading: Elle published an essay by Taddeo where she shares a story from a trip to Puerto Rico as a teenager and how it connects to the book. The magazine also has three reasons you’ll want to read this book.

Beneath the Tamarind Tree by Isha Sesay – In 2014, militant Islamic group Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls from their dorm rooms in Nigeria. Despite the high profile of this event, the true story behind their abduction and survival isn’t well known. In this book, Isha Sesay, an internationally-renowned journalist from Sierra Leone tells this story through the experiences of three girls exploring the inadequate response to the event and critiquing how it was covered in the media.

Further Watching: As she was leaving CNN after 13 years with the network, Sesay did a video offering tips for career success as a journalist.

Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl – In this collection of essays, Margaret Renkl explores “the cycles of joy and grief that inscribe human lives within the natural world.” She explores her childhood in Alabama, observations about her life in Nashville, and other reasons to find astonishment in common things. I’ll be honest – one of the reasons I picked this one to feature is because I am in love with the cover. But also it sounds great!

Further Reading: Renkl is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times where she’s recently written pieces like “Let’s Hear It for the Average Child” and “Girl on a Red Dirt Road.”

Finally, a few other new books coming out this week that should be on your radar:

• The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison’s Ten-Year Road Trip by Jeff Guinn
• When Islam is Not a Religion: Inside America’s Fight for Religious Freedom by Asma Uddin
• The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb by Sam Kean
• Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem by Daniel R. Day
• Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping and Risking it All With the Greatest Chef in the World by Jeff Gordinier
• The Trouble With Gravity: Solving the Mystery Beneath Our Feet by Richard Panek

And that’s all for this week! You can find me on Twitter @kimthedork, on email at kim@riotnewmedia.com, and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. This week we took another dive into great young adult nonfiction for readers of all ages. Happy reading! – Kim

Hello, readers! I have been informed I can write about any nonfiction topic I choose as the guest host for this week, so I’ve picked out some Preferred History Reads to share with you, the carefully discerning bookish type.

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Sponsored by Hawking by Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick, and First Second

From his early days at the St Albans School and Oxford, Stephen Hawking’s brilliance and good humor were obvious to everyone he met. At twenty-one he was diagnosed with ALS, a degenerative neuromuscular disease. Though the disease weakened his muscles and limited his ability to move and speak, it did not limit his mind. He went on to do groundbreaking work in cosmology and theoretical physics and became a pop-culture icon and an outspoken advocate for disability rights. In Hawking, New York Times bestselling graphic novelists Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick deliver a gripping biography of Stephen Hawking, one of the most important scientists of our time.

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The Scarlet Sisters: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in the Gilded Age by Myra MacPherson. Not only was Victoria Woodhull the first woman to run for president, she and her sister Tennessee were the first women stockbrokers on Wall Street. They also had their turn as mediums, AND got embroiled in a giant tiff with Harriet Beecher Stowe’s brother Henry (the Beechers were real mungbeans about the whole thing).

Heroines of Mercy Street: The Real Nurses of the Civil War by Pamela D. Toler. Did you know Louisa May Alcott was a nurse during the Civil War? Alcott nerds, I know you do, but I did NOT. This book is great. We know about battles like Gettysburg, Bull Run, Antietam, and others, but we aren’t told what happened after them – what happened to the wounded soldiers, and who cleaned up after the initial horror.

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward. What is history? Mostly us telling stories about what happened in the past (real historians, don’t @ me). Ward beautifully and painfully recounts how she watched five men in her life die around her in five years and what this says about our nation and its racist past and present.

Mary, Queen of Scots: A Study in Failure by Jenny Wormald. This is my favorite of all book titles. Down with Mary, Queen of Scots.

Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar. Really short but really good, Dunbar takes you through Ona Judge’s enslavement by George and Martha Washington to her amazing race to freedom and refusal to be recaptured.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. I know, you’re going “Alice. I haven’t read it by NOW, so hasn’t the moment passed?” And I am here to tell you that I read this only in the past year and I am so glad I did. Pick it up!

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That’s all from me for this week! Kim will return next week for more new releases and fun book links. As always, you can find us podcasting about nonfiction on For Real, and you can find me on Twitter at @itsalicetime.

Greetings to all, I am Alice Burton, your nonfiction news provider this week, and co-host with Kim of For Real, Book Riot’s nonfiction podcast. I’m delighted to meet you all. Let’s explore some new releases and backlist picks!

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Sponsored by Dynamic Dames by Sloan De Forest

Celebrate 50 of the most empowering and unforgettable female characters ever to grace the screen, as well as the artists who brought them to life! Through engaging profiles and more than 100 photographs, Dynamic Dames looks at some of the most inspiring female roles in film from the 1920s to today. The characters are discussed along with the exciting off-screen personalities and achievements of the actresses and, on occasion, female writers and directors, who brought them to life. Among the stars profiled are Audrey Hepburn, Josephine Baker, Barbra Streisand, Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Gal Gadot, Emma Watson, and many more.

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New Releases

What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal by E. Jean Carroll — Columnist Carroll and her poodle head out on a road trip from Vermont to Louisiana to ask the women she meets: “what do we need men for?”

American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century by Maureen Callahan — The story of serial killer Israel Keyes, how he planned murders across the United States, and the slip-up that led to his capture.

The Lie: A Memoir of Two Marriages, Catfishing & Coming Out by William Dameron — A shocking memoir of stolen identity, addiction, divorce, coming out, and healing.

Reading Behind Bars: A Memoir of Literature, Law, and Life as a Prison Librarian by Jill Grunenwald — Grunenwald recounts her time as a librarian at a minimum security prison in Ohio; what she learned; and which parts of a library remain the same, no matter where they are.

Backlist Picks

It’s the week of July 4th, so let’s check out some diverse books about the people who have contributed to what is now the United States.

An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz — A story of over 400 years of history that “examines the legacy of Indigenous peoples’ resistance, resilience, and steadfast fight against imperialism.”

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson — The story of the decades-long migration of six million African Americans in the 20th century from the rural South to northern and western cities.

The Making of Asian America: A History by Erika Lee — A history of Asian Americans, from sailors coming across the Pacific in the 16th century to the problematic 21st century label of “model minority.”

 

You can find me on Twitter @itsalicetime, and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. Last week, Kim and I shared some great reads about the ocean and what you can find in “mysterious fathoms below.” Happy reading! – Alice

Hello, nonfiction nerds, and congrats on making it to the end of another week. I’m excited to be bringing you some nonfiction news today… but honestly, even more excited that this is my last newsletter before I head on a vacation! Next week I’ll be going up north, as we Minnesotans like to say, to spend time at the lake with books and booze and boat rides.

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Sponsored by Libro.fm

Libro.fm lets you purchase audiobooks directly from your favorite local bookstore. You can pick from more than 100,000 audiobooks, including New York Times best sellers and recommendations from booksellers around the country. With Libro.fm you’ll get the same audiobooks, at the same price as the largest audiobook company out there (you know the name), but you’ll be part of a much different story, one that supports community. In June, Libro.fm is launching their Kids Club and YA Club, which will offer select audiobooks priced under $10 each month, as well as their Summer Listening Challenge–each person to finish will get free audiobook credit and the chance to win free audiobooks for a year! Sign up here to get three audiobooks for the price of one.

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Since I’ll be away from my desk I’ve tapped Alice Burton, the amazing co-host of the For Real podcast, to write next week’s newsletters. She’s one of my favorite funny people on the Internet, so I know you’ll be in good hands.

This week I have a few exciting book announcements, a list of best memoirs, and some thoughts on why it’s a terrible idea to climb Mount Everest. Onwards!

Author and creator Noelle Stevenson is writing a graphic memoir! The Fire Never Goes Out will be “a collection of seven or eight years of Stevenson’s personal comics, which come together in a memoir about her life.” I want to read this immediately but will have to be content to wait until January 2020.

Mallory O’Meara, author of The Lady from the Black Lagoon, has another book! Girly Drinks will be “a narrative nonfiction look into the history of women making and drinking alcohol all over the world” and sounds totally amazing.

The New York Times published a list of the 50 best memoirs of the past 50 years. It’s a really interesting list, and more diverse than I was expecting. I was pleased to see a few of my favorites – The Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward, Wave by Sniali Deraniyagala, and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, among others.

John Oliver did a segment on climbing Mount Everest and how the “expedition industry has devalued a once-historic achievement” and also made it a lot more dangerous. It’s interesting that this is in the news again, since this whole issue is at the center of Jon Krakauer’s 1997 book Into Thin Air. If you haven’t read that one, go get the audiobook right now – it’s incredible.

While it’s not exclusively nonfiction, the summer book club list from NPR’s Code Switch podcast looks excellent. The list is a collection of summer reads suggested by podcast listeners, as well as members of the Code Switch team.

If you haven’t gotten to read Furious Hours by Casey Cep, you can check out an excerpt from The Guardian. This piece came out back in May, but somehow didn’t cross my radar until this week. I’m psyched to get to this book.

And that’s all for this week! You can find me on Twitter @kimthedork, on email at kim@riotnewmedia.com, and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. This week we set sail on the high seas to talk about books on the ocean. Happy reading! – Kim

Hello and happy Wednesday, nonfiction lovers! I cannot believe we’re in the last week of June… that means we’re nearly halfway through 2019 already! Bananas.

This week’s new books are a good mix — a little TV criticism, and little sociology, and a little fashion history. Let’s dive in!

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Sponsored by Libro.fm

Libro.fm lets you purchase audiobooks directly from your favorite local bookstore. You can pick from more than 100,000 audiobooks, including New York Times best sellers and recommendations from booksellers around the country. With Libro.fm you’ll get the same audiobooks, at the same price as the largest audiobook company out there (you know the name), but you’ll be part of a much different story, one that supports community. In June, Libro.fm is launching their Kids Club and YA Club, which will offer select audiobooks priced under $10 each month, as well as their Summer Listening Challenge–each person to finish will get free audiobook credit and the chance to win free audiobooks for a year! Sign up here to get three audiobooks for the price of one.

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I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution by Emily Nussbaum – A collection of new and previously-published essays and criticism by a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic. Emily Nussbaum’s passion for television began with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and continues to include shows that are not traditionally part of the hierarchy that raises “violent, dramatic, gritty” shows over those that bring joy and lightness.

Further Reading: Nussbaum won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Criticism. Her winning columns are about Joan Rivers, Robert Durst, and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

The Power of Human: How Our Shared Humanity Can Help Us Create a Better World by Adam Waytz – A look at how our “unprecedented access to other humans” via technology has, paradoxically, “freed us from engaging with them.” Social psychologist Adam Waytz looks at the cost of living human-free lives and offers some scientifically sound ideas about how to reclaim humanity and social connections.

Further Reading: Waytz recently published an article about how “humans’ competitive edge over robots” is leisure. The full article is behind a paywall, but there’s a summary and link here.

Dressed in Dreams: A Black Girl’s Love Letter to the Power of Fashion by Tanisha C. Ford – A “fashionista and pop culture expert” dives deep into the history of fashion, connecting the stories of garments like dashikis and bamboo earrings to her story as “a black girl coming of age in a Midwestern rust belt city.” It’s also “a story of desire, access, conformity, and black innovation.” This sounds so good.

Further Reading: Newsweek published an excerpt of the book where Ford shared the 10 most important items in her closet.

And finally, a few other titles that might appeal to you this week:

• Superpower: One Man’s Quest to Transform American Energy by Russell Gold
• Emperors of the Deep: Sharks—The Ocean’s Most Mysterious, Most Misunderstood, and Most Important Guardians by William McKeever
• The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast by Andrew Blum
• Why Young Men: The Dangerous Allure of Violent Movements and What We Can Do About It by Jamil Jivani
• That Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile by Azar Nafisi, Valerie Miles, and Lotfali Khonji
• The Drama of Celebrity by Sharon Marcus

Whew! That’s another good week of books. You can find me on Twitter @kimthedork, on email at kim@riotnewmedia.com, and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. I hope your weekend is full of great reads! – Kim

Happiest of Friday, nonfiction lovers! With the arrival of this newsletter in your inbox, I am officially one week away from a much-needed vacation. I’m not really going anywhere, just taking a week to catch up on life and spend time up at the lake with my family.

I’ve already got an unreasonably high stack of books piled up, which isn’t being helped by the trend of “best books of the year (so far)” lists that have been out this month. This week I’ve got some thoughts on two of them – Amazon and Barnes and Noble – along with some other nonfiction news to round things out. Let’s dive in!

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Sponsored by Libro.fm

Libro.fm lets you purchase audiobooks directly from your favorite local bookstore. You can pick from more than 100,000 audiobooks, including New York Times best sellers and recommendations from booksellers around the country. With Libro.fm you’ll get the same audiobooks, at the same price as the largest audiobook company out there (you know the name), but you’ll be part of a much different story, one that supports community. In June, Libro.fm is launching their Kids Club and YA Club, which will offer select audiobooks priced under $10 each month, as well as their Summer Listening Challenge–each person to finish will get free audiobook credit and the chance to win free audiobooks for a year! Sign up here to get three audiobooks for the price of one.

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Amazon released their top books of the year (so far) list that includes a top 20 picks, then favorites in memoirs, food books, history, and more. There are a good number of nonfiction books in their top 20, which is always a delight. Titles in the top 20 include:

• Once More We Saw Stars by Jayson Greene
• Underland by Robert Macfarlane
• The Unwinding of the Miracle by Julie Yip-WIlliams
• Save Me the Plums by Ruth Reichl
• Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
• Formation by Ryan Leigh Dostie
• Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe

I’ve officially read… none of those! But I have two sitting on my shelves just waiting to be finished, so clearly I should get on those.

Barnes and Noble also put together their top list so far, with 15 totally different nonfiction picks than the Amazon list! It truly is an epic year for new books. This list feels a little more eclectic to me, and leans heavier on more serious, historical nonfiction titles like Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham, The Pioneers by David McCullough, and A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell.

The street in front of NASA headquarters is getting a new name! Inspired by the stories of African American women like Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, the street will now be named Hidden Figures Way. I am entirely and totally delighted by this. If you haven’t read it, Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly is excellent too.

The woman assaulted by Brock Turner is writing a memoir. Emily Doe, as the woman has been known during court proceedings, will release a memoir in September 2019. According to her publisher, the memoir “will reclaim the story of [Doe’s] sexual assault, expose the arduous nature of the legal system, and emerge as a bold, unifying voice.”

Finally, some follow up related to Naomi Wolf’s new book Outrages. As you may recall, a British journalist pointed out one of the major arguments of her book was based on an incorrect understanding of a historical legal term. Wolf acknowledged two errors and agreed to work on corrections, which was initially enough for her US publisher to move ahead with publication. Not anymore! Late last week, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt said the book will be delayed, adding, “new questions have arisen that require more time to explore.” The book is still out in the UK, with corrections to be made in future editions.

And that’s all I’ve got. You can find me on Twitter @kimthedork, on email at kim@riotnewmedia.com, and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. I hope your weekend is full of great reads! – Kim

Hello and welcome to a new week, fellow nonfiction fans! It feels like we’re in a bit of a lull for new releases, or at least not quite in the deluge we have been the last month or so. This week I’ve got books about exploring creativity, dying languages, and understanding menopause. Let’s dive in!

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Sponsored by Oxford University Press

In 1621, fifty-six young women left their homes and boarded ships bound for Virginia. Their ages ranged from sixteen to twenty-eight, and they were deemed “young and uncorrupt.” Each had a bride price of 150 pounds of tobacco set by the Virginia Company, which funded their voyage. Though the women had all gone of their own free will, they were to be sold into marriage, generating a profit for investors and helping ensure the colony’s long-term viability. In The Jamestown Brides, Jennifer Potter spins a fascinating tale of courage and survival, exploring their lives in England and experiences in Jamestown.

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Broken Places and Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected by Nnedi Okorafor – After waking up from back surgery to discover she can’t move her legs, Nnedi Okorafor’s entire sense of self began to feel fluid. This formative experience also bled into her writing, and led her to this manifesto about how “what we perceive as limitations have the potential to become our greatest strengths.”

Further Reading: Marie Claire interviewed Okorafor (who’s probably best known for her science fiction writing) about writing African superheroes for comics and television.

A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea by Don Kulick – As a young anthropologist, Don Kulick wanted to document the death of a native language in New Guinea. Over a thirty-year period, Kulick returned to the village of Gapun many times as he tried to understand the language and the daily lives of the people who spoke it. This book is a look at the remote, isolated village of 200 people and “why this anthropologist realized finally that he had to give up his study of this language and this village.”

More Recommendations: TIME Magazine included this book on their list of best books of summer 2019, which is a pretty impressive list.

Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life by Darcey Steinke – When menopause hit Darcey Steinke, she quickly discovered that a culture of silence and sexism made this period of life especially difficult and misunderstood. In this book, she explores different aspects of menopause “including the changing gender landscape that reduced levels of hormones brings, the actualities of transforming desires, and the realities of prejudice against older women.”

Further Listening: NPR’s All Things Considered interviewed Steinke as part of its “Let’s Talk about Sex” series where she talked about “navigating a new sexual life after menopause.”

And before I close, three other books that caught my eye this week:

• The Hidden Power of F*cking Up by Try Guys
• The Best People: Trump’s Cabinet and the Siege on Washington by Alexander Nazaryan
• My Seditious Heart: Collected Nonfiction by Arundhati Roy

You can find me on Twitter @kimthedork, on email at kim@riotnewmedia.com, and co-hosting the For Real podcasthere at Book Riot. Happy reading! – Kim