Author: Kim Ukura

Hello and happiest of Fridays, fellow readers! This week we learned that Barack Obama’s highly-anticipated memoir likely won’t be out until 2020. One journalist, citing “a person familiar with the writing process,” broke the news on Twitter. USA Today also reported that the publisher, Penguin Random House, began “alerting foreign partners” about the status of the book.

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Seventeen-year-old Carley Allison had it all. She was on the edge of fame as a singer and was reaching for the highest levels as a competitive skater. Her world came crashing down when she was diagnosed with a rare kind of cancer in her trachea. Faced with an uncertain future, Carley rose to the challenge and performed on television for an audience of millions. Now her memory lives on in the countless people she touched with her courage. Bestselling author Alice Kuipers weaves their stories together with the blog Carley kept in the final months of her life and her personal rules for living well in the worst of times.

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I’ve been listening to Becoming by Michelle Obama, where she talks a bit about the process Barack used writing his previous books – time alone, writing in long-hand on yellow legal pads. If that’s how he’s approaching his post-White House memoir, I can see it taking quite some time. And if it does come out in 2020, it’ll likely land right in the middle of the campaign. More to come on this one, I fully expect.

With that, let’s move on to some other interesting news of the week:

Ruth Reichl is a treasure, and her recent By the Book column in the New York Times is wonderful. The authors she mentions are varied and interesting, and her proposed slate of seven dinner party guests is a list I can totally get behind. Read it!

Nicole Chung is writing another book! I absolutely loved her first memoir, All You Can Ever Know, so I am thrilled to hear she’s writing more. The book is still untitled, but will be an “examination of class, grief, and healthcare inequality,” which sounds amazing.

Roxane Gay is everywhere and it is awesome. In addition to a podcast, she’s also hosting a book club that “might be on your TV this summer” and launched a new magazine on Medium. I am extremely intrigued about both. And speaking of a podcast, the first episode of Hear to Slay dropped this week. I’m still not totally clear on the platform they’re using, Luminary, but I think the first episode is available for free.

The collected speeches of a 16-year-old Swedish climate activist will be released as a book next month. Greta Thunberg began a worldwide school strike for the environment last year, and has since been a noted speaker. No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference includes 11 of her speeches. All of the proceeds from the sale of the book will go to charity.

Daniel Halpern, publisher at Ecco and friend of the late Anthony Bourdain, was interviewed by Grub Street about their relationship and Anthony Bourdain Remembered. In the interview, he talks about the idea behind the book – originally a gift from CNN to Bourdain’s family that’s being published with their blessing. It’s a really thoughtful interview.

It’s been a great week of news! 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

Greetings, nonfiction fans! It is a truly bananas week of new releases, everything from memoirs about long-distances horse races to an investigation into domestic violence to a look at what’s new in the world of paleontology. So let’s end the preamble and jump in!

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Dear Scarlet by Teresa Wong – A graphic memoir about a woman’s struggle with postpartum depression, written as a letter to her daughter.

The Castle on Sunset by Shawn Levy – A definitive history of the Chateau Marmont, Hollywood’s “most iconic, storied, and scandalous hotel.”

No Walls and the Recurring Dream by Ani Defranco – A memoir by a singer-songwriter, activist, and feminist.

Rough Magic by Lara Prior-Palmer – An 18-year-old impulsively signs up for the world’s longest and most difficult horse race… then inexplicably wins.

Furious Hours by Casey Cep – The story behind Harper Lee’s only piece of nonfiction, an account of the murder trial of a vigilante in Alabama.

Ghosts of Gold Mountain by Gordon H. Chang – “A history of the Chinese workers who built the Transcontinental Railroad.”

A Craftsman’s Legacy by Eric Gorges and Jon Sternfeld – A celebration of craftsmen, looking at the values of makers and what they can teach the rest of us.

At Home with Muhammad Ali by Hana Ali – A family memoir a legendary boxing champion told through the eyes of his daughter and aided by personal recording and family journals.

Dinosaurs Rediscovered by Michael J. Benton – A look at how our understanding of dinosaurs is being transformed by new fossil finds and new technology.

New Daughters of Africa by Margaret Busby – Twenty-five years after the original Daughters of Africa anthology, this follow up collection explores sisterhood, generational links, and the obstacles faced by female writers of color with essays by 200 women writers.

Riding the Elephant by Craig Ferguson – A memoir in essays by a comedian and former late night television host on fatherhood, Scotland, and beating the odds.

The Killer Across the Table by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker – A book by the criminal profiler who was the inspiration for Mindhunter that dives into four disturbing and complex cases.

No Visible Bruises by Rachel Louise Snyder – An investigation into the scope of domestic violence in the United States and how it connects to other major social issues.

The Man They Wanted Me to Be by Jared Yates Sexton – A memoir about the current state of masculinity, including “the personal and societal dangers of the patriarchy.”

The Unspeakable Mind by Shaili Jain – A cartography of PTSD that shines a light on an epidemic that affects more than six million Americans.

Upheaval by Jared Diamond – “A new theory of how and why some nations recover from trauma and others don’t.”

The Guarded Gate by Daniel Okrent – A look at “how the rise of eugenics helped America close the immigration door to ‘inferiors’ in the 1920s.”

The Goodbye Diaries by Marisa Bardach Ramel and Sally Bardach – A mother and daughter share two sides of the story after a terminal cancer diagnosis.

Hello and happy Friday nonfiction friends! I am so excited that we finally got some book reviews of The Mueller Report, and they are amazing.

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Sponsored by Scribd

In 1978, Harper Lee’s fame had reached a fever pitch following the remarkable success of her debut novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, but she had written little of consequence in the nearly two decades since. She was searching for her next book when the perfect story landed in her lap. A call from back home in Alabama lit the match: A reverend — described as “six-feet-four-inches of majesty and dread” — allegedly murdered five of his family members, without detection. Each time, he got rich off their life insurance policies but reaped no consequences. Vanity Fair’s special correspondent, Mark Seal, retraces the legendary novelist’s return home to Alabama to chase down a true crime mystery for the ages in THE DEVIL AND HARPER LEE.

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Slate book critic Laura Miller compares the report to Game of Thrones, in the sense that “palace intrigues make for addictive storytelling.” She goes on to say “reading the report as a work of literature makes clear that the narrator of the document, whoever that may be, relishes a little bit of that now and then.” Washington Post critic Carlos Lozada argues the book is too long and a little flat, but also “the best book by far on the workings of the Trump presidency,” showing a “mix of incompetence, disorganization, and self-interest.”

So good, so good. I want to read the report now. But before then, we’ve got some nonfiction news from the week. Let’s dive it!

Barack and Michelle Obama’s slate of Netflix shows have been announced! Higher Ground, the former First Couple’s production company, will “create content that embodies the core values of celebrating the human spirit.” Planned products include a biopic about Richard Williams (father of Venus and Serena Williams), a documentary about an Ohio factory, a biopic adaptation of Frederick Douglass, a nonfiction series based on The Fifth Risk, and more. Click through and read the article, the entire slate is amazing!

Julie Andrews is writing a second memoir! The book will focus on her time in Hollywood, following up on her 2008 memoir about her childhood. Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years will start right as she’s preparing to film Mary Poppins and be out on October 15. Another fun fact – she wrote the book with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton.

There’s a trailer for the Toni Morrison documentary! It has a ton of great quotes, which Jezebel helpfully pulled out in this article. Check out this one: “Navigating a white, male world wasn’t threatening. It wasn’t even interesting. I was more interesting than they were, and I wasn’t afraid to show it.” 🔥

Let’s get inside the National Spelling Bee! New York Magazine interviewed Shalini Shankar, author of Beeline: What Spelling Bees Reveal About Generation Z’s New Path to Success. She talks about how she came to this topic, the impact of immigration on the Bee, and how the Bee has changed over time to get more competitive.

Well, that’s a good collection of articles (if I do say so myself)! 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

Greetings and salutations, nonfiction nerds! Even though it’s officially May 1, we’ve got one more blockbuster week of April new releases to get excited about. This week’s new releases cover socialism, Sicily, spelling bees, and more — let’s check it out!

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Sponsored by Scribd

In 1978, Harper Lee’s fame had reached a fever pitch following the remarkable success of her debut novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, but she had written little of consequence in the nearly two decades since. She was searching for her next book when the perfect story landed in her lap. A call from back home in Alabama lit the match: A reverend — described as “six-feet-four-inches of majesty and dread” — allegedly murdered five of his family members, without detection. Each time, he got rich off their life insurance policies but reaped no consequences. Vanity Fair’s special correspondent, Mark Seal, retraces the legendary novelist’s return home to Alabama to chase down a true crime mystery for the ages in THE DEVIL AND HARPER LEE.

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All That You Leave Behind by Erin Lee Carr – After her father (journalist David Carr) died unexpectedly, Erin Lee Carr began to revisit their entire correspondence – nearly 2,000 items – to see what comfort and lessons she could find there.

 

 

The Socialist Manifesto by Bhaskar Sunkara – Writer Bhaskar Sunkara looks at the history of socialism from the mid-1800s and shows how it offers a way to “fight all forms of oppression, including racism and sexism” in the 21st century.

 

 

From Scratch by Tembi Locke – A young woman falls in love with an Italian chef, but his family objects to his marriage to a black woman. After years of estrangement, the family reconciles in the wake of a cancer diagnosis, and the woman finds comfort and healing at her mother-in-law’s table.

 

 

Beeline by Shalini Shankar – An anthropologist uses the lens of the National Spelling Bee to explore Generation Z (kids born after 1997) and their families, exploring the major life skills the competitors develop and the impact of immigrants and immigrant families on this age group. This one is really fun so far.

 

Mama’s Boy by Dustin Lance Black – A memoir by a filmmaker and activist about his conservative Mormon mother and how they managed to bridge the gap between his sexuality and her faith.

 

 

 

And with that, I’ll round out this newsletter with five more books to put on your radar:

• Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took On Silicon Valley’s Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime by Julian Guthrie
• What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence, edited by Michele Fildate
• Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11 by Mitchell Zuckoff
• African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan by Thomas Lockley and Geoffrey Girard
• No Shadow of a Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse That Confirmed Einstein’s Theory of Relativity by Daniel J Kennefick

Happiest of Fridays, fellow nonfiction nerds! I have to admit, I don’t really have books on my mind right now – I’m totally fixated on getting to see Avengers: End Game tomorrow night with friends. If you’ve seen it already, no spoilers!

This week’s nonfiction news feels a bit like a buffet and includes an essay about one of my very favorite things about reading nonfiction. Scroll on to find out what!

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The Music Memoir of My Dreams – I’m from Minnesota, so I’m required to love Prince. But even if I wasn’t, I’d be excited about the news that the memoir Prince was working on at the time of his death will be published on October 29. According to Variety, The Beautiful Ones will “combine Prince’s unfinished manuscript with rare photos, scrapbooks and lyrics.”

Special Counsel Reports – I think there’s going to be some interesting stories coming out soon about The Muller Report as a book, both in its impact on publishing and the narrative it shares. I haven’t read any that quite get at that yet, but I did enjoy this piece from the Washington Post looking at “odd American literary genre: reports by special counsels and select congressional committees on presidential wrongdoing.”

Speaking of Musician Memoirs – Singers Tegan and Sara are also coming out with a book! High School, out September 24, “tells their coming-of-age story: growing up in Alberta, Canada, grappling with their sexuality, and facing the pressures of adulthood as the end of adolescence loomed.”

For the Joy of Subtitles – For Real podcast listeners know that I am a sucker for a great book subtitle. I just love them SO SO MUCH. That might be why I enjoyed Mary Laura Philpott’s essay in LitHub titled “Why, Exactly, Do We Have Subtitles In Books?” The idea that subtitle is a book’s middle name made me laugh, and makes me appreciate them all the more. Her new book I Miss You When I Blink: Essays is charming too.

Parenting Hacks from a Cartoonist – I really like reading about how people get things done, so I’ve got all of Lifehacker’s “How I Work” series in my feed reader. This week I learned they also do a “How I Parent” series, which is less applicable to me personally, but one of the recent parents in the series is cartoonist Lucy Knisley (Kid Gloves), and her interview is totally charming.

Top Nonfiction (So Far) – Last week, Goodreads released their list of the top nonfiction of the year so far, based on both anticipation (adds to Want to Read shelves) and buzz (average reader ratings). The top three books on the list are three I haven’t read: Maid by Stephanie Land, Girl, Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis, and Notes on a Nervous Planet by Matt Haig.

And with that, I wish you well as you slide into your weekend. May it be filled with many books and plenty of time to read them. 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, nonfiction friends! It seems like, perhaps, the deluge of new books for April is starting to calm down. Sort of? Or maybe not — I still have nine new books to mention this week. Let’s just get right into it.

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Sponsored by The Book of Delights, essays by Ross Gay, from Algonquin Books.

Ross Gay, one of today’s most dynamic literary voices, spent a year writing daily essays about things that delighted him. With enthusiasm and thoughtfulness, the essays record the small joys that occurred in one tumultuous year, the small joys we often overlook in our busy lives. He finds wonder in the mundane, celebrates beauty in the natural world, and takes a clear-eyed view of the complexities of his life, including living in America as a black man. Share the delight of The Book of Delights for Mother’s Day.

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Everything in Its Place: First Loves and Last Tales by Oliver Sacks – This is the last collection of essays we’re going to get from Oliver Sacks, and that really bums me out. In this volume, Sacks shares essays on “ferns, swimming, and horsetails, to his final case histories exploring schizophrenia, dementia, and Alzheimer’s.”

 

Nanaville: Adventures in Grandparenting by Anna Quindlen – Anna Quindlen is such a gem, I can’t even stand it. In this collection, she writes all about being a grandmother and her new role, “no longer mother and decision-maker but secondary character and support to the parents of her grandson.”

 

The Valedictorian of Being Dead: The True Story of Dying Ten Times to Live by Heather B. Armstrong – This one sounds so fascinating. In 2016, Heather Armstrong elected to participate in an experimental treatment for depression wherein she would be put in a chemically induced coma to approximate brain death for 15 minutes… 10 times! Gah!

 

D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II by Sarah Rose – Lady spies! This is a book about the women recruited by Britain to help spy for the allies and help lay the groundwork for the D-Day invasion.

 

 

The Heartland: An American History by Kristin L. Hoganson – After moving to Illinois after teaching at Harvard and living in Washington D.C., Kristin Hoganson wanted to better understand the making of the modern heartland and the myths that have popped up about America and the Midwest.

And we’ll close with four additional books coming out this week that seem like good reads:

• Dante and the Early Astronomer: Science, Adventure, and a Victorian Woman Who Opened the Heavens by Tracy Daugherty
• Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity by Jamie Metzl
• The Last Job: The “Bad Grandpas” and the Hatton Garden Heist by Dan Bilefsky
• The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World by Melinda Gates

There are so many new 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. Happy reading! – Kim

Hello hello nonfiction lovers! It was a big week in the bookish world – the Pulitzer Prizes were announced!

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Sponsored by Atlantic Monthly Press

From “master of narrative journalism” (New York Times) and #1 bestselling author Mark Bowden, comes a gripping true crime story about the disappearance of the two Lyon sisters in 1975, and the extraordinary effort—40 years later—to bring their kidnapper to justice. “A riveting, serpentine story about the dogged pursuit of truth.” –NPR “A stirring, suspenseful, thoughtful story that, miraculously, neither oversimplifies the details nor gets lost in the thicket of a four-decade case file.” –New York Times

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We’ve got three exciting winners in the nonfiction categories:

• History: Frederick Douglass by David W. Blight
• Biography: The New Negro by Jeffrey C. Stewart (also winner of the National Book Award)
• General Nonfiction: Amity and Prosperity by Eliza Griswold

I haven’t read any of them, but I checked out Amity and Prosperity from the library and hope to get to it this weekend. I say this every year, but if you’re looking for something else to read check out the journalism awards, especially the feature writing winners/finalists. There are pieces on Salvadoran immigrants, racial injustice in South Carolina, a reflection on “the exile of a teen sexual assault victim in Texas.”

And with that, let’s move on to some other news this week:

Roxane Gay (Bad Feminist and Hunger) is partnering with Tressie McMillan Cottom (Thick) on a podcast! According to Gay’s tweet about it, “there will be an advice component where we talk about your problems cuz we know stuff.” Amazing. Click through to find out how to submit your questions.

Amy Adams is set to star in Netflix’s adaptation of J.D. Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy. The film is being directed by Ron Howard and is “a modern exploration of the American Dream (that) follows three generations of an Appalachian family as told by its youngest member, a Yale Law student forced to return to his hometown.” I still haven’t read this book, but I suppose I’m going to have to before the movie is released.

Speaking of Netflix adaptations, the streaming service is also set to make a television series of Comfort Me With Apples, food critic Ruth Reichl’s memoir about her decision to abandon her career as a chef to become a food writer. It’s a great memoir, I can’t wait for this one!

I’m a little late sharing this one – in March, Axios did a deep dive into books about Trump’s Washington written by journalists, specifically about the most recent Supreme Court confirmation fight. According to the article, publishers are paying advances of close to $1 million or more for some of these titles. It’s a fascinating list of books that I am not sure I have the stomach to read just yet.

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

Hello hello, and happy Wednesday! I am happy to report that I (and the rest of the Midwest) have survived an April blizzard and spring is in sight. But, let’s not dwell on the weather when there are books to enjoy.

In keeping with April’s theme of ALL THE BOOKS, I’ve got a full newsletter again today — five titles highlighted in a bit of detail, then a few more that should be on your radar at the end. Yay, books!

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Sponsored by The Five by Hallie Rubenhold, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

Five devastating human stories and a dark and moving portrait of Victorian London—the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper. For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that “the Ripper” preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told. Now, in this devastating narrative of five lives, Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, revealing a world not just of Dickens and Queen Victoria, but of poverty, homelessness and rampant misogyny. They died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time—but their greatest misfortune was to be born a woman.

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The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality by Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein – Two historians look at the intersecting personal and political lives of John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams, as they grappled with politics in early America.

 

Southern Lady Code by Helen Ellis – A collection of essays “on marriage and manners, thank-you notes and three-ways, ghosts, gunshots, gynecology, and the Calgon-scented, onion-dipped, monogrammed art of living as a Southern Lady.”

 

 

Magical Realism for Nonbelievers: A Memoir of Finding Family by Anika Fajardo – At 21 years old, Anika Fajardo boarded a plane to Colombia to visit the birthplace of the father she’s never known while uncovering the story of her parents’ marriage and her own experiences as parent.

 

 

The House of the Pain of Others: Chronicle of a Small Genocide by Julián Herbert, translated by Christina MacSweeney – In 1911, around 300 Chinese immigrants were massacred over the course of three days in the Mexican city of Torreón. In this book, Herbert tries to understand this horrific incident and put it in context within the history of Mexico and the Americas.

The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall by Mark Moffett – This book looks at the history of human civilization from chimpanzee communities to today’s sprawling civilizations. Drawing on biology, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, Mark Moffett tries to explain the social adaptations that bind us together.

 

 

And now five more books you could grab that I didn’t have a chance to write about in more detail:

• Left to Their Own Devices: How Digital Natives Are Reshaping the American Dream by Julie M Albright
• Down from the Mountain: The Life and Death of a Grizzly Bear by Bryce Andrews
• Eating the Sun: Small Musings on a Vast Universe by Ella Frances Sanders
• Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben
• The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez: A Border Story by Aaron Bobrow-Strain

And that’s it 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, Alice and I chatted books around the theme of “death and taxes,” which I promise is interesting. Happy reading! – Kim

Hello and happy Friday, fellow nonfiction lovers. I’m just going to get right into it this week with nine great nonfiction books finally out in paperback. If you missed any of these in hardcover, here’s your chance!

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Sponsored by Nimbus Publishing

A murder, a missing body, and a sensational trial. Will Sandeson seemed like a model son. A member of the Dalhousie University track and field team, he was about to start classes at Dalhousie’s medical school. He was arrested for the first-degree murder of Taylor Samson, a fellow student who also seemed to be a model son. When the physics student disappeared without a trace, the focus turned to Sandeson. Through interviews with friends and relatives, as well as transcripts of the trial and Sandeson’s police interrogation, award-winning journalist Kayla Hounsell paints a complex portrait of both the victim and killer, two young men who seemed destined for bright futures. First Degree includes previously unpublished photos and details never made public until now.

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I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell – A memoir about the 17 times Maggie O’Farrell has “stared death in the face–and lived to tell the tale,” from childhood illnesses to teenage disasters to the struggle to protect her vulnerable daughter.

Lead from the Outside by Stacey Abrams – A leadership handbook for outsiders, “written with an eye toward the challenges that hinder women, people of color, the working class, members of the LGBTQ community, and millennials ready to make change.”

God Save Texas by Lawrence Wright – A journey through “the most controversial state in America” that brings together historical perspectives and contemporary politics written by a Texas native.

Heavy by Kiese Laymon – An award-winning memoir about “what the weight of a lifetime of secrets, lies, and deception does to a black body, a black family, and a nation teetering on the brink of moral collapse.”

The Woman’s Hour by Elaine Weiss – Final passage of the 19th Amendment, finally granting women the right to vote, came down to an August 1920 vote in Tennessee. This book explores the last weeks of the fight and the opposing forces who descended on Nashville to duke it out.

This Is Me by Chrissy Metz – The star of “This is Us” “shares how she has applied the lessons she learned from both setbacks and successes” and “offers practical applications of her hard-won insights.”

Raw: My Journey into the Wu-Tang by Lamont “U-God” Hawkins – A memoir by the “quiet one” of the Wu-Tang Clan, a look at growing up in New York City and what it took for a group of black boys to make “music their ticket out of the ghetto.”

Fly Girls by Keith O’Brien – The true story of five women who fought for the chance to prove themselves as airplane racers during the decade after World War I.

Look Alive Out There by Sloane Crosley – A collection of essays about “scaling active volcanoes, crashing shivas, befriending swingers, or staring down the barrel of the fertility gun” published 10 years after her first collection, I Was Told There’d Be Cake.

So many books, so little time! 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 hello, fellow nonfiction lovers. At the time I’m writing this newsletter, it’s sunny and in the 50s outside (joy!), but Minnesota (and a chunk of the Upper Midwest) is expected to get another dump of snow at midweek… so I’m feeling a little bit salty about that. If it were the weekend I’d just snuggle up at home with a book, but I’ll probably have to trek to work in a blizzard. In April. This is my face.

Anyway! Since April is still full of many new books, I’m taking the same approach as last week – I’ve picked five titles to highlight in a little more depth, then listed a few more to get on your radar at the end. Let’s dive in!

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A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell – I am 100 percent in for all of the books about the untold contributions of women to major historical events. This book is about Virginia Hall, a socialite from Baltimore who became the first woman deployed behind enemy lines for the Allies, contributing to the French Resistance. She also had a fake leg, which doesn’t really matter but is an interesting detail and maybe would be good for spying? She sounds awesome.

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell – In addition to minimalism, I am very into books about doing fewer things because doing too much can be bad for us. In this, artist and critic Jenny Odell argues attention is our most important (and stretched) resource, taking away our chance to think big thoughts and make big changes. The book is also “an action plan for thinking outside of capitalist narratives of efficiency and techo-determinism,” which sounds pretty interesting.

Notes from a Young Black Chef: A Memoir by Kwame Onwuachi – Top Chef contestant Kwame Onwuachi grew up in the Bronx, but spent much of his childhood in Nigeria (where he was sent to “learn respect”). When he returned, he got his start in food, starting as a chef on board a Deepwater Horizon cleanup ship. His coming-of-age memoir tell those stories, and also looks at “the intersections of race, fame, and food.” I’m in the middle of this one right now and it is great!

Wolfpack: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game by Abby Wambach – Based on a 2018 commencement address at Barnard College, this book by World Cup-winning soccer star Abby Wambach is about how women need to let go of old rules of leadership and work together “to change the landscape of their lives and world.” I’m inspired already.

Murder by Milkshake: An Astonishing True Story of Adultery, Arsenic, and a Charismatic Killer by Eve Lazarus – I’ll be honest, the reason this book initially got on my list is because of the tile. How great is that? But it also looks good. This book is the story of a 40-year-old woman murdered by her husband, a radio personality, via arsenic-laced milkshakes in the 1960s. Creepy!

And finally, five more books that should be on your radar:

• Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Shaped America by Jared Cohen
• Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution: The Search for What Lies Beyond Quantum by Lee Smolin
• Radical Suburbs: Experimental Living no the Fringes of the American City by Amanda Kolson Hurley
• The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris by Mark Honigsbaum
• Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration by Emily Bazelon

And there we go. I am 100 percent certain I missed a few books from the week, but I hope there’s something on the list to topple your TBR just a bit. 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