Category: True Story

Hillary Clinton is leading the charge to bring the suffragettes to the small screen! She’s teaming up with Steven Spielberg to put together an adaptation of The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine Weiss. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the adaptation will be either a TV movie or a limited series, and likely run on a premium cable or streaming network.

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This detail in the story is particularly great:

Sources say as Weiss was writing the book, she was struck by the parallels between women’s suffrage movement and the 2016 presidential election between Clinton and Donald Trump. It then became a priority for the author and journalist — whose work has appeared in multiple publications and on NPR — to get her book in Clinton’s hands. Eventually, she met a bookstore owner who delivered The Woman’s Hour to Clinton. Clinton, sources say, loved the contemporary and relevant issues the book tackled and felt it would be an important story to tell on TV while also creating strong roles for women.

I started The Woman’s Hour earlier this year and enjoyed it quite a bit. The book focuses on events in Nashville, Tennessee in August 1920, and the last push to get the 19th Amendment ratified. It takes places over the last six weeks of the campaign, when all of the major players in the battle to get women the vote were there. I think the compressed location and timeframe makes it a perfect candidate for a limited series run. I can’t even begin to dream cast the adaptation, given how many great roles for women it will offer.

We’re a bunch of worried people. According to Barnes & Noble, sales of books related to anxiety are up 25 percent in June compared to a year ago. The most popular books were workbooks and tool-kids about how to deal with anxiety. Sales of books related to “finding happiness” have also increased 83 percent over the past year. Is anyone surprised?

A rare, leather-bound copy of a notebook with the computer program written by Ada Lovelace sold at an auction for almost £95,000. The book contains a translated essay about a computing machine, Lovelace’s reflections on it, and the notes that led to her algorithm. It’s one of just six copies of the book! Lovelace was a friend of Charles Babbage, daughter of Lord Bryon, and perhaps the world’s first computer scientist.

The hosts of My Favorite Murder are writing a book, but the book isn’t going to be entirely about murder. According to their publisher it will focus on stories about depression, eating disorders, addiction, and other formative events in Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark’s lives – stories they’ve alluded to on the podcast, but haven’t shared. I haven’t listened to My Favorite Murder, but it’s pretty universally recommended.

A numbered list of numbered book lists. This week I was excited to find a sequential list of numerical book lists to add more titles to your towering TBR piles:

• 8 Books to Read When You’re Stuck in a Rut at Work via The Cut
• 9 Books to Help Your Pets Lead Happier Lives via Book Riot
• 10 Microhistory Books to Read This Summer via Book Riot
• 11 Nonfiction Books that Explain the Mysteries of the Human Body via Bustle
• 12 Top Nonfiction Audiobook Picks from Audible Editors via Goodreads

Finally, check out some of these great, cheap ebooks available right now:

• An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew by Annejet van der Zijl for $2.99
• The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom by Helen Thorpe for $2.99
• Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Other Four-Letter Words by Michael Ausiello by $1.99

Don’t forget! You can win 16 awesome books featured on the Recommended podcast! Enter here by August 31.You can find me on Twitter @kimthedork, and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. Happy reading!

Michael Lewis – author of The Big Short, The Blind Side, and many other books – is one of several authors experimenting with a new format, the Audible original.

In June, the New York Times reported that Lewis had left his magazine home, Vanity Fair, and signed a multi-year contract with Audible to write and produce four audio-first pieces for the service. His first piece, “The Coming Storm,” came out on Tuesday. As an FYI, it’s available free for Audible members through August 14, as well as available for purchase by non-members.

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We’re giving away 16 of the books featured on Recommended! Click here, or on the image below to enter:

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“The Coming Storm” based on reporting from a series of essays Lewis originally wrote for Vanity Fair, and is a “timely story exploring the future of data, power, the weather, and the Trump Administration.” It’s pretty signature Michael Lewis – profiles of interesting people, connections between current events and historical trends, and sharp observations about people and their failures. I’m utterly fascinated learning about the role the Department of Commerce plays in the federal government – turns out, very little to do with business.

It’s an interesting approach. It feels a bit like taking the popularity of investigative podcasts like Serial or In the Dark and bringing it to a platform that has the potential to draw in revenue beyond just sponsorships or subscribers. I’m not sure “The Coming Storm” took full advantage of the audio format – there aren’t any recorded interviews or other editing effects that are common in podcasts – but it’s still been a good listen. I’ll be curious to see how many sales the piece gets outside of current Audible subscribers as a way to judge whether the existing audience of audiobook listeners or podcast subscribers will enjoy this format too.

It’s also a new way publicize an upcoming book ahead of time, potentially reaching an audience beyond traditional print readers. Lewis will be returning to the themes of “The Coming Storm” in his next big nonfiction anthology, The Fifth Risk, which is coming out in October. I’m certainly more interested in that book now that I’ve gotten a taste of it in this piece.

Bob Woodward is Writing about Trump

I didn’t think that there was a way to make me want to actually read a full book about what life is like inside the Trump Administration, but then Bob Woodward (one of the journalists who broke the Watergate story) announced his newest book, Fear: Trump in the White House. The book is scheduled for release on September 11, and according to the publisher, “reveals in unprecedented detail the harrowing life inside President Donald Trump’s White House and precisely how he makes decisions on major foreign and domestic policies.” I don’t think there will be a way to fault the reporting on this one, which makes me extremely interested in what it actually says. And according to Politico… “everyone talked to Woodward.” Yikes,

New Books!

This week’s new books are all interesting memoirs by interesting women, basically the bread and butter of my reading right now.

Open Mic Night in Moscow by Audrey Murray – This book is a “raucous and surprisingly poignant story of a young, Russia-obsessed American writer and comedian who embarked on a solo tour of the former Soviet Republics” of Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Sibera. I think a travel and coming-of-age memoir in those places, written by a comedian, seems like a great end-of-summer book to dive into.

Jell-O Girls by Allie Rowbottom – A feminist history of Jell-O? Why yes, that sounds amazing. Allie Rowbottom’s great-great-great-uncle purchased the patent for Jell-O in 1899, a business decision that would benefit his family for generations. This book explores the history of Jell-O, the marketing of the product, and the “Jell-O curse” that seems to have haunted the women of the family, in particular. I love a good family portrait and a good microhistory, so this book is high on my list.

Okay Fine Whatever by Courtenay Hameister – On the most recent episode of For Real, I talked about my love of a good stunt memoir. In this book, a woman decides to conquer her near-constant dread and anxiety by speaking a year doing little things that scare her, which the book jacket describes as “things that the average person might consider doing for a half second before deciding: ‘nope.’” This one sounds really funny, which is something I think we all need right now.

And finally, it wouldn’t be the end of a newsletter if I didn’t get to point you to an awesome Book Riot giveaway. Enter to win 16 awesome books featured on the Recommended podcast, open through August 31. You can find me on Twitter @kimthedork, and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. Happy reading!

The big news of this week is a political memoir (again), this time from a former member of the Trump administration. On Tuesday, Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s memoir, The Briefing, was released to reviews that were… let’s just say not raves.

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We’re giving away $500 of the year’s best YA! Click here, or on the image below to enter:

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Jonathan Karl’s review in the Wall Street Journal is particularly excellent (although to read it you need to click through to this Tweet, which should let you then click to read the review despite the WSJ paywall). My favorite quote from the book that Karl includes is this one: “(Trump’s) high-wire act is one that few could ever follow… he is a unicorn, riding a unicorn over a rainbow.” OMG.

Donald Trump’s first White House spokesman compares the president to a rock star, the Energizer Bunny and a unicorn. Jonathan Karl reviews ‘The Briefing’ by Sean Spicer. https://t.co/CFD7Q9sKFk pic.twitter.com/R6lyP9N7M4

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) July 24, 2018

At NPR, Annalisa Quinn notes that Spicer’s approach to writing about politics includes a moral double standard – criticizing the Clintons while also framing “former congressman Mark Foley as ‘smart and ambitious…and fun to be around’ — without mentioning that he solicited nude photos and sex from teenage boys employed as congressional pages.” Whoops.

Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple points out a section in which Spicer tries to argue that Trump’s use derogatory nicknames isn’t a flaw or behavior that diminishes the presidency. Instead, Spicer suggests that Trump “was a master of branding and psyched out his opponents by defining them with nicknames that stuck.” Right.

Overall, this one seems like a book that’ll be buzzy for a week while everyone reads the commentary about it, and then it’ll just fade away… and that’s ok with me.

With that out of the way, on to some actual good news:

A 2016 performance of Hamilton may be coming to the big screen! “unnamed Hollywood studios are bidding for the rights to a filmed performance of Hamilton from 2016 – when Miranda still headed the cast in the title role.”

A first-person account of the March for Our Lives movement will be published in October. Glimmer of Hope “chronicles in first person essays the events of February 14th and the creation of the March for our Lives from the founders of the movement.” I’m a sucker for oral histories, so I’m looking forward to this one.

Senator Kamala Harris will be releasing a book in January 2019, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey. I am not generally a fan of the memoir/current event books that politicians put out while they’re still in office/running for office, but Harris does have an interesting personal story.

Director Ridley Scott and documentary filmmaker Asif Kapadia will be adapting Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. Sapiens is an ambitious book, about the journey of humans “from prehistoric creatures to the present.” The format for the adaptation is unclear, but I think there are a lot of cool things you could do with it.

Have a great weekend, friends! You can find me on Twitter @kimthedork, and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. Happy reading!

As I’m writing this newsletter, I’ve just finished reading Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, an account of “the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of Theranos,” a biotech startup led by a woman who was hailed as the next Steve Jobs. But then a Wall Street Journal reporter got a tip that the technology the company was using on patients and preparing to sell to major healthcare companies didn’t actually work, an investigation that revealed the company was built on lies.

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We’re giving away $500 of the year’s best YA! Click here, or on the image below to enter:

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I’m not sure how this one completely missed my radar when it came out in May, but I ended up grabbing it at the recommendation of a friend and because of the chatter amongst the Book Riot editorial staff. And everyone was right – this book might be the most banapants work of nonfiction this year (that’s not about politics). The details about what went on inside Theranos, including the oddness of the CEO and the corruption among her supporters, seem almost too insane to be real. But it’s well researched and the reporting was rigorously managed, so I’m confident it’s accurate. So, so good!

Reading the book brought to mind a few other books on Silicon Valley that have been on my radar (or I’ve read) — Reset by Ellen Pao, The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, and Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton, just to name a few. It’s an area ripe for great stories.

With that gushing out of the way, on to this week’s newsletter!

New Books!

This week’s new books are three titles that have me curious but, for a variety of reasons, a little bit skeptical. My skepticism might be your genre kryptonite through, we’ll see!

The Widower’s Notebook by Jonathan Santlofer – This book is a memoir about a man learning to live without his wife, who died unexpectedly and tragically after a routine operation. It’s been compared to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking or Joyce Carol Oates’ A Widow’s Story, except getting at this particular type of tragedy and grief from the perspective of a widower rather than a widow. One review I read suggested that his arguments about grief and gender rely on some old-fashioned cultural norms, but I’m curious anyway.

The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump by Michiko Kakutani – In this book, the former New York Times critic wonders “how truth became an endangered species in contemporary America” (as we all are…). She looks to the cultural forces like social media, television and politics, as well as trends from both political parties, to look at how we got where we are. This book feels like it’s slotting right into a trend – books on truth in a world that’s abandoned facts – but I’m generally here for it.

Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley by Adam Fisher – After finishing Bad Blood, my interest in books about Silicon Valley culture is pretty high. Adam Fisher grew up in Silicon Valley, but didn’t realize how unusual it was until he was an adult. Valley of Genius is an oral history of Silicon Valley that relies in more than 200 interviews with people who lead the technological revolution, and shares “the most told, retold, and talked-about stories in the Valley.” A skim of the contributors looks very full of dudes, which I suppose makes sense for a book on Silicon Valley, but still gives me a little pause.

Book Lists!

And finally, I’ll wrap this one up with a few recent book lists that look pretty excellent:

• Great American History Reads from Fascinating Historians via Book Riot
• 9 New True Crime Books That Should Definitely Be Movies via Bustle
• 6 Environmental Books You Don’t Want to Miss this Summer via Environmental Defense Fund
• 22 Creative Nonfiction Books that Will Make You Feel All the Feels via Book Riot

Don’t forget! We’re hosting an awesome giveaway of $500 of the year’s best young adult fiction and nonfiction so far, picked out by our resident YA expert Kelly Jensen. Hop over to this link before July 31 to enter: https://goo.gl/iZpwWZ

With that, have an awesome weekend! You can find me on Twitter @kimthedork, and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. Happy reading!

Hello hello! My body is back from vacation, but my brain is still on cabin time thanks to my Fourth of July week break to a lake in the woods. I managed to read six books, swam every day, and did more day drinking that might be advisable. But hey, that’s what vacation is all about!

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Sponsored by Beacon Press

“I have friends and family of color. I can’t be racist!” Have you ever said something like this when your assumptions about race have been challenged? Or “Racists are bad individuals, so you are saying that I am a bad person.” Or “If you knew me or understood me, you would know I can’t be racist.”

If this sounds familiar, you should read White Fragility.

In her New York Times best-selling book, antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo explores the counterproductive reactions white people have when talking about race and how these reactions maintain racial inequality.

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This week I’ve got some bookish news – more Obama team memoirs! America Ferrera’s essay collection! – plus three early July new releases that look especially exciting. We’re off!

There are a lot of Obama team memoirs coming out right now, and the New York Times is ON IT. Jokes aside, I enjoyed this comparison of several of the books, including how they take similar and different approaches to looking back on the Obama administration, and some speculation about why these books are so popular right now. P.S. If you don’t follow @NYTOnIt on Twitter, you are missing out.

Related, I am SO PSYCHED that Obama photographer Pete Souza is coming out with another book of photography titled Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents, based on his amazing Instagram posts throwing, well, shade, at our current commander-in-chief. Check out his Instagram feed and then pre-order that book stat.

America Ferrera is editing an essay anthology all about culture, with a truly stellar list of contributors. American Like Me will include “stories from those trying find an identity in a culture that often ‘underrepresents or ignores’ their experiences.” Contributors include Lin-Manuel Miranda, Roxane Gay, Michelle Kwan, Kal Penn, and so many more really interesting people. Look for this one in September.

Combine beach reading and self-improvement with Fast Company’s five summer beach reads that can make you happier at work. The article describe the selections as “easy-to-read yet extremely informative nonfiction titles,” which feels like about the perfect Venn diagram for my reading brain right now.

More memoirs? Yes, please! This 50 must-reads list of classic memoirs by writers of color – covering books from the 11th century through 1996 – from Rebecca over at Book Riot is so, so great. I will also give a hearty thumbs up to Electric Lit’s list of eight memoirs by women with unconventional jobs. All the memoirs!

Get motivated with Redbook’s list of 15 motivational books that’ll leave you feeling inspired, books that are “filled with words of wisdom that’ll get you revved up and ready to conquer the world.”

New Books!

In this week’s episode of For Real I talked about three recent books I’m excited about – Don’t You Ever by Mary Carter Bishop, Empress by Ruby Lal, and From the Corner of the Oval by Rebecca Dorey-Stein. Here are three more early July releases to put on your radar:

Give People Money by Annie Lowrey – In this book, economics writer Annie Lowrey looks at the idea of a universal basic income, a stipend given to every citizen, as a way to help reduce inequality around the world. Lowrey looks at countries that have implemented UBI, and what challenges we might face trying to implement it.

What to Read and Why by Francine Prose – Who wouldn’t want advice on what to read from a novelist, literary critic, and essayist like Francine Prose? This book “celebrates the pleasures of reading and pays homage to the works and writers (Prose) admires,” everyone from Jane Austen to Roberto Bolaño, through previously-published work and new pieces.

The Poisoned City by Anna Clark – In January 2016, the residents of Flint, Michigan were instructed to stop using tap water due to high levels of lead in their municipal water supply, two years after complaints started to come in about the tainted, dangerous water. This book is, I think, the first full look at this crisis, telling the story “through the people who caused it, suffered from it, and exposed it.”

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

Hello readers! Associate Editor Sharifah here, stepping in while Kim is away. And since I’m only around for a moment, I decided to take a detour from your regularly scheduled content to talk about some backlist nonfiction I’ve enjoyed recently, that might’ve gone under the radar.

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Sponsored by Lion Forge Comics.

Green Almonds: Letters from Palestine is the graphic novel collaboration and true story of two sisters. Anaële, a writer, leaves for Palestine volunteering in an aid program, swinging between her Palestinian friends and her Israeli friends. Delphine is an artist, left behind in Liège, Belgium. From their different sides of the world, they exchange letters.

Green Almonds is a personal look into a complex reality, through the prism of the experience of a young woman writing letters to her sister about her feelings and adventures in the occupied territories.

In stores July 10 from Lion Forge!

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Let’s get right into it!

Recently Read Backlist Favorites

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Basically, everyone at the Riot is reading this right now. Or maybe it just feels that way. Robin Wall Kimmerer–scientist, ecologist, professor, mother, member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation–brings Indigenous stories to life, recounts powerful moments from history and her own past, and moves readers to consider the important connections between humans and nature. I read this one for the 2018 Read Harder Challenge (read a book about nature), and found myself compelled to get out of the apartment and into the great outdoors.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

I realized after listening to the full audiobook that there’s an abridged version, and that this significantly shorter version exists because you don’t get to the true crime part of the book until about eight hours in. But it didn’t matter. I got so wrapped up in the lives of Savannah, Georgia’s old money, new money, its eccentrics and powder kegs–I didn’t want to miss a second. John Berendt tells this true crime tale with such panache, I kept forgetting it wasn’t fictional. Pour yourself a martini, recline in your historic mansion, and enjoy.

Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? by Alyssa Mastromonaco

I’d been hearing a lot about some funny books coming from Obama-era White House staffers and, feeling anything but up to reading those tell-all books coming out of this country’s current presidency, jumped into Alyssa Mastromonaco’s memoir about her work with Barack Obama before his run for presidency, and then as the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. Mastromonaco is wry, super smart, hilarious, totally open about her experiences, and absolutely someone to look up to whether you’re a young woman considering a career path or an adult in search of empowering stories. I LOLed and I felt all the feels.

The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail by Óscar Martínez

This is a tough read. Especially with the recent, truly awful stories about families separated at the border. But Óscar Martínez took some incredible risks to tell these stories, giving a voice to those traveling the migrant trail from Central America and across the U.S. border. I found it as eye-opening as it was heartbreaking. Definitely take breaks while reading about the dangers these individuals face both at home and on their way out.

My Soul Looks Back by Jessica B. Harris

There’s a lot of name dropping around this book, but Harris’s prose and the pulsing life of the black intellectual scene in a bygone New York captivated me more than any one specific person in her social circle. Harris talks about a different era of activism, and what it was like to be a black artist and intellectual back when. She had a fascinating life, but I should note that she doesn’t take center stage in this book, even though it looks like a memoir at first glance. You end up hearing more about the people she knew, which included Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison, and about her first love. I enjoyed Harris’ writing, and I hope she returns with a book focused on her life or around the culinary expertise for which she’s known and celebrated.

That’s it for me! Kim will be back for the next issue, and you can find me on Instagram at @szainabwilliams.

 

And don’t forget–we’re giving away $500 of this year’s best YA books (so far)! Click here to enter.

Hello, True Story readers! After a crazy few months at my day job, I’m taking a vacation “up North,” as we say here in Minnesota, for a week at my parent’s cabin in Wisconsin. I’ve got an entire bag devoted just to books (and another one for booze), which seems just about right for a full week off the grid. I cannot wait.

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Just for Book Riot readers: sign up for an Audible account, and get two audiobooks free!

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Truthfully, most of the books I’m bringing along are fiction. I love fantasy and young adult novels for reading by the beach, mostly because I don’t have to pay attention as carefully as I do otherwise. But never fear, a couple of memoirs have made their way to the stack – Don’t You Ever by Mary Carter Bishop (July 3 from Harper) and Stalking God by Anjali Kumar.

But before I am off on vacation, some bookish news and some new books for late June and early July:

Bookish has collected this summer’s must-read nonfiction, a pretty wide-ranging list of titles that includes everything from “a thriller-like trip to Shanghai” to “a heart-wrenching illness memoir.” I am not as on top of my 2018 nonfiction reading as I’d like to be, but several on this list are on my TBR.

If you want to add some more diversity to your summer reading, the African American Intellectual History Society put together a list of recommended nonfiction that “offer(s) valuable insights on the Black experience in the United States and across the globe.” I love that many of these are from small or university presses because that means they’ve probably slipped under my radar. Eloquent Rage by Brittney Cooper is on my shelf, and History Teaches Us to Resist by Mary Frances Berry just got added to the list.

Still not sure what nonfiction to read this summer? A few more general summer reading lists also have some nonfiction sections that might help:

• Publisher’s Weekly has a full summer reading guide, including a relatively robust nonfiction section.
• Newsweek’s summer reading guide is also good. You can find nonfiction in the sections labeled “Reality Bites” (biographies and memoirs), “Political Animals” (power and corruption), and “Natural Highs” (science and nature).
• TIME’s summer reading guide includes “mind-expanding history” and “conversation-starting nonfiction” to peruse, with some good suggestions.

Finally, a few upcoming titles to keep your eyes open for:

Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession by Alice Bolin (June 26 from William Morrow) – A collection focused on “illuminating the widespread obsession with women who are abused, killed, and disenfranchised, and whose bodies (dead and alive) are used as props to bolster men’s stories.” A couple readers I trust have highlighted this one, so I am in.

Empress by Ruby Lal (July 3 from W.W. Norton) – I’m obsessed with reading about queens, but need to branch out beyond Europe. Empress is a biography of Nur Jahan, who in 1611 married an emperor, becoming his partner and most cherished wife. Sold!

City of Devils by Paul French (July 3 from Picador) – I’m in the middle of this one, and so far really enjoying it. It’s a nice mash-up of history and true crime, all about the two gang leaders who ruled the underground scene in Shanghai in the lead up to World War II. The first section is written in a sort of 1930s newspaper style, which takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s fun.

And with that, I’m out for vacation – look for a guest editor of this newsletter next week! You can find me on Twitter @kimthedork, and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. Happy reading!

Hello readers! This week’s newsletter is heavy on news and lighter on books, but it’s always good to have balance. Let’s dive in!

Book News!

Over a Book Riot, Cassandra offers an essential Anthony Bourdain reading list. Reading about all of his books, in an impressive array of genres, just makes me even more sad that he’s gone.

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As part of Season 2 of our podcast series Annotated, we are giving away 10 of the best books about books of 2017. Go here to enter for a chance to win, or just click the image below:

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Bustle has rounded up nine nonfiction books for fans of Harry Potter, which is a Harry Potter-related list that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. It has books about witches, activism, mythology, and more that definitely piqued my curiosity!

I very much enjoyed this Twitter thread about the considerations that go into writing a nonfiction book for kids/young adults by author Martha Brockenbrough. She’s currently working on a biography of Donald Trump – Unpresidented, out November 13 – and, in the thread, talks about writing a book that is both accurate, fair, and age appropriate. Admittedly, I don’t know the cultural conversation that prompted the thread, but I still thought it was interesting.

This is a little tangential to the world of books, but still interesting. Dr. Atul Gawande (author of excellent books like Being Mortal and Better) has been named CEO of a joint healthcare venture created by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan. The nonprofit organization is looking to find “ways to address healthcare for their U.S. employees, with the aim of improving employee satisfaction and reducing costs.” The scant details on the hiring process in the linked NPR are pretty intense!

Bustle again! This time, 20 books as inspiring as TED Talks, recommended by people who have given TED Talks. There’s a mix of fiction and nonfiction on this list, but I love all the nonfiction recommendations so it makes the newsletter!

Missing the Obamas as much as I am? Then I’ve got a couple of Book Riot posts for you. Yaasmeen offers a list of books to read while we wait for Michelle’s memoir, which isn’t coming out until November. If you want to read like Barack, then check out his recent reading list, which includes intriguing titles like The New Geography of Jobs by Enrico Moretti and Futureface by Alex Wagner.

Actress Priyanka Chopra is writing a memoir, set to be released in 2019. Unfinished, a collection of essays, stories, and observations, will be published simultaneously in the United States, India, and England.

Need a little quick inspiration or entertainment? These graduation speeches that are also books might just do the trick. Or, peruse this excellent list of 50 nonfiction audiobooks you can listen to in less than 10 hours.

New Books!

And finally, I’ll close out this newsletter with three quick takes on new books out this week:

Alone Time by Stephanie Rosenbloom – A look on the pleasures of solitude and the benefits of traveling alone, even in your own city, to boost creativity and mental space.

The Ambition Decisions by Hana Schank and Elizabeth Wallace – Female journalists dig into data and interviews to see what modern women feel like is the best course to navigate a big decisions that have been made possible by second wave feminism.

Old in Art School by Nell Painter – A memoir by a noted historian who decides to return to school in her sixties to earn a BFA and MFA in painting.

Thanks for checking in this week! You can find me on Twitter @kimthedork, and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. Happy reading!

The deadline for last week’s edition of True Story came too early for me to include the sad news that author, tv host, and enthusiast Anthony Bourdain died by suicide last week at the age of 61.

For our purposes, Bourdain was the author of more than a dozen books connected in some way to the world of food, eight of them nonfiction. Not sure where to start? Esquire suggests six to get you started, including the two that I think are his most recognized – Kitchen Confidential and Medium Raw. The New York Times has also collected some of his best work across genres and mediums, all worth reading, watching, or listening.

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Sponsored by Flatiron Books

When detective Ron Stallworth, the first black detective in the history of the Colorado Springs Police Department, comes across a classified ad in the local paper asking for all those interested in joining the Ku Klux Klan to contact a P.O. box, Detective Stallworth does his job and responds with interest, using his real name while posing as a white man. He figures he’ll receive a few brochures in the mail, maybe even a magazine, and learn more about a growing terrorist threat in his community.

A few weeks later the office phone rings, and the caller asks Ron a question he thought he’d never have to answer, “Would you like to join our cause?” This is 1978, and the KKK is on the rise in the United States. Ron answers the caller’s question that night with a yes, launching what is surely one of the most audacious, and incredible undercover investigations in history.

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At Book Riot, Erica Harlitz-Kern wrote about Bourdain’s trip to the Yangambi Research Library on the Congo River during an episode of his CNN show, Parts Unknown. It’s a fascinating, book-ish story. After a fan petition, Netflix agreed to continue streaming the show beyond June 16, when it was slated to be taken down from the service.

Bourdain’s editor, Daniel Halpern, said Bourdain was working on a collection of essays that he planned to deliver at the end of the summer. Halpern told Vulture that he thought the collection was “going to be much more personal. I think he planned to talk about traveling more, what it’s like to be on the road, having a family.” It’s not clear what will happen with that work.

Beyond being a writer, Bourdain also helped other writers get published through his imprint, Anthony Bourdain Books, which was founded in 2011. I particularly love that he published a collection of columns by Marilyn Haggerty, an 88-year-old food critic who went viral in 2012 thanks to her review of a local Olive Garden. While his travels and writing took him around the world, his embrace of a collection like that shows an appreciation for local foods and customs in every community. That sense of curiosity, openness, and appreciation for other people will be so deeply missed.

In Other News…

Daniel Radcliffe is set to star in a Broadway adaptation of The Lifespan of a Fact, an adaptation of a book that chronicles the seven year relationship between a journalist and a fact-checker working on a single magazine story. The book includes the text of the article, along with the red-line comments from the fact checker. I’m not entirely sure how it will be made into a play, but I am very curious!

Journalist Michael Wolff has signed on to write a sequel to his best-selling book about the Trump White House, Fire and Fury. According to Axios, Wolff himself is unclear about what a sequel might be – he’s lost the element of surprise, and many of his sources – but I guess he’s going to try.

Hugh Grant is returning to TV and will star in a three-part adaptation of A Very English Scandal, a drama that “details the brief homosexual affair between British politician Jeremy Thorpe (played by Hugh Grant) and young stable hand Norman Scott (Ben Whishaw) in the 1960s.” The book, a work of true crime, was written by John Preston and published in 2016.

Ebook Deals!

Given this week’s news about North Korea, learn more about that country with A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa and Risa Kobayashi for $1.99.

Getting ready for a road trip? Try Walden on Wheels by Ken Ilgunas for $1.99.

Thinking about travel or other cultures? At Home in the World by Tsh Oxenreider is available for $1.99.

Thanks for checking in this week! You can find me on Twitter @kimthedork, and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. Happy reading!

Hello, fellow humans! I decided to devote this first newsletter of June to a selection of the great new books that came out this week. These hardly even scratch the surface, but feature the Amazon jungle, refugees, Alzheimer’s disease, and British nobility.

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Sponsored by Tonight I’m Someone Else, Chelsea Hodson. Published by Holt Paperbacks.

From graffiti gangs and Grand Theft Auto to sugar daddies, Schopenhauer, and a deadly game of Russian roulette, Chelsea Hodson probes her desires in these essays to examine where the physical and proprietary collide. She asks what our privacy, intimacy, and bodies are worth in the increasingly digital world of liking, linking, and sharing. This tender and jarring collection is relevant to anyone who’s ever searched for what the self is worth.

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But before we get into the newsletter, a quick reminder that Book Riot is giving away $500 to the bookstore of your choice. Think of all the books you could get with $500 – probably every one mentioned in this newsletter, plus more. Enter here!

Third Bank of the River by Chris Feliciano Arnold – This book is a history of the Amazon River, “from the arrival of the first Spanish flotilla to the drones that are now mapping unexplored parts of the forest.” It’s also an exploration of the conflict between the isolated tribes that live along the river, and the modern businesses and criminals who want to use the land and resources. I’ve read a lot of historical nonfiction about this area, but nothing contemporary, so I’m very curious.

Goodbye, Sweet Girl by Kelly Sundberg – In this memoir, Sundberg chronicles her marriage, tracing it from a love story to a terrifying look at domestic abuse. She writes about why she stayed in a violent relationship, the stories she told herself about their life together, how her childhood in an isolated Idaho town contributed to her feelings on marriage, and how she eventually left her husband. I am not sure I will be able to read this one, but it sounds really moving and important.

The Boy on the Beach by Tima Kurdi – Ever since I finished Exit West by Mohsin Hamid I’ve been keeping my eyes open for books about refugees and the refugee crisis to help me learn about it more. This memoir is about the family of Alan Kurdi, a Syrian boy who drowned while fleeing the country and, in death, became a symbol for the entire crisis. Tima Kurdi, living in Vancouver at the time, recognized her nephew and the journey he was trying to make. In this book she recounts her own emigration from Syria and her work as an advocate for the displaced.

Somebody I Used to Know by Wendy Mitchell – This is another one I may or may not be brave enough to actually read. In 2014, when she was just 58 years old, Wendy Mitchell was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. In this memoir, she writes about her mental decline, her advocacy for people with this disease, and her efforts to “outwit” her Alzheimer’s as long as possible. Again, tough but important.

Sick by Porochista Khakpour – This book has been on many, many most-anticipated book lists, but it snuck up on me a little bit. For most of her adult life, Khakpour has been sick, but struggled to get a diagnosis for her condition. Feeling ill contributed to mental health problems and drug addictions, and cost her a lot of money, until she finally was diagnosed with Lyme’s disease. This book is about all of that, and the ways that the medical system fails to adequately address female illness.

Homelands by Alfredo Corchado – Corchado came to the United States from Mexico in 1987, and soon made a close group of friends at a local Mexican restaurant. Over the next 30 years, the friends meet regularly, “coming together of their shared Mexican roots and their love of tequila.” This book is a collection of their stories, told alongside the larger narrative of the last great Mexican migration during the 1970s and 1980s. This book seems particularly relevant in our current political climate.

Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth – When I saw the first movie trailer for BlacKkKlansman, I did not realize it was based on a book! This memoir is about the first black detective in the Colorado Springs Police Department, who poses as a white man and is invited to join the Ku Klux Klan. Since he obviously can’t go to meetings himself, he partners with a white police officer to infiltrate the KKK and sabotage the organization from within.

Those Wild Wyndhams by Claudia Renton – British aristocrats! I am still on a British bender thanks to the Royal Wedding, so of course this one caught my eye. This book is a “dazzling portrait of one of England’s grandest, noblest families,” focusing on four sisters who were “confidantes to British prime ministers, poets, writers, and artists, their lives entwined with the most celebrated and scandalous figures of the day.” In my head, this is sort of like rich, British, Little Women, but that could be totally off.

And with that, I’m out! You can find me on Twitter @kimthedork, and co-hosting the For Real podcast here at Book Riot. Happy reading!