Category: True Story

Welcome to August, nonfiction lovers. This month seems to kick off the big fall publishing schedule, although most of the releases I’m thinking about are out closer to the end of the month. This week I’ve got two new titles to highlight, along with a bunch of news about adaptations and another major political memoir announcement. Let’s dive in!

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New Releases on My Radar

Improbable Destinies by Jonathan B. Losos (August 8 from Riverhead Books) – Jonathan Losos, a biology professor at Harvard University, is a leader in the study of evolutionary biology. In this book, he explores a major debate in the field – convergence versus contingency – through the scientists leading the way in experimental evolutionary science. This book is a little outside my science comfort zone, but I also think it sounds pretty fascinating.

Bonus Reads: Back in 2013, Losos was the author of a popular New York Times blog, Scientist at Work. Improbable Destinies was also recently reviewed in Science magazine.

The Wrong Way to Save Your Life by Megan Stielstra (August 1 from Harper Perennial) – I am a sucker for new essay collections, especially those that are about “fear, creativity, art, faith, academia, the Internet, and justice” and that have a blurb from Roxane Gay. And I think contemplating fears, those that seem justified and those we may move past, is something we all should do more.

Bonus Reads: I enjoyed this short profile of Stielstra from Chicago Mag and this Chicago Reader piece about Stielstra based on interviews from her friends and family. The second, in particular, is a fun way to explore writing about an essayist who uses their friends and family in their work.

Hillary Clinton Announces Title of Memoir

Last week, Hillary Clinton announced the title and publication date of her upcoming memoir – What Happened out Sept. 12 – and shared a little bit about the writing process. In a Facebook post, Clinton wrote:

“I’ll be honest: Writing “What Happened” wasn’t easy. Neither is witnessing what we see in the news every day. It’s never been more important to fight back and stand up for what we believe. I hope this book inspires you to keep going.”

The announcement fueled numerous think pieces (including this smart one from Nicole Froio on the book’s historical importance) and a bunch of funny tweets and a lot of speculation about what the book will actually be about. I’m somewhere between excited and skeptical. I would love to see Clinton really talk about the sexist challenges of being the first female presidential candidate, but I’m worried it’s going to be all about Russia and the stupid email scandal. I want reflective and biting… not avoidance and blaming. We shall see in September.

Ta-Nehisi Coates Essays Coming This Fall

I’m a little late on including this news in a newsletter, so apologies for that. Ta-Nehisi Coates will have a collection of new and previously published essays on the Obama era published on Oct. 3 from Penguin Random House. The book, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, is a follow up to 2015’s Between the World and Me, which is pretty much a must-read title on race and America. I am definitely looking forward to reading this one.

ODWABDANOTWM Coming to Small Screen

Scaachi Koul’s excellent essay collection One Day We’ll All Be Dead And None of This Will Matter may be coming to the small screen. Playback Online reports that a Toronto company, First Generation Films, has optioned the rights to the collection for a half-hour TV comedy that will also be Koul’s tv writing debut. This sounds so fun!

In Cold Blood to Be Revisited in Limited Series

A “limited series” based on the 1959 Clutter family murders made famous in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood is being planned. Deadline reports:

“The new, limited series will reveal never-before-seen evidence gathered by law enforcement during the original investigation. It also brings to light newly discovered clues as to what really happened the night the Clutter family was killed.”

On My Nightstand

If I’m going to be totally honest with you, dear readers, my entire nightstand is filled with fiction right now. I got a bunch of holds in from the library, so I am immersed in those books at the moment. But when I get back to nonfiction, I’ve got two books I plan to pick up – American Eclipse by David Baron (narrative history about Gilded Age America and the 1878 total solar eclipse) and The Return by Hisham Matar (the 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir about Matar’s “journey home to his native Libya in search of answers to his father’s disappearance”). American Eclipse is because I want to learn more about the eclipse before August 21, and The Return because my book club will be reading it soon.

As always, suggestions, recommendations, and feedback are always welcome. You can reach me on Twitter @kimthedork or via email at kim@riotnewmedia.com. Happy reading!

This week’s newsletter is full to the brim with new books and news about some upcoming political memoirs I think will be awfully interesting. Onwards!

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Sponsored by JT McCormick, the CEO of Book In A Box and author of I Got There

JT McCormick shouldn’t have succeeded. He was born the mixed-race son of a negligent, drug-dealing pimp father and a struggling, single mother. He was raised in the slums of Dayton, Ohio, suffered incredible abuse and racism, and had multiple stints in the juvenile justice system. He barely graduated high school. But succeed he did.

Starting by scrubbing toilets, JT hustled and worked his way into better opportunities, eventually finding incredible success in the mortgage industry. And then it all fell apart. He lost his job, and his money. But this setback became the springboard for him to reach even bigger heights–eventually becoming President of a multimillion-dollar software company, and then CEO of a multimillion-dollar book-publishing start-up.

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Obama Staffers Writing Books!

It was big news when Barack and Michelle Obama announced a two book deal with Penguin Random House, but it turns out that’s just the tip if the iceberg when it comes to books by former members of the administration. Here are a few of the ones I’ve seen in the last few weeks:

• Joe Biden has a major book tour planned in conjunction with his upcoming memoir, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose, scheduled for publication on November 14. He’ll start the “American Promise” tour by sitting down with Oprah, then head out to 19 cities across the United States.
• Pete Souza, former White House photographer, has a collection of photos — Obama: An Intimate Portrait — out on November 7. Go follow him on Instagram right now, he’s amazing.
• David Litt, Obama’s former speechwriter, has a memoir coming out on September 19 — Thanks, Obama: My Hopey Changey White House Years. It was a simpler time back then.
• Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama’s top advisors, has signed a book deal with Viking, a “medley of personal history and civic advice, narrating her path since childhood.” No details on a publication date yet.
• Former FBI Director James Comey also has plans to write a book and, as you might expect, a lot of publishers are interested in it. By the time you read this, an official deal may have been announced for the book, which will be about “the principles that have guided [him] through some of the most challenging moments of his legal career.” (And yes, I know he’s not really an Obama staffer… forgive me for stretching).

Current Events Reading Lists

Given how much Russian has been in the news lately, I highly recommend this January post from Rioter Katie McBride: Required Reading for Understanding WTF is Happening in Russia. Masha Gessen, one of the authors mentioned in the post, has another book coming out later this year to keep on your radar — The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (October 3 from Riverhead).

A couple of recent posts that offer some context on current issues include this one on body positive memoirs, and this one on health care, North Korea, and populism.

New Releases on My Radar

What She Ate by Laura Shapiro — Journalist and culinary historian (can that be my job?) Laura Shapiro explores the lives of six women — Dorothy Wordsworth, Rosa Lewis, Eleanor Roosevelt, Eva Braun, Barbara Pym, and Helen Gurley Brown — through the food they ate, cooked, and loved. I like the idea of really digging into the idea that you are what you eat.

Bonus Read: Eater magazine recently published a profile of Shapiro that I think is a fun read.

Among the Living and the Dead by Inara Verzemnieks — Inara Verzemnieks was raised by her Latvian grandparents in the state of Washington, where she heard stories about the country they were forced to flee, ravaged by war. Eventually, she traveled back to the villages her family came from to follow the story of her grandmother and her grandmother’s sister through their separation and exile.

Bonus Read: Although not specifically book-related, this NYT Magazine piece on “life in Obamacare’s dead zone” by Verzemnieks is an excellent read.

Daring to Drive by Manal al-Sharif — I totally missed this book when it came out last month, my bad! Manal al-Sharif grew up in a devoutly religious family. After getting her education, al-Sharif began work as a computer security engineer and started to object to the strict codes of conduct for women. She became an accidental activist after choosing to drive her car on city streets.

Bonus Read: Al-Sharif wrote a moving piece about leaving her son in Saudia Arabia after getting a divorce from her husband and being forced to leave the country because of her activism.

On My Nightstand

My recent nonfiction reading hasn’t been very cheerful. I’m almost finished with Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond, a look at rental housing and the challenge it can be for living in poverty to keep a roof over their heads. It’s been making me alternatively sad and angry, though I’m hoping that by the end Desmond will be able to offer some suggestions about what we might do to fix some of the really serious problems with the system.

And I think that’s enough for this week. Thanks for reading all the way throught! As always, suggestions, recommendations, and feedback are always welcome. You can reach me on Twitter @kimthedork or via email at kim@riotnewmedia.com. Happy reading!

Welcome to the third quarter of the year, nonfiction lovers. I hope you all had a great Fourth of July holiday weekend, filled with booze and books and sunshine.

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This week’s edition of the newsletter is devoted to my favorite book format, the mighty trade paperback. That’s right, as promised in March, I’ve put together a list of 25 nonfiction favorites that finally came out in paperback in the second quarter of 2017 (from April to June). I culled the titles from a variety of sources, and while it certainly isn’t comprehensive, I hope it’ll be useful for snagging some of these great 2016 titles for your library.

The Fire This Time edited by Jesmyn Ward – Essays and poems about race, collected as a response by James Baldwin’s 1963 essay collection of the same title.

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer – A group of librarians “pull a brazen heist worth of Ocean’s Eleven” to save ancient texts from Al Qaeda.

American Heiress by Jeffrey Toobin – An account of the Patty Hearst saga of the 1970s, and a more general look at the turbulence of that time.

White Trash by Nancy Isenberg – This is another one of those book that’s gotten a boost thanks to the election of President Trump. Isenberg surveys the 400 year history of the marginalization of poor white Americans.

Rising Strong by Brené Brown – A groundbreaking researcher shares “stories of being brave, falling, and getting back up.” This is a favorite for many Rioters.

In the Country We Love by Diane Guerrero – An actress recounts her challenges as a young woman after her parents, illegal immigrants, were deported, leaving her alone in the United States.

American Pharoah by Joe Drape – A reported account of how American Pharoah won the Triple Crown and affected his jockey, trainer, and owner.

The Midnight Assassin by Skip Hollandsworth – In 1884, the Midnight Assassin terrorized Austin, Texas, violently murdering women and earning the title of America’s first serial killer.

But What If We’re Wrong? by Chuck Klosterman – Klosterman takes on the challenging task of trying to figure out what the modern world will look like when it’s in the past – what reasonable ideas will eventually look ridiculous?

In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi – After Faludi learns that her estranged 76-year-old father has had sex reassignment surgery, she digs into her family’s past and the meaning of identity.

The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father by Kao Kalia Yang – Yang shares the story of her father, a “song poet” in the Hmong tradition who came to Minnesota as a refugee.

The Marriage Bureau by Penrose Halson – Two twentysomethings in World War II London set up a marriage bureau to help eligible citizens find love.

Valiant Ambition by Nathaniel Philbrick – From the subtitle, “George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution.”

The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman – A collection of essays from a favorite author.

Paper: A World History by Mark Kurlansky – The author who told the story of salt is back with a microhistory of paper. So nerdy!

The Lonely City by Olivia Laing – After moving to New York City on her own, Olivia Laing explores what it means to be alone, and “how it might be resisted and redeemed.”

Grunt by Mary Roach – Another excellent entry from a favorite science writer, this one looking at the research that keeps soldiers safe and comfortable.

Forward: A Memoir by Abby Wambach – Soccer star Abby Wambach writes about how her “professional success often masked her inner struggle to reconcile the various parts of herself.”

A House Full of Daughters by Juliet Nicolson – A memoir about seven generations of women in one family, spanning the 19th century to the present.

The Lynching by Laurence Leamer – The “true story of a brutal race-based killing in 1981 and subsequent trials that undid one of the most pernicious organizations in American history – the Ku Klux Klan.”

The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee – A look at how we’ve come to understand the gene and the science that could come from this discovery.

Love Wins by Debbie Cenziper and Jim Obergefell – The story of the two men behind Obergefell v Hodges, the case that legalized gay marriage in the United States.

A Truck Full of Money by Tracy Kidder – A profile of Paul English, a “Pied Piper” of geeks and “unconventional inventor and entrepreneur.”

Consequence: A Memoir by Eric Fair – Rioter Tracy Shapey called this memoir, by a former interrogator in Iraq, called this “one of the frankest, most brutally honest” memoirs she’d ever read.

Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art by Virginia Heffernan – A look at the digital world, and an argument that the internet should be considered a huge collaborative work of art.

Before I put this newsletter to bed, I want to close with a quick plug for Book Riot’s newest podcast, Annotated. The podcast is a documentary series about books, reading, and language, with a similar format to podcasts like This American Life, Planet Money, or Invisibilia (all great, especially for you nonfiction lovers). Episodes of Annotated’s first season (six episodes total) will come out every other week, and you can subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or in your podcast player of choice.

As always, suggestions, recommendations, and feedback are always welcome. You can reach me on Twitter @kimthedork or via email at kim@riotnewmedia.com. Happy reading!

June has brought us two of the most anticipated memoirs of the year, one from Sherman Alexie and another from Roxane Gay, along with a host of book recommendation lists from across the internet. Read on for more!

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Sponsored by The Pierre Hotel Affair, by Daniel Simone with Nick Sacco. Published by Pegasus Books.

At 3:50 a.m. on January 2, 1972, a group of thieves pulled up in a limo to New York City’s famed Pierre Hotel. Dressed in tuxedoes, they entered the hotel and—with near-balletic choreography—seized the security guards and took as hostages the night staff and several unfortunate guests. The deposit boxes inside the vault chamber were plundered and, after holding the Pierre under siege for almost two hours, the gentlemanly thieves departed in their limousine with a haul of $28 million.

A suspenseful narrative of mafia intrigue, police corruption, and personal betrayal, The Pierre Hotel Affair is the incredible true tale of one of the greatest heists in American history.

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New Books On My Radar

You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie (June 13 from Little, Brown) — Following the loss of his mother, Sherman Alexie wrote this memoir full of “raw, angry, funny, profane, tender memories of a childhood few can imagine, much less survive.” His mother, Lillian, was a wealth of contradictions that Alexie explores in the book. I haven’t seen as much buzz about this one as I expected, but early reviews have been very good.

Bonus Read: Alexie talks about his childhood, his writing, and the state of Native writers in this interview with NPR.

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud by Anne Helen Petersen (June 20 from Plume) — In this essay collection, Anne Helen Petersen, a culture writer at BuzzFeed, looks at the ways in which female celebrities, from Lena Dunham to Nicki Minaj, are pushing against the boundaries of what it means to be an acceptable woman today. I am all for a book celebrating the unruly, persisting, opinionated women that the world loves to try and push down.

Bonus Read: In a recent BuzzFeed post, Petersen asks why we like to project the resistance on to Melania Trump.

The Pretender by Marc Ruskin (June 6 from Thomas Dunne Books) — During the 1990s and 2000s, Marc Ruskin was one of the FBI’s top undercover operatives. Engaged in multiple cases, Ruskin would change identities daily, working to investigate public corruption, fraud, drug trafficking, counterfeiting and more. The Pretender is an inside look at the work of undercover agents, even in a world increasingly reliant on electronic investigations.

Bonus Read: Ruskin highlights some of the stories from the book and talks about the work that goes into creating undercover identities in this interview with VICE.

Lots of Press for Roxane Gay’s Hunger 

On June 13, Roxane Gay’s highly-anticipated memoir, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, hit the shelves, accompanying a dizzying media blitz in outlets around the world… not all of it done particularly sensitively (which shows why there’s a deep need for this book).

Gay and others have been very critical of a story published by an Australian website, Mamamia, which revealed a number of the private requests made ahead of Gay’s interview. I managed to read the story before it was deleted and an apology was posted… it was pretty horrendous. The Mashable article linked above gives a good overview.

Thankfully, much of the other coverage has been excellent. For example, Gay’s interview with Trevor Noah on The Daily Show was great (hopefully that link works, it was being futzy for me). I also enjoyed interviews/profiles published in ELLE, Vogue, and NPR. For those of you who have read Hunger, what did you think?

Best Books and Summer Reading

Can you believe we’re half-way through 2017? Whew! With the midway point of the year, we’ve got a ton of best books so far and summer reading lists coming out:

• The Washington Post’s 37 books we’ve loved this year list includes some great nonfiction.
• Publisher’s Weekly has a good roundup of summer nonfiction suggestions.
• TIME has a collection of best nonfiction of the year so far.
• I also enjoyed Bustle’s picks of new nonfiction by women that will nourish your brain this summer.

Over at Book Riot, we’ve published some great nonfiction book lists as well — stories of strong as hell females, books to read if you love Veep, great military history books, and nonfiction about hair. I can feel my TBR tumbling already.

On My Nightstand

After seeing and loving Wonder Woman, I decided I wanted to learn more about the history of the character. I hemmed and hawed over a few titles, finally settling on Wonder Woman Unbound by Tim Hanley. I almost picked The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore, but didn’t love her writing style from a previous book and so decided to try someone new. Hanley is also a comic book historian, so I felt good about his credentials.

Anyway… so far, so good! Hanley is a funny writer, but I like the way that he’s approaching his subject with a sense of seriousness, using a mix of historical data and close reading of the comic books. He’s structured the book to explore Wonder Woman’s portrayal through various periods of comic book history, so I think the book will give a newbie like me a good overview in that respect as well.

As always, feedback and comments are always welcome. You can catch me on Twitter @kimthedork, Instagram @kimthedork, or via email at kim@riotnewmedia.com. Happy reading!

Hello, fellow nonfiction aficionados. I’m writing this newsletter having just gotten back from BookExpo in New York City. BookExpo is an annual trade show conference for publishers, authors, booksellers, librarians and other book-adjacent professionals. During the show there are book signings and galley giveaways, as well as presentations, education sessions and panels covering all sorts of trends and issues in the book world.

This is near one of the main entrances for BookExpo. Dad-like dudes were popular this year.

(As a quick informational aside, the conference recently split to address the needs of two different audiences – BookExpo, on Thursday and Friday, is more publishing industry focused, while BookCon, on Saturday and Sunday, is designed more for consumers.)

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Sponsored by HarperOne, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

Much advice about achievement is logical, earnest… and downright wrong. In Barking Up the Wrong Tree, Eric Barker reveals the extraordinary science behind what actually determines success. You’ll learn:

• Why valedictorians rarely become millionaires
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•         How to find work-life balance from Genghis Khan, Albert Einstein, and Spider-Man

By looking at what separates the extremely successful from the rest of us, we learn how to be more like them—and discover why it’s sometimes good that we aren’t.

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In my experience, the buzziest books of BookExpo tend to be fiction – some of the longest lines this year were for authors like Jennifer Egan, John Grisham and Celeste Ng, or for celebrities like Chad Michael Murray, Savannah Guthrie, or Isla Fisher.

If you’re excited about nonfiction, you’re generally not going to stand in any really, really long lines (unless it’s a celebrity memoir, but even those seemed more muted this year). That said, there were two nonfiction books that generated quite a bit of excitement, one by a celebrity (of sorts) and the other capitalizing on the popularity of nonfiction in pop culture.

Scott Kelly signed excerpts from his upcoming memoir, ENDURANCE. I was… not smooth when I got to meet him.

My first highlight of BookExpo was getting to meet Scott Kelly, an astronaut who spent a year living on the International Space Station. He was signing samples from his upcoming memoir, Endurance (Oct. 17 from Knopf), and couldn’t have been nicer during his autographing session. He followed up a very, very long line by jumping across the Penguin Random House booth for another signing, this time for his children’s book, My Journey to the Stars.

Kate Moore was very charming during her signing of RADIUM GIRLS. This one is next up on my TBR.

The other book I was pleasantly surprised to see generating a lot of buzz was The Radium Girls by Kate Moore (April 18 from Sourcebooks), a true story of the young women tasked with painting the glowing numerals on watches using a newly-discovered element, radium, around World War I. But as we know now, radium turns out to be incredibly dangerous, setting up a faceoff between the increasingly ill girls and the factory owners who are slowly poisoning them. I suspect the excitement around this book has something to do with the popularity of Hidden Figures, and I hope will lead to more books on women often ignored by history.

I feel like I have a ton more to say about BookExpo and trends in nonfiction, but I feel like this newsletter is getting a little long already. So, I’ll just leave you with five titles that are at the top of my TBR – one that’s out now, and four you can look for later this fall – and a promise to feature some of the other books I brought up closer to their publication date.

Upcoming Books On My Radar (BookExpo Edition)

All Day by Liza Jessie Peterson (April 18 from Center Street) – Poet and actress Liza Jessie Peterson writes about a year spent teaching at Island Academy, the high school for teenagers detained at Rikers Island.

Bored and Brilliant by Manoosh Zomorodi (Sept. 5 from St. Martin’s Press) – Based on an experiment conducted by the Note to Self podcast in 2015, Bored and Brilliant looks at “the connection between boredom and original thinking.”

Crash Override by Zoe Quinn (Sept. 5 from PublicAffairs) – Video game developer Zoe Quinn shared her experiences as a victim in the #gamergate awfulness, and about her work with her advocacy and online-abuse crisis resource, the Crash Override Network.

The Last Castle by Denise Kiernan (Sept. 26 from Touchstone) – The Last Castle is the book I decided to pick up on my plane ride home. Kiernan – who previously wrote The Girls of Atomic City – turns her attention to the story of the Biltmore mansion and the end of America’s Gilded Age. It’s a lot of fun so far.

Bunk by Kevin Young (Nov. 14 from Graywolf Press) – Subtitled “The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News,” Bunk is a look at the history of the hoax, and its connection to stereotypes, suspicion and race. This one feels substantial and important.

And that’s what I’ve got for this edition! As always, feedback and comments are always welcome. You can catch me on Twitter @kimthedork, Instagram @kimthedork, or via email at kim@riotnewmedia.com. Happy reading!

Welcome to another week in nonfiction releases, news and other stuff that I think is interesting. My favorite bit of news has to do with one of my favorite true crime books — read on for more!

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Sponsored by The Crime Book, the newest title in DK’s award-winning “Big Ideas Simply Explained” series

The Crime Book is a complete compendium for crime aficionados to add to their collection. From Jack the Ripper to Jeffrey Dahmer, it is a full study of international true crime history that unpacks the science, psychology, and sociology of criminal behavior with infographics and in-depth research.

Foreword writer and consultant Cathy Scott is a Los Angeles Times best-selling author and investigative journalist best known for her books The Killing of Tupac Shakur and The Murder of Biggie Smalls.

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New Releases On My Radar

Chasing Space: An Astronaut’s Story of Grit, Grace, and Second Chances by Leland Melvin (May 23 from Amistad) – Here’s a fun fact from the book jacket: former astronaut and wide receiver Leland Melvin is the only person to have ever caught a pass in the NFL and in space. In this book, Melvin recounts his personal journey as an athlete, engineer, and space traveler. I love that the cover of the book is his official NASA portrait.

Bonus Read: This Q&A between Swapna Krishna and Melvin at Paste Magazine is a delight to read.

Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002) by David Sedaris (May 30 from Little, Brown and Company) – Truthfully, I’m not sure how I feel about this trend of publishing notebooks and diaries from famous writers. But, anything new from David Sedaris is worth noting. This book includes the “overheard comments, salacious gossip, soap opera plot twists, secrets confided by total strangers” that have become the source of many of his most famous essays.

Bonus Read: The New Yorker published an excerpt of the book last month, a series of entries from 1983 to 1990 while Sedaris was at the Art Institute of Chicago and the International House of Pancakes.

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby (May 30 from Vintage) – Blogger and comedian Samantha Irby’s collection of comic essays looks to be very funny, something I think we could all use right now. Rioter Aisling Twomey said the book is “moody, vulgar, gross and so much goddamn unapologetic fun” and a must read for “any woman who’s tired of giving a damn and just wants to live life her way.”

Bonus Read: Check out Irby’s excellent blog, bitches gotta eat.

The ‘Devil in the White City’ to be exhumed

Experts in Chicago are preparing to exhume the remains of H.H. Holmes, the Chicago serial killer of Erik Larson’s 2003 book The Devil in the White City. The exhumation request was made by one of Holmes’ descendants, apparently to find out once and for all if he faked his own death. Before he was executed, Holmes confessed to more than 27 killings, many single women killed in his “Murder Castle.” Grisly!

Chicago Tribune photo

If you’re looking for more true crime, over at Book Riot, Charley Macorn shared five true crime comics that will keep you up at night. Creepy!

The Year of Living Biblically picked up by CBS

A comedy based on A.J. Jacobs best-selling book The Year of Living Biblically has been given a series order by CBS. The show, re-titled By The Book, “centers on a modern day man at a crossroads in his life who decides to live according to the Bible. It stars Jay R. Ferguson, now free and clear after his ABC series The Real O’Neals was canceled, Lindsey Kraft, Ian Gomez, David Krumholtz, Tony Rock and Camryn Manheim.”

On My Nightstand

I decided to dig into a backlist title this week, Isaac’s Storm by Erik Larson (yep, same one), the story of the deadliest natural disaster in American history – a 1900 hurricane that killed more than 6,000 people in Galveston, Texas. The central “character” of the story is Isaac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau. Larson chronicles the day using telegrams, letters, and stories from survivors. I’m just a few chapters in, but I’m definitely intrigued.

As always, feedback and comments are always welcome. You can catch me on Twitter @kimthedork, Instagram @kimthedork, or via email at kim@riotnewmedia.com. Happy reading!

This week’s newsletter has gotten pretty political, thanks to new biographies, adaptations and memoirs by and about major political figures. Let’s dive in!

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Sponsored by Timber Press, an imprint of Workman Publishing

At the age of thirty-four, Leslie Buck put her personal life on hold to pursue her passion. She became the first American woman to join Uetoh Zoen, one of the oldest and most highly acclaimed landscape companies in Kyoto. The work was often grueling and the cultural differences challenging, but a reverence for nature brought her and the dedicated craftsmen together. Cutting Back recounts Buck’s journey and her revelations along the way. This delicate and reflective memoir powerfully appeals to women working in a man’s world, visitors in foreign lands, and the other in us all.

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New Books On My Radar

Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama by David Garrow (May 9 from William Morrow) – Is the world ready for a nearly 1,500 page biography of Barack Obama’s early years, covering his childhood through his run for the White House? I’m not sure, but it’s here anyway.

Bonus Read: The New York Times has a good review of the book, covering some of the more controversial aspects. The author also spoke about his process and motivations on Inside Edition.

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson (May 2 from W.W. Norton) – In this book, “Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.” Woo, science!

Bonus Read: CBS News published some excerpts from the book, which will give you a good taste of what’s to come.

The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich (May 16 from Flatiron Books) – This book is one of my most anticipated reads of the year, thanks to the overwhelming good buzz about it on the Book Riot backchannels. Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, a young lawyer, begins to question her long-held beliefs about the death penalty after exploring a shocking case. As she digs deeper, she also has to grapple with long-buried family secrets and her past.

Bonus Listen: You can listen to about 10 minutes of the prologue read by the author at this link.

Adaptation News

There’s been some interesting news trickling out about some upcoming film and TV adaptations.

Mindy Kaling has optioned Alyssa Mastromonaco’s memoir Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Work in the White House. The book, published just last month, chronicles Mastromonaco’s time working for Barack Obama. Kaling plans to turn the book into a tv series, which sounds SO GOOD.

Reviews for The Lost City of Z, based on the 2009 book by David Grann, have been largely good (although not totally glowing). I liked this one from the New York Times, and this one in The Atlantic. I’m excited by the notes about how it feels like a classic Hollywood movie updated with more contemporary awareness.

The Glass Castle finally has a release date, August 11! The adaptation of Jeannette Walls’ 2005 best-selling memoir stars Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts. This is another one of those big nonfiction books I haven’t read, but it looks like it’s on my summer reading list.

And in more political news, Shattered, a new book by journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes about Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid, has been optioned for a limited television series. I honestly can’t decide what I think about this… it feels too soon, but maybe it’s what we all need in order to put 2016 to bed? What do you think, dear readers?

Book Review Schadenfreude

Normally, I am not into reading bad reviews of books just for the fun of it… but for Ivanka Trump, I will make an exception. The reviews for her new book, Women Who Work, have been almost universally terrible – you can get a peek at the highlights (or lowlights?) in this round up.

I did check Women Who Work out from the library to form my own opinion, but aside from the few eye-rolling moments highlighted in the reviews, it’s boring enough that I don’t think I’ll finish it. If you want some better books on working women, Rioter Trisha Brown put together a great list of books to read about women and work when your father isn’t a billionaire.

On My Nightstand

I’m currently in the middle of The Art of Grace: On Moving Well Through Life by Washington Post critic and senior arts writer Sarah L. Kaufman. By looking at grace in many forms, with an emphasis on arts and culture, Kaufman explores a “philosophy of living that promotes human connection and fulfillment.” I picked this one up impulsively while out shopping, and so far have been pleasantly surprised. I like the idea of trying to move through the world with more thoughtfulness and attention, and am enjoying the range of examples Kaufman has been drawing on to make her case.

Correction: A reader emailed to point out I made a mistake in my blurb for This Is Just My Face by Gabourey Sidibe. Sidibe is known for her role in the movie Precious, which was based on the novel Push by Sapphire. My mistake, apologies!

And that’s all for this week! As always, feedback and comments are always welcome. You can catch me on Twitter @kimthedork, Instagram @kimthedork, or via email at kim@riotnewmedia.com. Happy reading!

April showers bring May flowers, and the chance to sit outside with a good book. The house I moved into last fall with my sister has an awesome back porch, which I plan to utilize plenty this spring and summer. Where’s your favorite place to read when the weather gets warm?

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Today’s newsletter is sponsored by TarcherPerigee, publisher of Adult-ish by Christine Vanko and Adulthood for Beginners by Andy Boyle.

Ready for #RealLife?

Whether you’re a newly minted “adult” navigating your first job and paying rent for the first time—or are just about to graduate and join the “sophisticates” in the real world, Adult-ish and Adulthood for Beginners provide the tools and advice for Millennials seeking to ease the transition from dorm room to cubicle life.

Adult-ish, an illustrated, interactive journal encouraging self-reflection, is a celebration (and keepsake) of your first years as an “adult.”

Adulthood for Beginners is the hilarious—yet useful—guide for avoiding years of awkwardness, mistakes, bad dates and more that older Millennials and Gen Xers wish they’d had when they were younger.

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New Books On My Radar

This Is Just My Face by Gabourey Sidibe (May 1 from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) – Buzz on the Book Riot back channels for this book has been really good. Gabourey Sidibe is probably best known for her work in the movie Push and the television show Empire, but she’s also had an interesting life that (according to the publisher summary) has included a polygamous father and work as a phone sex “talker.” Intriguing! I’ll probably check this one out on audio, since Sidibe narrates it herself.

Bonus Read: Sidibe wrote about her love/hate relationship with social media for InStyle.

The H-Spot by Jill Filipovic (May 2 from Nation Books) – It may be immature to admit that the title of this book makes me giggle every time I type it but… whatever. In the book, attorney and author Jill Filipovic argues that the biggest challenge between women and true happiness is a rigged system that relies on free feminine labor, unrealistic standards of female perfection, and more. I imagine this one will get me riled up.

Bonus Read: In the New York Times, Filipovic argues that the Trump administration’s all male photos are a strategy, not a mistake.

Radical Hope, edited by Carolina De Robertis (May 2 from Vintage) – If the current political climate is beginning to wear on you, Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times might be a book to pick up. Collecting letters from authors like Junot Díaz, Thanh Nguyen, Karen Joy Fowler, Celeste Ng and more, the book offers perspectives on love and courage for uncommon times.

Bonus Read: The book’s Amazon page includes an excerpt from De Robertis’ opening letter explaining her idea for the project. It’s lovely.

Thoughts on Henrietta Lacks

Last weekend, HBO debuted their movie version of Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. I haven’t watched it yet (I know, I know), but I have been eagerly collecting think pieces and reviews to peruse after I’ve had a chance to form my own opinion. Here are a few I think will be worth reading:

• Aliya S. King at Jezebel – The Immortal Life of White Saviors and Black Stories
• Alyssa Rosenberg at the Washington Post – ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ and messy encounters between black and white women
• “Rebecca Skloot and ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’” at History.com
• Live Science Q&A with Rebecca Skloot

Book News in the World

On Monday, Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance died at the age of 88. The book, now considered an important work of popular philosophy, was based on a 1968 motorcycle trip Pirsig took with his son. The NPR story goes on to note that Pirsig is from Minnesota (woo, home state!) and helped found the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center. I’ve never read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – have any of you?

This October, Amy Tan has a memoir coming out titled Where the Past Begins. According to Entertainment Weekly, “she’ll explore her own past and the secrets of her family’s history, linking them both to her beloved novels.” I highly recommend clicking through to watch the video of Tan commenting on the cover of the book, it’s charming.

On My Nightstand

This week, one of my most anticipated books of the year came out – Option B by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant. After her husband, David Goldberg, died unexpectedly in 2015, Sandberg reached out to her friend, Grant, a Wharton psychologist, to learn more about resilience and recovery. The book combines Sandberg’s journey with Grant’s research on how humans handle adversity to explore how to increase our own resilience. Without getting too personal, I’ll just say that the last nine months of my life have been filled with my own immense loss, and so connecting with Sandberg through this book has been both difficult and hopeful.

As always, suggestions, recommendations, and feedback are welcome. You can reach me at kim@riotnewmedia.com or on Twitter and Instagram at kimthedork. Happy reading!

Hello again, nonfiction lovers. It’s been an exciting week – the Pulitzers were announced, Margot Lee Shetterly has another book deal, and I’ve been reading about the science of expensive wine. Let’s get down to it!

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This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Post Grad By Caroline Kitchener.

What really happens in the first year out of college? When Caroline Kitchener graduated from Princeton, she began shadowing four of her female classmates, interviewing them as they started to navigate the murky waters of post-collegiate life. Weaving together her own experience as a writer with the experiences of these other women—a documentarian, a singer, a programmer, and an aspiring doctor—Kitchener delves deeply into the personal and professional opportunities offered to female college graduates, and how the world perceives them.

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New Books on My Radar

April is such an exciting month for new books, I had a hard time narrowing down this week’s new releases down to just three. If you are anxious for more, check out Liberty’s April New Books Megalist from her New Books newsletter.

Sunshine State: Essays by Sarah Gerard (April 11 from Harper Perennial) – I feel like I have been seeing this book everywhere forever, and I’ll admit, all the buzz has made me curious. This collection looks at the state of Florida as a “microcosm of the most pressing economic and environmental perils haunting our society.” With comparisons to The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison and Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, how could you not give it a try?

Bonus Read: Christine Sang interviewed Sarah Gerard for Brooklyn Rail. The interview includes some interesting tidbits on the production and organization of the book.

Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism by Fumio Sasaki (April 11 from W.W. Norton) – I am one of those people who read The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and immediately tried to Kondo my entire life. I’m also one of those people that has fallen off the wagon and now lives in a perpetual state of clutter… so of course I’m going to keep obsessing over books on minimalism. In Goodbye, Things, average dude Fumio Sasaki shares his personal experience with minimalism and the joy it’s brought him.

Bonus Read: The Guardian writes about Japan’s ‘hardcore’ minimalists, including Fumio Sasaki.

Cake: A Slice of History by Alysa Levene (April 11 from Pegasus Books) – A micro-history of cake, from fruit cake to pound cake to angel food cake and more? I don’t need to hear more, I am in.

Bonus Read: Alysa Levene wrote about “the gender dynamics of pastries – and what it means for feminists in the kitchen” for the New Republic.

The Politics of Science

A recent study conducted by scientists at Yale, Cornell and the University of Chicago found that left-leaning and right-leaning readers are drawn to different topics in scientific literature. According to a summary of the study in the Huffington Post:

Liberals tended to prefer topics within the “life” and physical sciences, such as physics and astronomy. Conservatives, meanwhile, preferred commercial science subjects including medicine, criminology and geophysics. Certain topics like psychology and climate science attracted both liberal and conservative readers.

What’s the moral of the story? I’m not really sure, other than that your book purchasing history is being used in creative ways, and combating political polarization may mean reading outside your comfort zone across a wide range of subjects.

Book Riot Insiders

Looking for even more Book Riot goodness? We’ve got a new subscription program called Insiders, launched just this week. If you sign up (for as little as $3/month) you’ll be able to track new releases, listen to a dedicated Read Harder podcast, get a look behind-the-scenes at Book Riot, and more. Visit the Insiders site for more information and to sign up.

Pulitzer Winners Announced

The 2017 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced this week. Three of the “Letters, Drama and Music” awards are regularly given to nonfiction:

• Biography or Autobiography – The Return by Hisham Matar
• History – Blood in the Water by Heather Ann Thompson
• General Nonfiction – Evicted by Matthew Desmond

If you follow the prize link, you can also check out the other finalists and see winners from the past. I’ve always found the Pulitzer finalists (especially in general nonfiction) to be pretty good reads. And if you’re looking for something shorter, the winners and finalists in journalism are reliably excellent.

Two More Books from Margot Lee Shetterly

If you are among the people who loved Hidden Figures, here’s some good news – author Margot Lee Shetterly will be writing two more books “examining the idea of the American Dream and its legacy.” The first book will tell the stories of two influential African American households in midcentury Baltimore.

On My Nightstand

Spring has sprung, which I hope means more time for reading out on my back deck. This week I’ve got a couple of books in progress. Thanks to my Book of the Month subscription, I have an early copy of One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, a collection of essays by Saachi Koul, which has made me laugh out loud at least once already. I’m also almost finished with Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker, a Mary Roach-esque look at the world of sommeliers, wine snobs, and olfactory scientists. It’s been a delight.

As always, suggestions, recommendations, and feedback are always welcome. You can find me as @kimthedork on both Twitter and Instagram, or connect via email at kim@riotnewmedia.com. Happy reading!

One of my ongoing frustrations with the Publishing Industry is that there seems to be no consistency in when books originally out in hardcover will be out in paperback. Sometimes it’s just a few months, while other times it can be years before a paperback can fall into my hot little hands.

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This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Yoga Bodies from  Chronicle Books.

With portraits of more than 80 different yogis of all ages, shapes, sizes, backgrounds and skill levels, Yoga Bodies breaks the mold of what it means to have a “yoga body.” Inspiring and empowering, these real stories of real people who found transformation through yoga celebrate the glorious diversity of the human form.

 

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I almost always prefer the paperback, both for price and convenience, but tend to forget about titles I’m curious about between the hardcover and paperback publication dates. It’s hard to be a reader, am I right?

Since I’ve got this newsletter, I decided I could use it to try and do something about this problem. My plan is to devote one newsletter at the end of each quarter with a selection of “new in paperback” nonfiction picks. This list isn’t nearly comprehensive, but I do hope that it’s useful. Prepare for your TBR to explode… I know mine did!

Negroland by Margo Jefferson – A cultural critic looks back her upbringing in “upper-crust black Chicago.”

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren – A memoir of women in science, friendship, collaboration, and relationships with the natural world.

Evicted by Matthew Desmond – An investigation into how hard it is to get ahead as a renter, based on reporting in Milwaukee.

All the Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister – An exploration of the impact of single women on politics and culture.

The Return by Hisham Matar – Twenty-two years after his father disappeared, Matar returns to Libya to make sense of his upbringing. (Technically this is out April 4, so look then!)

Alligator Candy by David Kushner – Florida suburbs. 1970s. Murder and what everything that comes after.

Shrill by Lindy West – “A feminist rallying cry in a world that thinks gender politics are tedious and that women, especially feminists, can’t be funny.”

The Firebrand and the First Lady by Patricia Bell-Scott – The long friendship of Civil Rights leader Pauli Murray and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

Dark Money by Jane Mayer – Big-ticket Republican donors are buying influence and elections… it’s troubling.

Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson – Hilarious, uncomfortable, deeply personal essays on mental illness, depression and joy.

Lust and Wonder by Augusten Burroughs – Capstone of three memoirs, following Running with Scissors and Dry.

In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri – Memoir of a beloved writer learning to read and write in another language.

A Mother’s Reckoning by Sue Klebold – A mother grapples with her son’s role in the Columbine shooting and her journey as a parent.

The Lost Tudor Princess by Alison Weir – Lady Margaret Douglas, Henry VIII’s “cunning” niece, who survived five monarchs.

Girls and Sex by Peggy Orenstein – An in-depth look at the conflicting pressures affecting young women and their views on sexuality.

The Black Presidency by Michael Eric Dyson – A “deep dive into the true meaning of Barack Obama’s history presidency.”

The First Congress by Fergus M. Bordewich – Hey, Hamilton nerds! A “lively” history of how the Founders came up with a functioning government.

The Family Tree by Karen Branan – An account of a 1912 lynching by the great-granddaughter of the sheriff who sanctioned it.

Sex Object by Jessica Valenti – “The painful, embarrassing, and sometimes illegal moments that shaped Valenti’s adolescence and young adulthood in New York City.”

Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes – What would happen if you spent a year always saying yes?

United States of Jihad by Peter Bergen – “A riveting, panoramic look at ‘homegrown’ Islamist terrorism from 9/11 to the present.”

Imbeciles by Adam Cohen – The story behind Supreme Court ruling that made government sterilization of “undesirable” citizens legal. Yikes…

Rise of the Rocket Girls by Nathalia Holt – Women doing science in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (Also, Hidden Figures is out in paperback too!)

I Am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin – A selection from unpublished books, essays, letters, notes and interviews to accompany Raoul Peck’s new documentary about James Baldwin.

Republic of Spin by David Greenberg – A history of the White House spin machine, from Teddy Roosevelt to Barack Obama.