Slather on some sunscreen, cocoon yourself in a hammock, and lose yourself in a chlorinated haze this summer with these memoirs, biographies and deeply-reported investigations. Among the nonfiction books we’re excited for are workplace memoirs by a grocery store worker and a chef, a new biography of Harry Belafonte and a history of an 1830s American whaling boat shipwreck.
June
Memoir
Cancel Me if You Can
by Dave Portnoy
Since he founded Barstool Sports in 2004, the digital media mogul’s reputation has shifted from scrappy upstart to disruptive visionary and, most recently, unapologetic contrarian. Here, he tells his side of the story.
chess scandal
Checkmate
by Ben Mezrich
The best-selling author of “The Accidental Billionaires,” the basis for the movie “The Social Network,” unravels the scandal that rocked the chess world in 2022, when a 19-year-old American prodigy was accused of cheating after he unseated the reigning world champion.
politics and Faith
The Crooked Places Made Straight
by Raphael G. Warnock
Warnock, the Baptist pastor who has represented Georgia in the U.S. Senate since 2021, shares what he calls his “moral topography” on six issues: voting rights, mass incarceration, gun violence, climate change, income inequality and dark money in politics.
Guidebook
How to Not Die in Prison
by Taylor Sheridan and Tom Nelson
Sheridan, who created “Yellowstone,” has never been in prison, but the coauthor of this tough-talking guide says that’s by design. “One of us has written hit TV shows and Academy Award-nominated movies, and the other has spent much of his adult life behind bars,” Nelson told People magazine.
Politics
Regime Change
by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan
Two New York Times reporters who have followed Donald Trump over the last decade unpack the first year of his second presidency, taking readers inside the Situation Room and the Oval Office.
language and comedy
Something We Said
by Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor
In this personal and linguistic history, Pryor traces her complicated relationship with her father, the celebrated comedian Richard Pryor, and with the racial slur that played a central role in his career.
Memoir
Transcendent
by Laverne Cox
The Emmy-nominated transgender actress and L.G.B.T.Q. rights activist was on the verge of giving up her Hollywood dream when she landed a life-changing role in “Orange Is the New Black.” In her memoir, Cox recounts what it took to get her there.
memoir
Trash!
by Simon Pare-Poupart
In this memoir translated from the French by Pablo Strauss, a Montreal trash collector recounts 20 years in waste management, scrutinizing overconsumption and exploring the politics of refuse.
memoir
View From the East Wing
by Jill Biden
The former first lady Jill Biden writes about her life inside the White House — and her husband’s stunning decision not to seek re-election.
politics
What Conservatives Believe
by Mike Pence
The former vice president outlines his vision for the future of American conservatism in this account disavowing “the temptations of big-government populism.”
history
The Wreck of the Mentor
by Eric Jay Dolin
The author of “Black Flags, Blue Waters” turns to the tale of an American whaling ship whose 11 shipwrecked survivors were held captive by a Micronesian tribe in the 1830s.
Investigation
The Yahoo Boys
by Carlos Barragán
After his mother fell for an email scam, Barragán, a reporter-researcher at The New York Times, booked a flight to Lagos, Nigeria, and tracked the swindler via IP address. What he found was a local network of thousands of con artists, each caught between moral obligations and a brutal economic reality.
July
Caregiving
Aging Out
by Lucy Schiller
Following the death of her grandmother during the Covid pandemic, Schiller investigated what it means to grow old in America, challenging her own beliefs about aging along the way.
Memoir
All That’s Unseen
by Emilee Hackney
Hackney, an eighth-generation Appalachian, details her upbringing in the coal-mining hollers and Pentecostal churches of southwestern Virginia, including an early marriage that went darkly wrong.
science
Biological War
by Annie Jacobsen
In her new book, the author of “Nuclear War: A Scenario” turns to biological warfare, imagining the dystopian fallout of a global infection with the potential to collapse human society.
true crime
Catch the Devil
by Pamela Colloff
The dubious testimonies of a con man help put several men behind bars and one on death row for a crime another man admitted to committing in this book from Colloff, an investigative journalist for ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine.
history
Liberation Summer
by Micki McElya
One weekend in the summer of 1968, two very different groups protested the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, N.J.: the Miss Black America pageant, and the women’s liberation movement. McElya traces the road to that galvanizing weekend, with portraits of activists on both sides of the ideological spectrum.
Culinary memoir
Our Knives Will Save Us
by Nephi Craig
Craig recounts how he went from an Arizona reservation kid to an esteemed chef — starting with the felony arrest at 18 that nearly sent him to prison, and the judge who offered him a different path.
Grief memoir
Rise Above
by Matthew Schnipper
Schnipper’s memoir details his seismic grief after the devastating sudden death of his 1-year-old son Renzo in December 2021.
true crime
Sisters of the Midnight Sun
by Rebecca Wright Stevens
Stevens, a public defender, moved to a remote area of Alaska after her husband died. When two sisters were murdered, she was assigned to defend the prime suspect — a case that threw her into the deep end of the insular Indigenous community where she was a tanik, or outsider.
memoir
The Solo Honeymoon
by Laura Murphy with Bret Witter
After Murphy’s fiancé died a month before their wedding, she decided to go on the romantic honeymoon in Italy they had planned alone.
Memoir
Unsayable
by Michael Cunningham
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author offers a moving meditation on the power of language and the mission of the fiction writer: to capture in prose that which defies description.
August
history and memoir
The Black Shield
by Wilbert L. Cooper
In a memoir about race, power and the complexities of being a Black police officer, Cooper, a Marshall Project journalist, chronicles the history of the Black Shield — a Black police organization in Cleveland — while tracing his own family’s journey to policing.
Biography
Daylight Come
by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro
A new biography of the iconic musician, movie star and activist Harry Belafonte details his upbringing, rise to fame, friendship with Martin Luther King Jr. and enduring legacy.
history
A Moment in the Sun
by Shane White
From an acclaimed historian comes a definitive account of antebellum Manhattan, which brimmed with Black art and achievement 100 years before the Harlem Renaissance.
Politics
Seasons of Fury
by Rozina Ali
Following four families across eight decades, Ali, a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, takes a long view of the political moves that have complicated everyday life for Muslim Americans.
Illustrated narrative
Triage
by Claudia Rankine
Rankine braids criticism, memoir and more in this illustrated story of two women whose lives diverge and reconverge over decades.
Parenting
What Should My Children Do?
by Daniel Susskind
Susskind, a business professor and the author of “Growth,” offers readers frank, evidence-based advice about mindful parenting in the age of A.I.
The post The Nonfiction Everyone Will Be Reading This Summer appeared first on New York Times.
