Our Most Anticipated Nonfiction Books of the Summer

"Adventures are always set outside of the normal terms of life, but here Elmhirst lets her readers experience the extremes not only of those 117 days at sea but the ways in which they shaped and were shaped by the many thousands of days of Maurice and Maralyn’s relationship either side of them. The result is a compelling book about a shipwreck, but also as thoughtful a tale about marriage, for better and worse, as you are likely to read." – Tim Adams, The Guardian

As the daughter of a second-wave feminist icon, Molly Jong-Fast grew up often yearning for a deeper connection with a mother that always seemed to have more important things going on. After her mother was diagnosed with dementia and her husband with a rare cancer, Jong-Fast's life was turned upside down. This memoir follows the transformative impact of these diagnoses and explores the complex relationship between Jong-Fast and her mother.

"Fraser is determined to make the reader see the worst of the killers’ actions, in vivid but unsensationalistic detail, to underscore the ever-escalating crises that mining and smelting businesses tried to underplay, pay off, or ignore. By the ’90s, as bans on leaded gasoline took effect, smelters closed, and the EPA set stricter pollution standards, the number of serial killers dissipated. Fraser’s book is an engrossing and disturbing portrait of decades of carnage that required decades to confront... A true-crime story written with compassion, fury, and scientific sense." – Kirkus Reviews

In 2019, Karen Hao, a reporter with the MIT Technology Review was given rare access to a niche technology company that few outside of the world of AI reserach had heard of. Six years later, OpenAI, and its CEO Sam Altamn, have become one of the most powerful forces and best known companies in the world. This is the inside story of OpenAI's rapid rise which has been met with fierce hostility from the company itself.

"The best book about Sin City ever written. Yes, better even than Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas... Dunne has Thompson beat. His grotesqueries aren't drug-induced, they're very real. His is the genuine Vegas... What happened to John Gregory Dunne in Vegas didn't stay in Vegas, and he was all the better for it. So will you be after reading this phenomenal book." – Sean Manning, Esquire

In The Dry Season, Melissa Febos documents the year of abstinence she took in the wake of the tumultous end to a long-term relationship. Having for so long defined herself by the relationships she constantly cycled through, she was determined to finally spend time alone. The result was a year of utter transformation which reshaped her friendships, spirtuality, creativity, and her relationship with herself.

2024 is the explosive, behind-the-scenes chronicle of Donald Trump’s stunning return to power. Award-winning reporters Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf deliver a gripping account of the most chaotic campaign in U.S. history—marked by indictments, infighting, and political upheaval. With unmatched access to Trump, Biden, and Harris teams, this definitive narrative reveals how Trump defied the odds to reclaim the White House—and what it means for America’s future.

"Across both sections of the book, Lacey offers meditations on faith, violence, friendship, and dislocation. With scalpellike precision, she teases out connections between her childhood experiences with loving and losing God and losing her faith in love as an adult. There are no easy endings in this doubled book, just an infinity loop of questions and possibilities, a twinned bank of pay phones ringing in the night, waiting for someone to answer. A literary haunting that will burrow under your skin." – Kirkus Reviews

The critically acclaimed fiction writer's first foray into nonfiction, examines the nature of Black womanhood today and throughout American history. Using her own experience and deep, insightful understanding of culture and history, Jeffers reveals the tensions at the heart of the Black woman experience.

"Toni Morrison argued that black lives are 'spoken of and written about as objects of history, not subjects within it.' How then to humanise and investigate the interior lives of historical figures in the absence of source material? It’s a dilemma addressed in Eshun’s hybrid of biography and memoir through an extraordinary feat of empathy." – Colin Grant, The Guardian