Whether you’re looking for your next great read or looking to check off a Book Bingo square, June has some great new nonfiction to consider (in addition to June’s Peak Picks).
Politicos, AI skeptics, and anyone else who wants to take a deep dive on recent events have a lot of options this month. Cory Doctorow guides us on how to think about AI – before it’s too late – with The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI while Pulitzer Prize-finalist Robert Wright returns with a sweeping new view of AI, and our coming cosmic reckoning, in The God Test. Former First Lady Jill Biden discusses her four years in the White House in View From the East Wing; Georgia Senator Reverand Raphael Warnock reflects on the moral meaning of America in The Crooked Places Made Straight; and White House correspondent Maggie Haberman goes deep inside the imperial presidency of Donald Trump in Regime Change. Barbara McQuade urges readers to save America from the corruption of mob-style government in The Fix; Julia Angwin pens a deeply reported manual on how to be a dissident in an age of fear in On Courage; and Chris Smalls, who helped create the first Amazon union in the U.S., teaches readers how to fight for the future of the working class in When the Revolution Comes. Justine van der Leun tells three stories of violence, imprisonment, and extraordinary survival in the U.S. legal system in Unreasonable Women. And Carlos Barragán reports on love, deception, and the real lives of Nigeria’s romance scammers in The Yahoo Boys.
In memoir, YouTube adventurer Eva zu Beck inspires with adventure, freedom, and an uncharted life in The Wilder Way while Lauren Hough updates John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley as she hits the road in search of modern America in Monster of a Land. Dave Portnoy details the journey of how he built his polarizing media empire, Barstool Sports, in Cancel Me If You Can while Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Dorit Kemsley reveals the unscripted moments that shaped who she is today in Unburdened. Game of Thrones star Hannah Murray explores the spiritual awakening that turned into a mental breakdown in The Make-Believe and Vice President J.D. Vance pens an intimate account of how he strayed from the Christianity of his youth and what led him back to faith in Communion. Guitarist Kim Thayil goes into the superunknown with Soundgarden and beyond in A Screaming Life. Amateur home cook Krys Malcolm Belc chronicles his hard and fast descent into an obsession with food celebrities in What I Made for Dinner. And Montreal garbageman Simon Paré-Poupart attempts to convince people to “stop imagining that your garbage magically disappears” in Trash!
In history, Liaquat Ahamed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lords of Finance, studies the Rothschilds, the first Great Depression, and the making of the modern world in 1873 while Eric Jay Dolin tells the true story of death, despair, and deliverance in the age of sail in The Wreck of the Mentor. Katja Hoyer tells a history of interwar Germany told through the town of Weimar while Stephan Talty profiles the archaeologists and classicists who fought the Nazis and saved treasures of Ancient Greece in The American School of Spies. Emma Southon presents a groundbreaking history of how slavery made the Roman Empire in Not Built in a Day. Eric Moskowitz details how sabotage marked the first true coast-to-coast automobile race in U.S. history in The Hardest, Longest Race and Devin Thomas O’Shea looks at the secret society that has controlled St. Louis for over a century in The Veiled Prophet.
Darby Saxbe explores the new science of fatherhood and how it shapes men’s lives in Dad Brain while Taylor Sheridan, co-creator of Yellowstone, delivers How to Not Die in Prison, a darkly funny survival guide to life inside a maximum-security prison, cowritten with prison-hardened, formerly incarcerated Tom Nelson. From Steve Kamb comes How to Try Again, an approachable guide to navigating chaos and making change that sticks while Elizabeth Dunn shares how joyful decisions can impact climate change and save our species in Leave the Lights On. Drs. Rebecca Dunsmoor-Su and Amy Voedisch demystify the changes women experience during perimenopause in Estrogen, Interrupted, and from Jenny Hagel, writer/performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers, comes Advice No One Asked For, a hilarious and practical collection of advice for how to live your best life in love, at work, and in comedy.
Ben Mezrich, the author behind The Social Network, returns with the story of genius, lies, ambition, and the biggest scandal in chess in Checkmate Genius; Vaclav Smil explains how Speed explains the world across evolution, transportation, and technology; and Chris Ballard takes The Plunge and dives into the hidden world of cold water plunging and swimming. Robert MacFarlane’s latest celebration of the natural world, The Book of Birds, is a dazzling celebration of endangered birds; Saul Justin Newman embarks on a darkly comic journey to debunk modern longevity science in Morbid; and cultural historian Thomas W. Laqueur delivers an enlightening and unique meditation on the presence of dogs in art in The Dog’s Gaze.
~posted by Frank. All descriptions provided by publishers.