21 Nonfiction Books Coming this Summer

New York Times

22-05-2025

The Dry Season
After the breakup of a disastrous relationship, Febos takes a vow of celibacy — not to get closer to God, but to get closer to herself. She relishes in the sensuality of solitude and the pursuit of her art, a practice she situates in a long lineage of women who have made similar trade-offs: the Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen and the authors Virginia Woolf and Octavia Butler, to name a few.
Buckley
Tanenhaus, a former editor of the Times Book Review, exposes the roots of the modern conservative movement through this authoritative biography of William F. Buckley Jr., the firebrand writer and commentator who shaped it. As Buckley's only authorized biographer, Tanenhaus draws from troves of his private papers and extensive interviews with the man himself.
The Gunfighters
In his follow-up to the best selling 'Forget the Alamo,' Burrough offers a myth-busting look at the Wild West, though still replete with outlaws, cattle drives and carnage. In Burrough's telling, the Lone Star State, at the crossroads of anarchic frontier culture and Old South dueling culture, has been a hotbed of violence since its inception, making it a haven for gunslingers and, more formatively, the newspapermen and Hollywood producers who wanted to dramatize them.
How to Lose Your Mother
'I was born to privilege, born on third base, but desperate to strike out and go home,' writes Jong-Fast of her childhood in the shadow of her fame-hungry feminist icon mother, the writer Erica Jong. As Jong's health declines, Jong-Fast — now an esteemed writer in her own right — offers an unflinching, albeit not unkind, reflection on the relationship between mothers and daughters.
Baddest Man
A veteran sports journalist's nuanced history of the heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson offers a portrait of a mercurial young street fighter from Brooklyn, thrust onto the world stage — with all its attendant perks and indignities. Though the narrative ends in 1988, at the height of Tyson's boxing career, it sets in motion 'the snowballing phenomenon' of one of the most controversial athletes in American history.
Murderland
Fraser begins with a simple true-crime curiosity — why did the Pacific Northwest have so many serial killers in the '70s and '80s? — and expands her gaze to encompass the recent history of American industrialization and the hidden consequences of environmental degradation. The result is a scientific re-examination of Ted Bundy and his ilk, and the toxic chemicals that may have rotted their brains.
The Möbius Book
Split into fiction and memoir — two narratives, each beginning at either cover — Lacey's latest book draws its cohesion from ruminations on religion, permanence and waning relationships. In a novella, two friends, Marie and Edie, discuss a mutual friendship over tequila as a fresh puddle of blood collects outside a neighbor's door. Elsewhere, Lacey processes the aftermath of a breakup and the possibility of new love via reflections on Annie Baker, Dr. Watson and Christianity.
'Make It Ours'
This biography of Virgil Abloh, the men's wear chief at Louis Vuitton until his death in 2021, doubles as a lens into a staid luxury industry undergoing rapid transformation. Givhan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, deftly lays out how streetwear's grass roots revolution challenged fashion's stuffy notions of taste, exclusivity and their consumers — and paved the way for a hip-hop provocateur like Abloh to rise to the top.
The Beast in the Clouds
In 1928-29, Theodore Roosevelt's two eldest sons went on a swashbuckling global adventure to prove the existence of the until-then mystical panda bear. Holt chronicles their journey into the Himalayan wilderness — marred by sickness, violence and extreme weather — and what the landmark mission meant for the future of wildlife conservation.
A Marriage at Sea
In the early '70s, an eccentric married couple ditched their landlocked lives for grand plans to sail to New Zealand. Elmhirst's book opens just as a sperm whale crashes into their boat, kicking off a harrowing 117 days stranded at sea. But while the physical circumstances are extraordinary, the psychological drama is all too universal. 'What else is a marriage,' asks Elmhirst, 'if not being stuck on a small raft with someone and trying to survive?'
On Her Game
Caitlin Clark, the highest-scoring college basketball player in N.C.A.A. history, was a revelation to most observers following her standout season in 2024. Brennan draws on interviews and behind-the-scenes reporting in this energetic account of that campaign, and explains how the ensuing explosion in popularity of women's basketball is a legacy of Title IX's passage in 1972.
Dinner with King Tut
In the budding discipline known as experimental archaeology, researchers are driven by the full spectrum of human senses. Kean follows them on zany investigations and tactile recreations of ancient life that involve hunting with primitive spears, baking with ancient yeast strains, wrapping human mummies, taking perilous boats out to sea and building Roman-style roads.
Sloppy, Or: Doing It All Wrong
King's first book, 'Tacky,' was a sharp and spirited essay collection on pop culture and the pleasures of 'bad' taste (think: Creed, the Cheesecake Factory and 'Jersey Shore')8 This follow-up, which also enumerates 'my mistakes and crimes,' as the author has put it, is constructed out of 17 observant essays on the compulsions and vices — overspending, shoplifting, addiction, to name a few — that have molded her.
Tonight in Jungleland
Carlin, who has published biographies of R.E.M., Paul Simon and the Boss himself, pulls back the curtain on the making of Springsteen's 'Born to Run' album 50 years after its release. Drawing on interviews with the artist and his inner circle, Carlin revisits how each song was written and recorded while shedding light on the arduous studio sessions and their parallels to Springsteen's career.
Blessings and Disasters
Braiding personal narrative with Southern history, Okeowo, a contributing writer at The New Yorker, reckons with her love for Montgomery, Alabama, where she was raised by Nigerian parents, despite the state's legacy of chattel slavery and Indigenous dispossession and its more recent evolution into the backdrop for Amazon warehouses, auto plants and culture war lawsuits.
King of Kings
Much like his 'Lawrence in Arabia' (2013), Anderson's latest is an exercise in demystification. This absorbing account of the 1979 Iranian revolution unravels the story of how the nation's seemingly invulnerable leader, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, was forced into exile, and the ensuing hostage crisis that rattled American confidence and singed its reputation in the Middle East.
Tart
After quitting a 9-to-5 in corporate marketing, Cheff, the anonymous author of this gritty memoir, breaks into London's fine dining world in the hopes of becoming a chef. What follows is a tell-all detailing hot bartenders, endless emulsions and grueling work weeks offset by plenty of sex.
Summer of Our Discontent
Williams, a dependably contrarian voice on issues of race and social justice in the United States, examines how a confluence of issues — the Covid-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, the proliferation of social media — sparked an 'illiberal backlash,' and traces its influence to ongoing social justice movements, such as pro-Palestine encampments at universities across the country.
Hotshot
Wildland firefighting is no joke, as Selby, who spent years as part of an elite unit known as the Hotshots, details in this memoir. The author details their teenage struggles with homelessness and addiction, notes the rugged camaraderie and sexism of fire crews and shares searing insights on federal fire policy, Indigenous land use and American ecological history.
Anonymous Male
A former F.B.I. sniper falls off the grid in Somalia, raises a private army in Southeast Asia, survives a coup d'état and lives clandestinely for years until a near-death experience forces him to reassess his life. What sounds like the melodramatic plot of a James Patterson novel is Whitcomb's lived past, candidly divulged in this redemptive memoir.
The Martians
Mars, our barren neighbor, has served as an empty canvas for our expansionist imaginations since long before Elon Musk arrived on the scene. Baron chronicles the lasting influence of the Mars mania that gripped America during the early 1900s, how it captured the imaginations of Nikola Tesla and Alexander Graham Bell, generated speculative news headlines, fueled astronomical ambitions and left an indelible imprint on our culture.