Our season preview from our Buzz Books 2019 Spring/Summer sampler continues with nonfiction. Politics and current events continue to lead the conversation, with numerous titles about the Trump presidency and Supreme Court. This season’s notable memoirs include offerings from Valerie Jarrett, Moby, and Tan France, all excerpted in Buzz Books. Fredrik Backman, Jill Biden, and Rick Moody also have memoirs appearing this spring.
You can download “trade edition” from NetGalley or Edelweiss, or find the consumer editions from Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Apple’s iBooks, Google Play, and Kobo, among other online retailers. (Also all linked at our main Buzz Books website.)
Here is our full list of nonfiction titles for the fall and winter season, alphabetically by author. Titles excerpted in Buzz Books are noted with an asterisk. (Please remember: Because we prepared this preview many months in advance, titles, content, and publication dates are all subject to change.)
Politics and Current Events
Jill Abramson, Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts (Simon & Schuster, 2/5)
Emily Bazelon, Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration (Random House, 4/9)
Oliver Bullough, Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World (St. Martin’s, 5/7)
William J. Burns, The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal (Random House, 3/12)
Sam Dagher, Assad, Or We Burn the Country: How One Family’s Lust for Power Destroyed Syria (Little, Brown, 5/28)
Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis (Little, Brown, 5/7)
Larry Diamond, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency (Penguin Press, 6/11)
John Carlos Frey, Sand and Blood: America’s Stealth War on the Mexico Border (Nation Books, 6/25)
Adam Gopnik, A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism (Basic, 5/14)
Michael R. Gordon, Degrade and Destroy: The Inside Story of the War Against the Islamic State (FSG, 6/11)
Steven Greenhouse, Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor (Knopf, 8/6)
Carl Hulse, Confirmation Bias: Inside Washington’s War Over the Supreme Court, from Scalia’s Death to Justice Kavanaugh (Harper, 6/11)
Jamil Jivani, Why Young Men: The Dangerous Allure of Violent Movements and What We Can Do About It (All Points, 5/21)
Christopher Ketcham, This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism and Corruption are Ruining the American West (Viking, 7/16)
Parag Khanna, The Future Is Asian: Commerce, Conflict, and Culture in the 21st Century (Simon & Schuster, 2/5)
Henry Kissinger and Winston Lord, Kissinger on Kissinger: Reflections on Diplomacy, Grand Strategy, and Leadership (All Points, 5/14)
Tom LoBianco, Piety & Power: Mike Pence and the Taking of the White House (Dey Street, 3/5)
Marty Makary, The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care–and How to Fix It (Bloomsbury, 4/2)
P.E. Moskowitz, The Case against Free Speech: The First Amendment, Fascism, and the Future of Dissent (Nation Books, 8/13)
Philip Mudd, Black Site: The CIA in the Post-9/11 World (Liveright, 7/30)
Janet Napolitano with Karen Breslau, How Safe Are We?: Homeland Security Since 9/11 (PublicAffairs, 3/26)
Alexander Nazaryan, The Best People: The Inside Story of Trump’s Crony Cabinet (Hachette, 5/7)
Michael O’Sullivan, The Levelling: What’s Next After Globalization (PublicAffairs, 5/28)
Peter Pomerantsev, This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality (PublicAffairs, 8/6)
David Rothkopf, Treason: The Case Against Donald J. Trump (Thomas Dunne, 5/28)
Scott Rozelle and Natalie Johnson, China’s Invisible Crisis: How a Growing Urban-Rural Divide Could Sink the World’s Second-Largest Economy (Basic, 3/5)
Jim Sciutto, The Shadow War: Inside Russia and China’s Secret Operations to Undermine America (Harper, 5/14)
Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer, The Hill to Die On: The Battle for Congress and the Future of Trump’s America (Crown, 4/9)
Aaron Short and Allen Salkin, The Method to the Madness: Donald Trump’s Ascent as Told by Those Who Were Hired, Fired, Inspired–and Inaugurated (All Points, 5/21)
Robby Soave, Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump (All Points, 6/18)
Joseph C. Sternberg, The Theft of a Decade: How the Baby Boomers Stole the Millennials’ Economic Future (PublicAffairs, 5/14)
Matt Stoller, Goliath: How Monopolies Secretly Took Over the World (Simon & Schuster, 6/4)
Christopher Varelas, How Money Became Dangerous: The Inside Story of our Turbulent Relationship with Modern Finance (Ecco, 8/13)
Social Issues
Samantha Allen, Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States (Little, Brown, 3/5)
Deborah Appleman, Words No Bars Can Hold: Literacy Learning in Prison (Norton, 5/14)
Amy Blackstone, Childfree by Choice: The Movement Redefining Family and Creating a New Age of Independence (Dutton, 6/11)
David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Joy of Giving Yourself Away (Random House, 4/16)
David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (Riverhead, 5/28)
Emily Guendelsberger, On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane (Little, Brown, 7/16)
Rucker C. Johnson, Alexander Nazaryan, Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works (Basic, 4/16)
Darcy Lockman, All the Rage: Mothers, Fathers, and the Myth of Equal Partnership (Harper, 5/7)
Jeff Madrick, Invisible Americans: The Tragic Cost of Child Poverty (Knopf, 8/13)
Dani McClain, We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood (Nation Books, 4/2)
Jonathan M. Metzl, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland (Basic, 3/5)
Amanda Montell, Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language (Harper Wave, 6/4)
Paul Morland, The Human Tide: How Population Shaped the Modern World (Public Affairs, 3/5)
Susan Neiman, Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (FSG, 8/27)
Walt Odets, Out of the Shadows: Reconstructing Gay Men’s Lives (FSG, 6/4)
Maggie Paxson, The Plateau: Field Notes from a Place of Refuge in a World Adrift (Paxson, 8/13)
Christian Picciolini, Breaking Hate: Confronting the New Culture of Extremism (Hachette, 8/27)
Jonathan A. Rodden, Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide (Basic, 6/4)
Shalini Shankar, Beeline: What Spelling Bees Reveal About Generation Z’s New Path to Success (Basic, 4/30)
Rachel Louise Snyder, No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us (Bloomsbury USA, 5/14)
Lisa Taddeo, Three Women (S&S/Avid Reader, 8/20)
Harriet A. Washington, A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind (Little, Brown Spark, 7/23)
D. Watkins, We Speak for Ourselves: A Word from Forgotten Black America (Atria, 4/23)
Marc Weitzmann, Hate: The Rising Tide of Anti-Semitism in France (HMH, 3/12)
Dan Werb, City of Omens: A Search for the Missing Women of the Borderlands (Bloomsbury, 6/4)
Naomi Wolf, Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalization of Love (HMH, 6/18)
Science & Technology
Dan Albert, Are We There Yet?: The American Automobile Past, Present, and Driverless (Norton, 6/11)
Mark Arax, The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California (Knopf, 5/21)
Erik Asphaug, When the Earth Had Two Moons: Cannibal Planets, Dreadful Orbits, Icy Giants, Dirty Comets and the Origins of Today’s Night Sky (Custom House, 7/2)
Andrew Blum, The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast (Ecco, 6/25)
Douglas Brinkley, American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race (Harper, 4/2)
Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake, The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies, and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats (Penguin Press, 7/16)
Gordon L. Dillow, Fire in the Sky: Cosmic Collisions, Killer Asteroids, and the Race to Defend Earth (Scribner, 6/4)
James Donovan, Shoot for the Moon: The Space Race and the Extraordinary Voyage of Apollo 11 (Little, Brown, 3/12)
David Ewing Duncan, Talking to Robots: Tales from Our Robot-Human Futures (Dutton, 6/4)
Ben Goldacre, Statins (FSG, 5/14)
Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri, Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass (Eamon Dolan/HMH, 5/7)
Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson, Jump-starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream (PublicAffairs, 4/9)
Julian Guthrie, Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took On Silicon Valley’s Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime (Currency, 4/30)
John Halpern and David Blistein, Opium: How an Ancient Flower Shaped and Poisoned Our World (Hachette, 8/13)
Susan Hockfield, The Age of Living Machines: How Biology Will Build the Next Technology Revolution (Norton, 5/7)
Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricantm, User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play (MCD, 5/21)
David Kushner, The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet’s Rise (Simon & Schuster, 4/9)
Guy Leschziner, The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep (St. Martin’s, 7/23)
Gretchen McCulloch, Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language (Riverhead, 7/23)
Joseph Menn, Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World (PublicAffairs, 6/4)
Ben Mezrich, Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, and Redemption (Flatiron, 5/21)
Eric O’Neill, Gray Day: My Undercover Mission to Expose America’s First Cyber Spy (Crown, 3/26)
Tatiana Schlossberg, Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have (Grand Central, 8/27)
Jonathan Scott, The Vinyl Frontier: The Story of the Voyager Golden Record (Bloomsbury Sigma, 5/21)
Tim Smedley, Clearing the Air: The Beginning and the End of Air Pollution (Bloomsbury Sigma, 6/4)
Adrian Tinniswood, The Royal Society: And the Invention of Modern Science (Basic, 6/4)
Eric Topol, Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again (Basic, 3/12)
James Vlahos, Talk to Me: How Voice Computing Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Think (Eamon Dolan/HMH, 3/26)
Haider Warraich, State of the Heart: Exploring the History, Science, and Future of Cardiac Disease (St. Martin’s,
Amy Webb, The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity (PublicAffairs, 3/5)
Michael E. Webber, Power Trip: The Story of Energy (Basic, 5/7)
History & Crime
Dan Abrams and David Fisher, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy (Hanover Square, 5/21)
Elliot Ackerman, Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning (Penguin Press, 6/11)
Rick Atkinson, The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (Henry Holt, 5/14)
Julia Blackburn, Time Song: Journeys in Search of a Submerged Land (Pantheon, 8/6)
Mark Bowden, The Last Stone: Masterpiece of Criminal Interrogation (Atlantic Monthly, 4/2)
Maureen Callahan, American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century (Viking 7/2)
Tina Cassidy, Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait?: Alice Paul, Woodrow Wilson, and the Fight for the Right to Vote (Atria/37 Ink, 3/5)
Casey Cep, Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee (Knopf, 5/7)
Gordon H. Chang, Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad (HMH, 5/7)
Jared Cohen, Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America (Simon & Schuster, 4/9)
John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker, The Killer Across the Table: Unlocking the Secrets of Serial Killers and Predators with the FBI’s Original Mindhunter (Dey Street, 5/7)
Deborah Riley Draper, Blair Underwood, and Travis Thrasher, The Black Auxiliary: The Untold Story of 18 African Americans Who Defied Jim Crow and Adolf Hitler to Compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics (Atria, 8/13)
Peter Duffy, The Agitator: William Bailey and the First American Uprising against Nazism (PublicAffairs, 3/19)
James M. Fenelon, Four Hours of Fury: The Untold Story of World War II’s Largest Airborne Operation and the Final Push into Nazi Germany (Scribner, 4/23)
Adam Higginbotham, Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster (Simon & Schuster, 2/12)
Matti Friedman, Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel (Algonquin, 3/5)
John Glatt, The Family Next Door: The Heartbreaking Imprisonment of the 13 Turpin Siblings and Their Extraordinary Rescue (St Martin’s, 8/6)
Tony Horwitz, Spying on the South: Travels with Frederick Law Olmsted in a Fractured Land (Viking, 5/14)
Josh Levin, The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth (Little, Brown, 5/21)
Annie Jacobsen, Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins (Little, Brown, 5/14)
Michael J. Mazarr, Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and America’s Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy (PublicAffairs, 3/19)
Antonio J. Mendez and Jonna Mendez, The Moscow Rules: The Secret CIA Tactics That Helped America Win the Cold War (PublicAffairs, 5/21)
Rachel Monroe, Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime and Obsession (Scribner, 8/20)
Peter Moore, Endeavour: The Ship That Changed the World (FSG, 5/14)
Andrew Nagorski, The Year Germany Lost the War: 1941 (Simon & Schuster, 6/4)
Daniel Okrent, The Guarded Gate: Patricians, Eugenicists, and the Crusade to Keep Jews, Italians, and Other Immigrants Out of America (Scribner, 5/7)
Margaret O’Mara, The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America (Penguin Press, 7/9)
Tom O’Neill with Dan Piepenbring, Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties (Little, Brown, 6/25)
Anna Pasternak, The Real Wallis Simpson: A New History of the American Divorcée who became the Duchess of Windsor (Atria, 3/5)
Evan Ratliff, The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. (Random House, 3/5)
Clay Risen, The Crowded Hour: Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, and the Dawn of the American Century (Scribner, 6/4)
Cara Robertson, The Trial of Lizzie Borden (Simon & Schuster, 3/12)
William Rosenau, Tonight We Bombed the U.S. Capitol: The Explosive Story of M19, America’s First Female Terrorist Group (Atria, 7/2)
Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (HMH, 4/9)
Julie Satow, The Plaza: The Secret Life of America’s Most Famous Hotel (Twelve, 6/4)
Aaron Shulman, The Age of Disenchantments: The Epic Story of Spain’s Most Notorious Literary Family and the Long Shadow of the Spanish Civil War (Ecco, 3/5)
Duncan White, Cold Warriors: Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold War (Custom House, 8/27)
Simon Winder, Lotharingia: A Personal History of Europe’s Lost Country (FSG, 4/23)
Essays, Criticism, & More
Stephanie Burt, Don’t Read Poetry: A Book About How to Read Poems (Basic, 5/21)
Rachel Cusk, Coventry (FSG, 8/20) – Essays by the author of the Outline Trilogy.
Michele Filgate (editor), What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence (Simon & Schuster, 4/30)
Zahra Hankir (editor), Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World (Penguin Books, 8/6)
Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett, The Four Horsemen: The Conversation That Sparked an Atheist Revolution (Random House, 3/19)
Matthew Kepnes, Ten Years a Nomad: A Traveler’s Journey Home (St. Martin’s, 6/9)
Gabriel García Márquez, The Scandal of the Century: And Other Writings (Knopf, 5/14) – Selected journalistic writings collected for the first time.
Emily Nussbaum, I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution (Random House, 5/14)
Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Something That May Shock and Discredit You (Atria, 8/6)
Mary Laura Philpott, I Miss You When I Blink: Essays (Atria, 4/2)
Leah Price, What We Talk About When We Talk About Books: The History and Future of Reading (Basic, 8/20)
Antonin Scalia, On Faith: Lessons from an American Believer (Crown Forum, 4/9)
Amber Tamblyn, Era of Ignition: Coming of Age in a Time of Rage and Revolution (Crown Archetype, 3/5)
John Waters, Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder (FSG, 6/4)
Lindy West, The Witches Are Coming (Hachette, 5/28)
Biography & Memoir
Heather B. Armstrong, The Valedictorian of Being Dead: The True Story of Dying Ten Times to Live (Gallery, 4/23)
Fredrik Backman, Things My Son Needs To Know About The World (Atria, 5/7) –From the author of A Man Called Ove, a collection of essays about fatherhood.
Yousef Bashir, The Words of My Father: A Story from Palestine (Harper, 5/7)
Christopher Benfey, If: The Untold Story of Kipling’s American Years (Penguin Press, 7/9)
Dale Berra with Mark Ribowsky, My Dad, Yogi: A Memoir of Family and Baseball (Hachette, 5/7)
Jill Biden, Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself (Flatiron, 5/7)
Joan Biskupic, The Chief: The Life and Turbulent Times of Chief Justice John Roberts (Basic, 3/26)
Stephen Budiansky, Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas (Norton, 5/28)
Ash Carter, Inside the Five-Sided Box: Lessons from a Lifetime of Leadership in the Pentagon (Dutton, 6/11) – From the former Secretary of Defense.
Adam Chandler, Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America’s Fast-Food Kingdom (Flatiron,
Laura Clery, Idiot: Essays (Gallery, 4/9)
Jaed Coffin, Roughhouse Friday (FSG, 6/18)*
Laura Cumming, Five Days Gone: The Mystery of My Mother’s Disappearance as a Young Girl (Scribner, 8/6)
Nicole Weisensee Egan, Chasing Cosby: The Downfall of America’s Dad (Seal Press, 4/23)
Jennifer Cody Epstein, Wunderland (Crown, 4/23)
Zulema Arroyo Farley, So Much More to Do (Atria, 6/4)
Tan France, Naturally Tan (St. Martin’s, 5/14)*
Donna Freitas, Consent: A Memoir of Unwanted Attention (Little, Brown, 8/13)
Bill Geist, Lake of the Ozarks: My Surreal Summers in a Vanishing America (Grand Central, 5/7)
Nicci Gerrard, The Last Ocean: A Journey Through Memory and Forgetting (Penguin Press, 8/13)
John Glynn, Out East: Memoir of a Montauk Summer (Grand Central Publishing, 5/14)
Danny Goldberg, Serving the Servant: Remembering Kurt Cobain (Ecco, 4/2)
Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk To Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed (HMH, 4/2)*
Aleksandar Hemon, My Parents / This Does Not Belong to You: An Introduction (MCD, 5/7)
Mira Jacob, Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations (One World, 3/26)
Mitchell Jackson, Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family (Scribner, 3/5)
Shaili Jain, The Unspeakable Mind: Stories of Trauma and Healing from the Frontlines of PTSD Science (Harper, 5/7)
Valerie Jarrett, Finding My Voice (Viking, 4/2)*
Mark Kram, Jr., Smokin’ Joe: The Life of Joe Frazier (Ecco, 6/18)
C.M. Kushins, Nothing’s Bad Luck: The Lives of Warren Zevon (Da Capo, 5/7)
Dorian Lynskey, The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell’s 1984 (Doubleday, 6/4)
William J. Mann, The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando (Harper, 6/11)
Alyssa Mastromonaco with Lauren Oyler, So Here’s the Thing . . .: Notes on Growing Up, Getting Older, and Trusting Your Gut (Twelve, 3/5)
Meredith May, The Honey Bus: A Memoir of Loss, Courage and a Girl Saved by Bees (Park Row, 4/2)*
Patrick McGilligan, Funny Man: Mel Brooks (Harper, 3/19)
Moby, Then It Fell Apart (Faber and Faber, 5/7)*
Rick Moody, The Long Accomplishment: A Memoir of Struggle and Hope in Matrimony (Henry Holt, 8/6)
Karen Olsson, The Weil Conjectures (FSG, 7/16)
Susan Page, The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty (Twelve, 4/2)
Scott Pelley, Truth Worth Telling: A Reporter’s Search for Meaning in the Stories of Our Times: A Reporter’s Search for Meaning in the Stories of Our Times (Hanover Square, 5/21)
Tom Phelan, We Were Rich and We Didn’t Know It: A Memoir of My Irish Boyhood (Gallery, 3/5)
Iliana Regan, Burn the Place (Midway Books, 5/14)*
Ebony Roberts, The Love Prison Made: A Memoir that Reveals the Intimate Side of Mass Incarceration (Amistad, 7/9)
Pete Rose, Play Hungry: The Making of a Baseball Player (Penguin Press, 6/4)
Martha Saxton, The Widow Washington: The Life of Mary Washington (FSG, 6/11)
Tom Segev, A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion (FSG, 8/27)
Isha Sesay, Beneath the Tamarind Tree: A Story of Courage, Family, and the Lost Schoolgirls of Boko Haram (Dey Street, 7/9)
John Paul Stevens, The Making of a Justice: Reflections on My First 94 Years (Little, Brown, 5/14)
J. Randy Taraborrelli, The Kennedy Heirs: John, Caroline, and the New Generation – A Legacy of Triumph and Tragedy (St. Martin’s, 6/11)
Evan Thomas, First: Sandra Day O’Connor (Random House, 3/19)
Sarah Valentine, When I Was White (St. Martin’s, 8/13)
Lawrence Weschler, And How Are You, Dr. Sacks?: A Biographical Memoir of Oliver Sacks (FSG, 8/13)
A.N. Wilson, Prince Albert (Harper, 8/6)
Robert Wilson, Barnum: An American Life (Simon & Schuster, 8/6)
Jessica Wragg, Girl on the Block (Dey Street, 8/1)