17 Nonfiction Books We’re Looking Forward to This Fall

Summary

The Book Review Podcast — “17 Nonfiction Books We’re Looking Forward to This Fall”

Host: Gilbert Cruz
Guest: Jumana [Xumana] Khatib
Release Date: September 12, 2025

---

Episode Overview

In this episode, editors Gilbert Cruz and Jumana Khatib of The New York Times Book Review share an engaging preview of the most anticipated nonfiction releases for Fall 2025. This is “Part 2” of their fall preview, focusing on memoirs, biographies, history, and essays, bringing both their critical insights and personal tastes to each pick. Their lively banter and complementary perspectives make this episode a valuable roadmap for anyone looking to enrich their nonfiction reading list.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

I. The Year of the Memoir: Elizabeth Gilbert’s “All the Way to the River”

• Book: All the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilbert
• Discussion:
  • Gilbert’s new memoir delves into her relationship with her late best friend-turned-lover, Rayya Elias, and grapples openly with love, addiction, loss, and recovery.
  • Jumana appreciates the raw honesty and the exploration of addiction:

    “Anybody who's approaching [addiction] with a fresh angle or something new to say, I perk up and take note.” — [03:34]

  • Gilbert is lauded as a "memoir queen" (or "monarch"), and the emotional intensity of the narrative is highlighted.

II. Literary Biography: Stephen Greenblatt’s “Dark Renaissance”

• Book: Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt
• Discussion:
  • Greenblatt, famed for inventing “New Historicism,” explores the life of Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare’s mysterious, possibly nefarious, and murdered-at-29 rival.
  • The hosts poke fun at long subtitles and academic “marketing,” but are enthusiastic about Greenblatt’s imaginative leaps in reconstructing Marlowe’s life.
  • Jumana:

    “He's writing around a cipher. And that's hard… If anybody's gonna make these intellectual and almost imaginative leaps, I trust him to do it.” — [06:40]

III. Reflections on Family and Loss: Arundhati Roy’s “Mother Mary Comes to Me”

• Book: Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy
• Discussion:
  • Roy, known for “The God of Small Things,” centers her new memoir on her mother, blending personal mourning with literary exploration.
  • Memorable quote from Roy via Jumana:

    “Perhaps a mother like mine deserved a writer like me as a daughter; equally, perhaps a writer like me deserved a mother like her… I mourn her as a writer who has lost her most enthralling subject.” — [07:27]

IV. Pop Culture Memoir: Matthew McConaughey’s “Poems and Prayers”

• Book: Poems and Prayers by Matthew McConaughey (out Sept 16)
• Discussion:
  • Follows the massive success of “Greenlights,” described as “fortune cookie wisdom.”
  • Quirky, faith-filled, and characterized by “rodeo” metaphors.
  • Lighthearted moment:

    “Life is a rodeo.” — Gilbert Cruz [09:50]
    “Noted.” — Jumana Khatib [09:51]

V. True Crime & Justice: John J. Lennon’s “The Tragedy of True”

• Book: The Tragedy of True: Four Guilty Men and the Stories that Define Us by John J. Lennon
• Discussion:
  • Lennon, an incarcerated journalist, profiles himself and three other inmates, exposing socioeconomic factors and media sensationalism in murder narratives.
  • Unique perspective from within the prison, unsparing honesty, and critical examination of true crime’s cultural fixation.
  • This book stands out for its authenticity:

    “He has a remarkable level of access with the other men whose story he tells.” — Jumana Khatib [12:42]

VI. Constitutional Reflection: Jill Lepore’s “We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution”

• Book: We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lepore (out Sept 16)
• Discussion:
  • Explores both the adaptability and the stagnation of the U.S. Constitution and amendment process.
  • Notable fact: Over 11,000 amendments proposed since 1789, but little substantial change in recent decades.
  • Engages with the approach of America’s upcoming semiquincentennial.

VII. Literary Biography: Francis Wilson’s “Electric Spark: The Enigma of Dame Muriel”

• Book: Electric Spark: The Enigma of Dame Muriel by Francis Wilson (out Sept 23)
• Discussion:
  • A long-awaited biography of Muriel Spark, famed for her sharp novels like “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.”
  • Jumana reveals her own reluctance/biases around literary biographies and the curse of being an editor:

    “This is the curse of being an editor. Specifically. I don't think you can ever really take it off.” — [18:23]

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On addiction literature:

  “Anybody who's approaching it with a fresh angle or with something new to say, I perk up and take note.”
  — Jumana Khatib [03:41]

• On Greenblatt’s founding of New Historicism:

  “He was just desperate to publish [his essays] in a collection and just came up with it, and it stuck...Everything’s marketing.”
  — Gilbert Cruz / Jumana Khatib [05:25]

• On memoir saturation:

  “She is that refreshing counter to, like, all the 32 year olds putting out memoirs. She's 85…”
  — Jumana Khatib on Margaret Atwood [29:37]

• On Muriel Spark’s life ingredients:

  “Divorce, madness, murder, espionage, poverty, blackmail, affairs, revenge, and a major religious conversion…that sounds like the element of a Muriel Spark novel.”
  — Jumana Khatib [17:34]

• On long subtitles in nonfiction:

  “We love a long subtitle.” — Both, multiple times.

---

Additional Notable Books Mentioned (with Timestamps)

Memoir & Creative Nonfiction

• Joyride: A Memoir by Susan Orlean [21:04]
• Next of Kin by Gabrielle Hamilton (about reconnecting with her mother, after the acclaimed “Blood, Bones & Butter”) [22:41]
• Paper Girl by Beth Macy (“Dopesick” author’s personal memoir) [24:11]

Pop Culture & History

• Water Mirror: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America by Jeff Chang (late Sept) [27:36]

Literary Personalities

• A Book of Lives by Margaret Atwood (first memoir, age 85) [29:13]

U.S. & World History

• The Great, The Tragic Side of the American Founding by Joseph J. Ellis [31:51]
• History Matters by David McCullough (posthumous collection) [32:07]
• The Wounded: Generation Coming Home after WWII by David Nasaw [33:31]
• Family of Spies: A WWII Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor by Christine Kuhn (Nov 25) [34:32]

Science Writing

• Replaceable: Adventures in Human Anatomy by Mary Roach [36:17]
  • Mary Roach Quiz Segment — Playful, rapid-fire questions about Roach’s quirky science books [37:12–40:34].
  • Favorites like “Stiff,” “Gulp,” “Bonk,” and “Fuzz” highlighted.

---

Timestamp-Based Segment Guide

• 00:41–04:06: Introduction & Elizabeth Gilbert’s “All the Way to the River”
• 04:06–06:59: Stephen Greenblatt’s “Dark Renaissance”
• 07:05–08:25: Arundhati Roy’s “Mother Mary Comes to Me”
• 08:25–09:56: Matthew McConaughey’s “Poems and Prayers”
• 09:58–13:35: John J. Lennon’s “The Tragedy of True”
• 13:35–15:46: Jill Lepore’s “We the People”
• 15:46–18:49: Francis Wilson’s “Electric Spark”
• 21:02–25:37: Susan Orlean’s “Joyride” and Gabrielle Hamilton’s “Next of Kin”
• 25:37–27:36: Beth Macy’s “Paper Girl”
• 27:36–29:12: Jeff Chang’s “Water Mirror”
• 29:13–31:36: Margaret Atwood’s “A Book of Lives”
• 31:36–34:32: History Roundup: Ellis, McCullough, Nasaw
• 34:32–36:17: Christine Kuhn’s “Family of Spies”
• 36:17–40:34: Mary Roach’s “Replaceable” and the Mary Roach Quiz
• 40:34–41:02: Closing thoughts on the upcoming nonfiction season

---

Tone, Style, Memorable Moments

• The conversation is witty and friendly, filled with asides about editing and literary tastes.
• Playful moments include the debate over “memoir monarch,” word pronunciations (restaurateur, Carnegie/Carnegie), and the “Mary Roach Quiz,” which showcases their deep familiarity (and affection) for nonfiction quirks.
• Jumana’s honest takes about the overabundance of memoirs and what makes a literary biography worthwhile anchor the episode’s critical edge.

---

Conclusion

This episode is a lively, insightful overview of Fall 2025’s must-read nonfiction. Whether you love memoir, biography, pop culture, or history, Cruz and Khatib guide listeners with expertise and good humor, offering both broad recommendations and nuanced commentary.

---

For those building their fall reading lists, the books above represent the very best of upcoming nonfiction — with something for every curious mind.

Transcript

[Clinique Narrator]

Taking care of your skin is a personal, daily ritual. No matter what regimen works best for you. It's important to remember that great skin care doesn't have to be complicated. With Clinique's classic three step routine, fresh, radiant skin is as easy as 1, 2, 3. Clinique's iconic trio of products used to cleanse, exfoliate and moisturize is specifically created to address your skin's needs and provides a refreshingly simple solution for maintaining beautiful, resilient skin twice a day, every day. Great Skin starts here. Visit clinique.com to learn more.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Hello, I'm Gilbert Cruz.

[Jumana Khatib]

And I'm Xumana Khatib.

[Gilbert Cruz]

We are both editors at the New York Times Book Review, and this is part two of our fall book preview. Last week we talked about Dan Brown and Thomas Pynchon and Karen Desai and a bunch of other big fiction books. This week we are looking at several of the major nonfiction titles coming out over the next several months. How do you feel about our last episode, Chumad?

[Jumana Khatib]

So, listeners, I haven't listened to it yet.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Just feelings. Just how do feelings. You walked out feeling great.

[Jumana Khatib]

I walked out feeling excited. There's objectively a lot of good stuff coming.

[Gilbert Cruz]

So what's the first thing you're gonna do? You even know?

[Jumana Khatib]

I do.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Okay.

[Jumana Khatib]

Yes, of course I know. I am nothing if not prepared. Just as a big old asterisk, I'm going to be talking about a lot of memoirs today. Memoir, if we want to use the Kris Jenner preferred pronunciation.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I don't think we do.

[Jumana Khatib]

Okay. It's funny. All right, so we're going to start, we're going to start with a name that's probably very familiar to a lot of you who are listening. And this is the latest memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love notoriety. This is a big shift for her in a lot of ways. So this is called all the Way to the river. And luckily this book is already out. This is a pretty wrenching personal account. And she's written about this relationship in various forms before, but now she's put it together in a book. So her best friend, Raya Elias, she realized that she received a terminal cancer diagnosis when she was in her, I think, late 40s, early 50s. And that was the kind of shock that both women needed to realize that they were in love with each other much more than just best friends. And so Elizabeth left her marriage, moved in with Raya. They had this incandescent but also very tumultuous romantic relationship that, of course, is just amplified by the stress of knowing that Raya's life is going to end. And just to add another complication, both of these women were grappling with addiction and they were in recovery. But I think that also the intensity of their relationship elicited some of their worst impulses. So Raya actually had an amazing life. It sounds like she was born in Damascus. She came to the States when she was a kid. She didn't know any English. And then somehow she became this like punk musician in the East Village and she was living in the grunge era and she struggled with a years long heroin addiction. And Elizabeth, she's been very upfront about her own addiction problems, mostly with sex and love and romantic attachment. So this is pretty gutting because this is a huge loss. And one thing that I love reading about addiction, this is a thread in contemporary literature that always interests me because I think a lot of the ways that we talk about it tends to be very trite. So anybody who's approaching it with a fresh angle or with something new to say, I perk up and take note.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Ann Elizabeth Gilbert is really one of the kings of modern memoir.

[Jumana Khatib]

We might say queen.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I could say that, but I. Monarch.

[Jumana Khatib]

One of the monarchs. A memoir monarch.

[Gilbert Cruz]

She is a memoir queen. And that is all the way to the river. I want to talk about a book that also came out this week. It is a big piece of literary biography, literary nonfiction. It is called Dark Renaissance, the Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt. We love a long subtitle.

[Jumana Khatib]

We sure do. And you know, we do love the founder of New Historicism here at the Book Review.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Do you, do you want to tell.

[Jumana Khatib]

Do I want to. Well, okay. Stephen Greenblatt, of course, is best known, I think, as the Shakespeare scholar. But he's a really prolific, prolific academic. And I think one of his more enduring contributions to the humanities is this idea of New Historicism, which really encourages scholars to look at all types of historical and literary records when analyzing literature. So not looking at artistic works on their own terms, but looking at them in a broader context, this seems totally reasonable to me. I can't believe somebody had to come up with this. That's why I'm not an academic. But thank you, Stephen Greenblatt, for your eminently reasonable approach.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Do you think you would be good at coming up with terms? No, marketing terms, because this is academic marketing, in a sense.

[Jumana Khatib]

What's funny, this may be apocryphal, but my understanding of this is that he Coined the term New Historicism because he had a bunch of essays that were loosely linked by this idea, and he was just desperate to publish them in a collection and just came up with it, and it stuck.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Like I said, marketing. Everything's marketing. Stephen Greenblatt is, as you say, he is very well known for being a literary scholar. His book that I think people may be most identify him with is a book called Will in the How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. And then he won a Pulitzer for his book the Swerve, which is a book I have not read. But our own DWight Garner in 2011 reviewed it extremely positively. And now he's got a new book about the person that is not named in the subtitle. Who is that person?

[Jumana Khatib]

That is Christopher Marlowe. The playwright, the scoundrel poet, the eminently enigmatic lost to history, brilliant upstart young man, the spy.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Question mark. So, Christopher Barlow, murdered at the age of 29. Young genius. Greenblatt is trying as best he can to put together a life of this person based on the records that we have and then possibly some records that we don't have.

[Jumana Khatib]

He's making a lot of inferences, but he's been immersed in this context. I'm talking about Stephen Greenblatt for so long that, like, if anybody's gonna make these intellectual and almost imaginative leaps, I trust him to do it. He's writing around a cipher. And that's hard, Right? Must be said.

[Gilbert Cruz]

So this is Dark Renaissance. I'm not going to say the subtitle again. Stephen Greenblatt, just out now. Joumana, over to you.

[Jumana Khatib]

Okay, as promised, I have yet another memoir and another one that's already out. So this is Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy. And she is the, of course, is the author of the God of Small Things, which is a novel that, honest to God, I think was one of the more profound reading experiences I had the summer before I went to college. I should probably reread it. And she's also a political and social activist, very outspoken. And she has written a memoir that is focused on her mother, who died three years ago in 2022. I've said this before. I've written about my affection for single moms in literature. They are one of literature's great, enduring subjects. And it sounds like Arundhati Roy was really given quite a subject in the fact of her mother. And she has this quote. She'll say it better than I possibly could. She has this quote about the project where she says, perhaps a mother like mine deserved a writer like me as a daughter equally, perhaps a writer like me deserved a mother like her even more than a daughter mourning the passing of her mother. I mourn her as a writer who has lost her most enthralling subject. So that's Mother Mary comes to me. Arundhati Roy out.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Now I have a book that I know is going to be read by a lot of people. I cannot claim, with all due respect to Tauther, that it has the same literary merit as Arundhati Roy. This is a new book by Matthew McConaughey, the actor and cowboy poet, I guess. His new book is called Poems and prayers. Comes out September 16th. So his last nonfiction book or his last book, Greenlights. Do you remember this? It was published.

[Jumana Khatib]

I sure do.

[Gilbert Cruz]

It was published In October of 2020, that first pandemic year. And it was just a huge, huge, huge, huge bestseller. I think it still is today. This was a book of reflections. Fortune cookie wisdom, maybe is the way I'm thinking about it. He kept diaries for decades, right? And he brought all that together, went into the desert, so he claims, for a couple months, lived without electricity to write this book. Came out of the desert like Moses with the tablets, with the book green lights. And so many people read it and so many people bought it. And now he has a new one. And he has described this one as, quote, an inspiring, faith filled and often hilarious collection of personal poetry and prayers about navigating the rodeo of life and chasing down the original dream belief.

[Jumana Khatib]

I didn't realize I was in a rodeo.

[Gilbert Cruz]

He is from Texas. I think he sees all things through the rodeo prism.

[Jumana Khatib]

Okay.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Life is a rodeo.

[Jumana Khatib]

Noted.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah. Are you gonna read Poems and Prayers?

[Jumana Khatib]

Nope.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Okay.

[Jumana Khatib]

But you know what? I might read?

[Gilbert Cruz]

What?

[Jumana Khatib]

I'm really interested in this one. This is by John J. Lennon. And I don't want you to get the wrong idea. He is not related to Sean Lennon. Yoko. John Lennon. He's a really fascinating guy. He is a journalist who is incarcerated and currently serving a sentence of 28 years to life for murder, drug sales and gun possession. And during his incarceration, he's written for the New York Times Magazine. He's a contributing editor at Esquire. He's written for the Atlantic, and he has a totally unique level of access to the US Prison system because he lives it every single day. So his new book is called the Tragedy of True Four Guilty Men and the Stories that Define Us. He is one of the men, of course, but he also extensively interviewed three other inmates who were serving time for murder or manslaughter. And each of these men had a very different kind of arc. So one of them was Robert Chambers, who I think was dubbed by the tabloids the Preppy Killer. He became this notorious tabloid celebrity because he strangled a woman in Central Park. And he had this very clean cut look to him. There's also Milton E. Jones, who, as a teenager, he was 17, he was involved in a burglary that went very wrong, and he ended up involved in the killing of two priests in Buffalo. And then Michael Shane Hale, who is a gay man. I believe he's still incarcerated. And when he was in his early 20s, he killed his much older lover, whom he said was abusive. So there, even just in that kind of like precis, you can see all the different socioeconomic factors, cultural factors that contribute to these man's stories. And of course, Lennon talks about his own life and his own circumstances that led him to jail. He was raised in Sheepshead Bay and Hell's Kitchen and housing projects by a single mother. And he's unsparing. He's totally unsparing about his own life. He has a remarkable level of access with the other men whose story he tells. And this book also doubles as, I think, a very clear indictment of this media frenzy that some murders can become. And he, of course, has such a unique perspective on this. It's worthwhile, it's thought provoking, and it's certainly a unique position to be writing from. So that is the Tragedy of True Four Guilty Men and the Stories that Define Us by John J. Lennon. And that is coming out at the end of September.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That sounds fascinating. We're talking on a podcast. And one of the things that has been true about the podcast format for a very long time is that many of the, maybe at least until recently, many of the most popular titles were true crime. Podcasts, you know, look at cable channels are devoted to the stuff. You look at all the things that are popular, or many of the nonfiction titles are popular on Netflix. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to read it from his particular perspective. That one sounds good.

[Jumana Khatib]

Yeah.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I will go next because there's no one else in the room. I'm going to talk about a book by Jill Lepore. Jill Lepore is a historian at Harvard. She also writes for the New Yorker. If you know her name outside of the New Yorker, you might know her 2018 books. These a History of the United States, Big Modern History of this Nation. And her new book, we the A History of the US Constitution, looks at the Constitution looks at the amendment process to the Constitution. Xumana, without looking at the document here in front of us, can you say what the last constitutional amendment was or when it was?

[Jumana Khatib]

I was so sure you were going to ask me to say semiquincentennial. Well, does that count as a bonus point?

[Gilbert Cruz]

I think this book is being put out now, as well as a couple of other books I will mention because of the forthcoming semi quincentennial the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. That was not the question, though. The question was the last amendment to the U.S. constitution.

[Jumana Khatib]

I don't know.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Okay. It was 33 years ago. It was the 27th amendment. The last actually important constitutional amendment was in 1971. This was the one that lowered the voting age from 21 down to 18. This was related to the Vietnam War, I believe, and the fact that we were sending all these young men off to war who couldn't even vote. So we have this, as Lepore writes, this amazing document. It is amazing in part because it is able to be amended, it's able to be changed, but we haven't really done anything with that feature of it for more than half a century. As she writes, Since 1789, there have been more than 11,000 constitutional amendments proposed.

[Jumana Khatib]

Now, as somebody who has dedicated his life to journalism, primarily as an editor, does that surprise you? The number 11,000, I feel like I see that in a Google Doc on a given day.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That's a lot. Yeah, that's a lot of amendments.

[Jumana Khatib]

I'm ready to move on.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah, let us. That's we the People History of the U.S. constitution by Jill Lepore, out September 16th. So it's coming right up.

[Jumana Khatib]

Okay, I have a biography of one of my favorite writers, Muriel Spark. So this is Electric Spark, the Enigma of Dame Muriel by Francis Wilson. This is coming out also on the 23rd of September. And I know there is a healthy constituency of New York Times Book Review readers who really love Muriel because I've heard from them in the comments in my email, whenever I write about her for any amount of newsletter. I love you guys. I'm so glad you appreciate her. But just in case you have never read Muriel, she is this deeply enigmatic, sphinxy, a little bit remote intellectual Scottish writer. She's best known for the slim but mighty novel called the prime of Ms. Jean Brodie. You might also have heard of Memento Mori or A Far Cry From Kensington. All of her novels are just unbelievably acerbic and funny and just wicked and so it's been a while since we've had a biography of her. And it dawned on me when I was reading about this book. Book. That I know so little about her formation as a person and a writer. And just to give you a little teaser of everything that her life entails. Not everything, just a teaser of what her life entails. We have divorce, madness, murder, espionage, poverty, blackmail, affairs, revenge, and a major religious conversion. And if I had heard that not looking at a Google Doc or just being plopped into this chair with no knowledge of anything, I would say, oh, that sounds like the element of a mural spark novel.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That sounds fascinating.

[Jumana Khatib]

Yeah, I think it's going to be good. I'm a slow convert to the literary biography because I've said on here before I don't love biographies. That's still true. But there have been a couple this year that have begun to tempt me into changing my mind. This is a once a decade thing that happens.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Remind me why you don't like biographies.

[Jumana Khatib]

I don't know that there's like a cogent reason. I just. I think it's a reading experience problem. I think a lot of the ones that I've read have prioritized things that I would not have prioritized had I been in charge of the biography. And that's the problem of being a longtime editor.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I see. So you are. If I had written this book, I would have done something different. And therefore.

[Jumana Khatib]

Yeah, this is the curse of being an editor. Specifically. I don't think you can ever really take it off.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I love literary biographies. I know that's not surprising, of course.

[Jumana Khatib]

No, it's not. But I mean, this is like a big oversight on my part.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Certainly you can like what you like. It is. There's nothing that says you should be reading literary biographies. There's lots of other books to read out there. But I think, as you say with this one, once in a while it's worth checking them out. What was the book again?

[Jumana Khatib]

So that is Electric Spark by Francis Wilson, coming out September 23rd.

[Clinique Narrator]

Taking care of your skin is a personal, daily ritual. No matter what regimen works best for you. It's important to remember that great skin care doesn't have to be complicated. With Clinique's classic three step routine, fresh, radiant skin is as easy as 1, 2, 3. Clinique's iconic trio of products used to cleanse, exfoliate and moisturize is specifically created to address your skin's needs and provides a refreshingly simple solution for maintaining beautiful, resilient skin twice a day, every day. Great Skin starts here. Visit clinique.com to learn more.

[History of Sound Trailer Narrator]

Paul Mescal and Josh O' Connor star in the History of Sound, a sweeping and tender romance that spans decades and continents. In 1917 Boston, a chance encounter in a piano bar leads two students to a folk song collecting trip through the backwoods of Maine and an ensuing love affair that will change both their lives forever. In select theaters now, in theaters everywhere September 19th. Visit mubi.comhistoryofsound to get tickets. That's M U B I.comhistory history of.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Sound Mont Blanc invites you to use life's quiet moments to pause, reflect, and put pen to paper. Chapter one oh no, no, no, no.

[Clinique Narrator]

Part one Perfect. The mountains are impressive.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Oh, I wish you were here to see them.

[Clinique Narrator]

Dear Diary, meet my new writing companion, the Meister.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Stuck for every journey, the perfect companion awaits. Montblanc. Let's write. Visit Montblanc.com for exquisitely crafted writing instruments, leather goods, and more. Welcome back. This is the Book Review podcast and I'm Gilbert Cruz. I am here with Xumana Khatib and we are talking nonfiction fall preview books that are coming out over the next several months that we are looking forward to.

[Jumana Khatib]

What do you have for me?

[Gilbert Cruz]

I'm going to talk about two memoirs coming out on October 14th. The first one I will sell very briefly because I think if you're in, you're in based on who has written it. This is called Joyride A Memoir. It's by Susan Orlean. If you know who she is, you know who she is, right? She's the, well, very well known New Yorker writer. Her book the Orchid Thief was essentially adapted into the movie adaptation, the Spike Jonze Charlie Kaufman movie starring Nicolas Cage's twins. And Joyride. Her new book, is a writing memoir. It is a memoir of how she became one of the most popular writers of nonfiction that we have right now. So I'll mention that briefly because I feel like I don't need to sell it too hard. The next one I'm very interested in. This is Next of Kin by Gabrielle Hamilton. It's her second memoir, I believe her first one, Blood, Bones and Butter, came out in 2011. I read it at the time and in refreshing myself with what it was about, I just remember how evocatively written it was when it came to her childhood having these big roasts on the bank of the creek, you know, in rural Pennsylvania, where she grew up with her family, her French mother, her father who worked on Broadway sets and so Always had this sort of New York City hippie artistic scene over at their house. Those scenes of her in her early childhood are extremely memorable. And then it goes into how she started her restaurant. This restaurant, Prune, which was a very big deal when it was opened. I think it was the first place I ever had bone marrow on toast.

[Jumana Khatib]

Not to be confused with beef tallow.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I don't even know what beef tallow is. I feel like you mention it and I just smile and nod because I don't want to admit that I don't know what it is. But now I am. You can tell me off mic. So she opened Prune. She became this extremely well known chef and restaurateur.

[Jumana Khatib]

Yeah, restaurateur.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Restaurateur.

[Jumana Khatib]

Oh, my gosh, that is such a personal bugaboo of mine when people say restaurateur. It's Restaurateur.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Restaurateur. She's also a wonderful writer because she got her MFA from the University of Michigan. Right. And so she wrote this incredible first memoir, Blood, Bones and butter, in 2011. And when we reviewed this book at the time, our great critic at the time, Michi Kakutani, wrote the following quote. There are some odd gaps in puzzling emotional elisions in this memoir. While Ms. Hamilton says her mother taught her, quote, everything I know pretty much about eating, cooking, and cleaning, and describes her mother as being the very heartbeat of the most cherished period of her life, she abruptly notes in the middle of the book that she had not seen her mom in 20 years. This is a big hole in the middle of that memoir. And now in this book, we get to know her mother. Right. She reconnects with her mother after not talking to her for decades, 20, 30 years or something like that. So she talks about that situation, her relationship with her mother, her relationship with her two brothers who both tragically died. She's an incredible writer. I just have high hopes for this one.

[Jumana Khatib]

I haven't been to Prune in a long time, but Prune, like closed now? Well, I think I keep hearing rumblings that it's going to reopen. I think she's doing some private events down there. We'll see. So we're going to stick with the sort of Midwestern memoir beat to the extent that Gabrielle's is a Midwestern memoir. All good things start in America's heartland. So this is by Beth Macy, who is really an incredible investigative journalist. She's best known for Dopesick, which has also become a Hulu series, Raising Lazarus. She really tends to like embed herself in a struggling community and diagnose what's going on. And her work, particularly on how the opioid epidemic has completely hollowed out a lot of middle America, is her calling card. This is quite different. This is a personal memoir. This is called Paper Girl and it's coming out the beginning of October, and it's set in Urbana, Ohio, which is west of Columbus, which is where I grew up, close to Springfield, and it's like a middle class suburb. Although Macy herself didn't grow up wealthy. And actually she gets the title of the book from her adolescent job, which was the Local Paper Girl, which is how many journalists started out delivering papers.

[Gilbert Cruz]

What is a paper girl?

[Jumana Khatib]

It's where you deliver the printed paper to your neighbors.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I was just doing that for the sake of our listeners who may not.

[Jumana Khatib]

For anybody who's under 70 that's listening. Okay. I also was a paper girl, but mostly my mom.

[Gilbert Cruz]

What? You were?

[Jumana Khatib]

I was, yeah.

[Gilbert Cruz]

For what newspaper?

[Jumana Khatib]

For the Upper Arlington News.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Your mother drove you around and you threw papers out the window or what?

[Jumana Khatib]

Yeah, and sometimes when I had too much homework, she would help me stuff the papers in the bags and deliver them.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Wow.

[Jumana Khatib]

I know.

[Gilbert Cruz]

So really, I've been embedded in this.

[Jumana Khatib]

Business since the beginning, Sustained wretch since longer than I can count. So to go back to my paper girl in arms, Beth Macy. So as she's built this career looking at what's going on in America, looking at what's going on in these communities and getting to know them inside and out, she had this moment where, like, she thought, why have I not really looked hard at Urbana the way that I have these other cities? So 40 years after she left home, she is really taking that hard look at what the hell has gone on in her hometown. What used to be this middle class, harmonious, very community driven town has now calcified and there's a lot of economic and social strife. The support systems that were there when she was growing up have totally collapsed. And frankly, it sounds like it's become a bit of an angry. So I think this is the ideal mix for a book like this. This is somebody who knows this town inside out. She has the reporting chops to really get at what's going on. And she's just a really lucid and enjoyable writer to spend time with. So that is Paper Girl by Beth Macy, coming out October 7th.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I jumped ahead a little bit when I talked about the last two memoirs, which come out in mid October. I'm going to go back very quickly to Late September, when a book will be released by Jeff Chang. Jeff Chang is the author of a 2005 history of hip hop that I remember loving 20 years ago. Now. Jeez Louise. That book was called Can't Stop, Won't Stop. His new book is Water Mirror, Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America. It's a book about Bruce Lee in 2020. I remember watching a pretty good documentary that was part of ESPN's 30 for 30 series, and that was called Be Water. That was about Bruce Lee. And of course, hopefully everyone knows who Bruce Lee is because he's one of the great movie actors of the late 20th century. He died at the age of 32. He died in 1973. And he was the first big global martial arts movie star. Right. You have people now like Jet Li and Jackie Chan. They all live in the shadow of Bruce Lee. And Jeff Chang, who is a pop culture historian and an academic as well, is locating Bruce Lee's influence in the world of American pop culture, but also how it relates to how we see Asian Americans in our society today. So I'm, as someone who grew up watching Bruce Lee movies, is very interested in this one.

[Jumana Khatib]

I have yet to see a single book about a movie star come out that you haven't read, which is amazing. I mean, how are we not ourselves? Right?

[Gilbert Cruz]

We can only be ourselves.

[Jumana Khatib]

That's right.

[Gilbert Cruz]

What do you have?

[Jumana Khatib]

Okay, this is gonna be a wild card. I have no idea what to expect from this book. This is a book of lives by Margaret Atwood. The Margaret Atwood. She has never written a memoir. She is that refreshing counter to, like, all the 32 year olds putting out memoirs. She's 85. I swear to God, there are, like probably one in a hundred people in their 30s who have something interesting that, like, book worthy that's happened.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah, I'm. I feel that. Yeah, I do.

[Jumana Khatib]

I look forward to aging and having something to say. Then I'm really gonna get going. So she is a welcome change to that trend. And because she's 85 and has had a huge influence on a lot of our cultural material and has lived long enough to see some of her more dystopian works begin to resemble reality in the eyes of a lot of her fans. And I have a lot of affection for this woman. Right. I just do. She gave an interview to, I think it was Vogue when they announced that the book was coming because, of course, her publishers, I have to imagine that her publishers had been goading her to write a memoir. Like, come on, please. People are Interested in you. We know it's gonna sell. We know it's gonna be good. And so apparently her first response was like, oh, no, that would be so boring. Okay, I love. I believe she thinks of it that way.

[Gilbert Cruz]

It's nice to be humble.

[Jumana Khatib]

It is nice to be humble. But then it sounds like she thought about it. She went to whatever windy mountaintop where.

[Gilbert Cruz]

She goes to think Canadian mountaintop.

[Jumana Khatib]

Canadian mountaintop. And she said, I thought of my own life, the stupid and the big, and how all of that affected the writing of the books. That's useful. And so I think the resulting book is going to weave the events of her own life. She really had an almost forlorn childhood, very bohemian in rural Canada. And so she takes the events of her life and pairs them with the cultural impact or, like, the inflection points of her biggest work. Now, I think that is an example of cultural materialism. But if any of my former professors are listening to this, I'm sure you'll let me know. If I'm wrong.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Please reach out to Jumana directly through the usual channels and let her know that she's wrong. I'm sure you're not. I think we should do a little history corner right now. I have several books. I know that you have a World War II book that you want to mention, so these are.

[Jumana Khatib]

Are you trying to humble me? Is that why you said humility is so important?

[Gilbert Cruz]

No, not at. I don't think anything I can say could ever humble you. We're going to talk about a few books about American or world history very quickly. We're going to blaze through these. The first is the Great, the Tragic side of the American Founding. This is by Joseph J. Ellis. And this looks at the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution through the lens of what the author considers, as the title indicates, to be these amazing contradictions in American historical life. That we had this revolution based on the ideas of freedom, and yet when we founded this nation, we allowed the conditions for slavery to thrive and for the US to go and take the land away from the native people that have lived here before. So the great contradiction, tragic side of the American Founding, that's Joseph J. Ellis. David McCullough has a book coming out. Yes, David McCullough is dead, God rest his soul. He has a posthumous collection of speeches, essays, and the like coming out. We all know David McCullough. He wrote biographies of Truman, the Wright brothers, Teddy Roosevelt. He wrote books about the Brooklyn Bridge and the Panama Canal. There are people who love David McCullough and have read all his books. So there's one more coming out. It's called History Matters. And then finally, I'm going to talk about the Wounded Coming Home after World War II by David Nassau. David Nassau, I think, is most famous for his 2006 biography of Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie. It's Carnegie hall, but I feel like people say Carnegie.

[Jumana Khatib]

Yeah, but I always wonder if they're pranksters. Once again, if you know how to pronounce it. Listeners, please let me know if you.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Went to Carnegie or Carnegie Mellon. Please write.

[Jumana Khatib]

Definitely not Carnegie Mellon.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Write Jumana directly. So I don't know if we've talked about this, but we live in an age in which so much of what counts as storytelling, books, movies and TV is about trauma. Feel like that's been true for a very long time. Harald Sehgal, our colleague who is then our former colleague, who is now our colleague again, wrote an amazing piece about this at the New Yorker called the Case Against a Trauma Plot, which analyzes this trend in fiction storytelling. This book, David Nassau's new book, is about real trauma. It's about the way in which the terrors Of World War II affected American veterans who brought that trauma home and then had to live with it and spread it throughout their communities and their families and the like. So that's the Wounded Generation Coming Home after World War II by David Nassau. And you have one. I'm a history book corner here.

[Jumana Khatib]

I am nothing if not famous for my broad appetite. This is called Family of Spies, a World War II story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal and the Secret History Behind Pearl harbor by Christine Kuhn.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Love a long subtitle.

[Jumana Khatib]

So this is a story that she didn't really learn until well into adulthood. So this is really what I would call like a genealogical detective story focused on her grandparents who were German, and they were sent by the Nazi regime to spy in Hawaii. And they were pretty instrumental in helping lay the groundwork for Pearl Harbor. So this talks about their life in Hawaii, which is pretty extravagant and comfortable. And of course, they played a huge role in a pivotal tragedy in world history. And Kuhn's grandfather, as it turns out, was the only or one of the only people ever convicted for the bombing. And then her father denounced his family and eventually served for the US in the Battle of Okinawa. And Sochi's grand made sense of this history. She's done the work, she's gone into the paper trail to put it together. It's an incredible story. I think that these really personal accounts that actually tell you about the lives of the people who were involved in these big marquee events in world history can add so much to our understanding. And it's just a wild story that.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Is a crazy story.

[Jumana Khatib]

So that is Family of Spies by Christine Kuhn. And this is coming out November 25th.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I have left one book until the end. This one comes out in mid September. It's called Replaceable Adventures in Human Anatomy. This is by Mary Roach. Mary Roach is the master of writing books. Very specific science books that are full of weird and incredible facts that if you read them, you will quote many other people after reading her books. So her latest is about, quote, the quest to recreate the impossible complexities of human anomie. She's basically writing about the history of attempting to create replacement body parts, replacement noses, replacement skin, hearts, breasts. She takes us to a hair nursery. She takes us to a xeno pigsty in China. All sorts of weird stuff. All her books are quirky and kooky. This one seems like it'll be no different. And I've left it to the end because I have a quiz for you. Jomana. Another one.

[Jumana Khatib]

I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready.

[Gilbert Cruz]

The quiz is you have to tell me whether or not the book and the subtitle I say are real. Mary Roach book.

[Jumana Khatib]

Okay. All right.

[Gilbert Cruz]

All right. Ready?

[Jumana Khatib]

I'm so ready.

[Gilbert Cruz]

So I'm going to read it to you. And then you say, that is a Mary Roach book or that is not a Mary Roach book.

[Jumana Khatib]

Did you bring. Did you bring an air horn?

[Gilbert Cruz]

I did not. We really need more props.

[Jumana Khatib]

We need one in the office.

[Gilbert Cruz]

We need more props.

[Jumana Khatib]

Okay, I'm ready.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Okay, first one. Gulp. Adventures on the Alimentary Canal.

[Jumana Khatib]

That is a real Mary Roach book.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Correct? Ding.

[Jumana Khatib]

It's about the digestive system.

[Gilbert Cruz]

It is.

[Jumana Khatib]

And you'll never think about Prilosec the same way.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Okay, next one. Ripped Journeys and Exercise and the Science of Body Optimization.

[Jumana Khatib]

I don't think that's real.

[Gilbert Cruz]

You're correct. That is not a Mary Roach book. Okay, next one. Sniff. The Science of Scent and the Future of Smell.

[Jumana Khatib]

Yep. That's a real one.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That is not a real Mary Roach.

[Jumana Khatib]

Oh, my God. Ah, God, the confidence. All right, fine. Let's plow out.

[Gilbert Cruz]

You're so confident. Next one. Stiff. The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.

[Jumana Khatib]

That is actually correct.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That is a Mary Roach.

[Jumana Khatib]

Yes. Yes. You know what's amazing? What is that one thing that I learned from Stiff is that cadavers actually make, like, the best crash test dummies.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Is that something we do in our society?

[Jumana Khatib]

And yes, and she made the very good point, which is, if you are planning on donating your body to science, you need to be very specific.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I don't think there's a box for that on my license.

[Jumana Khatib]

This might be other than organ donor. We'll talk offline.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I have to go reread Stiff, which is a real book written by Mary Roach. Is this one the Curious Coupling of Science and Sex?

[Jumana Khatib]

Yes, it is.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That is a real Mary Roach book.

[Jumana Khatib]

Bonk.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Next one. The History of Itchiness and the Future of Itchy. Less. No, that is not one. That was a bad pun.

[Jumana Khatib]

You tried. You tried.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I tried.

[Jumana Khatib]

Honestly. I mean, subtitles are so out of hand.

[Gilbert Cruz]

We love a long subtitle. Galumph. The Curious Science of Grace and Flumsiness.

[Jumana Khatib]

No. What were you doing? Yeah, yeah.

[Gilbert Cruz]

This is work. That.

[Jumana Khatib]

Listen, you. It shows how much you love something when you parody it. I can tell you had a lot of fun with this last one.

[Gilbert Cruz]

All right. Hacking for Mars. The Curious Science of Life in the Void.

[Jumana Khatib]

Just because you've given me wrong ones now. I think this is correct.

[Gilbert Cruz]

This is correct. This is a real Mary Roach book.

[Jumana Khatib]

Okay.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Okay. Two more for you. Yell, yipping, yelping and how funny sounds have guided human evolution.

[Jumana Khatib]

Oh, God. What's the next one?

[Gilbert Cruz]

No, we're doing this one at a time.

[Jumana Khatib]

I've actually lost all perspective. You know what I said you're taking too long. Okay, I'm going to say no, not a real Mary.

[Gilbert Cruz]

It is not a. It is not a Mary Roach book. Go with your gut.

[Jumana Khatib]

Yes. Which I should know because I've read the book about the digestive system. Okay, last one.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Last one is Fuzz. When Nature Breaks the Law.

[Jumana Khatib]

Oh, yes. And this is a really good one. It. It is a Mary Roach movie.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That is a real Mary Roach. Really good Mary Roach. Wonderful author. I'm actually looking forward to replaceable you.

[Jumana Khatib]

She's great. Oh, she's so great.

[Gilbert Cruz]

And that's it. That's all we have. We have talked about a bunch of nonfiction books. There are many, many others that are coming out over the next several months. We just could not fit them all into part two of our fall preview podcast. Jumada, you're excited for the fall?

[Jumana Khatib]

I am. It's the best season. So many good memoir and other things coming out.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Histories, memoir, novels.

[Jumana Khatib]

A veritable cornucopia.

[Gilbert Cruz]

As always, thank you for being on.

[Jumana Khatib]

It's always a pleasure.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That was my conversation with joumanica T. Part 2. Of our fall books Preview this one about some of the most notable nonfiction books coming out this fall. I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review. Happy reading.

[Clinique Narrator]

Taking care of your skin is a personal, daily ritual. No matter what regimen works best for you. It's important to remember that great skin care doesn't have to be complicated. With Clinique's classic three step routine, fresh, radiant skin is as easy as 1, 2, 3. Clinique's iconic trio of products used to cleanse, exfoliate, and moisturize, is specifically created to address your skin's needs and provides a refreshingly simple solution for maintaining beautiful, resilient skin twice a day, every day. Great Skin starts here. Visit clinique.com to learn more.