It’s the 100-year anniversary of the Russian Revolution, and we are seeing several books on the Soviet leaders. Not surprisingly, we have memoirs and biographies that touch on the recent presidential election, as well as biographies of artists, athletes, and gastronomes.
Top 10
Ali: A Life
Jonathan Eig. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Oct. 3
Eig promises a deep analysis of Muhammad Ali, based on thousands of pages of FBI and Justice Department files, as well as dozens of hours of interviews.
Breaking Free: How I Escaped Polygamy, the FLDS Cult, and My Father, Warren Jeffs
Rachel Jeffs. Harper, Nov. 14
The daughter of the self-proclaimed prophet of the FLDS church reveals the secretive polygamist Mormon fundamentalist cult run by her family and how she escaped.
Gorbachev: His Life and Times
William Taubman. Norton, Sept. 5
Taubman’s portrait draws on interviews with Gorbachev, Kremlin aides, and adversaries, as well as with foreign leaders, along with material from the Russian archives.
The Gourmands’ Way: Six Americans in Paris and the Birth of a New Gastronomy
Justin Spring. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Oct. 10
Spring’s biography of six writers living in mid-20th-century France looks at how their writing initiated an American cultural dialogue on food.
Leonardo da Vinci
Walter Isaacson. Simon & Schuster, Oct. 17
Using thousands of pages from Leonardo’s notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Isaacson explores the intersection of Leonardo’s art and science.
Sisters First: Stories from Our Wild and Wonderful Life
Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Pierce Bush. Grand Central, Oct. 24
The former first daughters tell stories about their family, their adventures, growing up in the public eye, and their close bond as sisters.
Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches
John Hodgman. Viking, Oct. 24
Hodgman writes about life in his 40s as he travels through the woods of his home state of Massachusetts, as well as the coast of Maine, which he refers to as “Vacationland.”
Untitled Memoir
Hillary Rodham Clinton. Simon & Schuster, Sept. 26
Clinton’s new book of essays relates stories from her life, up to and including the 2016 presidential campaign, inspired by her favorite quotations.
We’re Going to Need More Wine: Stories That Are Funny, Complicated, and True
Gabrielle Union. Morrow/Dey Street, Oct. 17
In this essay collection timed with the release of the movie Birth of a Nation, actress Union tells personal stories about power, color, gender, feminism, and fame.
Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir
Amy Tan. Ecco, Oct. 17
The bestselling author shares her life as a writer, her traumatic childhood, and the connection between fiction and emotional memory.
Memoirs & Biographies Listings
Amazon/Little A
The Sky Below: A True Story of Summits, Space, and Speed by Scott Parazynski, with Susy Flory (Aug. 1, hardcover, $24.95, ISBN 978-1-5039-3670-6). Astronaut Parazynski offers a portrait of NASA, having flown five missions to outer space and conducted seven spacewalks in his 17-year career. His memoir portrays an astronaut’s engagement with the challenges of Earth and space.
Amistad
The Mother of Black Hollywood by Jenifer Lewis (Nov. 14, hardcover, $25.99, ISBN 978-0-06-241040-5). Black-ish star Lewis shares her Midwestern roots as she journeys from poverty to Hollywood, a road made treacherous by dysfunction and undiagnosed mental illness. 35,000-copy announced first printing.
The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African-American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty (Aug. 1, hardcover, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-06-237929-0). Renowned culinary historian Twitty offers a fresh perspective on race in this memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America. 20,000-copy announced first printing.
Atria
The Comfort Food Diaries: My Quest for the Perfect Dish to Mend a Broken Heart by Emily Nunn (Aug. 8, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-1-4516-7420-0). Former New Yorker editor Nunn chronicles her journey to heal old wounds and find comfort in the face of loss through travel, home-cooked food, and the company of friends and family.
Atria/Bestler
Nobu by Nobu Matsuhisa (Nov. 7, hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-1-5011-2279-8). The celebrity chef and international restaurateur divulges his dramatic life story and reflects on the philosophy and passion that has made him one of the world’s most widely respected Japanese chefs.
BenBella
Strange Beautiful Music: A Musical Memoir by Joe Satriani and Jake Brown (Nov. 7, trade paper, $17.95, ISBN 978-1-941631-57-7). Guitar legend Satriani gives fans the inside story behind his climb to stardom and the creative odyssey involved in writing and recording a storied catalogue of rock classics. 25,000-copy announced first printing.
Bloomsbury USA
The Best of Us by Joyce Maynard (Sept. 5, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-1-63557-034-2). The bestselling author offers a memoir about discovering strength in the midst of great loss after her recently married husband is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She charts the course through their whirlwind romance, their marriage cut short by tragedy, and her return to singleness on new terms.
Clarkson Potter
Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook by Alice Waters (Sept. 5, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0-307-71828-0) is a revealing look at Waters’s evolution from a rebellious yet impressionable follower to a respected activist who effects social and political change on a global level through the common bond of food.
Coffee House
Letters to Memory by Karen Tei Yamashita (Sept. 12, trade paper, $19.95, ISBN 978-1-56689-487-6). Through this dive into the Yamashita family archive and Japanese internment runs a documentary impulse that explores various aspects of the internment and expands its meaning beyond her family to ideas of debt, forgiveness, civil rights, Orientalism, and community.
Crown Archetype
Good Things Happen Slowly: A Life In and Out of Jazz by Fred Hersch (Sept. 12, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-101-90434-3) shares Hersch’s story as the first openly gay, HIV-positive jazz player, offering a deep look into the cloistered, largely African-American jazz culture that made such a status both transgressive and groundbreaking.
Why We Don’t Suck by Denis Leary (Oct. 24, hardcover, $27 ISBN 978-1-5247-6273-5) delivers a comic voice in divisive times, skewering liberals and conservatives alike with Leary’s signature blend of sarcasm and common sense. 150,000-copy announced first printing.
Da Capo
King Without a Crown by Matisyahu and Paul Zollo (Oct. 10, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0-306-82521-7). Matisyahu, known as “that Hassidic rapper,” tells of his at-risk early days getting involved in drugs, his spiritual awakening in the backwoods of Oregon, as well as his recent decision to leave Orthodox Judaism. 30,000-copy announced first printing.
Doubleday/Talese
Wayne and Ford: The Films, the Friendship, and the Forging of an American Hero by Nancy Schoenberger (Oct. 24, hardcover, $27.95, ISBN 978-0-385-53485-7). Drawing on previously untapped caches of letters and personal documents, Schoenberger narrates the friendship of John Ford and John Wayne, and the lasting legacy of that friendship on American culture.
Dutton
The Blueprint: LeBron James, Cleveland’s Deliverance, and the Making of the Modern NBA by Jason Lloyd (Oct. 24, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-5247-4190-7) tells the four-year story of how the Cavaliers lost their star player, but immediately put together both a plan and team that brought him back and brought the city a long-awaited NBA Championship.
Ecco
Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir by Amy Tan (Oct. 17, hardcover, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-06-231929-6) shares a memoir of the bestselling author’s life as a writer, her traumatic childhood, and the symbiotic relationship between fiction and emotional memory. 200,000-copy announced first printing.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Gourmands’ Way: Six Americans in Paris and the Birth of a New Gastronomy by Justin Spring (Oct. 10, hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-0-374-10315-6) chronicles six writers whose lives and careers intersected in mid-20th-century France and whose writing initiated an American cultural dialogue on food.
FSG/Crichton
Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell by David Yaffe (Aug. 29, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-374-24813-0) tells Joni Mitchell’s story, composed of dozens of in-person interviews with Mitchell and her friends, as well as analyses of her well-known lyrics, their imagery and style, and what they say about the woman herself.
Unstoppable: My Life So Far by Maria Sharapova (Sept. 12, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-374-27979-0). The five-time Grand Slam winner recounts the story of her rise to success. Full of episodes from her beginnings in Siberia to her career-defining games and her recent fight to get back on the court, this is a tale of persistence.
FSG/MCD
Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology by Ellen Ullman (Aug. 8, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-374-53451-6). Known for the 1997 coder classic Close to the Machine, Ullman follows up with the story of digital technology’s loss of innocence as it entered the cultural mainstream, and the personal reckoning with all that has changed and so much that hasn’t.
Godine
Christmas at Eagle Pond by Donald Hall (Nov. 1, trade paper, $12.95, ISBN 978-0-547-58148-4) draws on the author’s childhood memories as he gives himself the thing he most wanted but didn’t get as a boy: a Christmas at Eagle Pond.
Grand Central
Sisters First: Stories from Our Wild and Wonderful Life by Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Pierce Bush (Oct. 24, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-5387-1141-5). Former first daughters Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Pierce Bush take readers on a tour of their lives, with never-before-told stories about their family, their adventures, their loves and losses, and their special sisterly bond. 300,000-copy announced first printing.
Grove
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour (Aug. 1, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-0-8021-2596-5) recounts a dangerously entangled relationship LeFavour had with a psychiatrist when she was in her troubled 20s. She shifts between dialogue, observations from psychiatric records, and incisive reflection on youth and early adulthood.
Rickie Lee by Rickie Lee Jones (Nov. 14, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0-8021-2712-9). The rock and roll artist shares her journey of nomadic vaudeville childhood, years as a teenage runaway, her beginnings at L.A.’s Troubador club, her tumultuous (and private) relationship with Tom Waits, her battle with drugs, and her experience of motherhood as a touring artist.
Hachette
The Way It Was: My Life with Frank Sinatra by Eliot Weisman (Oct. 24, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0-316-47008-7). Sinatra’s longtime manager and friend provides an inside look at the final decades of the singer’s life, featuring original photos and filled with revelations that fans of all Sinatra stages will love. 70,000-copy announced first printing.
Harper
Breaking Free: How I Escaped Polygamy, the FLDS Cult, and My Father, Warren Jeffs by Rachel Jeffs (Nov. 14, hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-267052-6). The daughter of Warren Jeffs, the self-proclaimed prophet of the FLDS church, takes readers deep inside the secretive polygamist Mormon fundamentalist cult run by her family and how she escaped after years of physical and emotional abuse. 150,000-copy announced first printing.
Charles Darwin: Victorian Mythmaker by A.N. Wilson (Dec. 12, hardcover, $32.50, ISBN 978-0-06-243349-7) challenges the long-held assumption that Charles Darwin solely discovered evolution, arguing that Darwin was not an original scientific thinker but a ruthless and determined self-promoter who did not credit the many great sages whose ideas he advanced. 20,000-copy announced first printing.
The Dean: The Best Seat in the House, from FDR to Obama by John David Dingell and David Bender (Sept. 19, hardcover, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-06-257199-1). Dingell, the longest serving United States’ congressman in history and one of the House’s most powerful chairmen, offers a candid account of government and politics over the past 80 years. 50,000-copy announced first printing.
Logical Family by Armistead Maupin (Oct. 3, hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-239122-3) chronicles Maupin’s odyssey from the Old South to freewheeling San Francisco, and his evolution from curious youth to groundbreaking writer and gay rights pioneer. 50,000-copy announced first printing.
HarperOne
Finding Magic: A Spiritual Memoir by Sally Quinn (Sept. 12, hardcover, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-06-231550-2). The Washington Post journalist reflects on the spiritual quest that has brought deeper meaning to her life, and kept her grounded within the high-powered political world of Washington, D.C.’s elite. 50,000-copy announced first printing.
Holt
Untitled Memoir by Stephen Carter (Oct. 10, hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-1-250-12197-4) delves into the bestselling author’s past and retrieves a family story that becomes an American saga. Through the eyes of Carter’s grandparents, we see how African-Americans built a vibrant society of intellectual attainment and cultural refinement during the worst days of Jim Crow.
The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown (Nov. 28, hardcover, $32, ISBN 978-1-62779-136-6) recounts Brown’s eight years as editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, providing a portrait of the flash and dash of the 1980s in New York and Hollywood as she saved the troubled magazine.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Ali: A Life by Jonathan Eig (Oct. 3, hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-0-544-43524-7) reveals Muhammad Ali in the complexity he deserves, shedding new light on his politics and his neurological condition, with the help of Ali’s family and colleagues and thousands of pages of new FBI and Justice Department files, as well as dozens of hours of audiotaped interviews from the 1960s. 100,000-copy announced first printing.
Knopf
Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte (Oct. 10, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-0-307-59796-0) brings to life Herbert Hoover’s complexity and contradictions, his story as the poor boy turned businessman turned president who worked ceaselessly to fight the Depression yet became the public face of America’s greatest economic crisis.
An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn (Sept. 12, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-0-385-35059-4) is a personal tale of a father and son’s journey in reading—and reliving—Homer’s epic masterpiece while rekindling their relationship.
Hal Leonard/Backbeat
Street Survivor: Keeping the Beat in Lynyrd Skynyrd by Artimus Pyle, with Dean Goodman (Oct. 17, hardcover, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-61713-654-2). Drummer Pyle writes about the tortuous rise and tragic fall of Lynyrd Skynyrd, offering detailed insights into the band’s complex personalities and anthemic music. Packed with anecdotes of booze-fueled violence and destruction, the book also lays out the exquisite musicianship and sheer hard work of the band.
Little, Brown
North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail by Scott Jurek (Oct. 17, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-316-43379-2) recounts his 2015 challenge to break the speed record for the Appalachian Trail. Filled with the acclaimed runner’s insights into running, as well as facts about the people, places, and history of the Appalachian Trail, the book will delight runners and nonrunners alike. 150,000-copy announced first printing.
Metropolitan
Prairie Fires: The Life and Times of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser (Nov. 14, hardcover, $32.50, ISBN 978-1-62779-276-9). Based on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Fraser fills in the gaps in Wilder’s biography, setting the record straight regarding charges of ghostwriting that have swirled around the books and uncovering the grownup story behind the childhood epic of pioneer life.
Milkweed Editions
Feverland: A Memoir in Shards by Alex Lemon (Sept. 11, trade paper, $16, ISBN 978-1-57131-336-2). The poet and memoirist has created a fragmented exploration of what it means to be a man in the tumult of 21st-century America, and a harrowing, associative memoir about how we live with the beauties and horrors of our pasts.
Morrow
Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness that Ended the Sixties by Dianne Lake (Oct. 24, hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-269557-4). In this memoir of lost innocence, coercion, survival, and healing, Lake chronicles her years with Charles Manson, revealing for the first time how she became the youngest member of his Family. 100,000-copy announced first printing.
Rebel: My Life in Search of Myself by Nick Nolte (Jan. 23, hardcover, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-06-221957-2). The actor’s memoir offers a candid look at his life, a tale of art, passion, commitment, and addiction. 125,000-copy announced first printing.
Morrow/Dey Street
The Gambler: How a Penniless Dropout Became One of the Greatest Deal Makers in Capitalist History by William C. Rempel (Nov. 14, hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-245677-9) tells the rags-to-riches story of one of America’s wealthiest and least-known financial giants, self-made billionaire Kirk Kerkorian—the daring aviator, movie mogul, risk-taker, and business tycoon who transformed Las Vegas and Hollywood. 75,000-copy announced first printing.
We’re Going to Need More Wine: Stories That Are Funny, Complicated, and True by Gabrielle Union (Oct. 17, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-0-06-269398-3). In this essay collection, Union tells personal stories about power, color, gender, feminism, and fame. 200,000-copy announced first printing.
New Directions
Promise at Dawn by Romain Gary (Oct. 15, trade paper, $16.95, ISBN 978-0-8112-2198-6) chronicles the author and director’s childhood in Russia, Poland, and on the French Riveria, including his adventurous life as a young man fighting for France in WWII. Above all, he tells the story of the love for his mother that shaped his life.
Norton
Gorbachev: His Life and Times by William Taubman (Sept. 5, hardcover, $39.95, ISBN 978-0-393-64701-3). This portrait of Gorbachev draws on interviews with the man himself, along with Russian archives and interviews with Kremlin aides and adversaries, as well as with foreign leaders. It also covers Gorbachev’s remarkable marriage to a woman he deeply loved.
Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian by Richard Aldous (Oct. 10, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-393-24470-0). In this account of Arthur Schlesinger’s life and career, biographer Aldous draws on oral history, rarely seen archival documents, and the official Schlesinger papers to craft an invaluable portrait of a brilliant and controversial historian who framed America’s rise to global empire.
Other Press
Oriana Fallaci: The Journalist, the Agitator, the Legend by Cristina De Stefano, trans. by Marina Harss (Oct. 17, hardcover, $25.95, ISBN 978-1-59051-786-4). Thanks to unprecedented access to personal records, De Stefano brings back to life the Italian journalist whose groundbreaking work defied the codes of reportage and established its own style of interview. 22,500-copy announced first printing.
Pantheon
Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror by Victor Sebestyen (Nov. 7, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-1-101-87163-8). Portraying Lenin as a complex human being, Sebestyen casts a new light on the man and the Russian Revolution.
The Shadow in the Garden: A Biographer’s Tale by James Atlas (Aug. 22, hardcover, $28.95, ISBN 978-1-101-87169-0) presents a tale of how writers’ lives get documented, taking readers from his childhood love for literature to his impulse to study writers’ lives and learn from famed biographer mentors.
Penguin Press
Autumn by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Aug. 22, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0-399-56330-0). The first in a new autobiographical quartet based on the four seasons. Through close observation of the objects and phenomena around him, Knausgaard shows how vast, unknowable, and wondrous the world is.
Grant by Ron Chernow (Oct. 10, hardcover, $40, ISBN 978-1-59420-487-6). The historian produces a grand synthesis of painstaking research and literary brilliance that makes sense of all sides of Ulysses S. Grant’s life, explaining how this simple Midwesterner could be at once so ordinary and so extraordinary.
Penguin/Blue Rider
Ice Capades: A Memoir of Fast Living and Tough Hockey by Sean Avery (Sept. 26, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-399-57575-4). Controversial hockey star Avery’s memoir of high living and bad behavior in the NHL goes deep inside the sport to reveal how athletes and management really play the game, while also taking readers through Avery’s off-the-ice life.
Sweet Baby James by James Taylor (Nov. 14, hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-0-7352-1813-0) is a pop-up book that illustrates Taylor’s hit song “Sweet Baby James,” with each spread dedicated to a single stanza, bringing Taylor’s lyrics to life.
Picador
Joni: The Anthology by Barney Hoskyns (Oct. 3, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-1-250-14862-9). Hoskyns’s singular collection of almost 60 articles charts every major period of Joni Mitchell’s career, as they happened, with interviews, album reviews, and critical appraisal of her music and life.
Putnam
I’m Fine... And Other Lies by Whitney Cummings (Oct. 3, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0-7352-1260-2) features a personal account of the life, times, and crippling anxiety of the rising comedic star. Cummings comes clean about what has shaped her into the trailblazing comic that she is today, providing a personal tale of what it means to be a woman.
Random House
Tell Me More: And Other Important Things I’m Learning to Say by Kelly Corrigan (Jan. 16, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-399-58837-2) details the seven phrases that make us better people, each chapter drawing from Corrigan’s struggles with parenting and marriage, career and friendship, aging, and mortality.
The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President by Noah Feldman (Oct. 31, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-0-8129-9275-5) presents a controversial look at the three distinct arcs of Madison’s career, and explores how he redefined the United States in each of these political “lives.”
Rowman & Littlefield
Stan Lee: The Man Behind Marvel by Bob Batchelor (Sept. 15, hardcover, $22.95, ISBN 978-1-4422-7781-6). This biography of Stan Lee traces his life from Depression-era childhood to his years as a teen editor and his triumphs as the genius behind some of the most popular comics.
Running Press
Sophia Loren: Movie Star Italian Style by Cindy De La Hoz (Sept. 26, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-0-7624-6131-8) is a photographic tribute to the star, recounting her extraordinary life and notable films with famous costars and directors, with quotes by Loren and those who have known her best. 10,000-copy announced first printing.
Scribner
When the Needle Dropped: A DJ’s Journey by A-Trak (Nov. 14, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-1-4767-4549-7). The Grammy Award–nominated deejay, record executive, and musical tastemaker charts the cultural history of the deejay phenomenon and the rise of electronic dance music.
She Writes
Parent Deleted: A Mother’s Fight for Her Right to Parent by Michelle Darné (Aug. 8, trade paper, $16.95, ISBN 978-1-63152-282-6) shares the story of Darné’s fight for her children as a nonbiological, lesbian mother, stepping forward once again as the spokesperson of emerging civil rights issues.
Simon & Schuster
Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson (Oct. 17, hardcover, $35, ISBN 978-1-5011-3915-4). Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo’s notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Isaacson weaves a narrative that connects Leonardo’s art to his science.
Untitled Memoir by Hillary Rodham Clinton (Sept. 26, hardcover, $30, ISBN 978-1-5011-7556-5). This new book of essays collects stories from her life, up to and including the 2016 presidential campaign, inspired by the hundreds of quotations she has been collecting for decades.
S&S/Gallery
Raising Trump by Ivana Trump (Sept. 12, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-5011-7728-6) reflects on her life and the raising of her three children—Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka—and recounts the lessons she taught her children as they were growing up.
Sourcebooks
We Are All Shipwrecks by Kelly Carlisle (Sept. 5, hardcover, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-4926-4520-7). In piecing together the narrative of her mother’s life and death, Carlisle goes back to the beginning—to a mother she never knew, a 30-year-old cold case, and two of Los Angeles’s most notorious murderers.
St. Martin’s
Gold Dust Woman: A Biography of Stevie Nicks by Stephen Davis (Nov. 21, hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-250-03289-8) provides a serious book about the face and voice of Fleetwood Mac.
Tin House
The Glass Eye by Jeannie Vanasco (Oct. 3, trade paper, $15.95, ISBN 978-1-941040-77-5). The author tells of her struggle to honor her late father, who named her after his daughter from a previous marriage who had died.
Viking
Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life by Robert Dallek (Nov. 7, hardcover, $40, ISBN 978-0-525-42790-2). The noted F.D.R. scholar writes a one-volume biography of Roosevelt focusing on his career as an incomparable politician, uniter, and dealmaker.
Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches by John Hodgman (Oct. 24, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-0-7352-2480-3). Hodgman writes about life in his 40s as he travels through the woods of his home state of Massachusetts and the coast of Maine, which he refers to as “Vacationland” and which, he says, has the most painful beaches on Earth.
Yale Univ.
Devotion by Patti Smith (Sept. 12, hardcover, $18, ISBN 978-0-300-21862-6) offers an account of Smith’s creative process, inspirations, and unexpected connections. Whether writing in a café or a train, Smith generously opens her notebooks to provide glimpses of the alchemy of her art and craft.
