Nonfiction Summer Reading Guide
From inspiring biographies to hilarious historical deep dives, these books are guaranteed to be the perfect additions to your summer reading list.
A #1 TORONTO STAR BESTSELLER
AN INSTANT USA TODAY AND INDIE BESTSELLER
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From one of the hottest stand-up comedians, Nate Bargatze brings his everyman comedy to the page in this hilarious collection of personal stories, opinions, and confessions.
Nate Bargatze used to be a genius. That is, until the summer after seventh grade when he slipped, fell off a cliff, hit his head on a rock, and “my skull got, like, dented or something.” Before this accident, he dreamed of being “an electric engineer, or a doctor that does brain stuff, or a math teacher who teaches the hardest math on earth.” Afterwards, all he could do was stand-up comedy.* But the “brain stuff” industry’s loss is everyone else’s gain because Nate went on to become one of today’s top-grossing comedians, breaking both attendance and streaming records.
In his highly anticipated first book, Nate talks about life as a non-genius. From stories about his first car (named Old Blue, a clunky Mazda with a tennis ball stick shift) and his travels as a Southerner (Northerners like to ask if he believes in dinosaurs), to tales of his first apartment where he was almost devoured by rats and his many debates with his wife over his chores, his diet, and even his definition of “shopping.” He also reflects on such heady topics as his irrational passion for Vandy football and the mysterious origins of sushi (how can a California roll come from old-time Japan?).
BIG DUMB EYES is full of heart. It will make readers laugh out loud and nod in recognition, but it probably won’t make them think too much.
*Nate’s family disputes this entire story.
Discover the transformative New York Times bestseller—a step-by-step manual for mastering your inner mind for peak performance and living your life to the fullest.
As a professional baseball player, Jim Murphy’s sense of worth revolved around results. He was focused on achievement but also afraid of failure. When he started coaching professional and Olympic athletes, he often encountered the same mindset. He became obsessed with learning how the best in the world performed with poise under pressure.
After years of research, Murphy had a revelatory insight: the pursuit of extraordinary performance and the pursuit of an exceptional life are the same path.
Filled with exercises, techniques, and tools, Inner Excellence trains your heart and mind, showing you how to:
· Develop self-mastery—and let go of what you can’t control.
· Overcome anxiety—and build powerful mental habits.
· Remove mental blocks—and get out of your own way.
· Train your subconscious mind—and release limiting beliefs.
Merging two decades of research and interviews with top athletes and leaders with this training system, Inner Excellence will put you on a path towards a more satisfactory and joyful life.
From actor, comedian, writer, and host of the hit history podcast SNAFU, Ed Helms brings you an absurdly entertaining look at history’s biggest blunders, complete with lively illustrations.
History contains a plethora of insane screwups—otherwise known as SNAFUs. Coined during World War I, SNAFU is an acronym that stands for Situation Normal: All F*cked Up. In other words, “things are pretty screwed up, but aren’t they always?”
Spanning from the 1950’s to the present day, SNAFU features Ed Helms as unofficial history teacher with a loving tribute to humanity’s finest face-plants, diving into each decade’s craziest SNAFUs. From planting nukes on the moon to training felines as CIA spies to weaponizing the weather, this book unpacks the incredibly ironic decision-making and hilariously terrifying aftermath of America’s biggest mishaps.
Filled with sharp humor and lively illustrations, SNAFU is a wild ride through time that covers the head-scratching and occasionally inspiring blunders that have shaped our world and made historians spit-take. They’re the kinds of stories that not only entertain but offers fresh insights that just might prevent history from repeating itself again and again.
A GLOBE AND MAIL AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER
Like On Tyranny, but with cats, this is the ultimate guide to channeling feline wisdom in the face of authoritarian nonsense.
Cats, the original masters of stealth, sass, and strategic chaos, have been teaching us survival tactics for centuries—they just haven’t been this explicit about it. Until now.
Through humor, sharp insights, and unapologetic defiance, LESSONS FROM CATS FOR SURVIVING FASCISM lays out eleven essential cat-inspired strategies for resisting control and reclaiming power. From staying nimble and unpredictable to demanding what you need with the confidence of a hungry tabby, each chapter is packed with lessons that are as subversive as they are practical.
Whether you’re facing off against a system that thrives on control or just trying to make sense of a chaotic world, these lessons will arm you with the tools—and the attitude—you need to fight back. Cats don’t ask for permission, and neither should you.
Hearing is the first sense we develop—a primary warning instinct hardwired into our brains. And yet, in an increasingly noisy and distracted world, most people pay very little attention to sound. In school, we teach reading and writing, but not listening. Conscious listening is rare, and, with over half the world’s population now living in cities, billions of people never experience the rich and health‑enhancing sounds of the natural world. Every day, the sounds around us affect our experience and fundamentally alter our quality of life, for better or worse.
In four sections—geophony, the sounds of the planet; biophony, the “great animal orchestra”; anthropophony, the sounds of humanity; and silence, a sound in its own right—this book will help readers rediscover the wonder of sound and understand how powerfully it affects us, whether we’re paying attention or not. It will also offer readers a manual for taking back responsibility for the sounds we consume and the sounds we make, so we can enhance our own happiness.
To tell Larry Charles’s life story is to tell the story of modern American comedy. Over the last 40 years, few comedians have been a part of so many iconic, beloved projects. Larry was one of the original writers and producers on the first five seasons of Seinfeld, executive produced both Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage while directing 18 episodes of Curb, and served as the showrunner for Mad About You. His film directing credits include Borat, Bruno, and The Dictator, the comic documentory Religulous starring Bill Maher, and Masked andAnonymous, which he co-wrote with Bob Dylan who stars.
In Comedy Samurai, Charles pulls back the curtain on the making of his successful projects, offering sharp, never-before-told anecdotes about Jerry Seinfeld, Sacha Baron Cohen, Bill Maher, Bob Dylan, Nic Cage, Mel Brooks, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, and Larry David, among many others.
Perfect for fans of Seinfeldia and lovers of comedy in general, Larry promises to offer new insights about many of the most beloved shows, films, and actors of all time.
“The best Simpsons book ever.”―Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone’s chief television critic and author of The Soprano Sessions and TV (The Book)
The Simpsons is an American institution. But its status as an occasionally sharp yet ultimately safe sitcom that’s still going after 33 years on the air undercuts its revolutionary origins. The early years of the animated series didn’t just impact Hollywood, they changed popular culture. It was a show that altered the way we talked around the watercooler, in school hallways, and on the campaign trail, by bridging generations with its comedic sensibility and prescient cultural commentary.
In Stupid TV, Be More Funny, writer Alan Siegel reveals how the first decade of the show laid the groundwork for the series’ true influence. He explores how the show’s rise from 1990 to 1998 intertwined with the supposedly ascendent post-Cold War America, turning Fox into the juggernaut we know today, simultaneously shaking its head at America’s culture wars while finding itself in the middle of them. By packing the book with anecdotes from icons like Conan O’Brien and Yeardley Smith, Siegel alaso provides readers with an unparalleled look inside the making of the show.
Through interviews with the show’s legendary staff and whip-smart analysis, Siegel charts how The Simpsons developed its singular sensibility throughout the ‘90s, one that was at once groundbreakingly subversive for a primetime cartoon and shockingly wholesome. The result is a definitive history of The Simpsons‘ most essential decade.
Pulitzer Prize winning writer, editor and TV host Jonathan Capehart recounts powerful stories from his life about embracing identity, picking battles, seizing opportunity and finding his voice.
MSNBC anchor Jonathan Capehart is one of the most recognizable faces in cable news. But long before that success, Capehart spent his boyhood growing up without his father, shuttling back and forth between New Jersey and rural Severn, North Carolina, and contemplating the complexities of race and identity as they shifted around him. It was never easy bridging two worlds; whether being told he was too smart or not smart enough, too Black or not Black enough, Capehart struggled to find his place. Then, an internship at The Today Show altered the course of his life, bringing him one step closer to his dream. From there, Capehart embarks on a journey of self-discovery.
Yet Here I Am takes us along that journey, from his years at Carleton College, where he learns to embrace his identity as a gay Black man surrounded by a likeminded community; to his decision to come out to his family, risking rejection; and finally to his move to New York City, where time and again he stumbles and picks himself up as he blazes a path to become the familiar face in news we know today.
Honest and endearing, Yet Here I Am is an inspirational memoir of identity, opportunity, and finding one’s voice and purpose along the way.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NPR BOOKS WE LOVE 2025 PICK
From the author of Madame Restell and Get Well Soon, a biography of Mamie Fish that explores how women used parties and social gatherings to gain power and prestige.
Marion Graves Anthon Fish, known by the nicknames “Mamie” and “The Fun-Maker,” threw the most epic parties in American history. This Gilded Age icon brought it all: lavish decor; A-list invitees; booze; pranks; and large animal guest stars. If you were a member of New York high society in the Peak Age of Innocence Era, you simply had to be on Mamie Fish’s guest list. Mamie Fish understood that people didn’t just need the formality of prior generations — they needed wit and whimsy.
Make no mistake, however: Mamie Fish’s story is about so much more than partying. In Glitz, Glam, and a Damn Good Time, readers will learn all about how Fish and her friends shaped the line of history, exerting their influence on business, politics, family relationships, and social change through elaborate social gatherings. In a time when women couldn’t even own property, let alone run for office, if women wanted any of the things men got outside the home—glory, money, attention, social networking, leadership roles—they had to do it by throwing a decadent soiree or chairing a cotillion.
To ensure people would hear and remember what she had to say, Mamie Fish lived her whole life at Volume 10, becoming famous not by playing the part of a saintly helpmeet, but by letting her demanding, bitchy, hilarious, dramatic freak flag fly. It’s time to let modern readers in on the fun, the fabulousness, and the absolute ferocity that is Ms. Stuyvesant Fish—and her inimitable legacy.
Dining Out explores how gay people came of age, came out, and fought for their rights not just in gay bars or the streets, but in restaurants. From cruisy urban cafeterias of the 1920s to mom-and-pop diners that fed the Stonewall generation to the intersectional hotspots of the early 21st century. Using archival material, original reporting and interviews, and first-person accounts, Erik Piepenburg explores how LGBTQ restaurants shaped and continue to shape generations of gay Americans.
Through the eyes of a reporter and the stomach of a hungry gay man, Dining Out examines the rise, impact and legacies of the nation’s gay restaurants past, present, and future, connecting meals with memories. Hamburger Mary’s, Florent, a suburban Denny’s queered by kids: Piepenburg explores how these and many other gay restaurants, coffee shops, diners, and unconventional eateries have charted queer placemaking and changed the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement for the better.
After an abusive relationship, the death of her father, and a running injury that left her limping, Casey Johnston was unmoored, alone, and burned out. Then she stumbled on a viral blog post about one woman’s experience lifting heavy weights—no dieting, no cardio, no weight loss, and no shame or guilt. With zero experience and nothing left to lose, Casey took a deep breath and stepped into Brooklyn’s grungiest gym. Then she began to question how she had treated her body, and what that treatment meant.
Combining wit, rage, and a reporter’s eye for detail, Johnston embarks on a radical mission to understand the process of rupture, rest, and repair—not just within her cells and muscles, but also within her spirit. Her personal story frames a take-down of diet culture, and the ways we try to “get healthy” that actively make our bodies weaker, as she dives deep into the science of rebuilding mental, emotional, and physical strength. This is a sharp cultural critique for anyone who has ever longed to reclaim their body.
An open-hearted interrogation of our digital selves, braiding cultural criticism, memoir, and narrative musings into an exploration of identity, girlhood, media, tech, nature and “finding the depth and beauty in the fucked-up world we live in” from a writer, artist, and influencer (Phoebe Bridgers).
YOU HAVE A NEW MEMORY is a deeply human inventory of the digital sphere, a searing analysis of the present and a prescient assessment of the future. In her highly anticipated debut, Aiden Arata brings us raw reportage from the liminal space between online and offline worlds, illuminating how we got here and where to go next.
With high-res, cosmic vision and razor-sharp wit, this kaleidoscopic collection of essays artfully explores what it means to exist on the internet. Arata exposes influencer grifts from the perspective of a grifter, digs into the alluring aesthetic numbness of stay-at-home girlfriend content creators, and interrogates our online fetishization of doom to grapple with the real-world apocalypse.
Arata is the wry, unexpected voice we need to navigate existing simultaneously as creators, consumers, and products in our increasingly braver and newer world.
One of Smithsonian Magazine’s Top Ten Books of 2025
Hailed as a “worthy successor” to John McPhee (Kirkus Reviews), Ben Weissenbach —a digital native with little prior wilderness experience—embarks on a series of scientific adventures across the wilds of Alaska with some of the state’s most distinguished and audacious researchers.
At the age of twenty, college student Ben Weissenbach went north to Arctic Alaska armed with little more than inspiration from his literary heroes and a growing interest in climate change. What met him there was a world utterly unlike the 21st century Los Angeles in which he grew up—a land of ice, rock, and grizzlies seen by few outside a small contingent of scientists with big personalities.
There’s Roman Dial, the larger-than-life ecologist with whom Ben walks and rafts a thousand miles across Alaska’s Brooks Range. There’s Kenji Yoshikawa, the reindeer-herding permafrost expert who leaves Ben alone for eleven days to care for his off-grid homestead, where temperatures drop to -49 degrees Fahrenheit. And there’s Matt Nolan, the independent glaciologist who flies him to the largest glaciers in the American Arctic.
As these scientists teach Ben to read Alaska’s warming landscape, he confronts the limits of digital life and the complexity of the world beyond his screens. He emerges from each adventure with a new perspective on our modern relationship to technology and a growing wonder for our fast-changing—ever-changing—natural world.
Their nickname was the Magnificent Bastards and they were warriors without a war. Kept stateside after 9/11 and left floating in the Pacific during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the thousand Marines of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment were told they were bench-warmers as America sent troops into combat. But war was waiting. Iraq would explode in violence exactly one year after a U.S. led Coalition swept into Baghdad and the Magnificent Bastards would find themselves at the epicenter. When the battalion first arrived in the provincial capital of Ramadi, Iraq, in February of 2004, they were thrust into a savage battle where hundreds of insurgents organized a three-day offensive aimed at driving the Marines out of their city of 400,000.
In Unremitting, journalist Gregg Zoroya tells the fast-paced, dramatic, and meticulously-researched story of the battle that truly began the Iraq War. Capturing the heroism, courage, and brutality of battle, Zoroya explores this vital part of American military history and beyond, showing how Ramadi was not just a game-changer for the Iraq War, but also for the marines, sailors, and soldiers who fought it, the trauma remaining with survivors more than two decades later.