19 Nonfiction Books to Read This Summer

June

The Friday Afternoon Club, by Griffin Dunne

Judy Garland, Sean Connery, Carrie Fisher: Celebrities abound in the actor’s new memoir. Dunne’s book is engaging as much for his fame-adjacent vignettes as for his frank exploration of his famous family’s complicated history — most notably that of his sister, Dominique Dunne, a rising star in Hollywood whose career was cut short when she was killed by her ex-boyfriend. His account of her death and the subsequent infamous trial is an illuminating perspective.

Penguin Press, June 11

Roctogenarians, by Mo Rocca and Jonathan Greenberg

Worried that you’re past your prime? Fret not. Rocca and Greenberg make the case that our most remarkable years come later in life. The authors weave their argument from stories about the artist Henri Matisse, the actor Morgan Freeman and even Mr. Pickles, a tortoise who became a first-time father at 90 years old.

Simon & Schuster, June 11

Apprentice in Wonderland, by Ramin Setoodeh

Setoodeh, a co-editor in chief of Variety, draws on hours of interviews with several former contestants of “The Apprentice,” Trump’s son Eric and Trump himself, among others, to examine the long-running reality show that preceded Trump’s tenure at the White House.

Harper, June 18

Night Flyer, by Tiya Miles

A historian turns her eye to the future face of the $20 bill: Harriet Tubman. Though broad strokes of Tubman’s story are widely known, Miles probes deeper, examining her inner life, faith and relationships with other enslaved Black women to paint a deeper, more vibrant portrait of a historical figure whose mythic status can sometimes overshadow her humanity.

Penguin Press, June 18

On Call, by Anthony Fauci

Fauci was thrown into the national spotlight after becoming the de facto face of the United States’s fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. Nearly two years after retiring from his five-decade career in the public health sector, Fauci returns with a memoir that traces his path from growing up as a young boy in Brooklyn, to advising every president since Ronald Reagan (as well as millions of Americans) through modern-day scourges like AIDS, Ebola and SARS.

Viking, June 18

We Were Illegal, by Jessica Goudeau

Goudeau’s 2020 book, “After the Last Border,” offered a searing indictment of this country’s response to humanitarian crises through the stories of two refugees in Austin, Tex. Now, she broadens the lens on her home state, mapping pivotal moments in Texan history through multiple generations of her family — drawing parallels with issues of displacement, migration, mass violence and civil rights that continue to ripple through the United States.

Viking, June 18

Cue the Sun!, by Emily Nussbaum

The New Yorker staff writer traces the history of the divisive and influential phenomenon that is reality television. From “America’s Funniest Home Videos” to “The Real World,” “Survivor” and “The Bachelor,” the Pulitzer-winning critic investigates how this genre reveals as much about our country as it does ourselves.

Random House, June 25

Do Something, by Guy Trebay

Trebay, a New York Times journalist, maps his young adult years in a landscape of emerging artists, filmmakers and other creative types in 1970s Manhattan. It’s a fun and fascinating glimpse into the many artistic tribes that thrived in a city then on the skids.

Knopf, June 25

The Garden Against Time, by Olivia Laing

A garden is nominally a nurturing place for plants, but it is also fertile ground for generating ideas and exploring history. Inspired after restoring her own green space in 2020, the English cultural critic takes an anthropological approach to gardens both imagined and real, surveying them as both sites of “larger patterns of privilege and exclusion” and places of “rebel outposts and dreams of a communal paradise.”

Norton, June 25

July

The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum, by Margalit Fox

Before Al Capone, there was Fredericka Mandelbaum. In a scrupulously researched narrative, Fox, a former New York Times journalist, tells the story of one of the most successful crooks (and businesswomen) in New York City, who became so notorious that she earned the title of “a queen among thieves.”

Random House, July 2

The Incorruptibles, by Dan Slater

Slater takes readers on an atmospheric journey through the lens of Jewish men who ran gambling dens, prostitute rings and crime syndicates in New York City during the Gilded Age, capturing the extreme ambition of these larger-than-life characters, as well as the inequality and antisemitism of the era.

Little, Brown, July 16

Guilty Creatures, by Mikita Brottman

Two couples. One death. Zero body. The story of the couples Mike and Denise Williams and Brian and Kathy Winchester — and later, Denise and Brian — is catnip for true-crime aficionados. Brottman examines the shocking circumstances of Mike’s 2000 disappearance and reveals what it takes for a couple to kill (and to continue living with that secret for almost two decades).

One Signal/Atria, July 23

The Future Was Now, by Chris Nashawaty

1982 was a pivotal year for science-fiction and horror cinema. Eight beloved movies — “E.T.,” “Tron,” “Star Trek: Wrath of Khan,” “Conan the Barbarian,” “Blade Runner,” “Poltergeist,” “The Thing” and “Mad Max: The Road Warrior” — were released within six weeks. Written with a fan’s enthusiasm for Marvel superheroes, “The Future Was Now” recounts the origins of this wave, which marked an important inflection point in Hollywood filmmaking.

Flatiron Books, July 30

August

An Honest Woman, by Charlotte Shane

Shane, an author and essayist, chronicles her years as a sex worker to explore her relationship to all the men in her life — her clients, her friends, her husband, her father — as a feminist and a straight woman. Shane’s unsparing honesty illuminates what it means for her to seek love, intimacy and relationships with these men under a cloud of misogyny.

Simon & Schuster, Aug. 13

Keeping the Faith, by Brenda Wineapple

In July 1925, John Scopes, a high school teacher, was found guilty of violating a Tennessee law against teaching evolution in the classroom. His conviction was overturned by the state’s Supreme Court over a technicality, but the trial itself became a national sensation. Wineapple unpacks the sociopolitical conditions leading up to the case, and examines how it spotlighted the clash between fundamentalist and modernist values that reverberate across the country today.

Random House, Aug. 13

Kent State, by Brian VanDeMark

On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed protesters at Kent State University, killing four and wounding nine — a watershed moment in United States history that galvanized anti-Vietnam War demonstrators at college campuses nationwide. This book draws on new research and interviews, including the perspectives of guardsmen who were there, to reconstruct a shooting that changed American protests forever.

Norton, Aug. 13

Men Have Called Her Crazy, by Anna Marie Tendler

The artist recounts the two-week period in early 2021 when she checked herself into a psychiatric hospital. Equally evocative and devastating, this memoir traces the time before and after her institutionalization, resulting in a piecing together of momentous life occasions that were touched, to varying degrees and as the title suggests, by men. (Tendler’s ex-husband, the comedian John Mulaney, is not included in the book.)

Simon & Schuster, Aug. 13

Never Saw Me Coming, by Tanya Smith

This is a riveting account by a Black woman who pilfered thousands, then millions, from the federal banking system after discovering a brilliant white-collar hack. The story is filled with twists and turns — including an innocuous scheme to acquire Michael Jackson’s phone number — and is told by a woman who was constantly written off by the authorities, not least because of her race.

Little, Brown, Aug. 13

Where Tyranny Begins, by David Rohde

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist lays out his investigation of how Donald Trump bent two of the country’s most powerful law-enforcement agencies to his will for political gain. It’s an informative overview of Trump’s years in the White House, and examines how the agencies fail to check presidential power.

Norton, Aug. 27