Life Stories & History

Biography/Memoir

Agent Josephine:

American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy

by Damien Lewis

available in July, hardcover, PublicAffairs Prior to World War II, Baker was a singer and dancer, renowned for her beauty and sexuality; she was the most highly-paid female performer in Europe. When the Nazis seized her adopted city of Paris, she was banned from the stage. Yet, instead of returning to America, she vowed to stay and to fight the Nazi evil. Overnight she went from performer to Resistance spy. Drawing on a plethora of new historical material and rigorous research, including previously undisclosed letters and journals, Lewis upends the conventional story of Josephine Baker, revealing that her mark on history went far beyond the confines of the stage.

Normal Family:

On Truth, Love, and How I Met My 35 Siblings

by Chrysta Bilton

available in July, hardcover, Little, Brown Bilton’s magnetic, larger-than-life mother, Debra, yearned to have a child, but as a single gay woman in 1980s California, she had few options. One day she met a man and instantly knew he was the one she’d been looking for. But how much did Debra really know about the man she’d chosen to father her daughters? And as a single mother torn between ferocious independence and abject dependence, what secrets of her own was she keeping? It wasn’t until Chrysta was a young adult that she discovered just how much her parents had hidden from their daughters — and each other — including a shocking revelation with far-reaching consequences not only for Debra, Chrysta, and her sister, but for dozens and possibly hundreds of unsuspecting families across the country.

His Name is George Floyd:

One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice

by Robert Samuels, Toluse Olorunnipa

available now, hardcover, Viking A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd's life and legacy — from his family’s roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing — telling the singular story of how one man’s tragic experience brought about a global movement for change.

Mother Noise: A Memoir

by Cindy House

available now, hardcover, Scribner Cindy House is a recovering heroin addict with 20 years of sobriety. In her new memoir, she describes being torn between telling her young son about her past, weighing the harm it could do with being open and transparent about who she is. In essays and illustrations, House takes us through her years of use and sobriety in honest and spare language. It’s about mother love and how we navigate the ugly truths with our kids. –Claire

Tales of Al:

The Water Rescue Dog

by Lynne Cox

available now, hardcover, Knopf The moving, inspiring story of Al, the ungainly, unruly, irresistible Newfoundland puppy who grows up to become a daring rescue dog and super athlete — part of Italy's elite, highly specialized corps of water rescue dogs who swoop out of helicopters and save lives.

Northwest First Nations

Where the Language Lives: Vi Hilbert and the Gift of Lushootseed

by Janet Yoder

available now, paperback, Girl Friday Books The life and work of Upper Skagit tribal elder Vi Hilbert, who, more than anyone, revitalized her native language—Lushootseed—and shared it and the culture it expresses with the world. Drawn from thirty years of friendship and interviews, Where the Language Lives is a tribute to Vi Hilbert’s life, work, and her quest to preserve her native language. Vi carried her culture by the example of her life as she shared her beloved Lushootseed language through her teaching, speaking, storytelling, recording, and publishing. Without her diligent research and her transcription and translation of early recordings in Lushootseed, much of the language could have been lost to the world.

Hotbed: Bohemian Greenwich Village and the Secret Club that Sparked Modern Feminism

by Joanna Scutts

available in June, hardcover, Seal Press On a Saturday in New York City in 1912, a group of women gathered, all of them convinced that they were going to change the world. It was the first meeting of “Heterodoxy.” Its members were passionate advocates of free love, equal marriage, and easier divorce. They were socialites and socialists; reformers and revolutionaries; artists, writers, and scientists. Their club, at the heart of America’s bohemia, was a springboard for parties, performances, and politics. But it was the women’s extraordinary friendships that made their unconventional lives possible, as they supported each other in pushing for a better world.

Asian American Histories of the United States

by Catherine Ceniza Choy

available in August, hardcover, Beacon Press Asian American Histories of the United States is a nearly 200-year history of Asian migration, labor, and community formation in the US. Reckoning with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the surge in anti-Asian hate and violence, award-winning historian Catherine Ceniza Choy presents an urgent social history of the fastest growing group of Americans.

Mountaineering History

Into the Great Emptiness:

Peril and Survival on the Greenland Ice Cap

by David Roberts

available in July, hardcover, W.W. Norton In August 1930, no place in the world was less well explored than the east coast of Greenland. Henry George Watkins, a 23-year-old British explorer, led an expedition into its vast and forbidding interior to set up a permanent meteorological base on the icecap. When they arrived, there were not enough provisions for a two-man shift, so the station would have to be abandoned. Then team member August Courtauld made an astonishing offer — he would monitor the station solo through the winter. When a team went up in March to relieve Courtauld, after weeks of brutal effort to make the 130-mile journey, they could find no trace of him or the station. On April 21, four months after Courtauld began his solitary vigil, Watkins set out inland with two companions to find and rescue him.

Public Faces, Secret Lives:

A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement

by Wendy L. Rouse

available now, hardcover, NYU Press Rouse posits that, contrary to popular belief, the suffrage movement included a variety of individuals who represented a range of genders and sexualities. However, owing to the constant pressure to present a “respectable” public image, suffrage leaders publicly conformed to gendered views of ideal womanhood in order to make suffrage more palatable to the public. Rouse argues that queer suffragists did take meaningful action to assert their identities and legacies by challenging traditional concepts of domesticity, family, space, and death in both subtly subversive and radically transformative ways.

River of the Gods: Genius,

Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile

by Candice Millard

available now, hardcover, Doubleday For millennia the location of the Nile River’s headwaters was shrouded in mystery. In the 19th century, there was a frenzy of interest in ancient Egypt. At the same time, European powers sent off waves of explorations intended to map the unknown corners of the globe – and extend their colonial empires. Candice Millard has written another peerless story of courage and adventure, set against the backdrop of the race to exploit Africa by the colonial powers.

France:

An Adventure History

by Graham Robb

available in July, hardcover, W.W. Norton Beginning with the Roman army’s first recorded encounter with the Gauls and ending in the era of Emmanuel Macron, France takes readers on an endlessly entertaining journey through French history. Robb conveys with wit and precision what it felt like to look over the shoulder of a young Louis XIV as he planned the vast garden of Versailles, and the dangerous thrill of having a ringside seat at the French revolution. Frequently hilarious, always surprising, Graham Robb’s France combines the stylistic versatility of a novelist with the deep understanding of a scholar.