Accordion Eulogies

Noé Álvarez

“Accordion Eulogies unfolds like the truest corridos: with an invitation into a story of restless hearts and searching spirits, of strength forged by suffering, of ancestral specters that refuse to reveal their true shape. Noé Álvarez has married sacred music history with a personal quest of adventure and loss, and the result is a memoir of deep connection: with the past, a homeland, the self, and ultimately the reader. I’m grateful to have spent time with the melody Álvarez conjured.” – Katie Gutierrez

Get the Picture

Bianca Bosker

“Funny, whip-smart, and gorgeously written, Get the Picture will forever transform the way you see. In this engrossing book, Bianca Bosker crashes that most gate-kept of worlds, contemporary art....Equally edifying for art lovers and novices, Get the Picture will send you into a torrid love affair with shape, texture, and color. I loved every word.” – Suleika Jaouad

Candy Darling

Cynthia Carr

“I first heard her name in a Lou Reed song; I first saw her face in a Peter Hujar photograph, looking glamorous, dying; I first heard her voice in an Andy Warhol film. And now, how wonderful to be taken, with care and delight and plenty of spectacle, behind the myth for a peek at the beating heart of Candy Darling. Cynthia Carr has written an absorbing account of an unforgettable woman in a fascinating time, a lonely icon who tried to find a place for herself in a world that couldn’t hold her.” – Justin Torres

Miss May Does Not Exist

Carrie Courogen

“"In Miss May Does Not Exist, Carrie Courogen pulls off quite the feat; she manages to capture, with nuance and wit, the life of a woman who is as hilarious as she is complex, as sparkling as she is serious, as ambitious as she is aloof. Courogen makes an undeniable case for May’s permanent place in the cinematic canon as a major director and singular comedic talent; after reading this book, I will be saying ‘justice for Ishtar!’ to anyone who will listen.” – Rachel Syme

Thunderclap

Laura Cumming

“Cumming writes with the sureness of carefully laid paint. This is not art historical scholarship of the academic kind. It is an emotionally informed approach to art... She brings Carel Fabritius out of the shadows, making us see why he is so much more than the missing link in someone else’s story.” – The Guardian

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent

Judi Dench and Brendan O’Hea

“A literary demonstration of how the iconic actor has lost none of her energy, flair, and fiery intelligence... Dench’s memoir of the roles she has loved is a witty, thoroughly entertaining romp through the Shakespearean world.” – Kirkus Reviews, starred review

The Long Run

Stacey D’Erasmo

“Oh, how I needed this book! Stacey D’Erasmo has given us a tender and fascinating lineage of artists who demonstrate the myriad ways to build a life around an artistic practice and sustain it. Between their stories emerges her own gorgeous and intimate memoir, a queer künstlerroman that had me rapt. Every moment of reading these pages felt like ingesting a delicious, life-saving tonic. What a gift of a book.” – Melissa Febos

Building

Mark Ellison

“Who knew Mark Ellison’s handiwork would include a book this exquisite, purposeful, absorbing? Building merits reading and rereading — it’s a book with much to teach us all.” – Ayad Akhtar

The Black Box

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

“Henry Louis Gates is a national treasure. Here, he returns with an intellectual and at times deeply personal meditation on the hard-fought evolution and the very meaning of African American identity, calling upon our country to transcend its manufactured divisions.” – Isabel Wilkerson

Radiant

Brad Gooch

“It’s all here: the grade school Walt Disney and Dr. Seuss; the adolescent acid trips; the fondness for Post-it notes and flying saucers; the long tails of Dubuffet and Burroughs; the encounters with Madonna, Warhol, and one game-changer of a subway Johnny Walker Red poster. Brad Gooch takes us deep into Keith Haring’s imagination while somehow managing to fix the aura and energy of the 1980s New York art scene to the page. A keen-eyed, beautifully written biography, atmospheric, exuberant, and as radiant as they come.” – Stacy Schiff

Feeding Ghosts

Tessa Hulls

“With incandescent imagery and prose, Tessa Hulls excavates the incredible, sweeping story of her matrilineal lineage, wrestling with the ways in which her family’s ghosts, experiences with mental illness, and loneliness reverberate across generations. A striking, gorgeous memoir from a spectacular talent, Feeding Ghosts will linger with readers for years to come.” – Kat Chow

The Garden Against Time

Olivia Laing

“A book that begins as beguiling and beautiful then flicks into the revelatory: the work of salvaging a ruined garden in Suffolk becomes a book about a different kind of salvation altogether. Her mind is so agile, so capacious, so widely ranging, so consistently surprising. If I had the means, I’d present her with large plots of land every year so that she could write books such as this again and again.” – Neel Mukherjee

What a Fool Believes

Michael McDonald and Paul Reiser

“Michael McDonald is one of the most gifted musicians of our time. Over the last half century, his incredible talents have placed him in the eye of the musical hurricane and this vivid memoir brings it all to life. What a Fool Believes is essential reading for every music fan.” – Don Was

Stories Are Weapons

Annalee Newitz

“A penetrating, passionately-reasoned analysis of how propaganda and disinformation have been used as tactics of both hard and soft wars, and how we continue to be manipulated today. This is a storyteller’s account of the devastating force of storytelling.” – Angela Saini

Cue the Sun!

Emily Nussbaum

“The finest kind of pop-cultural narrative history: inquisitive, discerning, surprising, thoughtful, informative, and lively; underpinned but not weighed down by its serious intent; and written with a storyteller’s verve, a journalist’s skepticism, a critic’s astuteness, and a fan’s loving eye.” – Michael Chabon

Run Towards the Danger

Sarah Polley

“I loved this book! Like light refracted through a prism, each essay offers a unique view of the rich inner world and illustrious career of one of our most important artists. Smart, funny, devastating and compassionate — often all in the same paragraph — Run Towards the Danger reminds us of literature’s power to synthesize the human condition and to transform a reader in the process.” – Alison Pick

My Black Country

Alice Randall

“Alice’s unique position in Nashville, her family background, her talent for word craft, and her insatiable thirst for the truth position her as a much-needed voice and perspective on this seminal and overlooked piece of American cultural history.” – Rhiannon Giddens

All Things Are Too Small

Becca Rothfeld

“This is a radical and important book. Along with the brilliance of the prose and the range of consideration, there is the steady coherence of Becca Rothfeld’s argument: in these essays, she stages passionate duels between egalitarianism and distinction, abstinence and appetite, control and disproportion, and wins the battle, beautifully and eloquently, for the side of expansiveness and mess and desire. It’s a thrilling struggle, thrillingly prosecuted.” – James Wood

When Women Ran Fifth Avenue

Julie Satow

“By taking us inside the gilded department store revolving doors in When Women Ran Fifth Avenue, Julie Satow transports us to an era filled with designers, artists, and celebrities. In this fascinating and glamorous trip back in time, we are introduced to the women behind the scenes who made it all happen — changing the way we shop, dress, and pursue careers.” – Kate Storey

The Playbook

James Shapiro

“Some books illuminate the past, some feel vividly relevant to the present moment. The Playbook is one of those rare historical works that does both of these things equally brilliantly. In his compulsively readable style, James Shapiro tells a startling story of New Deal America and the Federal Theater’s extraordinary attempt to place creativity at the heart of democracy. He also uncovers the hidden roots of today’s culture wars, with all the cynicism, media manipulation and disinformation that shape our current political reality. This is not just a great work of theater history, it is history itself as a gripping and fiercely urgent drama.” – Fintan O’Toole

You Could Make This Place Beautiful

Maggie Smith

“You Could Make This Place Beautiful is a sparklingly brilliant memoir-in-vignettes that only Maggie Smith could write. Yet this is a book for everyone — who among us has never had our world upended by the loss of a relationship? Maggie Smith’s powerful mastery of language, and amazing ability to portray life in all its rich messiness, is on full display in this bold, brutally candid, and yes, beautiful, book.” – Isaac Fitzgerald

The Backyard Bird Chronicles

Amy Tan

“This is one of the most infectious and convincing books about nature I’ve read. For the bird-watcher, the would-be bird-watcher, or for the bird-watching skeptic, this offers great delight and unexpected intrigue. Through Tan’s ecstatic eyes, what could be a dry treatise on ornithological happenings becomes something far more fun and much more profound. It’s really a book about seeing.” – Dave Eggers

Cinema Speculation

Quentin Tarantino

“Brilliant and passionate....Tarantino’s joy, generosity, and singular point of view bolster his arguments, and even when he’s taking down his heroes, it’s out of love....Whip-smart and obsessive, Tarantino is great fun and tough to beat.” – Publishers Weekly, starred review

A Place of Our Own

June Thomas

“A breathless and fun-to-read, yet sobering, tour through the worlds we built. The depth of culture, subculture, and fascinating history that comes alive in this book captures a world before the internet, before corporate whitewashing obscured the complexity of our connections and experiences. A Place of Our Own illustrates a time when each woman had to venture out into the world of the unknown to create her lesbian life and all the unforeseen adventures she encountered and created. Bravo!” – Sarah Schulman

The Swans of Harlem

Karen Valby

“Until Valby’s utterly absorbing, flawlessly-researched book, I never knew the story of the original Dance Theatre of Harlem ballerinas — and now, I demand that their lives be taught in schools! Valby finally sheds light on these towering dance pioneers, all of whom triumphed as dancers in a world that didn’t believe Black people had a place in the classical art form. Vibrant, propulsive, and inspiring, The Swans of Harlem is a richly drawn portrait of five courageous women whose contributions have been silenced for too long!” – Tia Williams