Dreads, Beats, triumphs, tragedies, surfing, baseball, rock ’n’ roll, spaceflight and evolution. Oh, and DNA.
MEMOIR/BIO
The Rose Hotel
A Memoir of Secrets, Loss, and Love From Iran to America
Rahimeh Andalibian
National Geographic, $26
An Iranian-born psychologist tells the tragic story of her family, which left its home country for England, then America, after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. (Out now)
Twisted
My Dreadlock Chronicles
Bert Ashe
Bolden/Agate, $15 paper
Part memoir of a professor’s decision to grow dreadlocks, part meditation on the significance of African American hair in art and society. (June)
The Great Detective
The Amazing Rise and Immortal Life of Sherlock Holmes
Zach Dundas Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26
This biography of the world’s most famous fictional detective investigates how Arthur Conan Doyle’s character has managed to stay relevant all these years. (June)
I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career
The Selected Correspondence of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg, 1955-1997
Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg, edited by Bill Morgan
City Lights, $26.95
A collection of the letters, spanning over four decades, between “Howl” poet Ginsberg and City Lights co-founder Ferlinghetti, both Beat Generation legends. (June)
Barbarian Days
A Surfing Life
William Finnegan
The Penguin Press, $27.95
The New Yorker staff writer reflects on his life as a surfing fanatic, from his youth in Hawaii to later stints riding the waves in Thailand, Indonesia and more. (July)
Street Poison
The Biography of Iceberg Slim
Justin Gifford
Doubleday, $26.95 A look at the life, literature and politics of Robert Beck, the infamous pimp and controversial author better known by his nickname, Iceberg Slim. (August)
Under the Same Sky
From Starvation in North Korea to Salvation in America Joseph Kim with Stephan Talty Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $28
The story of a young North Korean man who escaped the poverty-wracked country for China and then the U.S., where he became a college student. (June)
The Pawnbroker’s Daughter
Maxine Kumin
W.W. Norton, $25.95
A posthumous memoir from the former U.S. poet laureate, whose work often dealt with feminism and life in the New England countryside. (July)
Undocumented
A Dominican Boy’s Odyssey From a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League
Dan-el Padilla Peralta
The Penguin Press, $27.95
The tale of a young undocumented immigrant who went from growing up homeless in New York to earning a Ph.D. in classics from Stanford University. (July)
Blackout
Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget
Sarah Hepola
Grand Central, $26
After too many mornings waking up with no memory of the night before, a young journalist makes the difficult decision to give up drinking for good. (June)
Bobby Wonderful
An Imperfect Son Buries His Parents
Bob Morris
Twelve, $25
The NPR commentator looks back on the deaths of his elderly parents and his sometimes contentious relationship with his
older brother. (June)
SPORTS/ARTS
The Domino Diaries
My Decade Boxing With Olympic Champions and Chasing Hemingway’s Ghost in the Last Days of Castro’s Cuba
Brin-Jonathan Butler
Picador, $26 Amateur boxer and gonzo journalist Butler writes about the pugilists of Havana and the beauty and contradictions of life in Cuba. (June)
Allen Klein
The Man Who Bailed Out the Beatles, Made the Stones, and Transformed Rock & Roll
Fred Goodman
Eamon Dolan/Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt, $27
A biography of one of the most controversial businessmen in rock ’n’ roll history — the canny, temperamental manager of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. (June)
Molina
The Story of the Father Who Raised an Unlikely Baseball Dynasty Bengie Molina and Joan Ryan
Simon & Schuster, $25
Three sons, six World Series rings. The former Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim catcher writes about the man who raised him and his two brothers, also star baseball players. (Out now)
Year of the Dunk
A Modest Defiance of Gravity
Asher Price
Crown, $26
In this memoir, a reporter and cancer survivor in his 30s, who’s not exactly in the best shape of his life, resolves to dunk a basketball in one year. (Out now)
Dreams to Remember
Otis Redding, Stax Records, and the Transformation of Southern Soul
Mark Ribowsky
Liveright, $27.95
The soul musician who died at 26 is the subject of this appreciation, which considers the singer’s career in the contexts of popular music and civil rights. (June)
Keepers
The Greatest Films — and Personal Favorites — of a Moviegoing Lifetime
Richard Schickel
Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95
The longtime film critic, who has seen more than 20,000 movies in his 50-year career, reflects on the films he loves the most. (June)
HISTORY/ CURRENT EVENTS
Palimpsest
A History of the Written Word
Matthew Battles
W.W. Norton, $26.95
From the author of “Library: An Unquiet History,” this chronicle of the art of writing spans millennia, from ancient Mesopotamia to our computer-obsessed modern age. (July)
Give Us the Ballot
The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America
Ari Berman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27
The Voting Rights Act was signed into law 50 years ago, but according to journalist Berman, the fight for equality in voting is still taking place. (August)
Midnight’s Furies
The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition
Nisid Hajari
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $28
A history of India and Pakistan’s 1947 independence from Britain, which was accompanied by terrible violence in both of the new countries. (June)
Putinism
Russia and Its Future With the West
Walter Laqueur Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s, $27.99
The historian argues that Vladimir Putin’s controversial style of governance won’t be going away anytime soon, no matter who succeeds him as Russian president. (June)
Project Fatherhood
A Story of Courage and Healing in One of America’s
Toughest Communities
Jorja Leap
Beacon, $24.95
UCLA anthropologist and gang expert Leap writes about the South L.A. community group she co-founded with local activist Big Mike Cummings. (June)
SCIENCE/ NATURE
Life’s Greatest Secret
The Race to Crack the Genetic Code
Matthew Cobb
Basic, $27.99
A history of the scientists who discovered DNA and the genetic code, forever changing the face of science as we know it. (July)
Leaving Orbit
Notes From the Last Days of American Spaceflight
Margaret Lazarus Dean
Graywolf, $16 paper
The writer offers a history of American exploration in space and considers what it means for the country that the space shuttle program has ended. (Out now)
Big Science
Ernest Lawrence and the Invention That Launched the Military-Industrial Complex
Michael Hiltzik
Simon & Schuster, $30
Times columnist Hiltzik chronicles the life and career of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who invented the cyclotron, which changed the face of modern warfare. (July)
The Weather Experiment
The Pioneers Who Sought to See the Future
Peter Moore
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $30
A history of the 19th-century scientists who realized that weather didn’t have to be a mystery and pioneered the study of meteorology. (June)
The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack
And Other Cautionary Tales From Human Evolution
Ian Tattersall
Palgrave MacMillan, $27
One of the world’s leading paleoanthropologists looks at how the discipline has evolved over the years and the missteps scientists have made along the way. (June)