17 new nonfiction books to read this season
Whether you want to read about current events, memoirs or history, this season brings plenty of new titles. Two journalists dive into George Floyd's life and family; Viola Davis reflects on her career; a historian explores the brutal underpinnings of the British Empire; and more.
Memoirs & biographies
• `Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama: A Memoir,' by Bob Odenkirk, Random House, out now
Odenkirk's memoir might have also been titled “Obscurity Obscurity Obscurity Fame.” He was a cult favorite of comedy fans in the late 1990s for his work on the sketch-comedy series “Mr. Show,” but his supporting role in “Breaking Bad” and his starring turn in the show's prequel, “Better Call Saul,” made him a household name. His memoir charts his dogged and unlikely path from Chicago comedy clubs to leading man.
• `Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand,' by John Markoff, Penguin Press, out now
Brand might be best known for his countercultural magazine Whole Earth Catalog, which first published in 1968. In that same decade, the Sausalito resident was a participant in the exploits of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters. Now 83, he went on to a long and varied life of thought and activism in the realms of environmentalism, Native American rights and personal computing. Markoff, a former technology reporter for the New York Times, wraps his arms around the whole story in this new biography.
• `Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation,' by Maud Newton, Random House, out now
In her first book, Newton, a critic and essayist, digs deep into her family's past, from Depression-era Texas to witchhunting Massachusetts, not flinching at what she sees. Closer to the present day, she wrestles with her father's racism and her family's religious extremism. Rooted in the personal, Newton's book opens out to an examination of a culture besotted with Ancestry.com and 23andme.com, and asks what we're really looking for in the past.
• `Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph,' by Lucasta Miller, Knopf, April 19
The poet Keats died at 25 in 1821, and his short life and brilliant work have inspired a vast amount of literature. In her new book, Miller says that literature often overlooks how rowdy and subversive Keats really was. She wants to shine light on aspects of his life and work “that haven't always made it into the popular imagination, which still tends to make him appear rather more ethereal than he actually was.”
• `Finding Me: A Memoir,' by Viola Davis, arperOne, April 26
Davis, a fixture on television and movie screens, the winner of an Oscar (for “Fences”) and an Emmy (for “How to Get Away With Murder”), found steady work and then stardom as an actor after growing up in incredibly difficult circumstances. In her memoir, she writes of the poverty and food insecurity her family suffered in Rhode Island when she was a child, and of how acting changed her life, leading to a college scholarship, Juilliard and the theater and Hollywood success that followed.