Here is a quick look at the most noteworthy nonfiction titles being released in May. Visit our catalog for a more extensive list.
TOP PICKS
David Sedaris, the master of the humorous essay, returns this months with “Calypso.” Including darkly funny musings on aging, his inability to enjoy his newly purchased beach house and the antics of his quirky family, this new collection should please his many fans as well as anyone looking for a nonfiction beach read.
The next installment in this year’s stream of popular political books is “The Restless Wave” by John McCain. This candid memoir chronicles the election of Barack Obama through the divisive 2016 election of Donald Trump, offering no-holds-barred opinions of the current developments coming out of Washington as well as the author’s recommendations for ongoing international challenges, from Russia and NATO to ISIS and the wars in the Middle East.
In the 1920s and 30s, Zora Neale Hurston traveled to Alabama to conduct a series of interviews with Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Lewis was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation’s history. Unpublished until now, “Barracoon” collects Hurston’s synthesis of these interviews and presents a story that is still poignant to this day.
Michael Pollan’s “How to Change Your Mind” presents a groundbreaking investigation into the medical and scientific revolution currently taking place in the field of psychedelic drugs, drawing on a range of experiences to trace the criminalization of such substances as LSD and psychedelic mushrooms and how they may offer treatment options for difficult health challenges.
BEST OF THE REST
- “Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture” edited by Roxane Gay
- “The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created a Modern World” by Simon Winchester
- “She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity” by Carl Zimmer
- “The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels” by Jon Meacham
- “There Are No Grown-Ups: A Midlife Coming-of-age Story” by Pamela Druckerman
- “Three Days in Moscow: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of the Soviet Empire” by Brett Baier
