21 Anticipated Books to Start 2021

For Real

This week Alice and Kim preview 21 of their most-anticipated new books from the first half of 2021. Plus, they discuss reading plans for the year and some of the best-reviewed books of 2020.

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Nonfiction in the News

“The Best Reviewed Nonfiction of 2020 [LitHub]

Most Anticipated Nonfiction of the First Half of 2021

White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind by Koa Beck

The Beautiful Struggle (Adapted for Young Adults) by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty by Maurice Chammah

Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion

Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain

Made in China: A Prisoner, an SOS Letter, and the Hidden Costs of America’s Cheap Goods by Amelia Pang

Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal by Mark Bittman

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert

A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload by Cal Newport

A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome by Emma Southon

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson

Already Toast: Caregiving and Burnout in America by Kate Washington

Night Rooms: Essays by Gina Nutt

The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans–and How We Can Fix It by Dorothy A. Brown

Every Day Is a Gift by Sen. Tammy Duckworth

Pipe Dreams: The Urgent Global Quest to Transform the Toilet by Chelsea Wald

Broken (In the Best Possible Way) by Jenny Lawson

Persist by Elizabeth Warren

White Magic by Elissa Washuta

African Europeans: An Untold History by Olivette Otele

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell

Reading Now

Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May

New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States by Marjorie Spruill Wheeler

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