Tamara J. Walker

👇🏽

New Nonfiction to Read This Spring Memoirs from Liza Minnelli and Arsenio Hall; essays from David Sedaris and Jesmyn Ward; plus histories, true crime, biographies and more.

Here are 26 nonfiction books we’re excited about this spring.

Whyteface: A Novel A pointed satire about a Nigerian on vacation in Europe, into the heart of whitenessFour years ago, a young man named Furo Wariboko woke up one morning in Lagos to find that he had transformed into a white man. Except for his ass. Now well established with a good job, going by Frank Whyte and living in a nicely appointed house in the capital city of Abuja, he is ready to set off on a real vacation—his first trip outside Nigeria.As Frank travels to Amsterdam, Oslo, and Milan, he finds himself, for the first time in years . . . blending in. His skin is not in the least remarkable. In Amsterdam he befriends his well-meaning but occasionally misguided Airbnb host. There he also meets a Nigerian expat living in America whom he is both delighted to see but who vexes him for reasons he can’t initially identify. In Oslo, he intervenes when a charismatic Kenyan writer is the victim of a racist taxi driver. In Milan he comes upon a woman who might be a distant relative who has survived a treacherous journey of migration. He quickly realizes that he feels most Nigerian when he is outside of Nigeria, and he begins to wonder what it might take to be treated, simply, as human.Hilarious, sharp-witted, and moving, each in turn and often all at once, A. Igoni Barrett’s Whyteface confronts the absurdities of Europe and the West’s ideas about the global south—both its xenophobic fear as well as its supposedly beneficent charity. It is a heady and absorbing new novel by the writer Teju Cole called “a major talent.”

OK, I recognize the following sentence is going look odd, but I cannot get over the year we're having for books and it's Friday night and we've got to live our truth so...

Holy crap there's a sequel to Blackass coming out called Whyteface!

The Historian's Writerly Craft: A Summer Intensive Grounded in Discipline and Artistry - OIEAHC APPLY NOW for this 12-week intensive workshop designed for historians who want to improve their artistic craft.

#skystorians! If you work on vast early America and want to develop your writerly and storytelling chops in community with other historians, please consider applying to the inaugural Craft Intensive sponsored by @oieahc.bsky.social (led by myself and Scott Heerman). For more details, visit:

RIP to hundreds of Iranians and one American vacation

What an incredible title and gorgeous cover. I cannot wait!

My book has a cover! IN LATIN AMERICA YOU COULD BE FREE: AN AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY tells the story of the place and promise of Latin America in the political imagination of African Americans and of their movements to the region in the antebellum period.

Out on Basic Books, November 11, 2026! 🥳

Martha S. Jones (2013 ACLS Fellow) and Kate Masur (2020 Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellow) have submitted a historians’ amicus brief in Trump v. Barbara.

Learn more about scholars working to increase public understanding and inform policymakers on birthright citizenship: bit.ly/4pz9XEk

Full text from @theguardian.com here:

Whether it's Trump planning to use secret police to suppress the Democratic vote in the 2026 election or Zohran Mamdani planning to open up a couple city-run grocery stores in Manhattan, both men are threatening the integrity of our democracy.

definitely seems like you're safer from any kind of punishment for being in the Epstein Files than for, say, just to pick two examples totally at random, attending a college protest for Gaza or tweeting that you weren't very sad Charlie Kirk died

But it's also staggering that it's not a standalone story in the mainstream press, considering the particulars of LeFrak's foundation work, her involvement at Barnard, and the school's educational mission. #epsteinfiles

It's part of both a specific story and a larger one:

Over 70 faculty members sign open letter demanding the College address Francine LeFrak’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein The letter called on Barnard College to investigate and address trustee and prominent donor Francine LeFrak’s connection to the convicted sex offender.

Every day I wake up hoping more outlets will cover this: Barnard trustee Francine LeFrak, whose name is on a prominent campus center, invited Jeffrey Epstein to Rwanda where she runs a foundation focused on women and girls, and had a friend solicit an invitation for her to visit his island.

Elimination of a cause in NYC at an institution founded for creative and progressive education...
@aaup.org
@higheredlabor.bsky.social

In the middle of a once-in-a-generation attack on academia and the humanities by the right in the US, as people are losing funding and jobs, and we don't even know if our disciplines will make it out alive, Tyler Austin Harper decides that it was time to attack the Mellon Foundation.

All of which raises an interesting question: are historians losing ground to historical fiction? Not only in terms of market share and media attention, but also in terms of the bigger picture of who is shaping the public's understanding of the past?

#history #historicalfiction

I also had a fun conversation with @infinite-women.com about her, for a whole episode of the podcast:

I wrote about Mabel Grammer in my book Beyond the Shores: A History of African Americans Abroad (out in paperback from Crown):
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/635185...

"Keeper of Lost Children" author Sadeqa Johnson talks with Club Calvi New York Times bestselling author Sadeqa Johnson's new novel, "Keeper of Lost Children," is based on the stories of mixed-race children abandoned in Germany after World War II.

I was thrilled to hear about this book, Keeper of Lost Children, which is inspired by the life of Mabel Grammar and focuses on her work securing the adoption of "Brown Babies" in post-WWII Germany.

A 🧵

So… the goal is to deport and detain people, inciting terror, separating families, and fracturing communities in the process regardless of your political affiliation… ok bet. I wish a swift and unceremonious end to you and your ilk’s political careers too!
I want better options. SMH.

The town that launched a global self-care industry Long before wellness became a global industry, a small town in eastern Belgium shaped how Europeans thought about health, leisure and water.

oh! hayyyyy! Spa in the news!

May I offer some further academic writing on this topic? My 2022 @pastpresentsoc.bsky.social article: academic.oup.com/past/article... -- fascinating town which bracketed out the tensions of the rest of the world for the season to enable healthcare.

interesting that these people — and fellow travelers like bari weiss — insist on large, expensive security details. they are status markers, i suppose.

Ho @douglassday.bsky.social this is @unlv.edu here at UNLV Libraries with a cake from Cake Designs Las Vegas featuring the cover page of the first Colored Convention in the West & a timeline of Black American History of the West…ending with our award winning cake from 2024!

This is so funny to me. It's like when Eddie Murphy played every member of the same family in Norbit.

UT-Austin to merge race, ethnic and gender study programs More than 800 students are pursuing degrees in the affected departments, which include African, Latino and gender studies.

This is AWFUL. Univ of Texas is consolidating 4 depts into 1: African and African Diaspora Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, American Studies, and Mexican American and Latino Studies will become "a Social and Cultural Analysis department." www.texastribune.org/2026/02/12/t...

Thank you for the shoutout!

Early in his career, William Randolph Hearst famously joked that if his papers kept losing $1 million a year, he'd lose all his money in 60 years. If the Post continues to lose $100 million a year, it will take Jeff Bezos 2000 years to lose his money.