Books like The Boys of Summer

01

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Michael Lewis · Business

Moneyball is Michael Lewis's account of how Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics, used statistical analysis to compete against teams with payrolls three times larger.

Both dig into baseball.

02

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

Daniel James Brown · History

The Boys in the Boat is the story of the University of Washington crew team that won the gold medal at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, defeating Nazi Germany's squad on Hitler's home course.

A kindred memoir read.

03

Open: An Autobiography

Andre Agassi · Memoir

Andre Agassi's autobiography opens with one of the most famous confessions in sports memoir: he hates tennis.

A kindred memoir read.

04

Seabiscuit: An American Legend

Laura Hillenbrand · History

Seabiscuit is the story of the undersized, knobby-kneed racehorse who became the most celebrated American athlete of the late 1930s — drawing larger newspaper audiences than Franklin Roosevelt or Joe DiMaggio at his peak.

A kindred memoir read.

05

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Laura Hillenbrand · Biography

Unbroken follows Louis Zamperini from his juvenile delinquency in Depression-era California to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he ran the 5,000 meters at nineteen and briefly caught Hitler's attention.

A kindred memoir read.

06

A Moveable Feast

Ernest Hemingway · Memoir

A Moveable Feast is Hemingway's posthumously published account of his years in Paris during the 1920s, when he and his first wife Hadley lived cheaply in Montparnasse while he apprenticed himself to the work of becoming a writer.

Both dig into memory.

07

A Promised Land

Barack Obama · Memoir

A Promised Land is the first volume of Barack Obama's presidential memoirs, covering his 2008 campaign through the first two and a half years of his presidency, ending with the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

Both dig into race.

08

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates · Memoir

Between the World and Me is a letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his teenage son, Samori, about what it means to live in a Black body in the United States.

Both dig into race.

09

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Susannah Cahalan · Memoir

Brain on Fire is Susannah Cahalan's account of the month she spent in a New York hospital in 2009, during which she experienced psychosis, paranoia, violent behavior, catatonia, and seizures — and was nearly committed to a psychiatric facility before a doctor correctly diagnosed her with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, a newly described autoimmune disease in which the body attacks the brain.

Both dig into memory.

10

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Isabel Wilkerson · Memoir

Isabel Wilkerson's second book proposes a reframing of American racial hierarchy: rather than thinking of racism primarily as prejudice, she argues that the United States has operated as a caste society, with Black Americans at the bottom of a rigidly maintained hierarchy similar in its structure — though different in its specific mechanisms — to the caste systems of India and Nazi Germany.

Both dig into race.

11

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Barack Obama · Memoir

Barack Obama wrote Dreams from My Father in 1995, before entering politics, after being elected the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review.

Both dig into race.

12

Educated: A Memoir

Tara Westover · Memoir

Educated is Tara Westover's memoir about growing up in a survivalist family in rural Idaho and eventually earning a PhD in history from Cambridge University.

Both dig into memory.