--- title: Summer Reading List for the Brilliant and Brainy description: World-class minds pick their favorites to pack with your sunscreen — from a grisly true-life murder investigation to the life of Willie Nelson canonical: https://time.com/3891653/book-summer-reading-list/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-05-21T16:14:24.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T07:30:27.936Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Brilliant and Brainy Books to Take to the Beach This Summer og:description: World-class minds pick their favorites to pack with your sunscreen — from a grisly true-life murder investigation to the life of Willie Nelson og:url: https://time.com/3891653/book-summer-reading-list/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0968c96ee5452b28/6988510c524fc0ec54df2bee/514410051-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=750&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: book-beach-towel og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Brilliant and Brainy Books to Take to the Beach This Summer twitter:description: World-class minds pick their favorites to pack with your sunscreen — from a grisly true-life murder investigation to the life of Willie Nelson twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0968c96ee5452b28/6988510c524fc0ec54df2bee/514410051-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=750&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Brilliant and Brainy Books to Take to the Beach This Summer by [Zócalo Public Square](https://time.com/author/zocalo-public-square/) ## Zócalo Public Square May 21, 2015 4:14 PM UTC  Close up of book on deck chair on beach Close up of book on deck chair on beachGetty Images by [Zócalo Public Square](https://time.com/author/zocalo-public-square/) ## Zócalo Public Square May 21, 2015 4:14 PM UTC Summer is a time of familiar comforts: the scent of sunscreen and the feeling of sand between toes, the taste of Bomb Pops and the sight of long, late, orange sunsets. But with the multiplexes filled with sequels, reboots, and retreads, and the beginning of a long election season crowded with familiar names, don’t you think something original is in order? In the spirit of getting out of our comfort zones this summer and taking a crack at something new, we asked recent Zócalo guests for the fresh and forthcoming nonfiction books they think curious people should bring to the beach, pool, bar, and porch this summer. **_Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People_** **by Elizabeth A. Fenn** This book is for all readers who think that we don’t have enough evidence to tell the histories of Native American peoples. Fenn counteracts that view with a marvelously deft history that weaves together resources as disparate as textual evidence, folkloric traditions, and climate science. The book fills long-lived holes in our collective understanding of the experience of Native American peoples on this continent. _— Danielle Allen, author of_ Our Declaration _and Institute for Advanced Study political philosopher_ **_Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America_** **by Jill Leovy** This is what the best nonfiction should be, and why a great true story will always trump an amazing novel. There’s savage, whip-smart, acid prose, iconic characters, and a driving narrative, but underlying that is a deeply argued, impeccably researched, gut-wrenching look at the tragic and flawed injustice at the core of violence in black America. A must read, but also a thoroughly enjoyable one. — _David Sax, author of_ The Tastemakers **_The Wright Brothers_** **by David McCullough** As always, McCullough is terrific at describing the personal and social side of important historical events. — _Robert D. Putnam, author of_ Our Kids _and_ Bowling Alone _and Harvard University political scientist_ **_Everything You Ever Wanted: A Memoir_** **by Jillian Lauren** _Everything You Ever Wanted_ is, in brief, about an adoptee who adopts a baby herself, but like all the best memoirs, it’s both personal and universal. It expands outward to encompass so many experiences and feelings we all share: love, loyalty, struggles with the past, what it means to take a profound and longed-for risk. Lauren is fierce and funny and unsparingly frank, and this book crackles with pain, love, truth, joy, and an abundance of excellent writing. — _Kate Christensen, author of_ Blue Plate Special **_The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools?_** **by Dale Russakoff** Russakoff offers a rare window inside urban school reform in an age of unprecedented investment—but precarious-at-best community support. — _Elizabeth Green, author of_ Building a Better Teacher **_It’s a Long Story: My Life_** **by Willie Nelson** As a music journalist, I’ve interviewed Willie Nelson a few times—and yes, one of those times was on his tour bus. He was a candid and captivating storyteller, a warm-hearted outlaw with a unique perspective on his life as a singer, songwriter, and activist. And so first on my list of summer beach reads is his new autobiography. We all know Willie’s music, but equally interesting are his musical journey and his boundary-pushing, from bucking the established Nashville Sound of the ’60s to his current crusade to legalize marijuana. — _Denise Quan, entertainment journalist and producer_ **_The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History_** **by Elizabeth Kolbert** This book should be required reading in schools, the U.N., the IMF, the Chinese Politburo, and everywhere else. Kolbert knows her stuff—hard-edged, data-driven science!—and she writes swimmingly well. — _Ann Louise Bardach, author of_ Without Fidel **_Even This I Get to Experience_** **, by Norman Lear** It’s moving, funny, beautifully written, and it spans show biz, politics, history, and dysfunctional families. Bonus: If you get the audio version, Lear recorded it—and he’s a terrific performer. — _Marty Kaplan, USC communications scholar and_ Jewish Journal _columnist_ **_Spain: The Centre of the World 1519-1682_** **by Robert Goodwin** As an artist whose work is highly involved with Mexican history and culture, I have been trying to fill in my historical gaps on the history of Spain. After recently reading _Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors_ by Edward Reston, I have been searching for another book that picks up the thread. I’ve already pre-ordered _Spain: The Center of the World 1519-1682_ by Robert Goodwin, which will be published in July. The book picks by where Reston left off and examines the Golden Age of Spain and its supremacy in Transatlantic exploration. — _Judithe Hernández, muralist_ **_Pig Tales: An Omnivore’s Quest for Sustainable Meat_** **by Barry Estabrook,** **_The Chain: Farm, Factory and the Fate of Our Food_** **by Ted Genoways,** **_Every Twelve Seconds_** **_:_** **_Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight_** **by Timothy Pachirat** These three books about meat/processing plants/pigs are wonderful reads (doesn’t sound like it, right?). In order of easier to take to gutsier (sorry): In _Pig Tales_, Estabrook takes an engaging look at the pig—its wild and domestic origins and our relationship with it on small sustainable farms—and focuses a critical eye on our large industrial “factories.” In the absorbing _The Chain_, Genoways focuses on five Hormel plants. It’s hard to underplay how riveting this tale of line workers, union leaders, hog farmers, local politicians, and activists is. You will never eat Spam again. And in _Every Twelve Seconds_, which began as a doctoral thesis, Pachirat goes undercover as an employee in a large slaughterhouse to investigate how the workers are affected by the seen and the unseen. It’s a fantastic read. — _Evan Kleiman, host of KCRW’s “Good Food”_ _This article was written for_ [_Zocalo Public Square_](http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/)_._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3891653/book-summer-reading-list/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3891653/book-summer-reading-list/"},"headline":"Brilliant and Brainy Books to Take to the Beach This Summer","datePublished":"2015-05-21T16:14:24.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T07:30:27.936Z","description":"World-class minds pick their favorites to pack with your sunscreen — from a grisly true-life murder investigation to the life of Willie Nelson","url":"https://time.com/3891653/book-summer-reading-list/","keywords":["Books"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0968c96ee5452b28/6988510c524fc0ec54df2bee/514410051-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Zócalo Public Square","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/zocalo-public-square/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0968c96ee5452b28/6988510c524fc0ec54df2bee/514410051-copy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"book-beach-towel","caption":"book-beach-towel","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/books/","name":"Books"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3891653/book-summer-reading-list/","name":"Brilliant and Brainy Books to Take to the Beach This Summer"}}]}] ```