THE DAYS are getting shorter and colder, which means it’s time to think seriously about your fall reading list. We’ve sifted through fall’s newest titles and compiled a top 10 guide, so you don’t have to.
NONFICTION
American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15, by Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $32
Considered in a vacuum, it’s kind of a sweet story: A lifetime tinkerer invents a prototype that revolutionizes a centuries-old technology. In practice, it skews closer to the horror genre, with an unsuspecting naif unleashing an agent of death into the world. Having justly become a lightning rod in the gun-rights debate, the AR-15’s origins and uses are chronicled in this carefully researched book by two Wall Street Journal reporters. It’s difficult, after reading this book, not to see the AR-15 as a weapon of purposeful mass destruction. Out on Sept. 26.
Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life, by Arnold Schwarzenegger
Penguin Press, $28
In this dishy quasi-biography disguised as a self-help book, Mr. Schwarzenegger discusses his triumphs and failures in equal measure and does his best to entertain. “Californians had elected me to blow up the status quo,” he writes, recalling the catastrophic defeat of a special election he called while governor of California that was perceived as a power grab. “What they were telling me now, at the ballot box, was ‘Hey Schnitzel, we sent you up there to do the work, not bring the work to us.’” Whether or not you take his advice (“shut your mouth, open your mind,” he suggests in Chapter 6) is up to you. Out on Oct. 10.
Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories, by Mike Rothschild
Melville House, $29
This is not a particularly penetrating investigation, but it’s certainly entertaining. Rothschild, who previously wrote a book on QAnon, is very interested in what’s been said about the famed Rothschild banking dynasty (no relation to the author). He’s less willing to get into the nitty-gritty of what is and isn’t factual; to be fair, there are plenty of exhaustive biographies of the family for those who prefer straight history. Instead, the author does his best to capture the various flavors of crazy that the Rothschilds have inspired for centuries. Some of these crackpot theories are more pernicious than others, but at root each has the same poisonous combination of antisemitism, xenophobia, and stupidity. Out now.
Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative, by Jennifer Burns
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $35
Ms. Burns, an associate professor of history at Stanford University, wisely takes a holistic approach to Friedman’s life and work, deftly weaving biography with theory and world events. In doing so, she paints a fresh, if not wildly new, picture of the man’s path from indulged overachiever in suburban New Jersey to the world’s most famous and most influential economist. Ms. Burns pays particular attention to the largely uncredited women in Mr. Friedman’s life — though, given the dismal legacy of his free market capitalism, it’s difficult to call them unsung heroes. Out on Nov. 14.
FICTION
The Fraud, by Zadie Smith
Penguin Press, $29
Mashing two very separate stories into one, Ms. Smith first introduces us to Eliza Touchet, a 19th century intellectual forced into the role of housekeeper for her once-famous cousin, the author William Harrison Ainsworth. Through her, we’re introduced to the book’s other protagonist, a man named Andrew Bogle, who grew up enslaved on a plantation in Jamaica. Alerted to his existence by a sham inheritance claim that’s the talk of London, Touchet becomes obsessed with Bogle. Eventually their worlds overlap. The two narratives never quite emulsify, but that’s almost beside the point. Ms. Smith is a dazzlingly skilled writer — the funniest parts of the book entail Touchet recoiling from Ainsworth’s grotesquely florid Victorian style — so it’s best to sit back and simply enjoy her easy, lightly humorous prose. Out now.
The Maniac, by Benjamin Labatut
Penguin Press, $28
If you liked Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, you’ll love this fictional chronicle of the mathematician John von Neumann, widely considered the father of the computer. Mr. Labatut’s previous novel, When We Cease to Understand the World, vivified various scientists and the often-unintended consequences of their breakthroughs; while it became a bestseller (translated into 30 languages and counting), persistent criticism of its superficiality dogged its success. In The Maniac, we get the history of a wealthy Jewish prodigy in prewar Budapest who, by dint of serene genius, transforms the world’s understanding of science and mathematics. Mr. Labatut still occasionally stumbles — a scene in which von Neumann swans into a classroom and solves an unsolvable equation seems to be unconsciously lifted from Good Will Hunting — but this time around, his writing is tighter, smoother and more convincing. Out on Oct. 3.
Family Meal, by Bryan Washington
Riverhead Books, $27
Mr. Washington is a regular columnist for the New York Times magazine who became famous with Lot, his first short story collection, which was named one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2019. He has anchored his latest novel with grieving protagonist Cam, who throws himself into meaningless sexual encounters and messy emotional entanglements with equal abandon. The book jumps among perspectives: first Cam, then his dead partner Kai, then his former (but maybe future?) best friend TJ, who runs a family bakery. After a while, the recurring emphasis on the emptiness of sex begins to feel a little adolescent, but Mr. Washington’s empathy for his characters keeps you coming back for more. Out on Oct. 10’
Roman Stories, by Jhumpa Lahiri
Knopf, $27
A masterclass in how to grab readers and never let them go, Ms. Lahiri’s newest collection of short stories presents a mosaic of perspectives loosely set in the Eternal City. Originally published in Italian by the bilingual Ms. Lahiri and translated by the author and editor Todd Portnowitz, the book has her effortlessly switching among class, race and gender and imbuing each protagonist with a unique inner life. Particularly striking is her story Well Lit Houses, told in the first-person perspective of one of Rome’s Muslim immigrants. She’s already won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction; this collection assures her place at the top of the pantheon of contemporary fiction writing. Out on Oct. 10.
Tremor, by Teju Cole
Random House, $28
Readers of Mr. Cole’s first novel in 12 years would be well served to do some homework in advance: If you’re not familiar with the Benin Bronze restitution debate, 15th century master Hans Memling, contemporary painters Luc Tuymans and Lynette Yiadom Boakye, the music of John Coltrane and Thelonius Monk, and the cellist Anner Bylsma’s recording of Bach’s cello suites, start brushing up. The good news is that even if you don’t get around to that, you’ll still enjoy Mr. Cole’s account of an emotionally and intellectually conflicted Harvard professor’s return to Nigeria. (Mr. Cole is a professor at Harvard who grew up in Nigeria.) The storyline is interwoven with a few separate, slightly less interesting threads told in other viewpoints, but Mr. Cole’s confident prose and glittering erudition carry the day. Out on Oct. 17.
Day, by Michael Cunningham
Random House, $28
Is it too soon for a COVID-19 novel? As this one begins, Isabel, a magazine editor, lives in a Brooklyn, New York, brownstone with her two elementary-school aged children and husband Dan, a never-famous singer. (Mr. Cunningham briefly slips into magical realism by making Isabel the breadwinner.) They’re joined by her brother Robbie, who’s forgone medical school and lives in their attic. Mr. Cunningham, who shot to fame with his novel The Hours, here sets up a true-to-life family dynamic: The kids both rely on and resent their parents, and the parents have nearly the same relationship with one another. Once the pandemic sets in, it slowly becomes clear that something or someone is going to snap — the only questions are who and when. Out on Nov. 14. –Bloomberg