Welcome to August! This month’s noteworthy new-in-paperback selections range from popular fiction to indie press excellence to hard-hitting historical investigations — and because it’s an election year, we’ll even throw in a major political memoir for good measure. Don’t worry, though, there’s still plenty of escapist fun to keep you entertained and distracted on your summer vacation. “A Promised Land” by Barack Obama (Crown, $25).
Nearly four full years after its hardcover release, the first volume of Barack Obama’s presidential memoirs is finally out in a (slightly) more economical paperback edition. Though “A Promised Land” doesn’t reach the aspirational heights of our 44 th president’s first memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” it is vastly better-written and much more introspective than his 2006 campaign quickie, “The Audacity of Hope.” “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama” by Nathan Thrall (Metropolitan Books, $18.
99). Subtitled “Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy,” this acclaimed winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction begins with a traffic accident involving a school bus full of kids near Jerusalem. A Palestinian father tries to find out where his son has been taken after the crash, and The New York Times raves that Nathan Thrall uses his story to “shuttle nimbly between the viewpoints of frantic families and Palestinian leaders as well as Israeli officials and nearby settlers.
” “Nothing Special” by Nicole Flatte.