LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Labor Day signals the summer coming to an end, which can be a bummer, except for the fact that it also means we have a whole heap of books coming out this fall to look forward to. Andrew Limbong is host of NPR's Book Of The Day podcast and has some nonfiction recommendations for us. Hey, Andrew.
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: Hey, Leila.
FADEL: So looking ahead to the next couple of months, we've got a few high-profile memoirs coming out, right?
LIMBONG: Yeah. I'm particularly stoked on the new Connie Chung book coming out in a few weeks. It's just called "Connie." You know, she's a big deal in our...
FADEL: Yeah.
LIMBONG: ...Field of broadcast journalism.
FADEL: She can be a one name.
LIMBONG: Yeah. Yeah, she can get away with it. She - you know, she was the first woman to co-anchor the CBS Evening News, the first Asian journalist to sit in the anchor chair for a national news broadcast. The book will cover a lot of her career trajectory, you know, those early days at CBS, duking it out with other reporters, dealing with, you know, men (laughter). And, you know, also her marriage to Maury Povich, who is, you know, no slouch in the broadcast department himself.
On a similar note, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has got her memoir coming out tomorrow. This is titled "Lovely One" based on her name. She is, of course, the first Black woman Supreme Court justice. And kind of similar to the Connie Chung memoir, it'll track her come up in a field where not a lot of people look like her. And there's one more I want to shout out, actually. Al Pacino has got...
FADEL: Oh, wow.
LIMBONG: ...His book - yeah, he's got his book coming out. It's titled "Sonny Boy." The New Yorker just ran an excerpt of it. And in that section, he's talking a lot about, like, going to the movies with his mom and growing up with his family being the only Italians in the neighborhood and drawing connections between his childhood and, like, the movies he'd later make.
FADEL: OK. What about for the history buffs out there?
LIMBONG: All right, Leila. Do you have a person in your life who's, like, really interested in presidential biographies?
FADEL: Yes, my uncle. It's, like, all he reads.
LIMBONG: OK. Yeah, all right. So shout out to him. For him (laughter), there's this new book about Reagan coming out by Max Boot. It's titled "Reagan: His Life And Legend." It's a deeply reported book based on a ton of interviews. And it looks at Reagan's childhood, his Hollywood years and, obviously, his presidential career. Max Boot, he just published an op-ed in The Washington Post and said that, like, during the reporting for this book, he found Reagan was both more ideological and more pragmatic than most people think. So...
FADEL: OK.
LIMBONG: ...Yeah, it's not like a hagiography - right? - it's looking at the entire guy. And so it's definitely for people interested in the presidency like your uncle.
FADEL: So, Reagan was in office from '81 to '89. I take it something important happened right after.
LIMBONG: Yes, thank you for that setup because, in February 1989, we got the debut album from De La Soul.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ME, MYSELF AND I")
DE LA SOUL: (Rapping) Mirror, mirror on the wall, tell me mirror, what is wrong? Can it be my De La clothes, or is it just my De La Soul?
LIMBONG: And for the Gen Xers out there who know all this, bear with me for a second while I explain to the kids that De La was this incredibly influential hip-hop group, you know, pioneering the rap you hear today. And I'm telling you this because, in a few months, the music writer Marcus J. Moore is coming out with a book called "High And Rising." It's a biography of the band, putting them into the context at the time and why they matter today.
I know Moore's writing from a book he wrote about Kendrick Lamar a few years back, and he's really good at explaining the, like, relationship between music and the culture at large. It's an interesting time for a De La book. I mean, one of their founding members just died last year. And for a long time, their music wasn't available on streaming services just because of, like, label hijinks and stuff. But it's up there now, and it's now there for a new generation.
FADEL: All right. Andrew giving us a reason to not be so bummed about summer coming to an end. Andrew Limbong hosts NPR's Book Of The Day podcast. Thanks, Andrew.
LIMBONG: Thanks, Leila.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ME, MYSELF AND I")
DE LA SOUL: (Rapping) It's just me, myself and I. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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