One of TIME and Oprah Daily's Most Anticipated Books of 2025

Amanda's story--innovatively told by versions of herself at different ages--underscores the lasting power of speaking your truth, building a movement, and never losing sight of your dreams. --Melinda French Gates

In Saving Five, Amanda Nguyen shows us how to reclaim the full spectrum of our lives, replete with pain, fury, creativity, and recovered dreams. --Chanel Miller, author of Know My Name

A brave and imaginative memoir by the Nobel Peace Prize nominee Amanda Nguyen, detailing her healing journey and groundbreaking activism in the aftermath of her rape at Harvard.

In 2013, the trajectory of Amanda Nguyen's life was changed forever when she was raped at Harvard.

Determined to not let her assault derail her goal of joining NASA after graduation, Nguyen opted for her rape kit to be filed under Jane Doe. But she was shocked to learn her choice to stay anonymous gave her only six months to take action before the state destroyed her kit, rendering any future legal action impossible. Nguyen knew then that she had two options: surrender to a law that effectively denied her justice, or fight for a change--not only for herself but for survivors everywhere.

A heart-wrenching memoir of survival and hope, Saving Five boldly braids the story of Nguyen's activism--which resulted in Congress's unanimous passage of the Sexual Assault Survivors' Rights Act in 2016--with a second, beautifully imagined adventure, of Nguyen's younger selves as they--at ages five, fifteen, twenty-two, and thirty--navigate through dramatic incarnations of the emotional stages of her path toward healing, not only from her rape but from the violent turmoil of her childhood. The result is a groundbreaking work that seamlessly blends memoir with a moving journey toward acceptance and hope, forging a path ahead that is as inspiring as it is instructive.

From one of the most influential activists (and now astronauts) of her time, Saving Five is at once a tribute to resilience, a celebration of healing through action, and a resounding cry to change the world.

The empowering, inspiring, patriarchy-smashing first book by the TikTok and Spotify star Drew Afualo.

Drew Afualo is best known as the internet's Crusader for Women and has established herself as a preeminent feminist leader of her generation. Loud is part manual, part manifesto, and part memoir. It makes it clear that behind Afualo's fearsome laugh is a mission and a life philosophy, a strategy for self-confidence from the inside out, and a pathway to once and for all remove men from the center of how women and femmes think about themselves.
Afualo has amassed more than nine million followers across her social platforms. When she started creating content in 2020, she quickly realized that many men on social media were disparaging women and other marginalized groups with rampant fatphobia, racism, and other forms of bigotry, having very real-life consequences. It didn't take long for her to step into the role of unofficial watchdog for misogyny. Her signature laugh is now a feminist call to arms, a summoning cry to rid the internet (and our hearts, minds, and lives) of terrible men and fight outdated patriarchal ideals.

This is a book only Questlove could have written: a perceptive and personal reflection on the first half-century of hip-hop.

When hip-hop first emerged in the 1970s, it wasn't expected to become the cultural force it is today. But for a young Black kid growing up in a musical family in Philadelphia, it was everything. He stayed up late to hear the newest songs on the radio. He saved his money to buy vinyl as soon as it landed. He even started to make his own songs. That kid was Questlove.

Now, in this landmark book, Questlove traces the creative and cultural forces that made and shaped hip-hop, highlighting both the forgotten but influential gems and the undeniable chart-topping hits-and weaves it all together with the stories no one else knows. It is at once an intimate, sharply observed story and a sweeping theory of the evolution of the great artistic movement of our time. Questlove approaches it with both the encyclopedic fluency of an obsessive fan and the unique expertise of an innovative participant. Hip-hop is history, and also his history.

Not many memoirs are generational events. But when Sly Stone, one of the few true musical geniuses of the last century, decides to finally tell his life story, it can't be called anything else.

As the front man for the sixties pop-rock-funk band Sly and the Family Stone, a songwriter who created some of the most memorable anthems of the 1960s and 1970s (Everyday People, Family Affair), and a performer who electrified audiences at Woodstock and elsewhere, Sly Stone's influence on modern music and culture is indisputable. But as much as people know the music, the man remains a mystery. After a rapid rise to superstardom, Sly spent decades in the grips of addiction.

Now he is ready to relate the ups and downs and ins and outs of his amazing life in his memoir, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). The book moves from Sly's early career as a radio DJ and record producer through the dizzying heights of the San Francisco music scene in the late 1960s and into the darker, denser life (and music) of 1970s and 1980s Los Angeles. Set on stages and in mansions, in the company of family and of other celebrities, it's a story about flawed humanity and flawless artistry.

Written with Ben Greenman, who has also worked on memoirs with George Clinton and Brian Wilson, and in collaboration with Arlene Hirschkowitz, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) is a vivid, gripping, sometimes terrifying, and ultimately affirming tour through Sly's life and career. Like Sly, it's honest and playful, sharp and blunt, emotional and analytical, always moving and never standing still.

A reissue of Greg Tate's classic, out-of-print collection of essays, with a new introduction by Hanif Abdurraqib and a new foreword by Questlove.

From one of the most original, creative, and provocative culture critics comes an eye-opening collection of essays and tales about American music and culture.

Under the guise of writing about a single subject, Greg Tate's essays in Flyboy in the Buttermilk branch out from his usual and explore social, pop cultural, political, and economic subjects. Taking on a wide diversity of topics--from the rise of hip-hop; the art of JeanMichel Basquiat; the music of Miles Davis, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Bad Brains, and many others; to the crisis of the Black intellectual and the irony of the GOP recruiting Black Americans-- Tate writes in a brave and distinctive voice that is angry, joyous, anxious, and funny.

In every piece of this collection, Tate offers informed insight into where America is going and why.

A reissue of Greg Tate's classic, out-of-print collection of essays, with a new introduction by Hanif Abdurraqib and a new foreword by Questlove.

From one of the most original, creative, and provocative culture critics comes an eye-opening collection of essays and tales about American music and culture.

Under the guise of writing about a single subject, Greg Tate's essays in Flyboy in the Buttermilk branch out from his usual and explore social, pop cultural, political, and economic subjects. Taking on a wide diversity of topics--from the rise of hip-hop; the art of JeanMichel Basquiat; the music of Miles Davis, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Bad Brains, and many others; to the crisis of the Black intellectual and the irony of the GOP recruiting Black Americans-- Tate writes in a brave and distinctive voice that is angry, joyous, anxious, and funny.

In every piece of this collection, Tate offers informed insight into where America is going and why.