For Real

Latest Episodes:

#27 The Ides of March Assassination Episode Mar 19, 2019

Show notes

This week Alice and Kim talk about assassinations, small town murder, and why women’s bathroom lines are longer than men’s (spoiler: it’s the patriarchy!).

This episode is sponsored by Book Riot Insiders.

Subscribe to For Real using RSS, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher.

For more nonfiction recommendations, sign up for our True Story newsletter, edited by Kim Ukura.

Follow Up

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019) (HBO documentary on Theranos)

New Books

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez

The Trial of Lizzie Borden by Cara Robertson

The Lost Gutenberg: The Astounding Story of One Book’s Five-Hundred-Year Odyssey by Margaret Leslie Davis

(People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks)

Humanimal: How Homo sapiens Became Nature’s Most Paradoxical Creature―A New Evolutionary History by Adam Rutherford

The Sakura Obsession: The Incredible Story of the Plant Hunter Who Saved Japan’s Cherry Blossoms by Naoko Abe

Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught Between Cultures in Early Virginia by Karen Ordahl Kupperman

Assassination Stories!

The Death of Caesar: The Story of History’s Most Famous Assassinationby Barry Strauss

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

The Romanov Sisters by Helen Rappaport

The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance That Changed the World by Greg King and Sue Woolmans

Reading Now

Who Thought This Was a Good Idea by Alyssa Mastromonaco

So Here’s the Thing . . . by Alyssa Mastromonaco

Kings of Georgian Britain by Catherine Curzon

CONCLUSION

You can find us on SOCIAL MEDIA – @itsalicetime and @kimthedork on Twitter

RATE AND REVIEW on ITUNES so people can find us more easily, and subscribe so you can get our new episodes the minute they come out.

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#26 International Women's Day Mar 05, 2019

Show notes

This week Alice and Kim talk about a ton of March new releases and books to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8.

This episode is sponsored by Libro.fm audiobooks and The Lady from the Black Lagoon by Mallory O’Meara from Hanover Square Press.

Subscribe to For Real using RSS, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher.

For more nonfiction recommendations, sign up for our True Story newsletter, edited by Kim Ukura.

NEW BOOKS

Skeleton Keys: The Secret Life of Bone by Brian Switek

Devices and Desires: Bess of Hardwick and the Building of Elizabethan England by Kate Hubbard

Women Warriors: An Unexpected History by Pamela D. Toler

The Wrong End of the Table: A Mostly Comic Memoir of a Muslim Arab American Woman Just Trying to Fit in by Ayser Salman

Dannemora: Two Escaped Killers, Three Weeks of Terror, and the Largest Manhunt Ever in New York State by Charles Gardner

An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago by Alex Kotlowitz

Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States by Samantha Allen

That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour by Sunita Puri

America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today by Pamela Nadell

Ten Drugs: How Plants, Powers, and Pills Have Shaped the History of Medicine by Thomas Hager

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY

Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova

The Queen of Katwe: A Story of Life, Chess, and One Extraordinary Girl’s Dream of Becoming a Grandmaster by Tim Crothers

I Should Have Honor: A Memoir of Hope and Pride in Pakistan by Khalida Brohi

Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History by Canyon Sam

The Lonely War: One Woman’s Account of the Struggle for Modern Iranby Nazila Fathi

Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin Americaby Dana Frank

READING NOW

This Is Where You Belong: The Art and Science of Loving the Place You Live by Melody Warnick

Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America by Michael P. Winship

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#25 Black History Month Pt II Feb 19, 2019

Show notes

This week, Alice and Kim discuss contemporary reads for Black History Month, an accidental con artist, and all new books to watch out for.

This episode is sponsored by Audible and , Book Riot’s Swords and Spaceships newsletter.

Subscribe to For Real using RSS, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher.

For more nonfiction recommendations, sign up for our True Story newsletter, edited by Kim Ukura.

Follow Up

True story podcast, The Dropout from ABC Radio, about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes

New Books

The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America, ed. by Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman

Parkland by Dave Cullen

Brown, White, Black: An American Family at the Intersection of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Religion by Nishta J. Mehra

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval by Saidiya Hartman

Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman

Black History Month II: Contemporary Voices

When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele

We Can’t Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival by Jabari Asim

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race, edited by Jesmyn Ward

The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves by Glory Edim

Reading Now

First Generations: Women in Colonial America by Carol Berkin

Atomic Habits by James Clear

CONCLUSION

Find us on Twitter @itsalicetime and @kimthedork.

RATE AND REVIEW on ITUNES so people can find us more easily, and subscribe so you can get our new episodes the minute they come out.

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#24 Black History Month and True Story Podcasts Feb 05, 2019

Show notes

This week Alice and Kim talk about books to read for Black History Month and some nonfiction adjacent podcasts they love (plus more books).

This episode is sponsored by Book Riot’s TBR and Flatiron Books, and I Am Yours: A Shared Memoir by Reema Zaman, from Amberjack Publishing..

Subscribe to For Real using RSS, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher.

For more nonfiction recommendations, sign up for our True Story newsletter, edited by Kim Ukura.

FOLLOW UP

American Fire by Monica Hesse

An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie

Ice Diaries: An Antarctic Memoir by Jean McNeil

A Wilder Time: Notes from a Geologist at the Edge of the Greenland by William E. Glassley

NEW BOOKS

No Beast So Fierce by Dane Huckelbridge

Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang

BuzzFeed: I’ve Been Committed To A Psych Ward Three Times — And It Never Helped

Underground by Will Hunt

WEEKLY THEME: BLACK HISTORY MONTH

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers, edited by Hollis Robbins and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

The Grace of Silence by Michele Norris

Negroland by Margo Jefferson

To Keep the Waters Troubled by Linda O. McMurry

NONFICTION + PODCASTS

Podcast: Broken Harts

Mel Magazine: The Sad, Strange Life and Death of Devonte Hart

Podcast: In the Dark

Podcast: Here to Make Friends

A Girl’s Guide to Joining the Resistance by Emma Gray

I Didn’t Come Here to Make Friends by Courtney Robertson

Bachelor Nation by Amy Kaufman

Podcast: Terrible, Thanks for Asking

It’s Ok to Laugh: (Crying is Cool Too) by Nora McInerny Purmort

READING NOW

Victoria: The Queen by Julia Baird

American Prison by Shane Bauer

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton (not nonfiction!)

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#23 The Arctic & the Tropics Jan 22, 2019

Show notes

This week Alice and Kim talk arctic explorers, murder in the tropics, and the mixed reactions to nonfiction bestseller Girl, Wash Your Face.

This episode is sponsored by Book Riot’s Read Harder Journal.

Subscribe to For Real using RSS, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher.

For more nonfiction recommendations, sign up for our True Story newsletter, edited by Kim Ukura.

Follow Up

Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis

By the Book podcast

BuzzFeed: “Girl, Wash Your Face” Is A Massive Best-Seller With A Dark Message

Tidying Up with Marie Kondo

New Books

Duped: Double Lives, False Identities, and the Con Man I Almost Marriedby Abby Ellin

A Thousand Sisters: The Heroic Airwomen of the Soviet Union in World War II by Elizabeth Wein

It Was All a Dream: A New Generation Confronts the Broken Promise to Black America by Reniqua Allen

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer

Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive by Stephanie Land

Weekly Theme: The Arctic

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer

Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing

Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff

Ada Blackjack: A True Tale of Survival in the Arctic by Jennifer Niven

The Tropics

Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala

The Mapmaker’s Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon by Robert Whitaker

The Third Bank of the River: Power and Survival in the Twenty-First-Century Amazon by Chris Feliciano Arnold

Njinga of Angola: Africa’s Warrior Queen by Linda M. Heywood

Reading Now

American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey Into the Business of Punishment by Shane Bauer

Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover

Remember the Ladies: Women in America, 1750-1815 by Linda Grant De Pauw

CONCLUSION

You can find us on SOCIAL MEDIA – @itsalicetime and @kimthedork on Twitter

RATE AND REVIEW on ITUNES so people can find us more easily, and subscribe so you can get our new episodes the minute they come out.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#22 New Year, New You Jan 08, 2019

Show notes

This week Alice and Kim talk about nonfiction to help you with your New Year’s resolutions and the reading resolutions they’ve set for the year.

This episode is sponsored by the Read Harder Journal by Book Riot.

Subscribe to For Real using RSS, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher.

For more nonfiction recommendations, sign up for our True Story newsletter, edited by Kim Ukura.

BOOKS WE GOT FOR CHRISTMAS

How to Draw Almost Every Day by Kamo

Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon

Feminasty by Erin Gibson

How Do We Look by Mary Beard

The Assassination of Branwaine Spurge by M.T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin

Legendary Ladies by Ann Shen

Educated by Tara Westover

NEW BOOKS

Trailblazer by Dorothy Butler Gilliam

When Death Becomes Life by Joshua Mezrich

Inheritance by Dani Shapiro

The Truths We Hold by Kamala Harris

Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom

WEEKLY THEME: NEW YEAR, NEW YOU

The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll

How to Break Up With Your Phone by Catherine Price (2018)

Presence by Amy Cuddy

Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis

READING NOW

Awakening Your Ikigai by Ken Mogi

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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#21 The Jane Austen Episode Dec 11, 2018

Show notes

This week, Alice and Kim talk all things Jane Austen, as well as the best nonfiction of 2018.

This week’s episode of For Real is brought to you by the Book Riot Read Harder Journal and The Molecule of More By Daniel Z. Lieberman and Mike Long.

Subscribe to For Real via Stitcher here, or via Apple Podcasts here. You can sign up for Book Riot's nonfiction newsletter True Story, edited by For Real's Kim Ukura here.

Weekly Theme: Jane Austen

A Smattering of Austen Titles

Reading Austen in America by Juliette Wells

A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen

At Home With Jane Austen by Kim Wilson

Tea With Jane Austen by Pen Vogler

Jane Austen and the Fiction of Her Time by Mary Waldron

What Matters in Jane Austen? by John Mullan

A Brief Guide to Jane Austen by Charles Jennings

Jane Austen Biography and Background Books

Jane Austen by Carol Shields

Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomalin

Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels by Deirdre Le Faye

Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World by Claire Harman

Jane Austen in Popular Culture

Among the Janeites: A Journey Through the World of Jane Austen by Deborah Yaffe

All Roads Lead to Austen: A Year-long Journey with Jane by Amy Smith

Fun Austen Titles & Covers

Jane Austen, Game Theorist by Michael Suk-Young Chwe

Why Jane Austen? by Rachel W. Brownstein

Critics Favorites of 2018

New York Times: Top 10 Books of 2018

American Prison by Shane Bauer
Educated by Tara Westover – also one of my favorites!
Frederick Douglass by David W. Blight
How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs

Washington Post: Best Books of 2018

Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantu
On Desperate Ground by Hampton Sides
One Person, No Vote by Carol Anderson

Popsugar’s Best Nonfiction Books 2018

Tonight I’m Someone Else by Chelsea Hodson
You All Grow Up and Leave Me: A Memoir of Teenage Obsession by Piper Weiss
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara
Would You Rather?: A Memoir of Growing Up and Coming Out by Katie Heaney
Choose Your Own Disaster by Dana Schwartz
Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession by Alice Bolin
The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After by Clemantine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil
Educated by Tara Westover (again!)
Can You Tolerate This? By Ashleigh Young
Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship by Kayleen Schaefer

Our Favorites of 2018

KIM:

All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

Tell Me More by Kelly Corrigan

From the Corner of the Oval by Beck Dorey-Stein

No One Tells You This by Glynnis MacNicol

ALICE:

Impeachment: An American History

My Squirrel Days by Ellie Kemper

The Real Lolita by Sarah Weinman

Bombay Anna: The Real Story and Remarkable Adventures of the King & I Governess by Susan Morgan

The Scarlet Sisters: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in the Gilded Age by Myra MacPherson

READING NOW

KIM: Left to Our Own Devices: Outsmarting Smart Technology to Reclaim Our Relationships, Health, and Focus by Margaret Morris

ALICE: Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History by Tori Telfer

The Magnolia Story by Chip and Joanna Gaines

CONCLUSION

Book Riot is taking the week off a Christmas, so this will be our last podcast of 2018!

You can find us on SOCIAL MEDIA - @itsalicetime and @kimthedork on Twitter, and don’t forget to rate and review us in your podcast app!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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#20 A Nonfiction Holiday Gift Guide Nov 27, 2018

Show notes

In this week’s episode, Kim and Alice share a few last November new books, then jump into a holiday gift guide with recommendations for history buffs, video gamers, wine aficionados, nature lovers and more.

This week’s episode of For Real is sponsored by Book Riot Insiders, Homer and the Holiday Miracle by Gwen Cooper, and Bare Minimum Parenting: The Ultimate Guide to Not Quite Ruining Your Child by James Breakwell.

Follow Up

The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C. Stewart

New Books

Stranger’s Pose by Emmanuel Iduma

The Woo-Woo by Lindsay Wong

Seduction by Karina Longworth

We the People by Erwin Chemerinsky

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Holiday Recommendation Guide: Reader Requests

Population 485 by Michael Perry

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman

Goodbye-to All That by Robert Graves

Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger

The Lost City of Z by David Grann

Skyjack by Geoffrey Gray

Salt, Fat, Acid and Heat by Samin Nosrat

The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty

Love, Loss, and What We Ate by Padma Lakshmi

Holiday Recommendation Guide: General Recommendations

Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker

Tasting the Past by Kevin Begos

The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf

The Game Console by Evan Amos

Console Wars by Blake J. Harris

Extra Lives by Tom Bissell

Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman

Bibliophile by Jane Mount of Ideal Bookshelf

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch

Writer’s Under Surveillance

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

The Family Gene by Joselin Linder

Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge

Reading Now

No One Tells You This by Glynnis MacNicol

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

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#19 Book Award Season! Nov 13, 2018

Show notes

For Real is sponsored this week by Book Riot Insiders, In the Name of the Children: An FBI Agent’s Relentless Pursuit of the Nation’s Worst Predators by Jeffrey Rinek from BenBella Books and Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom by Ariel Burger.

FOLLOW UP

Who Was series

Holiday Gift Guide Episode! Email kim@riotnewmedia.com by November 20th if you need a nonfiction recommendation for a present, or want a book to put on your own gift list.

NEW BOOKS

Gene Machine: The Race to Decipher the Secrets of the Ribosome by Venki Ramakrishnan

Bringing Down the Colonel: A Sex Scandal of the Gilded Age, and the “Powerless” Woman Who Took on Washington by Patricia Miller

Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward by Gemma Hartley

A Tale of Two Murders: Guilt, Innocence, and the Execution of Edith Thompson by Laura Thompson

First Comes Marriage: My Not-So-Typical American Love Story by Huda Al-Marashi

End of the Megafauna: The Fate of the World’s Hugest, Fiercest, and Strangest Animals by Ross D.E. MacPhee

Shout-Outs to:

Dirty Tricks: Nixon, Watergate, and the CIA by Shane O’Sullivan

Beyonce in Formation: Remixing Black Feminism by Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley

Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery

WEEKLY THEME: Book Awards!

Carnegie Award

Shortlist: The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border by Francisco Cantu

Longlist: High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing by Ben Austen

National Book Award

Finalist: Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh

Longlist: One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy by Carol Anderson

SEGMENT THREE: Colonialism

King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown

The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation by Colin G. Calloway (Oxford University Press)

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann

READING NOW

Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War by Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple

Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll

I’d Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life by Anne Bogel

CONCLUSION

Find us on Twitter @itsalicetime and @kimthedork.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#18 Great Young Adult Nonfiction Oct 30, 2018

Show notes

In this episode, Kim and Alice dive into some great young adult nonfiction reads and consider true stories connected to current events like Harry and Meagan’s royal visit to Australia and debates about immigration.

This episode is sponsored by Bibliophile from Chronicle Books and Democracy Hacked by Martin Moore.

Follow Up

In The Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick

New Books

All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

Silicon Valley: San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley by Cary McClelland

Let It Bang: A Young Black Man's Reluctant Odyssey into Guns by R.J. Young

In Pursuit: The Hunt for the Beltway Snipers by David Reichenbaugh

Nine Pints: A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood by Rose George

The King and the Catholics: England, Ireland, and the Fight for Religious Freedom, 1780-1829 by Antonia Fraser

Weekly Theme: YA Nonfiction

Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers Hardcover by Deborah Heiligman