Discover our Best Books for Fall 2025, including Annie Lennox: Retrospect and Joe Westmoreland’s Tramps Like Us and more.
In recent years, a rash of pop psychology books have focused on building good habits, following consistent routines, and optimizing productivity. So as a reader fond of neither repetition or self-help, I was delighted to discover Canadian writer and physicist Alex Hutchinson’s The Explorer’s Gene: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map (Mariner. $32.50. alexhutchinson.net). Combining travel chronicles and science writing, the book analyzes the polar pleasures of exploitation and exploration. Integrating anthropological, genetic neuroscientific research, he uses the lens of travel to explain the inherent value of breaking habits, choosing detours, and wrestling with the unfamiliar. In the end, the book is about striving “to strike the right balance between seeking novelty and sticking with sure bets.” If you’re feeling in a bit of a rut, read this book before you book your next trip. Buy the book.
We’re in the midst of a queer food book boom! In Dining Out (Grand Central Publishing. $30. erikpiepenburg.com), New York Times writer Erik Piepenburg waxes nostalgic as he drops into diners, coffee shops, and hole-in-the-walls where gay owners and clientele have created enduring bastions of community over the years. From Annie’s in Washington, DC to Orphan Andy’s in San Francisco, he celebrates the ways that breaking bread has helped hold us together. Buy the book.
Annie Lennox: Retrospective (Rizzoli. $65. annielennox.com) is the first, and may well prove the only, authorized look back at the career of the singular pop star and queer icon (despite not being queer herself). It’s a gorgeous, photo-centric coffee table book that, to many fans’ certain disappointment, spills absolutely no tea. Now 70, the solo songstress who came to fame as a Eurythmic and even earlier was lead vocalist for The Tourists, has always cultivated a certain cryptic unknowableness, even when bringing profound emotional depth to her singing. Still, the book will send readers down internet rabbit holes with shots of less-remembered moments in the diva’s career: Her movie role alongside Al Pacino in the 1776-set Revolution; her 54 date U.S. tour with Sting in 2004; and her activism on behalf of children with AIDS in Africa. Richard Avedon, Ellen von Unwerth, and Kevin Mazur are among the photographers whose intimate, indelible work is featured. Leafing through these pages leaves you craving a memoir. Annie, get your pen. Buy the book.
Originally published in 2001, just before September 11, Joe Westmoreland’s Tramps Like Us (MCD/FSG. $19. instagram.com/joewstmrlnd) was lost in the rubble and noise, going out of print before finding much of a readership. Fortunately, a new edition was released this spring, offering generations of readers the chance to ride shotgun on a lightly fictionalized road trip alongside this openly queer Kerouac (the real one never quite copped to it). From his abusive midwestern family home, the teenage Westmoreland begins a years-long ramble in the late 1970s, lighting out for the territories of Miami, Manhattan, New Orleans, and San Francisco in search of sex, stimulation, and self-actualization. His clean, unadorned, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny prose invites the reader along as Westmoreland fearlessly burns his way through passionate love affairs, raucous sex clubs, and drug-fueled debauchery, while simultaneously laying the ground for tender lifelong friendships. Buy the book.
Get more great book recommendations at PassportMagazine.com.
