New for the summer we have a unbelievable story of greed, looted treasures and stolen history in The Man Who Stole the Gods and tales from a garbageman in Trash! Enjoy 5 New Non Fiction Books June 2026
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5 New Non Fiction Books June 2026
Trash! by Simon Pare-Poupart
This fascinating no-bullshit account of twenty years in waste management paints a vivid portrait of the heroic labor, anarchic spirit, and violent conditions of the people who keep our cities clean.
Paré-Poupart’s story is atypical: he started working as a garbageman to pay for school, and after earning graduate degrees and working in more “respectable” fields, he is still on a truck—out of love for the physical rush, for his rough-and-tumble colleagues, and for an honesty and freedom that no other job has yet given him.
His sociology background informs his inquiry into our collective wastefulness and individual failure to confront the trash we produce. Every abstract observation comes with hilarious and hair-raising stories from the collection route to his days off spent hunting down furniture and toys for family and friends, as a committed freegan.
Trash!—the French edition of which is a runaway bestseller in Canada—explains and questions efforts to “clean up” a business with longstanding conventions of its own, a last bastion of well-paid employment for people who cannot fit in anywhere else.
The Man Who Stole the Gods by Matthew Campbell
From Cambodian temples to Christie’s auction house, this is an unbelievable tale of greed, looted treasures and stolen history in the world’s biggest art heist.
In the shattered aftermath of Cambodia’s civil war, temples that had stood for centuries were found ransacked, sacred sculptures hacked from pedestals, towering statues of Hindu gods and priceless relics of the Khmer Empire vanished. At the center of this vast plunder, British expat Douglas Latchford, whose decades-long obsession fueled one of the most audacious cultural thefts of modern times. From the Killing Fields to the marble galleries of New York and London and the private collections of the rich and famous, The Man Who Stole the Gods unravels a breathtaking story of power, greed and corruption, and questions what you take from a nation when you steal its past.
Drawing on years of investigation and exclusive access to the stories’ key players – from temple looters and traffickers to the investigators and archaeologists fighting to bring the gods home – award-winning writer Matthew Campbell reveals how the treasures of one of the world’s greatest civilizations were stolen, sold, and finally found.
The Lady Imam by Carla Power
A feminist scholar-activist, single mother of five, and queer advocate, amina wadud has led a struggle against Islam’s patriarchal establishment that’s been felt keenly all over the world. Like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X before her, wadud has mobilized faith’s potential as an engine of equality. Yet this American trail-blazer’s story has never been told in book form—until now.
Born Mary Teasley, the daughter of a Methodist preacher, wadud grew up in Maryland with a rare vantage on socioeconomic divides, living through poverty and her sister’s death from an illegal abortion. A gifted student, teenage wadud was sent to live with affluent white families in Weston, Massachusetts. After cross-country hitchhiking and a stint in a Buddhist ashram, she converted to Islam as a twenty-year-old Ivy League student.
wadud devoted her life to studying the Qur’an and challenged centuries of patriarchal interpretations, finding in it equality for all. In Manhattan in 2005, she became the world’s most famous—and infamous—Islamic scholar when she became the first woman in 1400 years to lead men and women together in public Friday prayers.
The Lady Imam chronicles the life of a singular figure not only in Islam, but also in feminism, Black history, and gender studies. With unprecedented access through years of interviews and archival research, Carla Power has written the definitive account of wadud’s extraordinary life while shedding light on our deepest questions about faith, family, and social justice.
The Housewives Underground by Kaitlyn Tiffany
In the winter of 1967, the official account of the Kennedy assassination was beginning to unravel. A scattered group of Americans had pointed to major problems with the report prepared by President Johnson’s handpicked Warren Commission. Many of the most serious criticisms of the government’s work came from a source that surprised some: women who, within the community of critics, outnumbered the men two to one.
Politicians and reporters dismissed these women, referring to them as “scavengers” and suggesting they were eccentrics with murder-mystery fixations or crushes on the deceased President Kennedy. But in The Housewives Underground, Kaitlyn Tiffany resurrects the story of Maggie Field, Shirley Martin, and Sylvia Meagher, whose collaboration and friendship reshaped both their own lives and our national memory. Field hosted screenings of the Zapruder film and raised money to pursue new leads. Martin traveled frequently to Dallas, enlisted her children to help interview witnesses, and irritated J. Edgar Hoover with her “antagonistic” attitude toward the FBI.
And at the center of the story is Sylvia Meagher—a born-and-raised New Yorker who was devoted to the ballet and the Mets, cultivated fierce friendships and firm grudges, and dedicated twenty-five years to her conviction that the whole truth of JFK’s assassination had not been told.
Painstakingly researched and engrossing, The Housewives Underground takes readers back to the turbulent 1960s and 1970s—a time when Americans’ belief in their government was eroding—introducing readers to the so-called housewives who asked the first, hardest questions about one of the most shocking events in American history.
Lightning Beneath the Sea By James M. Tabor
In 1854, the American entrepreneur Cyrus Field set out to lay a 2,000-mile telegraph cable across the Atlantic. Nothing like it had ever been attempted and Field knew nothing about electricity, telegraphy, ships or oceans. But he believed that wiring the world for near-instantaneous communication would bring about peace on Earth. After years of global scorn, catastrophic failures, staggering losses and brushes with death, Field would finally lay his great cable in 1866 and usher in the global information age as we know it.
Lightning Beneath the Sea is an unforgettable tale of radical vision, unwavering determination and triumph against overwhelming odds, as Field and a scientific dream team—including Samuel Morse, a young Lord Kelvin and Michael Faraday—battled epic storms, freak accidents, industrial sabotage and even the enmity of Abraham Lincoln. From acclaimed author James M. Tabor, Lightning Beneath the Sea is the gripping account of an epochal achievement.
If you enjoyed 5 New Non Fiction Books June 2026, check out 5 New Non Fiction Books May 2026