The 10 Books You Should Be Reading This May 2025

What’s on your mind this May? Our recommended books for this month should have you covered, whatever you’re curious about: the interpersonal drama around AI, thrilling accounts of man against nature or reflections on fathers real and fictional. Whether you’re looking for an escapist read or an immersive trip inside an industry, these books have plenty to offer. Here are 10 we’re particularly excited to read.

Craig Mod, Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir (May 6)

If you’ve spent any amount of time on the internet in the last few years, you’ve probably run across Craig Mod, a writer with a memorable voice and a penchant for subjects ranging from the details of technology to the art of walking. His latest book, the memoir Things Become Other Things, follows Mod as he makes his way along the trail of a historic Japanese pilgrimage route — and chronicles the disparate thoughts and inspirations that accompanied the journey.

Rich Cohen, Murder in the Dollhouse: The Jennifer Dulos Story (May 20)

Rich Cohen’s bibliography has covered a lot of ground, with subjects ranging from the overlap of business and imperialism to the paradoxes of the 1985 Chicago Bears. Cohen’s latest book takes a more narrow focus, recounting the events around the 2019 disappearance of Connecticut resident Jennifer Dulos and the murder investigation that followed.

Karen Hao, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI (May 20)

To read about AI in 2025 is to experience a number of often contradictory perspectives, where this technology can be cast as everything from utopian savior to harbinger of environmental collapse. Karen Hao, who’s written extensively on AI for The Atlantic and elsewhere, is an excellent guide to the inner workings of the industry. In telling the story of OpenAI and its co-founder Sam Altman, Hao has found a compelling lens through which to view these larger issues.

Dennis McNally, The Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties (May 13)

Are we living through a golden age of countercultural histories? Consider the 2024 publication of Tricia Romano’s expansive history of the Village Voice or the release a year earlier of Sean Howe’s Agents of Chaos. In his new book, Dennis McNally chronicled the moment at which hippies emerged out of earlier underground movements; given that his other books include a biography of Jack Kerouac, this is a subject he’s eminently qualified to cover.

Christopher Van Tilburg, Crisis on Mount Hood: Stories from a Hundred Years of Mountain Rescue (May 1)

Like a number of physicians, Christopher Van Tilburg spends some of his time writing books about the cases he’s encountered. One big difference between Van Tilburg and his peers, though, is where his experiences have taken him — including work with the nation’s oldest mountain-based search and rescue group, the Hood River Crag Rats. Van Tilburg’s latest book recounts some of the group’s experiences over the years — and the harrowing circumstances of rescuing someone under extreme circumstances.

Michele Filgate, ed., What My Father and I Don’t Talk About (May 6)

Everyone’s relationship to their parents is unique, and even under the best of circumstances, those relationships can be complicated. Editor Michele Filgate’s new anthology What My Father and I Don’t Talk About follows an earlier book in a similar vein and brings together 16 essays that showcase the range of paternal connections out there. Writers like Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Andrew Altschul and Isle McElroy provide very different explorations of their own fathers.

Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness (May 13)

Since his 2016 debut Night Sky With Exit Wounds, Ocean Vuong has established himself as a writer to watch for both his prose and poetry. The Emperor of Gladness chronicles the unexpected bond between two people: a young man dealing with intense depression and an older woman struggling with the effects of dementia. What impact might these two have on one another? Vuong’s book reckons with that very question.

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Paul Elie, The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s (May 27)

Paul Elie’s two books thus far have each explored in crystallizing detail the overlap of art and the sacred, whether that’s the effects of Catholicism on literature or the enduring power of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music. Elie’s new book revisits the 1980s for a panorama of the ways in which religion, art and politics collided in that decade — and where culture went from there.

Kevin Wilson, Run For the Hills (May 13)

In a 2022 interview with The New York Times, Kevin Wilson discussed what he looks for in a book. “I just want authors to write about their obsessions, the specificity of their own desires and concerns,” he said — and the scope of his own oeuvre suggests he’s heeded his own advice. Wilson’s latest novel is a road novel about a pair of siblings on the trail of their elusive, often contradictory father — with all of the complexities that situation implies.

Jordan Thomas, When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World (May 27)

There’s been no shortage of wildfires this year, with firefighters in Arkansas, California and New Jersey working to contain the damage. Jordan Thomas drew upon his own experience as a firefighter for this chronicle of six months with the Los Padres Hot Shots — and sought to answer the question of how humans can prevent the spread of devastating megafires.