New Book Releases for the Week of July 1, 2025
Featuring new releases by Suzi Ruffell, Charlie English, Kimberly Potts, and Michael Grunwald.
What we consume, whether it's literature, television, theater, or the food on our plates, can change how we move through the world. This week's batch of new releases will take you deeper into the stories of people who have explored new perspectives and created change through their pursuits in the arts, popular media, and food policy.
The Porchlight staff members choosing books each week include Porchlight's Managing Director, Sally Haldorson, and the marketing team of Gabbi Cisneros, Jasmine Gonzalez, and Dylan Schleicher. As expert booksellers, we browse publisher catalogs and explore new titles from across the book industry to discover what captures our interest, and we're excited to share our findings with readers like you.
Unless otherwise noted, all book descriptions are provided by their respective publishers.
Our Recommended Books This Week
Gabbi's pick: Am I Having Fun Now?: Anxiety, Applause and Life's Big Questions, Answered by Suzi Ruffell, published by Bluebird
Does peaking in high school ruin you for life?
Was Miley Cyrus right? Is it all about the climb (when it comes to building a career)?
And what, scientifically, is the best way to mend a broken heart?
Comedian Suzi Ruffell is considering life's big questions.
In this brutally honest, funny, and, at times, moving memoir, Suzi winningly tells her life story, and asks a host of experts to answer the tricky questions it prompts along the way. This life advice comes from contributors including Elizabeth Day, Dolly Alderton, Charlene Douglas, Laura Bates, Owen O'Kane, Anna Mathur and more.
From masking anxiety with musical theatre, developing an obsession with the movie Titanic, and struggling to find her groove at school, onstage, and in her love life, to (eventually) coming out, falling in love, and becoming a parent Suzi lays her life bare with trademark wit, verve and style.
This book is riveting, relatable and revealing. Studded with brilliant, cutting observations on feminism, being working class in the world of arts and comedy, LGBTQ+ equality and the up and downsides of ambition, Am I Having Fun Now? is perfect reading for fans of Fern Brady's Strong Female Character, Sarah Pascoe, Elizabeth Day and Tom Allen.
Sally's pick: The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature by Charlie English, published by Random House
"A book is like a reservoir of freedom."—Adam Michnik, Polish dissident
For nearly five decades after the Second World War, the Iron Curtain divided Europe, forming the longest and most heavily guarded border on earth. No physical combat would take place along this frontier: the risk of nuclear annihilation was too high for that. Instead, the war was fought psychologically. It was a battle for hearts, minds and intellects. Few understood this more clearly than George Minden, head of a covert intelligence operation known as the “CIA book program”, which aimed to undermine Soviet censorship and inspire revolt by offering different visions of thought and culture.
From its Manhattan headquarters, Minden’s “book club” secretly sent around ten million banned titles into the East. Volumes were smuggled aboard trucks and yachts, dropped from balloons, hidden aboard trains and stowed in travelers' luggage. Nowhere were the books welcomed more warmly than in Poland, where they would circulate covertly among circles of likeminded readers, quietly making the case against Soviet communism. Such was the demand for Minden’s books that dissidents soon began to reproduce these works in the underground. By the late 1980s, illicit literature was so pervasive in Poland that censorship broke down: the Iron Curtain soon followed.
Charlie English narrates this tale of Cold War spy craft, smuggling and secret printing operations for the first time, highlighting the work of a handful of extraordinary people who stood up to the intellectual strait-jacket Stalin had created. People like Mirosław Chojecki, who suffered beatings, jail and exile in pursuit of his clandestine mission, and Minden, the CIA's mastermind, who didn't waver in his belief in the importance of culture and diversity of thought. This is a story about the power of the printed word as a means of resistance and liberation. Books, it shows, can set you free.
Jasmine's pick: It's (Almost) Always Sunny in Philadelphia : How Three Friends Spent $200 to Create the Longest-Running Live-Action Sitcom in History and Help Build a Network by Kimberly Potts, published by Gallery Books
Charlie, Dennis, Mac, Sweet Dee, and Frank are deplorable characters. They will never mature, become more self-aware, or less self-involved. That is what the creators of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia are committed to—and that’s why the show’s millions of devoted fans have stuck with the cult comedy hit for over sixteen seasons and counting.
Created in 2005 by stars Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howerton, and Charlie Day, unemployed actors with a pair of Law & Order guest appearances as the highlights of their collective resume, the frustrated trio drafted a homemade TV pilot. A few months and $200 later (the cost of videotapes, pizza for their friends who volunteered as extras, and a broomstick to tape their boom mic to), It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia was ready for its network debut. All major parties either passed or were interested but wanted creative control. And then came FX looking to shake up cable TV. Willing to allow McElhenney, Howerton, and Day complete freedom to deconstruct the traditional sitcom, new president John Landgraf agreed to take a chance. No one had any idea how big of a success it would be. With FX’s one creative note—the hiring of Danny DeVito—adding the final piece of the puzzle, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has enjoyed a steady climb to high ratings, critical acclaim, and a place in the cultural zeitgeist. Now, how the show and its creators have accomplished this is revealed with this in-depth, behind-the-scenes celebration.
As thoughtful, provocative, and engaging as the show itself, this book also explores how the show has pushed the envelope and used absurdist comedy to explore major societal issues, including the #MeToo movement, LGBTQ+ rights, racism, and more. It also asks, what does the future hold for The Gang? It certainly won’t include the characters’ personal growth, but the show itself continues to move forward, adding to its dynamic history with each season.
Dylan's pick: We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate by Michael Grunwald, published by Simon & Schuster
Humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates a third of our carbon emissions. By 2050, we’re going to need a lot more calories to fill nearly 10 billion bellies, but we can’t feed the world without frying it if we keep tearing down an acre of rainforest every six seconds. We are eating the earth, and the greatest challenge facing our species will be to slow our relentless expansion of farmland into nature. Even if we quit fossil fuels, we’ll keep hurtling towards climate chaos if we don’t solve our food and land problems.
In this rollicking, shocking narrative, Grunwald shows how the world, after decades of ignoring the climate problem at the center of our plates, has pivoted to making it worse, embracing solutions that sound sustainable but could make it even harder to grow more food with less land. But he also tells the stories of the dynamic scientists and entrepreneurs pursuing real solutions, from a jungle-tough miracle crop called pongamia to genetically-edited cattle embryos, from Impossible Whoppers to a non-polluting pesticide that uses the technology behind the COVID vaccines to constipate beetles to death. It’s an often infuriating saga of lobbyists, politicians, and even the scientific establishment making terrible choices for humanity, but it’s also a hopeful account of the people figuring out what needs to be done—and trying to do it.
Michael Grunwald, bestselling author of The Swamp and The New New Deal, builds his narrative around a brilliant, relentless, unforgettable food and land expert named Tim Searchinger. He chronicles Searchinger’s uphill battles against bad science and bad politics, both driven by the overwhelming influence of agricultural interests. And he illuminates a path that could save our planetary home for ourselves and future generations—through better policy, technology, and behavior, as well as a new land ethic recognizing that every acre matters.
Buy these recommended new book releases and more directly from Porchlight Book Company.
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