This year at CHF, we hosted a mix of digital programs and our first live events since 2019—but one thing remained the same: many of our presenters came to share their latest work in the form of some truly excellent books, from Nikole Hannah Jones's The 1619 Project to Kal Penn's You Can't Be Serious. Join us in wrapping up this crazy year in our happy place: on the couch with a stack of our favorite books.
The Chicago Humanities Festival is proud to partner with Seminary Co-op Bookstores as our official bookseller, along with Semicolon Bookstore and Women & Children First on select programs.
Browse the books of our 2021 Festival and check out the archival video of our conversations with your favorite authors!
Baggage: Tales from a Fully Packed Life by Alan Cumming
Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
Hooked: How Crafting Saved My Life by Sutton Foster
Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Smile: The Story of a Face by Sarah Ruhl
Most Fun Thing: Dispatches from a Skateboard Life by Kyle Beachy
Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood by Dawn Turner
You Can't Be Serious: The Adventures of Playing a Stoner and Working for a President by Kal Penn
Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time by Teju Cole
Languages of Truth: Essays by Salman Rushdie
Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry by Joy Harjo
On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint by Maggie Nelson
The Wreckage of My Presence: Essays by Casey Wilson
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders
Voices from the Pandemic: Americans Tell Their Stories of Crisis, Courage and Resilience by Eli Saslow
Maggie Nelson: On Freedom (Virtual)
George Saunders: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
The Taste of Sugar by Marisel Vera
Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri
The (Other) You: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates
Marisel Vera: The Taste of Sugar (Virtual)
Jhumpa Lahiri: Whereabouts
Joyce Carol Oates: The (Other) You
Fleeting Monuments for the Wall of Respect by Romi Crawford
Wonderland by Annie Leibovitz
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic by Jessica Hopper
Ottolenghi Flavor: A Cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi
The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel
Revisiting the Wall of Respect and the Black Arts Movement
Annie Leibovitz: Wonderland
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones
The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War by Louis Menand
In Search of the Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece by Salamishah Tillet
National Security, Leaks and Freedom of the Press: The Pentagon Papers Fifty Years On by Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone
Nine Days: The Race to Save Martin Luther King Jr.'s Life and Win the 1960 Election by Paul and Stephen Kendrick
Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service by Carol Leonnig
Nikole Hannah-Jones: The 1619 Project
Louis Menand: Art and Thought in the Cold War
Salamishah Tillet: In Search of The Color Purple
National Security and Press Freedom
Paul and Stephen Kendrick: Nine Days
Citadels of Pride: Sexual Abuse, Accountability, and Reconciliation by Martha C. Nussbaum
Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison by Chris Hedges
The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee
The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Wildland: The Making of America's Fury by Evan Osnos
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio: The Undocumented Americans (Virtual)
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson
The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything by Michio Kaku
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates
The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis by Amitav Ghosh
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert
[Image description: The banner image along the top of the webpage is a collage of multiple different book covers.]
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