FSG Holiday Gift Guide

We can’t think of anything better than giving the gift of a book. So to make your holiday shopping less hectic, we’ve curated a Gift Guide with something for everyone on your list: the uncle who spends an hour lecturing you on history, the friend who is obsessed with The Crown, the sibling you nerd out about literature with, the coworker headed on vacation, and more!


FOR HISTORY BUFFS AND POLITICS-ADDICTS

How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr

“Wry, readable and often astonishing”
The New York Times Book Review

“Poses crucial questions about how the United States came to be.”
Paste

“Cleverly conceived and surprising . . . a surprising take on foreign policy.”
Chicago Tribune

Desk 88 by Sherrod Brown

“Perhaps the most imaginative book to emerge from the Senate since Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts produced Profiles in Courage.”
The Boston Globe

Field of Blood by Joanne Freeman

“Absorbing, scrupulously researched . . . Freeman uncovers the brawls, stabbings, pummelings, and duel threats that occurred among United States congressmen during the three decades just before the Civil War.”
The New York Times Book Review

MEMOIRS THAT SPEAK TO THE WORLD TODAY

In Hoffa’s Shadow by Jack Goldsmith

“Goldsmith’s gripping hybrid of personal memoir and forensic procedural lands with the force of a sucker punch.”
The New York Times Book Review

The Irishman is great art . . . but it is not . . . great history . . . For some of the real story, and for a great American tale in itself . . . go to Jack Goldsmith’s book, In Hoffa’s Shadow.
The Wall Street Journal

Unfollow by Megan Phelps-Roper

“The story of how Phelps-Roper extricated herself (and one of her sisters) from Westboro unfolds like a suspense novel, so I won’t spoil it here.”

“The story of how Phelps-Roper extricated herself (and one of her sisters) from Westboro unfolds like a suspense novel, so I won’t spoil it here.”

NPR

“She urges all of us to reach out in good faith to those we disagree with, to try to understand the experiences and motives that have shaped their stances, and to realize that grievous behavior isn’t necessarily driven by ill intent.”
The New York Times Book Review

The Undying by Anne Boyer

The Undying dispels her anger in startling terms, pointing to a vital conversation about how we treat those who are dealing with illnesses—and how we should start to truly listen to them.”
Time

“Extraordinary and furious book . . . told with searing specificity.”
The New York Times Book Review

“Blends memoir, mythology and philosophy . . . This is not your mother’s breast cancer narrative; it refuses peppy “pinkwashed” optimism, yet still offers a sense of comfort to readers who have experienced illness by reminding us we aren’t alone.”
NPR

FOR THE CELEBRITY-OBSESSED

Mr. Know-It-All by John Waters

“That John Waters is a national treasure is a surety. Period. Thank you and good night
The New York Times Book Review

“On a line-by-line basis, [Mr. Know-It-All] always sparkles”
The A.V. Club

Touched by the Sun by Carly Simon

“The pop star reflects on her years of close friendship with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who comes across as funnier, more vulnerable and fonder of gossip than we knew.”
People

Still Here by Alexandra Jacobs

“A thoroughly entertaining and vividly drawn picture of show business in the 20th century.”
The New York Times Book Review

“Stritch famously loved a good time and a good story, so she probably would have enjoyed Jacobs’s gossipy text, studded with juicy anecdotes . . . an absorbing story.”
The Washington Post

Carrie Fisher by Sheila Weller

“This look at the life of the star of stage and screen tackles it all. From Fisher’s childhood in Hollywood as the daughter of Debbie Reynolds to finding her own niche in the industry, Weller paints a complete portrait of the feminist entertainer taken from us too soon.”
Playbill

“Engrossing, gracefully written . . . Carrie Fisher reads as definitive.”
The Washington Post

High School by Tegan and Sara Quin

“Written like a game of hormonal hot potato and structured like a dynamic YA novel, High School is peppered with a treasure trove of archival photos and lyrics
Paste

“This book will heal your teenage heart.”
Autostraddle

Ninety-Nine Glimpses Princess Margaret by Craig Brown

“Rollicking, irresistible, un-put-downable . . . For anyone . . . who swooned to Netflix’s The Crown, this book will be manna from heaven.”
Vogue

“I ripped through the book with the avidity of Margaret attacking her morning vodka and orange juice.”

“I ripped through the book with the avidity of Margaret attacking her morning vodka and orange juice.”
The New York Times Book Review

NEW YEAR, NEW YOU

We Are the Weather by Jonathan Safran Foer

“This is a life-changing book and will alter your relationship to food for ever . . . Lucid, heartfelt, deeply compassionate . . . Sharp, hard-hitting.”
The Guardian

“In a style rarely found in books about global catastrophe, [Foer] interweaves personal stories, bulleted factoids and a delicious serving of metaphor. The effect is dazzling.”
The Washington Post

Good Habits, Bad Habits by Wendy Wood

“Top tip: Willpower isn’t enough. But through her original research, Wood explains what does work.”
The Washington Post

FOR THE LIBRARY NERD

The Topeka School by Ben Lerner

The Topeka School is at once a personal and national reckoning, and impossible to put down.”
Buzzfeed

“Taking aim at toxic masculinity, Ben Lerner’s latest novel explores, in part, how American culture has twisted young men and created our contemporary political moment.”
GQ

“Lerner’s exhilarating third novel, after Leaving the Atocha Station and 10:04, rocks an emphatically American amplitude, ranging freely from parenthood to childhood, from toxic masculinity to the niceties of cunnilingus.”
The New York Times Book Review

Essays One by Lydia Davis

“Let’s just agree that Davis, now 72, is an elder stateswoman of American letters . . . This is the kind of book you could read alone in a restaurant and feel you’re lost in a stimulating conversation . . . we can’t all be Lydia Davis, but thank god we have her.”
The New Republic

“[Davis] is our Vermeer, patiently observing and chronicling daily life
The New York Times Book Review

100 Poems by Seamus Heaney

“Handy handsome volume, the new best selection of his work yet.”
Literary Hub

Coventry by Rachel Cusk

“After finishing Rachel Cusk’s first collection of essays, Coventry, I read passages aloud to a friend over coffee. This is all you can ask of a book—to excite you enough to break out of your own head to share the words with someone else.”
NPR

The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine

A wise and witty novel that follows the diverging lives and linguistic obsessions of identical twin sisters who struggle to figure out who they are on their own and in relation to each other.
The New York Times Book Review

“Identical twins? Freaky. Identical twin grammatical whizzes who communicate via a private language but eventually go to war over their divergent theories? A freaky good premise . . . lavish but precise, and awe-inducing.”
Vulture

FOR YOUR NEXT VACATION (because the holiday break is way too short)

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

“A fast-paced story that’s both a murder mystery and a reflection on otherness that underscores how far some will go to protect the ones they love most.
Time

“One of the year’s best debuts . . . a smart look at motherhood, racism, immigration, and more, wrapped up into a compelling courtroom drama.
Bookriot

Stay and Fight by Madeline ffitch

“This one takes place in Appalachian Ohio. It’s about three women who push a certain “Don’t Tread on Me” philosophy to a punishing extreme by living off the grid in a DIY hut, eating groundhog stew, getting in trouble with multiple authorities, and focusing every trick of human resourcefulness onto a situation of wretched poverty.”
Vulture

“Like Bastard Out of Carolina, ffitch’s electrifying debut novel is a paean to independence and a protest against the materialism of our age.”
O: The Oprah Magazine

“Delightfully raucous . . . ffitch’s superb comic novel evolves . . . touchingly depicting the tangled and tenacious family bonds that develop in wild places.”
The Wall Street Journal

Severance by Ling Ma

“Do you remember being nine and staying up all night, reading with a flashlight under the covers because you simply could not wait until morning to know what happens next? Reading Ling Ma’s Severance gave me that need-to-know feeling . . . a brilliantly-told story that uses the zombie apocalypse trope to reveal the sometimes-hollowness of things like nostalgia, religion, and the things we do to assimilate to a new culture.”
Literary Hub

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

“A worthy match for 3 a.m. disquiet, a book that evoked existential dread, but contained it, beautifully, like a shipwreck in a bottle.”

“A worthy match for 3 a.m. disquiet, a book that evoked existential dread, but contained it, beautifully, like a shipwreck in a bottle.”

The New Yorker

“Moss is a master of coiled and uncoiling tension, and the ancient England she lets surface here is anything but pure.”
Literary Hub

IF YOU’RE LOOKING TO BE TRANSPORTED (across place and space)

Find Me by André Aciman

“There are moments, particularly in the final chapter, that may have readers gazing tearfully into their fireplaces, real or imaginary, just like Timothée Chalamet at the end of Luca Guadagnino’s superlative film of Call Me by Your Name.”
The Washington Post

“A beautiful ode to the passage of time, to the lasting power of true love and the ache of loneliness . . . the revelations about who these characters have become unraveling slowly like a gorgeous piece of classical music.”
Buzzfeed

Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer

“As the prophet of climate fiction, VanderMeer occupies a singular space in literature . . . This is a Russian doll of a novel, with each chapter containing worlds upon nested worlds, all of them dreamlike and dark.”
Esquire

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