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Are you looking for presents that are easy to wrap? Get books for the people in your life! To help make your holiday shopping easier, the University of Michigan Press has chosen to highlight some of our newest books for you to share with the readers in your life.

Don’t forget to take advantage of our holiday sale by using the promo code HOLIDAY25 at checkout! This year we are excited to not only offer 50% off our entire list of titles, but we are also extending our holiday sale into the new year (until January 4th). Since the holiday shipping is expected to be busy once again, we encourage customers to place their orders as early as possible if books are needed for the holiday season!

Gift Books

Gifts About Popular Media

Unsettling Catan: Detached Design in Eurogames by J. Rey Lee

This book is the gift for board game fans. As the first entry in the Tabletop Games book series, Unsettling Catan introduces key concepts for thinking about board games and offers personal reflections to help players, creators, and scholars reimagine what board games can be and become.

“If you love board games, it’s an essential read!” —Mary Flanagan, Dartmouth College

Big Feelings: Queer and Feminist Indie Rock After Riot Grrrl By Dan DiPiero

The perfect gift for fans of queer and feminist indie music, Big Feelings spotlights the music of Soccer Mommy, Indigo De Souza, the Ophelias, and boygenius, and others. Readers can also enjoy a Spotify playlist of music featured in the book.

Gifts About Lives Lived

Before Before: A Story of Discovery and Loss in Sierra Leone By Betsy Small

Before Before is "A must-read for all who seek to understand how our shared humanity is stronger than the forces that strive to tear us apart.” —Melanie Brooks, author of A Hard Silence and Writing Hard Stories

"A powerful commentary and memoir that challenge Western narratives of Sierra Leone." —Kirkus Reviews

Teamsters Metropolis by Ryan Patrick Murphy

“Teamsters Metropolis is a shaken, not stirred, history of labor, queerness, suburbia, gender, federal policy, consumerism and organized crime. For all who seek a fuller understanding of labor’s past and present, this is required reading.” —Lane Windham, author of Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide

Malaika and the Seven Heavens: A Memoir of My Encounters with Islam By Toyin Omoyeni Falola

Malaika and the Seven Heavens aims to foster a deeper appreciation for our shared humanity, inspire meaningful conversations that bridge cultural divides, and enrich our collective knowledge. This book will inspire readers to reflect on their own journey with faith. 

Hurt, Baby, Hurt By William Walter Scott, III

“This is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the Detroit Rebellion, or the fiery connection between inequality and discontent, especially among young people.” —Stephen Henderson, Detroit journalist and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for commentary

William Walter Scott, III is credited with starting the 1967 Detroit Rebellion. His memoir, Hurt, Baby, Hurt was first published in 1970 by New Ghetto Press, Inc. in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

When Charlie Met Joan by Diane Kiesel

When Charlie Met Joan is a gift for fans of Hollywood.

"Kiesel’s fine-grained character portraits present Chaplin as a charming rake who hammed up his court testimony with fake tears, and Barry as a troubled wannabe starlet taken advantage of by a powerful man. A meticulous retelling of a choice bit of Tinseltown melodrama, this will change how readers see Chaplin."
—Publishers Weekly

A Domestic Cook Book: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen By Malinda Russell

Gift a piece of American history with the oldest known published cookbook written by an African American woman. As featured on NPR’s Morning Edition and Southern Living, A Domestic Cook Book makes Malinda Russell’s recipes widely available to readers for the first time.

Gifts for Poets and Writers

Presentation of Self in Academic Support Genres: Job Application Statements By Mohammed Albakry & Clint Bryan

“I intend to give a copy of their book to my grad students so they’re more equipped than I was when the time comes.”
—Will Mari, Louisiana State University

Presentation of Self is a valuable guide for recent graduates and newly minted PhD holders about to start their careers. Readers will gain awareness of job application expectations and best practices, and how to leverage their skills and qualifications for industry jobs.

Your Historical Loveliness Knows No Bounds: Form, Futurity, and Documentary Desire by Wendy Xu

Your Historical Loveliness Knows No Bounds is a tour of poetic influences and the futures they’ve made possible. Tracing a personal family history of immigration amidst larger concerns of diaspora, “unsayability,” and absence, Wendy Xu reads the work of poets including Layli Long Soldier, Inger Christensen, Ocean Vuong, Liu Xia, giovanni singleton, Bei Dao, Diana Khoi Nguyen, and others.

Dispatches from the Land of Erasure: Essays and Conversations by Philip Metres

With keen insight into the lived experience of Arab Americans and other historically marginalized communities, Dispatches from the Land of Erasure explores the struggle for a just peace through reading Palestinian Arab and Israeli Jewish writers of conscience who contend with the wall of silence around the issue of Palestine. Dispatches weaves personal essays, cultural criticism, group chats, interviews, literary analysis, reviews, and roundtables that model the crucial need for robust dialogue.

Nothingism: Poetry at the End of Print Culture by Jason Schneiderman

What is the internet doing to poetry? In Nothingism, Jason Schneiderman grapples with the way that digital culture has begun to reshape America’s poetry landscape, examining this profound shift in the way that poetry is written, read, and taught.

The Imaginary Present: Essays in Quantum Poetics By Amy Catanzano

This finalist for the Annual National Indie Excellence Awards invites enthusiasts of poetry and science to consider what can be achieved through greater collaboration between these fields. In linked chapters that fluidly blend lyric essay, literary and scientific analysis, poetry, theory, and memoir, The Imaginary Present offers refreshing new insights on a wide range of thinkers over the past 100 years.

Radical Poetics: Essays on Literature & Culture By Khadijah Queen

In the tradition of Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, and many other Black writers and theorists, poet and professor Khadijah Queen observes questions of life and literature, human feeling and behavior, and common cultural conflicts. Radical Poetics makes a case for the value of understanding poetics beyond artistic and academic spaces and into everyday life.

Find more great gifts in each of our subject areas on the University of Michigan Press website.