5 Nonfiction Book Pitches
Titles you'll soon see on shelves, insights you'll soon hear recycled endlessly on the podcast circuit
For Jenn
Size: How Some Things Are BIGGER Than Others
Have you ever thought about how the Pyramids of Giza would be much less impressive if they were the size of sugar cubes? Consider the evolutionary counterfactual where ants were the size of busses— these mega ants would surely be apex predators. Historians never talk about how different modern Europe would look if Napoleon had been the size of a house cat. The reason for all of this is the overlooked, counterintuitive single explanation for all of human history you’ve been waiting for. It turns out being the right size is the hidden secret to success in any field. If you’re too big, you’ll likely not fit in certain rooms, but too small and you might get stepped on. Weaving together fascinating stories from history, social science, and things lying around the author’s home, get ready to take a huge journey full of tiny insights that leads you to one pint-sized conclusion: Size really is everything.
Well, Actually: 2 Hyper-Confident Contrarian White Men Mansplain Away Your Embarrassing Misconceptions About Everything
Did you know that you’re wrong about most things that you believe? Why are you even eating healthy and exercising when these choices will never result in the gains you are after? Have you ever considered that other people are much wealthier than you not because of white privilege, inherited assets, and the inherent asymmetries of capitalism, but because they know some sweet investment advice that you don’t? Well, we do know, even though you don’t, but lucky for you we’ve decided to share some of our awesome explanations with you. From the podcasters behind We’re Hypno’d by Crypto, Tasteful Backlash, and Intermittently Fast & Furious comes a groundbreaking book that will have you convinced that you’re wrong, we’re are right, and you need to buy more of our books to understand exactly why.
Megalodon Is Out There, So Keep Looking, Boys: 1 Giant Shark, 1 Giant Mystery That’s 2 Big 2 Ignore Any Longer
The scientific community keeps saying that the super-sized shark Otodus Megalodon went extinct millions of years ago. They assure us that there are no more of them ominously swimming around in our oceans, looking all badass like submarines but with teeth. What this book presupposes is: what if they were wrong?
While the mainstream scientific community has claimed that Megalodon went extinct 2.6 million years ago due to changes to the ocean and the disappearance of its prey species, there’s one thing they missed. Cutting-edge krypto-zoologists have pointed out that Megalodon is really cool, so it would be really cool if it were still alive, so maybe it is. Drawing together a bunch of concept art, interviews with college radio DJs, and research from the “scientists” behind History Channel’s Ancient Aliens and Monster Quest, this is a colorful and fascinating book about one of our plant’s most fascinating and definitely-still-alive mega-predators.
This is the perfect book for fans of Deadliest Warrior, Deadliest Catch, and basically any other show marketed at men with “deadliest” in the title. Early praise from the The New York Times is calling it “a deliberate and concerted bad-faith misunderstanding of marine biology that overstays its welcome for well over 300 waterlogged pages.” Get ready for a frightening deep dive into the living legend of the ocean’s most misunderstood non-extinct super shark.
It Depends: Some Stories, Facts, and Observations That Sort of Explain Some Things, but Not Others, So Take This Whole Book With a Pinch of Salt
Can you trust your first impression on a first date? What makes some investors gain money while others lose money? Why are some countries more stable than others? It turns out that all of these social, economic, and psychological phenomena are far too complex and nuanced to be distilled into an airport book like this. From the authors of It’s Simple: 1 Misunderstood Rule for Understanding Everything, who faced a surprising amount of pushback and lawsuits from that book, comes our most honest and accurate book yet! Now, instead of confident lists of rules and principles strung together by immersive anecdotes, we’re presenting a bunch of heavily caveated timid assertions about how things are, sometimes, in some places, for some reasons, maybe. No matter what sort of vexing conundrum or fascinating phenomenon we bring up, you can bet that we don’t have a simple, cute, or easily TED-Talked sound bite that neatly explains why. There are no elegantly counterintuitive explanations about the world here, just a lot of hyper-cautious verbiage that boils down to our #1 ironclad rule for explaining things, most of the time, we think: it depends.
Why Is Everything so Expensive? The Overinflated Story of Inflation
Have you ever noticed that the goods & services that money once bought now require more money to acquire? You’re probably wondering: “wait, what’s money again?” Well, money is a social contract usually centered around coins or bills that are given assumed financial value, usually but not always by a central government. It’s the reason why you can pay for this book in dollars instead of bartering for it with beads or pottery. Economics is pretty, cool, right? Wait until we tell you how the stock market is just legalized gambling by another name and that no one ever became a billionaire from wage labor. From the lovable dorks at Freakonomics comes an engrossing read about an economic phenomena that is as infinitely fascinating to examine as it is seemingly impossible to meaningfully fix, like our fragile power grid or the Bay Area housing market. This is the book about inflation you’ve been waiting for, provided you can afford to buy it and understand how economics work, two contingencies we’re still pretty skeptical about, to be honest.
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