Father’s Day Gift Guide

It’s June and once again time to shop for Father’s Day. After a decade of failed gift attempts, you’ve resigned yourself to yet another year of giving your dad a present he won’t ever use. Never fear, Vintage Books and Anchor Books are here with the perfect gift for every father in your life, because your dad doesn’t want another tie—he just wants a great read.

---

 

FOR THE DAD WHO REALLY WANTED TICKETS TO HAMILTON:

The Quartet by Joseph J. Ellis

“A sure-handed and entertaining guide through the thickets of argument, personality and ideology out of which the American nation emerged.” —The Economist

In The Quartet, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph Ellis tells the unexpected story of America’s second great founding and of the men most responsible—Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, John Jay, and James Madison:  why the thirteen colonies, having just fought off the imposition of a distant centralized governing power, decided to subordinate themselves anew. These men, with the help of Robert Morris and Gouverneur Morris, shaped the contours of American history by diagnosing the systemic dysfunctions created by the Articles of Confederation; manipulating the political process to force the calling of the Constitutional Convention; conspiring to set the agenda in Philadelphia; orchestrating the debate in the state ratifying conventions; and, finally, drafting the Bill of Rights to assure state compliance with the constitutional settlement, to create the new republic. Ellis gives us a dramatic portrait of one of the most crucial and misconstrued periods in American history: the years between the end of the Revolution and the formation of the federal government.

Read an excerpt | Buy the book

---

 

FOR THE CRIME-SOLVING DAD:

The Girl in the Spider’s Web by David Lagercrantz

“The Girl in the Spider’s Web is masterful. . . . Salander is an extraordinary heroine whose hacker skills are more relevant than ever in an increasingly high-tech surveillance society.” —The Atlantic

A genius hacker who has always been an outsider. A journalist with a penchant for danger. She is Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo. He is Mikael Blomkvist, crusading editor of Millennium. One night, Blomkvist receives a call from a source who claims to have been given information vital to the United States by a young female hacker. Blomkvist, always on the lookout for a story, reaches out to Salander for help. She, as usual, has plans of her own. Together they are drawn into a ruthless underworld of spies, cybercriminals, and government operatives—some of whom are willing to kill to protect their secrets.

Read an excerpt | Buy the book

---

 

FOR THE DAD WHO JUST SIGNED UP FOR A TOUGH MUDDER:

Natural Born Heroes by Christopher McDougall

“Fascinating. . . . Show[s] that heroism not only can be taught—it can be mastered.”—New York Post

Christopher McDougall’s journey begins with a story of remarkable athletic prowess: On the treacherous mountains of Crete, a motley band of World War II Resistance fighters—an artist, a shepherd, and a poet—abducted a German commander from the heart of the Axis occupation. To understand how, McDougall retraces their steps and discovers ancient techniques for endurance, sustenance, and natural movement that have been preserved in unique communities around the world. His search takes us scrambling over rooftops with a Parkour crew in London, foraging for greens with a ballerina in Brooklyn, tossing heavy pieces of driftwood on a Brazilian beach with the creator of MovNat—and, finally, to our own backyards. Natural Born Heroes will inspire readers to unleash the extraordinary potential of the human body and climb, swim, skip, throw, and jump their way to heroic feats.

Read an excerpt | Buy the book

---

 

FOR THE DAD WHO DREAMED OF JOINING THE CIA:

The Billion Dollar Spy by David E. Hoffman

“A true-life tale so gripping at times it reads like spy fiction.” —Los Angeles Times

It was the height of the Cold War, and a dangerous time to be stationed in the Soviet Union. One evening, while the chief of the CIA’s Moscow station was filling his gas tank, a stranger approached and dropped a note into the car. The chief, suspicious of a KGB trap, ignored the overture. But the man had made up his mind. His attempts to establish contact with the CIA would be rebuffed four times before he thrust upon them an envelope whose contents would stun U.S. intelligence. In the years that followed, that man, Adolf Tolkachev, became one of the most valuable spies ever for the U.S. These activities posed an enormous personal threat to Tolkachev and his American handlers. They had clandestine meetings in parks and on street corners and used spy cameras, props, and private codes, eluding the ever-present KGB in its own backyard—until a shocking betrayal put them all at risk.

Read an excerpt | Buy the book

---

 

FOR THE DAD WHO WOULD NEVER READ AN ADVICE BOOK:

Little Victories by Jason Gay

“Hilarious. . . . [A] tasty collection of advice.” —People

A comical journey through family, travel, sickness, heartbreak, and joy, Jason Gay’s debut is a celebration of those smaller, perfect moments that make us happy. Remember, some days you really don’t have to do it all—you just need to get your pants on before 2 p.m. This is The Rules for rule-breakers, an advice book that loves you for who you are–and especially for who you aren’t.

Read an excerpt | Buy the book

---

 

FOR THE MYSTERY-LOVING DAD:

The Forgotten Room by Lincoln Child

“Intriguing. . . . Lincoln Child is a master at mystery plots.” —The Florida Times-Union

On a sprawling estate on the coast of Rhode Island, at the nation’s oldest and most prestigious think tank, an unfathomable tragedy takes place. No one knows what to make of the disturbing evidence left behind. Then reports begin to surface of increasingly bizarre behavior among the organization’s distinguished scientists.
Called upon to investigate these strange happenings, history professor and analyst of inexplicable phenomena Jeremy Logan comes across an ingeniously concealed room in a long-dormant wing of the mansion. What he discovers within may provide answers—and, in the process, unleash a new wave of catastrophe.

Read an excerpt | Buy the book

---

 

FOR THE DAD WHO CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF NCIS:

The Cartel by Don Winslow

“An epic, gritty south-of-the-border Godfather for our time.” —Esquire

It’s 2004. Adán Barrera, kingpin of El Federación, is languishing in a California federal prison. Ex – DEA agent Art Keller passes his days in a monastery, having lost everything to his thirty-year blood feud with the drug lord. Then Barrera escapes. Now there’s a two-million-dollar bounty on Keller’s head and no one else capable of taking Barrera down. As the carnage of the drug war reaches surreal new heights, the two men are locked in a savage struggle that will stretch from the mountains of Sinaloa to the shores of Veracruz, to the halls of power in Washington, ensnaring countless others in its wake. Internationally bestselling author Don Winslow’s The Cartel is the searing, unfiltered epic of the drug war in the twenty-first century.

Read an excerpt | Buy the book

---

 

FOR THE DAD WHO BELIEVES IN ALIENS:

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

“Ted is a national treasure . . . each of those stories is a goddamned jewel.” —Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing

Stories of Your Life and Others presents characters who must confront sudden change—the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens—while striving to maintain some sense of normalcy. In the amazing and much-lauded title story, a grieving mother copes with divorce and the death of her daughter by drawing on her knowledge of alien languages and nonlinear memory recollection. A clever pastiche of news reports and interviews chronicles a college’s initiative to “turn off” the human ability to recognize beauty in “Liking What You See: A Documentary.” With sharp intelligence and humor, Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty and constant change, and also by beauty and wonder.

Read an excerpt | Buy the book

---

 

FOR THE DAD WHO ALWAYS WANTED TO GET HIS PILOT’S LICENSE:

Skyfaring by Mark Vanhoenacker

“Remarkable. . . . [Skyfaring] lifts the thoughts and spirits.” —James Fallows, The Atlantic

In the twenty-first century, airplane flight—once a remarkable feat of human ingenuity—has been relegated to the realm of the mundane. In this mesmerizing reflection on flying, Mark Vanhoenacker, a 747 pilot who left academia and a career in the business world to pursue his childhood dream of flying, helps us to reimagine what we—as pilots and as passengers—are actually doing when we enter the world between departure and discovery. In a seamless fusion of history, politics, geography, meteorology, ecology, family, and physics, Vanhoenacker vaults across geographical and cultural boundaries; above mountains, oceans, and deserts; through snow, wind, and rain, renewing a simultaneously humbling and almost superhuman activity and reawakening our capacity to be amazed.

Read an excerpt | Buy the book

---

 

FOR THE HISTORY-BUFF DAD:

Reagan by H. W. Brands

“Superb. . . . it is hard to imagine a biography of Ronald Reagan that could be more thorough, evenhanded and insightful.” —The Dallas Morning News

In his magisterial new biography, H. W. Brands brilliantly establishes Ronald Reagan as one of the two great presidents of the twentieth century, a true peer to Franklin Roosevelt. Reagan conveys with sweep and vigor how the confident force of Reagan’s personality and the unwavering nature of his beliefs enabled him to engineer a conservative revolution in American politics and play a crucial role in ending communism in the Soviet Union. Reagan shut down the age of liberalism, Brands shows, and ushered in the age of Reagan, whose defining principles are still powerfully felt today. Reagan is a storytelling triumph, an irresistible portrait of an underestimated politician whose pragmatic leadership and steadfast vision transformed the nation.

Read an excerpt | Buy the book