She's (Almost) Here! The Unruly Figures Book Is Available for Preorder!

📖🥲 plus the most beautiful cover reveal in all the land (I'm totally unbiased, of course)

I’m so excited to announce: Unruly Figures: Twenty Tales of Rebels, Rulebreakers, And Revolutionaries You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of is available for pre-order!

*cue screaming and crying and throwing up and happy tears and more screaming*

If you don’t need to hear the whole pitch and are excited to order, here you go:

Some of you already know all about this book from all my behind-the-scenes updates about writing it, but last year I wrote a book based on this podcast! It has twenty profiles of rule-breaking folks from all around the world, the vast majority of which I have not covered on the podcast. These are all new tales! Ones I’ve been dying to share ever since I first started writing this book in early 2022.

If you like this podcast, you will like this book. That might seem simplistic to say, but it’s true! I really wanted to carry the podcast’s ethos of chatting with a friend into this book, so my editor and I were really careful to maintain a casual approach to history—while still being extremely carefully cited and obsessively researched, of course. It’s everything you like about the podcast, but in convenient book form!

Books are great because they look cool on your shelf (podcasts can’t do that!), they count toward your Goodreads Reading Challenge (podcasts can’t do that!), and they can be thrown at annoying guests to make them leave your house so you can sit down and watch TV (do I need to say it again?). So buy the book today!

Jokes aside, I am embarrassingly proud of how this turned out. Might literally scream about it from the rooftops, you know? I can’t wait to share it with you all!

But don’t let me be the only person telling you to hit that big pretty pre-order button. Here is what two early readers had to say:

Drawing from her popular podcast, Valorie Clark has assembled a fabulous cast of real-life rebels, rule breakers, and revolutionaries from across the globe and across the centuries.  Each profile in “Unruly Figures” is brief, breezy and easy to read, but packed with vivid details and in-depth information that will surprise even seasoned history buffs.  Any reader with a rebellious streak will love this book!

 —Debby Applegate, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age

And…

“In this entertaining, insightful collection, Valorie Clark delves into the lives of extraordinary individuals whose unconventional paths have shaped history. The writing is crisp, and the storytelling marvelous. I tore through these pages!”

—Neal Bascomb, New York Times Bestselling author of The Winter Fortress and The Perfect Mile

Obviously, I’m also crying, screaming, and throwing up over these effusive and lovely reviews of the book. 🙈

Here’s the thing: Pre-orders are so important to authors*

(*And also so embarrassing to ask for? What a weird conundrum.)

You might have heard this before: Pre-orders are becoming more and more important because they tell a publisher and ~the marketplace~ about how interested people are in a book! Today, some stores base decisions about stocking a book in their physical locations on whether or not it does well during the pre-order stage!

So, please pre-order the book. It would mean the absolute world to me. That link is right here:

The book is available everywhere that books are sold! But if you’re feeling particularly generous, can I ask that you order somewhere other than Amazon? Not only does Jeff Bezos have enough money, but pre-orders at local bookstores (and big national chains) will encourage them to stock my book in stores. And honestly, this cover is so beautiful that I think it belongs on display!

I mean 🥹

You can pre-order Unruly Figures at Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, BAM, and more!

Now is also a good time to remind everyone that Founding Tier members of this Substack will get a signed copy of the book mailed to them when the book comes out! Plus other ~secret~ gifts to go along with it!

Okay, I’m off to go scream and cry happy tears and scream some more. If you have any questions—or you just want to scream along with me—hit reply to this email or drop them in the comments below.