There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR CRITICISM
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION

It might do all of us some good to reconsider what 'making it' even means.

Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1990s, Hanif Abdurraqib witnessed a golden era of basketball, one in which legends like LeBron James were forged -- and countless others weren’t. His lifelong love of the game leads Abdurraqib into a lyrical, historical, and emotionally rich exploration of what it means to make it, who we think deserves success, the tension between excellence and expectation, and the very notion of role models, all of which he expertly weaves together with intimate, personal storytelling.

There’s Always This Year is a triumph from one of America’s most celebrated and insightful writers. It brims with joy, pain, solidarity, comfort, outrage, and hope. No matter the subject, Abdurraqib’s exquisite writing is always poetry, always profound, and always a clarion call to radically reimagine how we think about our culture, and ourselves.