A biography of ISIS, or The Islamic State -- the Sunni Jihadi organization that has proclaimed itself a caliphate while conducting military raids on civilians in places like Iraq, Turkey, and Syria -- will be published by Ecco Books next January. Its two authors, Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger, have taken looks at religiously driven terrorism before: Harvard lecturer and former National Security Council staffer Stern penned Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill, and Foreign Policy magazine contributor Berger has the book Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam to his credit as well. [via the Star Tribune]

The National Book Awards Longlist was announced last week, and among the contestants are stories of some of the lives we find most interesting. There’s Tennessee Williams’s character-filled days as told by New Yorker drama critic John Lahr in Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh; cartoonist Roz Chast’s cartoon- and idiosyncrasies-filled memoir Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?; and Wall Street Journal Afghanistan correspondent Anand Gopal’s No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes, on the U.S.-Afghanistan war told from three very different viewpoints: a Taliban commander, a U.S.-backed warlord, and a village housewife. [via the National Book Foundation]

Gone too soon, very much missed, and hilarious narrator of many of the more uncomfortable parts of life, Joan Rivers will soon appear as the subject of a biography by journalist Leslie Bennetts. Rivers herself compulsively wrote about her own life, with several memoirs to her credit, including I Hate Everyone . . . Starting With Me, but Bennetts’s take will include stories from the comedienne’s friends, colleagues, and competitors for a story about "breaking down barriers for women in television and comedy and continually redefining the acceptable boundaries of truth-telling for women in public life." Look for it in 2016, via Little, Brown. [via the New York Times]

Want unfettered access to the life of British writer and galaxy hitchhiker Doug Adams? His new biographer had it: British writer Jem Roberts wrote Frood: The Authorised and Very Official History of Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with the blessing and cooperation of Adams's daughter Polly and stepfather George, who gave him an unlimited go-ahead to comb through the author’s archives. While reading the previously unseen material, most of which was likely never meant for public consumption, Roberts maintained a policy of sensitivity to match his sense of comprehensiveness: "I should emphasise that, of the material I read, maybe one third was unpublished but arguably publishable, and the material included in The Frood represents perhaps less than a fifth of that" -- for a tribute fitting in every way. [via Deonofgeek.com]