Jordan Ritter Conn Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Jordan Ritter Conn is an American published author.

He is a staff writer working at The Ringer who writes feature stories across national affairs, culture, and sports. He has also worked at Grantland and ESPN: The Magazine. He has also written for Sports Illustrated and The New York Times. Conn says that he got started working at the now-defunct Bradley News Weekly and the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

He is known for writing American Men (a New York Times Editors’ Choice) and The Road From Raqqa, which was a runner-up for the 2021 Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

Ritter Conn is the host of the podcast SONIC BOOM: How Seattle Lost its NBA Team, which is available on Luminary. It was selected as one of the Top 50 Podcasts of 2019 by The Atlantic. He has been a finalist for The Livingston Award twice, once in 2011 and again in 2013. His 2015 story ‘The End of the Hoop Dream’ written for Grantland was picked as one of the ten best pieces of that year by Longform.org.

He has reported on a variety of incidents including protests in Hong Kong, civil war in the Ivory Coast, the independence movement in South Sudan, and the Syrian refugee experience in Turkey. He has reported from such places as Cameroon, Oman, India, Israel, and many different locations in Europe and North America.

Ritter Conn attended and graduated from Lee University and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Today he lives and continues to write in Nashville, Tennessee.

The Road from Raqqa: A Story of Brotherhood, Borders and Belonging is a 2020 book by Jordan Ritter Conn. This is a great book that was a runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and a story that The New York Times calls ‘Riveting’ and a ‘resplendent love letter to an obliterated city’.

This story follows two Syrian brothers on the road to reunion in a tale that crosses continents and the years. Even though they have a homeland at war and they have an ocean between them, they are doing what they can to maintain their bond as a family.

Riyad and Bashar are the Alkasem brothers and have spent their childhoods growing up in Raqqa, a Syrian city that would go on to become the capital of ISIS. Riyad was a teen in the eighties and as such sees the aftermath of the Hama massacre, something that the Hafez al-Assad regime has imposed upon its people.

He wants to expand his own ideas of the government and justice so Riyad decides to pick up and relocate to the United States in order to study law. Unfortunately his plans get completely thrown off and he finds himself falling for a Southern belle. It ends up being true love and they eventually move to a suburb of Nashville together.

There they have two sons that they raise and Riyad opens a restaurant where he makes the same good food that his grandmother used to. Despite all of this, he has to deal with the darker side that American liberties allow and being an immigrant who has just arrived and has to deal with poverty as well as discrimination, racism, and feeling lonely.

Years end up going by and at the top of Syria’s own civil war he is scared for his family’s safety. He ends up putting his own life on the line by taking a risky trip to go back to Raqqa. Then there is Bashar who is in Syria as all this is happens.

When his older brother goes to America, Bashar decides to take on a legal career under the corrupt government that Riyad is so opposed to. His life is not perfect, but it is comfortable. Unfortunately he does not end up seeing the threat of ISIS until it is potentially too late.

This story pulls the reader into the lives of two brothers that are pulled together by the love that they have for each other as well as the city that they call their home. It revolves around a family that gets caught up in one of the most significant world events to happen during this time period and shows America’s own relationship to its immigrants as well as the cost that war and dictatorship can have on regular families.

It is a book that is all the more important during these times and shows the rainbow of emotion that can come along with living through troubled times in your home country or what it is like to be in a new country as a newcomer. Get a copy of this fascinating book to follow along with every word– check out The Road from Raqqa today!

American Men is a 2026 book by Jordan Ritter Conn. If you’ve been looking for a new nonfiction book to read, this portrait of four different men in America and what it means to be a man in this country might be the right pick for you.

While men have great power across institutions, they are also falling behind when it comes to measures of what it means to have a sense of well-being or be successful. These include all types of men in all types of field, a gender that makes up half of the population. When they are mentioned as a group, though, it’s frequently to pose the question ‘what is wrong with them?’.

This is book that takes a closer look at four men and looks at how they construct their relationship to masculinity and how it is navigated over time.

Ryan: He is an amateur MMA fighter form the Akwesasne Mohawk territory that is trying to deal with his sexuality as a gay man in the closet and his pull towards violence in bars.

Gideon: He is a tall and handsome graduate of West Point as well as former baseball star who starts to unravel when he comes across challenges to his status as the white masculine ideal.

Joseph: He is a Seattle law student who has a tumultuous marriage that he is trying to deal with as he contends with effects of sexual trauma experienced when he was young.

Nate: A young man from Ohio who lives at home and is trying to become secure in a red state even as he is Black, trans, and poor.

Check out American Men to follow along with all of their stories in a fascinating work that Jordan Ritter Conn constructed from five years of interviewing and following these men.