Under the microscope this spring: the Supreme Court, housing segregation, endemic poverty, police brutality, the patriarchy, immigration, whistleblowers, Hollywood abusers, cancel culture, the war in Ukraine, and Gerald Ford.
Top 10
Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East
Steven Simon. Penguin Press, Apr. 11 ($32, ISBN 978-0-7352-2424-7)
Analyzing the past 40 years of American involvement in the Middle East, longtime national security adviser Simon finds a record of illusory thinking and deliberate misconduct.
Just Action: Creating a Movement That Can End Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law
Leah and Richard Rothstein. Liveright, June 20 ($25, ISBN 978-1-324-09324-4)
The bestselling author of The Color of Law partners with his daughter, an affordable housing advocate, to offer a blueprint for ending racial segregation in the U.S.
The Lost Sons of Omaha: Two Young Men in an American Tragedy
Joe Sexton. Scribner, May 9 ($30, ISBN 978-1-982198-34-3)
ProPublica reporter Sexton debuts with an investigation into two linked deaths stemming from the protests that erupted in Omaha, Neb., after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.
Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino”
Héctor Tobar. MCD, May 9 ($27, ISBN 978-0-374-60990-0)
Interweaving memoir, reportage, and cultural studies, Pulitzer-winning journalist and novelist Tobar investigates the meaning of Latino as a racial and ethnic identity in the U.S. today.
The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality
Angela Saini. Beacon, Feb. 28 ($26.95, ISBN 978-0-8070-1454-7)
The origins and evolution of gender inequality—and the role colonialism played in solidifying patriarchal customs—are explored in this survey from the author of Superior.
Poverty, by America
Matthew Desmond. Crown, Mar. 21 ($28, ISBN 978-0-593-23991-9)
Pulitzer winner Desmond follows up Evicted with an argument that poverty persists in America because the affluent benefit from it.
Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock
Jenny Odell. Random House, Mar. 7 ($28.99, ISBN 978-0-593-24270-4)
In the follow-up to How to Do Nothing, Odell draws on history, science, and psychology to envision a world not centered around the corporate clock and the notion that time is money.
Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable
Joanna Schwartz. Viking, Feb. 14 ($30, ISBN 978-0-593-29936-4)
Qualified immunity, no-knock warrants, judicial discretion, and other obstacles to holding police accountable for their misconduct are analyzed in this account from UCLA law professor Schwartz.
We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America
Roxanna Asgarian. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Mar. 14 ($28, ISBN 978-0-374-60229-1)
In journalist Asgarian’s debut, the 2018 murder-suicide of a married white couple and the six Black children they adopted exposes fault lines in America’s child welfare system.
Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society
Arline T. Geronimus. Little, Brown Spark, Mar. 28 ($30, ISBN 978-0-316-25797-8)
Geronimus, who coined the term weathering to describe the toll systemic inequality takes on the health of marginalized people, presents more than 30 years of research into the subject.
Politics & Current Events Listings
Arcade
They Killed Freddie Gray: The Anatomy of a Police Brutality Cover-Up by Justine Barron (Apr. 18, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-950994-25-0) draws on new evidence to argue that Baltimore officials covered up the real cause of Freddie Gray’s death in 2015, undermining the criminal cases against the officers involved.
Astra House
Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration by Alejandra Oliva (June 20, $28, ISBN 978-1-66260-169-9) examines the so-called immigration crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border from the perspective of an interpreter and migrant rights advocate whose family has a long history on both sides of the Rio Grande.
Atlantic Monthly Press
Life Sentence: The Brief and Tragic Career of Baltimore’s Deadliest Gang Leader by Mark Bowden (Apr. 11, $28, ISBN 978-0-8021-6242-7) reports on gang leader Montana Barronette’s reign of terror over the streets of Sandtown, one of Baltimore’s deadliest neighborhoods.
Atria
Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America’s Future by Jean M. Twenge (Mar. 28, $32.50, ISBN 978-1-982181-61-1) documents the differences and points of connection between the six generations currently living in the U.S.
Basic
The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic by Stephen Vladeck (May 16, $30, ISBN 978-1-5416-0263-2) delves into the Supreme Court’s increasing use of unsigned, unexplained orders to rule on consequential issues including voting laws, abortion bans, and
vaccine mandates.
Belknap
Never Again: Germans and Genocide after the Holocaust by Andrew I. Port (May 2, $35, ISBN 978-0-674-27522-5) tracks how Germany’s reckoning with the Holocaust led to an increased willingness to get involved in military efforts to stop mass genocides abroad— a shift that has been celebrated by the country’s right-wing.
Bellevue Literary
All Else Failed: The Unlikely Volunteers at the Heart of the Migrant Aid Crisis by Dana Sachs (Mar. 21, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-954276-09-3) spotlights the volunteer relief network that came to the aid of migrants fleeing Syria and other war-torn countries in 2015.
Broadleaf
Pregnant While Black: Advancing Justice for Maternal Health in America by Monique Rainford (May 9, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-5064-8761-8) exposes the factors that make Black women three times more likely to die from pregnancy than their white counterparts, and offers solutions to the problem.
Broadside
America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything by Christopher F. Rufo (May 16, $32, ISBN 978-0-06-322753-8). The conservative activist who sparked the controversy over critical race theory examines the influence of left-wing politics on American society. 150,000-copy announced first printing.
Cambridge Univ.
You Can’t Always Say What You Want: The Paradox of Free Speech by Dennis Baron (Feb. 28, $27.95, ISBN 978-1-00-919890-5) surveys 200 years of speech legislation and technological advances to explain how free speech rights are now used by the powerful to protect themselves from those who seek to hold them to account.
Catapult
Who Gets Believed? When the Truth Isn’t Enough by Dina Nayeri (Mar. 7, $27, ISBN 978-1-64622-072-4) takes the question of why some honest asylum seekers are dismissed as liars as the springboard for an interrogation into the nature and meaning of believability.
Citadel
No Human Contact: Solitary Confinement, Maximum Security, and Two Inmates Who Changed the System by Pete Earley (Apr. 25, $27, ISBN 978-0-8065-4188-4) delves into the cases of Thomas Silverstein and Clayton Fountain, two inmates who endured decades in solitary confinement after murdering prison guards.
Crown
A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All by Adam Benforado (Feb. 7, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-984823-04-5) delineates the ways in which the U.S. education, justice, health, and welfare systems mistreat children, and argues that prioritizing children’s rights can help solve many of the major problems facing the country.
Dutton
The Teachers: A Year Inside America’s Most Vulnerable, Important Profession by Alexandra Robbins (Mar. 14, $29, ISBN 978-1-101-98675-2) tracks three U.S. teachers over the course of a school year as they grapple with Covid-19, school violence, inadequate resources, problematic parent and student behavior, and more.
Experiment
Retracing the Iron Curtain: A 3,000-Mile Journey Through the End and Afterlife of the Cold War by Timothy Phillips (Mar. 7, $30, ISBN 978-1-61519-964-8) depicts the author’s travels along the length of the former Iron Curtain, and the conflicted feelings he found there over the past and the future.
Hachette
Age of Danger: Keeping America Safe in an Era of New Superpowers, New Weapons, and New Threats by Andrew Hoehn and Thom Shanker (May 9, $30, ISBN 978-0-306-82910-9) contends that America’s national security system needs to shift its focus from combating terrorism to a wider range of issues, including pandemics.
Hanover Square
Fire on the Levee: The Murder of Henry Glover and the Pursuit of Justice After Hurricane Katrina by Jared Fishman (Apr. 25, $28.99, ISBN 978-1-335-42926-1) recounts how the investigation into the mysterious death of a man soon after Hurricane Katrina led to reforms in the New Orleans police department.
Harper
An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford by Richard Norton Smith (Apr. 11, $50, ISBN 978-0-06-268416-5) revisits Gerald Ford’s pardoning of Richard Nixon, support for the Helsinki Accords, and handling of a severe economic crisis to make the case that his leadership has been underrated.
Haymarket
Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young-Lutunatabua (Apr. 4, $16.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-64259-897-1), gathers essays from scientists, organizers, and poets on the latest developments in the climate movement and the need to combat inertia.
Knopf
Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State by Kerry Howley (Mar. 21, $28, ISBN 978-0-525-65549-7) analyzes how the internet has changed modern life through profiles of NSA leaker Reality Winner, Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh, and others whose notoriety will follow them wherever they go.
LITTLE, BROWN
Every Choice Matters: How I Found the Strength to Tell the Truth and Why I Blew the Whistle on Facebook by Frances Haugen (May 2, $30, ISBN 978-0-316-47522-8) recounts the author’s decision to leak documents revealing that Facebook knew its algorithms were spreading extremism and negatively impacting users’ health and well-being.
Liveright
Cold Peace: Avoiding the New World War by Michael W. Doyle (Apr. 25, $30, ISBN 978-1-63149-606-6) assesses rising tensions between China, Russia, and the U.S. and argues that tackling such global threats as climate change and nuclear catastrophe requires cooperation among all three.
Mariner
Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood by Maureen Ryan (June 6, $29.99, ISBN 978-0-06-326927-9) uncovers long-standing patterns of harassment and discrimination in the entertainment industry and the myths that enable them, and spotlights grassroots campaigns for reform.
Melville House
Playing God: American Catholic Bishops and the Far Right by Mary Jo McConahay (Mar. 14, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-68589-028-5) draws attention to how the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has allied with right-wing donors and evangelicals to oppose Pope Francis and promote an ultraconservative vision for America.
Metropolitan
Walk the Walk: How Three Police Chiefs Defied the Odds and Changed Cop Culture by Neil Gross (Mar. 21, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-250-77752-2) profiles a trio of police chiefs in California, Colorado, and Georgia who have made strides in reforming their departments to be less aggressive and more equitable and humane.
MIT
Beyond Data: Reclaiming Human Rights at the Dawn of the Metaverse by Elizabeth M. Renieris (Feb. 7, $26.95, ISBN 978-0-262-04782-1) argues that laws focused on data privacy and data security have failed to adequately protect people in the internet age, and calls for a shift to a policy framework based on human rights.
Morrow
Nine Black Robes: Inside the Supreme Court’s Drive to the Right and Its Historic Consequences by Joan Biskupic (Apr. 4, $32.99, ISBN 978-0-06-305278-9) analyzes how the recent appointments of three conservative justices shifted the dynamics of the Supreme Court, leading to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and other controversial decisions.
New Press
The Fear of Too Much Justice: How Race and Poverty Undermine Fairness in the Criminal Courts by Stephen Bright and James Kwak (June 20, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-62097-025-6) uses case studies and legal analysis to examine how the criminal justice system is weighted against the poor and the marginalized.
Norton
A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and How to Bend Them Back by Bruce Schneier (Feb. 7, $30, ISBN 978-0-393-86666-7) explores how the “hacker” mindset has gravitated outside the realm of computer technology, posing risks to America’s economic, political, and legal systems.
The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlet (Mar. 21, $28.95, ISBN 978-1-324-00649-7) reflects on the currents of faith and politics that brought Donald Trump to the White House and led to the January 6 Capitol riot.
OR Books
Cold War, Hot War: How Russiagate Created Chaos from Washington to Ukraine by Aaron Mate (May 16, $45, ISBN 978-1-68219-365-5) suggests that allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election became such a huge political scandal—running far ahead of the facts—because they served the interests of America’s elite.
PublicAffairs
Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson (May 16, $32, ISBN 978-1-5417-0253-0) reviews the Middle Ages, the Industrial Revolution, and other turning points to argue that technological change is less a driver of prosperity than a protector of entrenched powers.
Why Politics Fails by Ben Ansell (May 23, $30, ISBN 978-1-5417-0207-3) elucidates how the political system prioritizes individual actions over collective goals and obstructs commonsense solutions to climate change, economic inequality, and other social problems, while charting a path forward.
Random House
The Secret Gate: A True Story of Courage and Sacrifice During the Collapse of Afghanistan by Mitchell Zuckoff (Apr. 25, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-593-59484-1) recounts the rescue of Homeira Qaderi, an author and women’s rights activist, and her son in the final hours of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Zov: A Russian Soldier Caught Inside Putin’s Unjust War in Ukraine by Pavel Filatyev, trans. by Anna Aslanyan (Feb. 14, $28, ISBN 978-0-593-59738-5), chronicles the author’s experiences as a Russian Army paratrooper during the first two months of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Scribner
Untitled on Ukraine by Mikhail Zygar (July 25, $29, ISBN 978-1-66801-372-4). The founding editor-in-chief of an independent Russian TV news channel—which stopped broadcasting in March 2022—details how Ukraine’s increasing ties to Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union led to Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
Seal
Who Cares: The Hidden Crisis of Caregiving, and How We Solve It by Emily Kenway (May 9, $29, ISBN 978-1-5416-0122-2) draws on economic analysis, sociological research, and the author’s experiences caring for her terminally ill mother to expose the isolation and exhaustion of unpaid caregivers.
Sentinel
Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future by Patrick J. Deneen (June 6, $29, ISBN 978-0-593-08690-2) reveals how classical liberalism empowered the elite while undermining traditions and institutions held dear by ordinary people and calls for the emergence of conservative leaders whose interests align with those of the working class.
Seven Stories
On Living in a Democracy by Ralph Nader (Mar. 28, $14.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-64421-278-3) highlights the importance of engaging in one’s community and teaching civic responsibility in schools and at home in order to create a more civil society.
Simon & Schuster
The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us About How and When This Crisis Will End by Neil Howe (July 18, $28, ISBN 978-1-98217-373-9). The coauthor of The Fourth Turning draws on his theory of generational change to predict that America’s current period of civil unrest will end within 10 years.
Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right Wing Extremism by Jeffrey Toobin (May 2, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-66801-357-1) tracks Timothy McVeigh’s path to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and how his actions and beliefs foreshadowed the resurgence of white nationalism and the January 6 Capitol riot.
Stanford Univ.
The Transition: Interpreting Justice from Thurgood Marshall to Clarence Thomas by Daniel Kiel (Apr. 4, $30, ISBN 978-1-5036-3065-9) views the ideological shift that occurred on the Supreme Court when Clarence Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall in 1991 through the lens of America’s fraught racial history.
St. Martin’s
The Case for Cancel Culture: How This Democratic Tool Works to Liberate Us All by Ernest Owens (Feb. 21, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-250-28093-0) characterizes cancel culture not as censorship, but as an essential tool of democracy that has been wielded by the less powerful to drive historical change and fight for justice.
Univ. of California
The New Crusades: Islamophobia and the Global War on Muslims by Khaled A. Beydoun (Mar. 21, $26.95, ISBN 978-0-520-35630-6) spotlights anti-Muslim campaigns around the world, from America’s war on terror to hijab bans in France and the persecution of ethnic Uyghurs in China.
Verso
After Black Lives Matter by Cedric Johnson (Mar. 21, $34.95, ISBN 978-1-80429-167-2) contends that the Black Lives Matter movement has achieved few substantive reforms because it is not focused enough on finding solutions to socioeconomic inequality.
Viking
Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy by Colin Dickey (July 11, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-29945-6) revisits the Salem witch trials, the Satanic panic of the 1980s, and other historical obsessions with secret societies to shed light on why Americans are so drawn to conspiracy theories.
Vintage
The Traitor: Inside the World’s Most Powerful Drug Cartel by Anabel Hernandez (July 25, $18 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-593-31169-1) draws on the courtroom testimony and private journals of a high-ranking member of the Sinaloa cartel who testified against El Chapo to offer an up-close look at life in Mexico’s drug trade.
Yale Univ.
The Private Is Political: Networked Privacy and Social Media by Alice E. Marwick (May 30, $32.50, ISBN 978-0-300-22962-2) investigates how social media and big data have jeopardized the privacy of marginalized communities, and how the current legal system is incapable of addressing these issues.
