Top 10

Aggregated Discontent: Confessions of the Last Normal Woman

Harron Walker. Random House, May 20 ($29, ISBN 978-0-593-45004-8)

Vulture contributor Walker ruminates on contemporary American womanhood, from corporate pinkwashing to “pick me” girls to reproductive healthcare.

Authority: Essays

Andrea Long Chu. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Apr. 8 ($30, ISBN 978-0-374-60033-4)

This collection of Pulitzer winner Chu’s work focuses on the political meaning of art, with new essays outlining the history of literary criticism as a political force since the Enlightenment.

Decolonizing Language and Other Revolutionary Ideas

Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o. New Press, May 6 ($25.99, ISBN 978-1-62097-932-7)

Novelist Ngũgĩ examines the role of language on identity making, arguing that speaking and writing in African languages can combat the psychological and material impacts of colonialism.

I Want to Burn This Place Down: Essays

Maris Kreizman. Ecco, July 1 ($26.99, ISBN 978-0-06-330582-3)

Dissecting liberal myths she formerly embraced, cultural critic Kreizman tracks her own leftward political drift during the Trump and Biden administrations. 75,000-copy announced first printing.

On My Honor: The Secret History of the Boy Scouts of America

Kim Christensen. Grand Central, Feb. 11 ($30, ISBN 978-1-5387-2673-0)

This posthumously published report from Pulitzer winner Christensen culminates his decades-long investigation into sexual abuse allegations against the Boy Scouts of America.

Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age

Vauhini Vara. Pantheon, Apr. 8 ($30, ISBN 978-0-593-70152-2)

Pulitzer finalist Vara, who in 2021 famously used a ChatGPT predecessor to write about her sister’s death, reflects on how Big Tech has impacted the way she uses language—from the online chat rooms of her youth to her viral literary experiment and today’s AI revolution.

Seeking Shelter: A Working Mother, Her Children, and a Story of Homelessness in America

Jeff Hobbs. Scribner, Feb. 4 ($29.99, ISBN 978-1-6680-3482-8)

An L.A. mother escapes domestic violence with her six children, but struggles to keep them together as a full-time waiter who doesn’t qualify for government aid, in the latest from the bestselling author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace.

To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other

Viet Thanh Nguyen. Belknap, Apr. 8 ($26.95, ISBN 978-0-674-29817-0)

Meditating on literary forms of otherness, Pulitzer winner Nguyen reflects on literary celebrity in times of crisis and a writer’s responsibility to stand in solidarity with outsiders.

What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis

Malcolm Harris. Little, Brown, Apr. 15 ($30, ISBN 978-0-316-57741-0)

The bestselling author of Palo Alto outlines a political strategy for combating climate change that incorporates multiple elements of a fractured left. 50,000-copy announced first printing.

The World After Gaza: A History

Pankaj Mishra. Penguin Press, Feb. 11 ($28, ISBN 979-8-217-05889-1)

Reckoning with the global response to the war in Gaza, Mishra argues that there are two broadly competing narratives of the last century—the Global North’s triumph over totalitarianism vs. the Global South’s overthrow of colonial rule—that are inhibiting communication across the divide.

longlist

Abrams Image

America, Let Me In: A Choose Your Immigration Story by Felipe Torres Medina (Mar. 11, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-4197-7639-7). Comedian and Late Show writer Torres Medina takes a satirical look at the U.S. immigration system, drawing on 10 years he spent navigating it himself.

Beacon

The Cost of Being Undocumented: One Woman’s Reckoning with America’s Inhumane Math by Alíx Dick and Antero Garcia (June 17, $28.95, ISBN 978-0-8070-1494-3) examines the economics of America’s undocumented workforce and finds that rather than taking from the economy, undocumented immigrants put in far more than they get back.

Bloomsbury

Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy by Katherine Stewart (Feb. 18, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-63557-854-6) tracks the conspiracy theorists, billionaires, religious leaders, and “concerned moms” attempting to end democracy in America, and argues that their coalition is a shaky one. 100,000-copy announced first printing.

Bold Type

Owned: How Tech Billionaires
on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left by Eoin Higgins (Feb. 4, $30, ISBN 978-1-64503-046-1) traces the rightward drift of firebrand lefty journalists Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald as they began to take funding from tech billionaires Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Marc Andreessen.

Catapult

A Return to Self: Excursions in Exile by Aatish Taseer (July 15, $27, ISBN 978-1-64622-279-7). A novelist whose Indian citizenship was revoked after he wrote articles critical of the country’s increasing right-wing nationalism ruminates on what causes nativism to emerge in different parts of the world.

Celadon

Bad Friend: How Women Revolutionized Modern Friendship by Tiffany Watt Smith (May 6, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-250-87021-6) depicts contemporary female friendship as having overcome misogynist stereotypes—especially about women’s inherent competitiveness with other women—to develop into a revolutionary new type of relationship. 75,000-copy announced first printing.

City Lights

Little Red Barns: Hiding the Truth, from Farm to Fable by Will Potter (June 3, $18.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-0-87286-914-1) exposes the web of political corruption and corporate power that silences journalists who attempt to report on factory farming’s abuses.

Crown

There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America by Brian Goldstone (Mar. 25, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-23714-4) tracks five Atlanta families with full-time breadwinners who still cannot afford housing, shedding light on the extent of America’s homelessness problem beyond shelters and encampments.

To Those Who Have Confused You to Be a Person: Words as Violence and Stories of Women’s Resistance Online by Alia Dastagir (Feb. 25, $29, ISBN 978-0-593-72784-3) analyzes how the misogynistic hate women receive in online spaces impacts their psychological well-being, as well as how online misogyny intersects with other issues like white supremacy and disinformation.

Dey Street

Lost at Sea: Poverty and Paradise Collide at the Edge of America by Joe Kloc (Apr. 15, $32.50, ISBN 978-0-06-306169-9) delves into the lives of “anchor-outs,” a California homeless community living at sea on abandoned boats, and their struggle against wealthy coastal residents of Marin County who consider them an eyesore.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Fugitive Tilts: Essays by Ishion Hutchinson (Apr. 15, $32, ISBN 978-0-374-60051-8). National Book Critics Circle award–winning poet Hutchinson addresses contemporary questions about home and displacement.

Gallery

The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation’s Fight Over Its Future by Carter Sherman (June 24, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-6680-5245-7). To investigate why American teens and young adults are having less sex than ever, journalist Sherman tours social media quagmires, “dating with dignity” seminars, and pediatricians’ offices overwhelmed by adolescent mental health crises.

Graywolf

Dysphoria Mundi: A Diary of Planetary Transition by Paul B. Preciado (Apr. 15, $22 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-64445-332-2) argues that gender dysphoria should be understood not as a mental condition, but as the defining experience of an era characterized by disintegrating paradigms.

Harper

Misbehaving at the Crossroads by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers (June 24, $30, ISBN 978-0-06-324663-8). Exploring contemporary Black womanhood, Jeffers delves into the history of concepts like intersectionality and womanism and charts such ongoing challenges as respectability politics. 50,000-copy announced first printing.

Harvard Univ.

Justice Abandoned: How the Supreme Court Ignored the Constitution and Enabled Mass Incarceration by Rachel Elise Barkow (Mar. 4, $35, ISBN 978-0-674-29422-6) contends that a series of erroneously argued Supreme Court decisions since the 1960s undergird today’s system of mass incarceration.

Haymarket

No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain by Rebecca Solnit (May 13, $16.95 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-88890-363-6). In a meditation on the impact that today’s political decisions have on long-term issues like climate change, Solnit urges for more embracing of unpredictability and for more thought to be given to indirect consequences.

Little, Brown

Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash by Alexander Clapp (Feb. 25, $32, ISBN 978-0-316-45902-0) investigates the sketchy multibillion-dollar global garbage trade, uncovering how trash gets packaged, sold, and smuggled around the world.

Mariner

Culture Creep: Notes on the Pop Apocalypse by Alice Bolin (June 3, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-344052-4) examines how feminine identity is constructed in dieting apps, Animal Crossing, Silicon Valley mythmaking, and other elements of today’s digital pop culture, finding that it is often mixed with cultlike thinking.

Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful by David Enrich (Mar. 11, $32.99, ISBN 978-0-06-337290-0) reveals a right-wing, billionaire-funded plot to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan, a consequential 1964 decision that guarantees free speech for journalists and writers.

Melville House

Those Who Should Be Seized Should Be Seized: China’s Relentless Persecution of Uyghurs and Other Ethnic Minorities by John Beck (May 6, $30.99, ISBN 978-1-68589-179-4) probes the Chinese government’s persecution of Uyghurs, including its pursuit of those who escape beyond China’s borders. 75,000-copy announced first printing.

Metropolitan

Black Power Scorecard: Measuring the Racial Gap and What We Can Do to Close It by Andre M. Perry (Apr. 15, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-250-86971-5) delves into property and business records to analyze Black economic power in the U.S., identifying overlooked areas of structural inequality and examining how the racial wealth gap affects longevity. 60,000-copy announced first printing.

Morrow

Devils’ Advocates: How Washington Lobbyists Get Rich Enabling Dictators, Oligarchs, and Arms Dealers (While Thwarting Democracy) by Kenneth P. Vogel (June 10, $30, ISBN 978-0-06-334121-0) uncovers how undemocratic governments and criminal enterprises around the world lobby U.S. politicians for favorable treatment, in what amounts to a system of codified bribery.

New Press

Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine: Reform, White Supremacy, and an Abolitionist Future by Emile Suotonye Deweaver (May 13, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-62097-788-0) contends that there is racist logic behind parole boards, police unions, prison administrations, and other less often interrogated aspects of the American justice system.

Norton

Fewer Rules, Better People: The Case for Discretion by Barry Lam (Feb. 11, $24, ISBN 978-1-324-05124-4). Examining bias in the criminal justice system, philosopher Lam argues that stricter rule enforcement does not lead to less biased outcomes than systems in which authority-holders enforce rules at their discretion, and warns against the encroachment of AI into decision-making roles.

One Signal

The Lost and the Found: A True Story of Homelessness, Found Family, and Second Chances by Kevin Fagan (Feb. 11, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-6680-1711-1). Journalist Fagan profiles a pair of unhoused San Franciscans who, because of his reporting, were reconnected with families who had long been searching for them.

Pantheon

Integrated: How American Schools Failed Black Children by Noliwe Rooks (Mar. 18, $28, ISBN 978-0-553-38739-1) argues that school integration did a disservice to Black communities by decimating Black-run school systems and exposing Black children to racism, violence, and bullying from white peers and teachers.

What Is Wrong with Men: Patriarchy, the Crisis of Masculinity, and How (of Course) Michael Douglas Films Explain Everything by Jessa Crispin (June 3, $27, ISBN 978-0-593-31762-4) examines the crisis of masculinity through the satirical lens of the 1980s and ’90s film roles of Michael Douglas, whose characters mirrored the era’s culture shift, including growing anxieties about women and power.

Penguin Press

Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert (Apr. 29, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-65629-7) argues that early-aughts pop culture was defined by the collapse of third wave “riot girrrl” feminism and the simultaneous rise of internet porn, which led to a period of hyperobjectification and infantilization of women and girls.

Princeton Univ.

The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy by Eunji Kim (Mar. 18, $27.95, ISBN 978-0-691-26719-7) draws on data that suggests a large swath of Americans are not consuming the news and instead develop their ideas about American
economic realities from reality shows like Shark Tank and American Idol.

Random House

Ancestors: Identity and DNA in the Levant by Pierre Zalloua (Apr. 29, $31, ISBN 978-0-593-73090-4) critiques the role that heritage tests from companies like 23andMe and Ancestry have come to play in the politics of origin and ethnicity in the Levant, while offering a 100,000-year genetic history of the region.

Mad House: How Donald Trump, MAGA Mean Girls, a Former Used Car Salesman, a Florida Nepo Baby, and a Man with Rats in His Walls Broke Congress by Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater (Apr. 15, $32, ISBN 978-0-593-73126-0) depicts Congress as having fallen into anarchy since the January 6 attack, with ever more eccentric Republicans and disenchanted Democrats.

Riverhead

When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World by Jordan Thomas (May 27, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-54482-2). An anthropologist embeds with an elite group of California firefighters battling new “megafires” being wrought by global warming. 60,000-copy announced first printing.

Scribner

Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax of the Century, Its Enduring Impact, and What It Reveals About America Today by Phil Tinline (Mar. 25, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-6680-5049-1) explores how a 1966 hoax—a leftist’s satirical claim that a government-run study group had examined the “cost of peace” and found it too high—became inadvertent fodder for decades of conspiracy theorizing.

Seal

Pushback: The 2,500-Year Fight to Thwart Women by Restricting Abortion by Mary Fissell (Mar. 11, $30, ISBN 978-1-5416-0407-0). A historian of medicine shows that, from ancient Greece to today, restrictions on abortion access have been used to curtail women’s advancement when men grow anxious about women’s independence.

Seven Stories

Ordinary People Don’t Carry Machine Guns: Thoughts on War by Artem Chapeye (Apr. 8, $17.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-64421-459-6). A novelist who took up arms to defend Ukraine decries his previous pacificism and critiques the elitism of those who consider themselves above fighting.

Simon & Schuster

The Pardon: Nixon, Ford and the Politics of Presidential Mercy by Jeffrey Toobin (Feb. 25, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-6680-8494-6) analyzes Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon for its implications for the next presidential administration.

Rethinking Medications: Truth, Power, and the Drugs You Take by Jerry Avorn (Apr. 22, $30.99, ISBN 978-1-6680-5284-6) contends that America’s drug regulation process has been compromised by pharmaceutical industry lobbying and pressure from Congress, leading to an unsafe, inefficient, and overpriced drug market.

Stanford Univ.

The Worst Trickster Story Ever Told: Native America, the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Constitution by Keith Richotte Jr. (Feb. 11, $30, ISBN 978-1-5036-4164-8) posits that there is no constitutional basis for the Supreme Court’s assumption—underlying its decisions since the 1880s—that the federal government has jurisdiction over Native Americans.

Street Noise

Eyes on Gaza: Witnessing Annihilation by Khaled A. Beydoun, illus. by Mohammad Sabaaneh (Feb. 18, $16 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-951491-41-3), is a collection of essays written during the first year of the war in Gaza that tried to reckon with the tragedy as it unfolded. 50,000-copy announced first printing.

Verso

Scam: Inside Southeast Asia’s Cybercrime Compounds by Ivan Franceschini, Ling Li, and Mark Bo (July 8, $24.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-80429-690-5) shines a light on the inner workings of the online scam industry, including the appalling conditions of those who labor in it.

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