Yale English professor Yeazell (Art of the Everyday) scrupulously chronicles how the influence of Dutch Baroque painter Johannes Vermeer, who was nearly forgotten after his death in 1675, has spread through art and culture. Though French art critic Theophile Thore is credited with “rescuing the painter from oblivion” upon seeing View of Delft and writing an 1866 article about the painting, Yeazell points out that a little-known dictionary of Netherlandish artists, which mentioned Vermeer and three of his paintings, was published by two Dutchmen decades earlier. Yeazell goes on to examine the ways the painter’s work influenced art, literature, and cinema through both overt “imitation” and the subtle “assimilation” of his aesthetic into the cultural imagination. (The light and composition in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, for example, recalls Vermeer’s “cinematic” style of obscuring the artist’s presence and illuminating only a slice of the composition.) She also discusses how gaps in the historical record of Vermeer’s career created openings for forgers like Han van Meegeren, whose Supper at Emmaus appeared to confirm the theory that Vermeer had painted religious works early on. Throughout, the author marshals rigorous analysis to show how the artists, filmmakers, writers, and critics who carried forward Vermeer’s “afterlives” have expanded, innovated, and sometimes transformed the meaning of his work. Serious admirers of the painter will want this on their bookshelves. (June)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Spiritual teacher Wadleigh (Shadow Work) outlines in this optimistic if tired guide how readers can become their truest selves. In order to “peel away years of conditioning” that rob people of their authenticity, she writes, readers must question the ingrained habits and beliefs that keep them locked in damaging routines that fail to reflect their values. They can then embark on 12 “paths” to becoming their most authentic self, including ensuring their “inner voice” is kind and positive; forgiving themselves with the compassion they normally show others; and seriously contemplating their priorities. She also encourages readers to harness their creativity—whether gardening or drawing in a coloring book—as a means of “free[ing] up energy inside of you” and attuning to the world’s beauty. Each chapter concludes with a quote from a writer or thinker and a summary of its teachings, along with practical tips and journal prompts for getting started on the path to authenticity. The author’s insights are encouraging and wise but too often repeat from her previous books, and sections on such topics as the damaging effects of social media feel like old news. This is best suited for Wadleigh’s most devoted fans. (June)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

“Read this book,” memoirist Thanh (To the Bridge) implores in her introduction to this nightmarish memoir of everyday life in Gaza. “Hassan Kanafani risked his life to write it.” Drawn from the author’s Reddit posts spanning from December 2024 to July 2025, the diary centers on life in the tent that engineering graduate Kanafani—a pseudonym—shares with his parents, grandmother, and siblings. His eyewitness reports include harrowing stories of neighbors pulling the bodies of their children from rubble, meager meals cooked over fires made of scraps of clothing, and performative acts of gratitude cruelly demanded by aid workers. “They are killing us—not only with bombs and bullets, but with hunger, with imprisonment, and with the relentless, brutal violation of our dignity,” he writes, as he recalls walking the camp at night and hearing the buzz of drones intermingling with the cries of starving children. (He also keeps track of skyrocketing food prices resulting from Israeli blockades; a bag of flour rises to more than $200, a single onion to $13.) “The truth about the war on Gaza is simple,” Kanafani explains after a so-called ceasefire during which Israel never stopped its attacks. “The occupation doesn’t want to stop the killing. It only wants to change its justifications.” This astonishing account demands readers look directly at the horrors in Gaza without blinking. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Crazed propaganda, brutal repression, and helpless public acquiescence underpin Russian president Vladimir Putin’s regime, according to this heartbroken memoir. Bennetts (I’m Going to Ruin Their Live) revisits his 25 years living in Russia and covering it for The Times of London and other media outlets before he fled the country in 2022. He describes how Putin consolidated power by crafting an image as a strong force for order, gaining control of the media, perpetrating massive election fraud, arresting and murdering political opponents, and laying the groundwork for the Ukraine war. Bennetts tells the story through personal observations and interviews, including with newscasters who lied about Ukrainian soldiers crucifying a Russian toddler; his Russian mother-in-law, who believed television propaganda and cut him off; a Siberian shaman who tried to exorcize Putin from the Kremlin and wound up consigned to a psych ward; Ukrainian villagers tortured by Russian occupation troops; and Russian dissidents who volunteered to fight on the Ukrainian side. In Bennetts’s vivid rendering, Russia has fallen into an almost medieval mindset, with citizens exerting zero control over an abusive officialdom—at one point, he profiles the burgeoning cottage industry of witches employed to cast spells over unresponsive bureaucrats—while maintaining a peasant-like faith that a distant ruler will intervene in their problems. The melancholy result casts a bleak light on the Russian national psyche. (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Faflik (Transcendental Heresies), an English professor at the University of Rhode Island, overreaches in this unique study of the intertwined racial histories of the Boston Red Sox and the city’s 1970s school desegregation crisis. Antibusing protests in the city, he argues, mirrored the Red Sox’s handling of race. The team went to great lengths to deny that race entered its hiring decisions (though it was the last MLB team to field a Black player), just as opponents of state orders to desegregate public schools were quick to dismiss the perception that they were against Black people, instead claiming they wanted to preserve the “integrity” of their communities. Faflik traces the Red Sox’s racially coded fan culture, most notably through pitcher Bill Lee, who was booed at games for his support of desegregation efforts. Elsewhere, he shows how antibusing protests took on the look and feel of sports, drawing connections between pep rallies and the movement’s marches. Unfortunately, frequent instances in which ordinary objects are freighted with heavy racial symbolism—most notably the Red Sox’s official hot dog, the Fenway Frank, which the author says “became as deeply implicated in Boston’s contest over racial equality as any other aspect of the club”—feel like a stretch. The result is more of a lofty thought experiment than a successful argument. (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Beekeeper and poet Cormier debuts with a poignant collection of essays on life on her Canadian farm, an enclave teeming with wild and domestic animals surrounded by encroaching development. Personal anecdotes inspire reflections on life, as when strong winds knock down the scarecrow next to her quail pen and Cormier muses, “Even a protector of small and soft things sometimes falls down and needs someone to pick him up.” After a neighbor moves away and leaves an armchair outside to deteriorate, she ponders cycles of neighborhood development and decline. Other essays reveal a deep respect for nature: a robin’s nest stops her from chopping down a decaying apple tree, and after finding a dead fawn near the road, her partner gently carries it to the forest. A major through line is Cormier’s love of bees. She explains how a colony visits millions of flowers and flies 50,000 miles to make a pound of honey, and notes that the taste of the honey her bees produce changes with the environment: after the forest behind her property was bulldozed, the previously “rich orange-gold” honey that was “sweetly sour as children’s candies” became “lemon yellow, the tart note reduced to a quiet zing.” Evocative and lyrical, this is a moving portrait of a life lived in tune with nature. (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this brisk and witty debut memoir, journalist Coppola (The Big Casino) looks back on his life in Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood during the mid-20th century. The narrative spans from Coppola’s boyhood to his college years at the Columbia School of Journalism, with passages recounting his returns to Gowanus as an adult. Each chapter brims with distinctive portraits of larger-than-life Italian Americans with nicknames like “Muzzi, Funzi, [and] Blubberhead.” Some flee the neighborhood to make something of themselves, some meet tragic ends, but all endure the perils of toxic waterways, mafia violence, and predatory priests. Though Coppola dedicates plenty of space to evoking the electric pulse of 1960s Brooklyn, where residents lived “under one immutable commandment: never talk, never rat, never confide in an outsider,” he’s even better when focusing on his family. His account of his brother’s harrowing fight against AIDS and the final hours of his mother’s life are shot through with raw grief and unconditional love, lending the sometimes-lurid narrative a welcome poignancy. Fast-paced, vital, and characterized by a complicated nostalgia, this portrait of a bygone era is difficult to put down. (June)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

“What is happening today in America is part of a global political turn,” Madeleine Schwartz, editor-in-chief of the Dial, writes in her introduction to this illuminating anthology of reflections from foreign journalists on U.S. politics. What’s odd, she continues, “is how little the American people” seem to realize it. Writers from 12 countries consider America’s descent into Trumpism, rampant poverty, and growing attacks on human rights, along the way interrogating the impact of U.S. politics abroad. Indian journalist Saumya Roy compares homelessness in California to slums in Mumbai, finding the latter’s poor “do not carry around the devastating sense of shame and loneliness I witnessed on the streets of San Francisco.” Ukrainian writer Nataliya Gumenyuk considers how, despite Ukraine’s growing dependence on American military protection, “rarely have the two countries felt so far apart in how each sees the world.” Author Kaya Genç draws parallels between Trump and Turkish president Recep Erdoğan, and Buenos Aires journalist Lucía Cholakian Herrera explores how American dollars have become the most valuable currency in Argentina, even as their international value plummets. These fascinating outsider perspectives not only ground American problems in wider trends, but often show the U.S. as responsible for worsening conditions elsewhere. The result is a much needed reality check. (June)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Bestseller Gross (Flight of the WASP) offers a lavish if tedious history of luxury getaway St. Barthélemy. A St. Barth frequenter for “almost three dozen years,” the author begins with an overview of the Caribbean island’s modern-day milieu of financiers, Hollywood stars, children of dictators, and infamous Epstein pals including Ghislaine Maxwell. The book traces the island’s growth from “the Caribbean’s ugly duckling” to “an uber-luxury product,” an evolution spearheaded by Rémy de Haenen, an eccentric London-born “smuggler... and criminal” who, drawn to the island’s tax-free status, founded its first “jet-set guesthouse” in 1953. From there, Gross recaps the buildup of increasingly pricey resorts, villas, and restaurants (one of which offered “the world’s most expensive” lentil salad), as well as the rise of “antidevelopment sentiment” directed at more recent newcomers, especially Russian oligarchs. While the anecdotes occasionally exhilarate—particularly those concerning Jimmy Buffett’s raucous hotel, Autour du Roche, “the staging ground for some of the worst behavior I have ever seen,” per Buffett—the account gets bogged down in the minutiae of real estate deals, and its tallying of extreme wealth can veer into soul-sucking territory (the author’s propensity for referring to elites as “buccaneers” doesn’t help matters). This glimpse of the lifestyles of the rich and famous is more tiresome than expected. (June)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Kinney (Avidly Reads Opera), a professor of writing at the New School, offers an all over the map exploration of rejection in personal, political, and historical contexts. Rejections come in many shapes and sizes, Kinney notes: defectors spurn their homelands; revolutionaries deny their governments; and institutions exclude people from leadership roles (see the Catholic church’s rejection of female priests). She focuses in particular on rejections that stem from systemic inequalities, discussing how unfair immigration policies lead to citizenship denials and deportations, while racist hiring practices disadvantage people of color. With that in mind, she argues that quintessentially American narratives about rejection—namely, that it must be dealt with by simply working harder to measure up—are counterproductive and unfair because they ask people to aspire to arbitrary standards rooted in unequal systems. Instead, she calls for dismantling such oppressive structures, finding fresh ways of conceptualizing acceptance, and embracing failure’s unexpected benefits, like opening up spaces for new opportunities. Kinney provides especially intriguing commentary on the harms of can-do, self-improvement–focused responses to rejection, though her framework is so broad that she sometimes struggles to connect all her examples to the thesis. The result is a thought-provoking but uneven take on a universal phenomenon. (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink