This wild debut tell-all from former Infowars editor Owens recounts his destabilizing stint working under Alex Jones. Owens was already an Infowars fan when he was hired in 2013. Yet even with foreknowledge of Jones’s extreme personality, his first day was a surreal experience, from Jones’s uncomfortable overshares (“I bet you weren’t expecting to learn on your first day that it takes Alex Jones thirty seconds to take a shit”) to foreboding warnings from new colleagues (“You don’t want to make him angry”). What follows is four years of constant instability as Jones churns out paranoid content based on mundane observations like a low-flying plane (“This is 9/11 all over again!”) and sends the author on harebrained “gonzo” assignments, including infiltrating an NSA data storage facility and crossing the border into the U.S. dressed as an ISIS member. The book serves as a morbidly fascinating character study of Jones, who’s depicted as a volatile self-proclaimed “drunk” given to outbursts of violence (destroying an office watercooler with a kitchen knife; goading underlings into punching him, then punching back; shooting at staff during a video production). Even as Jones “seemed to be struggling with the nature of reality,” his employees affirmed his delusional theories—not out of true belief, Owens asserts, but fear of his retribution. It’s a riveting insider account of a deranged media ecosystem. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/10/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this incisive dual biography, historian Vinen (1968) paints British prime minister Winston Churchill and French general Charles de Gaulle as having moved along opposite trajectories. As Churchill grew into the indomitable leader who rallied Britain to persevere against the Nazis, de Gaulle’s wartime exploits were less glorious. Exiled to London and often sidelined by the Allies, he managed, through clandestine intrigues and a carefully cultivated aura of destiny, to position himself as France’s leader. The relative statuses of Churchill and de Gaulle changed drastically in postwar decades, however. Churchill’s second stint as prime minister in the 1950s was a study in fecklessness and physical decrepitude, in Vinen’s telling, while de Gaulle’s presidential term from 1958 to 1969 was a triumph: he presided over an economic boom; turned France into a modern, efficient technocracy; and faced down military revolts and assassination attempts to grant Algeria its independence. Vinen’s colorful portraits note resonances between the two leaders: both were conservatives and unreconstructed racists with theatrical streaks who grappled with imperial decline. But he depicts de Gaulle as the more perceptive and realistic statesman, ushering France into a less ambitious but prosperous and independent new dispensation while Churchill wallowed in nostalgia. The result is a fresh and illuminating reconsideration of two statesmen who helped build the modern world. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 04/10/2026 | Details & Permalink

Poet and biographer Sampson (Starlight Wood) offers a vivid biography of French writer George Sand. Born Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil in Paris in 1804, Sand came of age during a time of great political tension between revolutionary and monarchical forces in France. Though she was known for moving through literary circles dominated by men and dressing in menswear, her life was often spent tending to familial responsibilities as a wife and mother, Sampson reveals, and her writing was deeply concerned with the struggles women faced. Sand was prolific, penning more than 70 novels as well as stage plays and an autobiography before her death in 1876. At a time when divorce was rare, Sand legally separated from her husband in 1836 and was granted custody of her children and ownership of her property in the settlement. Though she never remarried and thus remained legally independent, she often organized her life around the men she was in a relationship with, to the point of financially supporting some of them. Still, Sampson keeps Sand front and center, punctuating each chapter with poignant meditations on paintings and photographs taken of the writer. The result is a panoramic chronicle of a complex life. Photos. (June)

Reviewed on 04/10/2026 | Details & Permalink

Sun (The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars), a biology professor at Central Washington University, provides an accessible overview of sexual reproduction in the natural world. Challenging the notion that sex is a fixed, binary process, he explores its origins and development to reveal “the intricate, often mind-bending biological world of sex and gender.” Sun presents possible reasons as to why sexual reproduction evolved, pointing to its value in repairing major DNA damage and the adaptive benefits of bringing diverse gene combinations together, and discusses different evolutionary strategies adopted by males and females (male traits have emerged to find and woo females, while females tend to focus on maximizing the survival of their eggs). Elsewhere, he notes the existence of species that change sex over the course of their lifetimes and points out that virgin birth—females reproducing with no males in sight—has been found to occur in over 80 vertebrate species. Sun also asserts it is overly simplistic to say that in humans there are only males and females since intersex individuals exist, with a modest estimate showing there are at least 80 million of them worldwide. He shares a good deal of current research on the subject and enlivens the account with intriguing details, though little will be new to well-informed readers. Still, it’s a solid primer for the uninitiated. (June)

Reviewed on 04/10/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this fascinating debut memoir, attorney Firestone explains “how a kid from New York founded a law firm in Moscow, had to flee for his life, and ended up in a pissing contest with the Putin regime.” Firestone’s father—a white-collar criminal who was indicted for defrauding investors—urged him to learn Russian at boarding school in the 1980s so he could enrich himself during the inevitable collapse of the USSR. After graduating from Tulane Law School, Firestone traveled to Moscow in 1991, hoping to cover his student loans by starting a law practice aimed at helping small businesses enter the free market. Over the next 18 years, the firm flourished, even as Firestone watched Russia go from “a land of infinite freedom, opportunity, and hope to a Mafia state, and from there to a dictatorship that attacks its own people.” After Sergei Magnitsky, an auditor for Firestone’s firm, discovered evidence of massive corruption within the Russian government in 2005, he was arrested and died in custody. Firestone details his ensuing battle to tell Magnitsky’s story alongside more personal struggles, including being forced partially into the closet by the Putin regime. Readers will find this a valuable eyewitness account of large-scale malfeasance in Russia. (June)

Reviewed on 04/10/2026 | Details & Permalink

These striking essays, originally serialized on Wilson’s Substack, This Is Precious, find her moving from the vigorous hope of 2020’s This One Wild and Precious Life toward a bracing reckoning with what she characterizes as civilization’s impending collapse. She maps out how this will likely occur thanks to a combination of the ever-warming climate and interlocking, global systems that will fail piece-by-piece, creating a domino effect that ripples across the globe and spells out a “slow-at-first-then-rapid decline of population, identity, and socioeconomic order.” This can’t be avoided, she writes, though readers should still take steps to stave it off by demanding regulations on new technologies, supporting climate reforms, and more. But most of the account is spent investigating what it means to cultivate a holistic approach to impending disaster by connecting with one’s community, living deeply, and engaging in the sometimes-difficult project of making meaning amid chaos. Drawing on perspectives from climate scientists, psychologists, and technology futurists, the author’s raw soul searching gives rise to plenty of hard questions as well as some surprisingly beautiful meditations on what it means to be human in an age of uncertainty. Challenging and rewarding, this will stick in readers’ minds. (June)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

Essayist Lopez follows up But Have You Read the Book?: 52 Literary Gems That Inspired Our Favorite Films with an enjoyable, straightforward look at how some of the most quintessential love stories have been adapted to film. Stretching from 1921 to 2015, she covers Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel Gone with the Wind, which “every studio in town” turned down until Darryl Zanuck of Twentieth Century Fox agreed to make the movie, which required paring down the 1,000-plus-page novel by cutting character backstories; the adaptation of Truman Capote’s Breakast at Tiffany’s into the 1961 film, which refashioned the book’s nebulous conclusion—protagonist Holly moves to Brazil and is never heard from again—into a more traditional happy ending; and 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary, which “cleans up” the messier, more vapid protagonist of Helen Fielding’s 1996 novel, in which Bridget spends more time counting calories and hunting for a man than growing as a person. Lopez’s brief summaries are entertaining and energetic, though the trivia—especially for the more recent movies—will feel familiar to cinephiles. Still, this has plenty of fun moments. (July)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

O’Grady, an art professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder, explores in her enlightening if dense debut how art “is lived and experienced.” Each essay uses an artwork as a springboard to explore the work of other artists and O’Grady’s own experiences. One chapter, for instance, uses Carrie Mae Weems’s photo-and-text Kitchen Table Series (particularly an image where a girl and her mother apply lipstick while looking into mirrors) to explore the complex relationship between women, their appearance, and their public and private selves. Along the way, O’Grady also unpacks the work of painters like impressionist Berthe Morisot as well as her memories of grappling with a narrow “ethos of beauty” when she worked at Vogue. Elsewhere, she uses conceptual artist Pope.L’s bottling of polluted water from Flint, Mich., to investigate the fraught concepts of home as a source of stability or chaos. The standout final essay ties Beverly Pepper’s monumental sculptures to the work of other “land artists” like Robert Smithson, meditating on how humans interact with natural wonders that dwarf them. In this entry, O’Grady exhibits a remarkable fluidity, leaping across continents and centuries with ease. In other places, her larger points get swamped beneath a wealth of personal stories and philosophical musings. There are plenty of gems here, but readers will need to be patient to unearth them. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

This meticulous study from historian Rickford (We Are an African People) spotlights a dramatic time in Guyana, when the nation held a heightened international profile as a hub of pan-Africanism. During the 1970s, the South American nation formed a deep web of connection to activists in the U.S. and Africa. Explaining that the ways Guyana eluded easy political classification are part of why it offered radical thinkers reasons for optimism, Rickford traces how Guyana’s status as a “cooperative republic” with a “distinctive brand of socialism” drew expatriates from the U.S., including militant Stokely Carmichael, writer Julian Mayfield, artist Tom Feelings, and dancer Lavinia Williams—only to frustrate many of them as the government, headed by Forbes Burnham, grew more authoritarian. The 1980 assassination of academic and activist Walter Rodney was the culmination of the country’s shift into a less welcoming place for dissident voices. Along the way, Rickford’s account examines the relations between Guyana’s various ethnic groups, among them a sizable Black community as well as residents of South Asian descent, the latter of whose experiences led to a gulf between Guyana’s promise and its lived reality—Rickford bluntly writes that some expatriates from the U.S. found themselves in the position of supporting “a regime that subjugated South Asians.” Wide-ranging and evenhanded, this offers a fascinating overview of a dynamic time and place. (May)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

Pulitzer-winning economist Ahamed (Lords of Finance) offers an eye-opening investigation of the “first truly significant global financial crisis.” In 1873, the Vienna Stock Exchange, inflated by a speculative real estate bubble, collapsed, affecting “people from every stratum of society.” Soon a “preeminent American investment bank... shuttered its doors,” inspiring runs on banks and further panic-selling. The period of global economic malaise that followed was the first to be referred to as the “Great Depression,” and Ahamed notes that “it is remarkable” how it seems to have set the mold for future crashes. Moreover, while the 1873 crash is “now largely forgotten,” its reverberations, he argues, were immense. The crisis led to “a giant redistribution of wealth” from “debtors to creditors,” as “bankers and financiers” profited “inordinately.” This provoked a general mood of “populist ire.” Around the world, “politics took a darker turn.” In the U.S., the Grant administration’s ineffectual response played a role in “prematurely ending Reconstruction.” In Europe, “novice investors who had lost their savings” sought scapegoats, and “increasingly directed their anger against Jews.” Meanwhile, government debt defaults in the Middle East caused turmoil. Throughout, Ahamed returns to the Rothschilds, owners of “the largest... private European bank,” using their central placement in the events that unfolded as “a natural connective thread.” Granular and deeply researched, it’s an essential new perspective on the link between capitalism’s boom and bust cycles and the emergence of reactionary political movements. (June)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink