Historian Burstein (Longing for Connection) aims in this probing biography to unearth the inner life of America’s most mercurial founder, including how he made sense of his contradictory positions on slavery and democracy. To do so, Burstein explores the Age of Enlightenment’s unique emotional landscape—where sensitivity and sensuality were valued but the barrier between public and private life was rigidly maintained—and examines how Jefferson, an easily irritated but loftily minded introvert, fit into this milieu. In a narrative studded with keen insights, Burstein offers notes on Jefferson’s flirting style with sexually empowered French aristocratic women (mostly jokey, belying intimidation) and juxtaposes his passionate vendettas against his fellow politicians with the icy condescension of his theorizing about the “natural” hierarchy of the races. Along the way, a complex portrait emerges of a man who both longed for control of his immediate environment and constantly pushed himself into the wider world, where control was impossible and frustrations abounded. Burstein ties this to everything from Jefferson’s decision to take teenage Sally Hemings as a “concubine” rather than remarry—evidence, Burstein suggests, of Jefferson’s fear of the loss of control stemming from his wife’s death—to his vision for America as a nation of lightly governed freeholders. It makes for immersive account of both the man and his age. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

Cox (The Path to a Livable Future), a former senior scientist at the Land Institute, offers a magisterial summary of modern ills, from obnoxiously loud leaf blowers and light pollution to humanity’s growing dependence on large personal vehicles and a food production system that prioritizes profits over affordability and quality. He argues that humans must do away with all facets of their dependence on fossil fuels and that preventing “ecological collapse by deeply altering our values and curbing our material production and consumption” will lead to far happier and healthier lives. He envisions a world in which personal cars no longer exist, air travel is phased out, the work week is no greater than 21 hours, parking lots and roadways are turned into gardens and parks, factory farms vanish, and the military-industrial complex is dismantled. He recognizes that this ideal society, while easy to envision, will be incredibly challenging to achieve. Unfortunately, his solution—to create degrowth movements at the local level—comes across as both naive and unlikely to result in such huge societal changes. While Cox succeeds in quantifying the problems of today, readers will be left without a meaningful course of action. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

Economist Heggeness’s astute debut analyzes the role women play in the economy through the lens of billionaire pop star Taylor Swift and other female trailblazers. Coining the term “Swiftynomics,” which she defines as “the power of harnessing women’s experiences and voices to advance economic growth, development, and equity,” Heggeness traces how Swift’s recent Eras Tour generated billions in consumer spending and established her as an economic force. From there, Heggeness analyzes the tactics that make Swift successful, such as her ability to continually reinvent herself­­—as when she shifted from country music to pop—to stay relevant and her willingness to forge her own path despite public criticism and doubt. Also examined are the forces that hold women back, such as misogyny and the devaluation of women’s work, which often includes unpaid labor as caregivers. Throughout, Heggeness weaves in stories of women in other fields making an impact, such as Emily Ramshaw and Amanda Zamora, who started The 19th*, a newsroom dedicated to covering stories that affect women. The balance of academic rigor and pop-culture verve makes complex economic ideas both digestible and entertaining. Readers will appreciate this smart fusion of cultural analysis and feminist economics. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

Film and theater composer Shaiman delivers a rollicking debut memoir about his decades-long career in entertainment. From his days as a 13-year-old piano prodigy sight-reading Funny Girl for a New Jersey community theater in the early 1970s to collaborations with luminaries including Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand, Harvey Fierstein, and Bradley Cooper, Shaiman recounts his career highs with exuberance and his misfires with humble wit. He shares behind-the-scenes accounts of collaborating with Lorne Michaels on Saturday Night Live sketches and composing music for the short-lived TV show Smash, infusing his anecdotes with the humor that has long defined his songwriting. (In a characteristic quip, he recalls Streisand’s rendition of “Ave Maria” as “the greatest Jewish Christmas miracle since Irving Berlin wrote ‘White Christmas.’ ”) Amid the laughter, Shaiman movingly recalls the loss and fear of the 1980s AIDS epidemic, writing somberly of scanning the newspaper for young men’s obituaries. Throughout, Shaiman’s narrative sparkles with personality and affection for the performers and collaborators who shaped his life. The result is a lively, heartfelt chronicle of creativity, survival, and the enduring pull of the spotlight. Agents: Cait Hoyt and Julie Flanagan, CAA. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

Weil, the original musical director of Rent, recounts in his conversational debut memoir his role in bringing one of Broadway’s most famous musicals to the stage. Weil was hired in 1994 to work as an audition pianist—for $10 an hour—on an early iteration of the show, before he stepped in as musical director later that year. When creator Jonathan Larson died suddenly in 1996 on the same day the show was set to preview off-Broadway, the production still needed fine-tuning. Weil recounts how he tried to protect Larson’s vision while also performing “a lot of nipping and tucking,” from dropping a few beats of silence to cutting entire song verses. Weil’s narrative will thrill theater fans with its fun in-the-room details (he goes into particular detail on the audition process; after future star Anthony Rapp’s audition, Larson exclaimed “That’s Mark!”). Along the way, Weil offers intimate insights into the challenges of producing a show that brought the influences of popular music—rock, R&B, pop—to bear on musical theater traditions. Rent fans old and new will revel in this colorful peek behind the curtain. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

Journalist Stern (The Mercenary) uncovers the captivating history of the first “smart” bomb and its impacts on both human lives and the evolution of technology. The Paveway self-steering missile originated in the quagmire of the Vietnam War, when the Air Force needed a precision weapon to destroy a key bridge known as the Dragon’s Jaw. Weldon Word, an engineer with Texas Instruments, was tasked by the Department of Defense to find a solution. The result was a long-range missile that used TI’s new semiconductor chips to navigate after being dropped. Stern tracks the Paveway from Vietnam to its subsequent deployments, often with upgraded capabilities, in hot zones around the world. Along the way he spotlights fighter pilots using the new tech; peace activists protesting against the bomb’s deployment; CIA analysts wrapping their heads around the unlimited potential of a weapon that, ostensibly, removed people from the war-fighting equation; and innocent civilians on the ground who suffered the collateral damage. Stern also tracks how each new iteration of the Paveway contributed to a military technological revolution that eventually led to the easy accessibility and ubiquitousness of tech like personal computers and GPS systems. Combining cinematic storytelling with urgent reflections on the moral implications of targeted killing at the press of a button, this is an enthralling and nuanced chronicle of modern warfare. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

MSNBC correspondent Soboroff (Separated) provides an emotional and intrepid account of the Los Angeles wildfires of January 2025. Having grown up in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of L.A., the author recalls covering the Palisades Fire live as it “carbonized” his “childhood memories,” including the home he was born into, which appeared to have “taken a direct hit from a ballistic missile.” Alongside his own experiences, which are told through detailed on- and off-air observations and frenzied family group chats, the book includes other perspectives: NOAA meteorologists warning about the region’s tinderbox conditions, firefighters risking their lives to battle the blaze, California governor Gavin Newsom desperately trying to find a cellphone signal to call President Biden, Donald Trump “fanning the flames of misinformation” on Truth Social, and residents of Altadena fleeing the encroaching Eaton Fire. Soboroff’s personal observations make for the most affecting moments as he confronts horrific scenes—like children fleeing his former preschool or a favorite restaurant going up in flames—that personalize the sheer scale of the destruction. Unfortunately, the at times awkward balance between memoir and objective reporting edges out any larger analysis of “the confluence of deteriorating infrastructure, changes in the way we live, climate change, and misinformation and disinformation” that caused the disaster. Still, for survivors especially, it’s a cathartically heartbreaking account of the unique horror of watching one’s community reduced to ash. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

This extensive if somewhat shallow study from Agatha Christie scholar and archivist Curran (The Hooded Gunman) explores how game-like qualities drove the long-term success and influence of detective fiction in the early 20th century. Curran sets the genre’s golden age between 1920 and 1945 and outlines common characteristics among mysteries published in the era, such as an emphasis on solving a puzzle (a crime that typically involved murder), a limited number of suspects, and a surprise ending. He then delves into the development of specific rules for mysteries, created most notably by novelists Ronald Knox and S.S. Van Dine, like the concept of “fair play,” which requires all clues to be made available to the reader so they are on an even playing field with the fictional detectives. Common devices are also discussed, like the game-within-a-game plot, in which characters play a game that results in a real-life crime; in Agatha Christie’s novel Dead Man’s Folly, for example, a game of “Murder Hunt” leads to the pretend victim’s actual killing (“Where better, from the writer’s viewpoint, to hide a murderer than in a ‘murder’?” Curran writes). Some spoilers are included, but Curran largely protects gameplay. Though his comprehensive history of the genre is jam-packed with examples, it lacks a stimulating overall argument tying the elements together. Murder mystery fans will leave with an extensive reading list but few new insights. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

Atkin (Some of Us Just Fall) crafts a pogniant account of her kinship with the owls near her home in England’s Lake District. While walking their property one afternoon, Atkin and her partner happened upon a tawny owl and were utterly mesmerized by the “angle of her huge head as she looked down” as well as “the lushness of her feathers [and] her still, cutting gaze.” As Atkin started noticing more of the creatures on her property, including a nest of owlets, she became enamored with their strangeness and self-possession, finding in the birds a mirror for her own sense of “only-ness and difference.” Reflecting on her feelings of isolation during the 2020 Covid lockdowns and her life with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which affects the body’s connective tissues and can cause hypermobility, Atkins considers what lessons animals have to teach humans about solitude and belonging. “All owls are one owl when we hear them cry in the night,” she writes. “Like the moon, they bring us together even as we realize our aloneness under their gaze.” Pensive and deeply felt, Atkins’s musings will leave readers wondering what they might learn about themselves by taking a closer look at the natural world around them. Fans of Katherine May will be charmed. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this piercing, ingenious account, American studies scholar Heideman (Class Struggle and the Color Line) unpacks why the Republican Party and the business elites that dominated it failed to rein in Donald Trump. Heideman draws a comparison between Trump and Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who, like Trump, “polarized much of the party against himself” and “practiced a demagogic mode of politics.” McCarthy was eventually neutralized by a censure in the Senate that was supported by the nation’s business elite. Heideman attributes the difference in outcome between Trump and McCarthy to new gaps both between candidates and their party, and between the party and big business. The former he fascinatingly traces back to 1950s campaign finance reform, which “virtually requires candidates to set up a finance committee separate from the national party,” with the party’s role reduced to providing “campaign services”; this effectively created a system wherein candidates with a personal brand and fund-raising prowess could do and say whatever they wanted without worrying about whether it aligned with the party’s agenda. The latter he attributes to the decline of organized labor, which ironically also weakened big business as a political force, since it lacks a serious foe to oppose. Meticulous and robustly argued, this is a vital new perspective on recent political history. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 11/21/2025 | Details & Permalink