Political theorist Mitchell (Carbon Democracy) offers a paradigm-shifting critique of the logic that underlies the modern economy. Today is “an age in which extraordinary wealth seems to arrive from unfathomable sources,” Mitchell writes, noting that even critics of the current system seem unable to reckon with the vast and concentrated wealth “conjured... out of thin air” by speculative financial markets. To fully reckon with this “mode of acquiring unearned wealth” that is “the defining feature of our contemporary form of life,” Mitchell argues that one must understand what capital actually is. Capital, he asserts, is foremost “a practical means of consuming the future.” By way of explanation, he traces the origins of “modern investor-owned firms” back to “armed trading corporations” like the Dutch East India Company, which had displaced “older merchant networks... of the Indo-Islamic world” that had put limits on speculation as unethical. With the colonial expansion of Europe, such limits were disregarded. Today, rampant speculation is seen as natural, with the rich living on “unearned income” that “those coming later” are expected to pay. Ultimately, it is time itself that has been “colonized,” Mitchell chillingly explains. He chases his theme across centuries and around the globe, along the way emphasizing the most drastic and global consequence of capital’s theft from the future: climate catastrophe. This bracing and original analysis demands a reorientation of many received wisdoms. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 03/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

The “centuries-long White... genocide against Indians” was central to the creation of racial identity in America, according to this trenchant study. Historian Silverman (This Land Is Their Land) argues that “at the outset of the colonial era, European settlers did not yet conceive of themselves as Whites” but rather identified as “Christians” (as distinct from the “savages” they sought to displace). However, over decades of violence, land theft, and “the development of a slave system that initially targeted Indians as well as Africans,” Euro-Americans increasingly justified their genocidal ambitions through a newly imagined logic of a “natural” hierarchy of peoples. As Silverman tracks the ideology of race developing in the language of those invested in frontier politics and Indian removal, he challenges recent scholarship positing that “racial ideology” was “an elite production” emerging from the realms of science and theology. It was the “lower-status Whites,” such as smallholding farmers, miners, and soldiers, who were the direct beneficiaries and “vanguard” of the “conquest of Indian country.” As such, they were the “greatest proponents of genocidal anti-Indian racism.” Repeatedly emphasizing that “racial meanings” were “the result of people pursuing their own immediate material... interests,” Silverman makes a powerful case that this history is crucial to understanding what motivates today’s resurgent “violent, conspiratorially minded” white nationalism. It’s a clear-eyed, forensic accounting of America’s original sin. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 03/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this penetrating and moving debut, journalist Ellis examines past and present African American life in his hometown of Minneapolis. Returning in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the author sees the subsequent upheaval not as an aberration but “an unpaid bill long overdue.” He seeks to interrogate the legacy of racial disparity hidden beneath Minneapolis’s guise of good-natured liberalism, drawing on extensive research and on-the-ground reporting to paint a portrait of a city with “a history of disparity that [is] as long as its contributions to the struggle for civil rights.” For example, even though Minnesota banned slavery in 1858 and gave African Americans the right to vote before the 15th Amendment was ratified, they continued to be treated as second-class citizens in Minneapolis, particularly via redlining. Furthermore, the city’s political responses to police brutality and discrimination often “prioritized white feelings over challenging white behavior,” as exemplified by Mayor Hubert Humphrey’s “antibias training” for police, which framed “systemic failures as bad personal behavior.” Ellis’s affecting research into his own family’s history forms the book’s emotional core, as he traces multiple generations who “thrived in spite of the continued failures of the state.” The result is a searing account of Black survival in a city built on broken promises, and a damning view of liberalism as willing to pick and choose when equality is a virtue. (June)

Reviewed on 03/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

This perceptive study by political scientist Ost (The Defeat of Solidarity) traces ways in which the fascist movements of yesteryear differ from today’s populist “red pill” politics. Comparing today’s movements with those of Hitler and Mussolini, Ost shows how contemporary far-right parties—he looks most closely at India, Poland, and the U.S.—are leaning as much into populist rhetoric as exclusionary rhetoric, are winning at the polls, and are less often resorting to violence. Additionally, they’re more likely to draw on socialism as a political tool. In short, the “red pill” right is an agile shape-shifter that is hard to for critics to pin down, partly because it has learned to tiptoe up to the edge of authoritarianism without crossing the line, and partly because it’s drawing more heavily on the left-wing, populist tools within the fascist toolbox. Ost suggests that today’s far right should be viewed as a sort of reformed fascism, an idea embraced by far-right figures themselves; he cites one supporter of Poland’s far-right Law and Justice party who griped that “Hitler gave fascism a bad name.” The author astutely concludes that, rather than falling into the trap of opposing populism, the left must strive to outpace the right on “radicalism, economic populism, and political toughness” if it wants to win. It’s a robust and energizing dissection of a protean foe. (May)

Reviewed on 03/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar are today’s biggest torchbearers of conscious rap, a subgenre that explores such sociopolitical issues as racism, poverty, and mass incarceration, according to this lackluster debut. McCool, an associate professor of digital media at West Chester University, and Hopkins, a culture reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, trace both artists’ ascents against the backdrop of a rap scene caught between “intellectual” writing and commercially successful hits. Cole grew up in North Carolina and developed an “introspective, vulnerable” style that speaks to issues facing “average Black people,” while Lamar used his “raw lyricism” to both expose and transcend the challenges of his gritty Compton upbringing. The authors attribute the artists’ success to their ability to subtly channel social commentary into “radio-friendly hits, block party anthems, and club bangers,” even as conscious rap declines with the rise of “talentless” social media rappers who churn out “easily consumable records” to ready-made audiences. While Cole’s and Kendrick’s achievements are undeniable, the book fails to expand much beyond its thesis, branching instead into tangents and getting lost in clunky, repetitive prose. (A chapter on the intersections between rap and college bounces between rappers who did or did not go to college, rap that references academia, college courses on rap, and Cole and Kendrick’s respective educational experiences.) This disappoints. (May)

Reviewed on 03/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Theater critic O’Malley (editor of Toward a Just Pedagogy of Performance) and lawyer Stern (The Trials of Nina McCall) assemble an enthralling history of Shakespeare’s portrayal of Margaret of Anjou, who married Henry VI at 14 and ruled during the War of Roses. More than 100 years later, Shakespeare wrote Margaret into four plays (all three parts of Henry VI and Richard III), amping up her sexuality and ambition for audiences who’d grown weary with the day’s “didactic morality tales.” The authors trace the character’s evolution in subsequent centuries, noting how some adaptations reduced Margaret’s role (she was entirely cut from Colley Cibber’s 1700 version of Richard III), though she reemerged in productions of the late 19th and 20th centuries with memorable performances from Peggy Ashcroft and Helen Mirren. Later, the 1990s and 2000s saw her “challenging, morally murky narrative” serve as a vehicle for playwrights to explore race, empire, and gender. O’Malley and Stern ingeniously probe the sweep of Shakespearean history, touching on everything from the economic realities of producing theatre in the 16th century to the varied political climates in which adaptations have been staged, ranging from Margaret Thatcher’s Britain to 1930s Germany. The result is a fascinating biography of a singular character and a revealing commentary on theater’s power to evolve with the times. (June)

Reviewed on 03/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Biographer Crowther (Dorothy Parker in Hollywood) delivers an intimate exploration of the personal library of actor and model Marilyn Monroe. Crowther analyzes Monroe’s 400-plus book collection—which was auctioned off several decades after her death—along with interviews and Monroe’s diaries to shed light on the significant role books played in her life. While she favored poetry, plays, psychology, Russian novels, and banned books, Monroe had a deeply curious mind that pushed her to read widely across genres and subject matters, Crowther demonstrates. She alleges that misogyny led to unfounded skepticism about Monroe’s intelligence, with people often expressing doubt about her proclivity or even ability to read. But, as Crowther shows, Monroe turned to reading to cope with the stress of Hollywood and books greatly influenced her art. For example, she read numerous works on acting, such as Konstantin Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares, which encouraged her to mine her life experiences to add depth to her performances. Her influence on her husband, the playwright Arthur Miller, is also elucidated, including how he wrote characters and scripts based on her. By illuminating and uplifting Monroe’s love of books, Crowther helps rewrite the narrative that cast the actor as a “dumb blonde” and takes seriously the impact Monroe had on film and culture. This is an enlightening study of a misunderstood icon. Photos. (May)

Reviewed on 03/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Biophysicist Osmundson (Virology) blends memoir and science writing in this moving meditation on queer family, the climate crisis, and 21st-century child-rearing. Balancing the scientific with the poetic, Osmundson documents the mating patterns of salmon, dives into age-old questions of nature vs. nurture, and quotes a range of literary sources from Carl Jung to Virginia Woolf to supplement the core narrative about his brush with parenthood. Osmundson remembers wanting children—wanting to be pregnant, in fact—since he was a young boy. As an adult in New York City, he was approached by a lesbian couple, both friends of his, who asked him to be a sperm donor and coparent to their child. The process sent Osmundson spiraling through standard contemporary parenting anxieties (the planet is dying; the cost of living is high) and nudged him toward more profound questions about passing one’s grief and anxiety onto their offspring and determining what makes a functional family when building one beyond the boundaries of a two-parent household. Though Osmundson’s story takes some heartbreaking turns, the mood is more inquisitive than melancholy: his reflections teem with the restless curiosity of someone who’s devoted their professional life to asking questions. The result is at once edifying and affecting. (May)

Reviewed on 03/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Historian O’Malley (Final Passages) offers a spellbinding saga of one man’s long and wandering search for freedom in Revolutionary-era America. David George left behind one of the earliest known first-person testimonies of escaping slavery. It was transcribed by British officials during the Revolution, and O’Malley attempts to fill in the brief but stupendous account’s many blanks. In 1762, 19-year-old George escaped from a Virginia plantation and headed southwest toward the Creek Nation. His odyssey led him thousands of miles and found him in and out of captivity—first held by the Muscogee, and then enslaved again by a rich Irish landowner. He ended up on a South Carolina plantation, where he married and became a preacher, building a congregation that was “likely the world’s first Black Baptist church,” before the Revolution provided him and his family a path to freedom by escaping to the British lines. Postwar, he settled in Nova Scotia, before tension with white neighbors led him to join a resettlement colony in Sierra Leone. In tracing George’s repeated enslavement and escapes, O’Malley argues that the institutional nature of colonial slavery made every new person a Black colonial encountered “not just a single master oppressing them but a whole society, a system,” all blurred together as “faceless oppressors: They.” It’s an astonishing tale of endurance in a harshly reimagined early America. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 03/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

A visit to paradise turns into a multiyear quest to investigate a massive ecological collapse in this immersive travelogue. South African literary scholar Martin (A Millimetre of Dust) “knew hardly anything” about the Dodecanese islands in Greece when she arrived for a 2017 sabbatical. But during her stay, she came to see the murky history of the sponge-diving industry as a gaping mystery at the center of daily life. Journeying to the most prominent of the islands—Rhodes, Symi, Kaymnos, and Patmos—she became acquainted with loquacious elders who offered handed-down recollections of the booming turn-of-the-20th-century industry. Piecing them together, Martin relates how the steady income enjoyed by traditional sponge divers, who dove naked, exploded into an “unimagined bounty” with the 1860s introduction of the diving suit. Merchants and captains grew wealthy even as the divers referred to the new technology as “Satan’s Machine” because “it killed people or disabled them for life.” The author mixes this story with her own observations of the region’s sunkissed charms, as well as its more ominous signs of decrepitude, cruelty, and inner turmoil. These include barren orchards, animal neglect, and residents’ steadfast denial that the islands’ ecological collapse resulted from sponge overharvesting; they instead truck in conspiracy theories, blaming outlandish culprits like radiation from Chernobyl. It adds up to a rich, unsettling “object lesson” in manmade disaster. (May)

Reviewed on 03/13/2026 | Details & Permalink