Optimism is not “blind faith” stemming from naivete but a powerful force for improving society, according to this intermittently insightful debut. Science writer Paul-Choudhury frames optimism as valuable in spurring people to action even when outcomes are uncertain, arguing that it opens up opportunities where realists or pessimists operating according to more “carefully reasoned estimates” see none. Elsewhere, Paul-Choudhury contends that hope is more effective than fear at motivating action when it comes to issues such as climate change, explaining that fear stirs up awareness about problems, but reduces the likelihood that people will act, while hope inspires them “to change their lifestyles in more enduring ways.” Such discussions are illuminating and valuable, but the book loses its way in the second half, which sets out to contemplate how to find the good in an increasingly bleak world, but detours into musings about theodicy and quantum mechanics, and never satisfactorily circles back to the original issue. Paul-Choudhury’s advice for imagining a better world is more intriguing even if the details are a bit fuzzy—for example, he suggests using AI itself to generate narratives that outline how the technology might be used in assistive and productive, rather than exploitative, ways to create a better future. The result is an intriguing if imperfect exploration of why it’s important to see the glass half full. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 03/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this rousing account, historian Rose (The Lion and the Fox) recaps the Battle of the Atlantic with a focus on the USS Guadalcanal’s June 1944 capture of German submarine U-505. The American boarding party recovered a German Enigma machine that helped the Allies decipher coded German messages faster. Their triumph makes a riveting frame for Rose’s chronicle of the yearslong struggle between the predatory German submarines and the Allied “hunter-killers” stalking them. The stealthy U-boats ran amok early in the war, but steady improvements in code breaking, radar, and sonar gave the Allies the tools to track the subs; better depth charges, artillery, and acoustic homing torpedoes, and a rising number of Allied warplanes, gave the Allies the tools to destroy them. Rose’s narrative foregrounds the battle of wits between German Adm. Karl Dönitz and his opponents, British Cmdr. Rodger Winn and American Cmdr. Kenneth Knowles, as each side tried to divine where enemy ships would go next. (Winn’s unit compiled extensive dossiers on U-boat crews, including their preferred rum and favorite prostitutes.) Rose also spotlights the extreme psychological pressure faced by submariners—one U-505 commander shot himself during a depth-charge attack—which he renders with evocative prose (the U-505 crew “would hear the creepy tick-tick of fingernails being run over a comb” when American sonar was tracking them). Readers will relish Rose’s blend of fascinating naval lore and nerve-wracking drama. (May)

Reviewed on 03/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

The cerebral, far-reaching latest from Nobel winner Coetzee (The Pole) takes the form of an “amicable but intense” correspondence with Dimópulos (Imminence), a regular translator of his work into Spanish. The two interlocutors draw on their respective backgrounds (both are novelists and translators; Coetzee is also a linguist) to explore language and translation as a political and cultural force. In one chapter, the authors discuss the current feminist push to remove gendered language from French and Spanish; in another, they interrogate the role of the translator when translating a piece of writing that uses “problematic language.” A scintillating chapter on “The Mother Tongue” explores the unique experiences of writers like Coetzee who grew up speaking one language (“the vernacular of their intimate lives”), but ended up writing in a globally “dominant tongue” like English. Coetzee and Dimópulos engage comfortably and earnestly, imbuing the erudite conversation with a natural rhythm—references to luminaries like Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida flow easily. Their wandering dialogue is littered with pearls of insight: “sometimes in the history of... a language... the culture becomes aware of a transformation within itself made possible through translation”; “literary writing amounts to writing in one’s own language as if foreign.” It’s a rewarding rumination on translation, language, and power. (May)

Reviewed on 03/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

Parents from a variety of backgrounds share their perspectives on caring for infants in this soulful collection. There are a few entries from experts—scientist Malia Jones emphasizes the importance of vaccinating children and dentist Vanessa Coupet recommends cleaning newborns’ gums with a moist washcloth—but most contributors are ordinary parents. Many selections focus on navigating the day-to-day challenges of raising babies; for instance, one mother encourages readers to try out different diapers to test which their newborn prefers, and a father illustrates how to fold “the perfect swaddle.” Other entries focus on building character, as when Tabitha St. Bernard-Jacobs, a founding member of the Women’s March, weighs in on “raising an anti-racist baby” by buying them books with protagonists of color. Highlighting challenges unique to fatherhood, single dad Brett Moore laments that men’s restrooms often lack changing tables. Elsewhere, two mothers discuss how they gently push back against probing questions about raising kids as a queer couple, and a writer describes overcoming the guilt she felt after failing to produce breast milk. The bite-size wisdom makes up in breadth what it lacks in depth. It’s a valuable resource. (May)

Reviewed on 03/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

Afshordi, a physics professor at the University of Waterloo, and Halper, a Royal Astronomical Society fellow, debut with a heady overview of scientific efforts to understand the events surrounding the big bang. The authors note that while few astronomers doubt that an explosion forged the cosmos 13.8 billion years ago, many challenge the idea that this explosion emerged from a “singularity of infinite density, pressure, and temperature” that marked the beginning of time. Surveying alternative explanations, Afshordi and Halper describe how researchers led by physicist Abhay Ashtekar forwarded the “big bounce” theory in the mid 2000s after running computer simulations that indicated the universe alternates between periods of collapsing and expanding. Each of the more than two dozen proposals is wilder than the last; for instance, the 4D black hole theory posits that “our universe is a membrane, expanding out of the horizon of a higher-dimensional black hole,” while the cosmological natural selection explanation holds that “a universe is born inside every black hole, each with slightly different laws of physics.” With helpful diagrams and illustrations, the authors succeed in breaking down for lay readers the mind-bending physics behind each theory. This will expand readers’ minds. Photos. (May)

Reviewed on 03/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

This revealing report from sportswriter Miller (coauthor of Ninety Percent Mental) investigates the evolving role of baseball managers. Tracing how an increasing reliance on data analytics has changed the front office, Miller contrasts how Yankees manager Billy Martin sometimes selected starting lineups by picking names from a hat in the 1970s with how Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane crunched numbers to determine the most advantageous plays in the 2000s. The “human element” remains key, Miller contends, describing how Dodgers skipper Dave Roberts prioritizes “honest and free-flowing communication with his players” so they don’t feel caught off guard by his comments to the press. Elsewhere, Miller compares Yankees manager Aaron Boone with his father, Bob Boone, manager of the Cincinnati Reds in the early 2000s, noting that while the increasingly corporate nature of MLB has raised the financial stakes (Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole’s $36 million salary is more than half of the Reds’ entire payroll under Bob), Aaron aspires to create the same supportive atmosphere his father cultivated in Cincinnati. Miller provides readers with an insider’s view of life in the front office and solicits surprisingly candid reflections from his subjects. For instance, Roberts admits to badly mishandling a public statement concerning sexual assault allegations against one of his pitchers. Baseball fans will want to check this out. Agent: Rob Kirkpatrick, Kirkpatrick Literary. (May)

Reviewed on 03/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

Essayist Okokon debuts with a tender exploration of how her Midwestern childhood and the death of her father have shaped her. In nostalgia-tinted essays, Okokon discusses growing up as one of the only Black children in lily-white River Falls, Wis., struggling to sustain romantic connections in her 20s, and staying in touch with her Nigerian roots. At the center of the collection is the death of Okokon’s father, who went to visit his home village in Nigeria in the early 1990s and died there during a possible flare-up of his seizure disorder—though the specifics remain murky. While the narrative is rooted in loss, Okokon avoids excessive gloom by charting her personal growth: she writes of how she learned, in adulthood, to celebrate her mother’s unwavering support after her father’s death, and draws on the Ghanaian concept of “sankofa” (meaning “go back and fetch it”) to reckon with her past. “I am responsible for living the life I want to live, and for living it on and with purpose,” Okokon writes, and it lands not as a cliché but as a hard-won insight. Readers will savor this stirring self-portrait. Agent: Brettne Bloom, Book Group. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 03/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

Journalist Spivack debuts with a stunning survey of “accidental activists” who faced down harm to their communities arising from malfeasance and deception in local government. Spivack argues that lack of transparency is the main avenue by which fraud and incompetence are able to flourish at the local level, and that the problem is growing, contributing to the erosion of the American public’s trust in “democratic governance.” Her examples are deeply upsetting, each one more indicative of a society whose priorities have gone dangerously out of whack than the last. She profiles Massachusetts resident Diane Cotter, who discovered that her husband Paul’s prostate cancer was likely linked to toxic chemicals in his firefighting uniform, but was met with extreme hostility by the firefighters’ union because the flame retardant suit’s manufacturer paid to advertise in union publications, and Maryland resident Richard Boltuck, who wanted to get a left-turn signal installed at a high-crash-incident intersection near his home, but was opposed for nearly a decade by a shadowy cabal of government contractors with ties to local politicians. Indeed, it’s the fad for privatization and outsourcing to contractors, Spivack persuasively demonstrates, that is generating a “nexus [of] growing secrecy” in local government, as kickbacks and preferential treatment become commonplace. The result is an enraging exposé of a nationwide culture of corruption. (May)

Reviewed on 03/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

Historian and military analyst Lacey (Rome) explores possible connections between Roman power politics and the crucifixion of Jesus in this entertaining if highly speculative account. Lacey’s narrative centers on the Roman emperor Tiberius’s relationship with his general Sejanus, who had earned the emperor’s trust when he shielded him from a rockslide with his body, but, as he rose to become Tiberius’s most intimate confidante, began to secretly lay groundwork for his own imperial takeover. Lacey hypothesizes that Pontius Pilate was one of Sejanus’s cronies, and that once Sejanus’s plot was revealed and he was executed in 31 CE—in the Temple of Apollo, where, à la Goodfellas, an “ebullient” Sejanus arrived thinking he was about to be promoted to tribune—a chain of events was set into motion that led to Jesus’s death. Amid a brutal purge of Roman officials suspected of being loyal to Sejanus, Lacey theorizes that Pilate was terrified that “any disturbance in Judea would attract Tiberius’s watchful eye,” which accounts for why he so easily caved to the mob demanding Jesus’s execution. Lacey’s command of his source material and elegant prose make for a riveting exercise in storytelling that readers will likely want to take with a grain of salt. It’s a fun and enticing what-if. (May)

Reviewed on 03/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

Teaching impulse management skills to at-risk youth could help stem gun violence, according to this stimulating study. Public policy scholar Ludwig (coauthor of Gun Violence) notes that while poverty and segregation contribute to higher rates of gun violence in low-income neighborhoods, those factors alone can’t explain why violent crime rates differ by season and between comparably disadvantaged neighborhoods. The missing variable, Ludwig contends, is what behavioral economists call “System 1 thinking”—quick and automatic cognition that occurs subconsciously. He posits that people living in poor areas learn to “fight back hard,” developing strong defensive reflexes. Subjected to “zero-tolerance” policies at school and by law enforcement, underprivileged youth also lack the opportunities to learn how to moderate such reflexes before experiencing dire consequences. Examining trends in crime data, Ludwig notes that more gun crimes happen in less populated neighborhoods with fewer “eyes on the street”—the same types of settings where, studies have shown, lack of social deterrence makes System 1 errors more prone to happen. He also points to how programs that teach impulse management to at-risk youth have been shown to reduce arrests for violent crime by 50%. Meticulous and persuasive, this is a thought-provoking look at the deeply intertwined natures of income inequality and violence. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/21/2025 | Details & Permalink