This trenchant treatise from economist Prasad (The Future of Money) argues that China’s rise and America’s wane are leading to global instability. The issue isn’t brinkmanship per se but a chaos-generating feedback loop that has emerged from the two very different economic behemoths’ attempts to compete with one another. (“My tribe of economists believes that competition is a positive force in practically every realm,” but “basic precepts of microeconomics do not always apply to the complex world of geopolitics,” Prasad notes.) To wit, in order to match each other’s strengths, China is adopting more free market measures, while the U.S.-led West is seeing more state control of corporations and markets. This would seem on its surface to be a harmonious development, but instead, Prasad argues, it has led to “dysfunction,” since there is no longer a universally understood set of rules governing the international order. Prasad’s goal is twofold, as he seeks both to puncture the myth of globalization as inherently generating stability (he points to globalization’s failure to evenly distribute its benefits across the world) but also to convince both sides that maintaining a working international order is more beneficial than retreating into zones of influence. To that end, he urges both sides to come together to work out a new set of international economic rules. Erudite and expansive, this will appeal to geopolitics wonks. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

The Democratic Party—and society at large—is experiencing an “authenticity crisis,” according to political strategist Rupert’s perceptive debut. While running Julián Castro’s 2020 presidential campaign, Rupert became interested in the thorny concept of authenticity in electoral politics. Specifically, she noticed how demands for authenticity from candidates of color or women candidates put them in an impossible bind, as whiteness and maleness are seemingly defined as authenticity’s “true zero.” Sharing examples from pop culture, politics, and her own life, Rupert shows how authenticity is a concept used to gatekeep or trip up people with marginalized identities, including Castro during his presidential bid. She points to how pundits pigeonholed Castro as a representative of his ethnicity, only to then castigate him for deviating from the box they had assigned him, as well as how Castro himself would at times subtly shift his messaging depending on whether his audience was white or Latino—code-switching that was then pegged as inauthentic. The onus, she argues, is on society at large as well as the party and the candidates themselves to foster in candidates a truer authenticity that prioritizes their own unique perspectives and their principled leadership. (This, she argues, would invite more people of color into politics, not fewer.) Given that parts of her thesis seem to predict New Yor City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s victory, this is worth checking out. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

Open-minded people—those willing to evaluate and alter how they think—make better decisions, according to this insightful guide from Harvard Business School professor emeritus Zaltman (Marketing Metaphoria). Based on interviews with business executives, scientists, and artists, Zaltman found they all practiced six techniques: cultivating serious playfulness, befriending their ignorance, asking the right questions, indulging their curiosity, thinking across disciplines, and embracing ambiguity. Befriending one’s ignorance, or “knowing how much you don’t know,” can help clarify one’s thinking and lead to smarter decisions. As an example, Zaltman details how an established soft drink company asked consumers about their experiences with the brand, despite already having a good idea of what made it popular. The company learned, however, that its marketers were missing out on a primary aspect of the brand experience: the emotional state of relaxation and calm the beverage brought customers. Throughout, Zaltman provides thought-provoking exercises to help readers access new perspectives. Describing the importance of chasing curiosity, for instance, he asks readers to look at a drawing from different angles and describe what they see, noting that “curiosity impels you to keep going and to see a bigger, richer picture.” Business leaders will find this a valuable framework for navigating complex decisions. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

CNN legal analyst Williams debuts with a thorough reassessment of the 1984 subway vigilante shooting, when white 37-year-old Bernhard Goetz shot four Black teenagers on a New York City subway after one of the victims asked him for $5. Goetz, who claimed he feared being mugged, subsequently received an outpouring of popular support for having “struck back against the forces of decay” that plagued the city. The author explores troublesome aspects of both shooter and victims, from Goetz’s overt bigotry to some of the victims’ later incarceration for violent crimes. Following the case through its criminal and civil trials, Williams explains the often convoluted decisions, like the judge’s banning of “open discussion” of race in the criminal trial—which didn’t stop the defense from presenting “menacing” photos of the victims. He also tracks the prosecution’s missteps—one prosecutor suggested that Goetz “pack his bags and go somewhere else”—and the judge’s shocking permissiveness, seen most bizarrely in a live reenactment with four Black members of the Guardian Angels playing the victims at “their most blatantly thuggish.” Both serve, in part, to explain how the jury acquitted Goetz. Williams explores how the central legal argument of the case—the “reasonableness” of Goetz’s fear—still resonates today. It amounts to a sharp look at a touchstone moment in American conceptions of race, self-defense, and who “has a right to feel safe.” (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

Vance, a former U.S. Attorney and author of the Civil Discourse newsletter, debuts with a forceful call for America’s civil institutions to be bolstered to resist, and eventually leave behind, Trumpism. The most important element of the fight, she argues, is defending the rule of law (i.e., the principle that even the president is accountable to the law) against “would-be dictator” Trump, who in his second term is explicitly attempting to undermine the legal system. (Such efforts on the part of the Trump administration include both “outright refusal to comply with a court’s decision” and “delegitimizing” judges who rule against the administration’s new policies.) Vance gives a useful and accessible account of how the rule of law has been created, debated, and challenged in the U.S. for centuries, from the Federalist Papers to the civil rights movement. Her advice can feel a little obvious, urging readers to protect the right to vote and not “permit the public discourse to be framed” in a way advantageous to Trump’s agenda (such as saying negative things about public sector workers). Still, there’s an edifying quality to such blunt resistance talk. Readers in need of a morale boost will want to check this out. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this expansive group biography, journalist Cooke (Come Fly the World) profiles three prolific mid-century female journalists and examines the impact their reporting had on both their times and their profession. Rebecca West, Emily “Mickey” Hahn, and Martha Gellhorn wrote about everything from the glitter of Shanghai to the horrors of Dachau; along the way, they were themselves the subjects of many a scandalous story regarding their affairs and divorces. It was an era when women reporters were frequently challenged as not up to the task, but it was also a time when writers were expanding “what a reporter could do in print,” and all three relished this new freedom, crafting voice-driven work that often centered their own travels and travails. Each woman was stunningly independent while also being a mother and occasionally a wife, resulting in complex feelings about domestic life (Hahn told her daughters not to learn how to keep house so it couldn’t be used against them; Gellhorn was obsessed with making her homes into “nests”). The ways in which, for these women, “family life and writing and roaming... braid[ed] together” ended up opening new possibilities for what it means to live a writer’s life for both men and women, Cooke astutely observes. It’s a fascinating study of how three legendary reporters left their mark. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

Investigative journalist Eden (Touchdown Jesus) shines in this novelistic work of true crime. The account opens in 2019, when deputies responded to a 911 call reporting a kidnapping in Santa Cruz, Calif., at the home of tech CEO Tushar Atre, who’d recently launched a cannabis company. Officers soon found Atre dead with his hands bound at his property in the nearby mountains. Drawing on interviews with law enforcement and the CEO’s friends, plus trial testimony and court documents, Eden toggles back and forth between Atre’s early life and career, and the police efforts to solve his murder. Along the way, he shuffles in colorful anecdotes including the story of Atre’s mother, an expert programmer who talked her way into an IBM job in New York in the 1970s despite resistance from her German bosses, and details about Atre’s business partner and former lover, Rachael Lynch, who sold marijuana on the black market before becoming involved with the tech executive and was viewed with suspicion by Atre’s family. Eden keeps the intrigue and emotional investment high until he reveals the details of the convictions and ongoing court proceedings in the home stretch. The author’s ability to dig into how marijuana is grown one minute and generate top-shelf suspense the next sets the account apart. True crime doesn’t come much better than this. Agent: David Granger, Aevitas Creative Management. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

The Western view of mental illness as a purely neurochemical problem best treated with drugs is misguided and damaging, according to this bold debut treatise from physician Kidia. He argues that mental suffering has its roots in such social and political issues as colonialism, racism, capitalism, and violence, and that Western psychiatry perpetuates these problems by merely “anesthetizing the pain of oppression” and thus upholding the status quo. Drawing on his experiences treating patients in the U.S. and Zimbabwe, he argues for a holistic approach to mental health care in which the community and a network of care providers share the load (he cites Zimbabwe’s Friendship Bench program, where caring grandmothers sit on benches and listen to people’s problems), patients have the final say about their course of treatment, and the doctor-patient relationship is rooted in empathy rather than profit motives. Interweaving his proposals with an analysis of how the lingering effects of British colonialism have shaped mental health in Zimbabwe, Kidia incisively reveals how the Western mental healthcare system simplifies the complexities of emotional suffering to the detriment of patients and doctors. It’s an impassioned plea to rethink what it means to feel well. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

Cognitive scientist Shankar debuts with a pragmatic, research-based guide to surviving life’s biggest disruptions. Upon learning, after years of trying, that she and her husband couldn’t have children, Shankar sought out others who’d experienced major upheavals to their life plans and spoke with them about how they’d successfully negotiated such changes. Examples include Olivia Lewis, a college student who battled through the aftermath of a catastrophic stroke by letting go of her obsession with others’ approval and investing in her recovery; Dwayne Betts, who was inspired to start writing poetry in prison by a fellow inmate who was making the most of his sentence; and Matt Gutman, a broadcast journalist who escaped a spiral of self-recrimination following an on-air error by “zooming out” to consider other people’s takes on the situation. Though not all of Shankar’s insights are groundbreaking, her explanations of the cognitive science involved are lucid and memorable. For instance, writing of how Gutman sought external feedback on his mistake, she observes that “emboldening others to poke holes in our narratives” can “create small openings through which we can forge new mental pathways.” Readers facing their own hinge points will be informed and inspired. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink

Pennsylvania senator Fetterman reflects on his political rise and simultaneous struggles with depression and a stroke in this uncomfortably raw memoir. The account opens with Fetterman contemplating suicide on a bridge during his 2022 Senate campaign. From there, he traces his political trajectory—from winning the mayoral race in Braddock, Pa., by just one vote to his longshot Senate victory against Mehmet Oz (with two chapters devoted to the devolution of his relationship with then Pennsylvania attorney general Josh Shapiro over their roles on the Board of Pardons). Throughout he expresses ample ire at the Democratic Party, including over its “policies against men.” But the political largely takes a backseat to the personal, as Fetterman focuses on his family and staff’s attempts to help him during his health battles, from cajoling him to go to the hospital during his stroke (“John, you are dying,” his brother Gregg told him) to encouraging him to be hospitalized for severe depression. These recollections are moving, but at times Fetterman’s openness can be disconcerting, including his dwelling on his “unplanned” birth, his second-guessing of his Senate run (“I should have quit”), his attempts to skip his own swearing-in ceremony, and his unraveling paranoia while in the Senate (“I began to convince myself there was a plot to have me committed”). It makes for a disquieting dispatch from a sitting senator. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 12/05/2025 | Details & Permalink