A Brooklyn “grieving and weaving” circle, a forest bathing session in Chile, and a group baptism at the Vatican are just some of the gatherings attended by bestseller Feiler (The Search) in this spirited meditation on rituals. Seeking to discover “what still holds us together” in a world of increasing alienation, the author travels the globe, observing a diverse range of practices and interviewing experts. What he finds is not a “celebration recession” but rather a “ritual revival,” with many people around the world rethinking what rituals can look like. Those spotlighted range from the “millennium-old” Balinese coming-of-age custom matatah, “the ceremonial act of shaving down... an individual’s twelve front teeth,” to Taylor Swift–themed divorce parties. Most movingly, the author profiles individuals who have created new rituals to match their experiences, including Missy Holliday, who pioneered “honor walks” for organ donors after her sister’s sudden death and donation. Though Feiler sometimes waxes florid (“Rituals curate symbols into meaningful experiences that form the alphabet of intimacy and the grammar of coexistence”), he offers strong proof that rituals foster community and connection. Even the typical familial arguments over weddings and funerals, the author astutely shows, work to “force families to address... underlying conflicts.” It’s a powerful case for the continued importance of ritual at a time of disconnection and division. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

The relationship between Dwight Eisenhower and Winston Churchill changed radically along with their countries’ military-industrial heft, according to this perceptive study. Historian Jordan (The War Queens) opens the account with Eisenhower’s 1942 arrival in Europe as America’s top general. At that time, British prime minister Churchill usually prevailed in debates over strategy—he persuaded the Americans to postpone the invasion of France to attack the Axis in North Africa—though he and Eisenhower often backed each other. That changed in 1944, when America’s prodigious arms production came to dominate the war and Eisenhower began overriding Churchill on strategic issues, including sidelining the Italian campaign and commencing bombing attacks on German-occupied France. In the 1950s, the stoutly anticommunist Eisenhower rebuffed Churchill’s calls for a summit with the Soviets, and during the 1956 Suez crisis, he forced Britain to back off against Churchill’s wishes. The eloquent, cigar-chomping, and frequently soused Churchill is the more charismatic figure in Jordan’s colorful dual portrait, but Eisenhower is more transfixing, a cold and ruthless operator beneath his genial, grandfatherly mien (“When Ike stepped on a friend, he wouldn’t lift his boot until he got what he wanted”). It’s a fascinating analysis of two larger-the-life personalities who ushered in the American Century. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this appealing but underwhelming proposal, geoscientist Hazen (Symphony in C) and astrobiologist Wong present a new law for understanding the universe. While the second law of thermodynamics states that the disorder of a closed system always increases over time, the authors posit that order increases as well. A new law, they contend, should be established to account for how “remarkable states of intricate organization” emerge over time, like how humans have created art and science and birds sing in patterns. They christen their discovery “the law of increasing functional information” and assert that it “describes the generation of order in a world of decay.” Hazen and Wong apply this law to language and music; advances in technology and scientific knowledge; and nonliving systems, including atoms, stars, minerals, and molecules. For example, they note how atoms, the building blocks of matter, emerged in stages after the big bang and how artificial intelligence has evolved to solve crossword puzzles, answer math questions, and hold conversations. According to the authors, their theory could help offer new strategies for tackling “unruly evolving systems” like the climate and cancer cells. Unfortunately, while they assert that any natural law should be able to explain and predict natural phenomena, they struggle to demonstrate this with their own law. It’s a provocative idea, but readers are unlikely to be convinced. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

Uchegbu (Fundamentals of Pharmaceutical Nanoscience), chemist and president of Wolfson College, Cambridge, reveals how chemistry underpins everyday life in this oversimplified account. “Without chemistry everything would simply not be,” she writes, explaining there are 118 known elements (including aluminum, carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen) and everything on Earth—from a fried egg to air—is the result of bonds forging and breaking between them. She describes the chemistry behind the making of everyday substances, like mayonnaise (weak bonds between oil, water, and egg yolk allow for a smooth yellow mixture) and hair-straightening chemicals (sodium hydroxide breaks the curl-inducing bonds along the hair shaft to loosen the curl). The chemistry of clothing is also elucidated, including efforts to find more environmentally friendly ways to dye jeans blue. She underscores the prevalence of chemistry through personal anecdotes, explaining, for example, how medication soothed her blistering skin during a sun allergy flare-up by blocking a substance called histamine in the body. Elsewhere, she uses the death of her father as a jumping-off point to demonstrate how chemicals can be used to delay decomposition. While her stories are intriguing, the science is relayed with an abundance of analogies and lacks specifics. This is best suited for those new to the subject. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this gut-wrenching work of intergenerational dialogue, Nimura (We Hereby Refuse) braids passages from her late father’s unpublished memoir of growing up in California’s Tule Lake Japanese-American concentration camp during WWII with her own reflections on the text. When Nimura’s father, Taku, was 10 years old and packing for camp in 1942, his family was instructed to burn all of their photos and anything they owned with Japanese writing on it. In his memoir, Taku describes Tule Lake as an unsanitary, demoralizing place whose resourceful residents made crafts and mochi and staged talent shows. His narrative comprises simple, factual descriptions that Nimura notes are short on emotion, in contrast to the expressive man she remembers. Meanwhile, in chapters spanning from 2010 to 2022, Nimura offers her own memories of Taku, who died in 1984 when she was 10; details revisiting his manuscript as an adult; and recounts her pilgrimage from Tacoma, Wash., to Tule Lake. The back-and-forth structure works beautifully, with added poignancy coming from her acknowledgment that “the United States government has begun new waves of mass detention and mass incarceration” under President Donald Trump. It’s a memorable duet. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

UCLA law professor Crenshaw (The Race Track), who coined the concept of intersectionality, details in her outstanding debut memoir the experiences that moved her to articulate why “the racial burden of Black girlness and Black womanhood mattered—and ought to matter—to anyone concerned with fairness, justice, and the fulfillment of the promise of America.” She begins by describing how, as a six-year-old in mid-1960s Ohio, she yearned for her turn to play princess in a daily classroom activity, but was never chosen. Decades later, she recognized this as an example of the “thoughtless devaluation faced by little Black girls.” Additional examples followed, including urban renewal projects that failed to compensate her mother and other Black property owners for their displacement, and the pressure from Crenshaw’s Black peers to not pursue charges against a college boyfriend who abused her. Along the way, Crenshaw charts her rise as a legal scholar in the 1980s and ’90s, and discusses assisting Anita Hill’s legal team during Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Throughout, she writes in an accessible, unadorned style that vibrates with authority. The result is an entertaining and invaluable account of personal triumph and political awakening. Agents: Nate Muscato and David Kuhn, Aevitas Creative Management. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

Marston Pierce, founder of Marston Studios, an interior design company, debuts with a wry guide to modern-day etiquette. She argues that being “fancy” isn’t a matter of “how you look [or] how much money you have” but a way of valuing oneself and one’s peers highly. Applying that philosophy to multiple areas of life, she dispenses advice on entertaining without overspending, decorating one’s home elegantly, finding a personal style (quality’s more important than quantity, and readers can find secondhand designer pieces online or at thrift stores), and more generally treating friends, family, and service staff well. The guide is at its most useful when addressing etiquette for the modern age, including rules about phones at the dinner table (keep it in one’s pocket if at all possible, and never swipe on someone else’s phone unless they’ve specifically given permission). Along the way, Marston Pierce successfully reframes “fanciness” as more about measured self-improvement than hewing to social strictures. The result is a funny, self-aware update on Emily Post’s Etiquette. Illus. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

Readers can chase their dreams without burning out or sacrificing their happiness, contends this down-to-earth guide from Ekstrom (Chasing the Bright Side), founder of Mic Drop Workshop, a company that teaches women public speaking. After starting two multimillion-dollar businesses by age 30, the author was nevertheless starved for validation and sought to understand how to find lasting fulfillment and motivation. The key, she realized, lies in defining one’s own concept of success and then relying on intrinsic motivation—rather than fickle external motivators, like money or praise—to get there. According to Ekstrom, intrinsic motivation is conducive to long-term success because it allows people to enjoy the path toward their goal and feel in control of their success along the way, which prevents burnout. The guide is bolstered with valuable anecdotes from Ekstrom’s professional and personal life, including how motherhood and postpartum depression shaped her approach to entrepreneurship. There are also plenty of actionable tips on topics like gracefully receiving feedback, casting aside limiting self-narratives, and pivoting in the wake of unexpected challenges. Aspiring entrepreneurs will get a lot out of this. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

This shocking exposé uncovers how Chicago police have used false confessions and cherry-picked evidence to systematically produce wrongful convictions of African American boys. Sociologist Gonzalez Van Cleve (Crook County) spotlights harrowing examples of children being falsely accused of extreme violence; they include the 1961 case of Lee Hester, a disabled 14-year-old convicted of murdering his teacher, a charge considered laughable by those who knew him, and of seven-year-old Romarr Gipson and eight-year-old Elijah Henderson, accused in 1998 of the brutal sexual assault and murder of an 11-year-old despite being physically unable to commit the crime. The author shows how, in each case, police dismissed exonerating evidence, from “a grown man’s shoe print” to airtight alibis like already being in police custody at the time. Along the way she unveils a clear “set of patterns and practices that allowed police to bury evidence,” such as 12-hour-long interrogations of impressionable children and selective reframing of evidence. Gonzalez Van Cleve’s most alarming discoveries involve the continued use of long-banned practices, such as “street files,” separate files of evidence hidden from defense attorneys, as well as law enforcement protecting itself from scrutiny through intimidation of both exonerees (one of whom was “stopped nearly twenty-five times for traffic violations”) and whistleblowers, including a detective whose squad car’s brakes were cut after he advocated for a child’s innocence. It’s a bone-chilling revelation of a “shadow system of justice” responsible for devastating untold numbers of lives. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

Qureshi, an organizational strategy consultant, and Richardson (Negotiation Analysis), a lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, offer a straightforward guide to applying persuasion skills to everyday life. Contending that life is a series of negotiations, whether it be dealing with an annoying neighbor or getting a promotion at work, they offer habit-building techniques designed to strengthen confidence and strategic thinking. Drawing on academic research and FBI tactics, they emphasize reciprocity, or how doing someone a favor can make them more inclined to repay the generosity down the line; the importance of understanding each party’s underlying motivations, including one’s own; and the necessity of saying “no” to some requests in order to say “yes” to what’s most important. Also included are exercises for improving negotiation skills, like practicing using acquaintances’ names in conversation to build connections, making a list of interests to home in on one’s desires, and asking about others’ interests to understand their needs. The advice is well organized and readily applicable, though promises of securing “exactly what you want” overstate what skill alone can accomplish in structurally uneven situations. Even so, the authors’ practical framing and concise presentation make the material easy to implement in professional and personal contexts. This will be a boon to readers seeking to sharpen their persuasive edge. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink