Journalist Latifi’s unsettling debut scrutinizes the highly profitable world of family vloggers and momfluencers. The most successful accounts make millions of dollars a year sharing intimate moments, from pregnancy announcements to potty training. Interviewing current and former influencers and their children (some of whom love making content while others report feeling trapped), as well as nannies, psychologists, and social media marketing managers, the author surveys various facets of the industry, from the odd preponderance of Mormon influencers and the discomfiting popularity of teen mom accounts to the over-the-top viciousness of anti-momfluencer forums. Mixed in are some truly hair-raising findings: videos of sick or hurt children attract the most attention (“A vomiting child... is potential”), vlogger parents have been caught on camera coaching their children how to cry, and many parents are aware that pedophiles engage with their content. Despite the inherent shock value, Latifi makes a genuine effort to grapple with the industry’s ethics, probing not only the parents’ justifications (“Kids love being part of the content” is a frequent refrain) but also her own attraction to this type of content as an isolated new mom. Most astutely, Latifi observes how understandable it is that parents are willing to swap their family’s privacy for financial stability, given the greater lack of structural support for families in the U.S. It’s a perceptive, often stomach-churning exposé. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

The built environment is not a passive backdrop to peoples’ lives but a force actively shaping them, according to this intriguing treatise. Architect Murphy (The Architecture of Health) showcases projects his firm has been involved with to illustrate how architecture can improve society. Among them are the Butaro Hospital in Rwanda, which replaced the massive, disease-spreading hallways of modern hospitals with outdoor waiting areas and large windows that let in light and air; a combined health clinic and wastewater treatment facility in Haiti erected after the 2010 earthquake; and an immersive Montgomery, Ala., memorial to Jim Crow–era lynching victims that seeks to combat the amnesia surrounding historical atrocities. The author reveals how these projects were accomplished in collaboration with local governments and populations to address on-the-ground needs, and argues for a form of architecture that strives to transform “the deeper, systemic issues” that perpetuate social problems. Murphy draws out in lucid and convincing detail the subtle but significant ways architecture influences health, community, and commerce and can serve as “a vehicle for justice and repair,” even if a memoiristic thread about caring for his dying father—while touching—sometimes takes things off-track. Still, it’s an illuminating, optimistic take on how architecture might be harnessed to better the world. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Champion marathoner Rideout debuts with a gritty and inspiring autobiography. Born in working-class Somerville, Mass., in 1971, Rideout grew up watching his uncle Barney shooting heroin and vowed never to touch drugs himself. Nevertheless, he went on to experiment with cocaine in college, and after moving to New York City, he suffered an ankle injury and became addicted to opioids. While navigating a vicious, yearslong cycle of sobriety and relapse in the aughts, he found support and relief from his future wife, Shelly. When his sobriety was finally stable, Rideout turned to athletic training to keep his demons at bay, and much of the account details his experiences in triathlons, half-marathons, and marathons. Rideout’s recollections of first-place finish after first-place finish—he won his age category in major races including the New York and Boston marathons, making him one of the world’s fastest over-50 marathoners—are admirably straightforward: he doesn’t brag about his prowess or sugarcoat the anxieties, fears, and physical pain that accompanied him through nearly every victory. Instead, he convincingly argues that hard work and dedication can turn around even the most desperate circumstances. Readers will be galvanized. Agents: Byrd Leavell and Dan Milaschewski, UTA. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Times of London business editor Prescott debuts with a riveting investigation into the late tech founder Mike Lynch, who was accused of defrauding Hewlett-Packard during the $11 billion sale in 2011 of his software company, Autonomy. Two sudden deaths, which occurred hours apart in August 2024, loom over the author’s query: Lynch himself, who drowned when his superyacht capsized, and former Autonomy VP Stephen Chamberlain, who was hit by a car. The author spends minimal time on conspiracy theorizing, however, instead tracking Lynch’s ambitious rise—a son of Irish immigrants, he was “hailed as ‘Britain’s Bill Gates’ ”—and heavily litigated fall. Prescott evocatively channels the exhilaration of Autonomy’s rapid ascent after its 1996 founding, as well as the pressures of the 2008 recession, when the company began to fudge its books, including by logging sales before their completion. Though whistleblowers raised red flags, Autonomy’s accounting irregularities only became a problem when Hewlett-Packard, reeling from buyer’s remorse, accused Lynch of fraud. Prescott’s detailed examination of the subsequent legal battles captivates, but the book shines as an in-depth character study of Lynch. The founder is at once brilliant and tyrannical, an eccentric who named boardrooms after Bond villains and “a king of spin” who could “lie... with fluidity” (he once pretended to have a finance director who simply “did not exist”). It’s an enthralling tale of tech industry hubris. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Abraham Lincoln was a gifted party organizer and shrewd political operator, according to this eye-opening biography. Historian Pinsker (Knowing Him by Heart) tracks how Lincoln forged a winning Republican coalition in 1850s Illinois by steering between antislavery radicals (i.e., abolitionists) and moderates (who wanted slavery restricted), only to swerve decisively to a radical position in 1858 to undercut his proslavery Democratic rival, Stephen A. Douglas. As president, Lincoln walked a similar tightrope between pro- and anti-emancipation Republican camps, once again swerving hard to the radical position in order to win reelection in 1864. Pinsker’s prosaic Lincoln is a fascinating departure from typical depictions; Lincoln the party boss “rarely indulged in the warm, folksy language of his popular legend,” but was rather a man forever twisting arms, counting votes, considering (but not committing) voter interference, “barking out orders, providing advice, [and] pressing others to stay on task.” Examples of Lincoln’s sharp-elbowed tactics include calling a meeting with Frederick Douglass, who had begun to support radicals’ calls for Lincoln’s ouster, to casually raise the possibility of revoking the Emancipation Proclamation; Lincoln also allowed pro-Southern Ohio congressman Clement Vallandigham to return from exile so the Democrat’s strident antiwar rhetoric would alienate voters during the 1864 election. The result is a penetrating study of low politics in the pursuit of higher purpose. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Food writer Washington (Caribbean Flavors for Every Season) takes a blistering look at America’s most prestigious culinary school in this vivid memoir. In 2009, the author, then in her 20s, was working for free as a pantry chef at a restaurant in Raleigh, N.C., when its owner, recognizing her talent, encouraged her to apply to the Culinary Institute of America. Washington arrived at the program’s stately campus in Upstate New York and found a hypercompetitive environment filled with state-of-the-art equipment, instructors who demanded militarylike uniformity, and a culture that prized pricier, fussier dishes—often American or European—over the simpler fare of her Trinidadian childhood (“The bouillabaisse I learned to prepare... could never dethrone buljol, a salted cod dish and relic from the transatlantic slave trade”). She was struck, she writes, at how many instructors mistook cruelty for rigor, though she acknowledges the humiliation was sometimes effective. She’s less forgiving of the disparity between the school’s hefty price tag—tuition, fees, room and board “might skirt six figures”—and the fact that graduates often ended up “making substantially less money in a year than the cumulative debt they incurred.” Washington successfully mines her experience to challenge some of the culinary industry’s excesses, while allowing her love for cooking and the history, culture, and technique that shapes it to shine through. Industry insiders and home cooks alike will be riveted. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Berlinerblau (As Professors Lay Dying), a professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown University, delivers a thought-provoking survey of contemporary comedians who have sparked controversy. The prevalence of these comedic disputes demonstrates that the general consensus about free speech—the belief that political, intellectual, and artistic expression should not be suppressed—is being challenged, Berlinerblau argues. In a section on American comedians, he contends that Dave Chappelle’s jokes have “punched down” at the LGBTQ+ community. The more LGBTQ+ people pushed back, the more time Chappelle devoted in his sets to mocking them, according to the author, who writes that “to consume Chappelle’s art is to be consumed by the controversies triggered by Chappelle’s art!” In India, consensus around free speech is “crumbling” and “jokes are literally being policed,” Berlinerblau explains. For example, the comedian Vir Das, who has made jokes about the Hindu nationalist government, has been frequently threatened with charges of sedition. In Zimbabwe, comedian Samantha Kureya was kidnapped and tortured by a group widely believed to be associated with the government, after she participated in a sketch insinuating Zimbabwean law enforcement was corrupt and abusive. Through detailed case studies, Berlinerblau effectively reveals how “humorists are increasingly confronted by those who wish to shut them up and shut them down.” This amounts to a thorough report on the shifting landscape of modern comedy. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

TikTokker Ward, who’s known for her unvarnished parenting videos, debuts with an earnest if uneven memoir of her hard-knock early life and years as a young mother. Though Ward’s core insight that “motherhood is hard” is obvious, she manages surprising depth elsewhere. Her account of her difficult childhood with a loving but immature mother is shot through with arresting dark humor (“I could cook, clean, and fend off creditors like nobody’s business”), and chapters charting her rise to social media fame during the Covid pandemic capture both the rush of finding new community and the disorientation of sudden viral celebrity. Ward’s prose, though charmingly conversational, wobbles in places, with tangled metaphors obscuring her meaning (parents who lack a supportive network, or “intergenerational village quilt,” must “go fabric shopping and make our own.... Sometimes, our scraps of material were scattered around the globe or hidden under giant boulders in some kind of sick scavenger hunt”). Yet there’s energy in these pages, and an unmistakable sense that Ward operates from a genuine desire to make other young mothers struggling with shame or buried trauma feel less alone. The result, while familiar, is ardent and heartfelt. Agent: Veronica Goldstein, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/13/2026 | Details & Permalink

Scribner (Home by Another Route), an art scholar and descendant of the publishing family, serves up a hit-or-miss collection of essays on art, music, and literature. The pieces are divided into three sections: the first and most unified covers books and writers, focusing on great American authors published by Scribners & Sons—Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe, among others—and the men named “Charles Scribner” (“ours is a redundant family,” he writes) who facilitated their publication. The second centers on painting and sculpture, and, for the most part, comprises impersonal, lightly academic meditations on the lives and work of such artists as Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, and Michelangelo. (One exception is an essay in which Scribner relates playing a small part in an undercover operation to bust art thieves.) The final and shortest section covers opera singers and refreshingly returns to the personal, with a long, standout piece about a “pilgrimage” the author took to visit soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf at her home in Austria. While Scribner’s scholarship is lucid, many of the essays appeared previously as book introductions, lectures, or magazine articles and can end abruptly or otherwise feel incomplete devoid of their original context. This has its moments, but doesn’t add up to more than the sum of its parts.

Reviewed on 02/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

The intricate rhythms and protean harmonies of Africa lie at the heart of most modern music, according to this exuberant debut study. Composer and bassist Gibbs reflects on the evolution and recombination of African-derived music, centering his own recollections of the multicultural ferment of New York’s music scene from the 1970s onward and his career playing in jazz, blues, and electronica groups. Explicating complex rhythms with ingenious clock diagrams, the author charts the infusion of Black-originated blues harmonies and scales into country music, and unpacks the ways classic African elements like dual rhythmic structures gave funk and dance music “their body-moving power.” He also explores how Black communities and culture have adapted musical styles to slavery and Jim Crow, noting that the Gullah-Geechee community of South Carolina’s Sea Islands, who were banned from using drums or horns after the 1739 Stono slave revolt, developed a unique foot-stomping, hand-slapping “ring shout” style that influenced many corners of American music, including the 1920s Charleston dance craze. Gibbs combines erudite and rigorous musicology with an entertaining, loose-limbed picaresque of a working musician’s life, writing in supple prose that hymns “the floating grace of Jimi Hendrix’s music and the menacing lurch of Black Sabbath.” The result is a stimulating take on the complexities and influence of a rich and multifaceted musical tradition. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/06/2026 | Details & Permalink