Abraham Lincoln’s much maligned wife had her mental troubles but was also a smart political operator and loving helpmeet, according to this vivid debut biography. Journalist Romano explores Mary Todd Lincoln’s many issues: her volatile temperament, her extravagant shopping expeditions that generated negative press coverage during wartime, her unseemly lobbying for government appointments for cronies, and, later in life, her unhinged grief at losing three sons and a husband, which made her prey to charlatan spiritualists. But, Romano contends, Mary was a shrewd promoter of Lincoln’s ambitions—she advised him to refuse a post as Oregon’s territorial governor that would have scotched his presidential hopes—who, contrary to critics’ assertions, fully supported his opposition to slavery. Romano devotes much space to demolishing the conventional historiography that Lincoln and Mary’s relationship was an agonizing ordeal; instead, she paints them as well-matched—“he learned how to defuse her tantrums; she was adept at pulling him out of his funks.” Later chapters recap how Mary adroitly marshaled the public sympathy needed to regain her freedom after her son had her committed in 1875. Romano is sometimes too quick with pat psychotherapeutic rationales for Mary’s questionable choices. (“Shopping filled an emotional void... [it] gave her a feeling of power and control.”) Still, this revealing study dramatically recasts a proverbial ball and chain as a dynamic and constructive figure. (May)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

Former San Francisco Standard editor-in-chief Weber’s enlightening debut traces the tech industry’s influence over three decades of San Francisco’s booms and busts. The author begins his survey in 1990 during the early, idyllic days of the internet when “a small but growing cohort... believed computers could change the world for the better” and created nascent online communities via mailing lists and forums. From there, Weber tracks how this utopian dream of “the Internet as a liberating tool of personal empowerment” turned into a roller-coaster ride of economic excess and devastation, from the dot-com bubble and its 2000–2002 deflation, which saw “some thirty thousand people” move out of San Francisco, through the second internet boom of the mid-2010s, centered on venture capital–funded start-ups, to the postpandemic “doom loop” of office closures that resulted in empty storefronts and hollowed-out business corridors. Weber tracks how these fluctuations affected the city’s habitability, character, and politics, including skyrocketing rents and the growing influence of the tech industry on government and media. He particularly focuses on San Francisco’s ongoing issues with homelessness, which became a cause célèbre for right-wing tech titans like Elon Musk and David Sacks. With a new “revival” occurring in San Francisco due to the rise of AI, this is a timely cautionary tale about what tech cannot fix. (June)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

Psychologist Saxbe debuts with a compassionate examination of how fatherhood changes men’s minds and bodies. Noting that active fathers are rare in the animal kingdom, where the males of only 5% to 10% of mammal species take part in caring for their young, Saxbe theorizes that involved dads are a crucial part of humanity’s success. New fathers can experience hormonal shifts leading to perinatal depression, a phenomenon that, though it’s lesser-known than women’s postpartum depression, is equally important to treat, according to the author. In addition to affecting men’s quality of life, depression and anxiety during their infant’s early days can impair bonding and children’s long-term well-being. Fatherhood impacts physical health, too: the “dad bod” can be traced to sleep disruptions, hormonal shifts, and mood changes. But fatherhood also leads to positive changes. For instance, when fathers regularly engage in physical play, their children are more likely to be confident and curious and to follow rules. The role of fatherhood has shifted in recent decades, meaning many of today’s dads may not have grown up with healthy models, Saxbe writes, but men who choose to challenge ingrained cultural stereotypes surrounding masculinity and care work are often rewarded with more meaningful lives. Smart and uplifting, this is a powerful resource for dads and dads-to-be. (June)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

“The garbageman is the Sisyphus of our consumer society, condemned to go from house to house picking up bags, swept along day after day in the never-ending flow of refuse we produce,” writes Montréal sanitation worker Pare-Poupart in his bewitching debut memoir. Though he originally became a garbageman in 2003 to pay for college, Pare-Poupart soon developed an addiction to the physicality of the job—he describes wrestling bags filled with heavy construction debris and trying to tame recycling and compost pickups (“Want to know what a city smelled like during the Middle Ages? Take a shower in compost bin juice”)—and kept at it for the following 20 years. He details sweet encounters with kids who idolize his work and outlines how the job informed his conversion to freeganism, a waste-reducing lifestyle he embraced after witnessing the sheer volume of trash people produce. In addition to his own musings, Pare-Poupart shares anecdotes about his eccentric compatriots, including Beaujeunehomme, who often shows up to work drunk, and Michel (aka Spandex), who speaks only to the garbage. Enlightening, unpretentious, and gently political, Pare-Poupart’s fascinating account will help readers view their garbage in a whole new light. It’s a treasure. Photos. (June)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

A tidal wave of fakery, hypocrisy, and cheating is eroding society’s moral fiber, according to this earnest if underwhelming investigation. Miller (The Character Gap), a Wake Forest ethics professor, surveys a panorama of fraud, pretense, and BS, now supercharged by the internet. This includes video deepfakes, adultery websites like Ashley Madison, college students’ ubiquitous use of AI to write papers, conspiracy theories shared over social media (though this isn’t technically dishonesty, Miller contends, if the theorist genuinely believes the hoax), and pastors who preach moral purity while indulging in extramarital hookups and plagiarizing sermons. Along the way, Miller explores the psychology and philosophy of honesty, noting that people lie when the truth is an impediment to their goals, though not especially frequently (studies show the average person tells between one and two lies per day, but a few prolific liars bring up the average). With technology amplifying dishonesty’s impact, the author calls for guardrails ranging from punishments for manipulating and disseminating individuals’ images without their permission to generally promoting a culture where people (especially public figures, like celebrities) call out BS. Miller’s gently moralistic take on the subject mainly reiterates basic truisms—honesty is the right thing to do to avoid hurting others—in stolid prose, offering few new insights. The result is a dry, prosaic defense of honesty as the best policy. (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this solid entry in the World of Art series, art historian Schwartz (Rembrandt’s Universe) surveys the context, systems, and styles of 17th-century Dutch painting. He attributes the abundance of Dutch artists during the period partly to the fact that the Netherlands was more urbanized than many other parts of Europe, with an abundance of cities where wealthy households and institutions were in need of decoration. He explains that most painters received work via patronage from members of the Dutch aristocracy, churches, local governments, and civic institutions like hospitals (commissions usually came through family or personal connections, though art dealers also made sales). During the second half of the century, as wealth became concentrated in fewer hands, Dutch painters competed more fiercely, leading to masterpieces but also causing some artists—including greats like Rembrandt and Vermeer—to fall on hard times. The economic situation also shaped how artists painted, the author observes, noting that limited color tones and loose brushstrokes allowed painters to “increase productivity and lower costs.” Devoting relatively little space to the superstars of Dutch art, the author takes a welcome look at overlooked figures like Adriaen van der Werff, who used a “fine brush” style to depict religious scenes, and Hollanders Willem van de Velde de Oude, a once prominent painter of seascapes. Art students will especially benefit from this comprehensive overview. (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this fizzy memoir, travel writer Ruiz (12 Trips in 12 Months) recounts the year she spent traveling after breaking up with her boyfriend at age 35. She writes of arriving in Egypt immediately after the split, where visits to the pyramids and the Valley of the Kings prompted reflections on grief and resilience, while conversations with a local tour guide who had problems with her ex reminded Ruiz “that love and heartbreak exist everywhere, no matter what language you speak.” Later, a trip to Japan introduced her to the concept of kintsugi—repairing broken pottery with gold—which served as a metaphor for embracing one’s emotional scars. Ruiz pairs these observations with lively travel writing, offering vivid descriptions of historical sites, foods, and local color. The narrative is most involving when Ruiz sticks to chronicling her post-breakup missteps and hurdles; less effective are her sometimes-clumsy efforts to extract advice from her experiences. (Of deciding to ride a horse up a volcano in Guatemala instead of walking, she writes, “Accepting help when you need it is a strength too. The most important thing is to keep finding a way forward.”) Still, readers seeking to start over should find some inspiration here. (June)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

This richly layered portrait of the 19th-century frontier from historian Nelson (Saving Yellowstone) spotlights figures whose complex lives embody an era of “chaotic and unstable... transformation.” They include Jim Beckworth, son of an enslaved woman and a white father, who spent years living as a member of an Apsaalooke community because a grieving mother insisted he was her dead son; Maria Gertrudis Barcelo, a Hispana woman who grew rich playing cards and whose “ability to assess the rapidly changing geopolitics of Nuevo Mexico” brought her fame and influence; and Little Wolf, a Northern Cheyenne “master strategist” who led his people on a thrilling flight for freedom, but turned to alcohol when he fell short. Nelson weaves her subjects’ lives together—they often quite literally cross paths—while simultaneously showing how their stories were changed or erased in favor of a more clear-cut frontier myth of white male dominance. Along the way, she highlights moments where Americans could have achieved a more just future—for instance, California missed an opportunity to write “full citizenship for all comers” into its constitution—while also offering vibrant details of daily life, like ruminative scenes where Sacajawea forages for wild licorice and artichokes and, later on, famously insists that she get to see the ocean. This complicated, sprawling epic is untamed in a good way. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Bestseller Glaude (Begin Again) offers a forceful counternarrative to the official commemoration of America’s 250th anniversary by surveying the horrors attendant to some of the nation’s previous anniversaries. Glaude begins by asserting that it is “dangerous to love something so abstract and so morally dubious” as America, particularly as it is founded on an inherent contradiction. America is both a “nation of laws” dedicated to the “equal standing of each individual” but also “a white Republic,” he notes, and it is at moments when the tension between the two “becomes unbearably felt” that “white America risks everything, including the well-being of the country, to resolve it.” (He cites both the Civil War and “Donald Trump’s ascendance” as examples.) But “history isn’t fate,” Glaude argues; it’s rather a “repository” that allows us “to act today with more than luck.” It is in this spirit that Glaude aims to excavate “the usefulness of the past, however ugly.” He begins in 1776 with the story of captured fugitive Moses Gordon, who “chose to drown himself rather than submit again to slavery,” and, from there, visits several other anniversaries, including the centennial celebration in 1876, which was conducted “as violence choked the life out of Reconstruction,” and the 150th celebration in 1926, which arrived during the resurgence of the KKK. The upshot isn’t just a searing revisionist history but a stirring view of America as a place “worth fighting for.” (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink

Historian Wyman (The Verge) upends myths about the rise of civilization in this profound and enchanting study. He begins by noting that “in the last several decades, our grasp of humanity’s distant past has been utterly transformed” thanks to a technological revolution in the archaeological sciences. Lidar scanning, ground-penetrating radar, and DNA analysis “have generated so much data” that most people “have yet to fully grasp just how much our basic story of humanity’s past has changed.” The traditional story, he suggests, is that of “an orderly sequence... from foraging to farming... to city-dwelling.” Recent research, however, shows that major developments like farming, permanent villages, and state structures were invented independently, again and again, around the globe. This revelation “points toward a new... more variable understanding of the human past” as one of kinetic, continuous social experimentation. “For every success story,” Wyman notes, there were “just as many who came, thrived, and then died out,” like the people who built Stonehenge, who “effectively disappeared from the genetic... record.” Thus, the distant past presents a series of case studies, and, as “our species faces immense challenges in the future,” he argues, humanity must attend to these examples more carefully, since “we cannot afford to waste the very insights that might help us survive once more.” In a narrative at once demystifying and awe-inspiring, Wyman vividly conjures the distant past while at the same time making it seem like a window into the future. It’s a remarkable achievement. (May)

Reviewed on 03/27/2026 | Details & Permalink