Score-keeping fosters creativity in games, but in real-life institutions it makes for rigid policies and distorts values, according to this trenchant philosophical investigation. University of Utah philosophy professor Nguyen (Games) explores scoring systems in games and sports, from difficulty rankings in rock climbing to idiosyncratic point schedules for fantasy role-playing games. Such score-keeping structures, he argues, create “background conditions” that enable players to creatively problem-solve and foster more captivating forms of play. Institutions, on the other hand, rely on scoring systems with simplistic data metrics that are easily measurable but often flatten value complexity, driving policy in unproductive ways. (College rankings, for example, boost the scores of schools with high rejection rates, prompting many to solicit applications from unqualified students to have more applicants to reject.) The author considers various solutions, ultimately suggesting that large institutions (and their flawed metrics) are necessary to help society remain organized and fuel big-picture initiative but that areas like art, fitness, or hobbies should be subject to flexible value systems dictated by individuals and small communities. Illustrating his ideas with lucid philosophy and descriptions of his own innumerable hobbies (Tetris, bouldering, yo-yo), Nguyen skillfully explores the ways in which humans think about progress, creativity, and play. It makes for a captivating look at how imperfect measures of success shape society. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/02/2026 | Details & Permalink

This intriguing study from historian Nesvig (Promiscuous Power) catalogs the ways in which Native and European supernatural beliefs met and intermingled in post-conquest Mexico. Drawing on Inquisition trials of women accused of sorcery in the two decades immediately following the fall of Tenochtitlan, Nesvig shows how, mostly via the socializing of newly arrived settler wives and mistresses with their Native domestic help, Iberian superstitions and beliefs mixed with Nahua (aka Aztec) spells and rituals. The Nahuans, for instance, took up the Iberian concept of the “evil eye,” and the Iberians took up the Nahuan practice of “throwing corn” as a means of casting lots and predicting the future. The Inquisition trials reveal that the church particularly targeted, from among the colonists, the Moriscan or Maghrebi women—remnants of the Muslim empire recently ousted from Iberia—who were likely mistresses or courtesans engaging in sex work. This official unease with the power women could attain through sex within lawless frontier territories stands in stark relief, in Nesvig’s account, with the openness of the women themselves, who seemed to eagerly seek to learn from other women from disparate backgrounds. “All the women in this book,” he perceptively notes, “relied on magic to assert some agency and power in a man’s political world.” While fairly academic, it’s worth checking out for those interested in the intersection of women’s history and magic. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Nazi hatred of the Soviet Union played a larger role in precipitating the Holocaust than is generally understood, according to this riveting revisionist study. Historian Hellbeck (Stalingrad) recaps how Hitler rose to prominence in the 1920s by exploiting Germans’ fear of communism. After the Nazis came to power and sent more than one hundred thousand German communists to concentration camps specifically created for that purpose, Germany’s preparations for the war against the “global menace” of Bolshevism began in earnest, Hellbeck writes. Even mere days before signing the 1939 nonaggression pact with Stalin, “Hitler openly remarked: ‘Everything I undertake is directed against Russia.’ ” Hellbeck further explains that, in the Nazi imagination, “the USSR was the most powerful Jewish organization in the world.” Thus, the author posits, once Germany went to war with the Soviet Union in 1941, Jews were subtly “redefined”: “They were no longer racial aliens who could simply be expelled” but “political enemies who needed to be destroyed.” This is why, in Hellbeck’s view, mass killings of Jews were first undertaken during the Nazi invasion of Soviet territory, and from there “seamlessly extended into the oppression, and then annihilation of Jews elsewhere.” Hellbeck elegantly brings to bear a vast array of German and Soviet sources to make his case. The result is a kaleidoscopic, thought-provoking reframing of the ideological underpinnings of Nazi atrocities and the war itself. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

This rousing debut account from independent researcher Flint profiles fiery West Virginia activist Karen Gorell, who spearheaded a successful grassroots campaign to get insurance benefits for retired aluminum workers. The Century Aluminum plant in Ravenswood, W.Va., where Gorrell’s husband Mike had worked since the 1970s, terminated its retirees’ health insurance plans in 2010. Flint recaps how plant employees like Mike had knowingly sacrificed their health working in the plant’s toxic conditions, under the belief that a robust retirement health insurance plan would help manage any “chronic conditions.” After the plan was canceled, Gorrell felt compelled to act—particularly on behalf of a former coworker of Mike’s who was suffering from an aggressive cancer. At first, Gorrell naively assumed that if elected officials could just “shake the retirees’ hands” at a townhall-style meeting, they would be moved to help. She found, instead, that most politicians ignored her pleas. Undeterred, Gorrell moved on to more confrontational encounters, including protesting the chair of the board at his home in suburban Cleveland, and culminating in 2011 with a 77-day Occupy-style encampment at the plant. Flint’s detailed reportage captures Gorrell’s folksy humor and refreshing forthrightness. (“If [your boss] doesn’t have the balls to call me back, he needs to be man enough to tell me,” Gorrell tells one flustered corporate underling on the phone.) It’s an inspiring granny vs. Goliath tale. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Influencer Mariah chronicles in her intimate debut guide how she found her way to a faith that embraces doubt. As a young girl, Mariah studiously followed the rigid rules of her Southern Christian culture, but doubts set in as she began noticing the contradictions inherent in religious life. She recalls, as a third grader, sitting in on a church budget meeting in which the amount of money spent on decorations caused her to publicly question the church’s values. Speaking up in the meeting, she writes, “sparked something in me” that fueled a life of “challeng[ing] the status quo” in ways that have enriched her faith and carried her through such personal trials as handling her infant daughter’s medical emergency when her husband was deployed in Iraq. With a series of probing questions, she aims to help readers uncover their own faith values—rather than the ones modeled for them—to guide their spiritual growth. Drawing candidly from her life, Mariah convincingly frames “friction” points as uncomfortable but fruitful opportunities to push beyond old beliefs as God “reestablishes us for something even better.” The result is an impassioned challenge to a church culture rooted in compliance. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Historian Richards (Black Atlantic) offers an eye-opening look at the fates of captives freed by maritime patrols after the U.S. and U.K. abolished the Atlantic slave trade in 1807. The trade continued clandestinely, so in the 1830s the British began issuing prize money for captured slave ships. This created a new system of exploitation, the author reveals, citing the case of the slave ship Progreso, wherein the “prize crew” who took over the ship forced the supposedly liberated captives—most of them children—back into the hold and flogged them for stealing water. By the time the Progreso docked in Cape Town, 177 of the liberated Africans—39.6% of the total—were dead. Once dropped in a random harbor town, getting emancipation papers required freed captives to find a court that would accept jurisdiction and declare the ship’s capture legal—no easy feat, given the onerous burden of proof. Moreover, freed captives were often required to be indentured for up to 14 years, resulting in further exploitation, including indentured freedwomen being forced to marry men at their contract owner’s behest. Throughout, the author draws canny links to the era’s macroeconomic shift from the slave trade to colonization—indeed, he notes, Britian used protecting Africans from slavery as an explicit justification for colonizing West Africa. The result is a savvy juxtaposition of individual lives and larger historical trends. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Novelist and singer-songwriter Darnielle (Wolf in White Van) unpacks his 30-year career as founding member of the Mountain Goats in this illuminating compilation of song lyrics and background notes. Darnielle explains that many of his early songs “had their roots in a sequence of poems... before I got the bright idea to set some of them to music.” Entries vary from detailing events and individuals depicted in the songs to broader overviews situating the author at inflection points in his life and work (after 1997, he writes, his love songs became less frequent as he got more interested in “knottier themes—death, struggle, alienation”). Intriguingly, a number of entries are based on songs never released or only performed live. Others provide intimate details on how songs took shape in the studio. “One thing music has over poetry is this freedom to improvise,” Darnielle writes, noting how the phrase “moonless” in the song “Transcendental Youth” changed in the studio to “nameless dark,” to better paint the picture of the song’s gloomy subjects, “people in a dark room who have not had enough to eat.” Darnielle’s attention to structure, scene, and evocative phrasing is apparent in both his lyrics and his rich, self-aware explanations, which shed light on his creative process and evolving relationship to his work. This is catnip for the author’s fans. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Has self-publishing enabled a greater number of writers from marginalized groups to find an audience for their work, or is it perpetuating the publishing industry’s historical inequities? Parnell, a lecturer in digital publishing at Melbourne University, makes the case for the latter in this incisive debut study. Through data analysis and interviews with writers of color who self-publish on Wattpad and Amazon, she shows how systematic inequalities have emerged on these platforms. Among her troubling examples are Amazon’s system for flagging adult material in self-published books, which seems to have an implicit bias against cover art featuring Black people, as well as Wattpad’s relationship with its “Stars Program” authors, who are contracted to write serial novels on the site, but get little support from Wattpad when they become targets of harassment in the comments section. Parnell also spotlights age-old systemic biases being perpetuated in new ways, like Amazon’s complex “browse categories” classification system, which replicates the BISAC system’s long-standing, much criticized practice of designating books by and about marginalized people separately from “General” categories. (Parnell argues that Amazon’s system is even worse in this regard, since new categories proliferate unchecked.) Throughout, Parnell offers intriguing insights that may even surprise publishing insiders, such as when she explores Wattpad’s large footprint in the Philippines, Brazil, and Turkey. Book industry professionals will be engrossed. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Novelist and biographer Mann (Bogie & Bacall) delivers a meticulous and humane reconsideration of one of America’s most sensationalized unsolved murders. Rather than dwell on the lurid mythology surrounding the 1947 killing of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short, whose mutilated body was discovered in a vacant Los Angeles lot, Mann sets out to restore complexity and dignity to a woman long reduced to tabloid caricature. Drawing on extensive archival research and overlooked police files, he traces Short’s troubled upbringing in Massachusetts and her zigzag path to Los Angeles after dropping out of high school. Mann challenges the image of Short as a “man-crazy” fame seeker, presenting her instead as a restless young woman navigating economic precarity and unstable housing. Through careful reconstruction of her final months, he charts her movements through Tinseltown’s underbelly of drifters and aspiring actors, exploring how the city’s culture of exploitation left her exposed. Though Mann revisits familiar suspects, he sketches a fresh and more plausible theory of her death without claiming absolute certainty. For true crime devotees and Black Dahlia obsessives, this is a must. Agent: Malaga Baldi, Malaga Baldi Literary. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Mount Shasta, Calif., high school senior Izumi Tanaka is a normal 18-year-old American girl: she enjoys baking, watching Real Housewives, and dressing like “Lululemon’s sloppy sister.” But Japanese American Izzy, conceived during a one-night stand in her mother Hanako’s final year at Harvard, has never known the identity of her father. So when she and her best friend find a letter in Hanako’s bedroom, the duo jump at the chance to ferret out Izzy’s dad’s true identity—only to find out he’s the Crown Prince of Japan. Desperate to know her father, Izzy agrees to spend the summer in his home country. But press surveillance, pressure to quickly learn the language and etiquette, and an unexpected romance make her time in Tokyo more fraught than she imagined. Add in a medley of cousins and an upcoming wedding, and Izzy is in for an unforgettable summer. Abrupt switches from Izzy’s perspective to lyrical descriptions of Japan may disrupt readers’ enjoyment, but a snarky voice plus interspersed text conversations and tabloid coverage keep the pages turning in Jean’s (Empress of All Seasons) fun, frothy, and often heartfelt duology starter. Ages 12–up. Agent: Erin Harris, Folio Literary Management. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink