O’Grady, an art professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder, explores in her enlightening if dense debut how art “is lived and experienced.” Each essay uses an artwork as a springboard to explore the work of other artists and O’Grady’s own experiences. One chapter, for instance, uses Carrie Mae Weems’s photo-and-text Kitchen Table Series (particularly an image where a girl and her mother apply lipstick while looking into mirrors) to explore the complex relationship between women, their appearance, and their public and private selves. Along the way, O’Grady also unpacks the work of painters like impressionist Berthe Morisot as well as her memories of grappling with a narrow “ethos of beauty” when she worked at Vogue. Elsewhere, she uses conceptual artist Pope.L’s bottling of polluted water from Flint, Mich., to investigate the fraught concepts of home as a source of stability or chaos. The standout final essay ties Beverly Pepper’s monumental sculptures to the work of other “land artists” like Robert Smithson, meditating on how humans interact with natural wonders that dwarf them. In this entry, O’Grady exhibits a remarkable fluidity, leaping across continents and centuries with ease. In other places, her larger points get swamped beneath a wealth of personal stories and philosophical musings. There are plenty of gems here, but readers will need to be patient to unearth them. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

This meticulous study from historian Rickford (We Are an African People) spotlights a dramatic time in Guyana, when the nation held a heightened international profile as a hub of pan-Africanism. During the 1970s, the South American nation formed a deep web of connection to activists in the U.S. and Africa. Explaining that the ways Guyana eluded easy political classification are part of why it offered radical thinkers reasons for optimism, Rickford traces how Guyana’s status as a “cooperative republic” with a “distinctive brand of socialism” drew expatriates from the U.S., including militant Stokely Carmichael, writer Julian Mayfield, artist Tom Feelings, and dancer Lavinia Williams—only to frustrate many of them as the government, headed by Forbes Burnham, grew more authoritarian. The 1980 assassination of academic and activist Walter Rodney was the culmination of the country’s shift into a less welcoming place for dissident voices. Along the way, Rickford’s account examines the relations between Guyana’s various ethnic groups, among them a sizable Black community as well as residents of South Asian descent, the latter of whose experiences led to a gulf between Guyana’s promise and its lived reality—Rickford bluntly writes that some expatriates from the U.S. found themselves in the position of supporting “a regime that subjugated South Asians.” Wide-ranging and evenhanded, this offers a fascinating overview of a dynamic time and place. (May)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

Crawford, a bassist for the Avett Brothers and “history enthusiast,” debuts with a fantastic, boosterish biography of famous “founding son” John Quincy Adams. Crawford focuses on the second and third acts of Adams’s long life, when he transformed from the failed ex-president who lost to Andrew Jackson into a “national hero.” Specifically, Crawford keys in on Adams’s post-presidency role in Congress as a representative from Massachusetts who bedeviled pro-slavery Southern politicians through his “verbal jujitsu.” Famously coining the term slavocracy to define the opposition, Adams found a new calling—much to his family’s dismay—as an increasingly vocal advocate for abolitionism. Along the way, Crawford weaves in the stories of two lesser-known abolitionists who teamed up with Adams: Benjamin Lundy (with whom Adams formed a “tender bond”) and Theodore Weld (“the very definition of a grassroots activist”). The trio worked tirelessly throughout the 1830s and ’40s against proslavery forces in Congress—Adams, most dramatically, by finding ways to subvert the Southern-instituted “gag rule” that prohibited presentation on the House floor of the thousands of antislavery petitions that were being sent to Congress during this time period. Throughout, Crawford offers up amusingly modern allusions—“as we would say today, antislavery debates in Congress went viral”—and pithy insights that link antebellum America to today’s politics. This is enormously fun and heartening. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

Politico editor Canellos (The Great Dissenter) offers a razor-sharp biography of conservative Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito. The book opens by exploring how Alito’s upbringing in Italian American New Jersey suburbia and the culture shock he experienced as a middle-class student at Princeton formed the bedrock for his later embittered judicial response to progressive social change. While he was at Princeton, explosive protests against the Vietnam War culminated in the expulsion of the ROTC, of which Alito was a member, leading him to nurture an aggrieved response to liberalism—he thought of the protesters as privileged students “free to challenge authority because they had nothing to lose.” The same upheavals that drove Alito rightward sparked the wave of conservative legal activism, spearheaded by the Federalist Society, that would propel Alito to the Supreme Court in 2005 after the failed nomination of moderate Harriet Myers, Canellos notes. Revisiting Alito’s most controversial Supreme Court decisions, Canellos painstakingly documents how Alito’s professed dedication to originalism is flexible depending on conservatives’ agenda. Though Canellos’s legal analysis is meticulous, it can drag; more juicy and haunting are observations he collects from Alito’s youthful associates—“Nobody would describe him... as humble or a nice guy anymore,” remarks one college friend. It’s a revealing deconstruction of an inscrutable justice whose tenure has “rocked the facade of American law.” (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

Oxford English literature professor Womersley (Divinity and State) delivers an impressive examination of the central human questions Shakespeare explored in his plays. Womersley argues that the playwright’s works remain relevant not because Shakespeare possessed some “timeless esoteric wisdom” but because he used drama to probe human nature; he wasn’t interested in reaching final conclusions but rather invited readers to think through questions of identity, politics, religion, and ethics. Struggles with identity, for example, play out in comedies like Much Ado About Nothing, which Womersley says presents the question of whether identity is “a seed (which already contains its potentialities) or a shell (which needs to be filled from the outside).” Questions about the meaning and vitality of political institutions arise in Macbeth, a play about a general who murders the king to seize the throne, as Shakespeare demonstrates how competing ideas about republicanism and divine monarchy took shape in social life. King Lear, Womersley says, shows that moral character is not fixed but changes over time as individuals contend between making decisions based on the means of actions and the ends of them. Womersley’s elegant prose and thoroughly detailed critical analyses lead to thought-provoking interpretations. It’s a smart testament to the staying power of Shakespeare. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

Hudson (Our Shared Storm) gives a skillful metaphysical twist to a tale of apocalyptic horror in this strikingly original novel. Its setting is a near-future America devastated by “popping,” a phenomenon that sees individuals unexpectedly vanish from existence, their sudden disappearance punctuated by a vacuum pop. Harvey Ellis and Shonda Erins, secretly lovers and both agents in the Kansas Bureau of Depopulation Affairs, spend their days documenting these incidents of “Spontaneous Human Absence” and issuing remainder benefit checks to loved ones left behind. They’re dispatched to rural Dawnville to investigate the case of Gabby Reyes, who popped as a teenager 10 years earlier and has now miraculously returned with a fantastical account of her post-pop existence. Shonda suspects Gabby is a fraud but Harvey, who lost his fiancée and parents in a mass “clusterpop” years earlier, clings to a shred of hope that those who have popped are not gone forever, setting the stage for an investigation that will harshly test the beliefs of both characters. The thoroughness with which Hudson imagines how individuals and society would have to rewire themselves to contend with this bizarre phenomenon lends his tale impressive philosophical heft. The result is a poignant exploration of loss, grief, hope, and the fragility of existence that will resonate with readers beyond the fantasy and horror genres. (May)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this delightfully droll debut from Fabriczki, a quirky mother and daughter find their footing in Los Angeles as the latter gradually learns the truth of their origins. When Sonia drops her daughter Mila off for her first day of elementary school in 1996, she instructs her in what to say: “We live about a five minutes’ drive away, your mother works at an office, and you’re not Russian.” Sonia, who buys American goods for resale in Eastern Europe, rarely discusses her early life. Despite their closeness, Mila knows nothing of her mother’s upbringing or her father’s identity. Five years later, Mila finds out her mother regularly emails a man named Anthony, and she hatches a scheme to meet him during a fifth grade band trip to San Francisco. She has no idea that her mom’s history with Anthony started when 18-year-old Sonia, then Szonja, flew from her native Hungary to California to spend the summer with her married sister, Rina. Szonja and her sister have little in common, and, feeling like a scolded child in her home, Szonja pulls away. The charm here is in Fabriczki’s character work, which takes on increasing depth as she alternates between 2001 and chapters focused on Szonja in 1989, slowly revealing what led to Sonia’s life as a single mother. This sharp-witted immigrant story is full of surprises. Agent: Rebecca Gradinger, UTA. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

Benedict (Wolf Season) unspools a harrowing story of an Iraqi refugee family’s attempts to fit into American society. During the Iraq War, Khalil served as an interpreter for the U.S. military, until he was killed in a car bombing, presumably by insurgents. His wife, Naema, who narrates, was left scarred, and their three-year-old son, Tariq, lost his leg. Staff Sgt. Jimmy Donnell, who worked with Khalil, arranges for the pair and Khalil’s mother, Hibah, to escape, and eventually puts them up in his home near Albany, N.Y., with his wife, Kate. Immediately, things start going awry for the family, as Naema is unable to find a job even though she was a pediatrician in Iraq, and Kate leaves the country for reasons that are explained later. Meanwhile, Jimmy suffers from PTSD triggered by his memories of combat, and pines for Kate, which alarms Naema, who feels she can’t quite trust him and wants to find an apartment for her family despite having little money. Benedict effectively chronicles the struggles of a family displaced by war and a refugee’s desire to provide for her family (“It does not seem so very much to ask from the country that destroyed my own,” Naema reflects). This chilling tale will stay with readers. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this smart, well-researched history, film scholar Schatz (The Genius of the System) explores what he calls the “conglomerate era” of Hollywood, the period between 1989 and 2004 when a series of mergers and acquisitions between media companies resulted in films with a “sustained level of artistry and prosperity.” He argues this was the most important period in Hollywood since the collapse of the studio system a half-century earlier and warrants consideration as another “golden age.” The success of Warner Bros.’ 1989 Batman, Schatz explains, was fueled by the merger between the studio’s parent company and Time Inc., which enabled massive marketing and merchandising campaigns. Giant media companies during this era were also able to fund technological innovations, spurring an explosion of animated films, including Disney’s The Little Mermaid, Pixar’s Toy Story, and Dreamworks’ Shrek. The book closes in 2004 with a trio of franchise hits: Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, Alfonso Cuarón’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning final installment of his Lord of the Rings trilogy. Throughout, Schatz ably balances board room machinations with insightful critical analyses of the period’s most influential films. This is a must-read for cinephiles. (May)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink

In 2017, an archivist at the University of Southern California discovered a nitrate print of a forgotten early ragtime-era film that revises notions of Black representation in early American cinema. This rigorous history from Field (Uplift Cinema), an associate professor of cinema at the University of Chicago, unpacks the significance of the film, Something Good—Negro Kiss, which depicts a young Black man and woman, played by actors Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown, “joyously embracing,” and represents a departure from 19th-century film, which relegated Black actors to demeaning roles as racist caricatures or comic buffoons. The newly discovered film, made by William Selig in 1898, was not a mockery of Black courtship for the benefit of “white gawkers,” according to the author, but a “media savvy” play on the first onscreen kiss, filmed in 1896 between John C. Rice and May Irwin, a well-known white minstrel actress. In remaking the Rice-Irwin film with Black actors, Something Good implicitly mocked Irwin’s “racial masquerade,” calling out “minstrelsy’s grotesque fantasies of blackness” while speaking to Black humanity, romance, and desire. In the face of a sparse historical record, Field performs impressive sleuthing to detail the film’s production, distribution, and historical context, while also exploring remakes by contemporary filmmakers in such shorts as 2020’s Glenville. The result is a nuanced study that expands notions of Black representation in early American film. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 04/03/2026 | Details & Permalink