Top 10
Biological War: A Scenario
Annie Jacobsen. Dutton, July 28 ($32, ISBN 979-8-217-04603-4)
In the vein of her bestseller Nuclear War, Pulitzer finalist Jacobsen outlines the aftermath of a hypothetical biological attack on the U.S.
Bonfire of the Murdochs: How the Epic Fight to Control the Last Great Media Dynasty Broke a Family—and the World
Gabriel Sherman. Simon & Schuster, Feb. 3 ($27, ISBN 978-1-9821-6741-7)
The battle between Rupert Murdoch’s heirs over control of his conservative media empire is scrutinized in this exposé by Vanity Fair correspondent Sherman.
Churn: The Tension That Divides Us and How to Overcome It
Claude M. Steele. Liveright, Mar. 3 ($29.99, ISBN 978-1-324-09344-2)
The psychologist and bestselling author of Whistling Vivaldi analyzes how and why diversity provokes agitation in some people, and lays out a path for overcoming bias in daily life.
Crime Fictions: How Racist Lies Built a System of Mass Wrongful Conviction
Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve. Random House, Apr. 7 ($31, ISBN 978-0-593-44708-6)
Legal scholar Van Cleve uncovers evidence that hundreds of wrongful convictions of Black minors in Chicago were intentionally orchestrated.
The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control
Jacob Siegel. Holt, Mar. 24 ($29.99, ISBN 978-1-250-36312-1)
The so-called fight against disinformation is just a weapon to quash legitimate dissent and a tool of the tech-government alliance that has emerged in the wake of the “war on terror,” according to Tablet writer Siegel.
Israel: What Went Wrong?
Omer Bartov. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Apr. 21 ($28, ISBN 978-0-374-61818-6)
A Holocaust historian seeks to understand the path by which Israel, a state founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust, came to embrace ethnonationalism and be credibly accused of war crimes.
London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth
Patrick Radden Keefe. Doubleday, Apr. 7 ($35, ISBN 978-0-385-54853-3)
The circumstances surrounding the 2019 suicide of British teenager Zac Brettler, who was living a double life posing as a Russian oligarch’s son, is investigated by the author of Empire of Pain.
The Overseer Class: A Manifesto
Steven W. Thrasher. Amistad, Apr. 28 ($29.99, ISBN 978-0-06-339941-9)
The author of The Viral Underclass explores the Faustian bargain members of marginalized groups must strike when selected for positions of power.
Undue Process: The Inside Story of Trump’s Mass Deportation Program
Julia Ainsley. Harper, June 16 ($32.50, ISBN 978-0-06-346894-8)
NBC News correspondent Ainsley offers a behind-the-scenes account of how a cadre of White House aides repeatedly broke the law to enact the Trump administration’s mass deportation plan.
The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet
Yi-Ling Liu. Knopf, Feb. 3 ($30, ISBN 978-0-593-49185-0)
This portrait of China’s online ecosystem from journalist Liu weaves together stories of both state control and personal
liberation found on the web.
longlist
Arsenal Pulp
Pizza Before We Die: An Eyewitness Account in Gaza by Hassan Kanafani (Apr. 7, $17.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-83405-032-4) provides a firsthand account of life in Gaza from an ordinary citizen who’s been documenting his daily experiences on Reddit since the genocide began.
Astra House
Dream Facades: The Cruel Architecture of Reality TV by Jack Balderrama Morley (Mar. 3, $28, ISBN 978-1-6626-0292-4) explores what the dwellings depicted on reality TV reveal about Americans’ deep-seated desires for safety and security.
Technology and Barbarism: Or: How Billionaires Will Save Us from the End of the World by Michel Nieva, trans. by Rahul Bery (Feb. 24, $18 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-6626-0318-1), examines, among other topics, the influence that science fiction has had on the convergence of tech and capitalism in Silicon Valley.
Atria
To Catch a Fascist: The Fight to Expose the Radical Right by Christopher Mathias (Feb. 3, $30, ISBN 978-1-6680-3476-7) spotlights the underground network of antifascists working, at great personal risk, to expose and oppose American neo-Nazis and white nationalists, all while being demonized as “antifa terrorists” in the press.
Bellevue Literary
To See Beyond: Essays by Anna Badkhen (Apr. 28, $17.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-954276-54-3). The National Book Award finalist ruminates on why, though the digital era has made the pain and suffering of others more visible than ever, both hostility and loneliness persist.
Bold Type
Strange People on the Hill: How Extremism Tore Apart a Small American Town by Michael Edison Hayden (Apr. 7, $30, ISBN 978-1-64503-060-7) investigates the tensions that erupted in a scenic West Virginia town when the white nationalist
group VDARE made a local historic site, a castle overlooking the town, into its headquarters.
Dial
Turn Where: A Geography of Home by Chet’la Sebree (May 5, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-59584-8). The James Laughlin Award–
winning poet interrogates America’s fraught relationship with its Black citizens, asking, among other questions, what it means to belong in a country that has never loved her.
Doubleday
Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI by Carissa Veliz (Apr. 21, $32.50, ISBN 978-0-385-55097-0) cautions that today’s computer scientists play the same role as ancient oracles or medieval astrologers, making predictions that determine the course of human lives as they advise on everything from loan applications to military targets.
Ecco
In Sickness and in Health: Love Stories from the Front Lines of America’s Caregiving Crisis by Laura Mauldin (Feb. 10, $30, ISBN 978-0-06-333913-2) profiles couples whose relationships are under strain as one partner is forced to become full-time caregiver to the other.
The Time Tax: How the Government Wastes Our Time—and How to Fix It by Annie Lowrey (June 9, $32, ISBN 978-0-06-344255-9) investigates the cost in time, aggravation, and mental effort imposed on Americans attempting to access their benefits, and traces the origins of such administrative burdens back to discriminatory post–Civil War bureaucratic schemes.
The Experiment
Where It Hurts: Dispatches from the Emotional Frontlines of Medicine, edited by Donna Bulseco (Mar. 24, $18.95 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-89303-104-1), collects writings by health care workers reflecting on their struggles with burnout, frustration, fear, and self-doubt, as well as the joys and successes that make their vocation worth it.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It by Samuel Moyn
(June 16, $30, ISBN 978-0-374-60764-7) proposes mandatory retirement ages, better benefits for retirees, and policies to encourage
asset transfers to younger generations as a means of rectifying America’s widening
economic divide between old and young.
Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class by Noam Scheiber (Apr. 7, $32, ISBN 978-0-374-61081-4) profiles a cohort of young, college-educated employees at a wide range of American businesses—from Apple stores to video game studios—who are embracing unionization as they realize their degrees are no longer tickets to the middle class.
Feminist Press
No! The Art and Activism of Complaining by Sara Ahmed (Apr. 7, $15.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-55861-368-3). The affect
theorist and author of Complaint! expands on her work analyzing how formal and informal complaints made within institutions
like universities function as a means to push for social change.
Flatiron
Aging Out: An Exploration of Caregiving, Community, and How Americans Grow Old by Lucy Schiller (July 14, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-250-34452-6) investigates the current deplorable state of American eldercare and ruminates on the connection between Americans’ fear of aging and their callousness toward their elders.
Grand Central
American Men by Jordan Ritter Conn (Apr. 21, $30, ISBN 978-1-5387-0909-2) follows, over the course of five years, four American men from vastly different backgrounds, providing an in-depth look at rarely discussed aspects of men’s lives including trauma, violence, sex, and friendship.
The Cruelty of Nice Folks: On Being Black in America’s Liberal Heartland by Justin Ellis (May 12, $30, ISBN 978-0-06-309124-5) grapples with the racist underbelly of ultraprogressive Minneapolis, from its decades of anti-Black housing discrimination to the murder of George Floyd.
Harper
Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff (Apr. 21, $30, ISBN 978-0-06-348432-0) maps Elon Musk’s influences, from South Africa to science fiction, to get a handle on the tech mogul’s particular brand of capitalism.
HarperOne
Screen People: How We Entertained Ourselves into a State of Emergency by Megan Garber (Apr. 21, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-341569-0) probes how the current media landscape, from post-truth politics to algorithmic siloing, encourages people to see others as entertainment and reality as spectacle.
Haymarket
Tending to Our Wounds: A Diasporic Memoir by Edna Bonhomme (July 21, $22.95 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-88890-595-1) sketches out an idiosyncratic personal history of the countries around the world the author has happened to call home—the U.S., Haiti, and Germany—and ruminates on how the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and racism stretch across borders.
Holt
Girls®: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything by Freya India (May 5, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-250-44222-2) contends that girlhood has become more commodified than ever, with young women no longer merely being sold products that prey on their anxieties but becoming the products themselves.
The Nord Stream Conspiracy: The Inside Story of the Explosions That Shook the World by Bojan Pancevski (June 16, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-250-41043-6) uncovers new details about the Ukrainian attack on Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline, and addresses popular conspiracy theories that it was a U.S.-led initiative or a Russian false flag operation.
Knopf
Bernie for Burlington: The Rise of the People’s Politician by Dan Chiasson (Feb. 3, $35, ISBN 978-0-593-31749-5). The poet and Burlington native recaps the early political career of Bernie Sanders in Vermont, where he forged a new, modern American socialism.
Little, Brown
The Great Refusal: A New Vision of Resistance by Casey Gerald (May 12, $29, ISBN 978-0-316-59741-8) calls for Black activists to consider new modes of resistance to white supremacy that don’t accept the oppressors’ own terms.
Mariner
Age of Security: How a Dangerous Obsession Has Stolen Our Privacy and Our Freedom by Ruben Andersson (May 5, $32.99, ISBN 978-0-06-344238-2) argues that the world’s growing web of surveillance and securitization—from border walls to video doorbells—is making everyone less safe as it weakens democracy and promotes authoritarianism.
Good Woman: A Reckoning by Savala Nolan (Mar. 3, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-06-332008-6) observes that conforming to the stereotypical expectations of womanhood has not brought the author, or other women in her life, any of the supposed benefits that conformity are meant to confer.
Melville House
Who’s Allowed to Protest? by Bruce Robbins (Feb. 24, $18.99 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-68589-257-9) dissects the charge of “privilege” that get lobbed at every new wave of American protestors, most recently those at pro-Palestinian college encampments, showing that the same complaints surfaced against Vietnam War protestors.
New Press
How We See It: The World Looks at America in the Age of Trump, edited by the Dial (June 9, $19.99 trade paper, ISBN 979-8-89385-022-2), collects the writings of foreign journalists reflecting on U.S. politics from the outside looking in.
Pushed to the Edge: Teachers’ Stories from the Culture Wars by Sue Granzella (Apr. 7, $29.99, ISBN 979-8-89385-014-7)
compiles accounts from educators in California who are facing down a growing wave of threats and harassment for teaching about race, gender, immigration, religion, and sexuality.
Norton
Law on Trial: An Unlikely Insider Reckons with Our Legal System by Shaun Ossei-Owusu (Apr. 14, $31.99, ISBN 978-1-324-12995-0) contends that the legal education system and inner machinery of the legal profession both work to perpetuate structural inequalities within the law.
One Signal
Seeking Sexual Freedom: African Rites, Rituals, and Sankofa in the Bedroom by Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah (Mar. 3, $29, ISBN 978-1-6682-0968-4) profiles traditional sex practices across Africa—particularly older women and gurus who guide girls through puberty and early marital life—and argues that such open, liberated sex lives are hampered by Western norms.
One World
Colored People Time: A Case for (Casual) Rebellion by Manny Fidel (Mar. 24, $28, ISBN 978-0-593-73066-9) humorously leans into the argument that, until genuine racial equity is achieved, people of color can be late to anything they want.
Pantheon
When the Revolution Comes: A Fight for the Future of the Working Class by Chris Smalls (June 2, $30, ISBN 978-0-593-70063-1) recollects the author’s 2020 battle, as his coworkers began to fall ill with Covid, to form the first Amazon union in the U.S. at a warehouse in Staten Island.
PublicAffairs
Dark Screens: Hackers and Heroes in the Shadowy World of Ransomware by Anja Shortland (Apr. 28, $30, ISBN 978-1-5417-0575-3) recounts major recent ransomware attacks, including ones against an L.A. hospital and the UK’s Royal Mail, and spotlights ransomware’s murky role in geopolitics, with known attacks undertaken by Russia and North Korea.
When Companies Run the Courts: How Forced Arbitration Became America’s Secret Justice System by Brendan Ballou (May 12, $30, ISBN 978-1-5417-0571-5) uncovers the corruption and abuses of the forced arbitration system, which allows companies to avoid being sued by employees and consumers.
Random House
A Pox on Fools: The True Believers, Grifters, and Cynics Who Convinced Us to Reject Vaccines by Thomas Levenson (May 12, $28, ISBN 979-8-217-15500-2) traces the origins of modern vaccine skepticism and makes arguments against skeptics’ common talking points.
Sarabande
Lucky Creatures: Essays by Joseph Trinidad (June 16, $18.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-956046-61-8) explores the complexities of identity and displacement through the author’s experiences as a Filipino immigrant in New Zealand and coming out as gay while grappling with a desire for a child.
Scribe US
Pride and Prejudices: Queer Lives and the Law by Keio Yoshida (Mar. 3, $24 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-964992-25-9) surveys recent and ongoing LGBTQ+ civil rights battles around the world.
Seal
Sex in Public: The Transformative Social Power of Our Erotic Lives by Angela Jones (June 16, $30, ISBN 978-1-5416-0543-5) argues that recent moral panics over trans and gay people are an example of repressive efforts to paint sex as inherently private, when in fact erotic life is fundamentally social.
Simon & Schuster
Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Ordinary People Forging a Revolution by Anand Gopal (Mar. 3, $30, ISBN 978-1-6680-6217-3). The Pulitzer and National Book Award finalist profiles residents of the northern Syrian city of Manbij who in 2011 began a political movement that eventually led to the overthrow of the Assad regime.
A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of Movies by David Thomson (July 7, $30, ISBN 978-1-6682-0573-0). Film critic Thomson reckons with the art form’s dark side, arguing that movies have in part been a destructive force responsible for the deepening isolation, disconnection, and passivity in contemporary society.
St. Martin’s
Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalries, Private Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare by Steven Feldstein (Mar. 10, $30, ISBN 978-1-250-39408-8) analyzes how advances in tech made by private companies are upending geopolitical relations between the U.S. and its major rivals.
Verso
The Alibi of Capital: How We Broke the Earth to Steal the Future on the Promise of a Better Tomorrow by Timothy Mitchell (Mar. 10, $34.95, ISBN 978-1-83674-227-2) argues that capitalism has always operated by saddling the future with costs incurred in the present and that this is key to understanding the current climate catastrophe.
Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization Without Political Consequences by Anton Jäger (Feb. 10, $19.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-83674-207-4) asks why, after a decade of surging political activism, mass movements have managed to change so little.
