In this can-do debut, Irani mines her and her husband’s experience of founding their Asheville, N.C., Indian restaurant, Chai Pani, for upbeat business advice. In 2009, the pair had been “diligently slogging away at our jobs to pay the bills” when a midlife crisis inspired them to open a restaurant based on the flavorful Indian street food Irani’s husband had grown up eating. Despite the lingering effects of the Great Recession and little restaurant industry experience, they set about putting their idea into practice—securing financing, recruiting staff, creating a colorful, energetic design aesthetic, and buying and converting a space within just two months. Irani spends much of the account discussing how she and her husband learned to create workable systems, and invested in their employees by assigning roles that catered to individual strengths and reimagining service traditions to ensure team bonding. (She also describes tackling unexpected challenges raised by the Covid-19 pandemic, during which the restaurant briefly transitioned to take-out only.) Irani seamlessly interweaves the Chai Pani story with applicable business lessons, and she’s frank about the many hurdles founders face, even as she highlights the heady, unexpected joys of bringing one’s dream to life. Aspiring entrepreneurs and foodies alike will savor this. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Journalist Moor (On Trails) defines trees as “a way of being” in this impassioned examination of their history and biology. Since human ancestors lived among their branches, trees have shaped humanity’s sense of time, self, and life, Moor argues. He recounts his own experience climbing trees, including a course he took in England, where, high up off the ground, he felt “precarious, grateful, and, most of all, alive.” Elsewhere, he shares findings from tree science, explaining how they exhale by opening pores on their leaves that allow water to evaporate; shed and regrow their branches; and, in some species, change sexes throughout their lifetimes. Moor also explores his family tree and learns about a slave-owning ancestor, which prompts him to travel to Alabama to reckon with this legacy. Trees inspire his view of history: “The present grows, always, upon the deadwood of the past,” he writes. This “arborescent thinking” encourages him to participate in a protest atop a tree slated for felling and inspires his own desire for rootedness: “to stay put, to slow down, to learn my local ecology.” Synthesizing reportage and philosophy, Moor’s nature writing is beautiful and refreshingly original. The result is a moving testament to the power of trees. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Nature writer Ruth (A Sideways Look at Clouds) delivers a charming natural history of the Pigeon Guillemot, a seabird found along the Pacific coast from Alaska to Southern California. Despite their abundance, they aren’t widely known, Ruth explains, blaming their “misleading and awkwardly unpronounceable name” (they’re auks, not pigeons, and Guillemot, though it looks French, is pronounced GILL-uh-mott). After a friend convinced her to volunteer to survey a guillemot colony in Puget Sound, she became captivated by the playful creatures, whose “fire-engine red webbed feet dangle comically beneath them like loose rudders.” Ruth details the bird’s behaviors, including its tendency to stay within 15 miles from the shore in a “just right” zone of not too hot or too cold water; courtship rituals (the male paddles around a female, dipping his head in and out of the water, seemingly “head over heels”); and vocalizations (they have more than a dozen “trills, whistles, and screams”). Elsewhere, she celebrates the network of volunteers whose regular counts of the birds help scientists understand the health of Puget Sound at large. Though at times the author goes overboard with detail, including dense descriptions of museum collections and studies to distinguish the Pigeon Guillemot from other species, her enthusiasm is contagious. This is a treat for bird lovers. Photos. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this meandering WWII saga, NCIS star Harmon and former real-life NCIS agent Carroll, authors of Ghosts of Honolulu, recap Operation Underworld, an effort by the Office of Naval Intelligence to use gangsters who ran New York City’s waterfront as intelligence assets. Hatched by ONI officers including Lt. Anthony Marsloe and Lt. Paul Alfieri, the initiative enlisted underworld kingpins like Lucky Luciano to appeal to dockworkers to watch for Axis spies or U-boats attempting to refuel. The operation was extensive, but didn’t achieve much; U-boats had their own resupply ships, and no spies were caught. Later, Operation Underworld’s gangster assets helped recruit Italian immigrants to provide maps and intelligence contacts for the 1943 Allied invasions of Sicily. This effort bore fruit when mobsters connected Alfieri, who deployed to Sicily, with a local man who led him to a trove of Italian military documents, including artillery positions. Later chapters recount further adventures of ONI men and mobsters in Italy, including American mafioso Vito Genovese’s black market dealings in military supplies, and Marsloe’s hunt for the Italian frogmen who were attaching mines to Allied ships. (He didn’t find them until the war ended.) Though the authors goose their account with dialogue that reads like an NCIS script, there’s not much suspense to many of these tales. Still, dedicated history buffs will find some amusing anecdotes. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Today’s algorithmically generated “predictive” decisions, from loan approvals to missile strikes, are, despite their scientific veneer, no less expressions of cultural and personal desires than the “prophecies” of earlier eras, ethicist Véliz (Privacy Is Power) argues in this captivating study. Surveying the long history of prediction, from the “oracle bones” of Shang dynasty China (1600–1046 BCE) to the writings of England’s 16th-century “astrologer-physicians, Véliz shows that “prediction cannot be disentangled from power.” In classical Greece, for instance, the priestesses of the Oracle of Delphi were known to [accept] bribes in return for delivering convenient political messages. Véliz shows how statistical prediction similarly undergirded a range of fraught political and economic developments in the 19th century, from the rise of race science to the emergence of the insurance industry. The proliferation in recent years of machine learning, large language models, and so-called artificial intelligence has turbocharged the role of prediction in culture, she notes. The rise of AI chatbots, in particular, has brought humans back full circle to ancient forms of prophecy like the Oracle of Delphi. By employing statistical models to guess the most appropriate response to a given prompt, chatbots enact the same ancient feedback loop of power and desire, hidden behind a quasi-mystical process. Véliz elucidates complex philosophical and technological concepts with ease, while covering a vast range of topics. Lively and erudite, this impresses. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Naiden, a historian and former MTA motorman, debuts with an endearing memoir of his time at the helm of New York City’s subway trains. After slogging through an entry-level job at McDonald’s and a gig selling bras on Orchard Street in 1980s Manhattan, a young Naiden sought more stable employment with the MTA to support himself and his wife. He first worked as a porter, performing custodial duties throughout the subway system, before being promoted to train operator. The most exciting passages chronicle the hazards of the job: blown fuses, failing headlights, and perilous emergency repairs, including a harrowing episode in the Harlem River Tunnel. Equally fascinating is Naiden’s account of labor activism within the subway system: a staunch union supporter who served as shop steward, he details the hard-won, sometimes violent history of organizing for worker safety. After one too many close calls, Naiden retired before qualifying for a pension, his relief sharpened by memories of colleagues injured or responsible for others’ injuries on the job. Blending memoir with institutional history, this fast-paced, edifying account elicits fresh appreciation for the workers who keep New York City moving. It’s a ride worth taking. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

“I am writing these words at a strange moment in my life: I have just been sanctioned by the United States.... for the absurd ‘crime’ of allegedly working with the International Criminal Court,” begins this incisive, heart-wrenching account from UN special rapporteur Albanese (Palestinian Refugees in International Law). The author spotlights the “unspeakable suffering” of the Palestinians and examines fraught questions around the Israeli occupation through close looks at 10 individuals who have shaped her thinking. They include slain five-year-old Hind Rajab; trauma expert Gabor Maté; Abu Hassan, a Palestinian acquaintance who took Albanese on an “alternative tour” of Jerusalem, including areas where “children had to crawl through sewage pipes to go to school because of the obstacles put in place by the Israelis”; and the author’s own husband, who used to accompany West Bank Palestinians in their daily activities in order to shield them from settler violence. Along the way, Albanese delves into complicated debates surrounding Israel-Palestine, such as whether to call the system of government apartheid; incorporates her own observations from living in Jerusalem, including a distressing encounter when an Israeli man told a Palestinian friend, “You don’t exist”; and draws on harrowing remote interviews she conducted with Gazan children in 2022. It’s an indispensable, at times deeply sickening, overview of the situation on the ground in Palestine. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this encouraging how-to, novelist Ausubel (The Last Animal) catalogs writing’s many “doorways” and the keys to unlocking them. She augments these lessons with personal stories of her own zigzagging journey through the creative process. Her plethora of sage suggestions include “Cut half the things on your plot to-do list. Spend twice as much time in moments that matter to characters,” and “Close your eyes. Breathe deeply and slowly. Place yourself in a scene you want to write.” Ausubel also tackles how to prepare for the next day’s writing session, suggesting: “Write the word NEXT at the bottom of the page and jot down your ideas for the next two scenes, ideas, moments, or questions.” Throughout, she provides a kind, supportive voice to help keep nascent writers on course. Her calming vibe is encapsulated by her parting words in doorway #101, “Begin Anywhere (Again),” wherein she advises: “I want you to finish a project and hold it in your hands. But here’s what I know: When you get there, after the high fives and a cocktail, everyone else will go home and all you’ll be left with is a chair and desk, your own mind, and a thousand, million doorways. And it will be the most beautiful thing in the world.” This is a gentle tonic for writers in need of a boost. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Wolfe (Birdie & Harlow), a comedian and mother of two, sheds light on the absurdities and indignities of modern parenting in this irreverent and insightful essay collection. She opens with a detailed recollection of letting her toddler, who needed to pee but refused to use the toilet, urinate in her toilet-paper-covered hands during a road trip. Also explored is the weight of being a lifelong “overthinker/anxious worrier”; after “giving up” anxiety as a New Year’s resolution, she confuses heartburn for a heart attack and goes to the ER. She covers many relatable motherhood experiences, like her struggles with breastfeeding, the crushing worry she felt leaving her kids behind to go on a trip, and the frustration of being bombarded with unsolicited parenting advice while pregnant (“If you think you’re tired now, just you wait”). With sharp humor and a keen eye for detail, Wolfe lays bare the complexities of juggling motherhood, career, and marriage. Lively prose puts a fresh spin on oft-discussed parenting experiences, such as when she describes being moved to the operating table for a C-section: “I was lifted in my sheets like a human taco.” These candid reflections will land with busy moms. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Retired firefighter Frank (Burnt) examines the allure of pickleball in this sweet if underwhelming account of why she and millions of other Americans are obsessed with the sport. After joining a friend at a community center pickleball game in 2021, Frank was immediately hooked. Here, she traces its origins to Bainbridge Island in 1965 and describes attending pickleball camp, tournaments, and the country’s first PickleCon. At each stop, she asks seasoned players why the non-volley zone is called “the kitchen”—a recurring question that promises intrigue but goes unanswered. At the U.S. Open Pickleball Championships in Naples, Fla., Frank, alongside thousands of other fans, watches tennis legend Andre Agassi play with the top female pickleball player. She discovers pickleball’s reach has even spread to prisons, including the Donovan Correctional Facility in California, where the Menendez brothers play. The book’s best insights explain why so many have turned to the sport: unlike golf or tennis, Frank notes, nobody has been playing pickleball since the age of five, creating a democratic environment where almost anyone can dominate. But such analyses are compressed into brief observations, as Frank focuses primarily on her personal journey. This is best suited for pickleball devotees seeking affirmation of their shared passion. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink