The urge to remake oneself—through therapy, religious conversion, or otherwise—is probed in this colorful deep dive into personal change. Journalist Denizet-Lewis (Travels with Casey) pursues many offbeat examples of self-reinvention, among them a schoolyard bully who grew up to be a Buddhist monk and learned to detach from his aggressive impulses; an obstreperous octogenarian—she threatened to stab Denizet-Lewis during an interview—who underwent hypnosis to curb her outbursts; and convicted murderers who used a mix of repentance and therapy-speak to convince the California parole board that they were new men. Denizet-Lewis also chronicles his own efforts to cure his sex addiction with the aid of questionable therapists—one urged him to attach pictures of his parents to a punching bag and pummel them—and magic mushrooms, and recalls mystical epiphanies that did or did not change his life. Denizet-Lewis attributes the rising obsession with self-transformation partly to today’s climate of “collective anxiety, ideological whiplash, and the uneasy sense that everything has simultaneously changed too fast and not nearly enough.” Beneath that, he writes, is a universal desire for change that’s as “messy and convoluted” as it is irresistible. (“Change is scary,” he writes, “not only because it scrambles instinct and routine, but also because we can’t predict where it will lead or end.”) Combining shrewd analysis and evocative reportage, this offers an entertaining and insightful take on humanity’s unappeasable drive to be different. Readers will be riveted. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

These funny and eclectic essays from Laithland (Momma Cusses) unpack what it means to learn to be “an unabashed whole person.” The author, who unexpectedly became a mom at age 23, expounds on developing a “trial and error” parenting style that teaches kids “to successfully fail, learn from our mistakes, and try not to repeat them”; being diagnosed with ADHD at age 37—which provided an answer to her lifelong questions about why “I couldn’t just brain the way I wanted to”; and dealing with imposter syndrome following an emotionally abusive relationship with a man who critiqued nearly everything about her, including her choice of sandwich. The author’s wry, self-aware tone energizes her candid insights about evolving as an adult in ways that can be uncomfortable (on teaching her kids to love their bodies: “If I wanted them to embrace their meat bags in a healthy, appreciative way, I was going to have to stop hiding my form and learn how to embrace all the work and effort it’s done, even in periods where I couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of it properly”). Moms will be entertained and reassured in equal measure by Laithland’s chatty confessions. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Travel writer Eaves-Egenes (Lonely Planet’s Best of London) delivers an enthralling exploration of humanity’s relationship with the dark. Today, blazing city lights and thousands of orbiting satellites fill the night sky, washing out stars to the point that most people can no longer see the Milky Way. To better understand what’s been lost, Eaves-Egenes traveled to dark-sky locations around the world—from New Mexico to Mount Everest to Argentina. She finds that across cultures and throughout history, humans have had an intimate connection to the night sky; the Maori people of New Zealand use stars as cues for planting and spiritual rituals, and the Ladakhi in the Himalayas incorporate the study of stars into medicinal practices. At the same time, fear of the dark remains a common phobia, perhaps dating back to prehistoric ancestors who were vulnerable to predators at night. Eaves-Egenes confronted this fear by attending a four-day darkness retreat at a monastery in Germany, which gave her “the ability to simply be, with no agenda, task, or need.” The disappearance of darkness as outdoor light levels increase impacts everyone, she explains, disrupting circadian rhythms and sleep cycles and wreaking havoc on plants and animals. Throughout, she combines captivating history and science with evocative personal reflections (“The more time I spent in darkness, the more it seemed to heal me”). Readers will be moved and enlightened. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Cognitive scientist Kreuz (Linguistic Fingerprints) offers a wide-ranging investigation of plagiarism as both a psychological and cultural phenomenon. Surveying famous examples across history, he spotlights plagiarists’ reasonings, litigates whether the charge of plagiarism is really warranted in some cases, and explores whether the idea of “unconscious plagiarism” is scientifically plausible. (It is, it turns out—Kreuz ends up making a case that it’s so plausible the law should hold those who’ve committed it less culpable; among the “unconscious” plagiarizers he pinpoints as perhaps deserving a pass are Helen Keller and George Harrison). Examples cited range from Vladimir Putin, who seems to have partly plagiarized his college thesis from a textbook, to the likes of Mahler, Nabokov, and Bob Dylan, the latter of whom, when accused of plagiarism, asserted that “all my stuff comes out of the folk tradition” and “you make everything yours,” adding that “only wussies and pussies complain about that stuff.” Kreuz notes that his most surprising finding is that plagiarism is far more common a practice than he had realized and that nearly everyone engages in it at some point, many routinely. Indeed, the book presents no one as above reproach—even Jesus, Kreuz points out, was accused of plagiarizing Plato. Full of entertaining anecdotes, this is a thorough overview of current understandings of plagiarism’s motivations and its role in artistic production. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

President Truman only received partial and misleading information ahead of the atomic bombing of Japan, according to this sensational account from historian Wellerstein (Restricted Data). Truman believed that the target would be a purely military one, Wellerstein provocatively argues, pointing out that Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s notes on his briefings with the president never indicate that he informed Truman civilians would be killed, and that a “sample” bombing announcement given to Truman named “Nagasaki Naval Base” as the target, which he would not have realized was a city. As Wellerstein points out, Nagasaki was not actually being considered at this time—instead, Gen. Leslie Groves was pushing for Kyoto, and Stimson was defending it because he’d honeymooned there. Wellerstein highlights how strange it is that behind-the-scenes wrangling over destroying a major city was happening even as Truman was hearing about a “naval base.” Moreover, a journal entry of Truman’s from this period unequivocally states that military personnel would be targeted; he continued asserting that no civilians had been killed up until reports of the Hiroshima death toll began to break, Wellerstein notes. Most shockingly, the author posits that Truman was so uninformed that he “almost certainly had no clue that another atomic bomb was about to be dropped.” It’s a remarkable act of reading between the lines and a dark warning about how decisions unfold in the halls of power. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Steele, a social psychologist and bestselling author of Whistling Vivaldi, delivers a captivating follow-up to that volume’s groundbreaking scholarship on the psychology of stereotypes. Beginning with what he sees as the core problem of social life, the inevitable “tension... between races, ethnicities, genders, [and] social classes” that arises “as we live and work together” and can lead to vicious cycles of increasing factionalism—a phenomenon he calls “churn”—the author offers a guide to overcoming such divisions through the conscientious practice of “trust-building.” Noting that many institutions in America have taken it upon themselves to promote diversity and reduce stratification but have sometimes failed to achieve results, Steele suggests that early on there was an over-emphasis on self and “identity,” and instead posits that true diversity requires allowing “others to tell me how they’d like to be seen” and openness to learning more about one another. Drawing on his own and others’ scholarship and a host of case studies, he makes a powerful argument for “trust” as the fundamental missing element both to diversity efforts and in American society at large. The methods he recommends are built around instructive questioning and listening to others, and tend to propose offering practical, concrete assistance to others as a show of “good faith”—or, as he pithily admonishes: “Render real help.” It adds up to an elegant, concise, and moving suggestion that a little kindness would go a very long way.

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Unlike women’s rights, disability rights, and the rights of numerous other protected groups, there is no binding international treaty guaranteeing LGBTQ+ rights, notes international human rights lawyer Yoshida (How Many More Women?) in this informative, at times heart-wrenching survey of laws pertaining to LGBTQ+ people around the world. Beginning with Oscar Wilde’s 1895 indecency trial, Yoshida spotlights past and ongoing legal battles that have led to the current state of affairs, wherein 69 countries penalize private same-sex activity, including 11 that call for the death penalty. Throughout, Yoshida emphasizes how these laws, even when less drastic, serve to ostracize and exclude LGBTQ+ people from normal civic life, such as Italy’s ban on gay couples being named the parents of the same child on a birth certificate, which compels couples to travel to other countries to give birth. Yoshida ties each legal case back to their own life experiences coming out as a lesbian and later as trans and nonbinary, reflecting on how the legality or illegality of one’s identity impacts one’s deepest sense of self. (“I felt despair,” they write of their teen years in Northern Ireland. “I didn’t understand then the difference between a crime and a sin.”) It’s an enraging window on the ongoing battle to secure LGBTQ+ rights. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Astrologer Wintersteen (By the Stars) aims in this lucid guide to help readers harness the power “within” to live more authentically. The key, she explains, is listening to one’s intuition in all its forms, including “gut feelings” and everyday hunches; the “heart intuition,” or a magnetic desire toward someone or something; and the “visionary intuition” that lets one peer into “the bigger picture of your life’s journey.” Such tools, she writes, allow readers to tap into “the answers” that are “tucked away in your amazing mind and heart.” Wintersteen shares solid advice for sharpening intuition by cultivating a breathing practice, becoming aware of damaging behaviors—like emotional hypervigilance—that mask the intuitive voice, and establishing grounding routines to counter stress. Along the way, she skillfully intertwines her advice with her own story of learning to live a more aligned life, from dropping out of academia to grappling with a failed marriage and founding Spirit Daughter, an online platform that aims to help seekers create better lives through astrology. While her ideas are familiar, her delivery hits just the right balance of clarity, compassion, and encouragement. This will please Wintersteen’s fans and win her new ones. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

New York Times reporter Streitfeld (Ursula K. Le Guin: The Last Interview) delivers an entertaining and distinctive biography of novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry, who died in 2021. A longtime friend of McMurtry’s, Stretifeld forgoes comprehensiveness in favor of delving into the writer’s fascination with the West. He establishes McMurtry’s Western bona fides by tracing his family history as hardworking ranchers in the Texas panhandle who “use[d] up all the daylight,” a legacy that informed his preoccupation with the state and influenced his novel Lonesome Dove. Elsewhere, Streitfeld chronicles the making of the film adaptation of The Last Picture Show, McMurtry’s 1966 novel about teens growing up in a small Texas town. Along the way, Streitfeld unravels myths McMurtry created about himself, noting that despite his claims that certain stories were autobiographical, “the search for real-life models in Larry’s works never arrives anywhere definitive.” Drawing on voicemails and personal conversations with McMurtry, Streitfeld brings the writer’s unfiltered voice and unique anecdotes into the narrative, including his dedication to the bookstore he owned in his hometown of Archer City, where he opened boxes and priced books “until his body literally could not do it anymore.” The result is a memorable portrait of a Texas icon. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink

Alaska’s harsh conditions mirror a woman’s emotionally barren childhood in this intense debut memoir from Aikens, star of National Geographic’s Life Below Zero. Growing up in the 1960s and ’70s with a distant mother who bounced between partners, Aikens learned self-reliance early. She didn’t ask many questions when her mother suddenly moved the family to Alaska—she just recalled the wilderness lessons she’d received from a Dakota elder whom she befriended while living in the Midwest. As Aikens unpacks the scars of her childhood, which left her with the “emotional capacity of a Ritz cracker,” she recalls moving to the Lower 48 and marrying two men in the 1980s, working as a trapper in Alaska, and finding peace by living in a remote campground in Alaska’s North Slope. Highlighting both the beauty and the heartbreak of bone-deep solitude, Aikens’s account captures the rugged appeal of life off the grid despite harrowing challenges, including a near-fatal bear attack (“Nothing on this earth can prepare you for the sound of your own skull cracking in the jaws of a grizzly”). Readers will find this exciting and uplifting. Agent: Byrd Leavell, UTA. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/16/2026 | Details & Permalink