Sisco (Honest Answers) mines her experience as a military interrogator for this intermittently insightful guide to combating psychological manipulation. Exploring techniques used to “exploit, control, and harm others,” she unpacks how and why gaslighting, negging, and reverse psychology work, often by skewing victims’ senses of reality or power. To protect themselves, readers can utilize 13 “power moves” that include trusting one’s gut, holding manipulators accountable with clear and specific questions, identifying what manipulators are using as bait, and gaining control of the situation by reflecting on one’s values and achieving manageable goals that build confidence. Sisco notes that dark psychology often stems from personality disorders like narcissism, but she stumbles in exploring how they might play out in relationships, relying on stereotypes like the “easily triggered partner” or the “overly emotional friend” that are too broad to be valuable. Still, the plentiful anecdotes that Sisco shares from her career make for a revealing and up-close analysis of the ways in which people exert control over one another. This has its moments. (July)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this poignant account, Lurie and Holocaust scholar Jacobs (Antisemitism) retrace the steps of Lurie’s father Sol, who survived six different Nazi concentration camps. In 1941, at 11 years old, Sol and his family, along with the entire Jewish population of Kovno, Lithuania, were rounded up in a ghetto established by the Nazis. The Kovno ghetto’s residents would later be taken to the Stuffhof concentration camp, from which Sol was then moved through five others: Kaufering, Landsberg, Dachau, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald. He narrowly escaped death on multiple occasions, sometimes due to luck, but often, as Sol would stress later in life, due to the unexpected kindness of others (at one point, in a shocking inversion of reader expectation, a Nazi soldier whom Sol family’s met on the road advised them not to continue in the same direction because Lithuanians further down the path were killing all the Jews who passed by). Sol didn’t begin sharing his story until 2004, but when he did, he emphasized that he was not “leaving this world until I accomplish my mission... that people love and respect one another.” The book is somewhat unevenly paced, as the authors alternate between Sol’s experiences and drily academic chapters on the wider war and Jewish history in the region. Still, it makes for an informative contribution to Holocaust studies. (June)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink

Historian and attorney Greenburg (The Noble Woman) offers a propulsive account of the 1978 Citicorp Center crisis, when the newly built 59-story Manhattan skyscraper was revealed to have a structural flaw that made it vulnerable to collapse. The book portrays William LeMessurier, the engineer who notified the public of the danger, as an intriguing figure for having copped up to such a massive error. (As LeMussurier later explained to his own engineering students, “Doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects” have “a social obligation to society.... You are supposed to be self-sacrificing and look beyond the interest of your client to society as a whole”). Greenberg details the decisions that led to the vulnerability: the last-minute replacement of welds with bolts impacted in unexpected ways the building’s unique design as a “skyscraper on stilts.” He also follows the summer 1978 race to fix the building before the autumn arrival of hurricane-level winds that gave it a one in 16 chance of collapse. Along the way, Greenburg offers fascinating insights into what the episode meant for the era’s economically struggling New York as well as captivatingly nuanced descriptions of the world of scientists, bureaucrats, architectural critics, thesis-writing doctoral students, and others who are involved in an undertaking as massive as the building of a skyscraper. It’s a thrilling saga of a disaster averted by dedicated professionals. (June)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this exquisite collection of travel dispatches, memoirist and novelist Taseer (The Dog of Tithwal) reflects on his relationship to place, what it means to be cut off from one’s home, and what leads to the formation of national identity and the rise of nationalism. At the outset, Taseer, who was born in Britain but raised in India and was a dual citizen of both countries, relates how in 2019 India’s government revoked his citizenship after he wrote an article critical of Prime Minister Narenda Modi. The government’s pretext was that Taseer had “concealed the Pakistani origins of my father” (an “odd accusation” because Taseer had written multiple books and essays about his father, the former governor of Punjab). This experience of bizarre, identity-based targeting by a nationalist government causes Taseer to begin to see his travels—which were commissioned by T magazine—in a new light. He becomes increasingly attuned to the palimpsest nature of place—with multiple identities and time periods layered over one spot—as well as the interconnectedness of the world at any given time. For instance, he finds Turkey in the throes of a nationalist wave deeply similar and seemingly directly connected to developments in India. Meanwhile in Mexico, he encounters similarities not borne of modern connections, but of a long-ago identitarian movement, the Reconquista, when Spain expelled its Muslim and Jewish populations. Sumptuously written and elegantly observed, this is a stunning and immersive vision of a fully interdependent world. (July)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink

Former Wall Street Journal publisher House (On Saudi Arabia) paints an uneven portrait of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince. The book comprises a series of thematic, at times repetitive essays that document how the sixth son of an elderly king radically changed the country in less than a decade. While briefly covering Mohammed Bin Salman’s consolidation of power, which involved trapping dozens of influential Saudis in a Ritz-Carlton, House mainly focuses on MBS’s efforts to implement his “vision of a new, modern kingdom,” including by allowing women more rights and pioneering “gigaprojects,” such as Neom, a “futuristic development the size of Massachusetts.” House’s effusive descriptions of MBS—who “doesn’t need sartorial trappings of power or regal airs because he has the real stuff”—and firsthand accounts of his development projects, including a theme park where “a visitor can’t help but be struck by the relaxed smiles of Saudis,” can be strikingly uncritical. This is especially jarring in combination with her coverage of imprisonments, disappearances, and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which she concludes was “a rendition gone wrong.” House is at her most astute when she analyzes MBS’s position as a young man at the helm of an even younger country (“Some 65 percent of Saudis are under thirty”) that is in pursuit of “big dreams.” Still, this feels like a missed opportunity. (July)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink

Memoirist and sports writer Dodson (The Range Bucket List) offers a charming look at the Great Wagon Road, the mid-18th-century route by which American colonists from the North settled the mountainous backcountries of the South. Inspired by the knowledge that his own ancestors traveled the Wagon Road to settle in the Carolinas, Dodson retraces the route from Philadelphia to Augusta, Ga. Along the way, he visits spots ranging from a colonial-style tavern in Philadelphia—where he eats a “period-correct supper”—to the Pennsylvania site of a 1763 massacre of dozens of unarmed Conestogas by the “Paxton Boys,” a settler mob that operated with the collusion of local authorities. Dodson notes a resonance between this period—the era of James Buchanan, whose chaotic administration led the nation “to the brink of civil war”—and today. He also moves through history as he travels, reflecting on America’s trajectory from the Revolution (he visits a North Carolina battlefield where the British faced off against the backcountry’s “Overmountain Men”) to the Civil War (the abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens was born into a Wagon Road family) and the civil rights movement (he recalls his father bringing him, on his seventh birthday, to witness the Greensboro lunch counter sit-in). With its many perceptive reflections on the movements of history, this edifies. (July)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink

Headaches can be “among the worst pain disorders known to human beings,” according to studies journalist Zeller cites in his moving debut. Noting that he has suffered from cluster headaches for over 30 years, Zeller recounts “writhing on the bathroom floor” and collapsing unconscious from pain, and traces the history of treatments for cluster headaches and the more common migraine (around 12,000 years ago, sufferers often underwent trepanation, or the drilling of a hole in the skull to relieve pressure). Contending that remarkably little is actually understood about headaches, Zeller points out that basic questions about their causes remain unresolved, and that they are frequently dismissed as “just a headache.” He explains the current landscape of solutions and cures, including stress reduction and relaxation therapy, and writes that while these may help, for most people, they’re as practical as “meditating your way out of cancer.” Zeller is a strong writer, especially when it comes to describing pain: “It’s all just poetry in the end—like trying to describe the color of an atom, or the texture of gravity, or the shape of sadness.” The result is an eye-opening study of an all-too-common affliction. Agent: Mackenzie Brady Watson, Stuart Krichevsky Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink

Gregory (Meteorite), a nuclear chemist at the U.K.’s main site for processing and storing nuclear waste, offers an impassioned and convincing defense of nuclear power. He describes how, in the face of climate change, governments are searching for an emissions-free form of energy that can allow standards of living to improve. Nuclear power, he argues, is the golden ticket. He explains that renewables including wind and solar, while helpful, are incapable of meeting society’s needs because their power fluctuates with the weather and there is no easy way to store their output if it’s generated at times when it isn’t needed. Nuclear, on the other hand, can immediately be ramped up or down to meet demand. Gregory argues that deaths attributed to nuclear power are orders of magnitude fewer than those caused by coal and oil, but notes that nuclear “feels far more deadly” because of “radiophobia.” He also makes a case that the process of dealing with nuclear waste can be made even safer by recycling spent fuel rods for additional fuel. Gregory’s conversational tone is a boon, and he balances it with solid data. The result is an evenhanded defense of a much-vilified industry. Agent: Matthew Cole, North Bank Talent. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink

Reinecke, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington, offers an informative debut on cultural differences in technology. Most tech is built with the U.S. and Western markets in mind, Reinecke explains, and taking a one-size-fits-all approach can make even big corporations fail in markets they haven’t researched properly. For example, in South Korea, Naver.com is a more popular search engine than Google thanks to its search feature being more akin to a q&a format with user-generated answers. This approach, according to Reinecke, makes it better suited to a “collectivist society.” Similarly, Uber had a hard time breaking into Bangladesh because of the country’s culture of negotiating rates and the fact that “only 11% of Bangladeshis had access to the Internet in 2016.” Reinecke shares how her studies helped companies consider design changes they should make to their websites in order to increase conversion rates across countries and cultures, and she skillfully lays out her research findings, including that neighboring countries tend to have similar design preferences (for example, countries from Northern Europe prefer simple websites while countries from Southern Europe prefer more colorful ones). It makes for a fascinating study on culture and tech. (July)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink

California State University history professor Choi debuts with an enthralling biography of “coroner to the stars” Thomas Noguchi, who performed high-profile autopsies on celebrities including Marilyn Monroe, RFK, and the victims of the Manson Family. Born in 1927, Noguchi immigrated to the U.S. from Japan after WWII, only to encounter racism that limited his professional opportunities. The medical training Noguchi had received in Japan led him to seek work at the L.A. County Coroner’s Office, where he landed a job despite resistance from white colleagues. Choi covers Noguchi’s professional triumphs and most notable cases—including his autopsy of RFK, which gave rise to conspiracy theories after Noguchi determined the politician was shot from behind, rather than straight-on—as well as his challenges, including administrative backlogs, contaminated tissue samples, and the theft of valuable items from corpses under his watch. The author’s portrait of Noguchi is satisfyingly complex: she acknowledges his skill and pushes back against certain accusations of negligence, but doesn’t shy away from his notorious headline-chasing, particularly when discussing his public statements about the cases of Natalie Wood and William Holden. At once a lurid collection of true crime stories and an edifying glimpse at midcentury California, this fascinates. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink