Marston Pierce, founder of Marston Studios, an interior design company, debuts with a wry guide to modern-day etiquette. She argues that being “fancy” isn’t a matter of “how you look [or] how much money you have” but a way of valuing oneself and one’s peers highly. Applying that philosophy to multiple areas of life, she dispenses advice on entertaining without overspending, decorating one’s home elegantly, finding a personal style (quality’s more important than quantity, and readers can find secondhand designer pieces online or at thrift stores), and more generally treating friends, family, and service staff well. The guide is at its most useful when addressing etiquette for the modern age, including rules about phones at the dinner table (keep it in one’s pocket if at all possible, and never swipe on someone else’s phone unless they’ve specifically given permission). Along the way, Marston Pierce successfully reframes “fanciness” as more about measured self-improvement than hewing to social strictures. The result is a funny, self-aware update on Emily Post’s Etiquette. Illus. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

Readers can chase their dreams without burning out or sacrificing their happiness, contends this down-to-earth guide from Ekstrom (Chasing the Bright Side), founder of Mic Drop Workshop, a company that teaches women public speaking. After starting two multimillion-dollar businesses by age 30, the author was nevertheless starved for validation and sought to understand how to find lasting fulfillment and motivation. The key, she realized, lies in defining one’s own concept of success and then relying on intrinsic motivation—rather than fickle external motivators, like money or praise—to get there. According to Ekstrom, intrinsic motivation is conducive to long-term success because it allows people to enjoy the path toward their goal and feel in control of their success along the way, which prevents burnout. The guide is bolstered with valuable anecdotes from Ekstrom’s professional and personal life, including how motherhood and postpartum depression shaped her approach to entrepreneurship. There are also plenty of actionable tips on topics like gracefully receiving feedback, casting aside limiting self-narratives, and pivoting in the wake of unexpected challenges. Aspiring entrepreneurs will get a lot out of this. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

This shocking exposé uncovers how Chicago police have used false confessions and cherry-picked evidence to systematically produce wrongful convictions of African American boys. Sociologist Gonzalez Van Cleve (Crook County) spotlights harrowing examples of children being falsely accused of extreme violence; they include the 1961 case of Lee Hester, a disabled 14-year-old convicted of murdering his teacher, a charge considered laughable by those who knew him, and of seven-year-old Romarr Gipson and eight-year-old Elijah Henderson, accused in 1998 of the brutal sexual assault and murder of an 11-year-old despite being physically unable to commit the crime. The author shows how, in each case, police dismissed exonerating evidence, from “a grown man’s shoe print” to airtight alibis like already being in police custody at the time. Along the way she unveils a clear “set of patterns and practices that allowed police to bury evidence,” such as 12-hour-long interrogations of impressionable children and selective reframing of evidence. Gonzalez Van Cleve’s most alarming discoveries involve the continued use of long-banned practices, such as “street files,” separate files of evidence hidden from defense attorneys, as well as law enforcement protecting itself from scrutiny through intimidation of both exonerees (one of whom was “stopped nearly twenty-five times for traffic violations”) and whistleblowers, including a detective whose squad car’s brakes were cut after he advocated for a child’s innocence. It’s a bone-chilling revelation of a “shadow system of justice” responsible for devastating untold numbers of lives. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

Qureshi, an organizational strategy consultant, and Richardson (Negotiation Analysis), a lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, offer a straightforward guide to applying persuasion skills to everyday life. Contending that life is a series of negotiations, whether it be dealing with an annoying neighbor or getting a promotion at work, they offer habit-building techniques designed to strengthen confidence and strategic thinking. Drawing on academic research and FBI tactics, they emphasize reciprocity, or how doing someone a favor can make them more inclined to repay the generosity down the line; the importance of understanding each party’s underlying motivations, including one’s own; and the necessity of saying “no” to some requests in order to say “yes” to what’s most important. Also included are exercises for improving negotiation skills, like practicing using acquaintances’ names in conversation to build connections, making a list of interests to home in on one’s desires, and asking about others’ interests to understand their needs. The advice is well organized and readily applicable, though promises of securing “exactly what you want” overstate what skill alone can accomplish in structurally uneven situations. Even so, the authors’ practical framing and concise presentation make the material easy to implement in professional and personal contexts. This will be a boon to readers seeking to sharpen their persuasive edge. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

Novelist Masad (Beings) and Seibert Desjarlais, a literature professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha, argue in this fun anthology of essays by viewers of the reality TV series The Bachelor that the franchise’s fandom “is a rich space for discourse on culture, race, sexuality, gender, human behavior, and community.” Claire Fallon and Emma Gray, cohosts of the reality TV podcast Love to See It, kick off the collection by discussing how in the 2010s The Bachelor became a lightning rod for political debate; it attracted conservative viewers who enjoyed the show’s largely white, Christian cast as well as liberal feminists who critiqued it as an example of outdated cultural norms. Subsequent critical essays take aim at the show’s stereotypical representations of contestants of color, its focus on heterosexual relationships, and its perpetuation of impossible standards for femininity. Other entries praise the franchise as a way to spend time with friends and connect over show-related gossip, an opportunity to escape from the complexities of real life, and a chronicle of genuine human moments, like the nonromantic relationships that arise between contestants. Offering intriguing arguments and passionate appraisals, this is a testament to the undeniable pull of a cultural touchstone. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

Actor and Pen15 cocreator Konkle debuts with a funny and heartbreaking autobiography that centers on her bumpy relationship with her father. Growing up as an only child in New England, Konkle idolized her offbeat dad, Peter, a 7-Eleven HR professional. Peter and Konkle’s mother, Janet, fought frequently, divorcing when Konkle was in seventh grade but remaining in the same home. From there, the memoir grows melancholy, as Konkle parallels her acceptance to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with Peter’s increasingly antisocial behavior. A shocking confrontation between Konkle and Peter when the author was in her early 20s left the pair estranged for several years, until Peter reemerged to tell Konkle, who had since moved to Los Angeles and entered a steady relationship, that he had health problems, which turned out to be lung cancer. Throughout, Konkle walks a tonal tightrope, blending the cringe comedy that made Pen15 a runaway hit with a more serious-minded humanity that allows her to render Peter in three dimensions and deeply consider the effects of her childhood on her adult life. Elegant prose, laugh-out-loud dialogue, and a tender heart make this a delight even for readers unfamiliar with Konkle’s TV work. Agent: Daniel Greenberg, Levine Greenberg Rostan. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

Historian Holland (Normandy ’44) opens this probing study of the political economy of WWII by analyzing the conflict’s financial roots: the harsh reparations imposed on Germany after WWI, the 1920s tariff wars that tanked the global economy, and the Great Depression, which turned Germany and Japan toward extremism. Drawing useful lessons from this turmoil, President Franklin Roosevelt put global economic development at the heart of his vision for the postwar world, and his ideas bore fruit in the Bretton Woods institutions—the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade—that stabilized the postwar financial order, and in the 1948 Marshall Plan that funneled American aid to shattered European economies. These “radical” initiatives led to soaring postwar standards of living, Holland notes; however, his narrative focuses less on the postwar economy and more on the economic dimensions of the war itself, along the way making a potent case that Allied victory was due less to Soviet manpower than to American and British weapons production and bombing. Above all, the book is a somewhat over-the-top homage to FDR—“a man of destiny” with “deeply felt Christian values” who providentially maneuvered America onto the global stage. It makes for a sketchy treatment of the postwar order but an insightful take on how money and arms factories won the war. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this sprawling family saga, historian Brooks (American Exodus) follows the lives of six siblings born to Chinese immigrant parents in Manhattan around the turn of the 20th century. The Moys siblings, Brooks writes, were ardently American, but pervasive anti-Chinese discrimination prompted several of them to move to China in the 1930s in search of greater opportunity—inadvertently landing them in the path of the coming Japanese invasion. The siblings include Kay, who married a wealthy restaurateur and raised a large family in New Jersey, only to lose everything during the Depression; Alice, who went to China with her husband, divorced him and remarried a well-heeled Shanghai businessman, only to lose it all when the Communists seized power in 1949; and, most dramatically, Herbert, a ne’er-do-well who finally found success and fame as an Axis propaganda mouthpiece at a Shanghai radio station, only to die by suicide when Japan lost the war. While the narrative drags in places where the Moys navigate more mundane happenstance, Brooks uses the siblings’ story to deftly explore, in often lively and novelistic prose, much larger themes: the fraught search for belonging in two starkly different cultures, the break with tradition that comes with the forging of modern lives focused on personal autonomy. The result is a rich and resonant exploration of the Chinese diaspora experience. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

Journalist Fairyington examines beauty standards and reflects on her meandering road to self-acceptance in her bold debut. “I am an ugly woman. I was an ugly child, too,” she writes in the opening sentences, announcing her intention to unpack those labels for the benefit of her young daughter. Each chapter confronts a different set of aesthetic social norms, from hygiene to racial hierarchies, placing cultural histories of traditions like Chinese foot binding beside Fairyington’s memories of growing up queer. Throughout, she parallels her daughter’s unburdened moments of self-discovery with memories of her own, crediting the study of queer theory with shaping her eventual self-confidence (“I began to recognize myself as a critical component of the whole, essential to every other part, vital because of my unexpected twists and turns, my radical counterpoints to normality and beauty”). Though the academic sections are often fascinating, they can be hard to wade through; Fairyington shines most in intimate moments when she addresses her daughter directly, as when she expresses pride in her for “calling out a friend’s racism, sporting an outfit that made you look like a goth girl, going high fashion among classmates who dressed down.” This maternal manifesto makes a major impression. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink

Durham, a career coach and influencer who posts as Emily the Recruiter, debuts with a straightforward guide to navigating the corporate job market. Drawing on her 10-plus years of experience as a recruiter, Durham aims to help the “not-yet-rich bitch” identify the right career path and thrive in it. She begins by advising readers to emotionally detach from companies, explaining that “dream jobs” do not exist and “your job will never love you back.” Instead of fantasizing about a job, she encourages readers to develop a deep understanding of what makes them feel validated, what gives them purpose, and the lifestyle they want. Pulling back the curtain on hiring, she explains that on average a recruiter spends six seconds looking at a résumé; job descriptions are often “wish lists,” not requirements; and some companies post fake listings to make it look like they are growing. After walking readers through perfecting their résumés, networking, and interviewing confidently, Durham details how to develop a strong personal brand (“confidence + being decent at your job + making others feel good”) and advocate for promotions (treat “your career development like it’s a regular part of your job”). Throughout, Durham intersperses her practical advice with comedy and personal anecdotes. It’s a down-to-earth resource for those seeking to level up. (May)

Reviewed on 03/06/2026 | Details & Permalink