“Technological innovation creates systemic and long-lasting shifts across society, and while we may be skeptical” of AI and other cutting-edge innovations, “we can no longer afford to look the other way” when it comes to their cultural impacts, Baylor University religious studies professor Cann (Dying to Eat) argues in this thought-provoking study. Cann posits that everything from hearing aids and titanium knees to smartwatches qualifies as “augmentations” that make humans into part-machine “cyborgs.” Drawing on her own travels, she theorizes that the West fears innovative technology due to cultural ideas about human exceptionalism, while East Asian countries embrace technological advancement because they respect robots as “soul-possible or soul-different.” She surveys a range of current and possible future technologies for augmenting human life, along the way spotlighting how disability “has often been a driving force behind.... technological innovations.” Cann’s notion that technology often serves as an extension of the body is apt, but her optimism about those extensions can feel too easy. While she acknowledges that digital technologies like AI can serve to reinforce human bias, she doesn’t touch on AI’s mental health or environmental concerns. “Being part machine might, in fact, make us more human, not less,” Cann asserts, but readers will be left wondering if that’s necessarily a good thing. This doesn’t always persuade, but it still offers intriguing fodder for debate. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

Great replacement theory is the ideological beating heart of the new authoritarianism sweeping the globe, according to this brilliant and eye-opening study. Historian and National Book Award winner Kendi (Stamped from the Beginning) notes that countries whose current head of state or opposition leader espouse great replacement theory include the U.S., U.K., Israel, South Korea, India, El Salvador, and “nearly every country in Europe.” The term, coined in 2011 by novelist turned right-wing ideologue Renaud Camus, broke into the American political mainstream after the first election of Donald Trump; it posits that shadowy “elites” are “enabling peoples of color to displace... White people” or other privileged or dominant ethnic groups, who thus “now need authoritarian protection.” Charting the historic precursors to great replacement theory, beginning with the early 20th-century writings of American eugenicist Madison Grant, Kendi demonstrates the concept’s long-standing ties to authoritarianism (Grant’s ideas on race were referred to as “my bible” by Adolf Hitler) and convincingly argues that the success of all authoritarians lies in their ability to redirect the legitimate grievances of the exploited away from their class interests and toward paranoid fantasy. Kendi closes with an astute blueprint for combatting this kind of politics that involves bolstering nonprofit media and civic education, though he shrewdly notes that “nothing minimizes the draw of great replacement theory like radically improving societal conditions.” It adds up to a rousing call for solidarity across lines of class and race in order to fight fascism. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

Theater critic Pressley (American Playwriting and the Anti-Political Prejudice) delivers a solid analysis of Jane Fonda’s film work within the context of her political activism. Countering the claim of Fonda biographer Patricia Bosworth that Fonda “won’t be remembered for her movies,” Pressley provides a career retrospective with a focus on her overtly political films of the 1970s. He describes Coming Home, in which Fonda plays a Marine wife who volunteers at a veterans’ hospital during the Vietnam War, as “by far the most complete articulation of Jane Fonda that she would ever make as a Hollywood feature.” Elsewhere, he notes that Fonda’s “actor-activist self” arrived in full form in The China Syndrome, where she plays an ambitious TV reporter who discovers a cover-up of safety violations at a nuclear power plant. She capped off the decade by tackling workplace discrimination in the 1980 film 9 to 5, which Pressley calls “an antic farce with political force.” Though the focus is on Fonda’s movies, Pressley also covers the actor’s ongoing political activities, including her viral 2019 BAFTA acceptance speech, which she delivered while being handcuffed during a climate protest. This valuable reassessment will remind film lovers of what makes Fonda a star. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

Berner, cofounder and CEO of the cannabis brand Cookies, debuts with an energetic business guide that recounts his rise from a high school dropout “hustling in the streets of San Francisco” to head of a successful global company. After getting a job at a medical cannabis dispensary at 19, he began to see marijuana as a product that helped people and offered community. Simultaneously making a name for himself as a rapper in the Bay Area, he noticed that weed and music went hand in hand and started selling pot to influential rappers and producers. When cannabis was legalized for recreational use in California, he already had a brand identity ready: Cookies, inspired by a strain he sold that tasted like Thin Mints. Framing cannabis as a once-in-a-generation opportunity, he explains how instinctive branding, cultural fluency, and sharp timing helped Cookies dominate a rapidly corporatizing sector. Structured around punchy principles—“ ‘no’ is code for ‘negotiate’ ”; “don’t let blueprints blur your vision”—his advice favors intuition over formal business frameworks. Though he leans on slogans rather than sustained analysis, Berner’s insistence on authenticity as a competitive advantage is persuasive. Fast-paced and unapologetic, this will resonate with entrepreneurs drawn to brand-building at the intersection of culture and commerce. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

This bold, immersive study from journalist Gittlitz (I Want to Believe) blends cultural criticism with social and labor history to argue that New York City baseball has long served as a battleground for class struggle, popular power, and control over people’s leisure time. Gittlitz shows how the game emerged during the American Revolution among rank-and-file soldiers rather than the cricket-favoring officer class, establishing baseball as a plebeian pastime tied to resistance and class identity. Later, New York’s Democratic political machine, Tammany Hall, learned to harness the game, turning it into a managed civic spectacle that generated loyalty without challenging elite power. The sport’s professional leagues consolidated as owners tightened control over teams. Through radio broadcasts, media mythmaking, and ballpark ritual, the Yankees, Giants, and Dodgers were successively rotated as the “people’s team” until, in the postwar 1960s, the Mets emerged to embrace that role, becoming a vessel for endurance, irony, and shared attachment. Gittlitz’s research is comprehensive and his case well argued, and though the prose can be dense and allusive, its lyricism reinforces the book’s view of baseball as a cultural language as much as a sport. Ambitious and intellectually invigorating, this will delight baseball devotees, surprise readers unfamiliar with the game’s political history, and satisfy those more versed in leftist politics than box scores. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this excruciatingly candid debut, National Magazine Award–winning journalist Junod peels back the secrets of his swaggering father, Lou, who strove to shape the young Junod in his image. Lou began molding his son early, carrying him to the beach in Long Island for mornings of running, pushups, and swimming. He also dispensed constant advice about sex, how to dress, and how to maximize personal pleasure. As a teenager, Junod began uncovering evidence that Lou may have conducted xtramarital affairs under the cover of his sales work. Decades later, at Lou’s funeral, an encounter with a woman whom Junod had only met once spurred him to further investigate the flawed man who raised him. Through detailed detective work, including interviews with Lou’s family members, friends, and former lovers, Junod sketches a picture of a complicated, self-absorbed, and surprisingly sweet person, and rigorously unpacks the ways Lou’s charm and overbearing masculinity influenced the man and writer he became. Though the pacing sags a bit in the middle, this is a gripping study of a larger-than-life personality that doubles as a sensitive self-portrait. It’s a winner. Photos. Agent: David Black, David Black Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

Protests are worthless, and “nonaction” is the only effective form of resistance, according to this provocative treatise from University of Alberta East Asian Studies professor Fried (The First Print Era). His approach is rooted in Daoism, a philosophy defined by its exhortation to nonaction, or “moving through... the world so that one’s actions never meet with resistance.” Fried asserts that, amid today’s performative culture that demands “heroic” action, “doing nothing at all is the very most you can do.” For instance, he denigrates recent pro-Palestinian college encampments as hogging attention from the issue they were protesting, contrasting them with the 2019 Hong Kong protests where protestors got closer to the Daoist ideal of “flowing like water” and “melting” away from conflict. Noting the Hong Kong protestors’ eventual turn to violence, however, Fried sticks with his assertion that any protest is useless; he argues that activism should focus instead on non-heroic, ego-less attempts to fix small things before they become large—once a conflict has resulted in mass death, protest can’t stop it, he maintains. Fried explores these ideas in meandering, koan-esque passages seeking to drain the “hope” out of protesting, since, in his view, “hope distorts and misleads,” and effective social change requires “seeing the world as it is,” with neither hope nor despair. Not all of Fried’s arguments land, but his challenging point of view will stretch readers’ imaginations. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

Bestselling travel writer McCarthy (Walking with Sam) offers a heartwarming meditation on male friendship. A pointed question from his son—“You don’t really have any friends, do you, Dad?”—inspires the author to reconsider his “self-induced isolation” and set out on cross-country drive to reconnect with former close friends. Over the course of a sprawling journey from Appalachia to the Southwest, McCarthy not only rekindles his relationships but makes impromptu, thematically appropriate stops—like at a museum dedicated to lonesome musical legend Roy Orbison—and, most intriguingly, chats with men he meets in bars and other hangouts about their friendships or lack thereof. He encounters several sets of lifelong best friends (including Mississippi duo Chuck and Dan, whose grandfathers were also best friends) and a slew of alienated loners (“I stick to myself,” one construction worker explains). These surprisingly open conversations allow McCarthy to interrogate what blocks male connection, particularly men’s fear of vulnerability and their sense that it’s easier to be emotional with women. McCarthy’s journey exposes how infrequently friendship is discussed at all in American culture—as one journalist notes, “People are reluctant to discuss friendship because it has no immediacy, no monetary value”—even as there is a widespread hunger to talk about it. The result is a poignant, life-affirming look at American men yearning for closer bonds. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this pragmatic guide, married coauthors Shen and Leung (Quit Like a Millionaire), who retired at 30, apply their frugal philosophy to the economics of raising children. Parents of a toddler, the authors draw on their expertise in saving and investing to challenge what they dub “Big Baby,” the consumer culture that encourages parents to buy more than they need. They instruct readers to optimize their kid-related spending and invest the money saved into assets that provide passive income, like real estate investment trusts and index funds. Parents can save money by buying baby gear, like strollers and clothes, secondhand; renting instead of owning a home (if the math favors doing so); buying a used car; trying nontraditional childcare options, like nanny-sharing and bartering babysitting services with other parents; moving to a less expensive city; and getting kids into magnet schools. Elsewhere, they explain how parents can optimize their tax credits, use the stock market to pay for college, and treat their Health Savings Account as a retirement savings tool. Blending personal anecdotes with cost analyses, Shen and Leung lay out an effective road map for resisting social pressure to overspend on kids. Readers will find this a welcome counterpoint to alarmist narratives about the cost of starting a family. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

Flowers “belong at the center of the story of how our world came to be,” argues biologist Haskell (Sounds Wild and Broken) in this passionate examination. Compared to other lifeforms, flowers were “latecomers,” evolving after many complex animals in the fossil record some 150–200 million years ago. The plants quickly diversified and became “champion relationship-builders,” as insects, birds, and other animals came to rely on them for food and shelter. Haskell explains how the study of goatsbeard helped scientists discover that some flowering plants duplicate their genomes, a process that allows them to adapt and evolve. The flexibility of plant genetics enabled the development of important crops that supported agrarian civilizations, like wheat, oats, potato, and cotton. Grass, another flowering plant, has also been key to sustaining human populations, building organic and fertile soils and forming a large portion of the calories people consume (rice, maize, and wheat are all grasses). Elsewhere, Haskell demonstrates how flowers elucidate the past—Carl Linnaeus’s classification of flowers in the 18th century helped usher in the theory of evolution—and offer lessons for the future, such as “thriving worlds grow from cooperation.” Through deep research and lyrical prose, Haskell triumphantly recasts the role of flowers as foundational to humanity. This is astonishing. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink