This strong debut manual from HR consultant Tardy explores how companies can attract and retain a more diverse workforce. Surveying common hiring biases, Tardy contends that assuming qualified applicants only come from competitors in the same line of work can reinforce industry-wide underrepresentation. She encourages hiring managers to get creative with how they reach applicants, such as by establishing connections with historically Black universities or partnering with churches that predominantly serve people of color to offer community training sessions on résumé writing and interview preparation. To ensure that employees from marginalized backgrounds have a fair shot at advancing within a company, Tardy recommends establishing an internal résumé database “to efficiently assess talent readiness within the company.” She sheds light on the ostensibly benign practices that fuel race, gender, and disability disparities in the workplace (hiring based on intuition comes in for particular opprobrium for its susceptibility to unconscious prejudice), and while the well-considered guidance is mostly aimed at HR professionals, Tardy also includes some useful tips for job seekers, as when she recommends asking during interviews about the difficulties the company is facing and discussing how one’s skills can address those challenges. Hiring managers would do well to check this out. Agent: Cole Lanahan, Seymour Agency. (June)

Reviewed on 04/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

“Black people can be the beneficiaries of a system they were violently forced to create and sustain,” according to this perceptive debut treatise. Laryea, a wealth management researcher at JPMorganChase, explores Black individuals’ complex relationships with capitalism through profiles of those who “prioritize social good and monetary profit.” She describes how one Goldman Sachs employee views himself as a “spy” within the bank, using the contacts he makes there to direct wealthy patrons to a Black dance company in Brooklyn. Contending that Black capitalists use the tools of capitalism to beat “the master at his own game,” she details how after a Black couple received a suspiciously low appraisal for their Bay Area residence, they asked a white friend to pose as the homeowner for a second appraiser, who valued the home at almost $500,000 more than the first. Laryea also recounts how she took advantage of the financial resources that Yale University offers student entrepreneurs to start her Ghanaian food business while studying to get her PhD in anthropology. Laryea imbues her probing character portraits with a measured outlook on capitalism, suggesting that while it’s a “dirty game,” people have no choice but to play it and so might as well try to get ahead while striving to change the rules. This provides food for thought. Agent: Hafizah Geter, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (June)

Reviewed on 04/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

The Hawaiian word for responsibility—particularly as it pertains to caring for the land—lends this stirring debut memoir from former Axios editor-in-chief Goo its title. Goo’s family kept a 90-something-acre piece of Maui, a small chunk of a much larger gift from King Kahmeamea III, under their ownership for nearly 200 years. In 2019, however, Goo’s father revealed in an email that property taxes had jumped 500%, and he didn’t know how to pay. Suddenly, like so many other Native Hawaiians, Goo’s family had to compete with wealthy investors from the mainland. Goo puts her journalism background to good use while researching the land’s history, her account of which doubles as a timeline of Hawaii’s shift away from traditions of shared ownership. Meanwhile, she navigates thorny intergenerational dynamics within her family, as various factions fight to choose the best path forward. Along the way, Goo interviews Hawaiian locals who share a passion for land stewardship and keeping Hawaiian culture alive, including a professor of Hawaiian studies who encourages her to pray to her ancestors. Ending on a note of fragile hope, Goo’s heartrending saga serves as an urgent reminder that Indigenous culture is alive and braided with modern life, and that all Americans have a role in its survival. Agent: Howard Yoon, WME. (June)

Reviewed on 04/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this accessible and practical debut, Met, whose CV includes playing the bass in a multiplatinum band and cofounding a climate research and advocacy nonprofit, draws on his varied experiences to make the case that the “fan-building tactics” performers employ can be applied “to move people to action on climate or other important issues.” The key, he argues, is to be seen as a “trusted messenger” by offering an authentic “insider’s view.” Met provides numerous examples to illustrate this point, from how his own band, AJR, produced “making of” documentaries that helped solidify its link to its fan base, to how Greta Thunberg and Andrew Yang were able to connect with far-reaching audiences about climate change and universal basic income by presenting earnest explainers on social media. While the strategies Met shares seem more like a marketing guide for influencers than anything else—a core piece of advice is to be “highly intentional about what [one] shares and when, which allows [one] to be transparent about their work without being dull and without ever crossing the line into oversharing”—it’s nonetheless advice that those hoping to become front men for political causes can make valuable use of. Aspiring activists will want to check this out. (June)

Reviewed on 04/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this scintillating account, biographer Bundles (On Her Own Ground) revisits the pioneering glamour and cultural patronage of her own great-grandmother, the hair-care heiress and Harlem Renaissance socialite A’Lelia Walker. Born in 1885, A’Lelia spent her early years in poverty until her mother, washerwoman Sarah Breedlove, refashioned herself as Madam C.J. Walker, purveyor of the Wonderful Hair Grower and first self-made woman millionaire. Bringing A’Lelia out from under her mother’s shadow (during her lifetime she faced down unfavorable comparisons to her mother’s business acumen, and the two had a contentious “fire and ice” relationship), Bundles argues that the heiress had a “gift” for “creating distinctive events” that “surprised even blasé New York.” She hosted landmark soirées at her inherited Westchester County mansion and founded both the Walker Salon, “one of Harlem’s most popular venues for private parties,” and the Dark Tower, a cultural salon named after a Countee Cullen poem “where her downtown friends joined her uptown friends.” Bundles shows how A’Lelia’s wide range of guests, from cutting-edge musicians, artists, and poets to high-ranking African Americans in the federal government, created a potent and unprecedented cultural mix. Along the way, she depicts A’Lelia with admiration for her “diva-worthy flamboyance” and, thanks to the familial connection, unmatched intimacy. This brings vibrant life to a luminary described by Langston Hughes as the “joy goddess of Harlem.” (June)

Reviewed on 04/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this inspiring debut report, Hogan, a former professional mountain biker, recaps the astonishing achievements of endurance athletes. She opens with a nail-biting account of 71-year-old Gunhild Swanson’s participation in the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run in 2015 and recreates the crowd’s uproarious reaction when Swanson crossed the finish line with five seconds to spare after running for more than 29 hours straight, becoming the oldest female finisher ever. Hogan drives home the physical toll that endurance sports take on athletes’ bodies, describing how in 1972, 15-year-old Lynne Cox had to periodically rinse her mouth with fresh water to prevent her tongue from swelling and salt water from shredding her gums while swimming the English Channel in a record-setting nine hours and 57 minutes. Elsewhere, Hogan covers how Tina Ament became the first blind woman to complete the Kona, Hawaii, Ironman World Championship course in 2014, and how John Stamstad braved windchills of as low as –85º F to snatch the bronze in the 1992 Iditarod Trail bike race through the Alaskan wilderness. The vivid recreations of grueling races capture the adrenaline of endurance competition, serving as testaments to the virtues of grit and perseverance. This will have readers cheering. Photos. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

Schor (After the Gig), a sociology professor at Boston College, makes a strong case for a shorter work week in this vigorous report. Recounting the findings of her research into 245 organizations that implemented four-day work weeks without reducing pay, she notes that all 20 of the well-being metrics she tracked showed “statistically significant and often large improvements,” including better mental health and reduced stress. Schor also surveys less intuitive findings, pointing out that 20% of men reported increasing their participation in household labor and that 37% of subjects said working less improved their physical health because they could spend more time cooking and exercising. Employers benefited just as much as employees, Schor claims, and she uses case studies to explore the two most common strategies for shortening the work week. For instance, she tells how the Toronto communications company Praxis maintained productivity levels while working fewer hours by slashing meetings, and how the Italian restaurant chain M’tucci’s accepted a decrease in productivity because it was offset by cost savings from lower turnover. The robust research offers proof of concept across a range of organizations, and the case studies provide a shrewd road map of the different routes a company might take to a four-day work week. Employers looking to stand out in a tight labor market should start here. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency. (June)

Reviewed on 04/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

Wall Street Journal reporter Hagey (The King of Content) portrays OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as the ultimate comeback kid in this fleet-footed biography. The future billionaire landed his first major deal as an undergraduate at Stanford University, scaling up his location-based social network Loopt with an investment from venture capital firm Y Combinator in the mid 2000s. Altman narrowly avoided getting ousted from Loopt over allegations he helped former colleagues illegally reverse-engineer a competitor’s code in 2009, and landed at Y Combinator after Loopt was “sold for parts” in 2012. Hagey’s crackerjack reporting fleshes out Altman’s ascendance to Silicon Valley royalty, detailing how he outmaneuvered Elon Musk’s attempted takeover of OpenAI in the late 2010s by persuading board members that Musk would be too difficult to work with, and how a staff mutiny convinced the board to overturn their firing of Altman in 2023. Hagey also gives due credit to Altman’s brilliance as a businessman without glossing over his contradictions, noting that he mostly equivocated in her interviews with him when confronted with how turning OpenAI into a for-profit company appeared to bring about the very AI “arms race” the organization once sought to avoid by making its software open source. The first major biography of tech’s newest titan, this sets a high bar for those to follow. Agent: Alice Martell, Martell Agency. (June)

Reviewed on 04/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

“At the age of thirty-five, it was time to meet myself unmediated by romantic and erotic obsession,” writes memoirist Febos (Body Work) in the opening pages of this bold account. After two decades of moving from one relationship to the next, with only a “few brief periods of singleness” in between, Febos went through a particularly devastating breakup and decided to abstain from sex and dating for a year. “I liked the idea of choosing celibacy not as a last-resort treatment for depression, not as a deprivation, but as an attempt to grow my world,” she explains. She examines the history of abstinence in religious and cultural contexts through the work of writers including Virginia Woolf and Octavia Butler, and explores what it meant to her, as a queer, 21st-century feminist. The results, Febos found, were freeing: she relished waking up alone, reading and writing on her own schedule, and pursuing her interests unmediated by the concerns of another. Though she’s wary of acting “as an evangelist for celibacy,” Febos convincingly makes the case for serial daters to slow down and reflect on their past relationships free from the cloud of a current entanglement. As fascinating as it is liberating, this is not to be missed. Agent: Ethan Bassoff, WME. (June)

Reviewed on 04/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

Hallucinations, convulsions, delusions, and other symptoms shed light on the brain’s obscure machinery, according to this luminous debut from neurologist Anand. Revisiting cases from her neurology practice as well as medical literature, novels, and even fables, she cites a woman who uttered prophecies in the voice of the Holy Spirit because of an autoimmune disorder that attacked her neurons; a mother with accelerating dementia who told Anand that her grown children were switched at birth with impostor babies; and a former doctor who fabricated stories about why she was at the hospital to paper over neural damage caused by a hemorrhage. At the heart of the book is an exploration of the intimate links between narrative and medicine—how the brain slots confusing impressions into stories to find “order in the chaos,” but also how patients create narratives to understand their symptoms; how doctors selectively cull from that information to shape diagnoses; and how cultural narratives inform the ways patients and doctors view bodies, illness, and treatment. In the process, Anand elegantly transforms the clinical minutiae of neurological disorders into evocative poetry (of a woman suffering from involuntary spasms: “her fingers moved like those of a piano player... her tongue thrusting from her mouth like that of a hummingbird searching for nectar”). It’s an engrossing exploration of the brain’s extraordinary powers and terrifying frailties. (June)

Reviewed on 04/11/2025 | Details & Permalink