A playful attitude can boost creativity, health, and happiness, according to this upbeat outing from Gelardi (Style Stalking), cofounder of Refinery 29. She argues that while adults tend to believe play is “frivolous” or incompatible with success, it actually strengthens pliability and adaptability in ways that improve problem-solving, boost fulfillment, and foster connection. She explores how a robust imagination can expand one’s sense of possibility by creating “neural pathways that prepare us for new experiences,” while creative expression can “transform our relationship with the unknown and the feared” or facilitate connection during dark moments. Recalling how a night spent singing karaoke became a surprising outlet for her grief over a recent miscarriage, Gelardi observes that play “doesn’t always mean joy or laughter; sometimes it means creative engagement with our grief, a way to befriend it rather than hide from it.” Vivid personal anecdotes and tools for incorporating creativity into one’s day-to-day buttress Gelardi’s argument, and her spunky tone is infectious. The result is a welcome reminder to color outside the lines. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Politics rather than geography is the defining feature of heartland rock, contends this thorough history from music journalist Osmon (Jason Molina). The genre originally known as “working class rock” emerged in the 1970s, as artists churned out songs featuring “factory workers, farmers, the American dream, underdogs, [and] the open road” amid a period of social unease. Osmon highlights the careers of Tom Petty, John Mellencamp, Bob Seger, and Bruce Springsteen, focusing on their political leanings and efforts to establish Farm Aid and other benefit concerts. She also explores how their songs have been misinterpreted by popular culture, with tracks like Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” harnessed by politicians eager to “inject a working-class subtext” into campaigns, and Springsteen’s “Born in the USA,” written about the plight of a Vietnam veteran, adopted as an anthem of uncritical patriotism. Despite that—and the fact that the genre has been used in the Trump era as the “soundtrack of insidious white grievance”—Osmon makes a strong case for its enduring legacy, noting how more recent bands harnessed its “against-the-odds moxie” to speak for “the 99 percent.” Spotlighting a broad range of famous and lesser-known artists, this is a robust assessment of a quintessentially American genre. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Shakur, stepbrother of rapper Tupac Shakur, paints vivid portraits of his family and hip-hop culture in his raucous debut. The author recaps a boyhood spent between North Carolina, Harlem, and Queens, where he fell in love with rap in the 1970s, and his later exploits rapping and producing with Tupac’s Thug Life group. Opening sections celebrate Shakur’s father, Mutulu, a charismatic founder of the Republic of New Afrika organization, before the narrative zooms in on Shakur’s time with Thug Life in the 1990s. What follows is an entertaining picaresque featuring starstruck fans, celebrity cameos from Snoop Dogg to Madonna, and violent feuds (“There were several 9-millimeters onstage, including mine,” Shakur recalls of an Atlanta show). Later chapters depict a darker Tupac after he was shot in New York and convicted of sexual abuse; the stepbrothers drifted apart after Tupac “disciplined” Shakur by forcing him to fight members of his entourage. It adds up to a rich, clear-eyed study of a rapper’s life interspersed with uncompromising assertions of the author’s values (“In what world do the cops not care about a dying child?” he wonders when NYPD patrolmen ignore his report of a Black kid getting hit by a bus). Readers will be rapt. Agent: Jon Michael Darga, Aevitas Creative Management. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/30/2026 | Details & Permalink

Pulitzer finalist Brundage (Civilizing Torture) chronicles the excruciating suffering of the Civil War’s hundreds of thousands of POWs, as well as the political and legal ramifications of this unprecedented mass incarceration of Americans on U.S. soil. Drawing on voluminous first-person accounts, Brundage tells a story of human misery and political incompetence drifting toward indifference. The worst of the era’s detainment facilities were the “prison pens,” reminiscent of concentration camps, such as Maryland’s Point Lookout and Georgia’s Andersonville. Over the course of the war, conditions worsened steadily for POWs; Brundage argues against the common notion that this was the result of mere expediency. Rather, he claims, the horrors were a product of design and resolve: “Men, not events, made Andersonville.” While the early years of the war saw frequent prisoner exchanges that reduced prison populations, a failure in negotiations and the halting of such exchanges brought about “experiments in custodial imprisonment” that were “beyond anyone’s worst prewar premonitions,” including the use of retaliation—i.e., hurting captive POWs in recompense for how the other side treated POWs. The camps, he explains, prompted new international codes of warfare, including those deeming “just following orders” an inadequate excuse. Captivity in the Civil War camps, Brundage perceptively concludes, “marked a generation of Americans in ways that we have barely recognized.” It’s a benchmark study in a harrowing yet oft-overlooked episode in America’s past. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

Lexicographer Stamper (Word by Word) takes readers on an uproarious journey into Merriam-Webster’s somber early-20th-century office and the decades-long, behind-the-scenes kerfuffle over the seemingly simple task of defining colors. Stamper tracks the “earnest and painstaking” editorial relationship between the brilliant scientist I.H. Godlove and various harried editors at M-W, all of whom were struggling to define colors within the tension of “the democratic chaos of language and the curated precision of science.” In other words, the public pictures one thing at the word purple, but a scientist might say that purple doesn’t technically exist, so how should one define it? Stamper depicts the esoteric editorial wrangling and nitpicking with verve, bringing a self-serious, cloistered world to vivid life. She also poignantly profiles the devoted relationship between Godlove and his equally brilliant wife Margaret, who finished his work after his death. Beyond M-W’s walls, Stamper dives into a broader color history, from the great “dye famine” of WWI to congressional debates over whether margarine should be allowed to be yellow, as well as a slew of other surprising, complicated ways color has collided with industry. Stamper writes with grace and a delightful sense of humor, particularly when making fun of her own camp (the average lexicographer’s reaction to a party: “silent panic, then hives, then anaphylactic shock”). It’s a scintillating journey into the prismatic heart of a subject that “touch[es] everything.” (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this symphonic exploration of the music of Prince, geographer and sociologist Shabazz (Spacializing Blackness) reveals how the history, ecology, and culture of Minneapolis incubated a unique musical style that shaped pop culture worldwide. Many credit Prince with creating the “Minneapolis Sound,” a fusion of funk, R&B, rock, synth-pop, and new wave. But Shabazz argues that, while Prince was “its high priest and the singular figure who impacted it more than anyone,” the Minneapolis sound predated and evolved beyond him, emerging from a unique combination of factors, including the area’s segregated but racially diverse history (Shabazz investigates Indigenous influences on the sound and spotlights the collision of Black and white pop music that occurred along the borders of segregated neighborhoods). Other determining factors include the city’s many empty, unfinished basements and unused “backrooms” where the Minneapolis sound was born, and its commitment to the arts, particularly the Minnesota public school system’s uniquely strong mid-20th-century investment in music education. After mapping the world into which Prince was born, Shabazz analyzes Prince’s life, career, and discography, showing how it was intrinsically shaped by Minneapolis, and shaped Minneapolis in turn. Shabazz’s innovative music analysis imbued with geography, history, and social science deserves a standing ovation. Music lovers will be captivated by this textured view of a beloved artist. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

This alarming and deeply perceptive study from anthropologist Doron (Waste of a Nation) and sociologist Broom (Survivorship) examines why India has become ground zero for the global explosion in antibiotic resistance. The authors begin with the “haunting statistic” that an estimated 58,000 Indian newborns die each year from antibiotic-resistant sepsis (not to mention the half million Indians who died in 2021 from drug-resistant tuberculosis, or the country’s horrifying new drug-resistance strains of cholera and typhoid). From there, they emphasize that an urgent solution is needed for India’s crisis but that “oversimplified” explanations of Indians as overusing antibiotics, in both medical and agricultural contexts, due to poverty, inadequate sanitation, and overburdened healthcare systems don’t paint a full picture. The real issue, they explain, is the country’s massive, and growing, pharmaceutical industry. India, they argue, is “saturated” with antibiotics, and like any drug, its very presence creates an epidemic of usage. Indeed, reminiscent of the American opioid epidemic, the authors find that “assertive medical representatives... promote new antibiotics to [Indian] doctors and play a key role in creating incentives for overprescription.” The influence of pharmaceutical sales reps, plus the complex machinations of the country’s “hybrid public-private health-care system,” have created “a cycle of antibiotic dependence,” as the authors astutely put it. Incisively argued and genuinely terrifying, this is a must-read for those whose work touches on epidemiology and public health. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

Social psychologist Carter’s encouraging debut how-to helps readers understand “the ways you have been socialized to see (or not to see) racial bias, how to unlearn those impulses, and how to bring others along on that journey.” Drawing on her experiences as a corporate DEI consultant, Carter presents actionable steps for talking to colleagues, friends, family, and children about racial bias, with a particular emphasis on how to broach the subject with white people, who typically learn about racism later in life, detect it less often, and feel ill-equipped to discuss it. Carter suggests some of this reticence can be countered by fostering a more general “growth mindset” that includes “shedding an ego-protecting façade and embracing... vulnerability.” She also provides helpful tools for identifying and calling out microaggressions and decentering whiteness in everyday interactions. While Carter’s tone is sometimes reminiscent of corporate HR training, she makes several antiestablishment points, including debunking the notion that each generation is naturally becoming less racist (she cites studies showing that, without education on the topic, white children are more likely to learn racism socially) and arguing against the “business case” for diversity—i.e., that a diverse workplace is better for the bottom line. Instead, Carter refreshingly declares that “even if ‘doing diversity’ was bad for business, I would advocate for it anyway.” Readers will feel galvanized. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

Financial institutions—often at the behest of government officials—are freezing bank accounts, cancelling credit cards, and denying payment processing to penalize people for controversial speech and politics, according to this hard-hitting debut exposé. Reitman, cofounder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, recaps recent examples, starting with PayPal’s blocking of donations to FPF’s campaign to free imprisoned military whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Other examples include the “banking blockade” of Wikileaks by Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal, at the instigation of Sen. Joe Lieberman, which reduced Wikileak’s revenue by 95%; PayPal’s cutoff of Consortium News for its skeptical coverage of the war in Ukraine; and PayPal and Venmo’s cessation of payment processing to online Persian poetry courses run by a Detroit-based Instagrammer on the vague possibility that they might run afoul of U.S. sanctions on Iran. Reitman explores the Kafkaesque character of debanking measures: customers usually get no notice or appeal and often are put on blacklists that trash their credit ratings. Her cogent recommendations include requiring transparency about accounts that are being closed and legislation to ban financial penalties for legal speech and political actions. Some of Reitman’s judgments are open to debate—how “chilling” is it really that Visa dropped Pornhub for fear of lawsuits from child pornography victims? Still, it’s an incisive call for action against the collusions of big money and big government. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink

With this quirky and informative account, screenwriter Brooke-Hitching (The Most Interesting Book in the World) veers off the beaten path to explore the strangest corners of music history. He covers some of the world’s most bizarre instruments, including the largest: the Great Stalacpipe Organ, which comprises a series of caves whose stalactites can be struck by mallets to produce different notes; and the pyrophone, a 19th-century “internal combustion organ” that used blasts of flame in glass tubes to make sounds. The weird concerts described—many of which still take place—include the Ice Musical Festival Norway, where visitors from around the world watch musicians play ice harps, fiddles, and drums, and performances by the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra, whose members create impromptu instruments from raw vegetables and later blend them into a soup for the audience. Elsewhere, Brooke-Hitchings unearths such historical oddities as 15th-century French composer Baude Cordier’s sheet music, which twisted lines of notes to match “the theme of the composition,” and hoaxes like a series of Haydn sonatas “rediscovered” in the 1990s. Enriched by a colorful array of reproduced sheet music, photos, and illustrations, and spanning continents and centuries, this is a witty, fun, and often jaw-dropping tour of the many outlandish ways humans have made music. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/23/2026 | Details & Permalink