Mulder and van Ravestein (The Sour City), heads of the marketing firm Mattmo, trace in this enjoyable history how the pickle has shaped New York City’s culinary culture. Pickling began in ancient Mesopotamia as a means of preserving foodstuffs in a hot climate, later becoming a core part of Roman gastronomy and spreading across the globe via the Silk Road and maritime trade routes. It became a prominent part of American cuisine when an influx of Jews emigrated from Russia, Germany, Austria, and Poland, to lower Manhattan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Bringing with them recipes and know-how, immigrant Jews made pickles in cramped tenements, shaping a thriving deli culture on Manhattan’s Lower East Side with such establishments as Russ & Daughters and Katz’s Delicatessen, and inspiring pickle companies across the country. Filled with fun facts, eye-catching photos and other ephemera (including a map of New York City’s pickle vendors and stores from 1895 to present), it makes for both a colorful food history and a testament to immigrants’ contributions to American cuisine. Readers will want to take a bite. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 02/20/2026 | Details & Permalink

Debut author Haynes, an artist and Timekeeper in Residence at University of College London’s Petrie Museum, takes an immersive ramble through the “forgotten art” of telling time without a modern clock. Arguing that the modern “clock-bound and screen immersed existence” has unmoored people from the natural world, she describes learning to gauge the time by listening for specific morning birdsongs, watching flowers open at certain times of day, and even tracking the changing shape of sheep pupils (which become larger and more circular as dusk approaches and light dims). Also explored are medieval monastic sundials that track the movement of sun and shadow, and daily church bells that toll at specific hours. The author visits with people who keep traditional time-telling methods alive, recounting experiences like meeting the founder of the New Crescent Society, which is dedicated to sighting the crescent moon that starts the Islamic month. Throughout, she describes with wonder how attending to such traditions offers a link to “a much larger world” that most people have lost contact with—one that encompasses other people, nature, animals, and past generations’ lost knowledge. Suffused with curiosity and joy, it’s a lovely ode to the world’s forgotten rhythms. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/20/2026 | Details & Permalink

Africa can achieve sustainable economic growth if governments there boost agriculture and manufacturing while avoiding political upheavals and war, according to this sweeping analysis. Journalist Studwell (How Asia Works) ascribes Africa’s poverty to chronic underpopulation and European colonial rule. Thanks to booming, better-educated populations, however, African economies are now poised to take off, he argues, provided governments follow the development playbook of Asian countries like South Korea and China. The key measures, he contends, are supporting small-scale farming with land redistribution and credit for seeds and fertilizers; making targeted investments in export-oriented manufacturing that fosters industrial ecosystems; and building infrastructure. Studwell reports on the growing economies of such African countries as Mauritius, Botswana, and Ethiopia. Drawing on World Bank statistics and his own reportage on innovative farmers and dynamic manufacturing start-ups, Studwell paints richly detailed portraits of African economies and takes an optimistic stance on the continent’s future, which isn’t always convincing, given sub-Saharan Africa as a whole is economically stagnant (it was slightly poorer in 2024 than in 2014 on a per-capita GDP basis). Still, Studwell is worth reading for his fine-grained insights into African politics and economies. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/20/2026 | Details & Permalink

Dugard, a runner and coauthor with Bill O’Reilly of the Killing series, recounts the 1970s marathon boom in this detailed history. He traces the marathon’s origins back to the Greek legend of Pheidippides, a long-distance messenger who in 490 BC supposedly ran 25 miles from the battlefield of Marathon to announce the Greek victory over Persia, and notes that this story inspired the inaugural Olympic marathon in 1896. The U.S. saw a surge of interest in running in the 1970s, spurred by several factors, including President John F. Kennedy’s fitness campaigns and new research extolling running’s health benefits. Then, at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, American Frank Shorter won the first marathon broadcast live on television in the U.S. Steve Prefontaine also rose to stardom around the same time, setting nine American running records in 1974. Women protested and broke rules to achieve equal treatment in marathons, Dugard explains, highlighting the success of female runners like Grete Waitz, who won nine New York City Marathons, and Joan Benoit, who won the first women’s marathon at the 1984 Olympics. Dugard dedicates about a third of the narrative to the years leading up to the 1970s and spends less time on the decade’s lasting impact, giving the account an unbalanced feel. Still, he offers affecting stories of the sport’s brightest stars. Runners will be delighted. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/20/2026 | Details & Permalink

“I remember how I stared at my middle-aged mom and her peers and thought how sad they were with their creaking joints gyrating to Blondie,” writes Gutierrez (A Product of Genetics (and Day Drinking)) in the introduction to this snarky memoir-in-essays. “Back then, with working parts still fully working, I couldn’t imagine ever being in their place.” With self-deprecating humor, Gutierrez, who was born in 1984, unpacks the bewildering experience of becoming the adult in the room regardless of feeling mature enough for the job. For much of the account, she recalls the totems of her early millennial childhood, including cereal box prizes, boy bands, Steve from Blue’s Clues, and a perpetual fear of toxic shock syndrome from leaving her tampon in too long. Throughout, Gutierrez’s nostalgic memories of writing in her diary with a Lisa Frank gel pen collide with more contemporary anecdotes about marriage and parenting (“Pure unadulterated bullshit most of the time,” she jokes). Gutierrez freely admits that her irreverent musings aren’t especially novel, but they are funny, and, for millennial women, wincingly relatable (after lamenting Gen Z’s rejection of heavy black eyeliner, she cries, “Are they coming for my panties next?”). It’s a fluffy but fun celebration of Generation Y. Agent: Claire Draper, Au Literary. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/20/2026 | Details & Permalink

Art historian Dempsey (Styles, Schools & Movements) explores in this thought-provoking survey how women have been portrayed in art over the past 500 years. In 80 short essays—one for each work—she explores how renderings of the female body have shaped and been shaped by societal values. Titian and Alexandre Cabanel’s paintings of Venus, for example, depict an idealized nude figure whose “mythical assignment” allowed her to be viewed without scandal, while Édouard Manet’s Olympia shocked audiences with its subject’s “confrontational gaze” and helped to “modernize the tradition of the female nude.” Dempsey also considers how these works responded to their political contexts. For example, Lee Miller’s 1944 photograph FFIWorker, Paris, France, depicts a Resistance fighter whose striking hairstyle and bright lipstick served as an implicit rebuke of Nazi ideals of femininity. British sculptor John Bell’s 1853 work A Daughter of Eve—A Scene on the Shore of the Atlantic, which portrays a shackled African woman, communicated a pointed anti-slavery message during the American Civil War. Also discussed are Australian sculptor Julie Rrap’s SOMOS (Standing on My Own Shoulders), which features two life-size casts of the 73-year-old artist’s body, and Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide’s Nuestra senora de las iguanas (Our Lady of the Iguanas), which documents the everyday lives of the Zapotec people. Comprehensive and lucidly written, this is a worthy addition to any art lover’s library. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/20/2026 | Details & Permalink

Novelist Haddon (The Porpoise) pieces together family photographs, illustrations, and vivid biographical snippets for this panoramic memoir. Moving nonsequentially, Haddon mines his memories of growing up in Northampton with self-involved parents (“You have to remember... that he only wanted one child,” his mother told his sister when she complained their father didn’t love her), a stint as a young adult caretaking for a rigidly religious disabled man, and his time as a children’s book author and illustrator. He also discusses his turn to writing for adults, though he admits it’s hard to separate recollections of writing The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time from “memories of the answers I’ve given” in interviews. The focus, though, is squarely on his relationships and his intellectual fascinations, including the fickle nature of memory and the mind, caring for his obstinate parents in their decline, and theories about writing as a kind of mysterious descent into the subconscious. Interspersed throughout are Haddon’s drawings, including a painting of his mother sitting at his father’s bedside, along with photos and ephemera like his paternal grandfather’s cigarette cards. Haddon writes of his “inability to weave the patchily remembered events of [his] own life into a coherent narrative,” but the result is utterly transfixing in its meandering approach. It’s a strange, beautiful work that exposes the inner workings of a creative mind. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 02/20/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this unique biography, Holland (Conversations with Wilde), Oscar Wilde’s grandson, explores the long-lasting impact of Wilde’s criminal conviction for homosexuality in London in 1895 and seeks to clear up misconceptions related to the incident. Holland starts with Wilde’s final years—his release from prison in 1897 until his death at 46 three years later—but the majority of the book focuses on Wilde’s friends and family. Wilde’s ex-lover, Bosie Douglas, proved litigious, suing Wilde biographer Arthur Ransome for implying he was responsible for Wilde’s downfall. Wilde had a disparate impact on his two sons, “one wanting to claim what little of his father’s artistic temperament he might have inherited and the other desperately anxious to distance himself from it at all costs.” Elsewhere, Holland elucidates the development and protection of his grandfather’s literary reputation as first his parents, then he, process copyright claims, work with biographers and filmmakers, and debunk fake manuscripts. Holland makes a valuable addition to Wilde scholarship, but the promised myth-busting focuses mostly on details that will speak only to the most obsessive Wilde fans, such as the motive behind a donation to erect a statue on Wilde’s grave. While the account’s comprehensiveness comes at the cost of narrative propulsion, this is sure to make a splash among Wilde scholars. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/20/2026 | Details & Permalink

American-Israeli Holocaust scholar Bartov (Anatomy of a Genocide) offers a powerful meditation on his birth country’s turn toward violence. Bartov chronicles the “tragic transformation of Zionism” from a movement that “sought to emancipate European Jewry from oppression” into “a state ideology of ethno-nationalism.” Lamenting the “bitter cunning of history,” Bartov confronts the awful resonances between his academic work about the Holocaust and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. He reflects impactfully on growing up in Tel Aviv neighborhoods “built... over the remnants of Palestinian villages,” and on his IDF service, when he was wounded in a training accident that was subsequently covered up, which he pegs as an early glimpse of his government’s compromised ethics. Concluding that Israel’s extremism is at least partly an “inevitable consequence of... settler colonialism,” Bartov finds some hope for reconciliation in the idea of drawing connections between the Holocaust and the 1948 Nakba, the forced displacement of Palestinians, asserting that “reflecting jointly on these two crucial events can have a transformative effect on Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian mutual understanding.” Nevertheless, he remains a realist, recognizing that equality for Palestinians would have to be essentially forced upon the Israeli political class and could “only happen under firm and determined American leadership.” It’s a clear-eyed work of moral reckoning. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/20/2026 | Details & Permalink

Finnish psychologist Lassander makes her English-language debut with a measured guide to how money influences daily routines, relationships, and happiness, in which she argues that aligning one’s finances with their values can improve overall well-being. She demonstrates how financial habits, like saving and attitudes toward debt, are often learned from one’s family and culture, and examines the complex role emotions play in financial decisions. A person, for example, might find security and pleasure from shopping and turn to the activity when feeling low, but this can lead to shame and regret when the credit card bill arrives. Lassander encourages readers to identify and understand their core values and let them guide financial decisions. To do so, she offers mindfulness exercises, like closing one’s eyes and asking, “What does a balanced and good relationship with the economy look like in my life?” as well as values-based money management tips, like “Enjoy your home as a home.... Ownership is not the most important issue.” Elsewhere, she shows readers how to deal with financial setbacks and how to determine personal notions of financial success. Readers seeking concrete financial instruction will find the advice more conceptual than tactical, and the book’s breadth occasionally dilutes its focus. Still, the author’s emphasis on values-driven decision-making offers a distinctive alternative to performance-oriented wealth-building programs. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 02/20/2026 | Details & Permalink