Ecologist Crowther debuts with an optimistic examination of how people can use feedback loops, cyclical processes in which the outcome influences the input, creating a chain reaction of cause and effect, to restore the environment. As Crowther explains, these processes apply to everything from the formation of stars to the diversification of species. Feedback loops also govern human economy and psychology. Crowther describes, for example, how eucalyptus tree plantations in Portugal supported a profitable paper industry that led to more clearing of land for eucalyptus trees in an accelerating loop that ultimately resulted in the destruction of local ecosystems and an increased risk of forest fires. Similarly, feedback loops fuel socioeconomic inequality, as wealth creates opportunity for accumulating more wealth, an exponentially increasing disparity that can cause the collapse of societies. On the other hand, people can embrace feedback loops to repair social systems and the natural world. Investing in restoring landscapes to their natural diversity can revive local agriculture and livelihoods, for example, and consumers opting for sustainable products can spur industries to create zero-waste brands. Filled with intriguing and wide-ranging case studies of how individuals can be agents of change, this empowers and inspires. (June)

Reviewed on 04/10/2026 | Details & Permalink

Gormley, cofounder of the British luxury interiors brand House of Hackney, debuts with a flowery account of how she and her husband, Javvy M. Royle, created an environmentally conscious business. Attempting to “reweave business back into its right relationship with people, place and planet,” Gormley describes how the company, founded in 2011, not only takes inspiration from nature, designing earth-inspired wallpapers and home goods, but also has a regenerative relationship with the natural world. She recounts how they implemented a “Nature License Fee,” redirecting 1% of sales toward protecting nature; achieved carbon-neutral status by measuring, reducing, and offsetting their emissions; and committed to offering employees wages that could truly cover the cost of living. In 2021, House of Hackney became a certified B corporation, a recognition given to businesses that meet high standards of social and environmental performance, and in 2023, it legally appointed Mother Nature to its board. There are intriguing anecdotes, including how Gormley and Royle wrested back their company’s ownership from private equity, but readers will find few practical details about how House of Hackney achieved an ecologically balanced operation, and the text gets bogged down by Gormley’s musings on bucolic virtue and noble impulses. This is more sanctimonious than inspiring. (June)

Reviewed on 04/10/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this concise and affecting memoir, Hoang (In the Shadow of Green Bamboos) recalls his escape from Vietnam in 1974 and subsequent life in the U.S. Taking advantage of a 36-hour ceasefire during the Vietnam War, 11-year-old Hoang and his older sister, Lan, fled Saigon for the U.S., where they settled in Athens, Ohio. He delivers a charming account of his early life in America, during which he purchased postcards to send back to his family in Vietnam and focused intently on his studies to earn admission to the University of Ohio. Small acts of kindness dot the narrative—a roommate lent Hoang headphones and a stack of Beatles tapes, which helped him sharpen his English language skills—while reports of deteriorating conditions back home inject urgency into his hopes to earn enough money to bring the rest of the family to the U.S. The action culminates with Hoang receiving a full scholarship to UC Berkeley for graduate school, becoming a U.S. citizen, and seeing his parents arrive on American shores. Though not without its share of challenging moments, Hoang’s memoir bursts with hope, offering a counterweight to more trauma-focused immigrant narratives. It’s a balm. (June)

Reviewed on 04/10/2026 | Details & Permalink

Canadian journalist and musician Henshaw (The Peddlers) catalogs the bizarre life and crimes of Jimmy Odo in this spine-chilling account. After bouncing between orphanages and foster families in Nova Scotia as a child, Odo descended into drug addiction and schizophrenia as a young adult. In 1975, he was tried for the brutal torture and killing of a 14-year-old coworker who was tied to trees in a Halifax park and stabbed to death. At trial, Odo claimed the boy died in a drug deal gone wrong from which Odo barely escaped, and was acquitted. A year later, Odo was arrested for child rape and sentenced to five years in prison. Finally, in 1981, he was accused of murdering a five-year-old girl, and testified at trial that he had no memories of his crimes because he was once in a satanic cult and remained possessed by demons. He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Drawing on his own reporting from the ’80s, Henshaw turns Odo’s lurid biography into a melancholy assessment of social welfare, mental health, and the flawed Canadian justice system that initially allowed Odo to walk free. It’s a haunting glimpse into the abyss. (June)

Reviewed on 04/10/2026 | Details & Permalink

Belc (The Natural Mother of the Child) uses his Covid-era obsession with semifamous internet chefs as a springboard for a charming reflection on food and identity. “I am cooking to save my life,” Belc writes, acknowledging the intensity of his relationship with food influencers after Covid isolated him at home with his wife and three children (then ages seven, six, and four). Eventually, Belc’s adventures in the kitchen spin off into musings on his childhood, gender transition, and fertility troubles, as when he recalls cooking meals for his parents at 12 years old to blunt feelings of depression and loneliness. Revisiting recipes he prepared at 16 gives way to reflections on the moment Belc realized he was queer (“I was listening to music on a big classic iPod. I was sixteen years old. Old brown leaves crunched under my feet.... I’m gay, I whispered, to absolutely no one”). In 2021, the loquacious blogs of Smitten Kitchen’s Deb Perelman offered solace when Belc’s plans to have another child hit roadblocks. Through it all, Belc proves a funny, generous guide who remains self-aware about his obsessions without undermining their sincerity. There’s plenty of sustenance in these pages. Agent: Ashley Lopez, Massie, McQuilkin & Altman. (June)

Reviewed on 04/10/2026 | Details & Permalink

In this refreshing debut guide, Maguire, creator of the Substack newsletter The New Fatherhood, upends traditional notions of fatherhood as a “side quest” to “life’s main plotline.” He lays out a philosophy that sees fatherhood as a chance to “be better: for our kids, for loved ones, and for ourselves,” suggesting, for example, that dads focus on managing their feelings rather than controlling their kids’ behavior. Doing so, he writes, makes it easier to navigate daily crises while modeling appropriate emotional responses for one’s children. Other chapters discuss embracing personal vulnerabilities, getting comfortable with not having all the answers, separating professional identity from self-worth, and even considering psychedelics like psilocybin as possible treatments for mental health problems. Maguire is a smart and self-aware guide, candid about personal challenges like his struggle with paternal postpartum depression, and full of practical tips for reframing tough situations. (Readers can get through tedious parenting tasks by reflecting that it might be the last time they’re doing it, which boosts gratitude.) This will resonate with modern dads frustrated with outmoded parenting advice. (May)

Reviewed on 04/10/2026 | Details & Permalink

Historian Hilmes (Berlin 1936) recreates the concluding months of WWII in an enthralling you-were-there style narration that covers May through September 1945. In California’s Pacific Palisades, Thomas Mann—who fled Germany in 1933—is only mildly nonplussed at the May 8 news of his homeland’s surrender, even as his son Klaus, writing for a U.S. Army newspaper, makes his way to Munich to find out what happened to his family’s home. In mid-July, Churchill, Truman, and Stalin meet at the Potsdam Conference, where they negotiate the new postwar order even as Truman mulls the results of the first atomic bomb test. Meanwhile, Margot Bendheim and Adolf Friedlander, newly liberated from Theresienstadt, are so overwhelmed they remain at the camp for several weeks, and Berlin empty-nester Else Tietze frets over the fates of her scattered adult children. Hilmes has a gift for bringing the mighty down to human level, so that Stalin’s irritation that, since he’s unable to ride a horse, he can’t have his own military parade, or director Billy Wilder’s lambasting of another director’s serious attempts to reckon with concentration camps (“Films have to entertain!... We’re alienating them with your movie!”) blend seamlessly with the everyman and -woman accounts. The result is an immersive mosaic of a world in flux. (June)

Reviewed on 04/10/2026 | Details & Permalink

London’s Eaton Square has been the home of prime ministers, Hollywood celebrities, Nazi sympathizers, and one enduring murder mystery, as revealed in this delightfully gossipy if occasionally plodding account from historian Larman (Power and Glory). Previously a patch of marshland famous for a disastrous 1784 balloon flight attempt, the square, with its relatively “modest” but tony homes built beginning in 1827 under the auspices of “master builder” Thomas Cubitt, evolved into London’s “most fashionable address.” The author surveys two centuries’ worth of residents with an eye for scandal, from 19th-century art collector and Whig politician Ralph Bernal, whose legacy is marred by his advocacy for slavery; to mid-20th-century conservative politician Robert Boothby, known for his “taste for rough-trade sex and teenage boys”; to Neville Chamberlain, who rented out his home to buffoonish Nazi ambassador Joachim von Ribbontrop. The most morbidly riveting resident is Diana Mitford, whose relationship with “charismatic” fascist Oswald Mosley led her to not only praise Hitler after meeting him (she noted his “marvellous drollery”) but have him at her wedding. In comparison, the less shocking tales can drag—such as an exhaustive exploration of the careers of actors Rex Harrison and Vivian Leigh—and the square’s intriguing contemporary iteration as a home for Russian oligarchs only gets a brief mention. Still, it’s an amusingly lurid compendium of elites mostly behaving badly. (June)

Reviewed on 04/10/2026 | Details & Permalink

Biographer and novelist Wilson (I Saw Him Die) marks the centenary of Marilyn Monroe’s birth with a prismatic account of her tumultuous life. Forgoing a linear narrative, Wilson offers vignettes of key episodes, ranging from the religious zeal that shaped her childhood to her romantic relationships with the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra, and, allegedly, John F. Kennedy. The approach allows for deep dives into the uncanny parallels between her life and that of earlier blonde superstar Jean Harlow and the ways Monroe thoughtfully crafted elements of her star persona, including her singular walking style. Wilson is particularly captivated by Monroe’s afterlife, devoting considerable coverage to the myriad theories that surround her death at 36 in 1962 and the convoluted path of her personal effects, which are now scattered around the world in private collections. These details, however, come at the cost of in-depth analyses of Monroe’s film performances and other aspects of her complex personality, such as her desire for intellectual self-improvement, which are only touched on glancingly. Wilson characterizes much of what has been written about Monroe as “an intriguing blend of truth and myth, whipped up with a topping of sickly-sweet Hollywood spin.” Despite his best efforts, he fails to escape the same trap. (June)

Reviewed on 04/10/2026 | Details & Permalink

Wall Street Journal editor Baer debuts with a labyrinthine history of Fidelity Investments. one of the world’s most powerful financial institutionsBaer recaps the company’s evolution from its 1946 founding in Boston by Ted Johnson, who pioneered mutual funds that let small investors buy into professionally managed portfolios of stocks and bonds. His son Ned took over Fidelity in 1972 and cultivated a vast new business in administering 401(k) retirement plans for millions of workers who constituted a gigantic pool of customers for Fidelity funds and other financial services. In more recent years, the company has innovated with zero-fee index funds and bitcoin investments. Along the way, Baer revisits company scandals, including traders’ acceptance of bribes from brokers they bought stock from and a convoluted familial succession melodrama. (Ned barred his daughter Abigail, a Fidelity executive, from replacing him, whereupon she tried to oust him from the company; the two reconciled and Abigail later became an effective CEO, Baer reports.) Baer argues cogently that Fidelity has been a leader in the democratization of Wall Street, but the narrative bogs down in eye-glazing details of mundane office politics. The result is an overstuffed and undershaped portrait of a Wall Street institution. (May)

Reviewed on 04/10/2026 | Details & Permalink