Nazi hatred of the Soviet Union played a larger role in precipitating the Holocaust than is generally understood, according to this riveting revisionist study. Historian Hellbeck (Stalingrad) recaps how Hitler rose to prominence in the 1920s by exploiting Germans’ fear of communism. After the Nazis came to power and sent more than one hundred thousand German communists to concentration camps specifically created for that purpose, Germany’s preparations for the war against the “global menace” of Bolshevism began in earnest, Hellbeck writes. Even mere days before signing the 1939 nonaggression pact with Stalin, “Hitler openly remarked: ‘Everything I undertake is directed against Russia.’ ” Hellbeck further explains that, in the Nazi imagination, “the USSR was the most powerful Jewish organization in the world.” Thus, the author posits, once Germany went to war with the Soviet Union in 1941, Jews were subtly “redefined”: “They were no longer racial aliens who could simply be expelled” but “political enemies who needed to be destroyed.” This is why, in Hellbeck’s view, mass killings of Jews were first undertaken during the Nazi invasion of Soviet territory, and from there “seamlessly extended into the oppression, and then annihilation of Jews elsewhere.” Hellbeck elegantly brings to bear a vast array of German and Soviet sources to make his case. The result is a kaleidoscopic, thought-provoking reframing of the ideological underpinnings of Nazi atrocities and the war itself. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Once characterized “Hog Butcher for the World” by poet Carl Sandburg, Chicago has not only shed the stench of its stockyard past but emerged as an improbable mecca of innovative cuisine, according to this entertaining ragout-to-Zagat debut from James Beard award-winning food writer Gebert. Drawing on dozens of interviews with industry insiders, Gebert’s oral history begins in 1963, when Chicago took its first step into the world of modern cuisine with the opening of Hungarian-born chef Louis Szathmary’s The Bakery. A former food scientist for Armour, Szathmary “reinvented himself in the image of a classic European chef” and became a TV celebrity through appearances with daytime hosts like Oprah Winfrey. In the 1970s, chefs like Jovan Trboyevic and Jean Banchet led a “French revolution” that put Chicago on the national culinary map. In the 1980s, Charlie Trotter’s eponymous establishment forged “an American style of high-end cooking” that ended French cuisine’s dominance. Throughout these first-person accounts, themes emerge like the increase of emotional abuse in fine-dining kitchens (which interviewees reveal came to a head at Trotter’s restaurant) and the ways in which the city’s depressed post–white flight real estate market fostered the rise of several culinary empires. Readers also encounter delightful Kitchen Confidential–style hijinks, including tips on how to get “invited... to do shots with the cooks.” This is a must-read for Chicago’s foodies. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

This rousing debut account from independent researcher Flint profiles fiery West Virginia activist Karen Gorell, who spearheaded a successful grassroots campaign to get insurance benefits for retired aluminum workers. The Century Aluminum plant in Ravenswood, W.Va., where Gorrell’s husband Mike had worked since the 1970s, terminated its retirees’ health insurance plans in 2010. Flint recaps how plant employees like Mike had knowingly sacrificed their health working in the plant’s toxic conditions, under the belief that a robust retirement health insurance plan would help manage any “chronic conditions.” After the plan was canceled, Gorrell felt compelled to act—particularly on behalf of a former coworker of Mike’s who was suffering from an aggressive cancer. At first, Gorrell naively assumed that if elected officials could just “shake the retirees’ hands” at a townhall-style meeting, they would be moved to help. She found, instead, that most politicians ignored her pleas. Undeterred, Gorrell moved on to more confrontational encounters, including protesting the chair of the board at his home in suburban Cleveland, and culminating in 2011 with a 77-day Occupy-style encampment at the plant. Flint’s detailed reportage captures Gorrell’s folksy humor and refreshing forthrightness. (“If [your boss] doesn’t have the balls to call me back, he needs to be man enough to tell me,” Gorrell tells one flustered corporate underling on the phone.) It’s an inspiring granny vs. Goliath tale. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Leadership coach Tran (The Karma of Success) delivers a practical guide to navigating uncertainty. In a time of constant technological advancement, Tran argues, society needs a new kind of intelligence, one that measures a person’s ability to handle change. She calls this the Agility Quotient, or AQ. People respond to change differently, Tran explains, outlining four AQ archetypes: novelists (those who make plans), astronauts (those who inspire), firefighters (those who improvise), and neurosurgeons (those who never give up). Knowing one’s type can help them understand their strengths and become more confident in the face of change, Tran posits. To acquire a high AQ, she suggests the use of tools like anchors, or having “people, places, and routines that ground our lives,” and bets, or taking action even when the outcome is unknown. Turning to AQ in the workplace, Tran reveals how outsize rewards may await those who see disruptions as opportunities. For example, Nike, which began as a distributor for a Japanese shoe company, only started making its own shoes when its supplier cut it off. While Tran frequently resorts to clunky acronyms and other business book gimmicks (life’s ebbs and flows are referred to as CHURN, which stands for change, hiccups, uncertainty, rupture, and newness), she astutely pinpoints how resistance to change holds people back. This will inspire readers to become more comfortable with discomfort. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

This mesmerizing collection from novelist and essayist Wong (The Box) uses observations of small invertebrates to tackle questions about selfhood, consciousness, and humans’ relationship with nature. In the title essay, Wong turns the life of a sea snail into a bildungsroman, chronicling its journey from a tiny larva to its eventual formation of a protective shell, which prompts questions about the snail’s mode of being (“She undulates at the threshold between what we call living and inanimate”). In “The One and the Many,” Wong juxtaposes her experience providing a home to a small snail she found attached to a stack of mail with the story of an endangered Bermudian land snail that became part of a captive breeding program. When the snail doesn’t leave the open takeaway container she uses to house it, she begins to wonder if her love for the creature is oppressive (“What if it didn’t feel like love but like surveillance?”). Love comes into focus again in “How to Love a Jellyfish,” in which the author questions what it would look like to marvel at another creature without capturing and using it for one’s own needs. Relentlessly empathetic, these essays reframe nonhuman beings as individuals worthy of respect. Readers will be moved. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

This stimulating memoir from French philosopher Badiou (The Immanence of Truths) recounts the personal milestones and intellectual influences that shaped him from his birth in 1937 to the middle of his career in 1985. Writing in a conversational mode, Badiou revisits his childhood in Vichy France, early encounters with literature and mathematics, and entrance into postwar intellectual life, situating each episode within the wider turmoil of the 20th century. His accounts of shifting ideological currents, including anti-colonial struggles, the rise and fall of left-wing movements, and the enduring temptations of fascism, are brisk yet sharp. Most involving are Badiou’s insights on his philosophical formation, including the “four truth procedures”—science, art, politics, and love—that came to anchor his worldview. As Badiou blends personal reflections and theoretical explorations, he occasionally slips into abstraction, but for the most part he writes with an inviting clarity, lingering as long on his considerable achievements as he does on his failures and regrets. Students of political thought and French intellectual history will find much to savor in this rewarding and approachable volume. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

This gut-wrenching account from sociologist Mauldin (Made to Hear) spotlights the hardships endured by couples in the U.S. when one partner becomes disabled or ill and the other must serve as full-time caregiver. Drawing on her harrowing experiences caring for her late partner J., who suffered from leukemia, as well as the stories of four other couples, the author explores the financial, physical, and mental toll of caregiving. The able-bodied partner, she shows, becomes a “bottomless resource”—or, as she bittersweetly calls it, “The One”—who must act as “physical therapist, appointment scheduler, medication manager, and all-around assistant.” Throughout, the author pinpoints how these challenges stem from America’s “minimal social safety nets,” as in the case of Tina, a woman with multiple sclerosis who struggles with red tape while trying to access home-care services through Medicaid, meaning that her husband must miss work to help her; or Angel, an independent contractor who can’t afford health insurance and is thus disastrously uninsured when he suffers a stroke. Mauldin’s account stands out for its courageous coverage of taboo topics, including the physical effort of “toileting,” caregivers who suffer from PTSD, and how infidelity can become imperative for a caregiver’s mental health. (It’s “the one thing that can bring you back to life,” one subject says.) The result is both an unflinching look at private worlds of pain and a forceful denunciation of America’s for-profit healthcare system. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Historian Jäger (The Populist Moment) offers an incisive analysis of the contemporary political moment, in which “popular involvement in American politics has seen a relative resurgence” and yet “institutional involvement” with organized political groups is at an all time low. Instead of the organized mass-movement politics that characterized the 20th century, Jäger asserts, today’s era is one of “hyperpolitics,” wherein “the primary forms of political engagement” happen on social media and are “as fleeting as a market transaction.” Such interactions are “intense” and “polarizing” yet “require little to no long-term obligation.” Jäger offers a brief survey of how society got here, from the post–Cold War “nihilistic societies of the 1990s and 2000s” to the shocks of the 2008 financial crisis and the ascendancy of Trumpism. Along the way, he highlights the public’s decreasing engagement with traditional social institutions like labor unions, civic groups, and churches, and points to how both major political parties have become increasingly “fused with their media or donor classes,” whose economic interests lie, the author suggests, in promoting exactly such monetizable, market transaction–style political engagement. Indeed, he cannily argues, the erosion of social institutions appears to be “an imperative of capital itself,” as if “collective life had to be thinned out to clear new inroads for the market.” It’s an urgent and clarifying call to log off and show up. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

James, a personal trainer and literacy activist, shares his unique path to learning how to read in this inspiring debut. Raised by a single mother in the poorest neighborhood of Bethlehem, Pa., in the 1990s, James struggled as a child to get the attention he needed. His OCD and ADHD made school a challenge, meaning he merely memorized some words as symbols, never functionally learning to read. At 19, he was arrested for trafficking guns—which he did not realize, due to his illiteracy, was illegal—and served time in prison. He continued to struggle with illiteracy after his release, eventually becoming “so sick and tired of hiding” it that, at 32, he shared his story on TikTok. He received responses from thousands of strangers, who pointed him toward videos and other resources to help him get started. Here, he recounts following the advice of his digital community and shares the titles that made an impression on him, including The Diary of Anne Frank and The Giving Tree, from the 100 he read in 2023. Straightforward, moving, and bursting with gratitude, this is a testament to the power of perseverance. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink

Wachter (The Digital Doctor), chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, offers an evenhanded and insightful exploration of the ways artificial intelligence could impact the medical profession. Recognizing that “nearly one million Americans are severely harmed or killed by medical mistakes every year” and that the current healthcare system is wildly expensive and often inaccessible, Wachter argues that “AI doesn’t have to be perfect to be better.” He examines possible physician uses of AI, explaining how its ability to analyze vast datasets could enable more personalized patient care, and explores how patients might benefit, noting, for example, that AI scribes can document patient-doctor conversations, thus freeing up the physician for more present and genuine connections. Wachter doesn’t see AI replacing doctors anytime soon because its biggest shortcoming is “a lack of expansive thinking and real-world experience,” but he does believe that it can automate administrative tasks, decreasing the amount of time spent on paperwork and the frustrations associated with filing pre-authorization forms with insurance companies. Throughout, Wachter clearly and concisely explains the complex technology and its possible medical uses and makes a convincing case that AI will usher in “something of a golden age in healthcare.” The result is a clear-eyed road map of AI’s potential in medicine. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/12/2025 | Details & Permalink