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38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England, and a Nazi in Patagonia

Philippe Sands (Knopf)

Profiling two mass murderers who found sanctuary from international criminal courts in Chile—the country’s erstwhile dictator Augusto Pinochet and Walter Rauff, an early architect of the Holocaust—legal scholar Sands slowly unravels the shocking revelation that Rauff likely worked as a torturer under the Pinochet regime. It’s a hard, chilling view of a world where evil not only goes unpunished but flourishes.

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America, América: A New History of the New World

Greg Grandin (Penguin Press)

This monumental work from Pulitzer winner Grandin reconsiders the story of the Americas as a push-and-pull between the Northern and Southern continents, rather than between the Old and New Worlds. In a sweeping paradigm shift, he identifies how ideas about democracy, freedom, and colonialism ricocheted back and forth between the two Americas, developing into world-changing political philosophies.

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Authority: Essays

Andrea Long Chu (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Pulitzer-winning critic Chu is at her best in this exceptional collection. She tackles a wide range of subjects—The Last of Us, The Phantom of the Opera, Zadie Smith, and the art of criticism, to name a few—with a precision that’s difficult to match, wielding harsh but stunning insights that leave the reader in awe.

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The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam

Lana Lin (Dorothy)

Modeled after Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, this bold memoir sees Lin narrating her partner’s life story from their point of view. Intimate and moving while making the most of its brainy concept, the result will inspire readers to look more carefully at their own close relationships.

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Baldwin: A Love Story

Nicholas Boggs (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

This meticulously researched and gorgeously written biography explores the life and writing of James Baldwin through the lens of four of his intimate relationships. Boggs’s unique approach delivers new insights into the private world of one of America’s greatest writers. It’s a vital contribution to Baldwin scholarship.

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Bibliophobia: A Memoir

Sarah Chihaya (Random House)

Critic Chihaya’s refreshingly unsentimental debut illuminates the pleasures and limits of a life lived through books. As she catalogs the texts that transformed her, she also considers the damage done by narrativizing her own pain, both as a perennial outsider in adolescence and an adult struggling with mental illness. It amounts to a brilliant, unsettling blend of criticism and autobiography.

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Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State

Caleb Gayle (Riverhead)

The charismatic, indefatigable Edward McCabe persevered in rising as a Black man through the political and business ranks of 19th-century America until one setback too many at the hands of racist adversaries set him on a radical, separatist path to turn Oklahoma into a Black homeland. Readers will be wowed by journalist Gayle’s propulsive history.

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The Broken King: A Memoir

Michael Thomas (Grove)

Nearly 20 years after his acclaimed first novel, Man Gone Down, Thomas returns with this harrowing self-portrait. Attempting to untangle what made him a “hard man,” he combs through his hardscrabble Boston childhood and profiles the men in his family with a poet’s eye and a clinician’s intellect. The result is arresting, unforgettable, and even, by the end, hopeful.

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The Colonel and the King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley, and the Partnership That Rocked the World

Peter Guralnick (Little, Brown)

Guralnick peels back myths about the exploitative relationship between Elvis and his manager Colonel Tom Parker to reveal a more complex—and intriguing—story of how Parker, a former carny, elevated his client to fame, creating a blueprint for the modern superstar in the process. Excerpts from never-before-seen letters bolster this uncommonly vivid portrait of one of rock’s most legendary partnerships.

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Genocide Bad: Notes on Palestine, Jewish History, and Collective Liberation

Sim Kern (Interlink)

This bold challenge to accepted American narratives about Israel is delivered by a prominent online Jewish activist who had a front-row seat to the propaganda war surrounding Israel’s campaign of destruction in Palestine after October 7. Kern breaks down the ways the Israeli government uses social media to shut down political dissent, and issues a powerful call for a clear-eyed reevaluation of the conflict.

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Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley

Jacob Silverman (Bloomsbury Continuum)

Tech reporter Silverman’s sharp and ominous account delves into the radicalizing worldviews of Silicon Valley billionaires in the lead-up to Donald Trump’s reelection, and warns of a fusion of corporate and state power through which tech titans seek to enact undemocratic agendas. It’s an essential unmasking of the growing extremism among America’s wealthy.

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Is a River Alive?

Robert Macfarlane (Norton)

Mixing travel writing and natural history, Macfarlane elevates rivers from functional resources to living, breathing beings deserving of respect and legal rights. Both personal and political, Macfarlane’s perspective-shifting narrative unfolds in lyrical prose and enchanting detail, cementing his status as a master of language.

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Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America

Bridget Read (Crown)

This thrilling debut exposé from New York magazine journalist Read is a whirlwind journey through the greed and exploitation of multilevel marketing schemes. Spotlighting MLMs’ overlooked role in conservative politics and showcasing the devastation they’ve wreaked on individuals struggling to make ends meet, Read skillfully unravels the lies at the heart of this all-American grift.

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The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue: A Story of Climate and Hope on One American Street

Mike Tidwell (St. Martin’s)

In this powerful portrait of a community, travel writer Tidwell reveals that, far from a distant threat, the consequences of climate change have arrived at readers’ front steps. He brings a penetrating hyperlocal focus to a global problem, shedding light on how warming temperatures affect everything from wildlife to people’s health and their perceptions of the future.

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Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star

Mayukh Sen (Norton)

The story of Merle Oberon, the first actor of color nominated for an Academy Award, who spent her career “passing” as white, is fascinating in itself. But Sen brings a uniquely compassionate lens to Oberon’s experience, delivering a nuanced portrait of a troubled star and an insightful depiction of the industry that shaped her.

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Marginlands: A Journey into India’s Vanishing Landscapes

Arati Kumar-Rao (Milkweed)

National Geographic journalist Kumar-Rao offers an elegant travelogue and environmental history of India that spotlights how disappearing Indigenous customs and agricultural practices are deeply in tune with the local ecology. The account culminates in an exhilarating call for readers to slow down and see the world around them.

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Memorial Days: A Memoir

Geraldine Brooks (Viking)

The Pulitzer-winning novelist indexes the years immediately after her husband’s sudden death in this gut-wrenching account. Toggling between the story of the couple’s courtship, a portrait of the absurd administrative crises death can cause, and a tender recollection of Brooks’s eventual “unclenching of the soul,” it’s a revelatory meditation on a well-covered subject.

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The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains

Pria Anand (Washington Square)

Neurologist Anand ventures deep into the brain’s mysteries with medical tales drawn from her own practice, literature, fables, and more. In probing the intimate links between medicine and narrative—those the brain creates to rationalize its symptoms, but also those told by patients, doctors, and the medical system—she uncovers sharp, eye-opening insights into whose pain is believed and why.

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On Air: The Triumph and Tumult of NPR

Steve Oney (Avid Reader)

Delivering an essential piece of media history, Oney chronicles the rise of NPR, from its early days as a countercultural force to its position as a mainstream media stronghold. Gossipy and unsparing, it’s a deeply researched and timely look at an institution that has frequently been made a political target and threatened with funding cuts.

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Racebook: A Personal History of the Internet

Tochi Onyebuchi (Grove/Gay)

In these sage and utterly original reflections on the relationship between race and the internet, Onyebuchi demonstrates the power of mining personal experience to uncover universal truths. Poetic and penetrating, his essays offer a nostalgic record of the internet’s early days, sharp critiques of the present, and glimmers of hope for the future.

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The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide

Howard W. French (Liveright)

Journalist French revisits the history of the Pan-Africanist movement through the life of Ghanaian prime minister Kwame Nkrumah, leader of the first African nation to gain its independence from colonialism. It’s an eloquent, erudite biography that develops into a towering history of ideas, and reframes the 20th century as a long struggle for liberation.

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Shift: Managing Your Emotions—So They Don’t Manage You

Ethan Kross (Crown)

Kross draws from his own neuroscientific research for an enlightening and deeply humane guide to better handling emotions with minor shifts in perspective. Along the way, he adeptly debunks received mental health wisdom—including the idea that positive thinking is unequivocally helpful—while making clear how much of the human mind remains a mystery.

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Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America

Russell Shorto (Norton)

Shorto’s fast-paced, stylish account of the unprecedented deal struck between Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch administrator of New Amsterdam, and Richard Nicholls, the Englishman tasked with capturing the city, posits that the duo’s canny negotiation and eventual bloodless handoff of Manhattan presaged much of the American story to come. It’s a propulsive character study brimming with big ideas.

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Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of ‘Born to Run’

Peter Ames Carlin (Doubleday)

Though the success of Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run now seems inevitable, Carlin’s blow-by-blow account of its creation reveals a process fraught with setbacks caused by the record company and Springsteen himself, who nearly scrapped the album after he finished recording it. With kinetic prose, Carlin turns the sometimes inscrutable process by which art gets made into a riveting story.

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Waiting for Britney Spears: A True Story, Allegedly

Jeff Weiss (MCD)

Weiss tumbles down the rabbit hole of 2000s celebrity culture in this colorful chronicle of Britney Spears’s rise and fall, drawn from his years as a tabloid reporter covering her career. What emerges is both an un-put-downable roller-coaster ride through the early aughts and a razor-sharp commentary on pop culture’s twin desires to glorify and demonize female superstars.

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