Tongues is a graphic-novel retelling of the Prometheus myth set in a version of modern Central Asia. It follows the captive god, his fraught relationship with the eagle that torments him, and his pursuit of revenge, while interweaving the stories of an East African orphan on an errand of violence and a drifting young man carrying a teddy bear. The book reimagines ancient myth through contemporary characters and themes of suffering, connection, and consequence.

Kōrero, a young girl from a remote Tongan island, is chosen to save her people and undertakes a perilous seafaring journey across the Tu’i Tonga maritime empire. The novel follows her rise to leadership and explores cultural survival, ecological strain, and personal discovery without revealing key plot twists.

A biography of William F. Buckley Jr. that traces his rise from the 1951 publication of God and Man at Yale to his decades as founder of National Review, columnist, television personality, and influential figure in the conservative movement. It examines his public career, personal relationships, and the internal struggles that reshaped conservatism in the late 20th century, presented without revealing major surprises.

Ian Leslie examines the twenty-three-year relationship between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, showing how their intense, shifting personal bond—affectionate, competitive and often turbulent—shaped The Beatles' music. Tracing their shared life before, during and after the band, the book explores how their private language, emotional dynamics and collaboration fueled creativity and songwriting.

Keith McNally’s memoir follows his journey from a tough London childhood and early acting to becoming a defining New York restaurateur. He recalls his travels, the founding of landmark restaurants such as Balthazar, Pastis, and Minetta Tavern, his family and relationships, a life‑changing stroke, and his later social media presence — all delivered with candor and irreverent wit.

An investigative look at how Spotify transformed the music industry, drawing on interviews with industry insiders, former employees, and musicians. Liz Pelly examines the platform’s algorithms, playlist-driven culture, and business model to explain how personalization and streaming economics have reshaped how music is created, distributed, and consumed—and how artists and listeners are responding.

Water Mirror Echo is a cultural biography of Bruce Lee that follows his journey from segregated San Francisco and a youth in Hong Kong to his return to the United States and emergence as a global figure. Jeff Chang examines how Lee popularized martial arts in the West, bridged Eastern and Western perspectives, and helped shape early ideas of Asian American identity, drawing on interviews, personal documents, and family photographs.

Mark Whitaker traces how Malcolm X’s reputation transformed after his 1965 assassination, showing how he became a major cultural and political icon. The book maps his influence across the Black Power and Black Arts movements, music and hip‑hop, sports, film, and contemporary activism, and notes how figures across the political spectrum have cited him. Whitaker also reexamines the legal history surrounding Malcolm’s murder and the efforts to revisit the convictions connected to the case.

A reporting-driven investigation into the anger that fueled the recent populist surge, traveling from shuttered factories and struggling small towns to the corridors of power and wealth to weave together interviews, history and analysis; it shows how economic dislocation, cultural resentment, racial anxieties, media amplification and elite neglect combined to produce a combustible political energy, offering both compassionate portraits of people left behind and a critique of the structural forces and narratives that made their rage politically potent.

Jeff Pearlman offers a detailed retelling of Tupac Shakur's life, examining the man behind the public myth and the enduring questions around his murder. The book reconstructs West Coast hip hop, goes inside Death Row Records and the sets of Juice and Poetic Justice, and uses nearly seven hundred interviews and previously unpublished material to present a layered portrait of a complicated, elusive figure.

A concise history tracing how personal choice came to define modern freedom. Rosenfeld follows developments from the seventeenth century to the present — from shopping and religious toleration to romantic, political, and reproductive choices — highlights the role of women in expanding options, and examines the social and psychological costs of living with ever more possibilities.

Blank Space examines why popular culture over the past 25 years has trended toward safe, formulaic entertainment—reboots, viral fads, and profit-driven aesthetics—rather than bold artistic risk. W. David Marx traces how economic incentives, technology, and shifting social attitudes (from influencer culture and K-pop to blockbuster franchises, industry plants, nepo babies, and AI art) reshaped music, film, fashion, and street culture. He argues this has created a “blank space” where reinvention is rare and suggests ways to refocus on creativity, community, and values beyond pure profit.

A concise essay collection in which cultural critic Tre Johnson explores how Black creativity and everyday innovation have shaped American life. Mixing personal memoir, pop culture, and historical observation, Johnson highlights examples—from 1990s airbrush tees to family trips and comedians like Dick Gregory—to argue that ordinary practices reveal extraordinary resourcefulness and cultural influence.

Augustine Sedgewick’s Fatherhood traces how ideas about being a father developed from ancient times to the present, examining the cultural, scientific and social forces that shaped masculinity and family life. Using historical figures and moments as touchpoints, the book explores how sex, money, power and love have influenced fathering and suggests a more caring vision of men’s roles in families.

Helen Lewis examines the myth of the lone "genius," arguing that cultural bias, collaboration, and historical context shape who we label exceptional. Using examples from science, music, and technology, she highlights overlooked contributors, questions whether inventions were inevitable, and reassesses celebrated figures. A concise, provocative look at how we understand creativity and achievement.

Peak Human examines seven historical golden ages—ancient Athens, the Roman Republic, Abbasid Baghdad, Song China, Renaissance Italy, the Dutch Republic and the Anglosphere—to identify the cultural, scientific, technological and economic factors that enabled their flourishing. Johan Norberg explores common patterns and vulnerabilities in these societies and draws lessons about how progress can be sustained and why prosperous eras eventually falter.

When her daughter Sana is arrested for the murder of a neighborhood landlord, widowed Kausar Khan returns to Toronto and refuses to accept the charges. Relying on sharp observation, old friends and her plucky granddaughter, Kausar digs into local secrets and a string of unsolved crimes to find the truth in this cozy, twisty whodunnit.

A searing collection of essays and reportage that traces the contours of Black life and American democracy, blending historical analysis, keen political commentary, and personal reflection to explore protest, policing, institutions, and the persistent fight for racial justice. Through examinations of moments from the civil rights era to contemporary movements, the book interrogates how power is wielded and contested, how narratives are shaped by media and politicians, and how everyday acts of resistance reveal the stakes of citizenship. Crisp, erudite, and morally urgent, the pieces illuminate both the structural forces that constrain Black lives and the improvisational strategies communities use to resist, persist, and imagine a more democratic future.

David Denby profiles Leonard Bernstein, Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, and Norman Mailer, showing how their Jewish heritage and American freedom shaped their work and reshaped mid‑20th‑century U.S. culture. Operating in music, comedy, feminism, and literature, they altered public tastes and debates while revealing ambition, contradictions, and intense personalities. The book examines their influence and character without revealing personal spoilers.

A lively culinary memoir that weaves together memories of living in the American West with recipes, folk stories, and meditations on hunger, survival, and identity; the narrator recounts episodes of childhood, relationships, farm and ranch life, and encounters with landscape and animals, using food as a lens to explore cultural history, personal loss, sexuality, creativity, and resilience, blending practical cookery with wry, lyrical observation.

Aflame recounts Pico Iyer’s decades of silent retreats at a Benedictine hermitage in Big Sur and how those periods of stillness brought clarity and joy to his life. Facing personal upheavals—fires, loss, a daughter’s illness—he reflects on silence, inwardness, and how solitude can strengthen our capacity for companionship. The book blends memoir and observation of monastic practice to explore how quiet can reshape how we live and love.

Dinner with King Tut follows experimental archaeologists who recreate ancient foods, tools, technologies, and rituals to recover the sensory details of past lives. Sam Kean joins their hands-on experiments—firing catapults, building Roman-style roads, trying ancient surgery and tattooing, and sailing reconstructed boats—to evoke how people looked, sounded, and tasted across eras and cultures. The book offers a lively, research-based tour of everyday experience in history without revealing specific plot details.

How to Be Well is a journalistic investigation of the modern wellness industry and its impact on how people think about health and self-care. Amy Larocca explores popular trends and communities, assesses the science behind common practices, and examines how wellness is shaped by gender, class, race, commerce, and long-standing beauty and fashion marketing—showing why alternative remedies persist and how the industry profits from health anxieties.

Authority is a collection of essays by Andrea Long Chu that examines what authority means in contemporary criticism and culture. Chu reads novels, television, theater, and video games, revisiting works such as The Phantom of the Opera and the reception of Octavia Butler, while critiquing the habits of literary critics. She traces the history of criticism from the eighteenth century to the social-media era and argues for a form of criticism fit to respond to real political crises.

A sharp, historically grounded critique of American policing that traces how beliefs about safety, property and race shaped the police’s expansion and distorted their role, arguing that contemporary reforms often entrench harm by treating symptoms rather than causes. Weaving legal and social history with reporting, the book shows how slavery-era patrols, labor control, and twentieth-century professionalization remade public order, and how police increasingly became the default responders to homelessness, mental illness and domestic crises. From this foundation it challenges familiar reformist fixes and advances a practical, justice-oriented case for shrinking police functions, redirecting resources to community institutions and reimagining public safety around prevention, care and democratic accountability.