An Economist Biggest Book of the YearHow commerce determines whether America preserves the peace or goes to warWhen the Cold War ended, many believed that expanding trade would usher in an era of peace. Yet today the United States finds itself...

The instant New York Times bestseller:“Today it hit me when he hit me, blood shaking in my brain. Maybe there wasn’t a savior coming. Maybe it was up to me to save me.”Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings...

A SEPTEMBER 2024 INDIE NEXT PICKReturn to Dalton as Shannon Bowring draws another stunningly human portrait of small town America. It's been five years since Bridget Theroux's death shocked the small town of Dalton, Maine, leaving behind husband Nate and...

Welcome to the Tyrrhenian Sea, home to la dolce vita, sun-drenched islands, and seaside towns where even the simplest trattoria has an effortless glamour. Following on from the success of A House Party in Tuscany, food writer Amber Guinness travels from...

How bankers created the modern consumer credit economy and destroyed financial stability in the processAmerican households are awash in expensive credit card debt. But where did all this debt come from? In this history of the rise of postwar American...

A haunting anthology of supernatural stories and the macabre. First published in 1898, The Eerie Book is a chilling anthology featuring classic gothic authors like Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, Thomas de Quincey, and Hans Christian Andersen alongside...

A profound exploration of the enduring impact of war in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. "War is back again." So begins Alexander Kluge's latest book, prompted by a war of aggression that, though being waged in Europe, is of global...

Fall captive to the code—the real-life buccaneer bylaws that shaped every aspect of a pirate’s life. Pirates have long captured our imaginations with images of cutlass-wielding swashbucklers, eye patches, and buried treasure. But what was life really...

Drawing on an impressive range of archaeological and textual sources and a nuanced understanding of biases, this book offers a valuable reappraisal of the enigmatic Phoenicians. The Phoenicians is a fascinating exploration of this much-mythologized...

A sympathetic but clear-eyed exploration of Paul McCartney’s work in the 1990s, arguably his most important since the rise of the Beatles. Paul McCartney’s 1990s was an era like no other, perhaps even the most significant decade of his entire career...

An engaging look at ocean routes’ complicated beginnings and elusive impact. Sara Caputo’s Tracks on the Ocean is a sweeping history of how we have understood routes of travel over the ocean and how we came to represent that movement as a cartographical...

A sweeping history of New York that chronicles the construction of one of the world's great cities. Between the 1880s and the 1930s, New York City experienced explosive growth as nearly a million buildings, dozens of bridges and tunnels, hundreds of...

For the first time, the story of how and why we have plumbed the mysteries of reading, and why it matters today. Reading is perhaps the essential practice of modern civilization. For centuries, it has been seen as key to both personal fulfillment and...

A book highlighting the work of pioneering Black printmaker, sculptor, and activist Elizabeth Catlett. Accomplished printmaker and sculptor, avowed feminist, and lifelong activist Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012) built a remarkable career around...

A far-reaching examination of how America came to treat street and corporate crime so differently. While America incarcerates its most marginalized citizens at an unparalleled rate, the nation has never developed the capacity to consistently prosecute...

Proposes that we can best understand literature’s relationship to sex through a renewed focus on masochism. In a series of readings that engage American and European works of fiction, drama, and theory from the late nineteenth through the early...

An in-depth exploration of the style and influence of Pat Metheny, a truly distinctive musical voice of our time. Guitarist and composer Pat Metheny, among the most acclaimed, visionary musicians of our time, has for five decades toured with his many...

A Nobel laureate offers a brief lesson on physics’ biggest mystery, accessibly explaining the two quantum revolutions that changed our understanding of reality. At the start of the twentieth century, the first quantum revolution upset our vision of the...

A gripping history that spans law, international affairs, and top-secret technology to unmask the tension between intellectual property rights and national security. At the beginning of the twentieth century, two British inventors, Arthur Pollen and...

Economists dream of equilibrium. It's time to wake up. In mainstream economics, markets are ideal if competition is perfect. When supply balances demand, economic maturity is orderly and disturbed only by shocks. These ideas are rooted in doctrines going...