Daughter of a Song

A Memoir by Sarah Curtis, published by Texas Tech University Press He was born in a dugout—a hole carved into the hard, unforgiving earth near Lubbock, Texas. He was picking cotton while most kids were learning to read, and before he could legally buy a drink, he was running

The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine

Brand New Beat written by Peter Richardson, published by University of California Press In 1967, Jann Wenner, a twenty-one-year-old who had abandoned his formal education, started a magazine. He set up shop in San Francisco, surrounded by the specific, humid idealism of the Bay Area counterculture. The

Headlights

Fiction written by C.J. Leede, published by Tor Nightfire Daniel Stansfield was done. His cardboard box was packed, his badge was sitting on the desk, and he was ready to walk out. After years of looking at the absolute worst things people could do to each other, he just

Nymph

Today's book written by Sofia Montrone and published by Avid Reader Press For ten-year-old Leo, the world is something to be harvested, piece by piece, and kept safe. Under the sun-baked roof of her Nonna Tina’s old Italian agriturismo, she moves through the mornings

The Great Fair of 1876 and the Invention of America's Future

Centennial by Fergus M. Bordewich, published by Knopf The summer of 1876 in Philadelphia was suffocatingly hot, yet millions of people streamed through the gates of Fairmount Park, drawn by a spectacle the likes of which the New World had never seen. The Great Centennial Exhibition was designed as a

The Book of Birds

A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss written by Robert MacFarlane, illustrated by Jackie Morris The Book of Birds is basically what happens when you decide a standard field guide just isn’t keeping it real enough. Instead of hitting you with the usual dry, textbook data about wing spans

Rasputin Swims the Potomoc

by Ben Fountain, published by Flatiron Books Imagine Succession meeting the WWE in a political thriller that reads like a Black Mirror episode directed by Andy Warhol. In this wildly satirical ride, reporter Clarence Thomas Jr. is desperate for a story juicy enough to survive the fifteen-second attention span

How We See It:

The World Looks at America in the Age of Trump Edited by The Dial, published by The New Press Living inside the American media bubble right now feels like being trapped in a group chat where everyone is shouting at the same time, the notifications never stop, and the main

Baby in a Box: Stories

by Sarah Braunstein (Author, Colby College) There is a certain kind of magic that happens when an author manages to capture the exact frequency of modern anxiety and wrap it in a story that feels like a late-night text from your most chaotic friend. It is that rare literary

1873

The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World written by Liaquat Ahamed, published by Penguin Press The new book by financial historian Liaquat Ahamed charts the rise and cataclysmic fall of the world's first true era of globalization, focusing on a forgotten nineteenth-

A Resistance History of the United States

written by Tad Stoermer, published by Steerforth Press About the book: The traditional narrative of American history often frames the founding of the United States as a definitive victory for human liberty. We are taught that the Revolution secured freedom, but the reality is much more complicated. In truth, the

Sublimation

The Border Cuts You in Two the debut novel by Isabel J. Kim, published by Tor Books Crossing a physical border changes the trajectory of a person’s life, but in Isabel J. Kim’s debut novel Sublimation, published by Tor Books, that division becomes a literal, physical split. In

Legs Hearts Minds

Loss and Its Remedies by Chris Jones, published by Random House Returning home from a long trip for ESPN, too jet-lagged to sleep, Chris Jones opened his wife’s laptop to get a little writing done. Instead, he found a series of text messages that would burn his marriage—

The Beasts of the East

The Fall and Rise of America’s Eastern Wilderness by Andrew Moore, published by Mariner Books Massive elk crashed through the old-growth canopy of New York and Pennsylvania. Apex cougars stalked prey through the misty Appalachian Mountains. Wild bison herds thundered across rolling Midwestern prairies, and wolves prowled the

Today's Book:

Whistler by Ann Patchett There is a distinct, universal anxiety that comes with wandering through a crowded museum. You are surrounded by centuries of human history, staring at oil paintings or marble sculptures, trying to find a moment of quiet reflection while shuffling alongside hundreds of strangers. But what if

Love and Terror

The Helter-Skelter History of the Manson Murders written by Claudia Verhoeven, published by Verso Books August 1969. Hollywood. The "beautiful people" were living on borrowed time, and the Manson Family came to collect. We’ve all heard the story—or at least the version of it that’

The Midnight Train

by Matt Haig published by Viking Books The Midnight Train, the latest novel by internationally bestselling author Matt Haig, was released on May 26, 2026. Marketed as a companion piece to Haig’s 2020 phenomenon The Midnight Library, the story explores themes of life, death, and the weight of human

How to Read a Tree

Clues and Patterns from Bark to Leaves Trees are the ultimate quiet observers. They have been standing there for decades, sometimes centuries, just watching the world unfold while we rush past them with our eyes glued to our phones. We treat them like scenery, just green noise in the background

Trudeau & Doonesbury

The Cartoonist Who Turned the News into Art by Joshua Kendall - published by Abrams Books Joshua Kendall’s biography of Garry Trudeau functions less like a standard academic text and more like a cultural autopsy of the last five decades. He digs through the archives and sits down with the

Marilyn and Her Books

The Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe From the book publicity: Far from the spotlights of the Hollywood film sets and the flashbulbs of the press, Marilyn Monroe was a great reader and lover of books. Her association with writers did not stop at reading their words on the page. She

The Impossible Factory:

The Remarkable True Story of Kelly Johnson and the Lockheed Skunk Works, America's Innovation Machine The history of American industry is a graveyard of good ideas that were strangled in the crib by committees, middle managers, and the paralyzing fear of failure. It is a long, tedious record

Two Friends, 82,490 Miles, and the Wild, Wonderful Sports We Love

Mike Schur and Joe Posnanski are two guys who are hopelessly, dangerously obsessed with games. And I don’t mean just the Sunday afternoon NFL slog where you’re parked on the couch with a bag of chips. I’m talking about anything with a scoreboard, a buzzer, a winner,

The Untold Story of NExT and the Remaking of an American Visionary

About today's featured book: In 1985, Steve Jobs—the brilliant, volatile founder of Apple Computer—walked out of his company’s headquarters, driven from the very corporation he had created. What happened next would transform not only his life and career, but the future of technology itself. For

ASTONISHED BY BEAUTY

A Field Guide to the Practice of Paying Attention From the book publicity: An invitation to slow down and experience the world through the mindful practice of natural history. What happens when we truly pay attention to the natural world? Astonished by Beauty offers a thoughtful and practical guide to

Last Gangster in Austin

Frank Smith, Ronnie Earle, and the End of a Junkyard Mafia Ronnie Earle was a Texas legend. During his three decades as the district attorney responsible for Austin and surrounding Travis County, he prosecuted corrupt corporate executives and state officials, including the notorious US congressman Tom DeLay. But Earle maintained