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New Nonfiction & Biography January 2026 |
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Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America's New Age of Disaster
by Jacob Soboroff
On the morning of January 7, 2025, a message pinged the phone of Jacob Soboroff, a national reporter for MS NOW. Big Palisades fire. We are evacuating, his brother texted within minutes of the blaze engulfing the hillside behind the home where he and his pregnant wife were living. Really bad. An attached photo showed a huge black plume rising from behind the house, an umbrella of smoke towering over everything they owned. Jacob rushed to the office of the bureau chief. I should go. I grew up in the Palisades. Soon he was on the front line of the blaze--his first live report of what would turn out to be weeks covering unimaginable destruction, from both the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire, in Altadena. In the days to come, Soboroff appeared across the networks of NBC News as Los Angeles was ablaze, met with displaced residents and workers, and pressed Governor Gavin Newsom in an interview on Meet the Press.
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The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth
by Nicolas Niarchos
Epic, shocking, and deeply reported, The Elements of Power tells the story of the war for the global supply of battery metals--essential for the decarbonization of our economies--and the terrible, bloody human cost of this badly misunderstood industry Congo is rich. Swaths of the war-torn African country lack basic infrastructure, and, after many decades of colonial occupation, its people are officially among the poorest in the world. But hidden beneath the soil are vast quantities of cobalt, lithium, copper, tin, tantalum, tungsten, and other treasures. With unparalleled, original reporting, Nicolas Niarchos reveals how the scramble to control these metals and their production is overturning the world order, just as the global race to drill for oil shaped the twentieth century. Exploring the advent of the lithium-ion battery and tracing the supply chain for its production, Niarchos tells the story both of the people driving these tectonic changes and those whose lives are being upended. He reveals the true, devastating consequences of our best intentions and helps us prepare for an uncertain future.
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Polar War: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic
by Kenneth R. Rosen
A gripping blend of travelogue and frontline reporting that reveals how climate change, military ambition, and economic opportunity are transforming the Arctic into the epicenter of a new cold war, where a struggle for dominance between the planet's great powers heralds the next global conflict. Russian spies. Nuclear submarines. Sabotaged pipelines. Undersea communications severed in the dark of night. The fastest-warming place on earth--where apartment buildings, hospitals, and homes crumble daily as permafrost melts and villages get washed away by rising seas--the Arctic stands at the crossroads of geopolitical ambition and environmental catastrophe. As climate change thaws the northern latitudes, opening once ice-bound shipping lanes and access to natural resources, the world's military powers are rushing to stake their claims in this increasingly strategic region.
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How to Be a Rich Old Lady: Your Guide to Easy Investing, Building Wealth, and Creating the Wild, Beautiful Life You Want
by Amanda Holden
A life-changing path to the financial freedom we all deserve: How to Be a Rich Old Lady is filled with humor, heart, and real-world perspective. Amanda Holden spent years working in investment management, where she saw exactly who gets access to the power, ease, and opportunity money can bring--and it wasn't people like her friends. She also saw how the financial system is designed to feel exclusive and confusing, and how it blames individuals for economic problems they didn't create. So, Amanda left her finance job to launch Invested Development, a financial education company where she has taught more than twenty-five thousand students how to invest with radical clarity, accessibility, and joy. Here, all her expertise is packed into a guide that won't feel like getting cornered by a crypto bro. Instead, it reads like a text from your smartest friend: Let's figure out money, so we can stop thinking about money.
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Do More in Four: Why It's Time for a Shorter Workweek
by Joe O'Connor
An impassioned--and data-driven--case for a four-day workweek. The five-day workweek is a pillar of modern life, but it isn't backed by science, ancient wisdom, or divine decree. It's simply a relic of the industrial age--and it's time for an upgrade. What if we could accomplish more while working fewer days? A shortened workweek once seemed like a radical idea. Today, it's embraced by innovative business leaders, forward-thinking politicians, and a new generation of workers demanding more meaningful work. O'Connor and Lindzon draw on extensive research, compelling case studies, and personal interviews with experts--including a Nobel Prize-winning economist and Bill Gates--to reveal how organizations are reimagining work.
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Neptune's Fortune: The Billion-Dollar Shipwreck and the Ghosts of the Spanish Empire
by Julian Sancton
Roger Dooley wasn't looking for the San José. But an accidental discovery in the dusty stacks of a Spanish archive led him to the story of a lifetime, the tale of a great eighteenth-century treasure ship loaded with riches from the New World and destined for Spain. But that ship, the galleon San José, met a darker fate. It was drawn into a pitched battle with British ships of war off the coast of Cartagena, and when the smoke cleared, the San José and its bounty had disappeared into the ocean, its coordinates lost to time. Though a diver at heart, Dooley was an unlikely candidate to find the San José. Neptune's Fortune is a thrilling adventure, taking readers from great naval battles on the high seas to the sun-soaked shores that nurtured history's most notorious treasure hunters, to the archives that held the secret keys to lost fortune on the ocean floor.
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Tom Paine's War: The Words That Rallied a Nation and the Founder for Our Time
by Jack Kelly
In 1776, one man's words--and the determination of American patriots--allowed our nation to survive its first crisis. Two hundred and fifty years ago, the Declaration of Independence marked the birth of the United States. But two essays of that era appealed even more directly to Americans' feelings. In January 1776, Thomas Paine--a recent immigrant to America --published Common Sense. His straightforward argument upended the fraud of monarchy and dismantled the idea of aristocratic privilege that had dominated the world for centuries. His words convinced Americans that the king had no divine right to rule them--they could rule themselves. A tribute to the Revolution's 250th anniversary, Tom Paine's War is a riveting exploration of our nation's birth. This is a story of the power of words--and the power of belief--and how both speak as well to America's current crisis.
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Once There Was a Town: The Memory Books of a Lost Jewish World
by Jane Ziegelman
A powerful exploration of the books created by Jewish Holocaust survivors to honor their lost world. Jane Ziegelman's Once There Was a Town takes readers on a journey through this largely uncharted body of writing and the vanished world it depicts. Once There Was a Town resounds with the voices of rich and poor, shopkeepers and tradespeople, scholars and peddlers, Zionists and Communists, men and women telling stories of the towns that were their homes. Stops are made in the bustling market squares where Jewish merchants catered to local farmers; study houses where men recited Torah; kitchens where homemakers baked 20-pound loaves of bread; cemeteries where mourners conversed with departed loved ones and wooded groves where young couples met for the occasional moonlit tryst. Of the many towns on Ziegelman's itinerary, she always circles back to Luboml, her family's ancestral shtetl and the point of departure for her own journey of discovery.
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Eat Yourself Healthy: Food to Change Your Life
by Jamie Oliver
For more than two decades, Jamie Oliver has been leading the charge on a global food revolution, aiming to improve everyone's health and happiness through food. Now, in response to the changing food environment and industry that is working against us, Jamie puts to use his nutrition diploma and chef experience to help us wrestle back control and build a celebratory relationship with good food, embracing its power to make us healthier and happier. In Eat Yourself Healthy, he's back with 120 incredible recipes sure to energize, satisfy, and nourish. Jamie proves that healthy eating can be joyful, generous and abundant-this is all about what you can have, not what you can't.
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Cozy Vegan: 100 Delicious, Plant-Based Comfort Food Recipes
by Liz Douglas
Enjoy nostalgic comfort food with these 100 easy, wholesome, and delicious plant-based recipes from Glow Diaries founder Liz Douglas. Cozy Vegan is the ultimate cookbook for anyone wanting to explore a plant-based lifestyle, feel incredible, and not sacrifice the delicious foods they love. This book is filled with colorful, balanced meals and vegan twists on your favorite comfort foods, showing you just how quick and easy cooking vegan comfort food can be. Author Liz Douglas, a.k.a. @GlowDiaries
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Selected Biography & Memoir
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The Windsor Legacy: A Royal Dynasty of Secrets, Scandal, and Survival
by Robert Jobson
From Elizabeth II to future King William, The Windsor Legacy offers a riveting exploration of the British monarchy's resilience and influence over the past century, looking at its key players and conflicts, with a forward-looking examination of its future. In an age where resilience is essential, The Windsor Legacy delivers an enthralling narrative of inspiration and royal intrigue. Penned by Robert Jobson, a Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author and a front-line royal correspondent for over three decades, this extraordinary work will take readers deep into the heart of royal history as well as through the secrets that plague it to this day. From the abdication crisis, royal family entanglements, Cold War espionage, betrayal, and scandalous love affairs to more recent constitutional crises and the monarchy's most closely guarded secrets and feuds. This riveting and stylish narrative, told through the key characters and clashes at the heart of the family, will be packed with exclusive revelations with a story as comprehensive as it is captivating.
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Two Women Living Together
by Kim Hana
The big-hearted, bestselling South Korean memoir co-written by two best friends flouting gender norms and societal expectations with their decision to grow old together under one roof. When most of their peers were moving in with romantic partners and having children, Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo chose independence--savoring solitude, quiet mornings, and the unmitigated freedom of living alone. But in their forties, something shifted, and they were met with a new, unexpected loneliness. Refusing to settle for the outdated choice between marriage or isolation, Hana and Sunwoo made a radical decision: to buy a home and live together--not as lovers, not as roommates, but as chosen family. Now a bustling household of two women and four cats, Hana and Sunwoo still value solitude, but can do so while sharing a life and its meaning with someone else. Together they navigate the challenges and comforts of cohabiting in midlife, the growing pains of interdependence and the unexpected rewards of compromise when you've grown set in your ways.
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Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China
by Jung Chang
Fly, Wild Swans chronicles her journey and that of her family, along with that of China, as it rose from a decrepit and isolated state to a world power challenging American dominance. During those decades, although she lives in the West, Jung's life intertwines with her native land in unexpected ways, a rare relationship made more complex because all her books are banned there. Her family story mirrors the ups and downs of China's transformation, right up to today, as it enters another watershed. Chairman Xi Jinping's attempt to return China to the anti-American Maoist past has a devastating impact on Jung's life: She is unable to go to her mother's deathbed. Fly, Wild Swans is Jung's love letter and emotional tribute to her extraordinary mother. Profoundly moving, it is filled with drama, love, curiosity and incredible history--both personal and global.
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Being Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History
by Andrew Burstein
The deepest dive yet into the heart and soul, secret affairs, unexplored alliances, and bitter feuds of a generally worshipped, intermittently reviled American icon.
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