July 2026 list by Donalee Jacobs |
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1873
by Liaquat Ahamed
From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lords of Finance, a timely reckoning with the first truly global financial calamity and the famous banking family at the center of the whirlwind. Over the course of the 1850s and 1860s, during the first era of globalization, the world experienced an unprecedented economic boom. Fueling this expansion was an explosion in the global bond market, at the hub of which stood one family -- the Rothschilds, arguably the wealthiest banking family in history. 1873 is a bird's-eye reckoning with the full dimension of the crisis, from its buildup to its long aftermath.
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The Asset Class
by Hettie O'Brien
In The Asset Class, Hettie O'Brien's thrilling, eye opening investigation penetrates a hidden empire of billion-dollar deals and covert financial warfare. From Copenhagen to San Francisco, Barcelona to the Yorkshire Dales, she follow the money, the trail of destruction, and the industry's murky ideological roots from 1970s trips to Moscow to the present day. What she finds is chilling: private equity isn't just reshaping the economy--it's selling out the foundations of Western society.
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Been There, Done That
by Greg Jackson
Professor Greg Jackson, podcast host of History That Doesn't Suck, looks back in time to eight examples from our nation's history and shows that some of the hottest issues of our day are, in fact, American traditions that stand firmly beside another deeply American trait: the will to push back on these demons, prevail, and overcome. Full of fascinating characters, page-turning narrative storytelling, and Greg's characteristic humor, Been There, Done That will fill readers with hope for our future by showing us the warts of our past -- only by knowing that our country has been here before, and prevailed toward a more just future, can we find the strength to rebound once more.
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Cleanup on Aisle Five
by Ann Larson
Unemployed and looking for work during the pandemic, journalist and activist Ann Larson found a job as a cashier at a supermarket in Utah. Though she had written about low-wage work for years, nothing could have prepared her for what she experienced. Informed by her time behind the register, Larson's takes a deep dive into supermarkets and how they operate from the inside out. From the unforgettable characters to the common challenges we face when it comes to food, Cleanup in Aisle Five will forever change the way we look at grocery stores.
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Dad Brain
by Darby Saxbe
Over the last decade, we've learned more about the transformative power of parenthood -- biologically, psychologically, and socially -- than ever before. But while the experience of motherhood has attracted well-deserved attention, fatherhood has remained overlooked and, often, misunderstood. Now, in Dad Brain, psychologist Darby Saxbe, PhD, explains how becoming a father changes men, from their bodies and brain architecture to their hormones and sense of purpose. Inspired by her relationship with her dad, Saxbe takes listeners behind the scenes of her research and around the world, from hunter-gatherers in the Congo to contemporary suburban dads, into her pioneering studies of how parenthood shapes men's brains and lives.
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Fires in the Night
by Matthew Wolfe
The explosive true story of the Earth Liberation Front, a secret group of radicals who launched a clandestine battle to save the planet -- and what their legacy illuminates about the past, present, and future of the environmental movement.
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The Fourth Branch
by Daniel Squadron
This part handbook, part history, and part personal narrative will open readers' eyes to the oft-overlooked arm of government that has done more harm and more good than any other in recent years: state legislatures.
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A God-Shaped Nation
by Brook Wilensky-Lanford
Ever since conquistadores claimed Taino land in the name of their Catholic God and New England Puritans formed their strictly Protestant city on a hill, religion has been central to American life. Even as some found religious freedom, indigenous people and Africans forced into slavery struggled to protect their religious practices. With the constitutional separation of church and state, it fell to the American people to decide: would they sharpen religion's formidable powers of division, or reimagine its creative possibilities? In A God-Shaped Nation, Brook Wilensky-Lanford follows this essential American tension from first contact through the 2024 election.
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Grandma Joy and Me
by Brad Ryan
Raised in Appalachia, Grandma Joy lived a life shaped by constraints and hardships, while Brad grappled with the weight of family rifts and unresolved pain. Together, they embarked on a quest not only to witness the majesty of America's wild landscapes but also to heal generations of struggles and misunderstandings. Grandma Joy and Me follows a seven-year adventure of intergenerational healing, wherein a grandmother and grandson find themselves released from the injustices -- real and imagined -- that had long held them hostage.
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How to Be a (Happy) Skeptic
by Massimo Pigliucci
Celebrated philosopher Massimo Pigliucci investigates the practical applications of Cicero's skepticism, weaving together ancient wisdom, personal narrative, and practical insights to help readers find meaning through doubt.
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In Defense of Sunlight
by Rowan Jacobsen
For decades, a zero-sun policy has characterized our approach to sun protection, but recent studies have proved that this prolific misunderstanding is causing us to miss out on many of the health benefits of sun exposure. In this incisive work, acclaimed journalist Rowan Jacobsen presents the growing case for modest sun exposure for our health and well-being. Aided by the most up-to-date studies on the effects of sunlight on human health, Jacobsen presents a much-needed, lucid assessment of not only what the sun can do for us, but how a lack of sun could actively be harming us.
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Let Your Body Do the Work
by PhD Sams, Anette
For more than twenty years, Dr. Anette Sams has worked as a pharmaceutical researcher -- including six years at Novo Nordisk, where she specialized in and led research on blood sugar, diabetes, and inflammation -- and she's now sharing her expertise worldwide. In Let Your Body Do the Work, Sams explains how the naturally occurring GLP-1 hormone works in the body and shares practical, everyday tips on how to activate it through nutrition and lifestyle tweaks. This powerful hormone can not only help to achieve and maintain a healthy weight, but also regulate blood sugar and appetite, improve insulin sensitivity, reduce inflammation, support satiety, and support natural prevention of common diseases.
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The Lost Founder
by Jesse Wegman
New York Times journalist Jesse Wegman tells the story of James Wilson, a Founding Father whose bold vision shaped American democracy but whose legacy was lost to scandal.
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The Make-Believe
by Hannah Murray
From her breakout role as a teen actor on the cult TV show Skins to the smash hit Game of Thrones, Hannah Murray built a career in Hollywood cracking open her own psychological foundations and pushing her body to its limits. But one day, the line between make-believe and reality disappeared, and she found herself confined to a psych ward, dangerously in love with the leader of a shadowy wellness organization, and believing in magic. How she got there--and how she managed to rebuild her life--is the heart of this gripping, powerful memoir that asks: How far would you go to find enlightenment?
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Mastering Connections
by Joe Navarro
From internationally bestselling author and retired FBI special agent Joe Navarro--a guide to reading other people's body language and commanding your own to build and maintain lasting connections in a world beset by loneliness and isolation.
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Mom Needs a Moment
by Cassidy Freitas
Motherhood is messy. Mom Needs a Moment is for the moms who are tired of snapping, spiraling, or second-guessing themselves and want to understand why this keeps happening, and how to change it. Dr. Cassidy invites mothers to see that much of what they carry didn't start with them, and that they have the power to choose what continues and what ends. So how do we break the cycle? By finding what Dr. Cassidy calls margins: the spaces we can create (mental, emotional, physical, and relational) that allow us to respond differently. Weaving together stories from her own messy motherhood moments with the tools she's gathered as a therapist, Dr. Cassidy shows how margins can help you feel less reactive, more connected, and more like yourself again.
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The Next China Is Still China
by Joe Ngai
A revelatory, insight-filled playbook for doing business in China and a probing look at why the country, despite the challenges it faces, still possesses unrivaled prospects for growth and entrepreneurial opportunity -- by two leaders who, over the course of decades, have taken turns helming McKinsey's management consulting practice in China.
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Not Built in a Day
by Emma Southon
From acclaimed author and historian Emma Southon, a groundbreaking history of Ancient Rome that explores how the empire was built, fueled, and shaped by its enslaved people. Not Built in a Day takes readers into the invisible spaces of the Roman empire, where the millions of enslaved lives perpetuated the excesses of the empire that owned them. It also explores the lives of those freed from slavery, finally able to choose their own destinies. With humor, wit, and expertise, Emma Southon invites us into the absurdity of Roman life and completely upends our idea of the Roman empire.
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Noticing
by Richard Louv
Long beloved for his insightful, inspiring nature writing, Richard Louv returns with his most personal book yet. Noticing is about discovering who you are by exploring the natural world. Louv shows how, by tapping into the thirty or more human senses we have, listeners can develop skills to see and experience the other worlds of nature. Through personal essays, rich with descriptions of the California wilderness around his home, Louv draws on wisdom from influences as far-reaching as neuroscience, nature photography, Indigenous traditions, and mindfulness to foster what he calls bioenchantment. He offers a new, deeper understanding of what it means to see a tree, know a fox, and to become fully human.
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On the Origin of Sex
by Lixing Sun
Biologist Lixing Sun reveals the wild and weird world of how creatures in nature reproduce. Assiduously researched and narrated with humor and verve, On the Origin of Sex offers an expert and entertaining investigation into the science of how our planet is populated.
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Oops...That's Illegal!
by Mike Mandell
From the popular creator of @LawByMike, a hilarious guide to all your legal questions -- from the obscure to the downright absurd.
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Radical Duke
by Danielle Allen
An explosive, deeply revisionist work that reveals how a renegade English Duke and Thomas Paine, the firebrand polemicist, almost brought the American Revolution to Britain.
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The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI
by Cory Doctorow
AI has arrived surrounded by unprecedented hype and value. To justify that level of value, every story about AI must be presented as inevitable, world-changing disruption. For Doctorow, it is imperative to see through that hype to the real story, to understand the technology not just for what it does, but for who it does it to and who it does it for. From that point of view, the story of AI is indeed dramatic and unprecedented, having generated an investment bubble so big that it endangers the entire world economy. In The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI, Doctorow recounts both how we found ourselves in this dire situation and how we can get through it, to a life after AI in which the tools work for us, not the other way around.
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This Is Also a Love Story
by Sally Hayden
Celebrated foreign correspondent Hayden reexamines catastrophe through the love stories she has come across while reporting throughout her career. Through these stories, which crisscross the globe, from Uganda to Lebanon, Ghana, Rwanda and Iraq, she challenges us to reconsider what it means to be alive on this planet today. What if news was recounted through the prism of the actions and decisions people take for those they love? Would it become harder to dehumanize those who seem different to us? This Is Also a Love Story dares us to recognize how innate generosity and self-sacrifice can be found in even the most difficult of times, and to question what might be needed to create a better world.
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Tonight the Music Seems So Loud
by Sathnam Sanghera
A deeply personal engagement with the life and music of George Michael, Tonight the Music Seems So Loud offers a colorful story on immigration, homophobia, and fame; the glorious eras of the '80s and '90s; creative and musical genius; the tabloids; addiction; obsessive fans; and why the love for George Michael has only grown in the years since his untimely death.
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Transcendent
by Laverne Cox
Four-time Emmy-nominated actress Laverne Cox shares her journey as a transgender woman in Hollywood, confronting childhood trauma, shame, gender identity, her transition, body image issues, her search for romantic love, deep-seated feelings of unworthiness, and ultimately, healing.
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Trash!
by Simon Paré-Poupart
This fascinating account of twenty years in waste management paints a vivid portrait of the heroic labor, anarchic spirit, and violent conditions of the people who keep our cities clean. Every abstract observation comes with hilarious and hair-raising stories from the collection route to Paré-Poupart's days off spent hunting down furniture and toys for family and friends, as a committed freegan. Trash explains and questions efforts to clean up a business with longstanding conventions of its own, a last bastion of well-paid employment for people who cannot fit in anywhere else. It will change how you think about your waste and the people who handle it.
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Unreasonable Women
by Justine Van Der Leun
In Unreasonable Women, van der Leun tells the propulsive and shocking stories of three women who, finding themselves caught in the direst circumstances, had to kill to survive. Tanisha is a spirited Michigan mother determined to help authorities solve a cold case, whatever the consequences. Jema is a softhearted Missouri factory worker struggling to keep her family together while navigating a dangerous relationship. TC is a bold Californian trying to escape generations of trauma and a toxic family environment. In each case, the women's childhood abuse was replicated in adulthood -- until they were forced to make an impossible choice. A work of literary reportage that reads like a crime novel, Unreasonable Women is the result of seven years of unprecedented research and on-the-ground reporting in U.S. prisons.
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When Memory Fades
by Nathaniel Chin
A geriatrician whose perspective on his specialty changed when his own father was diagnosed with dementia provides clear, calm questions to ask and tasks to tackle -- as well as what not to worry about -- from the first moments of concern.
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The Wilder Way
by Eva Zu Beck
From the internationally beloved YouTube adventurer and National Geographic TV host, a singular and fearless new travel memoir packed with inspiration for leading a more vibrant, wild, and authentic life.
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