May 2026 list by Donalee Jacobs |
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American Men
by Jordan Ritter Conn
A deeply intimate portrait of the lives of four men that examines--in profound and comprehensive ways--what it means to be a man in America. Written with searing intimacy after five years of reporting, American Men interweaves their stories into a mosaic that explores identity, heritage, and the pressures and performance of modern American masculinity.
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Anchored, Aligned, Accountable
by Aiko Bethea
We've all had them -- awkward interactions at work that could have gone differently, misunderstandings at home that led to avoidable blowups. But what if those moments could become opportunities for personal transformation? Renowned leadership coach Aiko Bethea gives us an innovative and road-tested framework for learning to show up in any situation authentically and not as the people-pleasing or conflict-avoidant versions of ourselves that have become second nature to so many of us. Throughout the book, Bethea draws on decades of real-life experience to show us the many forms that these scenarios can take, offering practical advice to help us lead from our most genuine selves and deepen relationships in every part of our lives.
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Beyond Life and Death
by Jet Li
Born into extreme hardship, Jet Li fought his way to become the youngest national martial arts champion in Chinese history at twelve years old. He then became one of the first internationally renowned movie stars from China with films that redefined martial arts for the modern world. But behind the glory lay a deeper battle: a search for meaning beyond fame, fortune, and physical skill. After a near-death encounter in the 2004 tsunami, Li deepened his study of Tibetan Buddhism and dedicated his life to philanthropy. For the very first time, he fully links his own story and spiritual journey with ten actionable insights that anyone can apply to live a healthy and happy life.
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Body Electric
by Manoush Zomorodi
In today's world, a normal day means sitting in front of a screen for eight to ten hours. We leave our desks drained, overstimulated and unfocused, only to go home, sit down again, and scroll some more. The result? Headaches, back pain, restless sleep, and rising rates of preventable disease. We know technology is breaking us down--so why can't we break away? As the host of the NPR's TED Radio Hour and Body Electric podcast, it's a question that Manoush Zomorodi has always wanted to answer. Now, in Body Electric, she presents an eye-opening investigation into the impact technology and sedentary living has had on our bodies and brains, and shares what science has taught her -- it's the small shifts, not the digital detoxes, that will make us healthier. And all we need is five minutes.
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A Course Called Home
by Tom Coyne
Tom Coyne, the bestselling author of A Course Called America, has spent his career playing legendary courses from St. Andrews to Shinnecock. When he buys a golf course in Sullivan County, New York the result is Coyne's most personal and profound book yet. It's a story about digging in as Coyne trades tee times for learning how to manage the grounds. Yet decades of declining tourism and economic downturn have left the club struggling to survive, so Coyne rallies the golfing faithful to uplift the historical course. Players from around the world answer the call, including names like Bill Murray, Jason Kelce, and Mike Madden. In the tradition of his beloved golf travel trilogy, Coyne again taps into what makes the game so timeless and transformative.
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Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I've Cried about
by Isabel Klee
From the social media superstar behind @SimonSits, Isabel Klee--known for her heartwarming tales of dog rescue--comes an utterly winning memoir about a twentysomething woman's search for true love in New York City and the dogs who helped her find it.
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Drained
by PhD Ruppanner, Leah
Popular understanding of the concept of mental load often reduces it down to managing a list of household chores and logistics. But sociologist Leah Ruppanner reveals that for women, mental load actually goes much deeper: It's a complex form of emotional thinking that is invisible, boundaryless, and enduring. Ruppanner outlines the eight distinct types of mental load and highlights what makes them so uniquely heavy for women. Urgent and provocative, Drained will help women stop blaming themselves for never feeling like they are enough and help them create richer, less overwhelming lives filled with more meaning and joy.
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For the Love of the Grind
by Sara Hall
Sara Hall shares the inspiring story of her record-breaking career and her unconventional path to motherhood via adoption, all while battling insecurities, injuries, and doubters.
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How to Be a Dissident
by Gal Beckerman
How do we push back in a world where leaders wield fear and intimidation? Where digital technology dehumanizes and flattens us? We need role models and acclaimed writer Gal Beckerman goes looking for them. Drawing on the stories of dissidents from around the globe and across time, Beckerman reveals the defining characteristics these extraordinary figures share. Structured around ten qualities, this illuminating, surprising book blends intellectual history, biography, and cultural criticism. It charts a dissident's journey from the solitary moment of recognizing the truth, through the risks of speaking it, to the legacy that can outlast a life. Urgent and inspiring, Beckerman's book shows that dissidence is a human capacity we can all cultivate, a refusal to betray one's inner voice, no matter the cost.
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How to Start
by Jodi Kantor
With warmth, honesty, and inspired wisdom, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jodi Kantor expands on her triumphant Columbia University commencement address, tackling the question, How, in this environment, is anyone supposed to find and start their life's work? Kantor identifies two principles to help young people discover their life's work: craft and need. By pairing the two, they can navigate tough, sensitive choices: how to think about money. How much risk to take on. When to buck what others are saying. Powerful and provocative, How to Start is a statement of faith for young people as they make their way through uncertain times, offering wisdom, strategy, and a set of aspirations to launch their careers and last their whole lives.
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In Trees
by Robert Moor
One day, on a whim, Robert Moor set out to climb a tree near his home -- unwittingly embarking on a decade-long, globe-spanning adventure of intellectual and spiritual transformation. Along the way, Moor learns the art of tree-thinking, which, he discovers, has the power to break open some of humanity's oldest questions: What is the secret to truly growing old? How do we set down deeper roots in an increasingly chaotic world? A witty and relentlessly curious excursion through philosophy, history, and science, what begins as an ode to the miracle of trees blossoms into a joyous, daring, fiercely hopeful endeavor to arborize humanity.
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Like, Follow, Subscribe
by Fortesa Latifi
Like, Follow, Subscribe shines a spotlight on the deeply troubling world of the child influencer industry. Journalist Fortesa Latifi dives into the lives of children whose parents mine their everyday activities for monetizable content, exposing issues like privacy violations, financial abuse, and the absence of child labor protections. Through expert interviews with psychologists, labor scientists, and even former child influencers and family vloggers, she uncovers the pressures, trauma, and consequences for children thrust into the spotlight. This timely and eye-opening book doesn't just reveal the harm of toxic social media culture: it also provides a roadmap to better regulating influencer families, safeguarding children, and questioning the role of audiences in perpetuating these cycles of exploitation.
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The Lost Cities of El Norte
by Peter Stark
In 1540, Francisco Coronado, backed by the full weight of the Spanish empire, assembled 2,000 men to conquer El Norte Misterioso --The Mysterious North, or present-day United States. But instead they encountered the American West, populated by complex societies of indigenous nations, masters of a vast and unforgiving landscape, who fiercely resisted this European incursion onto their lands. After leading the largest exploring cavalcade ever assembled in the New World, wearing his gilded armor and bobbing plume, Coronado retreated back to Mexico City two years later accompanied only by a hundred or so hangers-on and carried on a litter, a broken man. America's Southwest and Plains would remain unconquered for the next 300 years.
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The Martha Way
by Martha Stewart
The Martha Way: Essential Principles for Mastering Home and Living is a guide to the foundational principles that shape a well-kept, inspired life. With her signature clarity and elegance, Martha distills decades of experience into elevated yet accessible solutions for the everyday. Whether you're arranging your pantry, preparing a simple but impressive meal, hosting with intention, curating meaningful collections, or cultivating a lush garden, Martha shows you how to do it beautifully and with purpose. With her time-tested tips, and unique but ever practical insights, Martha helps you bring order, style, and joy to every corner of your life.
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Monsters in the Archives
by Caroline Bicks
After Caroline Bicks was named the University of Maine's Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, she was given full access to King's archives. Her year studying the archival materials was guided by one question: What makes Stephen King Stephen King? To answer this, Bicks focuses on five of King's iconic books --The Shining, Carrie, Pet Sematary, 'Salem's Lot, and Night Shifts. Through close reading of early drafts, interviews with King, and freshly discovered biographical details, combined with her own personal history as a reader and scholar, Bicks shows King's mastery of storytelling and his enduring imprint on American culture. In the process, Bicks faces her own fears and gets to know the man partially responsible for them.
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National Treasure
by Michael Auslin
The inspiring story of the Declaration of Independence -- the first to take us from its drafting by Thomas Jefferson to today -- charting the many lives of a document that captures the soul of America and has united generations around its defiant ideals, published for the 250th anniversary of America's founding.
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The Oracle's Daughter
by Harrison Hill
Harrison Hill traces the beginnings and violent end of the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps, a paramilitary religious cult operating out of New Mexico, from its early days as an outgrowth of the 1960s counterculture to its descent into conspiracy-fueled abuse. This is the story of three women -- Deborah, the group's founder and self-proclaimed oracle; Maura, one of its first members; and Sarah, Deborah's daughter. The three are bound together by a punitive, baroque set of radical beliefs and practices, including exorcism, kidnapping, and the horrific mistreatment of those who fell out of the leaders' favor. With a dramatic, deeply researched narrative, The Oracle's Daughter illuminates the porous boundary between the fringe and the mainstream -- and shows how much more vulnerable we are to extremism than we might like to think.
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Picky
by Helen Zoe Veit
Are children naturally picky? Today, it sure seems that way. Yet, amazingly, pickiness used to be almost nonexistent. Well into the 20th century, Americans saw children as joyful omnivores who were naturally curious and eager to eat. So how did modern kids become such incredibly narrow eaters? The story is fascinating - and about much more than rising abundance. Picky shows how fussy eating came to define children's food and reshape American diets at large. Maybe most importantly, it explains how we can still use the tools that parents used in the past to raise happy, healthy, wildly un-picky kids today.
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The Rolling Stones
by Bob Spitz
From the award-winning, bestselling author of classic histories of the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, a groundbreaking reckoning with the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band -- the Rolling Stones.
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The Story of Birds
by Steve Brusatte
From the renowned paleontologist and bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, comes the story of the dinosaurs' living legacy: birds. Brusatte explores how dinosaurs developed the features of birds and why they were the only dinosaurs to survive the asteroid impact 66 million years ago. Along the way, we meet remarkable, extinct, species: 10-foot-tall birds with beaks that sliced flesh, Pelagornithid seabirds with 20-foot wingspans, and a Jamaican ibis that used its wings as clubs to attack rivals. Brusatte also urges us to appreciate the birds alive today -- penguins that fly underwater, parrots that mimic human speech, and crows that can make tools and are smarter than most mammals. A fascinating scientific history, The Story of Birds establishes the living legacy of this remarkable species.
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A Terrible Strength
by MD Mscr Doll, Kemi
Black women are facing a systemic gynecological health crisis. This book gives them the tools needed to unlearn the medical normalization of their suffering and offers a path forward to healing-by a foremost physician, surgeon, researcher, and gynecological cancer expert.
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The Voice in My Head Is God
by 2 Chainz
In his most personal work yet, Grammy Award-winning rapper 2 Chainz shares the spiritual journey behind his success, offering a raw, reflective, and deeply motivational meditation on the inner voice that's guided him his whole life: God.
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What Ever Happened to Eddy Crane?
by Kate Crane
One night when Kate Crane was twelve, her father called to say he was on his way home from his trucking business. He never showed up. Kate and her family were left stunned, with no explanation or resolution on the horizon. Part memoir, part true crime, part psychological suspense, What Ever Happened to Eddy Crane? is an emotionally resonant story of searing loss and resilience, of Baltimore, of family ghosts, and the bravery required to confront the past.
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When the Body Speaks
by Liz Tenuto
The first book from trauma-informed practitioner and Instagram phenomenon The Workout Witch, Liz Tenuto, is a comprehensive guide to understanding how trauma and stress are stored within the body -- and how somatic exercises can provide a powerful tool for healing.
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Why We Talk Funny
by Valerie Fridland
A fun, smart and surprising dive into the past, present and future of accents - and the enduring power of sounding different. The story of language is the story of humanity, and as Fridland reminds us, the funny sounds we make - whether from the mouths of ancient ancestors or the tongues of screenbound teens - all come from the same powerful desire to communicate and belong. Why We Talk Funny will change the way you think about your own accent - and transform the way you listen to the sounds of others.
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