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Notable Non-Fiction July 2026 |
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The Hardest, Longest Race: Henry Ford and the Cross-Country Contest That Changed America by Eric MoskowitzIn 1909, America was home to 253 automakers, a landscape of visionaries, schemers, and would-be barons of the new century. But when playboy millionaire M. Robert Guggenheim announced an audacious “Ocean to Ocean” contest from New York City to the Seattle World’s Fair, only three companies were brassy enough to show up at the starting line: Acme, Ford, and Shawmut. Oddsmakers favored the Acme and Itala, a pricy import also joining the race, while dismissing the pint-sized Ford ― a homely little number called the Model T― and the long-shot Shawmut, struggling to survive after a factory fire. In fact, many didn’t believe any of the cars would reach Seattle at all, as they would need to forge a 4,106-mile course of mountain ranges, mud bogs, washed-out wagon bridges, and harrowing canyon trails, long before the era of asphalt highways, seatbelts, and service stations. But Henry Ford was intent on proving that the Model T could go the distance and beat out the muscular luxury cars---and he didn’t plan to leave it to chance. Indeed, a little over three weeks after the race began, a Ford crossed the line hours ahead of the Shawmut. Except that victory was a fraud. The Hardest, Longest Race is a colorful tale of ambition and subterfuge, but it is also a love letter to America at the turn of the Twentieth Century. As a seeming people’s champion―a car for the masses―traverses the vast nation, Moskowitz brings to vivid life the diverse populace and landscape that it would soon transform.
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Penelope's Bones: A New History of Homer's World Through the Women Written Out of It by Emily Hauser Achilles. Agamemnon. Odysseus. Hector. The lives of these and many other men in the greatest epics of ancient Greece have been pored over endlessly in the past three millennia. But these are not just tales about heroic men. There are scores of women as well—complex, fascinating women whose stories have gone unexplored for far too long. In Penelope’s Bones, award-winning classicist and historian Emily Hauser pieces together compelling evidence from archaeological excavations and scientific discoveries to unearth the richly textured lives of women in Bronze Age Greece—the era of Homer’s heroes. Here, for the first time, we come to understand the everyday lives and experiences of the real women who stand behind the legends of Helen, Briseis, Cassandra, Aphrodite, Circe, Athena, Hera, Calypso, Penelope, and more. In this captivating journey through Homer’s world, Hauser explains era-defining discoveries, such as the excavation of Troy and the decipherment of Linear B tablets that reveal thousands of captive women and their children; more recent finds like the tomb of the Griffin Warrior at Pylos, whose tomb contents challenge traditional gender attributes; DNA evidence showing that groups of warriors buried near the Black Sea with their weapons and steeds were, in fact, Amazon-like female fighters; a prehistoric dye workshop on Crete that casts fresh light on “women’s work” of dyeing, spinning, and weaving textiles; and a superbly preserved shipwreck off the coast of Turkey whose contents tell of the economic and diplomatic networks crisscrossing the Bronze Age Mediterranean. Essential for fans of Madeline Miller or Natalie Haynes, this riveting new history brings to life the women of the Bronze Age Aegean as never before, offering a groundbreaking reassessment of the ancient world.
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Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump by Maggie HabermanFrom the two reporters who have covered him more closely than perhaps anyone else over the past decade comes this definitive portrait of Donald Trump in the White House. Regime Change covers the first year of Trump’s second presidency—a term liberated from every constraint that defined his first. The generals who once told him “no” are gone, and the lawyers who remain have learned to pick their battles. His administration has flouted court orders and he has claimed powers that Congress once checked. What remains is a President willing to take enormous risks that have upended global markets and toppled heads of state; an imperial President operating almost entirely on instinct alone.
Based on hundreds of interviews and unprecedented reporting from deep within the administration’s most closely guarded rooms, Regime Change takes the reader inside the Situation Room and into the secret Oval Office deliberations that have launched a new war in the Middle East and seen Trump seal the border, surge National Guard troops into cities, and send immigration agents into deadly clashes with protestors. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan bring us behind the scenes of a presidency that has transformed the culture, turned the Justice Department into an agent of retribution against the President’s enemies and the office itself into a brazen vehicle for profit. They reveal a second term propelled by a historical irony that Trump himself has come to understand: that the indictments, the convictions, the assassination attempts, and four years of exile made him not weaker but far more powerful, more vengeful, and more willing to gamble than any President in modern history. This is the story of how Trump has used that power, who has tried to stop him, and why nearly all of them have failed. It is also the story of something American journalists are more accustomed to chronicling in distant capitals than in their own: a President who has fundamentally altered the nature of the office he holds—and, with it, how the rest of the world understands American power. It is an account of Regime Change right here in America—a landmark real-time history of a modern presidency like no other.
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A Little More Social: How Small Choices Create Unexpected Happiness, Health, and Connection by Nicholas EpleyThere is a paradox at the core of human life. We are a highly social species uniquely equipped to connect with other people and doing so is better for us. Yet we so often choose to be unsocial. We avoid talking to the stranger who sits next to us. We struggle to move beyond small talk with an acquaintance. We are reluctant to express our gratitude to people we appreciate. Every day, we avoid opportunities to connect with strangers, neighbors, colleagues, friends, and family. By missing those moments, we miss out on all the benefits of a more social life—one that is happier and healthier for everyone. University of Chicago psychologist and author of Mindwise, Nicholas Epley has spent his career studying the way we connect, and he has found that our social fears often keep us from reaching out. But Epley shows us how to seize the small moments with insights such as:- Social connection is a choice we make based on expectations about how others will respond to us—expectations that tend to be overly pessimistic.
- Introverts and extroverts alike benefit from choosing to be a little more social.
- Mistaken expectations can cause us to avoid interacting in ways that create strong connections—such as having a conversation—in favor of less satisfying interactions—such as social media or texting.
- While many books promise one big fix, making a habit of small connections is much more likely to improve your life.
- The habits and practices that Epley advocates are approachable. The beauty of this book is that small acts have an outsized impact on the most important parts of our lives.
Bridging the gap between two people is easier than we think, and success more likely, if we choose to be a little more social.
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The Beasts of the East: The Fall and Rise of America's Eastern Wilderness by Andrew Moore “A REVELATION. Andrew Moore recreates a lost world of not long ago, when the eastern part of North America was wild, when there were elk in Illinois, bison in Indiana, and much of Ohio and Michigan were covered by swamps. This book is both an elegy for what we’ve lost over the last few centuries of so-called human progress, and a clarion call for conservation, rewilding, and finding wonder in those pockets of history that still remain.” ―STEVE BRUSATTE, author of The Rise and Reign of the Mammals and The Story of Birds. Before skyscrapers and smokestacks rose across the eastern U.S., elk, bison, wolves, and cougars roamed. Typically imagined as icons of the West, these large mammals are in fact native to what was once a kind of Eden—towering forests in the Northeast, rolling prairies in the Midwest, and cypress swamps in the Deep South. But, in mere decades, industrialization and unregulated hunting brought these emblems of the East to the precipice of extinction; by the 1950s, squirrels were one of the few wild mammals an easterner was likely to encounter. Now, even as the climate and biodiversity crises loom, eastern wildlife are staging an unlikely comeback. Herds of bison graze on Illinois prairies, red wolves lurk in North Carolina’s coastal marshes, and abandoned coal mines in Kentucky are now home to thousands of elk. Such rewilding promises to restore balance to eastern ecosystems and return one of the most biodiverse regions in the world to its former luster—but not without controversy. In The Beasts of the East, we follow environmental writer and James Beard Award finalist Andrew Moore as he meets conservationists, hunters, biologists, and nature lovers as they confront herculean challenges: How can we enable wildlife migration in the midst of suburban sprawl? Are these success stories viable in the long-term? When humans and wildlife come in close contact, how do we define wilderness?
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Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe by Katja HoyerThe Central German town of Weimar is perhaps most familiar to non-Germans for giving its name to the Weimar Republic. After Germany’s inglorious defeat in World War I, the signing of a new constitution in Weimar marked the nation’s first experiment with full-fledged democracy. And yet this storied town, long known as a center of German culture and tradition, was also the place where Nazis were first welcomed into a local government, a milestone in Adolf Hitler’s fateful rise to power. In Weimar, historian Katja Hoyer examines Weimar as a microcosm for the entire German nation between the world wars. The Weimar Republic saw a flourishing in culture and the arts, including the establishment in Weimar of the Bauhaus school of architecture. But after Hitler seized the chancellorship in 1933, the town underwent rapid Nazification, with many ordinary Weimarers basking in the attention they and their town received from the regime and from Hitler personally. Combining gripping narrative with deep historical analysis, Weimar explores both the political upheavals and the rhythms of daily life in one town, revealing how fascism took hold first there, and then across the nation.
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What Conservatives Believe: Rediscovering the Conservative Conscience by Mike PenceIn this powerful and inspiring manifesto, New York Times bestselling author and former Vice President Mike Pence pens a 21st-century version of The Conscience of a Conservative. With candid insights after decades as a happy warrior in the movement, Pence convincingly explains why the Republican Party must choose enduring conservative principles over the temptations of big-government populism. Conservatives know that wisdom often begins by consulting the people who came before us. As Barry Goldwater wrote, conservative principles persist because they are rooted in the truth. But this isn’t just a book about the past. It’s about how time-tested conservative principles can be applied to the problems of tomorrow. Pence explains why conservatives believe our rights come from God and then articulates conservative positions on the right to life, limited government, law and order, economic freedom, the national debt, federalism, patriotic education, the traditional family, peace through strength, and standing with Israel, among many other issues―as well as the virtues of character, civility, and statesmanship in our politics. Few politicians have the strength of character of former Congressman, Governor, and Vice President Pence. Pence is the standard bearer for true conservative values at a time when many readers and voters no longer understand what it means to be a conservative, or why conservative values are so important.
In What Conservatives Believe, Pence writes about the importance of conservatism with authority, respect, and candor. As he's fond of saying, "I'm a conservative but I'm not in a bad mood about it." A true statesman and leader, Pence defines conservatism for a new generation in what promises to become a timeless conservative classic.
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The Crooked Places Made Straight: Reflections on the Moral Meaning of America by Raphael G. WarnockSenator Reverend Raphael G. Warnock is a transformational voice in Congress and the pastor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, and for the semiquincentennial of America, he exhorts us to reach for the highest and noblest aspects of our national character. Senator Warnock argues that we suffer not from a paucity of resources but from a poverty of moral imagination.
His sermon on the book of Isaiah draws from ideals resonant in his own faith and all the great faiths and other moral traditions, offering a bold vision of how to live and relate to one another in the land. A moral topography, he calls it, a geopolitics that centers love and justice, or as Dr. King would so often say, the beloved community. The Crooked Places Made Straight examines six crises at the center of American life: voting rights and voter suppression, gun violence, mass incarceration, the persistence of poverty, dark money in politics, and the climate emergency. This is not a naive faith, either. As Senator Warnock writes: Isaiah is no stranger to frustration with institutional leadership. He knows well the perils of public corruption, sophisticated legalized bribery, and a political class more interested in preserving its own power than in serving the people. . . . He’s fed up with political leaders who are focused on their own gain at the expense of the people. “Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves,” he says. For Senator Warnock, democracy is the political enactment of a spiritual idea. A vote is a kind of prayer. The Crooked Places Made Straight is his inspiring vision for a more just and equitable America where communities thrive with hope and possibility and every child has a chance.
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Trash!: A Garbageman's Story by Simon Pare-PoupartThis fascinating no-bullshit 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. Paré-Poupart’s story is atypical: he started working as a garbageman to pay for school, and after earning graduate degrees and working in more “respectable” fields, he is still on a truck — out of love for the physical rush, for his rough-and-tumble colleagues, and for an honesty and freedom that no other job has yet given him. Includes eight black and white photographs of the author on the job. His sociology background informs his inquiry into our collective wastefulness and individual failure to confront the trash we produce. Every abstract observation comes with hilarious and hair-raising stories from the collection route to his days off spent hunting down furniture and toys for family and friends, as a committed freegan. Trash! — the French edition of which is a runaway bestseller in Canada — 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. Aligned with great books about work from Zola to Orwell to Lucia Berlin, and in dialogue with societal critiques like How To Do Nothing, Trash! will change how you think about your waste and the people who handle it.
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Think Less, Sleep More: From Panic & Perfectionism to Stress-Free Sleep by Stephanie RomiszewskiIf there’s anything worse that not getting sleep, it’s lying awake with a scare-face staring at the ceiling worrying about it. Here’s Romiszewski’s―a sleep physiologist and founder of the UK’s Sleepyhead Clinics ― promise: “This book is your guide to liberating yourself from the endless cycle of sleep anxiety and obsession. By the end, you’ll have regained control – not through perfection, but by letting go of the need to constantly manage your sleep. Sleep will start working for you, not as something to fear or fix, but as your natural ally. And best of all, it will no longer dominate your thoughts.” THINK LESS, SLEEP MORE is a sensible take on sleep with some counterintuitive twists to current accepted dogma, such as that we all need more sleep and that segmented sleep ― aka waking up in the middle of the night ― is a killer. It’s a health and wellness sigh-of-relief book: there are some readjustments to make, both mental and physical, but a key takeaway is that whatever you’re doing now is probably better than you think. Among other counterintuitive insights, Romiszewski reveals:
--The importance of a consistent wake-time rather than a rigid bedtime
--How to trust your body’s natural sleep drive and rhythms
--That ‘bad’ nights neither ruin the next day, nor, necessarily, your health, and that variability is normal
--That sleep isn’t fragile―it’s adaptable, resilient, and smarter than any hack you could throw at it
--The myth of 8 hours
--The power of light
For an audience who found Matthew Walker’s “Why We Sleep” a bit daunting, Romiszewski’s is the sensible, seasoned, calming voice you want to think of at 3AM.
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