The Mighty and the Almighty
by Madeleine Albright with Bill Woodward (HarperCollins)
The former secretary of state muses on the intersection of religion and foreign policy.
The Sack of Rome
by Alexander Stille (Penguin Press)
Silvio Berlusconi, the author argues, is part Bill Gates, part Rupert Murdoch, part George Steinbrenner—and almost entirely awful.
Temptations of the West
by Pankaj Mishra (FSG)
A travelogue covering Bollywood, Afghanistan, Nepal, and points in between.
The Caged Virgin
by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Free Press)
An outspoken Dutch-Somali politician makes the case for women’s rights and democracy within Islam.
The Civil War as a Theological Crisis
by Mark A. Noll (North Carolina)
Both the Union and the Confederacy thought God was on their side. Something had to give.
When the Astors Owned New York
by Justin Kaplan (Viking)
How family rivalry, the Titanic, and the Jazz Age brought the Astors low.
The American Home Front
by Alistair Cooke (Atlantic Monthly)
A previously unpublished account of the late BBC correspondent’s travels in America after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Blind Oracles
by Bruce Kuklick (Princeton)
A look at the often obtuse—and occasionally catastrophic—contributions of intellectuals to foreign policy from World War II to Vietnam.
The Bystander
by Nick Bryant (Basic)
John F. Kennedy was a dynamic, inspirational leader, albeit one with a shallow and cynical record on civil rights.
Tiger Force
by Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss (Little, Brown)
The story of a rogue detachment of U.S. soldiers who massacred civilians during the Vietnam War, based on a Pulitzer Prize–winning newspaper investigation.
Moral Capital
by Christopher Leslie Brown (North Carolina)
Slavery was an accepted feature of the British Empire until—in the late 1780s—it suddenly wasn’t.
Empires of the Atlantic World
by J. H. Elliott (Yale)
A comparative study of Britain’s and Spain’s colonial holdings, covering the period between the late fifteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The Wake of Wellington
by Peter W. Sinnema (Ohio)
The Duke of Wellington’s funeral lured a million and a half visitors to London and sparked a cultural outpouring that captured the very essence of Englishness, circa 1852.
Agincourt
by Juliet Barker (Little, Brown)
English soldiers—outnumbered nearly six to one—won at Agincourt in 1415, slaying in the process “almost the whole nobility among the soldiery of France.” A balanced look at St. Crispin’s Day.
Realistic Visionary
by Peter R. Henriques (Virginia)
A biography of George Washington focusing on his religious convictions, romantic entanglements, and views on slavery.
Richard Hofstadter
by David S. Brown (Chicago)
A biography of the influential historian who, the author reveals, had a paranoid style all his own.
The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton
by Kathryn Hughes (Knopf)
Isabella Beeton died at age twenty-eight, but not before writing the book that would define Victorian housewifery.
Art Czar
by Alice Goldfarb Marquis (MFA)
A life of Clement Greenberg, the most influential American art critic of the twentieth century.
Postmortem
by Stefan Timmermans (Chicago)
A sociologist examines the world of medical examiners, a life-and-death realm where little is black and white.
Doing Nothing
by Tom Lutz (FSG)
A cultural history of idleness, surveying contributions to the field from Samuel Johnson, Oscar Wilde, Maynard G. Krebs, and others.
This Land
by Anthony Flint (Johns Hopkins)
A look at the long odds faced by the “smart growth” movement as suburban sprawl goes unchecked and its negative consequences become increasingly clear.
When Sex Goes to School
by Kristin Luker (Norton)
A sociologist examines the fate of sex education in America, from the early twentieth century to the present.
The Central Liberal Truth
by Lawrence E. Harrison (Oxford)
An attempt to isolate the cultural values and practices most responsible for successful civilization. Literacy, education, and transparency loom large.
The Bourgeois Virtues
by Deirdre N. McCloskey (Chicago)
The first of four volumes that aim to defend the integrity of capitalism and the innate goodness of the middle class.
Basilica
by R. A. Scotti (Viking)
The construction of St. Peter’s in Rome required the combined efforts of Michelangelo, Raphael, and more than twenty popes, not to mention countless others.
Double Crossed
by Kenneth Briggs (Doubleday)
There are nearly 100,000 fewer nuns in the United States than there were forty years ago, and those that remain are systematically ill-served by the Catholic Church, argues a former religion editor of The New York Times.
The Devil Is a Gentleman
by J. C. Hallman (Random House)
A neo-Jamesian look at contemporary religious experience in all its variety, from Scientologists to Druids to Christian pro wrestlers.
Seminary Boy
by John Cornwell (Doubleday)
The author of Hitler’s Pope recalls an adolescence spent training for the priesthood in 1950s England.
Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene
by Bart D. Ehrman (Oxford)
A historical study of three of Jesus’ most famous followers finds almost no evidence that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, that Paul worked miracles, or that Peter was crucified upside down.
The New Argonauts
by AnnaLee Saxenian (Harvard)
How Silicon Valley entrepreneurs from China, Taiwan, India, and Israel have boosted their home countries’ economies.
Treasure Hunt
by Michael J. Silverstein with John Butman (Portfolio)
A leading management consultant examines how our competing tastes for luxury and thrift are hollowing out the vast middle of the global market.
More Than You Know
by Michael J. Mauboussin (Columbia)
A top investment strategist’s multidisciplinary guide to the world of finance.
Reluctant Capitalists
by Laura J. Miller (Chicago)
The sociology of bookselling—and the culture-versus-commerce, indie-versus-megastore battle lines that define it.
Nature Revealed: Selected Writings, 1949–2006
by Edward O. Wilson (Johns Hopkins)
A lifelong study of ants informs ecology, sociobiology, and biogeography in this collection of essays from the Harvard entomologist.
After Dolly
by Ian Wilmut and Roger Highfield (Norton)
The man behind Dolly the sheep discusses cloning’s human potential, concluding that “as much damage can be done by failing to exploit the beneficial applications of a technology as by promoting the applications of that technology which are risky or harmful.”
Reporting
by David Remnick (Knopf)
Al Gore, Mike Tyson, and Natan Sharansky stand shoulder to shoulder in this collection from the editor of The New Yorker.
The Din in the Head
by Cynthia Ozick (Houghton Mifflin)
Assessments of Saul Bellow, Susan Sontag, Sylvia Plath, Isaac Babel, and others, as well as a fictional interview with Henry James.
Crime Beat
by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
A collection of newspaper articles from the mystery novelist’s former career as a police reporter.
The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories
by Valerie Martin (Vintage)
Writers, painters, and actors confront the challenges of their work and of loving one another.
Theft
by Peter Carey (Knopf)
A has-been artist is living quietly with his brother in rural Australia until a mysterious woman appears on the scene, in this novel from the two-time Booker Prize winner.
Triangle
by Katharine Weber (FSG)
The memories of the last living survivor of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire are probed by her granddaughter, a composer, and a historian.
The Possibility of an Island
by Michel Houellebecq (Knopf)
A comedian falls in with a techno-cult, leaving his successive clones to reap the dystopian rewards, in this novel from the author of The Elementary Particles.
Telegraph Days
by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster)
A young woman and her sheriff brother make their way through the twilight of the Old West.
Blue Water
by A. Manette Ansay (William Morrow)
After the death of their son, a man and woman take to sea in a sailboat, attempting to come to terms with their loss.
The Poe Shadow
by Matthew Pearl (Random House)
A literary thriller from the author of The Dante Club probes the mysterious circumstances of Edgar Allan Poe’s death.
Two Little Girls in Blue
by Mary Higgins Clark (Simon & Schuster)
Telepathic twins are kidnapped in this, the author’s twenty-fifth thriller.
Promise Me
by Harlan Coben (Dutton)
Entertainment agent Myron Bolitar finds himself mired in mystery after the disappearance of a teenage girl.
The Shape Shifter
by Tony Hillerman (HarperCollins)
The discovery of a long-lost rug drags Joe Leaphorn out of retirement and into a once-closed investigation.
Eye Contact
by Cammie McGovern (Viking)
An autistic boy is the only witness to a murder.