New History & Travel Books Summer 2026
Expand your cultural horizons and dive into critical narratives with the best new history, travel and geography books of the summer. Combining environmental stewardship, American history and space exploration, this reading list allows you to uncover the fascinating interconnectedness of our planet. This summer, we're featuring titles from acclaimed authors like Rick Atkinson, Ryan Huling and Lauren Hough. Our editors and book lovers have handpicked each new release on this list to find books that will open your eyes and change your perspective.
August History and Travel New Book Releases
Because of a Dog: How an Enchanted Italian Village Mended a Broken Heart
by Matthew Sigman
One dog's love. One man's journey.
When Matthew Sigman's beloved dog, Augie, died, his world fell apart. His boyfriend broke up with him. His work dried up. Even the ceiling of his West Village apartment collapsed. Heartbroken and adrift, Matthew did the only thing he could -- he ran.
An impulsive escape to Europe didn't lead to the cafés of Paris or the islands of Greece. Instead, thanks to a fluke in an Airbnb map, he landed in Quarna, a remote Italian mountain village seemingly hidden from tourists--and from time itself. There, amid winding cobblestone streets and alpine silence, Matthew stumbled into an unlikely friendship and madcap adventures with an exuberant innkeeper, Valerio, and discovered the warmth of a community that welcomed him as one of their own.
In Because of a Dog, Matthew traces a journey from profound grief to unexpected renewal, from isolation to connection. With wit, poignancy, and hard-won insight, this memoir is a reminder that sometimes, when all seems lost, it takes a village to mend a broken heart.
The Black Shield: An American Memoir of Family and Power
by Wilbert L Cooper
Both an epic history and an intimate family story, a startling account of the lives of Black cops in one Midwestern city.
In the wake of the George Floyd protests, a Black police organization in Cleveland called the Black Shield was causing a stir. Officers broke ranks with their fellow cops, aligning themselves with local Black Lives Matter activists and supporting demands for radical reforms. In the midst of these fissures, Wilbert L. Cooper returned to his hometown to write a profile of the organization's president, who had become notorious years earlier for shooting a young unarmed Black man.
For Cooper, the news was deeply personal. Both of his parents are retired Black Cleveland cops, his sister was a Cleveland cop, and on his mother's side, there's been a Cleveland cop in the family since 1950. Unearthing the dramatic histories of the Black Shield and his own family, Cooper tells the intertwined stories of the two: his relatives, who trace their roots back to the Great Migration and who chose policing because it was one of the few stepping stones to economic security and status in a segregated city; and an organization that, over decades of cultural and political upheaval, cycled endlessly between rebellion and acquiescence.
An intimate, bold work of literary nonfiction, The Black Shield is an urgent exploration of the complex duality of the Black cop. Cooper grapples with a knot of contradictions: Is the Black officer a sign of progressive change, or of the system's masterful way of changing its appearance without changing its outcomes? How can he reconcile the fact that policing helped lift his family out of poverty, and the equally real panic that accompanies being pulled over? Fearless and singularly powerful, Cooper gives us an American story about race and power of a kind that has never been told before.
Civilizations Map by Map: From Ancient Empires to Forgotten Cultures
by DK
Witness the rise and fall of ancient empires and forgotten cultures and their epic stories with this unique map-led history.
From Mesopotamia's thriving trade hubs to the spectacular cities of the Inca, such as Machu Picchu, Civilizations Map By Map charts the rise and fall of more than 90 pioneering early societies. A combination of specially commissioned storytelling maps and contemporary examples offer a window into the pivotal events, key innovations, cultural cornerstones, and enduring legacies of these ancient worlds.
Travel through 6,000 years of history, from the first recorded war between Elam and Sumer, through Alexander the Great's conquests across three continents, to the rapid expansion of the Aztec Empire. Discover the birth of writing, the calendar, coinage and urban planning, along with the spread of early scientific knowledge, and religious, philosophical and political ideas. Marvel at colossal Olmec stone heads, the exquisite gold artifacts of ancient Korea's Silla Kingdom, the rock-hewn churches of the Zagwe dynasty and many more artistic and architectural triumphs.
Written and authenticated by a panel of expert historians, Civilizations Map By Map uncovers the incredible stories of our shared past, one map at a time.
Cooking Thai: Heritage and Modern Recipes from My Kitchen Notebooks
by Pim Techamuanvivit - Andrea Nguyen
Through 100 stunning recipes, an award-winning chef shares her Thai culinary heritage, blending intriguing flavors, rich culture and multi-hued stories.
"This book, like everything Pim does, is an indelible achievement. It's just the guide I needed through every major category of Thai cuisine--from snacks all the way to desserts -- but it's also a lighthearted, easy-to-read narrative." -- Yotam Ottolenghi
After emigrating to America as an adult with a deep respect for the savors and traditions of her native country, Pim Techamuanvivit noticed assumptions around Thai cuisine being cheap or foreign. Driven to change that perception, she opened multiple Michelin-starred restaurants to celebrate the richness of Thai cuisine and her family's culinary heritage. Cooking Thai presents a collection of Techamuanvivit's best recipes and breaks down traditional Thai techniques with simple dishes and cultural insights, encouraging readers to craft their own Thai culinary journeys.
With an explanation of how to source core ingredients, home cooks will be whipping up incredible meals without a hitch. From deeply flavorful dishes like Grilled Shrimp and Lychee Salad and Massaman Curry with Beef Cheeks, Potatoes, and Burnt Shallots to Namprik Gapi Fried Rice and Kin Khao Wings, cooks of all abilities will have an abundance of delectable, sharable recipes at their fingertips.
Cooking Thai showcases Pim's award-winning culinary prowess as she guides you through the landscape of Thai cuisine, helping you understand the veracity, complexity and deliciousness it has to offer.
The Everest Mystery: Sandy Irvine, George Mallory, and the Truth Still Buried on Everest
by Julie Summers - Jochen Hemmleb
"Utterly captivating ... everyone will be riveted by the personalities, the constraints of their era and the courage and ingenuity they ultimately brought to it, whether or not they succeeded." – Booklist (starred)
"Gripping ... Recommended for those with an interest in exploration history, as well as those drawn to enduring historical mysteries." -- Library Journal
The unsolved mysteries of George Mallory, Sandy Irvine and their legendary 1924 Everest expedition
There is no mystery more compelling in the history of mountaineering than the disappearance of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine close to the summit of Mount Everest on June 8, 1924. Over 100 years after they were last seen "going strong for the top," the question of exactly what happened to them on that fateful day has not been answered.
George Mallory's frozen remains were discovered in 1999. But in September 2024, a climber found an old boot lying out in the open on the Central Rongbuk Glacier on Mount Everest, several miles from where Mallory lay. The boot contained a foot, and a sock bearing a nametape spelled out in red: A.C. IRVINE.
Did Mallory and Irvine reach the summit -- becoming the first to do so -- or did they perish while ascending? What happened to the camera that Irvine may have carried, which would have documented their climb? Written by Julie Summers, Sandy Irvine's great-niece, and Jochen Hemmleb, the world's leading authority on the Mallory and Irvine Everest expedition, The Everest Mystery explores the life of Sandy Irvine, his relationship with George Mallory, and the many theories about what happened to them so close to the summit of Mount Everest. Above all, it restores Sandy Irvine to his rightful place in the great mystery of Everest 1924.
Lovers of the Empire: Vol. 1
by Yudori Yudori
South Korea, 1929. Arisa Jo, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, is the most eligible bachelorette in all of Gyeongsung (the capital city). With her Western dresses, movie star hairstyle and assertive attitude, she embodies bold "modern" values. Meet her opposite, Jun Seomoon, a young man from the countryside deeply rooted in tradition. When Jun is charged by Arisa's father to be her escort in the big city, these opposing forces create sparks. Through this unlikely connection, these teenagers open their eyes to new perspectives amidst the rapidly changing world they live in.
Coming off the heels of her acclaimed Raging Clouds, Lovers of the Empire proves Yudori to be a comic artist at the height of her creative powers. On the surface a sweet and funny will they, won't they romance, this story garners depth from its depiction of Korea at a crossroads: a city occupied by Japan, molded by Western influences and facing a modernity that stirs inner conflicts within its citizens. Rendered in gorgeous full color, this period piece portrays a fascinating city in a tumultuous time, with two winsome characters at its heart.
Your Fellow Americans: Dispatches from Across the Country We Call Home
by Peter Santenello
Come along with an adventurous and charismatic independent journalist (perhaps you're one of his four million subscribers on YouTube) on a journey through some of the very best of America, reminding us of all the reasons we've got to love this place and one another.
Have you ever swapped stories on a porch with Amish snowbirds in Florida? Searched for reindeer with the Siberian Yupik in Alaska? Been a guest on a houseboat deep in the Louisiana bayou?
Peter Santenello hadn't either until, after years spent traveling through 85 countries and living abroad, he realized the most unfamiliar territory was often his own American backyard. And so, with a camera in hand and an open mind, he began visiting communities across the country, places that most of the media overlooks or misrepresents, from tiny towns in Appalachia to the streets of East L.A.
What began as curiosity became, one story at a time, an intimate, revealing portrait of America today. From road trips and chance encounters to dinners shared in locals' homes, Your Fellow Americans captures what makes this country so dynamic, so resilient, and most of all, so very human. Because what Peter discovered on his travels wasn't a nation torn in two. He found something more complex and more powerful: People who want to be seen, who are willing to listen and who still believe we're more alike than we are different.
With humor, exuberance and reverence for the human spirit, Your Fellow Americans is a celebration of the United States that exists far beyond the headlines and an invitation to sit down, open up and rediscover the soul of this place that we call home.
Up on Cove Mountain: Adventure, Tragedy, and a Quest for Meaning on the Appalachian Trail
by Earl Swift
From the New York Times bestselling author of Chesapeake Requiem comes an intricately plotted tale of two end-to-end adventures through the Appalachian Trail's twenty-two hundred miles, braided around a third strand, that of the trail's most notorious tragedy that has haunted Earl Swift for 30 years.
In 1990, a youthful Earl Swift backpacked the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia, a transformative experience that colored every aspect of his later life. He emerged from his hike across the rugged, sky-high roof of 14 eastern states a sharper and more organized thinker, a better problem solver and a committed outdoorsman.
But he also left the AT with baggage: Early in his odyssey, he spent time with a couple of other southbounders, who were friendly, capable and doing everything right, but who were nonetheless murdered weeks later at a mountaintop campsite in Pennsylvania, a fit of violence that the killer never explained.
Half a lifetime later, Swift returned to the trail to find out whether he was still, in his 60s, equal to the AT's roller-coaster terrain. Driving him, too, was a quest for answers that had nagged at him since that first hike: What had happened at that campsite to turn two smart, bighearted people into prey? Why had fate chosen them, when other hikers -- Swift included -- seemed more likely candidates? And how could such a grisly episode have unfolded in the backcountry's sylvan loveliness, not to mention one of the safest places around?
Up on Cove Mountain is the arresting account of Swift's 2024 trek through the AT's enduring wonders and the ghosts of its past, a chronicle of swashbuckling adventure coupled with a meditation on the nature of risk and the risks of nature.
July History and Travel New Book Releases
Fierce Country: The Untold Story of Three Women Who Ignited America's Love for the Wild (Original)
by Heather Hansman
The inspiring, untold story of three incredible women who spearheaded recreation, conservation and resilience in America's most beloved landscapes, for readers of Pam Houston and David Grann
Throughout the 20th century Georgie White, Anne LaBastille, and Dolores LaChapelle did more to inspire our love of the great outdoors than just about anyone.
- Georgie devoted her life to the Grand Canyon, kickstarting the river running craze in the 40s and igniting the recreation industry
- Anne, a wilderness guide and bestselling author, protected endangered species and predicted the impacts of climate change from her isolated, off-grid cabin in the Adirondacks.
- And deep powder skier Dolores developed an environmental philosophy that shaped everything from the radical environmental movement of the '70s to modern conservation ethics.
Now, for the first time, outdoor journalist and bestselling author of Powder Days Heather Hansman goes deep into multiple rugged American landscapes to bring three fascinating lives to the forefront of the outdoor movement, affirming their rightful place in the larger story of an evolving American wild.
Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War
by Jane Rogoyska
Since its opening in 1910, the Hotel Lutetia has been a grand Paris institution, a meeting place for artists, intellectuals, musicians, and politicians. André Gide took his lunch here, James Joyce lived in one of its rooms, Picasso and Matisse were regular guests. But the hotel has a darker history, too--from the years before, during, and after the second World War. In this short period, the Lutetia witnessed some of the most dramatic and terrible events in recent history.
In Hotel Exile, Jane Rogoyska evokes in novelistic prose the emotions, dilemmas, and fates of the hotel's patrons. In the 1930s, Europe's bohemian artists and political activists, forced to flee their homes when Hitler came to power, met at the Lutetia with the hope of forming an alternative government. But when war came, Paris was occupied, and the hotel became the headquarters of the German military intelligence service--and the center of their operation to root out enemies of the Reich. In 1945, the Lutetia was requisitioned once more, this time transformed into a reception center for Holocaust survivors who sought refuge after the Liberation. Rogoyska explores what it meant for these three profoundly different groups to live in exile, under the shadow of the dark ideology that dictated the course of their lives.
A masterpiece of empathy and concision, Hotel Exile is about what happens at the edges of a war, passing through the doors of a normally functioning hotel, a site under occupation, and, finally, a shelter and place of healing. Jane Rogoyska's extraordinary new book offers us a vision of individual human beings desperately trying to find a path through some of the twentieth century's most devastating events.
How to Kill a Language: Power, Resistance, and the Race to Save Our Words
by Sophia Smith Galer
An urgent, globe-spanning exploration of languages at risk, from Kichwa to Ukrainian, that asks: What do we lose -- culturally, politically, and personally -- when a language is silenced?
"A vivid, hopeful portrait of how people around the world are staying connected to their linguistic roots."--Gretchen McCulloch, author of Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language
Languages can be killed in many ways: war, the climate crisis, nationalism, and even quiet choices made at the dinner table. Around the world, an unprecedented shift is drawing speakers toward national and global lingua francas. For some, that means losing the language of parents or grandparents; for many, it is a permanent farewell to systems that carry knowledge, culture, and belonging. With half of our 7,000 languages due to disappear this century, linguicide is one of the most pressing cultural emergencies of our age.
In How to Kill a Language, journalist Sophia Smith Galer travels across continents and generations to chart this phenomenon. In Ecuador, she sees firsthand how shame deters parents from passing Kichwa onto their children. In Oman, she learns about languages with roots older than Arabic but never officially recognized. And in Italy, she searches for her Nonna's dialët, which is vanishing from diaspora communities and Italy itself. But languages can also be reclaimed: We meet the Karuk tribe of California, pioneering a grassroots language immersion program, and the storytellers challenging the criminalization of Kurdish. And in her discussion of Hebrew, Smith Galer reckons with the unintended consequences of raising a language seemingly from the grave.
Part investigation, part travelogue from a disappearing world, How to Kill a Language exposes the true costs of this mass extinction event. Brought to life by vivid storytelling and Smith Galer's own experience with language loss, it's a fierce rallying cry for a multilingual future.
Tin Can Coast: A History of Industry, Greed, and Fishing in the Golden State
by Joseph Ogilvy
"Powerful nature writing ... a lively story about the consequences of rapacious capitalism." - LOS ANGELES TIMES
"You'll never look at a can of tuna the same way again." - MALCOM HARRIS, nationally bestselling author of Palo Alto
The hidden story of the California Coast, told through generations of immigrants, surges of industry, and three marine species caught in the dragnet of human history.
Look west from San Francisco or Monterey, past the surfers and cargo ships. This is the California Current, 1,900 miles of the most productive waters on earth. It was here that eighteenth-century locals encountered frisbee-sized abalone mollusks, sardine schools the size of buses, and Yellowfin tuna, each the size of a man. But it was not to last.
Over the next three centuries, the abalone, sardine, and tuna were swept into the violent undertow of history. Their species became resources. Fishing and hunting drove the Spanish-Russian territory battle of the eighteenth century, California's virulently racist first "conservation" laws in the 19th, and an ad campaign that kept America fed on just-like-chicken canned goods in the 20th. Along the way, they became drivers of geopolitical competition, catalysts for the dramatic rise and fall of Cannery Row aristocracy, and even surly muses for John Steinbeck and Fritz Lang.
Collapsing the distinctions between human and natural history, Tin Can Coast brings the cautionary tale of the California shore to life.
Ungrounding: The Architecture of Genocide
by Eyal Weizman
From an acclaimed architect and investigator, a devastating, meticulous accounting of Israel's destruction of Gaza and crimes against its people
Eyal Weizman is one of the world's leading experts on the relationship between violence, conflict, and the built and natural environment. As director of the organization Forensic Architecture, he and his team of interdisciplinary researchers have spent decades investigating and documenting acts of war and human rights violations around the world, including extensive work in Weizman's native Israel and Palestine. Since 2023, the group's efforts have focused on producing evidence for the International Court of Justice's case against Israel.
In this revelatory new project, Weizman draws on that original and extraordinarily comprehensive research to bring us on an eye-opening journey through the "deep cartography" of the area extending from Gaza's subterranean tunnels through to its militarized topography, settlements, and barriers. He catalogs, in unflinching and exacting detail, the Israeli campaigns of violence and displacement that have reshaped the region in an effort to make Gaza and its surrounding areas unlivable for the Palestinian people. Taking us through the broader geographical and historical context, from the Nakba in 1948 to the present day, Ungrounding establishes that architectural and territorial analysis is key to understanding the relationship between colonizer and colonized -- and how Israel's actions have escalated into violence so extreme and so far-reaching as to, Weizman argues, meet the definition of genocide.
Deeply informative and profoundly affecting in its scope and precision, Ungrounding is an essential document of atrocity in our time.
Babylon: The Biography of a Metropolis
by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones
A vibrant, colorful, and authoritative exploration of the world's first and most illustrious metropolis.
'Babylon' is a name that has a double life: it denotes the great ancient Mesopotamian city with a long and complex history, and it is also a fictive allusion with a wide variety of connotations, from the Hebrew bible's Tower of Babel, through the New Testament's 'Whore of Babylon' to the iconic song 'The Rivers of Babylon' in the 1970s.
The first royal dynasty of Babylon was founded by an Amorite interloper named Sumu-la-El a thousand years after the fall of the great Sumerian city states of Ur and Uruk, creating a new superpower in the Near East. Clinging close to the mighty River Euphrates, the city quickly grew in size and, thanks to its military prowess, soon expanded its territories, sweeping down to the Persian Gulf and advancing north into Syria.
The kingdom of Babylonia came in to being and, governed from mighty Babylon, setting the agenda for what civilization meant. This fascinating book explores Babylon's reputation as a city with a dual legacy by exploring its rich ancient past and its astonishing mythic legacy.
Our Knives Will Save Us: Dispatches from a White Mountain Apache Chef
by Nephi Craig
Named a nonfiction book "Everyone Will Be Reading This Summer" by the New York Times
From Indigenous chef Nephi Craig, a searing personal and cultural reckoning that demonstrates the power of food to heal intergenerational wounds
At just eighteen years old, Nephi Craig was facing a felony charge that could have put him in prison for years. Having struggled with substance abuse throughout his teens, his life had come to a dizzying halt. So when a judge ordered three years of probation instead--on the condition he attend work or school--Craig took it as an opportunity for a new lease on life. Not long after, he enrolled in a culinary arts program a few hours from Whiteriver, Arizona, where he had grown up on the White Mountain Apache Tribe Reservation. Expecting little more than a means to an end, Craig quickly discovered a talent and passion for cooking. He also experienced a profound dissonance as the only Indigenous person in the kitchen, preparing European recipes that – disguised by their French and Italian names -- relied on ingredients native to the Americas.
Craig untangled the buried histories of Indigenous cultivars such as tomato, cacao, and amaranth, each one a portal into possibility as well as a marker of the violent legacy of colonization. As he did so, he found new ways to honor his Apache and Navajo roots and build Indigenous food sovereignty. His journey led him around the world, from top fine-dining restaurants in the United States to high-profile banquets in Brazil, England, Germany, and Japan. All the while, Craig wrestled with addiction, entering one treatment center after another in the hopes that he could get--and remain--sober.
In the heat, frenzy, and collaborative energy of restaurant kitchens, Craig found a lifeline. But when he was faced with the difficult decision of choosing between a career-defining executive chef job and an opportunity to serve his community back on the Rez, he realized his true vocation. Interweaving personal reflection with illuminating cultural insight, Our Knives Will Save Us offers a vision of hope: one where food is decolonized and cooking is a pathway to healing for all of us.
June Book Releases
1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World
by Liaquat Ahamed
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by Literary Hub
From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lords of Finance, a magnificent and 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. While the giant sums of capital provided through the bond market built the railroads, the century's most transformative investments, the money raised also unleashed a frenzy of speculation, massive overinvestment, and wasteful borrowing by governments.
With excessive euphoria leading to disappointed expectations, in the early 1870s the bubble burst. Stock markets from Vienna to New York crashed, and dozens of railroads and many governments defaulted. Financial officials responded by blundering into a precipitous remaking of the global currency system--exacerbating the ensuing economic collapse and setting the stage for decades of a punitive deflation that sparked waves of anti-globalist populism. As Liaquat Ahamed shows us in this enthralling history, the crisis of 1873 was, among other things, a death blow to Reconstruction in the United States and the proximate cause of the Ottoman Empire's slow death spiral. Ironically, though the Rothschilds had presciently kept a low profile during the bubble, when the deluge came, they were viciously scapegoated as part of a wider hatred directed at "Jewish finance," a strain of antisemitism that would come to full evil flower during the twentieth century.
1873 is a bird's-eye reckoning with the full dimension of the crisis, from its buildup to its long aftermath. The Rothschilds and a cast of other witnesses give us the human perspective. And we have a brilliant financial historian's grasp of the larger forces at play, resulting in a global narrative with thrilling explanatory power.
Dinner with an Astronaut: Serving Space Stories: Past, Present and Future
by Leroy Chiao - Victoria Bruce
The inspiring journey of Leroy Chiao, one of the first Asian American astronauts in history, illuminating his remarkable path into space and the fascinating history of rocketry and space travel from its very beginnings
Imagine if you could sit down and enjoy a meal with an astronaut. What questions would you ask? What could you learn after a few courses? Leroy Chiao invites you as his guest for Dinner with an Astronaut, an insightful and witty deep dive into the world's most unexplored realm: the cosmos.
At just 30 years old, Leroy was selected by NASA as one of twenty-three members of the thirteenth astronaut group. As the first full Chinese heritage professional astronaut, he flew four space missions: the Space Shuttle, Soyuz, ISS and on spacewalks in both U.S. and Russian spacesuits, and served as the commander of the International Space Station.
Using his unique perspective from flying with fellow American, Japanese and Russian professionals, Leroy now answers your burning universe-spanning questions, such as:
- What is the new space race, and who are the next generation of competitors?
- What is NASA working on these days?
- What feelings did you experience looking out at Earth from space?
- What does the future of space exploration look like?
- Will we ever make it to Mars?
Sharing the wonders of space with those of us on Earth, Leroy details his astronaut training and otherworldly spaceflights. Gorgeously luminary and deeply profound, Dinner with an Astronaut invites readers to join Leroy Chiao and take a seat at the table, for fans of Scott Kelly, Chris Hadfield, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and for anyone who's been obsessed with the Artemis II moon mission.
Kingdom of Devils: A Tale of Murder in the Shadow of the American Revolution
by Katherine Grandjean
The chilling true story of a brutal string of deaths on the post-Revolutionary frontier that reveal the violence at the heart of the young United States
"In Cold Blood for the 1790s … Part true crime, part western, part ghost story, Kingdom of Devils plumbs the dark underbelly of the American West in the years following the Revolution." -- Jane Kamensky, president and CEO, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello
Kentucky, 1798: A harrowing series of murders begins. The first body, discovered by cattle drovers, lies bloody at the bottom of a ridge. Then another, a dead boy staring up from a sinkhole. Bodies turn up along roadsides, stuffed into brush. They float to the surface of muddy brooks. For nine terrifying months, over hundreds of miles of Kentucky and Tennessee countryside, the terror unfolds. The killers, two men with hazy backgrounds, are brothers, named Wiley and Micajah Harp.
The Harps killed dozens, but why they did it has eluded folklorists and historians for generations. Almost every story imagines that their motive was pure bloodlust, but for historian Katherine Grandjean, that's too simple. Instead, she uses the Harp murders to reveal the dark side of the young United States' independence. These were uncertain and dangerous years, a time when the fledgling federal government could do little to protect its citizens. And if the American Revolution was liberating, it was also deeply destabilizing, politically and socially. Even as it built up some men, it stacked the deck against others, punishing them with volatile markets, lost safety nets and shattered aspirations. Unspooling the mystery of what sent the Harps reeling exposes the hidden, violent legacies of the revolutionary era.
Bristling with tense, page-turning storytelling and driven by a historian's obsessive detective work, Kingdom of Devils recovers these long-forgotten murders as a haunting tale about the darkness at the heart of the American dream.
Monster of a Land: On the Road in Search of Modern America
by Lauren Hough
From The New York Times bestselling author of Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing comes an update of John Steinbeck's trip in Travels with Charley, a cross-country journey exploring modern America with Lauren Hough's signature observational wit, searing social commentary, and perspective as someone who knows what it's like to truly exist on the margins in this country.
"Monster of a Land is so much more than a road trip book--it's about the trips we never take, the people we lose before we get the chance, and what happens when you finally get in the goddamn car." --Jennette McCurdy, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Half His Age and I'm Glad My Mom Died
Lauren Hough has always been haunted by the road trips she never got to take: no money, no vacation days, no car capable of making the trip. So, upon finally finding herself in a situation where such a trip might be possible--being a writer may not always pay better than being a bartender or a cable guy, but at least the schedule's flexible--she leaps at the chance, refurbishing a ramshackle 2001 Dodge van and setting off from Austin, Texas with her Husky mix Woody by her side.
Her influences feel obvious--but a lot has changed about the United States since the 1962 trip John Steinbeck chronicles in Travels with Charley. And Lauren Hough isn't John Steinbeck--unless the Noble Prize-winning author of The Grapes of Wrath had a secret past as a six-foot-tall lesbian and Air Force vet. But even better as a social lubricant than beer, a dog is the ultimate conversation starter. With Woody as wingman, Lauren chats--at gas stations and restaurants and auto shops and bars--with an incredible cross-section of Americans from all walks of life and every possible political perspective. And as she circumnavigates the country, she documents, with all-too-rare empathy, what it means to be poor, to be marginalized, and to be seen as Other in America.
Part travelogue, part social commentary, and 100% Lauren Hough, Monster of a Land unites her poignant vulnerability, her hilarious narrative voice, and her razor-sharp insights into a journey that will show us how far we've come as a country, and how far we still have to go.
The Beasts of the East: The Fall and Rise of America's Eastern Wilderness
by Andrew Moore
"An exemplary work of environmental journalism." ― Kirkus, starred review
A fresh and fascinating portrait of the eastern wilds, The Beasts of the East is a celebration of the extraordinary lost natural wonder of the eastern U.S. Discover an astonishingly abundant landscape that was once the center of American wildness before its despoliation and a revelatory journey through recent efforts to return elk, bison, wolves, and other creatures to their native landscapes
"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?
The British Are Coming: The Graphic Edition, Volume 1
by Rick Atkinson - Nora Neus - Federico Pietrobon
This striking graphic edition adapts the first half of the New York Times bestselling The British Are Coming, the opening volume in Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Rick Atkinson's extraordinary trilogy about the American Revolution
From the battles at Lexington and Concord in the spring of 1775 through the Siege of Boston in 1776, American militiamen and the newly created Continental Army take on the world's most formidable adversary: the British Empire. The gripping saga is alive with astonishing characters: Henry Knox, the former bookseller with an uncanny understanding of artillery; Nathanael Greene, the blue-eyed bumpkin who becomes a brilliant battle captain; Benjamin Franklin, the self-made man who proves to be the wiliest of diplomats; and George Washington, the commander in chief who learns the difficult art of leadership when the war seems all but lost. The story is also told from the British perspective, making the mortal conflict between redcoats and rebels all the more compelling.
Full of riveting details and iconic stories, The British Are Coming is a tale of heroes and knaves, of sacrifice and blunder, of redemption and profound suffering. Expertly rendered in gripping graphic novel-style artwork, the battle for our nation's independence is brought to life like never before. Discover the first act of America's creation in this vividly illustrated graphic history.
The Hardest, Longest Race: Henry Ford and the Cross-Country Contest That Changed America
by Eric Moskowitz
From Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Eric Moskowitz comes the riveting story of the first true coast-to-coast automobile race in U.S. history, a fast-paced tale of the gritty and determined drivers who braved hostile terrain, mechanical failure, and, shockingly, sabotage, to take home the gold.
In 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.
The Hidden Nations of Animals: A Grand Tour of Earth's Wild Civilizations
by Ryan Huling - Oliver Uberti
An instant classic of nature writing and breathtaking blueprint for a more expansive view of animalkind, inspired by the profound sense of awe that accompanies an expedition into unknown lands
"Shatters the notion that humanity holds a monopoly on civilization." -- Joaquin Phoenix
"This book will leave you feeling like a vital member of the broader world of animals--a cosmopolitan citizen of the zoopolis." -- Robert Moor
From far-flung forest settlements in Canada's "beaver belt" to disputed territories of clashing Argentine ant armies, Ryan Huling's around-the-world odyssey takes us to places most people don't even know exist. Along the way, we meet renowned ecologists, anthropologists, geographers, and historians whose work has uncovered vast sub-Saharan tunnel complexes, booming animal metropolises nestled within the urban sprawl of the American Southwest, and ancient Silk Road-style migration routes that traverse the Eurasian Steppe.
When humans settle in an area, it is deemed, by definition, populated. By contrast, the millions of other species we share this planet with have long been viewed as fleeting ephemera, living brief and transitory lives in "uninhabited" wilderness. Over the course of a year, Huling investigates how technology is rapidly changing that perception by deepening humanity's understanding of our fellow animals and their unique relationships with the land, air, and sea. His immersive account fuses with vivid full-color maps and hand-drawn sketches by award-winning cartographer Oliver Uberti, revealing a radically reimagined version of our world and illuminating its true contours for the first time.
The Kennedys and the Windsors: The Story of Two Dynasties, One Born, One Made
by Caroline Hallemann
Two iconic dynasties, the Kennedys and the Windsors, whose glamour and ambition defined an era.
** For fans of FX's new Ryan Murphy limited series Love Story. **
For nearly a century, two families an ocean apart have captured the world's collective imagination: the British Windsors and the American Kennedys. Much ink has been spilled on their individual trysts, tragedies, and triumphs over the years, but no one has examined their powerful and intertwined legacies. Until now.
In The Kennedys and the Windsors, acclaimed journalist Caroline Hallemann unearths the story of two iconic families whose lives, ambitions, and respective reigns have mirrored each other in surprising ways. Through rich archival research and fresh interviews from insiders on both sides of the Atlantic, Hallemann reveals how an upstart Irish Catholic family with little access into elite New England society came to host dinner parties for a King and Queen, and forge an eventual path to the White House. In the process, she draws out some startling parallels between the two families: the style icons Princess Diana and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy (both tragically gone too soon), the frustrated "second sisters" Princess Margaret and Lee Radziwill, the scandal-plagued next generation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the man formerly known as Prince Andrew, and the current generation's shared struggle to figure out what a monarchy (actual or imagined) means in the twenty-first century.
From Queen Elizabeth's coronation to President Kennedy's historic London visit, from JFK Jr.'s shocking death to Prince Harry's decisive break with his family, Hallemann traces the key moments in the lives of these two dynasties through a fresh and fascinating lens, showing how they have intersected over the generations in ways that not only shaped their images and legacies, but history itself.
Related: Want to jet off to another century or discover more engaging nonfiction picks? Check out out latest reading guides for Time Travelers and Mavericks. In case you missed it, catch up on our World Traveler Book Recommendations for Spring 2026.