The North American prairie is an ecological marvel, a lush carpet of grass that stretches to the horizon, and home to some of the nation’s most iconic creatures—bison, elk, wolves, pronghorn, prairie dogs, and bald eagles. Plants, microbes, and animals together made the grasslands one of the richest ecosystems on Earth and a massive carbon sink, but the constant expansion of agriculture threatens what remains.

Escape the race to happiness, build a life of value, and resist the pull of self-help.

In Spellbound, historian Molly Worthen argues that we will understand our present moment if we learn the story of charisma in America. From the Puritans and Andrew Jackson to Black nationalists and Donald Trump, the saga of American charisma, Worthen argues, stars figures who possess a dangerous and alluring power to move crowds. They invite followers into a cosmic drama where hopes are fulfilled and grievances are put right—and these charismatic leaders insist that they alone plot the way.

Across the world, patriarchy has oppressed women and denied their contributions, but every nation has its own unique gendered hierarchy. Dr. Anna Malaika Tubbs applies her signature approachable yet rigorous analysis to define American patriarchy in this definitive and groundbreaking history. Humanity in the United States is determined by gender in a limited and flawed binary logic that is also always tied to whiteness. Tubbs shows how a fabricated hierarchy became so deeply ingrained in the country over time that it now goes unnoticed, along with everything it intentionally conceals.

Acclaimed journalist Megan Greenwell’s Bad Company tells the hidden story of private equity through the experiences of four American workers who watched as private equity upended their employers and communities: a Toys R Us floor supervisor, a rural doctor, a local newspaper journalist, and an affordable housing organizer.

Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and ’80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing?

You’ve heard about the tantrums, the seething, the storming out of court, yes. But what about E. Jean’s side of the story? What about the flight suits, the bottle of green Chartreuse, and the bob? Not My Type puts you in a better seat than the jury box.

The “Wild West” gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth, more a product of dime novels and B movies than a genuinely important American history. In fact, as Bryan Burrough shows us in his dazzling and fast-paced new book, there’s much more below the surface. For three decades at the end of the 1800s, a big swath of the American West was a crucible of change, with the highest murder rate per capita in American history. The reasons behind this boil down to one word: Texas.

Majestic in its sweep, rich in ideas and argument, and packed with news and revelations, Buckley vividly captures its subject in all his facets and phases—founding editor of National Review, the 20th century’s most influential political journal; syndicated columnist and TV debater; ally of Joseph McCarthy and Barry Goldwater; mentor to Ronald Reagan; wisecracking candidate for mayor of New York; and bestselling novelist and memoirist.

A few weeks after the 2016 election, at Thanksgiving with his daughter’s family, Rhys Kinnick snapped. After an escalating fight about politics, he hauled off and punched his conspiracy theorist son-in-law. Horrified by what he'd done, by the state of the country and by his own spiraling mental health, Rhys chucked his smartphone out a car window and fled for a cabin in the woods, off the grid and with no one around—except a pack of hungry raccoons. Now, seven years later, Kinnick’s old life is about to land right back on his crumbling doorstep.