It’s January 6th, fifth anniversary of Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow our democracy by instigating his violent followers to lay siege to the Capitol and threaten death to Vice President Pence and many members of Congress. It has always been clear, and Jack Smith’s testimony before Congress a couple weeks ago made it even clearer, that Trump should have been tried for this crime and banned from ever holding office again.
But here we are, five years later. Trump is back in power, leading an orgy of criminal behavior, grift, self-serving acts, and dismantling the pillars of our democracy, our Constitution, our economy, our civic pact, our history, our educational system, our healthcare system, our scientific research, the international diplomatic order, and the very future of the planet itself. One of his first acts was to pardon his traitorous followers who had been convicted for their actions on that day. In less than a year, at least 33 of them have committed new crimes.
All because the Republicans protected him from the consequences of his criminal acts.
Leading off our roundup of this week’s notable new nonfiction is a book that came out on today: Storm at the Capitol: An Oral History of January 6th, by Mary Clare Jalonick. You’ll find the full description below with the rest of the week’s new releases, but I thought I would first offer some of the other books that have been published.
Just a week ago was 24 Hours at the Capitol: An Oral History of the January 6th Insurrection, by Nora Neus, published by Beacon Press. While there is much overlap between Neus’ book and that of Jalonick, 24 Hours at the Capitol takes a much more scathing view, rooting the insurrection squarely in white nationalism.
January 6 was largely planned right out in the open, but lawmakers and government officials underestimated the threat in part because it was coming from white people. Neus examines the underlying racial implications of not only the attack itself, but also in the planning and coordination of the response.
Nora Neus also wrote 24 Hours in Charlottesville: An Oral History of the Stand Against White Supremacy.
Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, who was in the thick of the battle with the seditionist mob at the Capitol that day, wrote a memoir, now available in paperback: Standing My Ground: A Capitol Police Officer's Fight for Accountability and Good Trouble After January 6th.
Standing My Ground is “a powerful, patriotic tale – told with striking moral clarity” (Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi) that provides a crucial, definitive firsthand account of what happened on that day our country was shocked to its core. But it will also share the story of a man who refused to stay quiet when he learned that some of the men and women he had risked his life protecting, who knew him by name, would deny the horrors they faced. That’s when he chose to speak up and to seek out what his hero John Lewis once termed “good trouble.” Dunn’s ongoing story as a witness willing to meaningfully engage with the media, lawmakers, and the public provides a backdrop for examining the political and racial divide in this country—one that we must overcome in order to demand accountability and preserve our precious democracy.
After the attack on the Capitol and the assualt on dozens of law enforcement officers, online sleuths began poring over the photographs and videos of that day to help identify the participants for investigators. The came to be known s the ‘Sedition Hunters,’ and journalist Ryan J. Reilly recounted their efforts in Sedition Hunters: How January 6th Broke the Justice System.
The attack on the Capitol building following the 2020 election was an extraordinarily large and brazen crime. Conspiracies were formed on social media in full public view, the law-breakers paraded on national television with undisguised faces, and with outgoing President Donald Trump openly cheering them on. The basic concept of law enforcement--investigators find criminals and serve justice--quickly breaks down in the face of such an event. The system has been strained by the sheer volume of criminals and the widespread perception that what they did wasn't wrong.
A mass of online tipsters--"sedition hunters"--have mobilized, simultaneously providing the FBI with valuable intelligence and creating an ethical dilemma. Who gets to serve justice? How can law enforcement still function as a pillar of civil society?
In this work of extraordinary reportage, Ryan Reilly gets to know would-be revolutionaries, obsessive online sleuths, and FBI agents, and shines a light on a justice system that's straining to maintain order in our polarized country.
And of course, there is always The January 6 Report itself, the official report and findings of the bipartisan Congressional investigation into the January 6 attack. 750 pages of their findings and evidence, accompanied by commentary from Ari Melber.
THIS WEEK’S NOTABLE NEW NONFICTION
- Storm at the Capitol: An Oral History of January 6th, by Mary Clare Jalonick. The January 6th insurrection was a stunning and unprecedented attack on the center of American government. Unlike previous national traumas that united the country in the face of turmoil, the siege has only further divided Americans, as many continue to dispute the facts and downplay its significance.
In Storm at the Capitol, Mary Clare Jalonick delivers a deeply reported and definitive account of the violence at the Capitol told through firsthand narratives—from the rioters themselves and the police who fought them, to the lawmakers who fled the violence, and the staff, workers, and reporters who were there that day, including Jalonick herself. Her retelling begins in the predawn hours of January 6th, as Trump’s supporters travel to Washington, some with plans for violence, and ends in the early morning hours of January 7th, after Vice President Mike Pence slams his gavel on the House rostrum and declares Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election. “Storm at the Capitol is a gripping account of the events of January 6th. At a time when too many Americans are trying to erase that day from memory, Jalonick guarantees that it will not be forgotten. This is an important contribution not just for explaining our past but saving our democracy.” —Brendan Ballou, former January 6th prosecutor
- Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America’s New Age of Disaster, by Jacob Soboroff. On the morning of January 7, 2025, a message pinged the phone of Jacob Soboroff, a national reporter for MS NOW. “Big Palisades fire. We are evacuating,” his brother texted within minutes of the blaze engulfing the hillside behind the home where he and his pregnant wife were living. “Really bad.” An attached photo showed a huge black plume rising from behind the house, an umbrella of smoke towering over everything they owned. Jacob rushed to the office of the bureau chief.
“I should go. I grew up in the Palisades.”
Soon he was on the front line of the blaze—his first live report of what would turn out to be weeks covering unimaginable destruction, from both the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire, in Altadena. In the days to come, Soboroff appeared across the networks of NBC News as Los Angeles was ablaze, and met with displaced residents and workers., and pressed Governor Gavin Newsom in an interview on Meet the Press. But no story Soboroff has covered at home or abroad could have prepared him for reporting live as the hallmarks of his childhood were engulfed in flames around him while his hometown burned to the ground. “A riveting recollection of one of the worst fires in American history. Almost as hard to digest as the extreme loss of life and environmental devastation is Soboroff’s reporting on how some of our most prominent public figures responded to the disaster. . . . It’s hard to find a sense of hope in this reportage, but Soboroff finds it, beautifully, in the small moments." - BookPage "An emotional and intrepid account of the Los Angeles wildfires. . . . A cathartically heartbreaking account of the unique horror of watching one’s community reduced to ash." - Publishers Weekly
- American Reich: A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate, by Eric Lichtblau. One night in early 2018, while he was home from college, an Ivy League student named Blaze Bernstein snuck out of his parents’ house in Orange County. Waiting for him in a car outside was an old high-school classmate: Sam Woodward, someone who Blaze mostly remembered as a brooding, bigoted loner. But that night, after months of flirtatious messaging, Sam had succeeded in coaxing Blaze—a gay, Jewish sophomore at UPenn—out for a rendezvous. No one would ever see him alive again.
In American Reich, veteran investigative journalist Eric Lichtblau uses the story of Blaze’s life and death to shine a light on the epidemic of hate in Southern California and, increasingly, the nation as a whole. Orange County has long been a bastion of the ultra-right: carved out of farmland as a haven for wealthy whites fleeing the diversifying metropolis to the north, it was the birthplace of the far-right John Birch Society, a hub for neo-Nazi recruitment, and a powerful springboard for race-baiting Republican politicians including Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
Revealing how Orange County has exported racial hatred to the rest of the country and the world, American Reich weaves this tragic tale together with stories from across the nation, showing what this haunted place and the colliding paths of two of its residents reveal about America's fractured soul and our hope for healing. “With the resurgence of Neo-Nazism in the current political climate, this book is both timely and indispensable. To understand the history of white supremacy is to understand a crucial element of American history itself – and that recognition is essential if we are to continue striving to make ours a more perfect union.”—Anthony D. Romero, American Civil Liberties Union executive director
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Tom Paine's War: The Words That Rallied a Nation and the Founder for Our Time, by Jack Kelly. Two hundred and fifty years ago, the Declaration of Independence marked the birth of the United States. But two essays of that era appealed even more directly to Americans’ feelings. In January 1776, Thomas Paine—a recent immigrant to America —published Common Sense. His straightforward argument upended the fraud of monarchy and dismantled the idea of aristocratic privilege that had dominated the world for centuries. His words convinced Americans that the king had no divine right to rule them—they could rule themselves. He turned a rebellion over taxes and representation into a true Revolution.
Having inspired patriots to declare their independence, Paine enlisted as a militia private. There, he wrote The American Crisis, the most stirring rallying cry in our history. It began: “These are the times that try men’s souls . . .” With Paine’s words ringing in their ears, Washington and his men crossed the Delaware River and defeated the enemy at Trenton. The battle reversed the fortunes of the campaign and of the Revolution itself. A tribute to the Revolution’s 250th anniversary, Tom Paine’s War is a riveting exploration of our nation’s birth. This is a story of the power of words—and the power of belief—and how both speak as well to America’s current crisis. "Kelly’s book focused on Thomas Paine is a timely reminder of the principles of human equality, justice, and reason that undergird the creation of our democratic republic. Accessible and entertaining – and a stern rebuke to contemporary political actors who have betrayed the American cause."—Katherine Stewart, author of Money, Lies, and God and The Power Worshippers
- Polar War: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic, by Kenneth R. Rosen. A gripping blend of travelogue and frontline reporting that reveals how climate change, military ambition, and economic opportunity are transforming the Arctic into the epicenter of a new cold war, where a struggle for dominance between the planet’s great powers heralds the next global conflict.
Russian spies. Nuclear submarines. Sabotaged pipelines. Undersea communications severed in the dark of night. The fastest-warming place on earth—where apartment buildings, hospitals, and homes crumble daily as permafrost melts and villages get washed away by rising seas—the Arctic stands at the crossroads of geopolitical ambition and environmental catastrophe. As climate change opens once ice-bound shipping lanes, the world’s military powers are rushing to stake their claims.
In Polar War, Kenneth R. Rosen takes readers on an extraordinary journey across the changing face of the far north. Through intimate portraits of scientists, soldiers, and Indigenous community leaders representing the interests of twenty-one countries across four continents, he witnesses firsthand how rising temperatures and growing tensions are reshaping life above and below the Arctic Circle. "Lyrical and deeply reported...Two years of travel to the Arctic regions and hundreds of interviews bolster Rosen’s hypnotic descriptions of the frigid crossroads where nations vie for domination and control."—Publisher's Weekly
- Doctors' Riot of 1788: Body Snatching, Bloodletting, and Anatomy in America, by Andy McPhee. Throughout the seventeenth century, medical lecturers demonstrated human anatomy by dissecting a cadaver while surrounded by students. After the Revolutionary War, though, instructors realized that they needed many more cadavers to serve a growing number of medical students. Enter the “resurrectionists” – body snatchers. Resurrectionists were a cruel lot; men (almost always men and often medical students themselves) who would sneak into a cemetery under the cover of darkness, remove a body, and then sell it to a physician or anatomist – usually for around $100.
In April 1788, word of one particular body snatching quickly spread, and over the course of days, thousands of New Yorkers descended upon a New York City anatomy lab in a growing and dangerous riot. This book reveals the forgotten history of the so-called Doctors' Riot of 1788, along the way explaining the history of body snatching in the United States and England and exploring the moral questions behind an existential medical crisis: Does the need for medical students to learn anatomy on cadavers override society’s demand for maintaining the dignity of its dead?
As the Doctors' Riot boiled over, Founding Fathers Alexander Hamilton and John Jay and Revolutionary War hero Baron von Steuben were called in to quell the rioters, to no avail. Eventually, the state militia was ordered to fire into the crowd, killing several and injuring far more. “McPhee tells the story of New York in its colonial days, when familiar institutions were then new and the people whom city streets and landmarks are named for were still walking the earth. The author places his account in the medical, cultural, and racial context of the time . . . A brief, fast-paced history, loaded with surprising detail." — Kirkus Reviews
- The Spy in the Archive: How One Man Tried to Kill the KGB, by Gordon Corera. The Spy in the Archive tells the remarkable story of how Vasili Mitrokhin—an introverted archivist who loved nothing more than dusty archives—ended up changing the world. As the in-house archivist for the KGB, the secrets he was exposed to inside its walls turned him first into a dissident and then a spy; a traitor to his country but a man determined to expose the truth about the dark forces that had subverted Russia, forces still at work in the country today.
Historian and journalist Gordon Corera tells of the operation to extract this prized asset from Russia for the first time. It is an edge-of-the-seat thriller, with vivid flashbacks to Mitrokhin’s earlier time as a KGB idealist prepared to do what it took to serve the Soviet Union and his growing realisation that the communist state was imprisoning its own people. It is the story of what it was like to live in the Soviet Union, to raise a family there, and then of one man’s journey from the heart of the Soviet state to disillusion, betrayal, and defection. “Corera conveys the dedication and uncertainty Mitrokhin faced and the discipline to carry on when hopes of publishing his horrific findings were extremely low. He deftly tells Mitrokhin’s life story and illuminates the valuable intelligence he brought to the West in a compelling narrative about standing up for justice and against tyranny.” — Booklist, starred review
- Battle of the Arctic: The Maritime Epic of World War II, by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore. It is 1941 and Russia has been invaded. The terms of the new alliance were that Western nations would ship urgently needed war materials to Russia via the shortest but most dangerous route: sailing north of the Arctic Circle while being hunted by U-boats, the Luftwaffe, and a surface fleet spearheaded by Tirpitz and Scharnhorst. This endeavor was called the Arctic convoys.
Battle of the Arctic is about the conflict and naval battles that unfolded while Allied naval and merchant seamen, airmen, submariners, soldiers and intelligence officers delivered on this wartime commitment to Russia from 1941-45, passing through terrific storms, snow, ice and Arctic mirages.
In Battle of the Arctic, Sebag-Montefiore has used a remarkable collection of vivid witness accounts brought together at the passing of the last survivors and has been produced with the benefit of research in Russian, German, British and American archives. “Sebag-Montefiore takes a distinct approach by emphasizing the stories of survivors of sinkings on both sides. Granular details of personal experiences within a strategic context distinguish this naval history. — Booklist
- Blood and Treasure: The Economics of Conflict from the Vikings to the Modern Era, by Duncan Weldon. Wars are expensive, both in human terms and monetary ones. But while warfare might be costly it has also, at times, been an important driver of economic change and progress. Over the long span of history nothing has shaped human institutions—and thus the process of economic development—as much as war and violence. Wars made states and states made wars. As the costs of warfighting grew so did state structures, taxation systems and national markets for debt. And as warfare became ever more destructive the incentive for governments to resort to it changed too.
Blood and Treasure looks at the history and economics of warfare from the Viking Age to the war in Ukraine, examining how incentives and institutions have changed over the centuries. It surveys how warfare helped drive Europe's rise to global prominence, and it explains how the total wars of the twentieth century required a new type of strategy, one that took economics seriously.
Along the way it asks whether Genghis Khan should be regarded as the father of globalization, explains how New World gold and silver kept Spain poor, ponders why some economists think of witch trials as a form of "non-price competition," notes how pirate captains were pioneers of effective HR techniques, asks if handing out medals hurt the Luftwaffe in World War II and assesses if economic theories helped to create a tragedy in Vietnam.
- Homeschooled: A Memoir, by Stefan Merrill Block. Stefan Merrill Block was nine when his mother pulled him from school, certain that his teachers were "stifling his creativity." Hungry for more time with her boy who was growing up too quickly, she began to instruct Stefan in the family's living room. Beyond his formal lessons in math, however, Stefan was largely left to his own devices and his mother's erratic whims, such as her project to recapture her twelve-year-old son's early years by bleaching his hair and putting him on a crawling regimen.
Years before homeschooling would become a massive nationwide movement, at a time when it had just become legal in his home state of Texas, Stefan vanished into that unseen space and into his mother's increasingly eccentric theories and projects. But when, after five years away from the outside world, Stefan reentered the public school system in Plano as a freshman, he was in for a jarring awakening.
At once a novelistic portrait of mother and son, and an illuminating window into an overlooked corner of the American education system, Homeschooled is a moving, funny and ultimately inspiring story of a son's battle for a life of his own choosing, and the wages of a mother's insatiable love. “He resists sensationalism or blanket indictments of homeschooling, but his testimony offers a sobering glimpse into what lobbyists have wrought by convincing politicians to strip away federal oversight in the name of “parental freedom.” Lyrical, harrowing, and politically pointed, this is both a moving coming-of-age story and a clarion call for reform.” --Publisher’s Weekly
- Always Carry Salt: A Memoir of Preserving Language and Culture, by Samantha Ellis. Samantha’s mother tongue is dying out. The daughter of Iraqi Jewish refugees, Samantha grew up surrounded by the noisy, vivid, hot sounds of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic. A language that’s now on the verge of extinction.
The realization that she won’t be able to tell her son he’s "living in the days of the aubergines" or "chopping onions on my heart" or reminding him to "always carry salt" opens the floodgates. The questions keep coming. How can she pass on this heritage without passing on the trauma of displacement? Will her son ever love mango pickle?
In her search for answers Samantha encounters demon bowls, the perils of kohl, and the unexpected joys of fusion food. Her journey transports us from the clamour of Noah’s Ark to the calm of the British Museum, from the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages to the banks of the River Tigris. As Samantha considers what we lose and keep, she also asks what we might need to let go of to preserve our culture and ourselves. "Samantha Ellis’s powerful memoir Always Carry Salt exemplifies diaspora yearning and determination. Written with the belief that 'sleeping languages can be kissed back to life,' Always Carry Salt is a remarkable memoir about what we pass down and why."— Foreword, starred review
- Black Bear: A Story of Siblinghood and Survival, by Trina Moyles. When Trina Moyles was five years old, her father, a wildlife biologist known in Peace River as "the bear guy," brought home an orphaned black bear cub for a night before sending it to the Calgary Zoo. This brief but unforgettable encounter spurred Trina’s lifelong fascination with Ursus americanus—the most populous bear on the northern landscape, often considered a nuisance to human society. As a child roaming the shores of the Peace in the footsteps of her beloved older brother, Brendan, she understood bears to be invisible entities: always present but mostly hidden and worthy of respect.
After years of working for human rights organizations, Trina returned to northern Alberta for a job as a fire tower lookout, while Brendan worked in the oil sands, vulnerable to a boom-and-bust economy and substance addiction. When she was assigned to a tower in a wildlife corridor, bears were alarmingly visible and plentiful, wandering metres away on the other side of an electrified fence surrounding the tower. Over four summers, Trina begins to move beyond fear and observe the extraordinary essence of the maligned black bear—a keystone species who is as subject to the environmental consequences of the oil economy as humans. At the same time, she searches for common ground with Brendan on the land that bonded them. “Moyles intertwines her experience losing a sibling to drug addiction with the story of how she learned to coexist with bears. Through keen observations and captivating storytelling, Moyles shows that survival is about finding inner peace and learning to overcome fears. This personal history goes straight to the heart." — Publishers Weekly, starred review
- Duet: An Artful History of Music, by Eleanor Chan. A lush new history of music that transcends eras, borders, personalities, and genres by revealing how music is something seen, as well as heard.
Classically trained musician and art historian, Eleanor Chan, takes us deep into the visual and material manifestations of music, transforming our understanding of the story of art and music. Plunging the reader into the body of a performer and the eyes of an art historian, this wonderful book explores the history of music through a series of objects, both everyday and unusual, revealing how music has always been something that we visualize. From the sumptuously illuminated manuscripts of Ethiopia and Safavid Iran to the decorated porcelain flutes of China, from Brazilian opera houses to the jazz-inspired abstract paintings by artists throughout the world, Chan opens windows onto the ways that art has been heard, and music has been seen, throughout time. “A swooping, capacious, and beautiful history of how we see music, of the intrinsic connection of eye and ear. The scope is breathtaking: no genre, context, or artefact seems out of bounds for Chan’s brilliant and insightful analysis. Duet is a testament to the musicality and artistry of the human experience and, frankly, I wish there were more books like this.” — Emily MacGregor, author of While the Music Lasts
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