The rare economist to hit international bestseller lists, Varoufakis is known for his left-of-center political positions and outspoken statements while serving as Greece’s finance minister. His newest book argues that capitalism is over; its sinister replacement, he writes, has emerged in the form of Big Tech, which has single-handedly taken control of most of global society. Unsurprisingly, Varoufakis isn’t a fan of the new order.

Haring, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1990, was one of the most famous artists in the ’80s–an early and successful self-promoter who flitted seamlessly between high art and pop culture. Gooch, who’s written probing, acclaimed biographies of poet Frank O’Hara and fiction writer Flannery O’Connor, was given broad access to the artist’s archive.

After coordinated, monthslong strikes in 2023, unions for autoworkers, screenwriters and actors achieved unprecedented (and frankly unanticipated) concessions from employers. It was proof that American unions, long in decline, can still produce results for their middle-class constituents. Nolan, an unapologetic booster of organized labor—he helped unionize digital news media—argues that it’s the US’s best, and perhaps only, path toward closing the gap between rich people and everyone else.

Thanks to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical, Alexander Hamilton has recently inspired plenty of literature examining the man, his times and his legacy. Most takeaways have been positive, but Hogeland argues that aspects of Hamilton’s ideology—notably, his belief in the power of an oligarchy—have been overlooked.

Summiting Mount Everest has gone from a feat of almost superhuman achievement to something more mundane—a thing rich people do to say they’ve done it. Aside from the obviously better gear and better conditioning, the transformation in scaling Everest has been brought about by the Himalayan guiding industry. Cockrell, who’s covered mountaineering throughout his career as a magazine writer and editor, tells the somewhat unknown story of these entrepreneurs, whose ingenuity, acumen and very hard work have created a boom industry.

Grossman got famous for his bestselling fantasy trilogy, The Magicians, an adult version of Harry Potter, which, in turn, was made into a regrettable TV series. Sticking with fantasy, he’s jumped back several hundred years to a Camelot in disarray. King Arthur has died in battle, and the few remaining knights of the Round Table are not exactly the A-Team. With Britain besieged by enemies both magical and mortal, a young knight named Collum is burdened with the responsibility of making things right.

Matar won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for his memoir The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land In Between, which detailed the London writer’s attempt to solve the disappearance of his father in Libya. Now he’s taken up many of the same themes—alienation, exile, homecoming—in a novel that follows Libyan Khaled and his friends in the UK over the course of several decades.

Dubbed a cross between Scarface and Moby-Dick, the novel follows Ismael Reyes (Izzy), a failed celebrity impersonator who tries to make it big. Set in Miami, the book gradually expands beyond Izzy and his immediate concerns to include other characters, such as Lolita, a captive orca at the Miami Seaquarium, in what’s billed as a “super-saturated fever dream.”

Smiley, who won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for her tale of an Iowa farmer who disastrously attempts to divide his inheritance among three daughters, now spins the tale of a musician whose rise to fame belies an existential longing.

This sequel to Tóibín’s bestselling Brooklyn picks up 20 years later. The original—turned into a 2015 movie starring Saoirse Ronan—follows Eilis Lacey, a young woman who emigrates from Ireland in the 1950s. In Long Island, Eilis, who’s now married with two children and happily living in the suburbs, is suddenly thrust back into the life she’d left behind.