In “How the Word Is Passed,” the poet and journalist Clint Smith visits nine places to assess how we are reckoning with our racial history and its legacy.
“The Confidence Men,” by Margalit Fox, recounts the elaborate true-life saga of two British officers who escaped from an Ottoman prison camp during World War I by brainwashing and manipulating their captors.
Few subjects may be as resistant to successful literary examination. But in “Pure Flame” the author, assisted by a literature on feminism and motherhood, brings a cleareyed approach to her relationship with her mother, an ambitious businesswoman.
In “A Night at the Sweet Gum Head,” Martin Padgett follows the L.G.B.T.Q. activist Bill Smith and the drag queen John Greenwell to chronicle 1970s queer history.
Wake, by Rebecca Hall and Hugo Martínez, blends passion and fact to set a new standard for illustrated history: Not just action scenes of daring, desperate women, but the struggle to make them known.
A detailed history of the fight for same-sex marriage, Sasha Issenberg’s “The Engagement” casts fresh light on the role of conservative churches in compelling gay rights activists to embrace the issue as a cause.