1. The Fall of Richard Nixon: A Reporter Remembers Watergate by Tom Brokaw (Random House)

Before climbing into the anchor’s chair of NBC Nightly News, where he presided for more than two decades, the amiable Brokaw was the network’s White House correspondent covering Nixon’s decline and fall. From the initial news reports through the Watergate hearings to Nixon’s resignation in August 1974, Brokaw replays dramatic highlights from this “chaotic time,” including Rose Mary Woods and the tape recording gap, Archibald Cox and the Saturday Night Massacre, Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation, and the increasingly erratic president himself. Brokaw recalls those days from a personal perspective, recounting the deep passions dividing the nation and inevitably evoking contrast with the turbulence of today.

2. Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right by Anne Nelson (Bloomsbury)

In her fascinating book, Nelson, a journalist who teaches at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, focuses on the conservative Council for National Policy, a group fusing the morality and ideology of the Southern Baptists and the Republican Party. Nelson locates the origins of the center and tracks its ascendance over the past three decades, and how Christian fundamentalists gathered their political power and exerted it through President Donald Trump’s administration. Nelson deftly and persuasively follows the money, tracing how it has flowed into government, political campaigns, and organizations to support the Christian fundamentalist agenda, concerned less with the economy than with social issues such as opposition to abortion and rights for LGBT people, and fomenting cultural divisions.

3. Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac by Alex Dimitrov and Dorothea Lasky (Flatiron)

The stars aligned for Dimitrov (Sagittarius) and Lasky (Aries), who met at a party a decade ago, connected over their passions for astrology, and, just after the 2016 election, launched @poetastrologers on Twitter (535,000 followers). The pair of poets – Dimitrov (Begging for It) and Lasky (Milk) – have won a cult following for their playful approach to the karmic wheel, drawing on their linguistic talents and rapacious cultural curiosities. Starting off the Pisces chapter, an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem leads into a scene at Coachella featuring Rihanna rolling a blunt while propped up on her bodyguard’s shoulders. Pisces style? “Given their compulsive texting, grandiose emotions, and endless nostalgia, you might be surprised to know that Pisces are quite understated when it comes to fashion.” Astro Poets can make skeptics into believers.

4. A History of New York in 27 Buildings: The 400-Year Untold Story of an American Metropolis by Sam Roberts (Bloomsbury)

The author of the marvelous A History of New York in 101 Objects, longtime New York Times urban affairs correspondent Roberts turns to telling New York’s history through structures of brick, glass, wood, and steel that reveal the soul of the city. With dynamism beyond conventional wisdom and guidebooks, Roberts tells the inside story – the politics and personalities – of the creation of some iconic places, such as the Empire State Building and Grand Central Terminal. But his surprising discoveries animate this book and spark curiosity about the city’s history, for example: the American Bank Note Plant in the South Bronx, which printed billions of dollars in currency until the 1980s, an Upper East Side glassy skyscraper that encases a four-story brownstone because a resident of more than three decades refused to leave her rent-controlled apartment, and a landmark Indian grocery store, once a mansion built by Chester A. Arthur, who was sworn in as president on the third floor.

5. Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (Ecco)

Wilson has a gift for fiction with wit, humor, and great heart. In his new novel, two best friends at a tony Tennessee boarding school fall out, until years later, the heiress recruits the other, the scholarship girl who is now stuck in a dead end in work and life, to become the governess for her stepchildren. The unusual 10-year-old twins could cause embarrassment for their father, a political figure, because of their disturbing, unexplainable condition: When flustered or angry, they spontaneously ignite in flames, which hurts no humans, only their houses, clothes, and possessions. The twins have a remarkable effect on the quirky, sarcastic governess as they develop an emotional attachment, and these social oddballs are transformed.