1. Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (Knopf)

Kristof and WuDunn, who once won a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting from China for the New York Times, bring their reporting talents and sympathetic imaginations to inequality and the plight of working-class Americans. They focus on Kristof’s hometown of Yamhill, Oregon, as a microcosm, and consider how economic forces are cruelest to those who have the least, putting education, health care, and a place to live out of reach. Rather than curse the darkness, Kristof and WuDunn spotlight community programs around the nation that successfully deal with, for instance, free health care in Appalachia and drug treatment for women in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which provide hope in dire times.

2. The Fixers: Bottom-Feeders, Crooked Lawyers, Gossipmongers, and Porn Stars Who Created the 45th President by Joe Palazzolo and Michael Rothfeld (Random House)

The Wall Street Journal pair that won a 2019 Pulitzer Prize for stories revealing the hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, and President Donald Trump’s direct participation in both cases, have built on their earlier work untangling the web of interlocking schemes and deception. Palazzolo and Rothfeld’s new revelations about figures like Michael Cohen and Michael Avenatti, as well as David Pecker and the National Enquirer, deepen our understanding of Trump’s 2016 campaign and add horrifying details to the record. Most interesting, however, is how a new set of fixers such as Rudy Giuliani and William Barr allied with Trump to promote and extend his interests involving Ukraine and the White House, making for compelling – and alarming – reading.

3. Imperfect Union: How Jessie and John Frémont Mapped the West, Invented Celebrity, and Helped Cause the Civil War by Steve Inskeep (Penguin Press)

Inskeep has carved out a niche for himself as a great storyteller of westward expansion in Jacksonian America. Following Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab, he uncovers his story of the colorful husband-wife Frémonts. He was the Republican Party’s first-ever presidential nominee, and an explorer who made five mid-19th-century expeditions and, with his wife, glorified the accounts of these adventures. With his vivid depiction of the Frémonts, Inskeep also dramatizes the issues facing pre-Civil War America, from slavery to suffrage.

4. Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity by Peggy Orenstein (Harper/HarperCollins)

It has been nearly 25 years since Orenstein galvanized attention with Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap and raised important questions about girlhood, and now she’s bringing her characteristically rigorous investigation and compassionate understanding to boys. Orenstein’s fascinating study spans a wide range that includes gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals, and how they fear losing their place in society. A keen listener, she draws out how boys feel, particularly the stresses regarding sexual relationships and even their internal conflicts about their own inappropriate behaviors and the pressure they feel to fit in.

5. Little Gods by Meng Jin (Custom House)

In her dazzling debut novel, Jin tells the story of 17-year-old Liya, who journeys to China with the ashes of her mother, Su Lan, a former physicist who died in America. Liya unravels the mysteries of the life of her mother, who grew up in a mountain village and became a brilliant student of physics, and she learns what happened on the night of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre when she was born. In this deftly structured polyphonic novel, Su Lan emerges from the alternating points of view of those whose lives were so differently affected by a woman whose preoccupation was time.