1. The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes by Zachary D. Carter (Random House)

In his brilliant biography, Carter lucidly details the development of John Maynard Keynes’ visionary theory that government could engage in deficit spending to increase demand and prevent a depression. Carter entwines this belief system, which reframed modern economics, with Keynes’ life as a moral philosopher who had faith that art and ideas can transform and elevate society. Keynes was prophetic yet unappreciated as he moved through the 20th century, intersecting with the Bloomsbury group of intellectuals and involved in relationships with men, yet wildly in love with a woman. Carter captures the full scope of a great economist’s contradictory and influential life and work.

2. Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy by David Frum (Harper)

In his previous book Trumpocracy, Frum denounced President Donald Trump’s first year, shining klieg lights on the foreign policy disasters, destruction of security and judicial agencies, and boorish bullying. In his latest book, the former speechwriter and special assistant to George W. Bush, now a staff writer for the Atlantic, sensibly focuses on how to beat Trump in November (win moderate voters) and how the nation can recover from his catastrophic reign. Looking ahead, Frum’s directives include: confer statehood upon Washington, D.C., deter gerrymandering, and require that candidates make tax returns public.

3. One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965
by Jia Lynn Yang (W.W. Norton)

In her fascinating history, Yang chronicles four contentious decades stretching between two landmark immigration acts. A New York Times editor who was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post team that uncovered ties between Donald Trump and Russia, Yang recounts how the xenophobic and anti-immigrant 1924 Johnson-Reed Act took root in the eugenic fervor of the early 20th century and tracks how the restrictions later manifested themselves into national security concerns and Japanese internment as well as quotas and anti-Semitism for Jewish refugees. Yang describes the significance of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which did away with quotas and opened the door to a new set of non-European immigrants, and how today America still wrestles with questions of inclusion, exclusion, and new waves of diversity.

4. The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity, from Nixon to Trump by Geraldo Cadava (Ecco)

Why do Hispanics support the Republican Party, especially Trump’s Republican Party, with its xenophobic “build that wall” rallies? In his clear and compelling explication of why a third of Hispanic Americans vote Republican, Cadava recounts how they were courted with political patronage by Richard Nixon and how the GOP cultivated party loyalty. With his keen insights into voting patterns and nuances within the Hispanic bloc, Northwestern University professor Cadava enlivens his narrative with characters such as “Boxcar Ben” Fernandez, co-founder of the Republican National Hispanic Council, who got his nickname because he was born in a railroad boxcar and relished the association with Abraham Lincoln’s log cabin.

5. Red Dress in Black and White by Elliot Ackerman (Knopf)

Psychologically perceptive and with keen understanding of how politics plays out in webs of relationships, Ackerman’s suspenseful novel spans one day in Istanbul in 2013. A couple with thwarted artistic ambitions – he is a Turkish architect and she an American woman who intends to leave the country with their son – anchor this rewarding book, which is enriched by flashbacks and a constellation of characters: a wide range of spies, affluent businessmen, and struggling artists, as well as the woman’s photographer-lover and the diplomat her husband enlists to keep his wife and son in the country. Ackerman, a former White House Fellow and decorated Marine who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, brings a light but knowing touch to foreign intelligence and deftly evokes both personal dynamics and political undercurrents in contemporary Turkey.