1. Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford (Penguin Press)

This Lone Star trio of authors de-Disneys the siege of the Alamo and focuses on the reality that the battle was waged to preserve slavery. The authors bust up the Texas creation myth, taking aim at the Davy Crockett martyr legend and the way Mexican American rebels were erased from history after they died during Texas’s war for independence. The battle continues through the release of this book, as the Texas Tribune reports that the Bullock Texas State History Museum abruptly canceled a recent book event that had hundreds of registered attendees, just hours before it was to begin.

2. The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America by Adam Serwer (One World)

How cruelty became part of American politics is the question animating Serwer’s insightful essay collection. A staff writer at The Atlantic, Serwer recalls Trump’s whirlwind of cruelty and demonization of others, threading his own biracial background through his account. Serwer deftly traces the cruel political impulse through America’s past, touching on slavery, eugenics, white supremacy, and how it all intensified during the Obama presidency. He persuasively argues that Trumpism is not an aberration but rather is deeply rooted in American history — and will endure.

3. Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship by Catherine Raven (Spiegel & Grau)

Written with sentiment rather than sentimentality, Raven’s Fox & I merits a place on the same shelf as Hope Jahren’s prize-winning Lab Girl, of female scientists writing about the natural world with literary flair.  A biologist and former park ranger living off the grid in Montana, Raven receives regular visits from a fox with whom she develops a bond that allows her to see the interconnection of nature. Raven resists the impulse to anthropomorphize the fox and other creatures around her. She retains her imagination and comes to recognize the importance of her intuition. “I realized that a fox, like a rainbow and every other gift from Nature,” Raven writes winningly, “had an intrinsic value that was quite independent of its longevity.” 

4. From Sarah to Sydney: The Woman Behind All-of-a-Kind Family by June Cummins with Alexandra Dunietz (Yale University Press)

With her “All-of-a-Kind Family” series, first published in 1951, Sydney Taylor broke new ground by portraying Jewish-American life in New York in mainstream, popular books for children. Cummins has provided an overdue biography of Taylor, whose books drew from her own poor but happy childhood in a tight-knit family embracing American patriotism while retaining Jewish values and traditions. Taylor, who transformed herself from Sarah to androgynous and Americanized Sydney, has a worthy champion in Cummins, who suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease and died before the publication of this biography, which was brought to publication by her husband and close friend.

5. Wayward by Dana Spiotta (Alfred A. Knopf)

Spiotta has a talent for tapping into cultural moments and does just that in her fifth novel. Her heroine, Sam Raymond, midlife with an ill mother and unmoored by Donald Trump’s 2016 election, hits the reset button on her life: She joins Facebook protest groups like “Hardcore Hags, Harridans, and Harpies” and leaves her husband and their 16-year-old daughter to rehab a house in Syracuse. In this stylish and smart work of fiction, Spiotta has created a vibrant central character whose curiosities, passions, and anxieties bounce across generations, through her mother and her daughter and the world beyond their control.