1. The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics by Mae Ngai (W. W. Norton)

The hundreds of thousands of Chinese men who left home to pursue their fortunes in California, the Yukon, Australia, and South Africa in the late 19th century were not only central to the emerging global economy but also excluded from it, Ngai argues in her impressive book. Ngai, professor of Asian American studies at Columbia University, homes in on the arduous and dangerous mining work performed by Chinese immigrants and how they persevered despite racism and entrenchment of the “coolie” stereotype. Deeply grounded in her extensive archival research, Ngai skillfully and persuasively illuminates the Chinese immigrants’ persistence against the global backlash that sought to exclude them.

2. The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson by Robert S. Levine (W. W. Norton)

Levine’s dual biography of Southern Democrat Johnson and prominent Black leader Douglass focuses on their post-Civil War wrestling over building a more egalitarian nation through Reconstruction, the promise of which began to fade just months after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and Johnson’s elevation to the White House. While Johnson’s impeachment drama is central to this engrossing history, Levine argues: “The story of Douglass and the impeachment of Johnson addresses the hopes and frustrations of Reconstruction during the moment of opportunity and crisis that was the Johnson presidency.” The promises of Reconstruction were soon dashed and, in his fascinating book with a relevance for those concerned with voting rights today, Levine shows how Douglass and his compatriots grew disillusioned with Johnson and how the reluctance to grant voting rights to African Americans contributed to his impeachment.

3. Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning by Fiona Sampson (W.W. Norton)

While the lines “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” appear on sentimental greeting cards, the poet who wrote them, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, has been generally misunderstood and unappreciated until Sampson’s marvelous biography. With sharp literary analysis and new research into the Barrett family, Sampson has recast Barrett Browning’s image in this innovative biography, doing away with the cliche of the swooning poet as a feeble invalid. Sampson ingeniously structures this engaging biography of Barrett Browning into parts that mirror the poet’s epic poem/verse novel Aurora Leigh, and shows how her guilt over family-owned plantations led her to political radicalism.

4. Radiant Fugitives by Nawaaz Ahmed (Counterpoint)

Ahmed’s dazzling, ingenious debut novel centers upon a Muslim Indian family and is narrated by Seema’s son, born as his mother died in the delivery room. “What cosmic irony that I, who am birthed at my mother’s darkest hour, am to be named for the day’s rosiest light,” notes the infant to be named Ishraaq, meaning “sunrise, radiance.” Shifting from topical references to then-Sen. Kamala Harris to Wordsworth, Keats, and the Quran, Ahmed fuses past and present and vividly captures the generations of a family, particularly the sisters and their mother, as they fracture, heal, and find forgiveness and consolation.

5. The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers (Harper)

In an intimate coming-of-age story and a powerful historical saga spanning centuries, poet Jeffers tells the story of Ailey Pearl Garfield and her deep roots in Chicasetta, the Georgia town where she and her sisters return to her mother’s family each summer. Jeffers neatly weaves Ailey’s life story with those of her enslaved ancestors who had been brutalized and degraded by a “White Man with Strange Eyes,” who fathered many children before the Civil War. Jeffers creates an identity for Ailey as a historian, the daughter of a light-skinned Washington, D.C., doctor and a Southern schoolteacher, as well as the niece of a retired professor who had been acquainted with DuBois, whose wisdom informs the musicality of Jeffers’ prose.