1. Indivisible: Daniel Webster and the Birth of American Nationalism by Joel Richard Paul (Riverhead)

It takes a bold biographer with a deft touch to acknowledge that his subject is “a problematic figure to be cast in a heroic role.” In his marvelous book, Paul makes the case that Webster’s eloquence on the idea of national unity shaped and popularized resistance to Andrew Jackson’s “toxic populism.” Paul perceptively and persuasively argues that as the nation was falling apart in the antebellum period, roads, canals, and the telegraph connected and united disparate people in a new form of nationalism and “our American identity was taking shape.”

2. South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry (Ecco)

Perry defies genre with her distinctively original, perceptive alchemy of past and present, personal chronicle, and literary criticism in her investigation of the South, which received the 2022 National Book Award for nonfiction. An intrepid explorer, Perry surveys the South, stretching from Appalachia to Oklahoma, Florida, and even Cuba, and exposes the nuances and rhythms of the region that reveals America.

3. The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty (Knopf) 

Gunty struck gold with her spectacular debut novel, winner of the National Book Award for fiction. Set in a run-down, low-income housing complex full of oddballs in a crumbling post-industrial Indiana city, Gunty magically entwines their stories in illuminating fairy dust of her prose that is an X-ray of the American heart.

4. Still No Word From You: Notes in the Margin by Peter Orner (Catapult)

Attempts to classify Orner’s collection of short essays as autobiography or literary criticism defy his distinctive invention. His associative mind is a sort of periscope of mirrors or prisms of his reading life in which books and writers lead to brilliant thought bombs. Segueing from Hawthorne to Marilynne Robinson, Yusef Komunyakaa, Chekhov, Cheever, and Hansberry, Orner begins the magical adventure of his book with a glimpse of his mother at the kitchen sink doing dishes as Nixon resigned, and closes with her story of spending the night in a gas station during a blizzard. In one gorgeous prose-poems chapters in between, Orner retreats into Midwinter Day, Bernadette Mayer’s book-length poem in prose and verse, which he notes is her “fiercely individualistic consciousness,” both aloof from her family and at its the center. To quote Mayer’s book, Orner writes, “is like cutting out a vital organ. A kidney won’t tell the story of a body and soul.” The same can be said for Orner.

5. The Moment: Changemakers on Why and How They Joined the Fight for Social Justice by Steve Fiffer (New South Books)

A jolt of inspiration in book form. From the first chapter “To Help Condemned People” to the last, “We Directly Invest,” Fiffer has assembled a bountiful array of idealistic, creative visionaries on the frontlines whose personal experiences sparked grassroots activism. With his generous spirit and capacious mind, Fiffer connects with more than thirty groundbreaking reformers. An undocumented Mexican preteen who grew to be an activist for refugees and immigrants in Arizona. A Sikh software engineer who put his cartoons online, developed a global following with Sikhtoons and now performs as “Captain America.”  A college student who couldn’t afford groceries went on to launch an organization to support farmers and deliver fresh produce to Detroiters. Her reminder: “So my advice is to get involved, no matter how small you think what you’re doing is.”