How do you pick what nonfiction you read? I typically look at what’s popular in the news. Below I have gathered a list of nonfiction you have probably seen in the news about topics all over the news. As of this writing, all of these books are owned by the Davenport Public Library. Descriptions are provided by the publishers.

America, U.S.A. : how race shadows the nation’s anniversary by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.

Celebrated public intellectual Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. presents a groundbreaking analysis of the vicious cycles of American history and the country’s enduring refusal to face its true nature—especially at the moments when national anniversaries steer us back toward the mythology meant to disguise the truth.

America, U.S.A., deliberately formulated and beautifully written, details a heart-wrenching exploration of America’s legacy. It is a magnificently complex combination of lessons and voices—from W.E.B. DuBois and John Dos Passos to Herman Melville and Martin Luther King, Jr.—that, together, paint a sprawling and honest tableau of the United States, its complicated past, and ever more tenuous future. Glaude’s is a powerful voice of conscience in our tumultuous world. He pulls no punches, calling on us to interrogate our conceptions of innocence and freedom and the stories we tell ourselves about our past and present.

Centered around the major celebrations of America’s milestone birthdays across 250 years of history, the book offers a riveting look at the battles over who has a stake in writing the American story. Devastatingly candid, profoundly moving, and deeply reflective, America, U.S.A. is a shining meditation on how we must reckon with a grim past in order to strive for the better angels of our future. – Crown

American struggle : democracy, dissent, and the pursuit of a more perfect union : an anthology by Jon Meacham.

In a polarized era, history can become a subject of political contention. Many see America as perfect; many others argue that the national experiment is fundamentally flawed. The truth, Meacham shows, likely lies between these extremes. America has had shining hours, and also dark ones.

In American Struggle, Jon Meacham illuminates the nation’s complicated past. This rich and diverse collection covers a wide spectrum of history, from 1619 to the twenty-first century, with primary-source documents that take us back to critical moments in which Americans fought over the meaning and the direction of the national experiment. From the founders to Lincoln to Obama, from Andrew Jackson to Theodore Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan, from Seneca Falls to the March on Washington, this chorus—sometimes discordant and always fascinating—tells the story of the country and of its people. As clashes over liberty and slavery, inclusion and exclusion, play out, these voices, brilliantly framed by Meacham’s singular commentary, remind us that contentious citizenship and fair-minded observations are essential to bringing about the more perfect union envisioned in the Preamble to the Constitution, which Frederick Douglass called a “glorious liberty document.”

Conflict is nothing new in our democracy; rather, as Meacham and these texts show, tensions are inherent, stubborn, and perennial. And American Struggle teaches us anew that to know what has come before, to watch as long-running disputes rise and fall, is to be armed against despair. – Random House

This title is also available in large print and CD audiobook.

Chain of ideas : the origins of our authoritarian age by Ibram X. Kendi.

Recall the words chanted in Charlottesville, Virginia: “You will not replace us!” Recall the string of mass shooters across the globe—in Oslo, Christchurch, Buffalo, El Paso, and Pittsburgh—who claimed their crimes were a defense against “White genocide.” Recall business and media figures cultivating anxiety and furor over demographic change. These incidents only scratch the surface: Popular and ruling politicians in every region of the world have expressed some version of great replacement theory, eroding democratic norms in the name of preventing demographic change.

The term was coined in 2011 by a French novelist who argued that Black and Brown immigrants were “invading” Europe, brought by shadowy elites to “replace” the White population. From there, politicians and theorists in the United States and elsewhere repackaged it as a story of “globalists” welcoming “migrant criminals” and promoting diversity to take away the jobs, cultures, electoral power, and very lives of White people. Over time, great replacement theory has expanded those under threat to include citizens, men, Jews, Christians, heterosexuals, and ethnic majorities in countries as distinct as Russia, El Salvador, Brazil, Italy, and India, all targeted with the message that they are facing an existential attack that only a strongman can prevent.

In Chain of Ideas, internationally bestselling author Ibram X. Kendi offers an unsettling but indispensable global history of how great replacement theory brought humanity into this authoritarian age—and how we can free ourselves from it. – One World

Fair game : trans athletes and the future of sports by Ellie Roscher & Dr. Anna Baeth, foreword by Chris Mosier

A timely, illuminating plan for how trans and cis athletes can both fairly play sports

Fair Game offers an insightful, timely examination of the ongoing battle for equality in athletics. As LGBTQ athletes break barriers in the Olympics, transgender athletes still face harsh restrictions in many areas. With twenty-four states passing anti-trans sports legislation in the last two years, nearly half of Americans live under laws that restrict or ban transgender individuals from participating in sports. Fair Game explores why taking the next step and increasing the acceptance of trans athletes is important not only for everyone with an Olympic dream but also everyone whose kids just want to join the town soccer league.

Fair Game explores the role of sports in the lives of transgender youth and adults, offering a comprehensive, nuanced, and multivoiced picture of the transgender athletic experience. Through a woven collection of the narratives from a marginalized population, Fair Game examines the patterns of fear and gender stereotypes that undergird anti-trans legislation and offers helpful historical and political context about sex segregation in sports and how bodies (including trans bodies) work in sports.

Timely, accessible, inspiring, and rigorous, Fair Game presents a sports landscape beyond our current conceptions, a world changed by unrestricted and joyful movement in sports. – The New Press

The fix : saving America from the corruption of a mob-style government by Barbara McQuade.

New York Times bestselling author and former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade offers a piercing, urgent, and deeply informed exposé on the escalating threat of far-right politics to American democracy and national security—and a clear roadmap for how to stop it.

In The Fix, Barbara McQuade draws on her decades of experience as a federal prosecutor to show us the detrimental effects of a government that uses corruption, cruelty, and chaos as tools of control. As a US Attorney, McQuade became all too familiar with corruption cases, prosecuting former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, the “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and Volkswagen, among others. Here, she exposes how rampant corruption and cruelty are being weaponized to manipulate every facet of American life. Weaving together courtroom stories, lessons from history, and real-time legal analysis, McQuade shows how each corrupt offense, each act of cruelty, is a step toward total authoritarianism.

Yet The Fix is not just a critique of power gone awry. McQuade offers clear strategies that ordinary Americans can utilize, from organizing teach-ins and protests to running for local office, to reclaim the rule of law and ensure that elected officials serve the public’s interest, not their own.

Eye-opening and grounded in the author’s abiding faith in the US Constitution to help restore power to the people, The Fix is essential reading for anyone concerned about the future of America and ready to work together to take it back. – Seven Stories Press

Into the wood chipper : a whistleblower’s account of how the Trump administration shredded USAID by Nicholas Enrich ; with a foreword by Atul Gawande.

A civil servant discovers his breaking point when the Trump administration’s cruelty and indifference threaten to violate the oath he swore to uphold.

Nicholas Enrich had finally achieved his lifelong dream: becoming USAID’s lead official for global health. But that dream turned out to be a nightmare in the tumultuous time after President Trump’s second inauguration.

In the months that followed, USAID became the first target of Elon Musk’s newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The mission to which Enrich had dedicated his career was being dismantled before his eyes—even the name of the agency was removed from the building’s facade. Enrich witnessed firsthand the Trump administration’s lies, how it systematically prevented USAID from providing lifesaving foreign aid, and the death and suffering around the world that resulted from careless decisions. Finally determining he could no longer keep quiet, and risking the career that he loved deeply, Enrich released a set of whistleblowing memos exposing the administration’s illegal and destructive actions.

Enrich was put on administrative leave, yet his memos went viral and had a sustained impact. In the days following their release, hundreds of canceled aid projects were revived, and the documents were cited in a Supreme Court case on the legality of USAID’s dissolution. While his memos were too late to save USAID, Enrich was one of the first government officials to publicly blow the whistle on DOGE’s reckless destruction, sounding an early alarm bell for other federal agencies that would soon find themselves in the crosshairs.

Urgent and profoundly human, Enrich’s story offers an astonishing behind-the-scenes look at a federal agency under siege, from the early days when Enrich and his team were unaware of what was to come to the shockingly ignorant, callous, and bigoted conversations they witnessed. Enrich reveals in this detailed, no-holds-barred account what was truly at stake when DOGE set out to dismantle one of America’s most effective humanitarian institutions, and how millions of lives hung in the balance. – S&S / Summit Books

It’s on you : how corporations and behavioral scientists have convinced us that we’re to blame for society’s deepest problems by Nick Chater and George Loewenstein.

Two decades ago, behavioral economics burst from academia to the halls of power, on both sides of the Atlantic, with the promise that correcting individual biases could help transform society. The hope was that governments could deploy a new approach to addressing society’s deepest challenges, from inadequate retirement planning to climate change—gently, but cleverly, nudging people to make choices for their own good and the good of the planet.

It was all very convenient, and false. As behavioral scientists Nick Chater and George Loewenstein show in It’s on You, nudges rarely work, and divert us from policies that do. For example, being nudged to switch to green energy doesn’t cut carbon, and it distracts from the real challenge of building a low-carbon economy.

It’s on You shows how the rich and powerful have repeatedly used a clever sleight of hand: blaming individuals for social problems, with behavioral economics an unwitting accomplice, while lobbying against the systemic changes that could actually help. Rather than trying to “fix” the victims of bad policies, real progress requires rewriting the social and economic rulebook for the common good. – Basic Venture

Like, follow, subscribe : influencer kids and the cost of a childhood online by Fortesa Latifi.

A searing investigation into the child influencer industry and the perils of childhood internet fame, Like, Follow, Subscribe is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the costs of internet fame, and the ethics of online content.

What is it like to grow up with a camera in your face 24/7? To have your childhood moments sold as “content” to millions online? What happens when someone who works in a largely unregulated multi-billion-dollar industry sells away their childhood and has no financial safety net as an adult? What does it feel like to have your private moments—your medical diagnoses, your first period, your first break up, your tantrums, potty-training, and breastfeeding-weaning—broadcast to an audience of millions? Like, Follow, Subscribe shines a spotlight on the deeply troubling world of the child influencer industry.

Journalist Fortesa Latifi dives into the lives of children whose parents mine their everyday activities for monetizable content, exposing issues like privacy violations, financial abuse, and the absence of child labor protections. Through expert interviews with psychologists, labor scientists, and even former child influencers and family vloggers, she uncovers the pressures, trauma, and consequences for children thrust into the spotlight.

This timely and eye-opening book doesn’t just reveal the harm of toxic social media culture: it also provides a roadmap to better regulating influencer families, safeguarding children, and questioning the role of audiences in perpetuating these cycles of exploitation. – Gallery Books

One bad mother : in praise of psycho housewives, stage parents, momfluencers, and other women we love to hate by Ej Dickson.

For fans of the witty and evocative writing of Anne Helen Petersen and Amanda Montell, a sharply clever exploration of what it means to be a “bad mom” by delving into the world of momfluencers, stage moms, trad wives, and more.

We all have an idea what it means to be a good mom: little screen time, kids hitting their milestones, endless patience and understanding, and self-sacrifice on behalf of one’s children. But what does it mean to be a “bad mom” in modern society? Women as wide-ranging as Meghan Markle, Hannah Neelman (of Ballerina Farm), and anyone giving birth over forty, have been labeled “bad moms.” In a world where the rules are constantly changing, it feels like women simply cannot win.

With this in mind, in her first book, Ej Dickson takes a sharp, provocative look at one of society’s most polarizing labels: the “bad mom.” What makes a mother “bad,” and why? Through the lens of pop culture and American history, Ej Dickson explores how this trope has evolved—from Victorian “angels in the house” to the infamous Mommie Dearest, from Instagram influencers like EmRata and Mormon momfluencers to fictional icons like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

Each chapter dives into a different archetype of so-called bad motherhood—like the Stage Mom, the Tiger Mom, the MILF, the MLM hun—challenging us to rethink our assumptions about femininity, parenting, and societal expectations. Drawing on insightful analysis and interviews, Dickson unpacks why our culture is obsessed with vilifying moms and how issues of race and class shape these narratives. Are bad moms truly “bad,” or do they simply defy norms we don’t fully understand—or fear?

This isn’t just cultural commentary—it’s a clarion call. Because if we really take a close look, we might find that some of the women we’ve reviled throughout history are due for a reassessment — and in doing so, moms today may take some much-needed pressure off themselves. One Bad Mother invites moms everywhere to stop chasing impossible standards, reclaim their autonomy, and maybe—just maybe—enjoy motherhood for what it is, not what it’s “supposed” to be.

Thoughtful, eye-opening, and downright funny at times, One Bad Mother is a vital exploration of modern motherhood. – S&S / Simon Element

Screen people : how we entertained ourselves into a state of emergency by Megan Garber.

An eye-opening look at how the current media landscape has incentivized us to see our fellow citizens as characters in an ongoing entertainment—and how we can fight back, from the popular and award-winning staff writer for The Atlantic.

Whether it’s our reality-television-star President or our expertly curated Instagram feeds, the line between fact and fiction—between what’s real and what’s fabricated for entertainment—has never been more blurred. Screen People explores what happens when we cede our reality to spectacle. Megan Garber explains how today’s internet-inflected culture conditions us to see one another not as people but as characters in an ongoing show, and how some of our most chronic and harmful social conditions—loneliness, depression, mistrust, misinformation, cynicism—stem from our demand for diversion.

In ten chapters, each themed around an element of entertainment—from “The Producers,” who edit our reality, to “The Extras,” the strangers we turn into objects of our amusement, to “the Haters,” the worshipful Qanon-types who expect the prophecies of their anonymous leader to play out on live television—Garber argues that this comedy of our daily lives is quickly becoming tragedy. And we can’t understand our politics without first understanding our culture.

Like The Anxious Generation but about our media diet, Screen People shows why Megan Garber is one of the most respected and widely-read journalists of our day. It is an urgent, page-turning, and dazzling look at how we entertained ourselves into our current predicament, and how we might find our way out of the maze of misinformation and chaos. – HarperOne

Shadows of the Republic : the rebirth of fascism in America and how to defeat it for good by Omer Aziz.

What is driving the rise of fascism–and how can we stop it?

In this singular investigation into the sinister realms of fascism and its many guises, Omer Aziz, author of the acclaimed Brown Boy and contributing writer for the Boston Globe, sets out to answer the question: Why are so many young people like him drifting to the ultranationalist right? Shadows of the Republic offers a haunting portrait of American fascism, how it began, and why it is now focused on immigration, technology, and the purification of society.

Fascism is not coming to America; it has been here for a long time. With astringent clarity, Aziz traces the flaring up of fascist ideas in both American history and our current moment. From the dominance of the KKK, to the Nazi rally in New York in 1939, to the alliances between U.S. elites and European fascists, Aziz examines the long shadows of fascism. Traveling across the United States and Europe, he illuminates connections between street fascists and the ones in suits, between Hitler and the country across the ocean he so admired. Aziz examines culture in Germany and Italy in the 1930s, where propaganda ministers made people believe both everything and nothing, and he examines the apppeal of the far right among the very group it targets. Using interviews with experts and his own experience, he also offers an anti-fascist playbook to reinvigorate democracy and our civic life.

Fascism is a precise term, cheapened by overuse. Yet when a word describes reality, we can’t afford to ignore it. From the pulsing power of an ideology of the past to its comeback among even those with the most to lose, Shadows of the Republic offers the definitive story of American fascism–and what we can do to salvage democracy for years to come. – Broadleaf Books

Undue process : the inside story of Trump’s mass deportation program by Julia Ainsley

A revealing, news driven account of the Trump Administration’s mass deportation program, featuring never-before-told stories and behind-the-scenes reporting from NBC News’ Senior Homeland Security Correspondent.

In Undue Process, NBC’s Senior Homeland Security correspondent Julia Ainsley takes us inside the Trump White House to show how Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Tom Homan, and other anti-immigration hardliners are executing the administration’s mass deportation plan, seemingly prioritizing spectacle and punishment over security and legal constraints.

Brimming with revelations from sources within ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, Undue Process is a harrowing chronicle of how the Trump administration aimed to create “the largest deportation force in U.S. history,” only to ignite a resistance within the government and across the country as they redefined the limits of executive power. – Harper

We’ve Been Here Before: How Rebellion and Activism Have Always Sustained America by Michael I Days

America has always been sustained by rebellion and activism. It is up to us to continue the fight.

America’s founding was a contradictory one. When the Declaration of Independence was signed 250 years ago, it painted a beautiful vision of freedom and equality. It was quite the gutsy move, declaring freedom, especially economic and religious freedom amid slavery and oppression for others. Indeed, for the majority of our nation’s history, America hasn’t lived up to its founding vision of freedom. Various movements have helped define and shape America, for good or bad, nudging us toward greater freedoms at times and pulling us back at others.

In our current era, these contradictions feel even more profound, and many of us are left wondering if America will ever live up to the promises of her founding, or if we are moving even further away from those hopes. Yet, a deeper look at our history reveals key revolutionary moments in which the promise of America has been fully realized. We’ve Been Here Before draws together the stories of these movements as a powerful reminder that America has always been sustained and challenged by rebellion and activism. Longtime journalists Michael I. Days and Angela P. Dodson compellingly profile the individuals who led those movements–the mavericks, rebels, outliers, and ordinary citizens who had extraordinary impact–paying particular attention to the women and people of color history has overlooked. At this important historical milestone, let us look back to celebrate those moments and let them guide our future.

Publisher’s Note: During the final stages of production for this book, Michael I. Days tragically passed away. Days was a pioneering journalist whose career left an indelible mark on American media. As the first Black editor of the Philadelphia Daily News, he led the paper to a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2010, cementing his reputation as a fearless advocate for truth and accountability. Beyond his editorial achievements, Days championed diversity in newsrooms, serving as vice president of diversity and inclusion for the Philadelphia Media Network and holding leadership roles in the National Association of Black Journalists, including serving as president of its Philadelphia chapter. Inducted into the NABJ Hall of Fame in 2017, he was widely celebrated for mentoring countless young journalists and fostering inclusive storytelling. This book stands as just one part of the legacy he leaves behind, and we are grateful for his many contributions. – Broadleaf Books