Book Reviews

The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War

James Shapiro. Penguin Press, 2024. 358 pages. $30.00.

Native Nations: A Millennium in North America

Kathleen DuVal. Penguin Random House, 2025. 752 pages. $25.00.

What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. One World, 2024. 496 pages. $20.94.

Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World

Guru Madhavan. W. W. Norton & Company, 2024. 384 pages. $22.99.

The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History

Ned Blackhawk. Yale University Press, 2023. 616 pages. $35.00.

The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History

Allen Boyer and Mark Nicholls. Routledge, 2024. $45.59 (paperback).

Mark Twain

Ron Chernow. Penguin Press, 2025. 1174 pages. $45.00.

Reading Genesis

Marilynne Robinson. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2024. 344 pages. $29.00.

The Invention of Prehistory:  Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins

Stefanos Geroulanos. Liveright, 2024. 512 pages. $21.68.

From One Cell: A Journey into Life’s Origins and the Future of Medicine

Ben Stanger. W.W. Norton, 2023. 368 pages. $30.00.

Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters

Charan Ranganath. Vintage, 2025. 304 pages. $16.51.

Crisis Averted: The Hidden Science of Fighting Outbreaks

Caitlin Rivers. Viking, 2024. 304 pages. $17.96.