8 Can’t-Miss New History Books Coming Soon

During the 1980s, as the Satanic Panic gripped much of America and Britain, the Pagan News was an underground newspaper charting occult and pagan topics for readers of all stripes. In this massive best-of, the former editors of Pagan News round up many of the most interesting articles published during the magazine’s run and, in the course of doing so, shine a light on the intersection of occult practice and popular culture at a time when the two were bleeding into one another more than ever before in a book that is by turns funny, irreverent, and illuminating.

With nationwide protests once more taking place throughout the country, there’s never been a better time than the present to learn about the history of protesting in the United States. From the earliest resistance of Indigenous peoples against European colonization to our modern clashes about climate change, school shootings, and more, “legal scholar Gloria Browne-Marshall provides fervent affirmation of the many different groups, causes, and methods that comprise the protest tradition from our nation’s founding to today’s pursuit of a more perfect union” (Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Professor of History and African and African American Studies, Harvard University).

For five years, as the First World War raged in Europe, New York was engulfed in a conflagration of its own as anarchist bombings gripped the city. Against this backdrop, Steven Johnson charts the history of a changing police force, as science-based methods of detection clash with bombs powered by the relatively recent invention of dynamite. The result is a “fast-burning fuse of a book, every page bursting with revelatory detail” (Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City) that has already been longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and nominated for the Edgar Award, to name just a few of its accolades.

Edgar Award-winning author Kate Summerscale offers up an “engrossing true crime page-turner” (Publishers Weekly) as she explores one of the most controversial murder cases in history, when London police found the bodies of three young women hidden in the wall of a Notting Hill home. An “exhaustively researched” (Kirkus Reviews) account of a crime that shocked the world and dominated tabloid headlines, “Summerscale captures all the horrible fascination of Christie’s crimes, but also expertly situates them in their troubled post-war setting” in this “haunting, thought-provoking, deeply unsettling book” (Sarah Waters, author of Tipping the Velvet).

Beginning nearly 200 years ago, this “essential and eye-opening paradigm shift” (Publishers Weekly) tells the story of 30 remarkable individuals who left their mark on the world, while “powerfully—and compellingly—argu[ing] that it’s not the existence of transgender people that’s new; what’s new is the anxiety around them” (Library Journal). From a trans countess who instigated LGBTQ+ riots 40 years before Stonewall to the world’s greatest female billiards player of the early 20th century, this “riveting, compassionate collection of life stories” (Foreword Reviews) showcases trans lives throughout history, and how they became the flashpoint of our modern political moment.

The American prairie rivals the rainforest in its biological diversity. But while efforts have been made to save the rainforest for many years, the prairie is disappearing just as rapidly, and with much less fanfare. In this “sweeping history of the American prairie” (Kirkus Reviews), veteran journalists and lifelong Midwesterners Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty “excel at elucidating the complex workings of prairie ecosystems” (Publishers Weekly) while offering a glimpse into the history—and the possible future—of this unique landscape.

In the 1970s and '80s, America in general and the Pacific Northwest in particular saw an explosion in the number of violent, grisly serial killers. Names like Ted Bundy, the Green River Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, and others still terrify today. Is it possible that this epidemic of serial slayers was the result of industrial contamination? 

That’s the question that Pulitzer Prize-winning author Caroline Fraser sets out to answer in this “eerily lyrical study of the heyday of American serial killers” (Kirkus Reviews), a “provocative and page-turning work of true crime” (Publishers Weekly) that explores not only the crimes of the killers and the lives of their victims, but the milieu in which it all took place and what it means for our present and future.

Hailed by retired CIA officer and author Alma Katsu as “a must-read for historians, intelligence scholars, and any woman considering a career in national security,” Agents of Change got its start while its own author was working at the CIA. As she became fascinated by the stories of the trailblazing women who had first joined the agency during the turbulent years of the 1960s, she began to seek out their personal accounts, performing interviews with current and former CIA officials, including many who have never spoken publicly before. 

The result is an “immensely readable book [that] tells the nearly lost stories of everyday women who dared to enter the man’s world of the CIA and do extraordinary things” (Valerie Plame, former CIA officer and author of Fair Game).