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Each week, The Post compiles the buzziest new books. Have a look at our favorite titles in recent weeks.

This week’s best new books

A Perfect Coincidence: The Extraordinary Friendship and Astonishing Deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson 

Jim Rasenberger (Scribner)
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826, exactly fifty years after the Declaration of Independence was adopted. Rasenberger deems it “the most perfect coincidence in American history … [a] miraculous confirmation that Divine Providence favored America.” The two Founding Fathers had a complicated relationship that ranged from close friendship to bitter political rivalry. “At its best,” Rasenberger writes, “it was a model of dialogue and empathy that transcended partisanship and personal grievances to find human connection and collaboration.” 

This Land Is Your Land: A Road Trip through U.S. History

Beverly Gage (Simon & Schuster)
Ahead of the semiquincentennial, Gage, who teaches American history at Yale and won a Pulizer for her biography of J. Edgar Hoover, decided to get out of the ivory tower and visit 13 historical sites across the country. She devotes a chapter to each. Her journey begins at the Brandywine Battlefield in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, a key Revolutionary War site, and ends in California, where she visits the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum and Disneyland. Stops along the way include the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama and the Alamo in Texas.

The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People’s Constitution

Jesse Wegman (Celadon Books) 
James Wilson, a Scottish American lawyer, wrote the first draft of the US Constitution but later racked up huge debts, dying of malaria while hiding from creditors. Wegman shines a light on the highly influential thinker who has mostly been left out of the history books. 

1,000 Days in America: An Illustrated History of the Moments That Defined a Nation

David M. Rubenstein, David Treuer  (National Geographic) 
This comprehensive, strikingly illustrated tome starts with Parliament passing the Townshend Acts on June 29, 1767 and works its way through the centuries to the present day. Along the way, notable historians — Michael Beschloss, Douglas Brinkley, Annette Gordon-Reed and Walter Isaacson — lend insightful commentary. 

National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America

Michael Auslin (Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster)
Auslin tracks the United States’ foundational document over the years — from Thomas Jefferson drafting it in 1776 to is dissemination during the Revolutionary War to the document being saved from fire during the War of 1812 and preserved in the 20th and 21st centuries. He explores what it means today for our fractured nation. 

Obstinate Daughters: The Rebels, Writers, and Renegade Women Who Ignited the American Revolution

Denise Kiernan (Dutton)
From Nanye’hi, a Cherokee leader who defiantly warned settlers of potential attacks and nursed the captured wife of a colonial soldier, to Laura Wolcott, who melted down statues to make musket balls that helped the American Continental Army win the Battles of Saratoga, Kiernan highlights the many women who were pivotal to the revolution and the country’s founding. 

Last week’s best new books

The Sixth Nik


Daniel Kraus (S&S/Saga Press)
Kraus, who won a Pulitzer last month with his WW1 novel “Angel Down,” offers up a lively sci-fi adventure. A young girl with a technologically enhanced brain goes on a mission to track down a rogue planet. She shares the spaceship with a motley cast of characters, including a medic with a peyote addiction, a pretty engineer marred by plastic surgery and a captain who is out to get her.

Songs of the Dead: The Strata Wars


Brandon Sanderson and Peter Orullian (S&S/Saga Press)
This is the first book in a new fantasy series centered around a London rock musician, Jack Solomon, who is murdered. He re-awakens to find himself in a strange version of the English capital, where different periods in history collide and some beings have potent magical powers.

Someone Else’s Husband: A Novel


Kimberly McCreight (Knopf)
A rich Upper East Side wife’s life falls apart after her husband has an affair while trekking Mount Kilimanjaro — and then the other woman is found murdered. The thriller has already been acquired by Lionsgate Television to be adapted into a TV series.

The Housewives Underground: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the JFK Assassination Our Most Enduring Mystery


Kaitlyn Tiffany (Crown)
World Health Organization analyst Sylvia Meagher spent the later decades of her life delving into the Kennedy assassination and working to discredit the Warren report, believing Americans deserved to know more about what happened in Dallas. Tiffany zeroes in on her and a handful of other gals who came together to challenge the FBI’s narrative and look for the truth.

How to Not Die in Prison: A Survival Guide


Taylor Sheridan and Tom Nelson (Simon & Schuster)
Sheridan, the co-creator of “Yellowstone,” teamed up with ex-con Nelson for this cheeky-yet-practical tome that offers advice on everything from making a shiv to getting through solitary confinement.  

It Could Have Been Her


Lisa Jewell (Atria Books)
The bestselling British author’s latest begins in the English countryside. Out walking her dogs, Jane Trevally comes upon a terrier that was being cared for by a teen girl who’s gone missing. Jane offers to take the dog to its registered owners in London, but when she arrives at the address, it’s a creepy house from her past. A strange man answers the door and a spooky woman lurks in the window.

The best new books for the week of June 1

Pool House: A Novel


Mary H.K. Choi (Flatiron Books)
With her first adult novel, YA author Choi explores mother-daughter relationships. Stevie yearns to leave LA and her lame job, but she can’t escape the pull of her mother, a struggling actress grieving the death of her TV husband. Then, unable to pay their bills, they’re forced to rent out their main home and live in the pool house.  

The Children: A Novel


Melissa Albert (William Morrow)
The adult children of a late author wrestle with their mother’s legacy in this work of magical realism. Growing up, Guinevere and Ennis were the main characters in their mother’s phenomenally popular books. On the page, their childhood was enchanted and idyllic, but in reality their rural upbringing was filled with neglect and hunger. Then, a fire burned it all down.

I’ll Take the Fire: A Novel


Leila Slimani (Penguin Books)
In this autobiographical work, a young Moroccan woman yearns to escape her socially conservative upbringing and find sexual and intellectual freedom against the backdrop of recent history.

Contrapposto: A Novel


Dave Eggers (Knopf)
The Pulitzer Prize winner’s latest spans 65 years and was some 20 years in the making. An Indiana teen named Cricket Dib journeys to Chicago to take a drawing class. There, he’s captivated by Olympia Argyros, a fellow young artist one year his senior. Their friendship, love and art unfold over the decades.

Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me


Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor (37 Ink)
Pryor, a history professor and the daughter of the late comedian, reflects on her complicated relationship with her father and grapples with his use of the N-word and role in popularizing it.

The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail


Eric Jay Dolin (Liveright)
In 1832 in the western Pacific, the American whaleship mentor struck a reef. The 11 crew members who survived were marooned on Palau where warring tribes enslaved them for years. 

The best new books for the week of May 25

Alan Opts Out


Courtney Baum (Little, Brown and Company)
After a successful ad man blows the pitch of his career, he decides to abandon the capitalist system he’s long been a part of. His wife is less than thrilled for his sudden pivot and what it will mean for their live in Greenwich, Conn., but some of his neighbors take a shine to the idea for themselves.

Keeper of My Kin: Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter


Ada Ferrer (Scribner) 
Pulitzer Prizer-winner Ada Ferrer writes of her mother’s decision to flee Cuba with her in 1963, when she was an infant. Her mom had to leave her 9-year-old son and another son behind to be raised their grandmother, while she forged a new life in the US.

Whistler


Ann Patchett (Harper)
The latest from the beloved author of “Tom Lake” centers on a chance encounter between a middle-aged woman named Daphne and her ex-stepfather, Eddie. The two run into each other one afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Eddie was only married to Daphne’s mother for a short while, but their unexpected reunion at the museum leads each to take stock of their lives.

Tonight the Music Seems So Loud: The Meaning of George Michael


Sathnam Sanghera (Pegasus Books)
A journalist looks at the pop star’s life and legacy, from his humble beginnings — the son of an immigrant restaurateur, he had no formal musical training but possessed a genius gift for crafting hits — to 80s debauchery and the homophobia he endured. While Michael’s songs haven’t received the same earnest examination as the output of some of his lauded contemporaries, Sathnam seeks to change that. 

1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World


Liaquat Ahamed (Penguin Press)
After documenting the run up the Great Depression with his Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, “Lords of Finance,” Liaquat Ahamed shifts focus to another financial calamity. He examines the Panic of 1873, the Rothchilds’ place in it and all that followed, looking at the impact the crisis had on everything from Reconstruction to antisemitism.

The Land and Its People: Essays


David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Company)
The droll humorist’s latest collection finds him having misadventures caring for his partner after hip surgery, using Duolingo, riding a Guatemalan horse named Tequila and daring a friend to eat a truck tire.

The best new books for the week of May 18

The Lost Empire of Emanuel Nobel: Romanovs, Revolutionaries, and the Forgotten Titan Who Fueled the World


Douglas Brunt (Atria Books)
Brunt, the bestselling author of “The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel,” tells the little known story of one of the biggest business titans in history. In Russia in the early 1900s, oil baron Emanuel Nobel built wealth that surpassed John D. Rockefeller’s. Then, Stalin came to power.

How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University


Theo Baker (Penguin Press)
As a Stanford freshman, Baker didn’t just find himself enrolled at an elite university, he found himself in a Silicon Valley enclave, where, he writes, “venture capitalists pursue[d]] 18- and 19-year-olds, handing out mentorships and money and invites to yacht parties in an attempt to convert promise into profit.” Working at the student newspaper, he also found that the university’s then-president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, had been accused of research misconduct and started digging around — ultimately leading to Tessier-Lavigne’s resignation.

On Witness and Respair: Essays


Jesmyn Ward (Scribner)
The two-time National Book Award winner offers up several beloved classics and three never-before-published pieces on topics ranging from Toni Morrison and Octavia Butler to growing up in rural Mississippi and losing her husband in early 2020 to a mysterious virus just as Covid-19 was hitting.

This is Me: A Reckoning


Hayden Panettiere (Grand Central Publishing)
The star of “Heroes” and “Nashville,” who battled alcohol and drug addiction and lost custody of her daughter at the height of her struggles, gives a candid account of her life and the price she paid for early fame.

A Little More Love: The Life and Legacy of Olivia Newton-John


Matthew Hild (Bloomsbury)
With new and archival interviews, Hild looks to get beyond the nice girl image and provide a deeper look at the late pop star, who passed away in 2022 from breast cancer at age 73. Hild writes of the almost-romance she had with “Grease” co-star John Travolta and how she tried to help Karen Carpenter as she battled the severe anorexia that ultimately led to her death. 

Fever Dream


Elsie Silver (Atria Books)
This is the first in a new Western romance series. A professional bull rider reluctantly signs on to go on a new reality dating show to save his family’s ranch, but then he meets the show’s sassy location consultant — and falls in love before filming begins. 

The best new books for the week of May 11

Five: A Novel


Ilona Bannister (Crown)
This buzzy thriller has an intriguing premise: At a train station in suburban London, five strangers wait on the platform. In minutes one of them will die. Bannister tells each of their stories as death nears.

John of John: A Novel


Douglas Stuart (Grove Press)
In the latest from the acclaimed author of “Shuggie Bain,” a gay, recent art school grad returns home to the Hebrides. He struggles to relate to his religious, sheep-farming father, but the two have more in common than it first appears.

Athens and Sparta: The Rivalry That Shaped Ancient Greece


Adrian Goldsworthy (Basic Books)
A noted British historian examines classical Greece by comparing its two major cities and their opposing ideologies: Sparta’s rigid militarism and Athen’s enlightened democracy.

Take Me to Your Leader: Perspectives on your First Alien Encounter


Neil deGrasse Tyson (Simon Six)
Get ready. With his typical wit, the phenomenally popular pop-astrophysicist explores what aliens might actually be like, if they do indeed exist — according the laws of physics — and how best to act should you ever encounter one.

The Long Game: US Men’s Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts 

Leander Schaerlaeckens (Viking)
Ahead of this year’s World Cup, a longtime soccer writer looks at how the US Men’s team evolved from being largely irrelevant on the international stage for decades, until around 1990, to becoming a serious squad.

A Parade of Horribles: A Novel


Matt Dinniman (Ace)
In the eighth book in the literary role-playing game series “Dungeon Crawler,” Carl and his cat Donut continue to make their way through the dungeon’s levels by performing various tasks. All is going well enough on the tenth floor, but something strange is happening on the eleventh floor where the AI system has identified a “parade of horribles.”

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