In Hit Makers, Derek Thompson tries to explain why some ideas become popular and others fade away.

In Nixonland, Rick Perlstein looks at the origin, rise, and decline of the Nixon administration. His general view is that there was simmering white resentment underneath the optimism and change of the Kennedy Administration.

Joshua Greene’s Devil’s Bargain is ostensibly about Steve Bannon. However, the book is really about how three well-financed forces coalesced and resulted in the election of Donald Trump to President of the United States.

With a scope wide as it is personal, Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns paints a historical picture of one of the largest, but least reported events in the 21st century: the mass northern migration of African Americans.

How Not To Network a Nation by Benjamin Peters provides an exhaustive look at one of the functional problems that plagued the Soviet experiment: information management.

The Most Powerful Idea in the World is a surprisingly readable, insightful, and entertaining book about the steam engine and patent law.

In The New Deal, journalist Michael Hiltzik, tells the story of the people, policies, and actions that shaped the nation.

Matt Stoller’s How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul is the best political analysis I’ve read all year.

Foroohar’s book isn’t perfect–it goes on a bit long and only offers a few solutions—but it’s a well-meaning and well researched book on the modern economy.