From the classical age of Alexander the Great and Roman statesman Cicero to the United States on September 11, 2001, this month’s new history releases cover a wide swath of the past. What gripping historical read will you pick up this month?
When the Roman statesman Cicero was murdered in 43 BCE, his head was cut off, and his tongue pierced with pins—a final, brutal act of revenge against a man whose words had shaped a generation and made him many enemies. Rising from provincial obscurity to the highest elected office in Rome, Cicero became the greatest orator of his age, a figure who believed that speech itself could defend a republic.
In this gripping new biography, the distinguished classicist Catharine Edwards brings Cicero vividly to life, revealing both the brilliance and the contradictions of a man caught between principle and ambition. At a moment when democratic institutions feel fragile, and the power of persuasion is once again under scrutiny, Cicero’s life speaks to us with renewed urgency.
In Confronting America, bestselling authors Bill O’Reilly and Josh Hammer argue that Americans have lost sight of the values that made America strong. To return to our former glory, the answer is not nostalgia or another government program. It is a return to informed citizenship, strong families, honest education, meaningful work, generosity, self-respect, and a willingness to put country and community ahead of self. Their central challenge is straightforward: “Americans need to wise up.”
How do Americans do that? They provide the answers in Confronting America.
Born in Florida to a religious family, Lillian Smith (1897-1966) was a white Southern woman living in the Jim Crow South who defied all stereotypes, such as living with her lover, Paula, and publishing works by both black and white Americans. She also firmly believed racism hurt white Americans, too.
Drawing on previously unpublished archival research, and with a modern appreciation of Smith’s complex identity, An Inconvenient Woman by Keri Leigh Merritt is the definitive biography of a woman who defied all expectations and dedicated her life to racial equality.
Alexander the Great, a wide-eyed boy from the hills of Macedon who ruled most of the known world by his mid-twenties, was one of history’s greatest military minds. For centuries, historians, refugees, poets, and explorers have told his story, and yet Alexander himself has remained a mystery.
But over the last few years, a series of remarkable discoveries has changed everything. Now, for the first time since antiquity, it is possible to tell a different story. The story of a young man whom almost no-one noticed, until the day he became king. A king who became a hero, a hero who became a living god, and a god who died broken-hearted in Babylon.
Using cutting-edge research and a unique narrative approach, Alexander thrusts readers into Alexander the Great’s world in ways which have never before been possible: to see the same stars wheeling overhead, feel the desert wind, and experience the full horror of battle. Alexander is a cinematic work of non-fiction, a revelatory retelling of one of the most famous and elusive stories in history.
Publishing for the 25th anniversary of 9/11: A dramatic, never-before-told, minute by minute account of the military, national security, and aviation response to the devastating attacks against the United States
While the events of that day have been widely reported, Ash and Honor is a masterclass of narrative journalism, putting into a shocking new context what really happened.
Investigative journalist Jeffrey Robinson weaves together the stories of more than 60 American and Canadian eye-witnesses to history, many of whom who have never spoken publicly, taking readers on a unique journey deep inside the most crucial and devastating 368 minutes of our time. It is the definitive chronicle of the chaos and confusion, the turmoil and pandemonium, told by first-hand sources who guided America through the ash and honor of its darkest day.
One of The New York Times‘ 100 Most Notable Books of 2025
A Time Magazine Must-Read Book of 2025
A New Yorker Essential Read
In late October 1780, a slave ship set sail from the Netherlands, bound for Africa’s Windward and Gold Coasts, where it would take on its human cargo.
When a series of unpredictable weather events and navigational errors led to the Zorg sailing off course and running low on supplies, the ship’s captain threw more than a hundred slaves overboard in order to save the crew and the most valuable slaves. The ship’s owners then claimed their loss on insurance, a first for slaves who had not been killed due to insurrection or died of natural causes.
The insurers refused to pay, leading to a trial which courts initially found in their favor with the Chief Justice comparing the slaves to horses. Thanks to the outrage of one man present in court that day, a retrial was held. For the first time, concepts such as human rights and morality entered the discourse on slavery in a courtroom case that boiled down to a simple yet profound question: Were the Africans on board people or cargo?
What followed was a fascinating legal drama in England’s highest court that turned the brutal calculus of slavery into front-page news. The case of the Zorg catapulted the nascent anti-slavery movement from a minor evangelical cause to one of the most consequential moral campaigns in history―sparking the abolitionist movement in both England and the young United States.
Now available in paperback.
A memoir of the Cuban diaspora that follows one family’s exile from the island, through a lyrical exploration of memory, cultural mythology, and the history of Cuban-American relations.
Cifuentes, Cuba, in the 1950s was nearly idyllic—at least that’s how Elena’s grandparents, Rosita and Gustavo Delgado, remember the Eden they left. When Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, Gustavo was placed on a list of political undesirables, and by the end of 1960, the couple and their two daughters had fled to Florida, certain they would return to Cifuentes within a few months after Castro’s reign had run its course. But they never went back, and a piece of each of their identities became frozen in that moment.
In 1987, Elena was the first in Gustavo and Rosita’s family to be born in the United States, but through the memories that lived on in her grandmother’s mind, Cuba became the foundation of her childhood. Elena takes us inside these stories, and as we travel back and forth across the narrow Florida Straits that separate Miami and Havana, we also weave between past and present, to discover family secrets that are on the brink of being lost to time.
In lyrical yet unflinching prose, The Eternal Forest seeks to understand the nature of inheritance, how trauma and memory are passed down through generations, and what it means to yearn for an island you can never fully know.
Now available in paperback.