Divorce stories are hot right now — Lyz Lenz’s “This American Ex-Wife” popped up on the best-seller list the same week as one of the books we recommend below, Leslie Jamison’s memoir “Splinters.” But the public’s appetite for such spectacles is nothing new, as another of this week’s recommendations makes clear: In “Strong Passions,” Barbara Weisberg tells the story of a scandalous high-society divorce that captivated New York City in 1864.
Also up this week, the story of a political divorce — Matt Dixon’s entertaining look at the Trump-DeSantis rivalry — and Joy-Ann Reid’s look at the strong, and consequential, marriage between Medgar and Myrlie Evers. We also recommend a book about New York’s rich linguistic heritage, a look at the roots of the immigration crisis and, in fiction, new novels from Tia williams, Maurice Carlos Ruffin and Megan Nolan. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles
In this history of New York, Perlin, a linguist, focuses on residents fighting to preserve their spoken heritages. The result is sweeping and intimate, simultaneously a call to arms and a tribute to a place that contains almost as many tongues as speakers.
Atlantic Monthly Press | $28
Sparks fly when Ricki, who has opened a flower shop in Harlem in 2024, meets Ezra, who made a name for himself as a musician during the Harlem Renaissance a century earlier. This is not a time-slip story. Ezra has, through a curse, achieved a haunted immortality that keeps him trapped in the world but apart from it: People forget him entirely within a month if he doesn’t keep in contact.
Grand Central | $29
Ruffin’s stirring new novel brings a little-known aspect of the Civil War to vivid life: enslaved women who worked as resistance fighters against the Confederacy. His courageous protagonist reminds us that we still have a lot of work to do when it comes to reckoning with our past.
One World | $27
The MSNBC journalist offers an intimate account of the civil rights activists Myrlie Evers-Williams and her husband Medgar Evers, an N.A.A.C.P. field secretary killed by the Klan in 1963. Their story casts light on the tolls of the fight against white supremacy.
In 1864, the nation was riveted by a society divorce trial that had everything: cheating, wealth, feuding brothers and lurid details. Weisberg’s sensitive examination reconstructs the trial while giving dimension to the real-life people involved.
Norton | $28.99
Jamison, who has previously written stylishly about her experiences with addiction, abortion and more, here delivers a searing account of divorce and the bewildering joys of new motherhood, cementing her status as one of America’s most talented self-chroniclers.
Little, Brown | $27
This urgent and propulsive account of Latin American politics and immigration makes a persuasive case for a direct line from U.S. foreign policy in Central America to the current migrant crisis.
Penguin Press | $32
Last year, as Ron DeSantis briefly surged in polls against his former ally Donald Trump, the Republican presidential primary seemed headed for an epic face-off. Dixon’s book is an enjoyable, if horrifying, soap opera.
