Three extended nonfiction essays look closely at distinct episodes where people tried to redirect, constrain, or rebuild around powerful natural forces: efforts on a major river system, responses to a volcanic eruption, and work against mountain debris flows.

Lulu Miller interweaves a personal memoir about grief and depression with the life and work of 19th-century fish taxonomist David Starr Jordan to probe how humans try to impose order on a chaotic world.

A first-person, essayistic account that traces an author's experiences around pregnancy, partnership, and family while weaving in philosophical and theoretical reflections. The work observes intimate domestic moments alongside questions about gender, identity, and what it means to make a family in contemporary life.

A first-person account of growing up between Chinese folktales and American life, where family history and mythic stories intertwine with recollections of childhood.

An exploration of fungi and their roles across ecosystems and human life, surveying fungal biology, ecological relationships, and practical implications.

A character-driven reconstruction of the three days around the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, told through the perspectives of historical military figures from both the Union and the Confederacy.

Michelle Alexander argues that mass incarceration in the United States operates as a contemporary racial caste system—what she terms the "New Jim Crow."

A poet-turned-memoirist looks closely at the death of her mother and the aftermath for the daughter left to piece together memory, legal facts, and family history.

A meditation on eels that interweaves the species’ baffling lifecycle and scientific search with the author’s personal reflections. The book traces biological questions about migration and reproduction while using those puzzles as a lens for broader natural-history investigation and memoir-inflected curiosity.