The selection includes Matt O’Hara’s The Flying Death: Poison, Plunder, and the Quest for a Miracle Medicine in the Amazon, a historical narrative about the 1938 search for curare. The book details how opportunists and adventurers raced to exploit the poison for medical and financial gain, often manipulating indigenous communities who originally discovered its properties.
Olivia Swarthout’s The Wordspotter’s Guide: A Jaunt Through Our Etymological Past offers a researched exploration of English word history. The text highlights the origin of the term “boycott,” tracing it to Charles Cunningham Boycott, an English land agent whose unfair policies toward Irish tenants led to his collective shunning by the community.
Jessica Craig-Martin presents I Regret I Am Able to Attend, a memoir that chronicles her transition from a bohemian childhood in London to her career as a photographer for publications like Vanity Fair and British Vogue. The author maintains a transparent, un-gauzy perspective on high society and her own artistic development.
Sarah Haas’s Jealousy: A Memoir examines the emotion as both a lens and a character, tracing its impact on human relationships in the age of social media. The work provides an unflinching look at the author’s inner workings and technological unraveling.
Hermione Lee’s biography Anita Brookner: Art and Life seeks to revive the reputation of the English novelist who won the Booker Prize in 1984 for Hotel du Lac. Lee addresses the misogyny that previously overshadowed Brookner’s work and argues for her significance as a literary figure, noting that Brookner’s iron sense of control is evident in her austere prose.
Other titles on the list include Northern Comfort: The New England Baking Tradition by Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald, and How to Design a Universe: The Science of Real and Virtual Worlds by Catherine Heymans, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland.