Red Dawn Over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity by Frank Dikötter (Bloomsbury Publishing). Reviewed by Todd Kushner. “The Communists deceived other visitors by hosting them in contrived settings designed to accentuate the compatibility of Communism with Western values while concealing its authoritarian elements. Mao so adeptly sold his fiction of a ‘new democracy’ — with promises of a multi-party system, equal suffrage, and democratic freedoms — that American journalists who’d never set foot in Yenan widely accepted it. Dikötter remarks that General George C. Marshall, sent by President Truman to China as his envoy in December 1945, believed the Communists were ‘merely rural reformers who could help shape a democratic China.’”

Wake Now in the Fire: A Story of Censorship, Action, Love, and Hope by Jarrett Dapier and AJ Dungo (Ten Speed Graphic). Reviewed by William Schwartz. “The surrounding stories unfolding during the week leading up to the protest mostly involve teens dealing with personal drama and mental-health issues. In illustrating them, artist AJ Dungo avoids melodrama and is quite restrained; the point seems to be that high-schoolers are always dealing with their own crises, some more petty than others. While Wake Now in the Fire is a bit vague about the overall narrative arc of Persepolis, it’s easy to see why the latter’s banning affected these students so deeply. After all, much of Satrapi’s book portrays her struggles as a teenager slowly realizing that the adults around her don’t always know what’s best.”

Scale Boy: An African Childhood by Patrice Nganang (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Reviewed by Gretchen Lida. “Although the memoir is about ‘an African childhood,’ it is far from child’s play. Rather, Scale Boy is a 400-plus-page tome published in this era of 30-second Instagram reels. In other words, it’s a challenging read — not The Fault in Our Stars kind of hard but the Ulysses or Moby-Dick kind. (Which may explain why Scale Boy made so many promising-new-release lists but garnered relatively few reviews. The book requires focus and patience.)”

The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts: A Novel by Kim Fu (Tin House). Reviewed by Emily Hall. “A harrowing work of psychological horror, Kim Fu’s third novel, The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts, explores the complexities of caretaking. The story begins after its protagonist, Eleanor Fan, has lost her mother, Lele, to cancer. Following Lele’s last wishes, Eleanor uses her inheritance to buy a house. Although Eleanor is initially excited by this purchase, she soon realizes that the house is in disrepair. Overwhelmed by home ownership and still grappling with grief, she struggles to take care of herself.”

A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness by Michael Pollan (Penguin Press). Reviewed by Teddy Duncan Jr. “The author acknowledges, start to end, that he can’t resolve this ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, squarely positioning his approach as open-ended and provisional, contingent on the newest available knowledge. Before venturing into the abyss of consciousness scholarship, he judiciously insists that even he is unsure whether his questions are answerable.”

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