John Hancock: First to Sign, First to Invest in America’s Independence by Willard Sterne Randall (Dutton). Reviewed by Stephen Case. Imagine the Revolutionary War as a film competing at the Academy Awards. Surely, George Washington would win Best Patriot. But who would take home Best Supporting Patriot? In his crackerjack new book, John Hancock: First to Sign, First to Invest in America’s Independence, acclaimed biographer Willard Sterne Randall convincingly stumps for Hancock. (Remember him? His supersize signature all but jumps off the Declaration of Independence.)

Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating-Disorder Recovery by Mallary Tenore Tarpley (Simon Element). Reviewed by Frances Thomas. “For those with chronic food and body struggles, a salient benchmark for getting better might be what Tarpley calls ‘the middle place’: a liminal space between sickness and full recovery, where ‘hope and hardship coexist, slips are expected, and progress is possible.’ It’s a place where Tarpley has lived for many years, as chronicled in the book’s piercingly interior sections of personal backstory. It’s a place where I, too, hold citizenship. Having been in recovery from anorexia for nearly two decades, I read Slip rapidly, raptly, and downright hungrily, riveted by its articulation of a recovery narrative that refuses a tied-up-with-a-bow (which is to say falsified) resolution.”

Twelve Stories by American Women, edited by Arielle Zibrak (Penguin Classics). Reviewed by David A. Taylor. “Zibrak points out that when we read these authors together, it’s easy to assume they were ahead of their times. But she insists that each was ‘embedded in the prejudices and specific material conditions of their own historical moment,’ and that they can’t answer questions for our time. ‘But they are our ancestors,’ she concludes, ‘and by turning to them now, we assert the value of learning the past as part of our own story.’”

Culpability: A Novel by Bruce Holsinger (Spiegel & Grau). Reviewed by Tara Campbell. “Culpability is an Oprah Book Club selection, and I agree that it provides excellent fodder for discussion. As easily digestible as it is, it still offers readers relevant, thorny issues to debate. It’s also very much a book of its time, unspooling the effects of artificial intelligence on our lives. Yet it retains a certain timelessness by keeping the focus on human relationships, remaining at its root a family drama. The particulars of technology have changed over the epochs, and will continue to change, but families will stay messy, juggling competing demands and calls on their loyalty, forever balancing truth and culpability.”

Mad as Birds by M.C. Schmidt (Black Rose Writing). Reviewed by Emma Carbone. “He’s further drawn into the strange atmosphere when his new neighbor and potential friend, Sam, reveals that she’s seen an unprecedented increase in her painterly abilities since moving in. It’s almost as if something — someone, really — is painting through her. Until, that is, that something turns its attention to Milo instead. Desperate to create again, Milo keeps painting with help from the spectral hand until the lines between them begin to blur. ‘She controlled me but that didn’t mean I wasn’t myself,’ he insists. ‘I was just myself in a more significant form.’”

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