In London, circa 1809, Alaina Sinclair, daughter of the Earl of Norwich, is making her debut at the city’s classiest balls (her prospects are helped by her gorgeousness but hindered by her scandalous habit of reading books). Heading her dance card is Graham Wallace, the Duke of Ashford, who is tall, dark, great looking, rich, kind, polite, and actively hunting a wife. Complicating matters is Graham’s best friend and ballroom wingman Christopher Kendall, the Marquess of Rochester, who is tall, blond, blue-eyed, great-looking, rich, gruff, and disdainful of marriage. (He and Alaina meet cute when he stumbles into her at the refreshments table; she calls him a drunk, and he calls her ill-mannered.) Naturally, Alaina falls for the brooding rogue Christopher while being officially courted by Graham, leading to tense scenes in which she’s supposed to be flirting with the duke but can’t help gazing into the marquess’ eyes, their hearts aflutter. Christopher proves his worth (saving Alaina when her horse bolts and defending her when she’s accused of being a bookworm), and their passion escalates to secret kissing. Alas, miscommunications—he worries that she is a gold digger after Graham’s money, she thinks he’ll never commit—keep intervening to prevent them from confessing their love. Further stirring the pot are Graham’s cousin Percy (a vile cad who hopes to steal the dukedom, threatens to spread scurrilous rumors questioning Alaina’s virtue, and briefly kidnaps her) and the sinister Lady Barbara, who masterminds Percy’s crimes in the hope that he will become rich enough to marry.

Harrington’s period yarn features an intricate, nuanced, and affecting love triangle that requires Alaina and Christopher to navigate their own mutual suspicions along with their reluctance to betray Graham. The novel’s haphazard plot has third-act problems—after the triangle resolves itself in a graceful bow-out followed by a lavish wedding-night sex scene, there are several chapters still to go with more far-fetched scheming by the villains—but the writing is strong. Adventure scenes are handled with vigorous aplomb: “He came around with his other hand with vicious intent, driving the butt of his pistol down on [Alaina’s] head, the lantern hanging from his arm the only point of light before darkness closed in on her.” The characters are colorful and sharply etched, and despite some anachronisms (Christopher talks about “collateral damage”), the prose has a droll, Austen-esque verve to it, using pompously polite palaver to reveal the crassness of high society. (“Oh no, here he comes, the lascivious Lord Finch and his merry band of drunken fools,” sighs Alaina at a ball wherein his lordship makes a hilariously insulting proposal: “I fear I have fallen madly in love with the idea of having you as my wife, and I feel you should be happy with such an arrangement.”) In keeping with the style is the spirit of the book’s message—that true love triumphs over mercenary calculation. Readers will root for the feisty Alaina to overcome the stuffed shirts and find her heart’s desire.

This book, part of a series that pairs authors with common objects and ideas, views the ballot through a topical, politically progressive lens. A novelist and poll worker, Enjeti pens evocative opening pages linking her childhood participation in mock elections to her “reverence for the right to vote.” Another engaging chapter zips through the etymological, social, and technological history of ballots. Mostly, though, Enjeti is interested in the current state of the franchise, recounting her experience supporting Democrats while living in Republican-heavy places. Her observations illustrate how voting has changed due to conservative-friendly court rulings and “an avalanche of voting restrictions” enacted after Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. Her local drop box was among those that Georgia eliminated in 2022, making it harder to cast absentee votes. Statewide, Georgia made it illegal to offer refreshments to voters in line near polling places. Meanwhile, gerrymandering has transformed her “very racially diverse and solidly Democratic” congressional district into “a very white and solidly Republican one.” The remedies Enjeti supports range from practical to quixotic. Voters seeking to reform criminal justice and protect immigrants can help by voting in relatively overlooked sheriff and district attorney elections. But overhauling the Senate so that not all states have two seats? This makes sense from a population standpoint, but in the current political climate, it’s a nonstarter. Enjeti’s account of the “dilemma” she faced in 2024—as a battleground state voter, she opposed both Trump and the Democrats’ approach to the Gaza war—is relatable. But she’s not looking to please centrists with her characterization of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ campaign. To her, Harris’ “Republican, warmongering, imperialist brand”—her opposition of an arms embargo on Israel—was a big reason she lost to Trump.

Frank Uwe Laysiepen (1943-2020), better known by the sobriquet Ulay, was a German-born photographer and artist who in 1976 perpetrated one of the most audacious and celebrated art thefts in modern history, albeit as an act of performance art. In this rather uneven account, a triptych of that event, principal author Charney attempts to place the theft, Ulay’s career, and his professional and personal relationship with fellow artist Abramović in the context of classical aesthetics and to assay whether the theft was in fact a crime at all, since the painting in question was returned unharmed, Ulay’s political and cultural statement having been made. Including brief, meandering, and, alas, leaden accounts by Ulay and Abramović themselves, Charney, an art historian and personal friend, also makes a case for the “Berlin lifting” (as the theft was called) as an enduring work of art. Arguably, Charney interprets aesthetic ideas to validate his judgment, but he is not wholly convincing—or unbiased. It’s even debatable whether Ulay’s famous act was genuinely significant—outside a narrow, rarefied slice of the art world. Ulay himself resisted calling it art, preferring to call it an aktion (action) aimed at exposing the disconnect between what is revered as art and what is neglected in society, such as the poor or marginalized, as well as what Ulay saw as the suffocating institutionalization of art. That said, Charney cannot be faulted for adding that the theft “gives us, briefly, a vision of what art can still dare to be: not just beautiful but bold, dangerous, and alive.” Yet the real strength of the book—a monograph, actually—rests not in Charney’s championing of Ulay, but in his wider historical and critical analysis.

Plants make rain, writes ecologist Gaudet, author of The Pharaoh’s Treasure: The Origin of Paper and the Rise of Western Civilization (2018). Forty percent or more of precipitation over land originates through evaporation from plants and trees. When vegetation is cleared, evaporation plummets, seasons come later, temperatures rise, and rainfall diminishes. Ten thousand years ago, the Sahara bloomed because the end of the last ice age—combined with changes in Earth’s axis—warmed the planet and increased rainfall. As the axis cycle continued, temperatures continued to increase, rainfall diminished, and by 3,000 years ago, the Sahara had dried up. Greenhouse gases filling the atmosphere over the past century have interrupted the cycle, which would ultimately have restored the Sahara, but the accompanying disordered weather increased rainfall in northern Africa, persuading some experts, Gaudet included, that reviving the Sahara is worth a try. The author embraces green technology and massive, climate-altering projects, arguing that these will jump-start the return of tolerable weather worldwide. Desalinizing has grown cheap enough to beget extensive, desalinization plants in every Saharan nation for drinking water and irrigation. Egypt’s Qattara Depression has long fascinated engineers who propose a pipeline from the Mediterranean to create a huge inland sea to cool the desert and support a large population. Once huge, Lake Chad is almost dry, but a canal from the Congo River basin carrying water over a thousand miles could revive it. Money and politics are the only barriers. Gaudet mildly approves an ongoing mega-project—the Great Green Wall, aiming to plant billions of trees across North Africa—but has more faith in a spreading practice among locals who have adopted farmer-managed natural regeneration that does not clear trees for crops but preserves and fosters them, enriching the soil. His surprisingly nonapocalyptic conclusion adds that carbon dioxide nourishes plants, and rising levels from global warming already produce significant greening of vegetation over much of the planet.

The co-authors—a pediatrician and a sports journalist—take a widely used metaphor to its limits. They use many elements of or situations common to the two related games as opportunities to lecture readers about the virtues of discipline, consistency, respect, making good choices, learning from mistakes, staying positive, and following rules. These are solid principles—but along with being largely expressed as slogans (“Give 110 Percent”) or platitudes, they’re packed into short, numbered entries that for all the boldface titling soon begin to run together. Moreover, the baseball-bromide connection turns tenuous at times: “Switch-Hitting,” for example, cautions against reckless behavior; “The Check Swing” promotes the importance of keeping promises (“The more you check your swing, the more likely you are to strike out with those depending on you”); and “First and Third” includes a warning about online scams. Even if the overall approach is upbeat, these wearyingly earnest pep talks are unlikely to reach base. Although the co-authors directly address readers as “young adults like you,” the tone of the writing is unlikely to appeal to contemporary teens: “The older kids at school may seem cool, but some of their habits and behaviors may be better to avoid than to imitate.”