Charlatans: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Hucksters Bamboozle the Media, the Markets, and the Masses by Moisés Naím and Quico Toro (Basic Books). Reviewed by William Rice. “It all starts in our head, insist Moisés Naím and Quico Toro. Charlatans, say the authors, know how to exploit a collection of mental traits we all share: confirmation bias, our tendency to embrace information that supports our opinions and ignore that which doesn’t; ‘motivated reasoning,’ a process of confirming information to further bolster our pre-existing beliefs; ‘fast thinking,’ which responds intuitively to stimuli without actually thinking; and ‘social proof,’ our herd-animal instinct to assume something’s fine if we see other people doing it.”

Tall Is Her Body by Robert de la Chevotière (Erewhon Books). Reviewed by Priyanka Champaneri. “The novel’s opening act of violence is the first of many peppering these pages, and each time Fidel gains a certain amount of security, the world tilts. Soon after, he must again find his way with a new home, a new relative, a new set of histories to navigate, and one more thing: a new spirit to acclimate to. For as he slowly comes to learn, Fidel is Obeah, a conduit with the land who can see the dead as easily as he sees the living.”

Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore by Ashley D. Farmer (Pantheon). Reviewed by Tim Hirschel-Burns. “Farmer managed to produce this extensive biography despite the archival limitations that contributed to Moore’s erasure. While Moore’s artifacts are largely missing — and a fire destroyed many of her records — Farmer nonetheless pieced together information through interviews with Moore’s family and acquaintances, government surveillance files, and previously undiscovered records from her childhood in Louisiana. Although this allows Queen Mother to convey the events of Moore’s life in thorough detail, the broader narrative can, at times, get lost in the minutiae.”

Secret Maps: Maps You Were Never Meant to See, from the Middle Ages to Today by Tom Harper, Nick Dykes, and Magdalena Peszko (University of Chicago Press). Reviewed by Tom Peebles. “For the authors, place-specific secrets represent a powerful combination of the ‘intrigue, excitement and danger’ that drive human fascination with secrecy generally and the ‘peculiar thrill that maps give us of revealing and thereby possessing the world in miniature.’ The subjects of map secrecy have included ‘routes, distances, physical and political entities, locations of raw materials, industrial sites, fortifications and defenses, installations and infrastructure, coastlines and harbors, persons situated in, and happenings occurring in places.’ But whatever their form and purpose, ‘maps always must be useful,’ the authors emphasize, ‘even if it means compromising the integrity of their secret.’”

Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, a Writer’s Life by Todd Goddard (Blackstone Publishing). Reviewed by Ellen F. Brown. “In any good rags-to-riches story like this one, there’s always a reckoning. For Harrison, it was failing to gain the recognition he thought he deserved as a poet. While he published an enormous quantity of verse over his lifetime, and some of it sold quite well, he was generally overlooked by what Goddard refers to as ‘the New York literary establishment.’ Not that Harrison ever gave up trying. In the last years of his life, riddled with physical ailments and depression, he continued writing poetry. He died at his desk in 2016, a pen in his hand.”

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