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During the summer of 1896, a 10-day heat wave killed nearly 1,500 people across New York City — many of them tenement-dwellers. In Hot Time in the Old Town, historian Ed Kohn describes the disaster — and how a little-known police commissioner named Theodore Roosevelt championed the efforts to help New Yorkers survive the heat.

This year brought memoirs from several former Trump administration officials, investigations by journalists reporting on Trump's White House — and a look back from former first lady Michelle Obama.

Mark Bowden's account of the unsolved 1975 case of two girls who went missing near D.C. is a riveting, serpentine story about the dogged pursuit of the truth, regardless of the outcome or the cost.

When Teddy Roosevelt became a New York police commissioner in 1895, he vowed to clean up the city's endemic vice and corruption. It didn't exactly work out. New Yorkers liked the idea of standing up to corrupt cops, but they rebelled when Roosevelt tried to enforce a ban on Sunday drinking.

The New Zealand-born author Adam Christopher has a fascination for America — his latest, Hang Wire, is a decade-jumping, character-crisscrossing urban fantasy set in San Francisco. Reviewer Jason Heller says that with Hang Wire, his fourth novel, Christopher has mastered "geek-centric weirdness and galloping, whiz-bang pace."

Ecologist and "natural security expert" Rafe Sagarin thinks our systems for dealing with natural disasters and terrorist attacks need to be updated. The best place to turn for advice? Other organisms.

The Biden administration is already projecting a tougher policy on China and Taiwan than many expected. Analysts say that sends important early signals to allies in Asia — and Beijing.

Raymond Gunt is profane, rude, heartless and truly the Worst. Person. Ever. Author Douglas Coupland says he's not exactly sure how the character, with no redeeming qualities, came into his mind.

In Jennifer Mathieu's novel, "nice girl" Vivian secretly publishes a zine decrying her high school's culture of sexist harassment. Our reviewer says Moxie works on a "pure, wish-fulfillment level."

Jade Chang's debut novel follows former cosmetics magnate Charles Wang, whose business empire has collapsed, as he herds his fractious family on a cross-country roadtrip to their new home.