The British love to complain that words and phrases imported from America --- from French fries to Awesome, man! --- are destroying the English language. But what about the influence going the other way? Britishisms have been making their way into the American lexicon for more than 150 years, but the process has accelerated since the turn of the 21st century. From acclaimed writer and language commentator Ben Yagoda, GOBSMACKED! is a witty, entertaining and enlightening account of how and why scores of British words and phrases --- such as one-off, go missing, curate, early days, kerfuffle, easy peasy and cheeky --- have been enthusiastically taken up by Yanks.

Randy Newman is widely hailed as one of America’s all-time greatest songwriters, equally skilled in the sophisticated melodies and lyrics of the Gershwin-Porter era and the cultural commentary of his own generation, with Bob Dylan and Paul Simon among his most ardent admirers. While tens of millions around the world can hum “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” his disarming centerpiece for Toy Story, most of them would be astonished to learn that the heart of Newman’s legacy is in the dozens of brilliant songs that detail the injustices, from racism to class inequality, that have contributed to the division of our nation. In A FEW WORDS IN DEFENSE OF OUR COUNTRY, veteran music journalist Robert Hilburn presents the definitive portrait of an American legend.

After his bestselling home run books WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL and THE BASEBALL 100, Joe Posnanski turns from the national pastime to the number one sport in America. WHY WE LOVE FOOTBALL is Posnanski’s newest must-have deep dive into the archives and legends of the sport, and the result is a rousing tale of the 100 greatest moments in football lore. This is the best kind of sports writing. Entertaining, enlightening, heartbreaking, hilarious and always fascinating, these stories of the sport offer a panoramic look across its history. From hidden gems and classic tales to famous moments told from previously unheard perspectives, this book is the football book for even its most ardent fans.

For over 40 years, Jane Rosenberg has been at the heart of the news cycle, covering almost every major trial that has passed through the New York justice system as a courtroom sketch artist, including the most recent Donald Trump hush money trial. In DRAWN TESTIMONY, Rosenberg brings us into the dramatic high-stakes world of her craft, where art, psychology and courtroom drama collide. Over the course of her legendary career, Jane has had a front-row seat to some of the most iconic and notorious moments in our nation’s recent history. Readers will learn how she has honed her unique powers of perception and what her portraits reveal, not only about her subjects, but about the human condition in general.

An ambitious Harlem woman’s husband upends her social climbing when he buys a Negro Leagues baseball team and appoints her as the team’s business manager. Overnight, Effa Manley goes from 125th Street’s civil rights champion to an interloper in the boys’ club that is professional baseball. Navigating her way through gentlemen’s agreement contracts, the very public flirtatious antics of superstar Satchel Paige, and a sports world that would much rather see this woman back in her “place” at home, Effa ultimately whips her team, the Newark Eagles, into the Negro Leagues Champions of 1946. But how long will she get to enjoy the fruits of her success before Major League Baseball tears it all apart?

For the past 15 years, Ian Frazier has been walking the Bronx. PARADISE BRONX reveals the rich and tumultuous history of this amazingly various piece of our greatest city. From Jonas Bronck, who bought land from the local Native Americans, to the formerly gang-wracked South Bronx that gave birth to hip-hop, Frazier’s loving exploration is a moving tour de force about the polyglot culture that is America today.

Clayton Kershaw has embodied the burden of athletic greatness, the prizes and perils that await those who strive for it all. He is a three-time Cy Young award winner, the first pitcher to win National League MVP since Bob Gibson, and a surefire, first-ballot Hall of Famer. In an age when baseball became more impersonal, a sport altered by adherence to algorithms and actuarial tables, Kershaw personified the game’s lingering humanity. THE LAST OF HIS KIND traces Kershaw’s path from a boyhood fractured by divorce to his development as one of the most heralded pitching prospects in Texas history to his emergence in Los Angeles as the spiritual heir to Sandy Koufax. But the book also charts Kershaw’s place in baseball’s changing landscape, as his own stubbornness butted against the game’s evolution.

When Brian Cashman arrived in the Bronx as an intern in 1986, he discovered a team in chaos, run on impulse and emotion, and lacking the sheen that had defined the Yankees in earlier eras. Decades later, Cashman had risen through the ranks of the front office, earned the trust of the Steinbrenner family, and become the longest-serving GM in the Yankees’ storied history, helping to transform the Yankees to glory with a string of World Series championships and an unmatched streak of winning seasons. With unprecedented inside access and featuring exclusive interviews with Cashman, owner Hal Steinbrenner, top front-office executives, and current Yankee stars and coaches, award-winning baseball journalist Andy Martino gives fans a view from the GM’s seat that we would never normally see.

Pete Rose is a legend. A baseball god. He compiled more hits than anyone in the history of baseball, a record he set decades ago that still stands today. He was a working-class white guy from Cincinnati who made it. He was everything that America wanted and needed him to be, the American dream personified --- until he wasn’t. In the 1980s, Pete Rose came to be at the center of one of the biggest scandals in baseball history. He kept secrets, ran with bookies, took on massive gambling debts, and was magnificently, publicly cast out for betting on baseball and lying about it. The revelations that followed ruined him, changed life in Cincinnati and forever altered the game. CHARLIE HUSTLE tells the full story of one of America’s most epic tragedies --- the rise and fall of Pete Rose.

Baseball is “the New York game” because New York is where the diamond was first laid out, where the bunt and the curveball were invented, and where the home run was hit. It’s where the game’s first stars were born, and where everyone came to play or watch the game. With nuance and depth, historian Kevin Baker brings this all vividly back to life: the still-controversial, indelible moments. Did the Babe call his shot? Was Merkle out? Did they fix the 1919 World Series? In Baker's hands, the city and the game emerge from the murk of 19th-century American life --- driven by visionaries and fixers, heroes and gangsters. He details how New York and its favorite sport came to mirror one another, expanding, bumbling through catastrophe and corruption, and rising out of these trials stronger than ever.