New Book Releases for the Week of April 29, 2025
Featuring new book releases from Greg Grandin, Jaz Brisack, Martin Reeves and Bob Goodson, and Kristine Gasbarre
Finding the right book at the right time can transform your life or your organization. As expert booksellers, we help you discover your next great read by showcasing four recently released titles each week.
The books are chosen by Porchlight's Managing Director, Sally Haldorson, and the marketing team: Dylan Schleicher, Gabbi Cisneros, and Jasmine Gonzalez.
(Book descriptions are provided by the publisher unless otherwise noted.)
Our Recommended Books This Week
Dylan’s pick: America, América: A New History of the New World by Greg Grandin, published by Penguin Press
The story of how the United States’ identity was formed is almost invariably told by looking east to Europe. But as Greg Grandin vividly demonstrates, the nation’s unique sense of itself was in fact forged facing south toward Latin America. In turn, Latin America developed its own identity in struggle with the looming colossus to the north. In this stunningly original reinterpretation of the New World, Grandin reveals how North and South emerged from a constant, turbulent engagement with each other.
America, América traverses half a millennium, from the Spanish Conquest—the greatest mortality event in human history—through the eighteenth-century wars for independence, the Monroe Doctrine, the coups and revolutions of the twentieth century, and beyond. Grandin shows, among other things, how in response to U.S. interventions, Latin Americans remade the rules, leading directly to the founding of the United Nations; and how the Good Neighbor Policy allowed FDR to assume the moral authority to lead the fight against world fascism.
Grandin’s book sheds new light on well-known historical figures like Bartolomé de las Casas, Simón Bolívar, and Woodrow Wilson, as well as lesser-known actors such as the Venezuelan Francisco de Miranda, who almost lost his head in the French Revolution and conspired with Alexander Hamilton to free America from Spain; the Colombian Jorge Gaitán, whose unsolved murder inaugurated the rise of Cold War political terror, death squads, and disappearances; and the radical journalist Ernest Gruening, who, in championing non-interventionism in Latin America, helped broker the most spectacularly successful policy reversal in United States history. This is a monumental work of scholarship that will fundamentally change the way we think of Spanish and English colonialism, slavery and racism, and the rise of universal humanism. At once comprehensive and accessible, America, América shows that centuries of bloodshed and diplomacy not only helped shape the political identities of the United States and Latin America but also the laws, institutions, and ideals that govern the modern world. In so doing, Grandin argues that Latin America’s deeply held culture of social democracy can be an effective counterweight to today’s spreading rightwing authoritarianism.
Jasmine’s pick: Get on the Job and Organize: Standing Up for a Better Workplace and a Better World by Jaz Brisack, published by Atria/One Signal Publishers
Get on the Job and Organize is a compelling, inspirational narrative of the Starbucks and Tesla unionization efforts, telling the broader story of the new, nationwide labor movement unfolding in our era of political and social unrest. As one of the exciting new faces of the American Labor Movement, Jaz Brisack argues that while workers often organize when their place of work is toxic, it’s equally important to organize when you love your job.
With an accessible voice and profound insight, Brisack puts everything into the context of America’s long tradition of labor organizing and shows us how we too can organize our workplaces, from how to educate yourself and your colleagues, to what backlash can be expected and how to fight it, to what victory looks like even if the union doesn’t necessarily “win.”
Sally’s pick: Like: The Button That Changed the World by Martin Reeves and Bob Goodson, published by Harvard Business Review Press
Over seven billion times a day, someone taps a like button. How could something that came out of nowhere become so ubiquitous—and even so addictive? How did this seemingly ordinary social media icon go from such a small and unassuming invention to something so intuitive and universally understood that it has scaled well beyond its original intent?
This is the story of the like button and how it changed our lives. In Like, bestselling author and renowned strategy expert Martin Reeves and coauthor Bob Goodson—Silicon Valley veteran and one of the originators of the like button—take readers on a quest to uncover the origins of the thumbs-up gesture, how it became an icon on social media, and what's behind its power.
Through insights from key players, including the founders of Yelp, PayPal, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Gmail, and FriendFeed, you'll hear firsthand the disorderly, serendipitous process from which the like button was born. It's a story that starts with a simple thumbs-up cartoon but ends up with surprises and new mysteries at every turn, some of them as deep as anthropological history and others as speculative as the AI-charged future.
But this is much more than the origin story of the like button. Drawing on business and innovation theory, evolutionary biology, social psychology, neuroscience, and other human-centered disciplines, this deeply researched book offers smart and unexpected insights into how this little icon changed our world—and all of us in the process.
Gabbi’s pick: Show, Don't Tell: A Writer, Her Teacher, and the Power of Sharing Our Stories by Kristine Gasbarre, published by Worthy Books
Mrs. Korthaus has always been ahead of her time—an educator who inspired her students to dream bigger, think deeper, and live boldly. For decades, she led an English classroom with caring and conviction, but it’s not until she’s retired, and then fighting cancer, that she begins to share her story: long ago marching with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., building a corporate career, and overcoming heartbreak before “accidentally” becoming a teacher and forever shaping the lives of countless young adults—including bestselling author Kristine Gasbarre.
In Show, Don’t Tell, Kristine reflects on her thirty-year friendship with this extraordinary teacher who shaped her life so significantly. She shares the profound lessons Mrs. Korthaus taught her and other students on self-discovery, resilience, strength, and showing up fully for life. It shines a spotlight on the power of sharing our lives and our stories with each other as it moves between tragedy, awe, and the heartwarming relationship forged over decades between two women from different generations. Above all, it delivers a moving reminder about the elders who’ve believed in us—and a call to thank them for the lives they influenced us to lead.
Buy these recommended new book releases and more directly from Porchlight Book Company.
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