New Books Hitting the Shelves This September!

Cicero’s Tongue: The Life of Rome’s Greatest Orator and the End of the Republic by Catharine Edwards

When the Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero was murdered in 43 BCE during the violent political purges that accompanied the collapse of the Roman Republic, his assassins subjected his body to a final, brutal act of revenge. They cut off his head and his hands, displaying them on the Rostra in the Roman Forum, and pierced his tongue with pins—a symbolic retribution against a man whose powerful words had shaped a generation and made him many dangerous enemies. Rising from provincial obscurity in Arpinum to the highest elected office in Rome as consul, Cicero became the greatest orator of his age, a foundational political thinker who firmly believed that public speech, rational discourse, and the rule of law could defend a republic against tyranny.

In this gripping new biography, distinguished classicist Catharine Edwards brings Cicero vividly back to life, revealing both the brilliance and the profound contradictions of a man caught perpetually between high-minded political principle and relentless personal ambition. Edwards explores how Cicero navigated a collapsing political system marked by civil war, demagoguery, and the crumbling of democratic norms. At a contemporary moment when democratic institutions around the world feel increasingly fragile, and the power of public persuasion and rhetoric is once again under intense scrutiny, Cicero’s tumultuous life and writings speak to modern readers with renewed and sobering urgency.

Confronting America by Bill O’Reilly and Josh Hammer

In Confronting America, bestselling authors Bill O’Reilly and Josh Hammer turn their analytical lenses toward the contemporary sociopolitical landscape of the United States, arguing that modern Americans have largely lost sight of the core foundational values that historically made the nation strong, prosperous, and united. Rather than looking backward with blind nostalgia or proposing yet another expansive government program to fix systemic cultural issues, the authors contend that the true path forward requires a deliberate return to timeless civic virtues.

O’Reilly and Hammer advocate for a revitalization of informed citizenship, strong family structures, honest and rigorous education, meaningful labor, personal generosity, self-respect, and a willingness among citizens to consistently put country and community ahead of hyper-individualism or partisan self-interest. Their central challenge to the reading public is remarkably straightforward and provocative: Americans need to wise up. Throughout the pages of Confronting America, the authors outline their perspectives on how the nation can confront its current challenges and reclaim its cultural equilibrium.

An Inconvenient Woman: Lillian Smith and the Struggle for Racial Equality by Keri Leigh Merritt

Born in 1897 into a religious, middle-class family in Jasper, Florida, Lillian Smith lived a life that defied virtually every social convention of the Jim Crow South. As a white Southern woman, Smith courageously challenged the deeply entrenched racial hierarchy of her era. She lived openly with her romantic partner, Paula Snelling, defied segregationist laws, and used her platform as a writer and publisher to amplify the works of both Black and American authors, fostering cross-racial dialogue at a time of severe societal fracture. Furthermore, Smith was a vocal proponent of the belief that systemic racism inflicted profound psychological and moral damage on white Americans as well as its direct victims.

Drawing extensively upon previously unpublished archival research and bringing a modern historical appreciation to Smith’s complex personal identity, historian Keri Leigh Merritt presents An Inconvenient Woman as the definitive biography of a trailblazing figure. Merritt chronicles how Smith dedicated her entire life to the pursuit of racial equality and social justice, often standing nearly alone against the overwhelming tide of white supremacy in the American South, leaving behind a legacy that continues to resonate within the history of civil rights activism.

Alexander

Alexander the Great remains one of the most enigmatic figures in world history. A wide-eyed young man from the rugged hills of Macedon who conquered most of the known ancient world by his mid-twenties, he established an empire that stretched from Greece to the Indian subcontinent. For centuries, successive generations of historians, refugees, poets, and military explorers have retold his legendary exploits, yet Alexander himself has remained an elusive historical mystery, often obscured by myth and ancient propaganda.

However, over the course of the last few years, a series of remarkable archaeological discoveries and scholarly breakthroughs has fundamentally changed how historians understand his reign. Now, for the first time since antiquity, researchers are able to tell a radically different story—tracing the trajectory of a young man whom almost no one noticed until the fateful day he unexpectedly inherited the throne of Macedon. It is the story of a king who achieved the status of a hero, a hero who was eventually deified as a living god, and a god who ultimately died broken-hearted and feverish in the ancient city of Babylon at the age of thirty-two.

Utilizing cutting-edge historical research and a unique, immersive narrative approach, this new work titled Alexander thrusts readers directly into the visceral world of antiquity in ways that have rarely been achieved in non-fiction. Readers are invited to experience the historical environment firsthand: to see the same constellations wheeling overhead in the Macedonian night sky, feel the harsh desert wind sweeping across Persian plains, and understand the full, terrifying psychological and physical horror of ancient combat. It stands as a cinematic work of narrative non-fiction and a revelatory retelling of one of the most famous stories in human history.

Ash and Honor: The Untold 368 Minutes of 9/11 by Jeffrey Robinson

Publishing to coincide with the solemn twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Ash and Honor offers a dramatic, minute-by-minute account of the military, national security, intelligence, and aviation responses that unfolded during the devastating assaults against the United States in 2001. While the tragic events of that day have been extensively reported and documented over the past two decades, investigative journalist Jeffrey Robinson constructs a masterclass in narrative journalism that places what really happened behind closed doors into a shocking and comprehensive new context.

Robinson weaves together the firsthand testimonies of more than sixty American and Canadian eyewitnesses to history—many of whom have never before spoken publicly about their experiences. By capturing their accounts, the book takes readers on a unique, harrowing journey deep inside the most crucial and chaotic 368 minutes of the modern era. It serves as a definitive chronicle of the institutional chaos, confusion, turmoil, and panic that gripped the nation’s leadership, told entirely by the frontline sources who guided the United States through the ash and honor of its darkest day.

The Zorg by Siddharth Kara

Originally recognized as one of The New York Times 100 Most Notable Books of 2025, named a Time Magazine Must-Read Book, and designated as a New Yorker Essential Read, Siddharth Kara’s powerful historical investigation is now widely available in paperback.

In late October 1780, a slave ship named the Zorg set sail from the Netherlands, bound for the Windward and Gold Coasts of Africa, where it was scheduled to take on its cargo of human beings. As the voyage progressed across the Atlantic toward the Americas, a series of unpredictable weather events, navigational errors, and poor management led the Zorg to sail dangerously off course, resulting in severely depleted food and water supplies. Faced with the prospect of losing their financial investment if the enslaved people died of natural causes aboard the ship—for which insurers would not compensate—the captain made the catastrophic decision to throw more than one hundred enslaved Africans alive overboard into the ocean to preserve the remaining provisions for the crew and the most "valuable" captives.

When the ship reached its destination, the owners filed an insurance claim to recover their financial losses, marking a horrifying precedent in maritime trade. When the insurers fiercely refused to pay out the claim, the dispute escalated into a landmark legal battle. During the initial court proceedings, the Chief Justice notoriously compared the murdered human beings to cargo, such as lost horses. However, the profound moral outrage of one abolitionist observer in the courtroom that day catalyzed a push for a retrial.

For the first time in a British court of law, fundamental concepts of universal human rights and basic morality entered the formal legal discourse surrounding the transatlantic slave trade. The proceedings boiled down to a simple yet historically profound question: Were the African captives on board human beings or mere cargo? What followed was a fascinating and tense legal drama in England’s highest courts that thrust the brutal financial calculus of slavery onto the front pages of newspapers. The case of the Zorg ultimately catapulted the nascent anti-slavery movement from a minor evangelical faction into one of the most consequential moral and political campaigns in human history, directly sparking the abolitionist movements in both Great Britain and the nascent United States.

The Eternal Forest by Elena Sheppard

Rounding out the month’s prominent releases in paperback is The Eternal Forest by Elena Sheppard, a deeply personal memoir of the Cuban diaspora that traces one family’s forced exile from the island through a lyrical exploration of cultural memory, mythology, and the fraught history of Cuban-American relations.

In the 1950s, the town of Cifuentes, Cuba, appeared nearly idyllic—at least in the cherished memories of Elena’s grandparents, Rosita and Gustavo Delgado, who remembered their homeland as a lost Eden. Following Fidel Castro’s seizure of power in 1959, Gustavo was quickly placed on official lists of political undesirables. By the end of 1960, the couple and their two young daughters fled to Florida, firmly convinced that they would return to Cifuentes within a few months once Castro’s regime inevitably collapsed. They never went back, and a vital piece of each family member’s identity remained permanently frozen in that moment of displacement.

In 1987, Elena became the first member of Gustavo and Rosita’s family to be born in the United States. Yet, through the vivid memories and stories that survived intact within her grandmother’s mind, Cuba became the foundational landscape of her childhood. In The Eternal Forest, Sheppard navigates the physical distance across the narrow Florida Straits separating Miami and Havana while simultaneously weaving back and forth between past and present. In doing so, she uncovers deeply buried family secrets on the verge of being lost to time. Written in lyrical yet unflinching prose, the memoir examines the nature of generational inheritance, exploring how trauma and memory are transmitted across generations and what it means to perpetually yearn for an island homeland one can never fully know.