If you’re looking for escapist reading, this week’s recommended books won’t help. But if you want a cleareyed and sometimes rousing look at the state of the world today, settle right in: We’ve got books about the Mexican drug trade and America’s efforts to combat it (“The Dope,” by Benjamin T. Smith), along with an argument that modern warfare is too easy (Samuel Moyn’s “Humane”) and a memoir by a key figure in Donald Trump’s first impeachment (Alexander Vindman’s “Here, Right Matters”). We’ve got a hardscrabble immigration memoir from Qian Julie Wang, “Beautiful Country,” and two books exploring aspects of technology: Meghan O’Gieblyn’s “God, Human, Animal, Machine” and Tom Standage’s “A Brief History of Motion.” And in fiction, we recommend three debut novels about characters trying to make the best of sometimes dire circumstances: “Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost,” by David Hoon Kim, “Three Rooms,” by Jo Hamya, and “The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois,” by the accomplished poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers.
New York Times: 9 new books we recommend this week
A girl reads a book in the street of Hong Kong on Aug. 21, 2021.
