The question, “can we trust the polls?” has been the headline for countless articles. After the 2020 election, pundits, politicians, and prognosticators were even more worried than they had been in 2016 about whether polling was in a crisis.

Indeed, polling has not kept up with changes in technology and in voter behavior. But while forecasters failed to anticipate the election of Donald Trump in 2016 or his strength in 2020, the accuracy of polls in those elections, as well as in midterms and various special elections has been pretty much average by historical standards.

In Strength in Numbers: How Polls Work and Why We Need Them, G. Elliott Morris urges us to resist the idea that polls are worthless and untrustworthy and instead to focus on why saving them is critical to the survival of our democratic system. As the data journalist for the Economist, Elliott covers polls and elections for the magazine. And in his book, he looks at the history of polling to explain how we got to where we are today – and considers ways in which the industry can and must change to adapt to a wave of social, economic and technological challenges.

As polling and pollsters sort out their place in our political lives, Elliott Morris is ideally placed to reflect on the contribution they can and must play in preserving our democracy.

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Gulf, a sweeping cultural and natural history of the bald eagle in America.

The bald eagle is regal but fearless, a bird you’re not inclined to argue with. For centuries, Americans have celebrated it as “majestic” and “noble,” yet savaged the living bird behind their national symbol as a malicious predator of livestock and, falsely, a snatcher of babies. Taking us from before the nation’s founding through inconceivable resurgences of this enduring all-American species, Jack E. Davis contrasts the age when native peoples lived beside it peacefully with that when others, whether through hunting bounties or DDT pesticides, twice pushed Haliaeetus leucocephalus to the brink of extinction.

Filled with spectacular stories of Founding Fathers, rapacious hunters, heroic bird rescuers, and the lives of bald eagles themselves―monogamous creatures, considered among the animal world’s finest parents―The Bald Eagle is a much-awaited cultural and natural history that demonstrates how this bird’s wondrous journey may provide inspiration today, as we grapple with environmental peril on a larger scale.

What would it be like to see clearly after a childhood of near blindness? Or to hear for the first time? Since understanding what we see and hear comes so naturally to most of us, we assume that our senses developed spontaneously in infancy—that gaining sight or hearing later in life would be like turning on a light switch or a sound system. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The real story is far more interesting and inspiring, with much to teach us all about the way that we perceive the world.

With her latest book Coming To Our Senses: A Boy Who Learned to See, a Girl Who Learned to Hear, and How We All Discover the World , neurobiologist Susan R. Barry draws on the stories of two remarkable young adults to show how our brains process raw stimuli into meaning, why ‘gaining a new sense’ requires a fundamental reorganization of the brain, and how our past experiences and personal predilections influence our future observations and growth. Her conclusions suggest that while adapting to a new sense after childhood is immensely difficult, it’s not impossible—in the same way that adult athletes continue to train after their brains and bodies are mature, it is possible to become an “athlete of perception.”

Liam McCoy was 15 when a surgical procedure addressed several conditions that had left him nearly blind since early childhood. But instead of seeing his family, friends, and everyday objects within a three-dimensional landscape, he saw a hodgepodge of lines and colors on one flat plane. Zohra Damji was 12 when a cochlear implant enabled her to hear for the first time. But all sounds—voices, a car motor, the rain—merged into one unintelligible cacophony.

Susan Barry, having come to know each of them and their families and having experienced her own sensory awakening, as chronicled in her first book, Fixing My Gaze, is uniquely positioned to tell their amazing stories from both a scientific and personal perspective. As moving as it is illuminating, Coming To Our Senses invites readers to “see” ourselves in a whole new way.

The biggest companies are getting bigger – and it’s not just Amazon and Facebook, it is happening in field after field. Jim Bessen became interested in why this was happening as part of his research on the impact of automation. He wasn’t convinced that the factors that are typically thought to be behind this growth – mergers and acquisitions, changes in antitrust regulation, and, indeed, automation – were good explanations any longer.

His work revealed that the secret to these large firms’ dominance comes from their ability to invest in bespoke technology. And this, in turn, convinced him that we are in the midst of a profound economic change. In Walled Capitalism: The Dwindling of Disruption, he makes a compelling case for a shift in the nature of capitalism, one that has gone largely unrecognized.

Over the last twenty years, technological advances have become less of a force for disruption and more of a barrier that dominant firms employ against would-be disruptors. Walled Capitalism documents this change, explains why it has occurred and what can be done about it. The impacts are profound. The changing nature of capitalism has exacerbated social divisions, undercut average productivity growth, and threatens future innovation and economic dynamism. Understanding these changes will be key to grasping the economic and social challenges of coming decades.

Legal aid, the program through which legal assistance is made available to people who cannot otherwise afford it, has had a controversial history.  Support for providing legal services has waxed and waned.  But while it has not always received widespread acclaim, legal aid has been a legal lifeline for people who would not otherwise have access to some measure of justice.

In The People’s Champ: Legal Aid from Slavery to Mass Incarceration, legal scholar Shaun Ossei-Owusu provides a broad history of legal aid in America.  He locates its origins much earlier than has typically been assumed, looking back to the antebellum period when abolitionists actively sought legal rights for fugitive slaves and the white citizens who gave them assistance.

This sweeping narrative of America’s legal aid efforts also reveals how central race was, and continues to be, to the delivery of legal services.  While the conventional assumption is that legal aid was focused on the poor, irrespective of race, Ossei-Owusu shows how race has always been central to the way in which legal aid programs operated.  This perspective illuminates another angle on the history of discrimination, incarceration, and the delivery of social justice in this country.