Click here for additional new Prepub Alert columns  

Dougherty, Nancy. The Hangman and His Wife: The Life and Death of Reinhard Heydrich. Knopf. Apr. 2022. 704p. ed. by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt. ISBN 9780394543413. $35. Downloadable. BIOGRAPHY

Responsible for both the Security Service branch of the SS and the German Security Police, which included the Gestapo; chair of the Wannsee Conference and thus instrumental in formulating the Final Solution; and infamously known as the Hangman and the butcher of Prague, Reinhard Heydrich personified Nazi evil. PEN Girard Award–winning Doughtery’s full-scale biography tracks back to Heydrich’s unpromising youth before capturing the full horror of his actions and includes commentary from interviews she conducted with Heydrich’s wife. After Doughtery’s death in 2013, this volume was edited by distinguished critic Lehmann-Haupt, himself deceased in 2018.

Ford, Clyde W. Of Blood and Sweat: Black Lives and the Making of White Power and Wealth. Amistad: HarperCollins. Apr. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780063038516. $27.99. CD. ECONOMICS

A Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright honoree and author of Think Black, winner of the Nautilus Award for Social Change and Social Justice, Ford shows that throughout U.S. history, Black labor has been an integral aspect of everything from agriculture, politics, and finance to law, culture, and medicine. Yet Black men and women have not benefited from the wealth thus created, which Ford insists should frame conversations about social justice and reparitions today. With a 60,000-copy first printing.

Kelly, Kim. Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor. One Signal: Atria. Apr. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9781982171056. $27. HISTORY

Independent journalist and Teen Vogue labor columnist Kelly offers an expansive view of the U.S. labor movement, going back to the 1860s to show that one of the country’s first unions was founded by Black Mississippi freedwomen. From Jewish immigrant garment workers in early 1900s New York to Latinx and Asian American farmworkers in 1970s California, from Ida Mae Stull’s 1934 bid to work alongside men in an Ohio coalmine to Dorothy Lee Bolden’s founding of the National Domestic Worker's Union of America in the 1960s, Kelly highlights an inclusive fight for fair wages and better working conditions. With a 60,000-copy first printing.

Lim, Louisa. Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong. Riverhead. Apr. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780593191811. $28. HISTORY

Raised in Hong Kong and now living in Australia, Orwell Prize finalist Lim argues that any understanding of her in-the-news birthplace has been too long overshadowed by two key events: the British occupation in 1834 and the handover to China in 1997. Part-Chinese, part-English Lim aims to provide a thoroughgoing history, including a deep dive into Hong Kong’s origins (which she says are not well known or taught) and Beijing’s plans for the region. Personal portraits of everyday Hong Kongers range from calligraphers to amateur archaeologists to the King of Kowloon, a trash collector descended from royalty who’s famed for his street art.

Manjapra, Kris. Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation. Scribner. Apr. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9781982123475. $26. HISTORY

Born in the Caribbean of African and Indian parentage and currently an award-winning history professor at Tufts, Manjapra argues that slavery is essentially still with us because emancipation was incomplete, reinforcing rather than destroying the racial caste system. He speaks not only of the United States but the entire Atlantic world, defining five emancipations from the 1770s to the 1880s: the Gradual Emancipations of North America, the Revolutionary Emancipation of Haiti, the Compensated Emancipations of European overseas empires, the War Emancipation of the American South, and the Conquest Emancipations of Sub-Saharan Africa. All failed to provide restorative justice, he says, and all affirmed the notion of white supremacy. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Maurer, Kevin. Damn Lucky: One Man’s Courage During the Bloodiest Military Campaign in Aviation History. St. Martin’s. Apr. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781250274380. $29.99. HISTORY

During World War II, Second Lt. John “Lucky” Luckadoo of the Eighth Air Force’s 100th Bomb Group lived up to his nickname. A B-17 Flying Fortress pilot, he miraculously survived 25 missions during the initial bombing of France and Germany from England, considered the deadliest military campaign in aviation history; his group became known as “The Bloody 100th.” Maurer, an award-winning journalist and New York Times best-selling coauthor (No Easy Day), tells Maurer’s story. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Overy, Richard. Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931–1945. Viking. Apr. 2021. 1152p. ISBN 9780670025169. $35. HISTORY

A leading British military historian, Wolfson Prize winner Overy ( The Dictators) offers a revisionist history of World War II, arguing that it was the final imperial war following a long buildup of global imperial expansion. That buildup hit its last gasp with the territorial ambitions of Germany, Italy, and Japan, then plunged into the world’s bloodiest war, which might have ended territorial conquest by empires but had long-ranging consequences after 1945.

Scott-Clark, Cathy & Adrian Levy. The Forever Prisoner: The Full and Searing Account of the CIA’s Most Controversial Covert Program. Atlantic Monthly. Apr. 2022. 464p. ISBN 9780802158925. $30. HISTORY

Award-winning journalists Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy, whose The Siege earned the 2016 CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction, take an in-depth look at the torture program known as enhanced interrogation, instituted by the CIA following 9/11. It began shortly after 9/11 with the capture of Abu Zubaydah, thought to be third in command within al Qaeda, as U.S. Air Force psychologist James Mitchell and others were granted permission to interrogate him using "enhanced" techniques like water boarding that would have violated the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law had not government lawyers found ways to skirt that issue. A primary source for Alex Gibney’s eponymous documentary, appearing in December 2021,

Click here for additional new Prepub Alert columns