Brettschneider, Corey. The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought To Defend It. Norton. Jul. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9781324006275. $32.50. HIST

Constitutional law and political science professor Brettschneider (The Oath and the Office) considers the assaults on democracy led by five different U.S. presidents (John Adams, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, and Richard Nixon) and the people who stopped them, including Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and Daniel Ellsberg.

Cooper, Paul. Fall of Civilizations: Stories of Greatness and Decline. Hanover Square: Harlequin. Jul. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9781335013415. $35. HIST

Based on his popular podcast Fall of Civilizations, Cooper’s book details how ancient kingdoms grew to power and then fell to ruin. He considers empires ranging across the Mediterranean, Asia, West Africa, and Central America, exploring the great centers of power of the Aztecs, Romans, and more. With a 75K-copy first printing.

Dunn, Daisy. The Missing Thread: A Women’s History of the Ancient World. Viking. Jul. 2024. 512p. ISBN 9780593299661. $35. HIST

The author of The Shadow of Vesuvius pens an accessible work on the women of antiquity, focusing on Sappho, Cleopatra, Agrippina, and others who shaped and changed their worlds. The book spans 3,000 years and crosses Asia Minor, the Persian Empire, and the Mediterranean.

Gibson, Susannah. The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women’s Movement. Norton. Jul. 2024. 384p. ISBN 9780393881387. $29.99. HIST

Historian Gibson (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?) offers a trade history of the 18th-century Bluestockings movement, a group of women who created intellectual lives for themselves and advocated for a broader role for all women. The Bluestockings pushed for women to be educated and were part of the long fight to unravel the patriarchy.

Sheppard, Kathleen. Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age. St. Martin’s. Jul. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9781250284358. $30. HIST

The famous story of finding King Tut’s tomb and the wonders of ancient Egypt is driven by the discoveries of men. Sheppard upends that storyline and introduces the redoubtable women who were there long before Howard Carter and his cohort—women explorers, travelers, and Egyptologists who worked during the Gilded Age and created a circle of expertise that built the field.

Taylor, Michael. Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin, and the Battle Between Science and Religion. Liveright: Norton. Jul. 2024. 416p. ISBN 9781324093923. $32.99. HIST

Taylor’s debut, The Interest, was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. He returns with a dinosaur book, this one illuminating the ways their discovery and resulting bestiary shifted religious authority, introducing questions that many raced to solved and others sought to quash. The book follows Charles Darwin, Mary Anning, and others as they changed the world.

Winegard, Timothy C. The Horse: A Galloping History of Humanity. Dutton. Jul. 2024. 544p. ISBN 9780593186084. $35. HIST

The best-selling author of The Mosquito offers a history of human development as seen through the domestication of the horse, whose power and speed changed the course of global human history. Winegard explores this relationship across agriculture, trade networks, military actions, colonialism, and more.