Carr, Jack & Scott, James. Targeted: Beirut: The 1983 Marine Barracks Bombing and the Untold Origin Story of the War on Terror. Atria/Emily Bestler. Sept. 2024. 432p. ISBN 9781668024355. $29.99. HIST

Best-selling thriller author and former Navy SEAL Carr (The Terminal List) starts a nonfiction series about terrorist attacks, beginning with the 1983 U.S. Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, in which 241 American servicemen were killed. He joins forces with historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist James M. Scott (Black Snow) to detail what happened.

Dalrymple, William. The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World. Bloomsbury. Sept. 2024. 400p. ISBN 9781639734146. $32.99. HIST

Award-winning Delhi-based Scottish historian Dalrymple (The Anarchy) returns with a cultural, religious, and intellectual history of India. In what amounts to a travelogue as well, he takes readers to the monasteries where Buddhism took hold, traces trade routes, and explores the innovations in math, art, science, and more that shaped civilization. With a 175K-copy first printing.

Graham, Elyse. Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II. Ecco: HarperCollins. Sept. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780063280847. $35. HIST

Written like a spy thriller, this work by historian Graham (SUNY Stony Brook; You Talkin’ to Me?) details how the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the CIA, recruited academics as spies at the start of WWII. Librarians, humanities professors, and more were trained in tradecraft and undertook missions that helped defeat the Nazis. With a 150K-copy first printing.

Harari, Yuval Noah. Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. Random. Sept. 2024. 496p. ISBN 9780593734223. $35. HIST

Best-selling historian Harari (Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem; Sapiens) considers how information has shaped the world. He considers witch hunts, Stalinism, Nazism, and populism as he looks at how the powerful have wielded information to get what they want. But he also offers hope for better uses of data.

Macintyre, Ben. The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World. Crown. Sept. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780593728093. $30. HIST

Macintyre (Operation Mincemeat), who often hits the best-seller lists with his true-life espionage thrillers, considers the 1980 siege on the Iranian Embassy in London, where 26 hostages were taken and, over the course of six days, negotiators navigated demands and politics and British special forces planned a rescue.

Milton, Giles. The Stalin Affair: The Impossible Alliance That Won the War. Holt. Sept. 2024. 336p. ISBN 9781250247582. $29.99. HIST

With his past hit Nathaniel’s Nutmeg headed to the screen, Milton offers a history of the Harriman Mission, the WWII effort to manage Stalin into a deal with the Allies to stand against Hitler. Based on new research and material, Milton details how Averell Harriman, Winston Churchill, and others navigated the mercurial bargain.

Nagle, Rebecca. By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land. Harper. Sept. 2024. 352p. ISBN 9780063112049. $32. HIST

Nagle, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and creator of the podcast This Land, blends history and modern reporting to investigate the forced removal of Indigenous people onto treaty lands in the United States. She also recounts the 2020 Supreme Court ruling that returned the largest acreage of tribal land in U.S. history. With a 100K-copy first printing.

O’Reilly, Bill & Dugard, Martin. Confronting the Presidents: No Spin Assessments from Washington to Biden. St. Martin’s. Sept. 2024. 464p. ISBN 9781250346414. $35. HIST

Discussing a range of presidents, O’Reilly and Dugard present portraits of the men, detailing what they think are the highs and lows, legacies, and backstories that matter. With a 750K-copy first printing.

Rubenstein, David M. The Highest Calling: Conversations on the American Presidency. S. & S. Sept. 2024. 400p. ISBN 9781668067628. $30. HIST

Rubenstein, best-selling author and host of PBS’s History with David Rubenstein, considers the U.S. presidency through interviews with officeholders and historians. By talking with most of the living presidents, and scholars such as Jon Meacham and Annette Gordon-Reed, he considers how these men have defined the nation.

Yaron, Lee. 10/7: 100 Human Stories. St. Martin’s. Sept. 2024. 288p. ISBN 9781250366283. $30. HIST

A journalist with the newspaper Haaretz writes about the October 2023 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel through the stories of 100 individuals. Based on interviews with survivors, first responders, and others from Israel and beyond, she offers a full account of the tragedy while also highlighting the consequences of the Netanyahu era.