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Avlon, John. Lincoln and the Fight for Peace. S. & S. Feb. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9781982108120. $30. HISTORY

Baime, A.J. White Lies: The Double Life of Walter F. White and America’s Darkest Secret. Mariner: HarperCollins. Feb. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780358447757. $30. BIOGRAPHY

Chapin, Dwight. The President's Man: The Memoirs of Nixon's Trusted Aide. Morrow. Feb. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780063074774. $28.99. MEMOIR

Fischer, David Hackett. African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Freedom. S. & S. Feb. 2022. 800p. ISBN 9781982145095. $40. HISTORY

Kirchick, James. Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington . Holt. Feb. 2022. 912p. ISBN 9781627792325. $29.99. HISTORY

Randall, Willard Sterne. The Founders' Fortunes: How Money Shaped the Birth of America. Dutton. Feb. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781524745929. $29. HISTORY

Thompson, Erin L. Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments. Norton. Feb. 2022. 224p. ISBN 9780393867671. $25.95. HISTORY

Thompson, Neal. The First Kennedys: The Humble Roots of an American Dynasty. Mariner: HarperCollins. Feb. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780358437697. $28. HISTORY

In Lincoln and the Fight for Peace, CNN anchor Avlon addresses President Abraham Lincoln’s conciliatory vision regarding the post–Civil War era, aiming to show how it influenced activists from Nelson Mandela to Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr. (75,000-copy first printing). The New York Times best-selling Baime’s White Lies profiles Black civil rights activist Walter F. White, who figured largely in the Harlem Renaissance and the NAACP while leading a dual life as a reporter investigating racial violence in the South because he could pass for white (40,000-copy first printing). Chapin, The President’s Man, here recalls his years as personal aide, special assistant, and finally deputy assistant to President Richard Nixon as the 50th anniversary of Watergate looms. In African Founders, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Fischer shows that enslaved Africans brought with them skills ranging from animal husbandry to ethics that profoundly shaped colonial and early U.S. society (100,000-copy first printing). A conservative gay reporter who has received awards from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, Kirchick dug through multitudinous declassified documents and interviewed over 100 people to write Secret City, which profiles the impact of the LGBTQ+ community on Washington, DC, politics since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. A multi-award-winning journalist and professor emeritus at Champlain College, Randall intends to show that not only were The Founders' Fortunes pledged in support of the Revolutionary War but that concerns about their fortunes helped prompt it. A professor of art crime at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Thompson is an acknowledged expert in the national debate surrounding Smashing Statues—should controversial public monuments be pulled down or allowed to stand? Journalist/author Thompson ( Kickflip Boys) uses newly released records to tell the story of Patrick and Bridget Kennedy, who fled Ireland’s Great Famine for Boston, MA, and became The First Kennedys, founders of a political dynasty.

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