“To change how we talk is to change who we are,” notes Andrew Marantz toward the end of Antisocial, his breathtaking, page-turning foray into the clash between Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and online extremists. He continues, “More and more every day, how we talk is a function of how we talk on the internet.”

A staff writer for The New Yorker and contributor to “Radiolab” and “The New Yorker Radio Hour,” Marantz spent three years immersed in two different worlds. Rather like a war correspondent, he focused on both the new social media tycoons and a variety of online extremists.

And while the title might lead you to expect a dense, academic treatment, Marantz’s narrative is like going along for the ride in a foreign landscape, bouncing into the unknown on a bumpy road. The book begins, for instance, with a lively, rather humorous foray into the 2017 DeploraBall, a party in Washington, D.C., for, as one participant told Marantz, “all the big names from MAGA Twitter.”

Marantz has a keen eye for character, and Antisocial sometimes reads like a novel about people with oversize personalities. But his intentions are serious, and ultimately Antisocial is an insightful look at two powerful forces shaping American society. There are the social media entrepreneurs motivated by a vision of the internet bringing people closer together and toppling traditional media gatekeepers and outlets. And, often in direct opposition to that vision, there are extremists, conspiracy theorists, white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

Traveling with Marantz is indeed a dizzying and often disturbing ride. Depending on what readers know about social media, the characters Marantz encounters may or may not be familiar names. But some of the ideas and positions they espouse are increasingly impossible to ignore.

Whether you use social media or not, Antisocial is an important look at groups that are molding the nation. “We like to assume that the arc of history will bend inexorably toward justice,” Marantz notes in his prologue, “but this is wishful thinking.”

Early in his political ascent, Russian president Vladimir Putin floated the idea of giving his New Year’s Eve address live at midnight in each of Russia’s 11 time zones. Despite his obvious energy and the rapidity of air flight, the stunt never happened. But it did give authors Nina Khrushcheva and Jeffrey Tayler the idea for this book. Could they discover the “soul” of this massive nation by visiting cities in each zone, zigzagging leisurely from Kaliningrad on Russia’s western edge to the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Far East? Both writers bring a good deal of useful background to their journey. Khrushcheva is the great-granddaughter of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Tayler lives in Moscow, is married to a Russian and has written of his earlier travels across the country.

If Russia has a soul—an irreducible essence—it may well be its ambivalence about its place in the world, its simultaneous admiration and resentment of the more developed (and more decadent) West. It often mimics what it publicly deplores. In spite of Russia’s much-touted embrace of capitalism, vestiges of its communist past are everywhere. Virtually every town has a Lenin statue. A more sanitized version of Stalin also surfaces here and there. Russians, the authors contend, subscribe to the “great man” theory of history, believing that strong rulers, rather than changing circumstances, “determine the course of events.”

Throughout this chronicle, there are vivid descriptions of the climate, monuments and apparent public mood in each place the authors visit, along with interviews. Oddly, however, there is no discussion of the media—what the newspapers and magazines are saying (or not saying), what’s popular on television or how local and national news is conveyed and received. Despite Russia’s rough spots, the authors conclude, “People are, as a rule, living better than ever before, freer than ever before.”

On Election Day in 2016, pundits were confident that Wisconsin would be a “blue wall” that would lead Hillary Clinton to victory. The next day, however, revealed a different story. Instead of showing Clinton the same support they had given Obama in the previous two presidential elections, Wisconsin went for Trump by 22,748 votes.

Political commentators were flummoxed. How could Wisconsin, historically the most progressive state in the Union, have turned overnight to the right? After all, Wisconsin had served as the legislative laboratory for the rest of the country, passing reform laws that later inspired the New Deal. Furthermore, Wisconsin’s unions could be reliably counted on to turn out the vote for Democrats. What had caused such a sudden shift?

According to journalist Dan Kaufman, the answer is that the shift did not occur overnight. A native Wisconsinite now based in New York, Kaufman argues that Wisconsin’s swing to Trump is the product of a decades-long effort by conservative think tanks, PACs and donors to dismantle Wisconsin’s progressive ethos and replace it with a right-to-work, anti-regulatory government. The result, according to Kaufman, is a gerrymandered state with weakened environmental laws, poor educational results and increased poverty.

Democrats do not get off lightly, either. Kaufman claims that the Democratic Party’s neglect of the industrial workers who made up the bulk of their union support had a significant impact on the outcome of the 2016 election. He also observes that job losses from NAFTA and the recession made union workers particularly susceptible to Governor Scott Walker’s divide-and-conquer tactics. Democrats, he argues, took Wisconsin for granted, and gave the unions little or no support in devastating political battles. Weakened, they had neither the ability nor the desire to turn out the vote for Clinton.

Kaufman weaves recent political events, Wisconsin history and the stories of real people caught in the political whirlpool—union leaders, Native Americans, grassroots organizers—into a meticulous and compelling exploration of a consequential political metamorphosis. It is essential reading to understand how we arrived where we are today.

Dan Rather has enjoyed something of a renaissance recently, emerging as the leading force behind News and Guts, an online outlet that provides critiques of and insights into current happenings in Washington, D.C. It’s been gratifying to see this lion of the press corps get a second act, after a semi-scandal involving his reporting of unverified documents relating to President George W. Bush’s Air National Guard service hastened his exit from CBS News in 2007.

Now, Rather delivers What Unites Us, in which he reflects upon what it means to be a patriotic American. Written with collaborator Elliot Kirschner, the book is a deeply felt reminder of what is the best of America.

“Our Constitution, our rule of law, our traditions, our work ethic, our empathy, our pragmatism, and our basic decency,” he writes. “As I have seen over the years, when we cultivate these instincts, we soar. When we sow seeds of division, hatred, and small-mindedness, we falter.”

Given the Twitter wars, the tragedy in Charlottesville and the general vitriol currently ruling our national conversation, What Unites Us is at times almost unbearably poignant. Yet Rather’s words provide a sort of salve—and clear thinking about how to recover from these ugly times. He reflects on the role of the press, the need for sound science in making policy and public education as a pillar of patriotism. Deeply grounded in his upbringing in segregated Houston, Rather reminds us how far we have come as a nation.

Although this is a set of essays, not a memoir, Rather adds another dimension to the book by sharing remembrances from his remarkable life. This is a man who has so often been in the front row of history. He recalls drinking cola with civil rights activist Medgar Evers as they talked about voter repression in the 1960s South and rushing to the studio the morning of September 11, 2001.

What Unites Us is a passionate treatise on preserving the best of America and letting go of that which makes us weaker.

In a recent Salon interview, Georgetown University professor and political analyst Michael Eric Dyson asked, “[H]ow do you carry out a criticism of those with whom you disagree without losing your humanity or questioning theirs in the process?” He answers his own question in The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America. Driven by the hopes Obama raised with his historical rise to power, Dyson delivers a provocative scrutiny of a presidency as complex as the ongoing issues of race, and he does so with grace and wary empathy.

Some of Obama’s fellow African Americans, like civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and academic-activist Cornel West, can be brutally critical, while others, like Al Sharpton and Andrew Young, have been candid but kinder. Nationwide, blacks who voted in record numbers to help elect Obama have mostly given him a pass, according to Dyson, hesitant to speak too harshly because he is one of their own.

Dyson, though also black, is none of these. His review of Obama’s presidency is as unsparing as a parent practicing tough love. The love is there, but it grows tired. Why, he asks, does Obama so often point out the failings of his fellow African Americans while minimizing the context of racial inequality in America? Why can’t the president be as forthcoming as his wife Michelle in acknowledging the trials of being the first black family to occupy the White House? Why does he speak out about racial injustices less forcefully than his former attorney general, Eric Holder? Dyson carries his lengthy list of disappointments and complaints into the Oval Office and a revealing interview with the president himself.

Then come Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddy Gray and Charleston. The black president who had seemed so reluctant to address his own blackness is finally moved to speak from his spirit, in a eulogy that seems to deliver, Dyson says, on “the promise of his black presidency” at last. Time will tell whether Obama can include racial progress in his legacy. Dyson is cautiously holding onto that hope.

Priscilla Kipp is a writer in Townsend, Massachusetts.

Here we are, well into the campaign for the 2016 presidential primaries, complete with televised debates, Twitter feuds and weekly sendups on “Saturday Night Live.” And who knew we had Theodore Roosevelt to thank for all this?

Such education comes courtesy of Geoffrey Cowan in Let the People Rule, an entertaining account of how Roosevelt and his minions created and benefited from 13 primaries in the run-up to the 1912 presidential election—an election in which Woodrow Wilson ultimately prevailed over incumbent William Howard Taft and a back-from-retirement Roosevelt.

Roosevelt battled Taft’s entrenched forces for the Republican nomination, championing “the right of the people to rule.” His success in the primaries made life difficult for Taft right up to the party’s convention in Chicago, but Taft’s network was too much to overcome. That’s when Roosevelt’s supporters famously walked out and had a convention of their own.

Roosevelt admirers looking for a love letter to their hero had best look elsewhere, though. As Cowan makes clear, Roosevelt’s No. 1 objective was returning to the presidency, and he was willing to do anything to achieve that goal, such as repeatedly denying the rights of African Americans from the Deep South.

Roosevelt’s charismatic personality notwithstanding, the real stars of Let the People Rule are the political operators—like the reporter who doubled as a campaign strategist or the clandestine organizer of a “draft Roosevelt” campaign that even Roosevelt’s daughter called “somewhat cooked.”

It wasn’t pretty, but that’s politics—then and now.

This article was originally published in the January 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.