1. The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster)

In his previous books about geniuses of the distant past, such as Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein, Isaacson steered clear of hagiography and incisively captured the special alchemy of their pioneering discoveries. In his latest captivating biography, he shines a spotlight a modern-day genius: Jennifer Doudna, a winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Isaacson captures Doudna’s formative years in Hawaii as she figured out her place in the world, reading James Watson’s The Double Helix in sixth grade, which helped to inspire her determination to develop CRISPR technology to cut and change DNA sequences. Since the promise of eradicating genetic diseases is so closely connected to the peril of misusing the technology and doing lasting harm to humanity, Isaacson suggests wisdom and caution. “To guide us, we will need not only scientists, but humanists,” he writes in this brilliant, yet highly accessible book. “And most important, we will need people who feel comfortable in both worlds, like Jennifer Doudna.”

2. Blood Gun Money: How America Arms Gangs and Cartels by Ioan Grillo (Bloomsbury)

British journalist Grillo has a well-deserved reputation as a fierce investigative reporter in Latin America, known for his coverage of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman. Now he focuses his attention on the “iron river” of legal guns that go on the black market through private sales, theft, and shady purchasing to make the Americas so murderous. Grillo explores policies in the Americas but he also reports from street corners of Baltimore, factories of Transylvania, jungles of the Andes, and gun vaults of Arizona in this shocking, arresting account of gun trafficking. “It delves into the twisted relationship between the illegal drug and gun trades,” he writes, “how they play off each other like angry lovers.”

3. How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue (Random House)

Following her gripping debut, Behold the Dreamers, which involved immigrants from Cameroon in New York and questions about power and privilege amid the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Mbue extends her gaze to an imaginary African village in the grip of an American oil megacorporation. But this riveting novel is about more than the poisoning of the food and water of the village; it extends to the complicit relationship between corporate power and the dictatorship with which it is enmeshed, and a kidnapping is involved. Mbue shifts perspectives through an evolving set of narrators, especially a precocious 10-year-old girl who goes to America for her education, and returns as an adult to contend with the degradation of her home.

4. Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction by Michelle Nijhuis (W.W. Norton)

Co-editor of The Science Writers’ Handbook, a project editor at the Atlantic, and a self-described “lapsed biologist” Nijhuis traces the history of wildlife conservation movements and the humans determined to protect animals from the other humans. Nijhuis begins in the late 19th century and considers the efforts of William Temple Hornaday, who later became director of the Bronx Zoo, to keep the bison population alive and the forceful Rosalie Edge, who founded a bird preserve, as well as the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which ended the “plume trade,” in which birds were killed for their feathers. Nijhuis continues with the ongoing efforts to protect animals from slaughter and preserve their habitats, eventually leading to advocacy organizations like the World Wildlife Fund. She is a gifted storyteller, capturing both the heroism of those fighting extinction and the reality of biodiversity experts who warn that many, many species are in danger of disappearing within decades.

5. Love Like That by Emma Duffy-Comparone (Holt)

“As it is with this kind of thing, Anita is finding the narrative of an affair much more reasonable than the living of it,” muses the narrator of Duffy-Comparone’s “The Zen Thing,” the first story in her stylish and sharp debut collection. Anita and her former professor boyfriend, who is decades older and still married, are vacationing with her parents and family at the Sea Breeze Motel, where the pool is surrounded by a carpet. Duffy-Comparone’s stories are rich with details, and generally they feature unlikable girls and women narrators in the clash of reality and fantasy and bring to mind the stories of Lorrie Moore. Duffy-Comparone conveys how characters flatten themselves to deal with sharp feelings – resentment and duty, guilt and pleasure – and she brings an ironic, wry, yet generous eye to the power dynamics of ordinary life, from the dad who “ran off with a bank teller with great teeth” to the high school English teacher and her privileged plagiarizing student.