As the year nears its end, we’re excited to share a preview of some of our forthcoming Spring/Summer 2025 books. Save on pre-orders during our Holiday Sale!

Starlings by Mike Stark

Starlings (Bison Books, March) is a first-of-its-kind history of starlings in America that reveals an oddball, love-hate story at the intersection of human folly, ornithology, and one bird’s tenacious will to endure in hostile territory.

“Starlings is a smart, entertaining parable about human foolishness, avian ingenuity, and the unintended consequences of ecological meddling. With wit and verve, Mike Stark tells the epic story of the plucky starling—a bird that enchanted Mozart, exasperated farmers, and ultimately conquered America.”—Ben Goldfarb, author of Crossings and Eager

Too Good to Be Altogether Lost by Pamela Smith Hill

Pamela Smith Hill delves into Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House novels in Too Good to Be Altogether Lost (Nebraska, July), examining their texts, characters, settings, and themes to reveal how the books forever changed the literary landscape of children’s and young adult literature in ways that remain meaningful today.

“In her third major study of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s work, Pamela Smith Hill distinguishes herself as the preeminent Wilder scholar of this generation. Eminently readable, meticulously researched, without catering to passion or prejudice, Too Good to Be Altogether Lost places Wilder and the Little House books firmly in the pantheon of American literature.”—Eric A. Kimmel, winner of the Sydney Taylor Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Regina Medal

Georgia and Anita by Liza Bennet

Georgia O’Keeffe knew as soon as she met Anita Pollitzer that they had nothing in common. Anita looked like a china doll, small boned and delicate, and obviously well-to-do in her fashionable tunics and hobble skirts. She had the kind of mouth that settled naturally into a smile, which irritated O’Keeffe, who had no time for dewy-eyed girls. Yet this first impression was the beginning of a lifelong friendship that had a tremendous impact on both women and on twentieth-century America. In Georgia and Anita (Nebraska, May) Liza Bennett tells the little-known story of their enduring friendship and its ultimately tragic arc.

“A masterpiece, an exquisitely told story of love, art, feminism, family, and the making of the modern age, propelled by the deep and turbulent current of a decades-long friendship between two extraordinary women.”—Frederick E. Allen, former editor at American Heritage and New York magazines

The Bears of Grand Teton by Sue Consolo-Murphy

The Bears of Grand Teton (Bison Books, April) is the first comprehensive history of bears, black and grizzly, and their interactions with people in Grand Teton National Park and the surrounding area of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It is also a personal account by Sue Consolo-Murphy, who spent thirty years as a wildlife manager for the National Park Service.

“A masterpiece of well-researched history, colorful lore, pioneering science, and the savvy of personal experience. Sue Consolo-Murphy, uniquely qualified to write this book by virtue of her decades of productive work on behalf of the region’s bears, has given us the authoritative and richly textured tale we’ve long needed. From here on out, anyone hoping to come to terms with Teton bears should start by reading this book.”—Paul Schullery, author of The Bear Doesn’t Know

Baseball’s First Superstar by Alan D. Gaff

A superstar long before that term was coined, Christopher “Christy” Mathewson became an icon of sportsmanship. He was posthumously elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame at its first induction ceremony in 1936. In Baseball’s First Superstar (Nebraska, May) Alan D. Gaff brings Mathewson to life through Mathewson’s own writings and those of others, largely lost to history until now.

“If Christy Mathewson didn’t exist, baseball would have had to invent him. The game had matured to the point where genuine heroes were needed. Alan Gaff’s well researched book gives us a fresh look at Matty, just in time for the centennial of his passing.”—Marty Appel, a New York Yankees historian and author of Pinstripe Empire and Casey Stengel

Into the Void by John Youskauskas and Melvin Croft

The world had been fascinated with astronauts and spaceflight since well before the first crewed launches in 1961, when Yuri Gagarin, Alan Shepard, and John Glenn became household names. But when Alexei Leonov of the Soviet Union exited his spacecraft in March of 1965, a new era in spaceflight began. And when Ed White, clad in his gleaming space suit with a large American flag on his left shoulder, eased himself outside his Gemini spacecraft later that year, Americans too had a new space hero. They also learned a new acronym: EVA, short for extravehicular activity, more commonly known as “spacewalking.” In Into the Void (Nebraska, May) John Youskauskas and Melvin Croft tell the unique story of those who have ventured outside the spacecraft into the unforgiving vacuum of space as we set our sights on the moon, Mars, and beyond.

“Working in a space suit in hard vacuum is likely the most demanding test of an astronaut’s physical skills and mental concentration. Into the Void reveals in fascinating detail how spacewalkers, flight controllers, and suit engineers mastered this difficult art to explore the moon, recover crippled spacecraft, and build an expansive space station on the high frontier. Lock your helmet ring, open chapter 1, and float outside!”—Tom Jones, veteran spacewalker and astronaut and author of Space Shuttle Stories

90 Seconds to Midnight by Charlotte Jacobs

90 Seconds to Midnight (Potomac Books, June) tells the gripping and thought-provoking story of Setsuko Nakamura Thurlow, a thirteen-year-old girl living in Hiroshima in 1945, when the city was annihilated by an atomic bomb. Struggling with grief and anger, Thurlow set out to warn the world about the horrors of a nuclear attack in a crusade that has lasted seven decades.

“Charlotte Jacobs has a most compelling story to tell—the biography of Setsuko Nakamura Thurlow, a survivor of Hiroshima. Only biography has the power to convey what happened at the dawn of the nuclear age.”—Kai Bird, coauthor of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Mrs. Cook and the Klan by Tom Chorneau

On the day she was murdered, Myrtle Underwood Cook boasted to local authorities about new evidence of a major bootlegging ring operating out of the Rock Island train depot behind her house in a small farming town in eastern Iowa. Then, as she sat at her parlor window sewing, she took a single slug through the heart. She was president of the local temperance union; her killing made the front page of the New York Times. The next day her funeral made national news due to the eerie presence of a small army from the Ku Klux Klan, its members donned in full regalia, drawn from three surrounding states. Mrs. Cook and the Klan (Bison Books, March) is a true crime investigation that not only sheds new light on Myrtle Underwood Cook’s unsolved killing but also explores the confluence of the social, political, and economic forces that brought the Klan, lawless street gangs, a local mob boss, and the temperance movement together in a small American town.

“Booze, law, politics, temperance, racism, and organized crime all converged one hundred years ago in Iowa. Tom Chorneau uncovers the origins of how each of these components became engrained in society, making a small Iowa town a microcosm of the broader country and dooming Mrs. Cook.”—Brian Haara, author of Bourbon Justice: How Whiskey Law Shaped America

In French author Tristan Garcia’s Memories from the Jungle (Nebraska, May) chimpanzee Doogie is marooned in the jungle after being raised by human beings. With his exceptional intelligence, Doogie must confront not only the dangers of the natural world but also his place in human and nonhuman society.

“Embedded within this whimsical wild ride to a speculative future is a sendup of B. F. Skinner’s theory of behaviorism. In Christopher Beach’s adept translation, Tristan Garcia’s language play brings across the sympathetic and humanlike chimpanzee Doogie and his quest for a middle ground between nature and nurture.”—Elizabeth Kadetsky, author of On the Island at the Center of the Center of the World

Tell Me About Your Bad Guys by Michael Dowdy

Combining lyric essay, memoir, and cultural critique, Michael Dowdy’s meditations on fathering take his daughter’s unruly questions as a guide, seeking a language to match his desire to be an antipatriarchal father.

“In Michael Dowdy’s superb essay collection Tell Me about Your Bad Guys, a father thinks through what it means to raise a child while reckoning with all that is terrifying and broken in this world. Here we bear witness to the tender intimacy between parent and child, which simultaneously never lets us look away from climate change, gun violence, the migrant crisis, and more. These agile, moving investigations of how to love and think are a must-read for anyone trying to care for another in a violent world, which is to say, everyone.”—Tessa Fontaine, author of The Red Grove

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For the full list of books that will be published throughout the Spring/Summer 2025 season, check out our catalog!