In December of each year Choice publishes its list of Outstanding Academic Titles. This prestigious list reflects the best in scholarly titles, both print and digital, reviewed by Choice during the previous year and brings with it the extraordinary recognition of the academic library community. The list is quite selective, containing approximately ten percent of some 5,000 works reviewed annually in Choice.

Congratulations to the following UNP authors whose books were chosen as Outstanding Academic Titles of 2025 by Choice!

Too Good to Be Altogether Lost by Pamela Smith Hill. In Too Good to Be Altogether Lost, Laura Ingalls Wilder expert Pamela Smith Hill dives back into the Little House books, closely examining Wilder’s text, her characters, and their stories. Hill reveals that these gritty, emotionally complex novels depict a realistic coming of age for a girl in the American West.

Turning the Power by Nathan Sowry. Turning the Power follows the forced indoctrination of Native American students and then details how each of them “turned the power,” using their English knowledge and work experience in the anthropological field to embrace, document, and preserve their Native cultures rather than abandoning their heritage.

Baseball before We Knew It by David Block. Now, in this twentieth anniversary edition of his classic work, David Block fills in more of baseball’s origin story by summarizing the discoveries and advancements he and his fellow historians have accomplished over the past two decades.

Starlings by Mike Stark. Starlings is a first-of-its-kind history of starlings in America, an oddball, love-hate story at the intersection of human folly, ornithology, and one bird’s tenacious will to endure.

Race and Resistance in Boston edited by Robert Cvornyek and Douglas Stark. With personal reminiscences from former New England Patriot Devin McCourty and journalist Bijan Bayne, as well as research from scholars of sport, Race and Resistance in Boston captures the intersection of Black history and sporting culture in America’s City on a Hill.

Rainbow Cattle Co. by Nicholas Villanueva. Rainbow Cattle Co. reveals a history of gay liberation through rodeo, which from the mid-1970s provided a safe space where LGBTQ athletes could focus on their sport and evolved into a highly successful philanthropic organization by the end of the twentieth century.

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