Your Fellow Americans by Peter Santenello

YOUR FELLOW AMERICANS by Peter Santenello is a wonderful collection of “Dispatches from Across the Country We Call Home.” Santenello has a YouTube channel with over four million followers and pulled many of these stories from those encounters. He divides the book into four broad sections. In the first, he looks at “groups of people living in the modern world and yet almost alongside the modern world,” travelling to an Amish outpost in northern Florida, to East LA, and to Alaska. Santenello comments on “the thing that keeps hitting me each and every time I find myself somewhere new is how much people here care -- about their families, their towns, their little corners on the map.” Next, he writes about “The Underdogs” with interviews in Central Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta. That is followed by a section with stories about endurance and overcoming obstacles from the Pacific coast of northern California and on to an island in the Chesapeake Bay. The final section, “Pioneering Spirit,” veers towards stories of exploration and adventure; here, Santenello provides insight into one of his first travel experiences, a post high school road trip on a tight budget (in a repurposed van named Vandura) with his best friend Steve. Santenello clearly has a passion for travel and for learning about people and his essays are well presented and generally optimistic. He writes, “As America celebrates its 250th anniversary I think we could all use some stories that leave us feeling good about our country.” Interested readers may also want to pursue Judy Woodruff’s America at a Crossroads, or the Make America Dinner Again movement, or even expand upon the idea of creating connections with titles like David Brooks’ How to Know a Person or Nicholas Epley’s A Little More Social.

The New Geography if Innovation by Mehran Gul

Named a Financial Times Best Book of the Year for 2025 and one of Forbes’ Best Business Books of 2025, THE NEW GEOGRAPHY OF INNOVATION by Mehran Gul was just published in the US. Gul writes about “The Global Contest for Breakthrough Technologies” by sharing anecdotes from eight countries across three regions: China, Singapore, and South Korea in Asia; Switzerland, Germany, and United Kingdom (London) in Europe; and Canada and Silicon Valley in North America. He bases his comments on extensive interviews with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and other researchers.  Gul’s emphasis on cultural and historic factors is particularly interesting and informative. Although he does not appear to argue for specific policies or an overarching theory, he does point to trends like increased efforts to bring products to market more quickly and, according to the Asian Review of Books, to “the various components necessary for large-scale, ongoing technical innovation: a government providing public goods like education and infrastructure, functioning capital markets, investors with a tolerance for failure, a culture that encourages start-ups, openness to immigration, and enough consumers to scale up.” The Wall Street Journal concludes its review by noting that THE NEW GEOGRAPHY OF INNOVATION is “a thoughtful discussion of how economic geography is changing. If you’re concerned that the U.S. is losing its capacity for innovation, Mr. Gul suggests, you shouldn’t worry. But if you’re concerned about maintaining U.S. technological dominance, maybe you should.”  This is an accessible read with a global perspective. 

The Power of Geography by Tim Marshall

THE POWER OF GEOGRAPHY by Tim Marshall (most recently The Age of Walls) is another entry in his series on the politics of place. In this latest text, Marshall discusses “Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World.” In THE POWER OF GEOGRAPHY he looks to the future and focuses on regions as disparate as Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Spain. As with Australia, Marshall provides a bit of history (e.g., penal colony; world’s sixth largest country), notes some ongoing challenges (e.g., climate change means increased risk of heat waves, droughts, and forest fires; plus rising sea levels), and diplomatic issues (e.g., proximity to China; difficulty defending such a long coastline and potential for further cyberattacks). His section on Space is likely to be of high interest to our students. There, he stresses the need for cooperation and in other chapters also discusses political ramifications for areas like Iran, Greece, Turkey and the Sahel which stretches across a dozen countries in northern Africa. THE POWER OF GEOGRAPHY received a starred review from Booklist. Written and published in 2021, it failed to address the war in Ukraine, something which I vividly remember being predicted at a lecture I attended at Stanford University roughly a decade ago. Marshall, though, has analyzed that ongoing tension in a previous books (Prisoners of Geography has a chapter on Russia) and in more recent articles like this one in New Statesman. 

Going Remote by Matthew E. Kahn

GOING REMOTE by Matthew E. Kahn concentrates on “How the Flexible Work Economy Can Improve Our Lives and Our Cities.” Kahn, a professor at the University of Southern California, has written extensively on environmental and urban economics issues. In this case, he definitely uses an economics lens to look at work from home (WFH) with sections on the short- and medium-term gains for workers, plus the reactions by firms and local governments. His introduction provides an excellent overview of these general trends. One point that surprised me a bit is his frequent references to cities like Seattle and San Francisco (109 and 50 mentions, respectively) which, admittedly, are likely to see more WFH; however, Kahn scarcely comments on some potentially “hot” markets like Raleigh, Nashville, or even Atlanta (1, 4 and 6 mentions). As such, his text seems more theoretical than a “how-to” guide for workers, firms or cities, although he definitely is a proponent of remote work, saying “the ability to unbundle where we live from where [we] work creates new opportunities for many of us.” Roughly fifteen percent of the book is devoted to helpful notes and there are several additional pages filled with “Recommended Reading.

8 Billion and Counting and Crossing Borders

8 BILLION AND COUNTING by Jennifer D. Sciubba is an examination of demographic trends and their policy implications, or, as the subtitle explains, a look at “How Sex, Death, and Migration Shape Our World.”  Sciubba is an associate professor of International Studies at Rhodes College and a former demographics consultant to the United States Department of Defense. In this new text she wades through a great deal of statistics and offers plenty of numbers for the data geeks in her audience.  Simultaneously, she also stretches her readers' imaginations regarding social and cultural shifts.  For example, she describes extremes, referencing the aging population in Japan and the growth in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Nigeria whose population is projected to exceed that of the United States by 2050. In addition to discussing fertility rates and lifespans, Sciubba also turns to developing concerns like climate migration, a topic of interest in the past few years for our Junior Theme students. She devotes a chapter to “Warfare and Wombfare,” commenting “as the pace of demographic change accelerates – particularly ethnic, racial, and religious composition – we should expect identity conflicts to intensify.”  Another powerful chapter on economic impacts is titled “Marx versus Malthus.” Overall, Sciubba is very informative and encourages further probing; roughly thirty percent of the text is devoted to notes which will be invaluable for other researchers. Her surprisingly stimulating look at the future has also made me curious to investigate some of the related titles of interest to her readers such as The Human Tide, The Devil Never Sleeps, and The Agile College.

CROSSING BORDERS by Ali Noorani is subtitled “The Reconciliation of a Nation of Immigrants” and focuses more narrowly on the immigration experience for individuals and families. President and CEO of the advocacy group named National Immigration Forum, Noorani shares stories based on his travels and conversations with immigrants and the organizations who support them. He writes eloquently of changes since the 2008 financial collapse, concluding that “Skepticism about immigration has become fear of immigrants” and that “By weaponizing immigration, Trump mainstreamed hate.” Noorani details visits to cities and towns in Arizona, Texas, and Honduras to support his views on the need for immigration reform. He cites numerous other examples and political actions, although seems to struggle to summarize key points. Roughly a third of this text is filled with notes, a bibliography, and a useful index. A list of resources  and contact information for places like the Migration Policy Institute, RAICES (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, in Texas) or even Pew Research Center would have been a valuable addition.