100 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY FEBRUARY 2, 2026
Marsloe and Lt. Paul Alfieri, the initiative enlisted underworld king- pins like Lucky Luciano to appeal to dockworkers to watch for Axis spies or U-boats attempting to refuel. The operation was extensive, but didn’t achieve much; U-boats had their own resupply ships, and no spies were caught. Later, Operation Underworld’s gangster assets helped recruit Italian immigrants to provide maps and intelligence contacts for the 1943 Allied invasions of Sicily. This effort bore fruit when mobsters con- nected Alfieri, who deployed to Sicily, with a local man who led him to a trove of Italian military documents, including artillery positions. Later chapters recount further adventures of ONI men and mobsters in Italy, including American mafioso Vito Genovese’s black market dealings in military supplies, and Marsloe’s hunt for the Italian frogmen who were attaching mines to Allied ships. (He didn’t find them until the war ended.) Though the authors goose their account with dialogue that reads like an NCIS script, there’s not much suspense to many of these tales. Still, dedicated history buffs will find some amusing anecdotes. (Apr.) The Bird with Flaming Red Feet: Seasons with an Uncommonly Common Seabird Maria Mudd Ruth . Skipstone, $24.95 (208p) ISBN 978-1-68051-725-5 Nature writer Ruth ( A Sideways Look at Clouds ) delivers a charming natural history of the pigeon guillemot, a seabird found along the Pacific coast from Alaska to Southern California. Despite their abundance, they aren’t widely known, Ruth explains, blaming their “misleading and awkwardly unpronounceable name.” (They’re auks, not pigeons, and guillemot, though it looks French, is pronounced GILL-uh- mott.) After a friend convinced her to volunteer to survey a guillemot colony in Puget Sound, she became captivated by the playful creatures, whose “fire-engine red webbed feet dangle comically beneath them like
loose rudders.” Ruth details the bird’s behaviors, including its tendency to stay within 15 miles from the shore in a “just right” zone of not too hot or too cold water; courtship rituals (the male paddles around a female, dipping his head in and out of the water, seemingly “head over heels”); and vocalizations (they have more than a dozen “trills, whistles, and screams”). Elsewhere, she celebrates the network of volunteers whose regular counts of the birds help scientists under- stand the health of Puget Sound at large. Though at times the author goes overboard with detail, including dense descriptions of museum col- lections and studies to distinguish the pigeon guillemot from other species, her enthusiasm is contagious. This is a treat for bird lovers. Photos. (Apr.) In Trees: An Exploration Robert Moor . Simon & Schuster, $30 (384p) ISBN 978-1-4767-3925-0 ★ ❘ Journalist Moor ( On Trails ) defines trees as “a way of being” in this impassioned examina- tion of their history and biology. Since human ancestors lived among their branches, trees have shaped humanity’s sense of time, self, and life, Moor argues. He recounts his own experi- ence climbing trees, including a course he took in England, where, high up off the ground, he felt “precarious, grateful, and, most of all, alive.” Elsewhere, he shares findings from tree science, explaining how they exhale by opening pores on their leaves that allow water to evaporate; shed and regrow their branches; and, in some species, change sexes throughout their lifetimes. Moor also explores his family tree and learns about a slave-owning ancestor, which prompts him to travel to Alabama to reckon with this legacy. Trees inspire his view of history: “The present grows, always, upon the deadwood of the past,” he writes. This “arborescent thinking” encourages him to participate in a protest atop a tree slated for felling and inspires his own desire for rootedness: “to stay put, to slow down, to learn my local ecology.” Synthesizing reportage and
philosophy, Moor’s nature writing is beautiful and refreshingly original. The result is a moving testament to the power of trees. (Apr.) Screen People: How We Entertained Ourselves into a State of Emergency Megan Garber. HarperOne, $27.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-341569-0 The radically shifting contempo- rary media environment has warped Americans’ interactions with one another and the world, accord- ing to this scathing but unfocused examination by Atlantic staff writer Garber ( On Misdirection ). Writing in response to feeling “chastened by the giddy optimism I once felt for the Internet,” the author seeks to identify the cause of the current influx of misinformation, alienation, division, online bullying, and “surreality.” She chalks it up to the oddity of social media’s “two-way screens.” In contrast to television’s one-way screen, which creates distinct divisions between “those who were watched and those who did the watching,” the internet, particularly social media, confuses these boundaries, making all users “actors and audiences,” and encour- aging the mistreatment of others because they “don’t seem real.” This environment has not only turned politics into show business, best exem- plified by the rise of Donald Trump (though Garber argues this occurred even earlier with former actor Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton’s televised sax-playing), but all interaction now carries the pressure of entertainment (she cites the bored response to the January 6 hearings). However, this incisive argument is muddled by frequent, somewhat off-topic asides on major news events as well as TV shows and films, ranging from Love Is Blind to the 2017 P.T. Barnum bio-pic The Greatest Showman . This meanders more than it makes it case. (Apr.) Life in Progress Hans Ulrich Obrist, trans. from the French by David Watson. Crown, $25 (160p) ISBN 979-8-217-08943-7 In this invigorating memoir, Swiss curator and art critic Obrist
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