The New York Times New Books Recommended This Week (Nov 10, 2016)
Sometimes looking at ALL the books on the NY Times bestseller lists is overwhelming and just a bit too time consuming for the start of your week. In each Book Review there is a recommendation list you can use to simplify your search for some new books to put on your “TO READ” list.
THE ATTENTION MERCHANTS: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads, by Tim Wu. (Knopf, $28.95.) The history of the slow, steady annexation of our attention — whether by television commercials or war propaganda or tweets — is the subject of this expertly synthesized survey by Tim Wu, the star professor at Columbia Law School who coined the term “net neutrality.” The critic Jennifer Senior especially loved the book’s ending, which is “written so rousingly that it just may make you reconsider your priorities.” Delete your accounts.
ROGUE HEROES: The History of the SAS, Britain’s Secret Special Forces Unit 
That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War, by Ben Macintyre. (Crown, $28.) Nobody tells a true-life spy story with as much excitement and style as Ben Macintyre. Dig into his latest, an entertaining history of the S.A.S. from its North African desert origins, to watch the good guys outwit the Nazis.
CITY OF DREAMS: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York, by Tyler Anbinder. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $35.) “Immigrants, we get the job done” is one of the many lines from the musical “Hamilton” that so many of us have had stuck in our heads this past year. (It’s from the song “Yorktown [The World Turned Upside Down],” for those who don’t know.) Anbinder’s history tells the much broader story, offering a richly textured guide to the past of the nation’s chief immigrant city.
THE MAN WHO KNEW: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan, by Sebastian Mallaby. (Penguin Press, $40.) This thoughtful and provocative biography says Greenspan knew the dangers of financial success. Why then, Sebastian Mallaby asks, didn’t he put on the brakes? A thorough account of the former Fed chairman’s rise depicts him as political to a fault.
THE WORD DETECTIVE: Searching for the Meaning of It All at the Oxford English 
Dictionary, by John Simpson. (Basic Books, $27.99.) From a former chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, a charmingly frank account of a 35-year career dedicated to lexicography.
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY: A Love Story, by John Kaag. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) In this book, John Kaag, a philosophy professor, discovers a hidden library that changes his life. What follows is a spirited lover’s quarrel with the individualism in our national thought.
THE MOTHERS, by Brit Bennett. (Riverhead, $26.) 
Brit Bennett marks herself as a young writer to watch in her much-buzzed-about (and already best-selling) debut. In this complex, ferociously moving novel, three young people come of age in a black community in Southern California.
THE MORTIFICATIONS, by Derek Palacio. (Tim Duggan, $27.) This sweeping debut novel, full of literary allusions, follows a Cuban family’s journey to America and back.
RICH AND PRETTY, by Rumaan Alam. 
(Ecco/HarperCollins, $25.99.) Two friends — one getting married, the other the maid of honor: It’s a familiar premise, but in this astute debut novel, the characters and situation feel fresh and three-dimensional.