POW!: When UK Punk Went Pop, 1980-84
Tony Fletcher
Trouser Press Books, 2026, $22.94
Tony Fletcher was barely out of adolescence when he found himself at the center of Britain’s post-punk explosion. In POW!, the Catskills-based music journalist and biographer recounts the dizzying years from 1980 to 1984, when his fanzine Jamming! grew into a magazine and opened doors to Paul McCartney, the Clash, Madness, Dexys Midnight Runners, Wham!, the Smiths, and more. Fletcher also promoted shows, played in a band, ran a record label with Paul Weller, and learned some bruising lessons about business, sex, and ambition. The result is both an insider’s chronicle and a coming-of-age story propelled by punk’s unruly aftershocks from the longtime Ulster County resident.
Hudson River Sailing
Capt. Steve Schwartz and Capt. James Malchow
Arcadia Publishing, 2026, $24.99
Long before highways and railroads hugged its banks, the Hudson River was a working waterway crowded with sloops, schooners, ferries, and cargo vessels. In Hudson River Sailing, Schwartz and Malchow trace four centuries of maritime history through archival photographs and accounts of the people and boats that shaped the region. The book moves from colonial trade and 19th-century shipyards to ice-yacht racing, the environmental legacy of Pete Seeger’s Clearwater, and contemporary sail-freight experiments aboard the Apollonia. More than a nautical scrapbook, it reveals sailing as a force in the region’s commerce, culture, recreation, and environmental revival.
The Rather Magnificent Bert Sommer: Woodstock’s Lost Treasure
Sharon Watts
Lucknow Press, 2026, $22
Bert Sommer earned Woodstock’s first standing ovation, yet vanished from the festival’s official mythology after his performance was omitted from both the film and soundtrack. In this book, Watts reconstructs the singer-songwriter’s remarkable, turbulent life: his teenage collaborations with the Left Banke’s Michael Brown, role in the original Broadway production of Hair, recording career, and slide into addiction and obscurity before his death at 41. Drawing on interviews with family, friends, and musicians, Watts restores a gifted, charismatic performer to the historical record while examining the fickleness of fame and the human cost of squandered promise.
This Kaleidoscope Career: Empowering Women to Build Unconventional Careers and Redefine Success
Helen Jonsen
De Gruyter, 2026, $24.99
The traditional career ladder was never built for the messy realities of women’s lives. In this book, Jonsen offers a more flexible metaphor: skills, experiences, passions, and setbacks rearranging themselves into new professional patterns. Drawing on her decades across journalism, entrepreneurship, digital media, and public service, along with the stories of dozens of women, Jonsen explores layoffs, caregiving pauses, burnout, ageism, reinvention, and late-career ambition. Practical exercises help readers identify the throughline connecting disparate roles and frame a nonlinear resume as evidence of adaptability, resourcefulness, and range—not as a record requiring apology.
Surviving a Patriarchy on Steroids
Stephanie Davies
Bink Books, 2026, $14.95
Written in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration, this book channels political despair into 13 personal essays. Kerhonkson writer and Lambda Literary honoree Stephanie Davies moves between the intimate and systemic, examining male violence, anti-trans politics, Hollywood’s “feminist” pretensions, family estrangement, language, witch hunts, and whether patriarchy has harmed her dog. Davies writes with fury, humor, and the hard-earned perspective of a queer feminist activist who once lived at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp. Yet the book’s governing question concerns endurance: how can women resist cruelty without surrendering their capacities for joy, solidarity, compassion, and love?
