This week, my colleagues and I recommend new books that tackle pressing concerns and chronicle lives devoted to political activism. With alarms about AI dominating the headlines, investigative journalist Sharon Weinberger reports on the relationship between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley in her chilling Valley of Death. The late Gloria Steinem’s new memoir, An Unexpected Life, looks back on her role in the women’s movement and offers advice for the next generations of revolutionaries. In Avalon, Rise, the new novel by Madeline ffitch, a small town fights interloping white supremacists.

Elsewhere in the newsletter, culture writer Chuck Klosterman talks about *Rock, a work of criticism as alternate history, while pioneering hip-hop DJ Grandmaster Flash tells the story behind his new book, Birth of a Culture, and novelist R.F. Kuang shares why she keeps switching genres.

Happy reading!

—David Varno