Happy freaking New Year. Welcome to the new normal. You know it, I know it—even the batshit-crazy climate-change deniers know it: we're toast. In Hot (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Mark Hertsgaard predicts what "Generation Hot" can look forward to in the next 50 years, and it ain't pretty: crops go extinct, vineyards turn from the noble art of wine-making to pimping raisins, the climate of Chicago comes to resemble that of Houston, and Houston officially becomes hell on earth. There's black humor but no laughs in Paul Clemens'sPunching Out (Doubleday), his year-long, boots-on-the-ground account of the slow death of a once proud Detroit auto plant, and a requiem for the working class. Our best hope for the future may lie in a new and rapidly growing segment of society, the oft maligned gaming class. According to visionary game designer Jane McGonigal,Reality Is Broken (Penguin) and alternate-reality computer games may be the best way to resurrect it, because gamers—unlike politicians—are natural collaborators, skilled problem solvers, and love a challenge. Set them on the mission of winning the battles over pollution, poverty, and global warming, and we just might be victorious. Get ready for The Big Payback (NAL), Dan Chamas's history of the business of hip-hop, the 40-year-long rise of rap music from the streets to the boardroom, from crack to Cristal.

Also this month: Caroline Leavitt plumbs the depths of grief and forgiveness in the lovely Pictures of You (Algonquin). Sean Manning, loving son, does The Things That Need Doing (Broadway) in his memoir honoring his mother.

Nicholas Delbanco muses on the Lastingness (Grand Central) of creativity. Seth Mnookin exposes the ways vaccine opponents have spread The Panic Virus (Simon & Schuster). Phoebe Hoban renders the intensity of painter Alice Neel (St. Martin's).

ELISSA SCHAPPELL

Debut novelist Hannah Pittard muses in The Fates Will Find Their Way (Ecco). Douglas Brinkley meditates on The Quiet World (HarperCollins). Aminatta Forna's novel is infused with The Memory of Love (Atlantic Monthly Press). William Hartung shoots down the Prophets of War (Nation Books) at Lockheed Martin. Robert Dallek again salutes J.F.K. in John F. Kennedy (Oxford). Colm Tóibín's stories fill up The Empty Family (Scribner). Teresa Strasser confesses to Exploiting My Baby (NAL). Robert Kurzban argues Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite (Princeton). —E.S.