Newsmax Rising Bestsellers – Week of May 24, 2021

The Newsmax Rising Bestsellers list will do more than stimulate your mind. These reads may challenge your beliefs, broaden your perspectives, excite your curiosities, or widen your imagination.

These books may not necessarily appear on the official New York Times list of bestsellers, but they're the ones our Newsmax audience is reading, talking about, sharing with friends, and buying.

Here are the Newsmax Rising Bestsellers for the week of May 24, 2021:

1. “Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Trump’’ by Edward Isaac Dovere (Viking) Dovere, an award-winning political journalist for The Atlantic, offers the “inside story’' of how the embattled Democratic party, seeking a direction for its future during the Trump years, successfully regained the White House. According to publisher Viking, this is a “searing, fly-on-the-wall account of the Democrats’ journey through recalibration and rebirth’’ as Dovere traces this process from the early days in the wilderness of the post-Obama era, though the jockeying of potential candidates, to the backroom battles and exhausting campaigns, to the unlikely triumph of the man few expected to win, and through the inauguration and insurrection at the Capitol. (Nonfiction)

2. “Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell’’ by Jason L. Riley (Basic Books) Riley traces the life of the famed economist and social theorist and his rise from African American orphan in the Jim Crow South to one of the nation’s foremost public intellectuals. Sowell, who is a former Newsmax columnist, has boldly attacked liberal orthodoxy, the civil-rights establishment, and much of the mainstream media — bringing him both praise and criticism, the latter of which Riley says has caused a lack of acknowledgment of his scholarship among critics who prioritize political correctness. (Nonfiction)

3. “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters’’ by Steven Koonin (BenBella Books) Koonin, who served as Undersecretary for Science in the U.S. Department of Energy, argues the while the media, politicians, and other prominent voices have declared “the science is settled” on climate change, in reality the issue has been “corrupted by misunderstanding and misinformation.’’ And he tackles society’s response, using data-driven analysis to explain why many proposed “solutions” would be ineffective, and how alternatives like adaptation and, if necessary, geoengineering will ensure humanity continues to prosper. (Nonfiction)

4. “The Devil's Playbook: Big Tobacco, Juul, and the Addiction of a New Generation’’ by Lauren Etter (Crown) This corporate exposé from Etter, an investigative reporter for Bloomberg News, details the “greed and deception’’ involving “one of the biggest botched deals in business history’’ — leading to the vaping epidemic and slew of vape-linked deaths, according to publisher Crown. Biographer Jonathan Eig called it “the best business book I’ve read since ‘Bad Blood’ … A riveting story, meticulously researched and almost impossible to put down.” (Nonfiction)

5. “Faithful Presence: The Promise and the Peril of Faith in the Public Square’’ by Bill Haslam (Thomas Nelson) The two-term Republican governor of Tennessee reveals how faith — too often divisive and contentious — can be a redemptive and unifying presence in the public square. He argues that too often, Christians end up shaping their faith to fit their politics rather than forming their politics to their faith. He also discusses partisanship in our divided era; the most essential character trait for a public servant; how we cannot escape “legislating morality”; the answer to perpetual outrage; and how to think about the separation of church and state. (Nonfiction)