Newsmax Rising Bestsellers – Week of March 15, 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 March 15, 2021:

1. "This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race” by Nicole Perlroth (Bloomsbury) Perlroth, an award-winning cybersecurity journalist for The New York Times, looks at the cyberweapons market, which she calls the most secretive, invisible, government-backed market on earth — one that is ushering in a new kind of global warfare. One weapon is the "zero day," a software bug that allows a hacker to break into your devices and silently spy on your iPhone, dismantle the safety controls at a chemical plant, alter an election, and shut down the electric grid, as it did in Ukraine. For decades, the U.S. owned the zero day, but has lost its grip, with the bug now controlled by hostile nations and mercenaries. The publisher says Perlroth reveals "the urgent threat faced by us all if we cannot bring the global cyber arms race to heel." (Nonfiction) 
    
2. "Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight” by Julia Sweig (Random House) This new biography of Lady Bird Johnson contends that she remains one of America’s most overlooked first ladies — a political powerhouse who served as her husband Lyndon B. Johnson’s strategist, managing the White House in years of national upheaval, including the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, and Vietnam War. Author Sweig says Lady Bird ran the East Wing like a professional office and took on her own policy initiatives, making her not only a woman ahead of her time — but an accomplished politician in her own right. (Nonfiction)
    
3. "Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX” by Eric Berger (William Morrow) Berger, senior space editor of tech website Ars Technica, chronicles SpaceX from its early days as a fledgling startup, scrambling to develop a single workable rocket, to now boasting the largest constellation of commercial satellites in orbit and being the first private company to launch human beings into orbit. The author focuses on SpaceX’s first four launches of the Falcon 1 rocket, charting the bumpy journey from scrappy underdog to aerospace pioneer. Billionaire founder Elon Musk, who hopes to put his spaceships on Mars, talks extensively with the author. (Nonfiction)
    
4. "Under Our Roof: A Son's Battle for Recovery, a Mother's Battle for Her Son” by Madeleine Dean and Harry Cunnane (Convergent) Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Penn., discovered her son Harry is stealing to feed a painkiller addiction, just days before she was running for statewide office. In this candid memoir, she and her son describe the family trauma from the dual perspectives of a mother rising in politics and a son living a double life, afraid of what might happen if his secret is exposed. The publisher calls it  "honest, bracing, yet ultimately uplifting" book that addresses the nation’s pressing opioid crisis. (Nonfiction)
    
5. "Dirty Gold: The Rise and Fall of an International Smuggling Ring” by Nicholas Nehamas, Kyra Gurney, Jay Weaver, and Jim Wyss (PublicAffairs) A team of current and former Miami Herald reporters look at the illegal gold trade from South America, and three Miami businessmen who got rich from it to the tune of $3.6 billion — until it all came crashing down. The authors say the massive, very illegal international business is more lucrative than trafficking cocaine, and often just as dangerous. Following the trail of these three traders, "Dirty Gold" enters the inner sanctum of a sprawling criminal underworld. (Nonfiction)