Shade, by Sam Bloch (Random House). Shade is a straightforward solution to the problem of a warming world. But as this thought-provoking series of dispatches about the history of shade shows, its deployment is uneven and often politically charged. Providing protection from the sun was long considered a civic responsibility: in Mesopotamia, it was achieved by building cities on grids. But in the twentieth century the development of air-conditioning and automobiles stymied community-minded urban planning. Bloch, an environmental journalist, examines how shade is now a privilege, often denied to farmworkers, the homeless, and residents of poor neighborhoods.

Empty Vessel, by Ian Kumekawa (Knopf). This clever micro-history tracks the voyage of two barges through the roiling economic changes of the past half century. Built near Stockholm in 1979, the vessels swapped names, owners, and flags as they took in British troops in the Falkland Islands, held prisoners in New York City, and housed oil workers in Nigeria. In Kumekawa’s telling, theirs is an itinerary that drifts along deep historical currents, from British imperial decline and mass incarceration to globalization, financialization, and the development of the offshore economy. Along the way, Kumekawa brings readers on excursions into the collapse of Sweden’s shipbuilding industry, the rise of automation at Volkswagen, and the emergence of the Bahamas as a tax haven.

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