R. Sikoryak is a cartooning mimic of incredible ability, drawing in the style of any other cartoonist with absolute precision. Boing Boing has written about his previous projects taking legal documents and illustrating them using various famous cartoonist styles and comics characters. — Read the rest

The post R. Sikoryak's latest word-for-word comics adaptation of America's foundational documents appeared first on Boing Boing.

Back in 2019, author Margaret Stohl was handed a manuscript written by Jason Jones, who's best known as the co-creator of sci-fi gaming series Halo and Destiny. The two had worked together at Bungie, and Jones wanted Stohl's opinion on a book he was writing about AI taking over the world. It was an oral history of the fictional events, with around 100 characters spread across 40 countries, all detailing the AI uprising from their own perspectives. Pretty quickly Stohl realized that this idea could be much more than a single book.

"I was floored but not surprised," she says of her reaction to the original manuscript. "He's a worldbuilder who …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Le livre “Nous les Français” cartonne en librairie et suscite l’intérêt des politiques à l’approche de la présidentielle. Il dresse en 100 thèmes une radiographie de ce qui caractérisent les français en 2026. Air fryer, doudounes, usage des vocaux, pratiques d’hospitalité, poids de la nostalgie, phénomène Voisins vigilants et solidaires… Où se crée du commun ? Qu’est-ce qui nous divise vraiment ? Où se niche le politique ?

Pour cet épisode spécial enregistré en public au sommet sur la compétitivité économique organisé par POLITICO mardi 13 octobre à Paris, Anthony Lattier reçoit Laureline Dupont et Jean-Laurent Cassely, deux des co-auteurs de l’ouvrage publié aux éditions Robert Laffont.

To camp with kids makes me question my sanity. I crush tasks. Setting up the tent, laying out the bedding, stacking coolers on a bench. The picnic tables are skeined with leaves after a season of rain. I peel and drape their skeletal outlines over a nurse log. Forest doilies. We brought bikes. Our sons pop wheelies in the parking lot, safer than it sounds because few campers have braved late spring at Seaquest State Park.

On the drive along Spirit Lake Highway to Mount St. Helens, the houses are few and well-priced. I marvel; Brian scoffs. That’s because this whole place was destroyed forty years ago. Having timed our trip to the eruption’s anniversary, we ascend through what had been a trail of devastation. Once seared by lahars, the landscape has greened into a wildlife corridor that winds around the Toutle River.

Scientists didn’t think life would come back this fast. Scant weeks after the blast, fireweed poked its green head through the ash, sending purple flowers skyward by July of 1980. The next year, I was born. We don’t always know where hope resides. I spent four decades guarding a secret. Quietude is a fertile state. Sure, I published hundreds of articles with my byline. But I rarely disclosed my own truths.

To this sunny weekend, I had invited a couple that Brian and I met in Seattle. Like him, they’re from the Midwest. Friendly people. She sang at our wedding with her two sisters, one of whom was our officiant. They moved to Portland a year after we met. We have stayed friends, which says something because I have lost contact with people who live in north Seattle. Together we decide on the Hummocks Trail. It’s only 2.5 miles long. I used to burn for monthlong expeditions, but it’s a good length for short legs.

I had never heard of hummocks before, which is the privilege of choosing one’s encounter with destruction. Hummocks are pieces of the mountain blown off by the eruption and carried downhill by a landslide. By the time we arrived, they had settled into place.

Upon these chunks of rock, ecosystems arise. Beneath the alders, bushy green horsetails wave in the unaccustomed sun. Their bright stalks, notched like bamboo, are topped with long fronds that grow in a feathery circle, like squirrel tails. With more than 300 million years of evolutionary strategy in the making, horsetails are hard to remove when they take root. It doesn’t matter how many times you pull them. I was charmed when they touched down in my garden. There, like here, they grow high enough to tickle my children’s hands along the path.

Our boys throw sticks into the ponds. Called the lifeblood of the hummocks by helpful plaques I read at a gallop to keep the kids in sight, the ponds are more like seeps. Or rainfall catchment basins. They were born when chunks of shattered glacier melted, forming pits filled by water then buried in ash. No longer held together by the mountainside, the hummocks slumped apart. Water dribbled through gray crannies. Now exposed to the sky, the ponds are thick with algae and cattails. Damselflies and dragonflies lay their eggs in the stillness. In springtime, the toad and frog eggs hatch into tadpoles which wriggle through the murk.

The ponds are unstable and evaporate quickly. To survive their home, the creatures must reproduce early and often. By the time I birthed our boys, I was in my thirties and had fortified my self-regard. Each autumn, the frogs and toads bury themselves in the muck to wait for spring. I had no knowledge of such metaphors when I was a girl. But I waited for my season to come.

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Fireweed has many uses. I can only name a few. Epilobium angustifolium fights inflammation, bacteria and aging, among other properties. What I can say about fireweed — I know what it is to harden in resistance, to become a seed that flowers in adversity. I work to overcome a tendency toward hypervigilance and its attendant crises of critique and anxiety. My husband has a hard time getting me to relax.

He is practiced. I am wary of his wiles. But Brian loves the prickly spine of me. He did not show up just to harvest the blossoms. He takes time to water the roots. He opens channels to the sun. He accepts sudden rains for the blessings they bring. I married an easygoing man. He trusts eventuality. Our sons scamper down the path with their friends, secure in their innocence.

Called Lawetlat’la, Loowit, or Louwala-Clough, which means smoking mountain, Mount St. Helens didn’t remake itself overnight. The eruption began on the same day in March that our eldest was born and that the Attis passion week concludes. Lavatio. A public ceremony that washes the image of the mother goddess, following Hilaria, a time for celebration. Few continue to worship Cybele, if any, but her rituals persist in other guises. Images of the Madonna are promenaded through the streets of Catholic towns throughout Europe and South America. She is showered in petals gathered from the hills, just like in pagan times. Carried in procession, her image is exposed to public view so that she may confer protection upon that community. With sorrowful eyes and an enigmatic smile, she tells them a story about themselves.

Mount St. Helens collapsed in three separate blocks, the first of which hurtled toward where we are hiking. Standing in the sun, passing snacks, it is hard to imagine the ground — which feels solid under my feet — as it had been, spinning down the mountain at up to 155 miles per hour.

A few seconds after the first block slid, the second block broke through, powered by the blast of released pressure and the magma welling from beneath. Before Mount St. Helens erupted, scientists didn’t know how far away to keep onlookers. Geologists thought the volcano would blow its top upward, rather than sideways. The mountain did not perform according to plan. For this and other reasons — some decided to wait it out — fifty-seven people perished that day in May. Decades of subsequent study have shown that the earth held this knowledge for us, but we did not see it.

Scientists had noticed mounds near other volcanoes, but they believed the hills had formed from mudflows or glaciers. But they were, in fact, evidence of catastrophe. In New Zealand 23,000 years ago, Mount Egmont’s debris avalanche traveled 19 miles. Closer to home in California, Mount Shasta’s debris avalanche traveled 30 miles. In 1888 Japan, a debris avalanche traveled 7 miles from Mount Bandai and became a hilly forest that people now call home. Glistening in the sun, the scooped cone of Mount St. Helens’ summit can be seen from these hummocks which came to rest 14 miles from their source. Snowmelt unfurls from the crater like tentacles.

My home in Seattle is 3,093 miles from the island of my youth. It would take forty-six hours to drive that distance, or forty-two days to walk the diagonal across a country which has not always felt great enough to protect me. I hew to my beloved jagged coast. This place helped make me who I am, a woman who carries stories for our descendants. May they know greener times.

Seeds grow best when given space. To heal from my origin so that I could become myself and a mother, I have accepted estrangement as necessary. My parents are unable to reconcile our facts. They prefer façades. But to remain in relation with falsity is too deep a strain. My narrative belongs to me.

When this book is published, I anticipate my birth family will not speak to me again. While the pull toward my parents is real, separation brought relief to my body. Do these hummocks miss their brethren shoved against the valley walls? Their silt and silica trickle downhill together, grain by grain.

Most entanglements are quantum. The braids of Toutle River are akin to the Missoula Flood patterns, visible from astronomical heights which reveal our land’s history: A mighty ice dam gave way, again and again, to the water it held in abeyance. I have worked hard to pry apart the fractals that have locked my kin into repeating errors at various orders of magnitude. To move forward, I have relinquished the belief that my happiness depends on our unity. They don’t have to show kindness for me to heal. They have their reasons for being puzzles I no longer need to solve. Forgiveness does not imply reconciliation.

Releasing them has freed me to hold space for my own story. My liberation has stoked resentment and dissent. You’re hurting us, they accuse, meaning, You’re hurting our idea of us, and this idea is all that we are. In these pages, I remain in relation to forebears who no longer define my future. Our shared memories make us a family the way rivers carry snowmelt to the sea.

 

It can be hazardous to leave the path that was planned for you. Here on the hummocks, in full view of the mountain which mothered them, I step off trail and slide down scree that skins my shin into a shining ruby constellation. I don’t bother to shield my legs from the sun. My scars remind me: Forging a desire line can be dangerous. So is failing to follow your hope. When I think of my family now, I look for roots I’ve grown into the earth. Sturdy enough to bear witness, they send signals of welcome to you whose presence I embrace, unseen.

With our communion comes responsibility for what happens next. That, too, is mine to accept, though not control. The route to the goddess unmakes you. Our journey was never meant to be linear. Find the whole in the fragments.

Dusk cloaks the grove around our tents. A cinder cone rebuilds herself on a horizon I cannot see. Here I feel safe to revel in the gloaming. Evenings are ceremonial for parents. We remain open to the world in defiance of routines which structure our days. Rituals are made through repetition. We feed our children and tell stories. Not much remains to be done. In the forest, there is no bathing, except in beauty.

Our kids stay up. The campfire warms their small faces. Wet wipes provide the semblance of clean hands after s’mores. The fathers are tasked with bedtime. With kisses good night, my sons step into our tent. My husband zips up the door. From the fire circle, I hear their murmurs and laughter amidst the slight rustle of sleeping bags. My friend smiles, her eyes agleam with patient hope. She is ready for our song time. The night stills but for the crackles of sap. We sip from metal cups, our sparks spiraling toward the stars.

“Desire Lines” is available in print from Red Hen Press or as an audiobook narrated by the author, who is currently on a book tour. 

The post To become the mother I wanted to be, I had to let my parents go appeared first on Salon.com.

Visit our bookshop.org page to purchase this week’s new books and support your local bookstore. And us!

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Anonymous: Helen of Troy (Flame Tree Collections UK 978-1835628072, $30.00, 368pp, formats: hardcover, 10/13/2026)

Anthology of stories based on the legend of Helen of Troy. Introductory essay by Bella Vivante, and foreword by Emily Hauser. Part of Flame Tree’s Myths, Gods, and Immortals series. This is an international hardcover edition simultaneous with the Flame Tree UK edition.

 

Anonymous: Of Blood & Petals (Flame Tree Collections UK 978-1835628096, $30.00, 416pp, formats: hardcover, 10/13/2026)

Anthology of fantasy stories themed around forbidden love, with 25 illustrations. Foreword by Ella d’Avoine. Part of Flame Tree’s Romantic Fantasy series.

 

Anonymous: The Tarot of Love (Flame Tree Collections UK 978-1835628102, formats: hardcover, 10/13/2026)

Anthology of fantasy stories. Foreword by Niamh Rose. Part of Flame Tree’s Romantic Fantasy series.

 

 

Buehlman, Christopher: The Thrice-Bound Fool (Tor 978-1250621214, $29.99, 384pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Fantasy novel, second in the Blacktongue series. Thief Kinch has to decipher a sentient ancient book that tries to kill him, and finds himself on the run with knight Galva. Simultaneous with the Orion UK/Gollancz edition.

 

Campbell, Annabel: The Void Dragon (Orbit US 978-0316580830, $19.99, 496pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Fantasy novel, second In the Shattered Lands series. Naila’s powers threaten to escape her control, and with dragonriders after her, she seeks sanctuary at the library of Awasef. Simultaneous with the Orbit UK edition.

 

Cassidy, Nat: Nestlings (Titan Books UK 978-1835418895, £10.99, 432pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Horror novel. Ana, paralyzed by complications giving birth, wins an affordable housing lottery in a beautiful old NYC building, but after moving in with her husband, sees bite marks on the baby. Originally published October 2023.

 

Chambers, Becky: As You Wake, Break the Shell (Harper Voyager US 978-0062936066, $32.00, 480pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

SF novel, first in a duology. Cora, a pilot who guides a living ship and is struggling with “mindbleed,” forms a bond with Signy, a reclusive botanist, on the struggling planet Fortune. Simultaneous with the Hodder & Stoughton UK edition.

 

Dawson, Delilah S.: Monstera (Titan Books UK 978-1835416013, $25.99, 192pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Horror novel. Lucy moves into an old house in Savannah and is drawn into a propulsive romance with Saskia, a secretive bodybuilder who keeps a flourishing garden.

 

Dimitri, Francesco & McDougall, Sophia: Pan (Tor 978-1250406989, $28.99, 464pp, formats: hardcover, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Fantasy novel, blending elements of the Roman god with Peter Pan. Pan returns to present-day Rome, and children start dreaming of an island and fighting pirates. Translated from the Italian (Marsilio 2008) by Sophia McDougall. Ebook also available.

 

Dunn, Kat: Rottenheart (Zando 978-1638934653, $28.95, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Queer romance horror novel, a reworking of Hamlet. Odette, traumatized by her mother’s death and her father’s remarriage to the cruel Claudine, learns her mother’s ghost haunts their manor, Herne House. First US edition (Manilla Press UK 6/26).

 

Faubion, Rebekah: What a Nightmare (Penguin Random House/Berkley 979-8217192144, $20.00, 368pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Queer horror novel. Repressed receptioning Haven Powers has a dream about her boss dying that comes true the next day, and feeling stifled by her family and conformist town, embarks on a path to revenge.

 

Forest, Susan: Rivers of Ivy (Laksa Media Groups 978-1988140636, $21.00, 446pp, formats: paperback, 10/13/2026)

Fantasy novel, first in the Addicted to Heaven: The Next Generation series. After family catastrophe, Ivy Garton feels to Highglen, a city where magic is enslaved and industry is on the rise, to infiltrate the corrupt elite.

 

Goldsmith, Amy: A Darker Act (Penguin Random House/Delacorte 978-0593814383, $12.99, 368pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

YA horror. Hazel played the lead role in a local play based on legends of a huntsman on the moors, but something horrible happened — a year later, Hazel and her castmates have to face the presence they awoke.

 

Goodman, A.B.: House of Atreus: Quest (Planetary Books 979-8233142161, $6.99, 154pp, formats: ebook, 10/15/2026)

SF novel, fifth in the House of Atreus series. In a world where the ancient Greek gods were actually ancient artificial intelligences, Orestes reunites with his sister and faces trial in Athens.

 

Hackwith, A.J.: Goblin Market (Titan Books UK 978-1835418970, £18.99, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Fantasy novel. Toast is a goblin changeling raised by humans, struggling to adapt to the Goblin Market; when human Sam is accused of murder, Toast has to prove her innocence. The author is Amanda Hackwith, who also writes SF romance as Ada Harper. Simultaneous with the Ace edition.

 

Jones, Stephen Graham: Off the Reservation (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press 978-1668225127, $32.00, 416pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Horror novel, sequel to The Only Good Indians. Nate and some older Blackfeet set out to repatriate the bones of a Blackfeet boy who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, only to find that something has taken the bones first.

 

Jung, Lynn D.: Mothsblood (Bloomsbury USA 978-1639737888, $30.00, 352pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Fantasy novel. Alchemist Larkspur investigates the death of her university’s headmistress, wary that the case is drawing her closer to the cult called Promethean Genesis. Simultaneous with the Del Rey UK edition.

 

Lamberti, Luciano: To Bewitch a Hunter (HarperVia 978-0063455726, $28.00, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Literary horror novel. An old stalker tells Julia Ruiz that she’s her real grandmother, and warns Julia her parents aren’t her real parents, forcing Julia to confront events during Argentina’s military dictatorship. Translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne.

 

Levine, Jenna: Love You to Death (Penguin Random House/Berkley Romance 978-0593819937, $20.00, 352pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Paranormal romance novel. Lucy is killed by a bus, and offers a deal to jaded, handsome reaper Daniel: six more weeks of life, and he can spend time on earth. Copyrighted by Jennifer Prusak.

 

Lewellen, Lyndsey: Karabos (Enclave Escape 979-8886052961, $35.37, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Young-adult fantasy novel. Winslet, homeschooled entomologist, enters the Tournament of Scarabs to save her family and become a magical insect hunter.

 

Liss, David: The Death and Birth of Iliana Marek (Tachyon Publications 978-1616964696, $18.95, 304pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 10/13/2026)

Paranormal crime novel. In rural Florida, Iliana, foster daughter of the corrupt police chief, suddenly starts defending Dan, the town’s most unpopular person — a drug addict who’s been told he led a woman to suicide ten years ago.

 

MacDonald, Alexander: The Spaceflight Narrative: A Literary History of Leaving Earth (MIT Press 978-0262056830, $45.00, 286pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 10/13/2026)

Non-fiction.A critical look at the “conceptual development of spaceflight” as it appears throughout science fiction history, covering works from the 1620s through the 1890s.

 

Maclean, Will: Solace House (Grove Atlantic/Grove 978-0802168689, $28.00, 512pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Horror novel. Alex, a university student clearing out a run-down Victorian mansion, uncover elaborate and eerie journals from a former owner about a mysterious realm next to ours First US edition (Atlantic UK 5/26).

 

Marlowe, Mallory: Entities to Lovers (Penguin Random House/Berkley 978-0593956335, $20.00, 368pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Paranormal rom-com novel. Medium and ghost-tour guide Rory is forced to host a tour with cocky professor Ezra, only for them to upset a matchmaker’s ghost and end up hexed. Simultaneous with the Bloomsbury UK/Head of Zeus/Aria edition.

 

McDonnell, C.K.: Ring the Bells (Penguin Random House UK/Bantam UK 978-0857505392, $33.99, 400pp, formats: paperback, 10/10/2026)

Paranormal holiday murder novel. During a Chistmastime book club, a local librarian is possessed by a chaotic entity who’s set on murdering first the book club members, then the rest of humanity.

 

McGuire, Seanan: Be Sure, Volume II (Tordotcom 978-1250459305, $21.99, 576pp, formats: paperback, 10/13/2026)

Collection of the fourth, fifth, and sixth books in the Wayward Children series. In three adventures, children visit strange worlds and encounter strange creatures, from goblins to kelpies. Illustrated by Rovina Cai.

 

Miller, Rowenna: The Dancer and the Dream Thief (Orbit US/Redhook 978-0316571920, $19.99, 400pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Historical fantasy novel. During an alternate Prohibition where dreams are sold illegaly, dancer Evelyn investigates the disappearances of her fellow girls and joins forces with Raife, who sells human dreams to elves.

 

Mooney, Kate: The Woman of the House (Penguin Random House/Berkley 979-8217189885, $30.00, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Supernatural horror novel. In their lakeside house, Rose tries to hide her secrets from her husband, but scratches on her arms start appearing, and the woman who lived there before her vanished.

 

North, Claire: As We Fall Through Time (Orbit US 978-0316586467, $19.86, 416pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

SF time travel novel. A rupture in history disrupts the lives of Cal — a time traveler who falls in love with a Drench soldier doomed to die — and Fadimatu, an ancient woman who sees her own mummy in a modern museum. North is a pen name for Catherine Webb, who also writes as Kate Griffin. Simultaneous with the Orbit UK edition.

 

Norton-Kertson, Justine: Gutterspace (Stars and Sabers 979-8992845808, $13.99, 142pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 10/13/2026)

Horror novella. A washed-up Portland artist is pitted against a monster that lurks in the panels of an old comic book. Interior illustrations by Ahmed Raafat.

 

Proudman, Sandra: The End of Us (Penguin Random House/Joy Revolution 979-8217118199, $19.99, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Young-adult SF novel. In the post-apocalyptic Wasteland, Rico wins a lottery to the safe haven oasis, but gives it up for his lover Jules — only for him to find out that it was rigged, and Jules is in danger.

 

Rekulak, Jason: Look What the Cat Dragged In (Macmillan/Flatiron 978-1250895875, $29.99, 352pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Thriller/horror novel. Cartoonist Penny agrees to catsit a strange feline named Godfrey, but after a week in her house, Godfrey seems to bring violent nightmares, disturbing new drawings, and insects. Features 80 pages of original artwork.

 

Rivers, Erynne: Wench (HarperCollins/Avon 978-0008798246, $24.90, 400pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Robin Hood-inspired fantasy romance novel. Maid Marian, unhappily betrothed to the Sheriff of Nottingham, is kidnapped in the forest by the notorious fae Merry Men and Robin Hood. First US edition (Avon UK 7/26). A first novel.

 

Roberts, Adam: Frankenstein Rex (Orion UK/Gollancz 978-1399617727, £25.00, 288pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 10/15/2026)

SF horror novel. Frankenstein’s monster, aided by his giant height and strength, becomes world dictator, and to prepare for his own death returns to his maker’s research to create an heir.

 

Sangoyomi, O.O.: Dreamweaving (Page Street 979-8890034465, $22.99, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Young adult fantasy novel. Deja, a newcomer at prestigious Tanglewood Preparatory School who’s been shielded by her family’s witch legacy, shares disturbing dreams with straight-A school queen Tóbi.

 

Silver, Josie: Merry Spooky Love (Penguin Random House/Dell 978-0593983041, $20.00, 288pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 10/13/2026)

Fantasy romance novel, third in the Melody Bittersweet series. Melody and the Girls’ Ghostbusting Agency face the ghost matriarch of a local department store, who doesn’t want her living children to sell out. The author has also written as Kat French.

 

Willett, Edward: On Spec 2026: New Canadian Literature of the Fantastic (Shadowpaw Press 978-1-998273-72-0, $29.99, 460pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 10/13/2026)

Anthology of 28 original stories of fantasy, science fiction, and horror by Canadian authors, a continuation of the magazine.

 

Zeller, Mathilda: It Looks Like You in the Dark (Tor/Nightfire 978-1250402035, $27.99, 288pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/13/2026)

Horror novel. When Tapeesa’s sister Esther goes missing from their Alaskan Inupiat village, Tapeesa must contend with white rare-earth miners and a hungry creature as the long dark of winter sets in. A first novel.

 

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FRANKFURT — European Central Bank staff want to know whether President Christine Lagarde breached her own ethics standards by plugging her forthcoming book at an ECB press conference last month.

The central bank’s staff committee raised its concerns with the ECB’s chief compliance officer in a letter dated Oct. 9 and seen by POLITICO. Staffers are seeking clarity on whether Lagarde breached the central bank’s code of conduct, and have raised concerns about “potential double standards” between the ethics requirements for staff and the ECB’s six executive board members. 

Lagarde mentioned her memoir, Lady First, during a monetary policy press conference on Sept. 10, when asked how she would keep the book’s commercial promotion separate from her ECB role. The Frenchwoman told reporters that “any marketing, publishing, commercial operations will happen either at weekends or on a day or two that I will take as a holiday.” 

She then added: “I strongly encourage you to buy the book.” The autobiography’s English version is expected to hit the shelves on Feb. 4. A spokesperson for the ECB said Lagarde has done nothing wrong.

The podium plug has fueled speculation that Lagarde may leave the ECB by the time the book is published, well before the end of her official term in October next year. Lagarde has declined to commit to staying for the full term, triggering an early race for the EU’s most powerful economic job.

The letter is the latest in a string of clashes between the central bank’s leadership and staff representatives, who are suing ECB management for allegedly violating freedom of speech within the central bank. 

The book plug might’ve been in jest. But staffers want to know whether writing and publishing the book falls within her “occupation” under Article 11.1 of the ECB’s statutes. If not, the union has asked whether the central bank’s Governing Council received and granted an exemption. The letter also asked whether the manuscript was vetted for confidential or policy-sensitive material, and whether promoting the book at an official event was consistent with the ECB’s code of conduct.

“President Lagarde informed the ECB’s Ethics Committee and the Compliance and Governance Officer about the book project and has received approval,” the spokesperson for the central bank said.

The staff committee reminded the ECB’s compliance chief that staff rules require employees to seek prior authorization before publishing material outside their work at the central bank. The rules also restrict employees from using ECB resources, or their position, for private activities.

While ECB staff is subject to a different set of rules than the bank’s leadership, the committee said that any differences in treatment should be “objectively justified” and proportionate, the letter said, adding that ethical expectations should become “more — not less — demanding as institutional responsibility increases.”

Similarly, the staff committee wanted to know whether Lagarde had disclosed any contact with the World Economic Forum and if any potential conflicts of interest had been assessed. The ECB president is rumored to be in talks about a leadership role at the global think tank, although this has never been confirmed. 

“The book project is a private activity, carried out in the President’s own time, and does not use ECB resources,” the ECB’s spokesperson said. The staff committee declined to comment.

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To the average observer concerned with the future of American democracy, it might be easy to conclude that religion has been part of the problem — particularly over the last few years. Right-wing religious leaders, including the leading Southern Baptist televangelist Robert Jeffress, have endorsed “Christian nationalism”; other evangelical pastors and conservative Catholic intellectuals have been openly pondering if America should become more of a theocracy; Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who once called for an “American crusade,” evoking bloody medieval religious campaigns, has referenced Christian theology in statements about the Iran war.

To critics, these examples show that American religion is becoming an active threat to pluralism and tolerance — the ideas that make American democracy work. 

But what if the solution to this anti-democratic slide is also religion — more religion than the US currently has?

A new book by two thinkers from opposing ends of the ideological spectrum argues that declining levels of religiosity across the board, but particularly among liberals, have deepened political polarization, which in turn has corroded democratic norms. Now, they argue, one of the most effective ways for liberals to stand up for democracy is to engage with religious communities and their scriptural traditions with more respect, openness, and curiosity. The authors also urge liberals who are believers themselves to embrace organized religion and return to it themselves.

Conservative evangelical Christian Matthew Kaemingk and liberal Muslim writer Shadi Hamid argue in Can Religion Save Democracy? that there’s a necessary and unique role that religious institutions and organized religion must play in American public life. Religion serves a fundamental regulating purpose, tempering emotions, fundamentalism, and nihilism. And when that fades away, those base instincts and emotions get channeled into our politics.

They write:

As Americans exit churches in droves, they’re not leaving behind their religious passions. Instead, they’re transferring those passions to the political battlefield. In this new post-religious context, Christian faith and Scripture function less as moral constraints within evangelical circles and more as political cudgels to use against one’s opponents.

“We’re not trying to convert [nonbelievers],” Hamid told me in an interview. “Believing is one thing, but believing that religion can play a positive role is another. And we want to encourage secular readers to embrace the second proposition, even if they don’t believe religion is true or don’t believe God exists.”

What happens when religion recedes from the public square

At the core of Kaemingk and Hamid’s argument is a simple case: There is an innate religion-shaped hole in people in the 21st century, which has been slowly replaced with politics, unbridled passions, and secular ideologies. The loss of religion hasn’t meant a loss of religious convictions, but instead has meant the rise of a new fanaticism, either secular or fundamentalist, while depriving everyone of the good things that organized and institutional religion can do.

It’s not a completely novel argument; it’s a combination of St. Augustine’s famous line that “our hearts are restless until they rest in [God]” and of the political scientist Robert Putnam’s modern case that churches and religious communities provided the third spaces that fostered civic partnership, trust, meaning, and belonging. 

But they also connect these lines of thinking to what the Dutch philosopher Abraham Kuyper used to argue around the turn of the 19th century: that all people are religious, and that something very similar to religious fervor quietly powers all political movements. Religion is “pervasive, public, and pluriform” — an essential part of being human, whose absence leaves nihilism, fear, and distrust in isolated, but still fanatical, individuals.

“If Kuyper is correct that all human beings desire ultimate belief and belonging, then erasing or sequestering religion won’t extinguish our spiritual passions. They will simply shift elsewhere,” Kaemingk and Hamid write. And that shift has been toward politics, candidates, elections, and secular “creeds” that provide identity, belonging, moral certainty, and salvific promises without the accountability, guidance, and caution that religious traditions can provide.

It’s not hard to find examples of what Kaemingk and Hamid mean here. From 2016 to 2024, many observed elements of quasi-religious fervor in movements powering Trump and Woke 1.0. Trump’s strongman appeal generated a cult of personality around him, while anti-Trump resistance efforts and progressive social movements often took on qualities people also found quasi-religious: in-group markers, language, and customs, BlueAnon theories. What’s left is a stalemate, with more conservative religious believers bunched up on one end, and nonreligious but equally passionate citizens on the other end.

Kaemingk and Hamid argue that people on the left often respond by denigrating religion and religious people, dismissing those who try to defend or practice it in the public square, or forcing them to adopt secular language and thinking instead of letting religious people bring their full selves to the public space. But the way out of this current stalemate, Kaemingk and Hamid suggest, is for people on the left to be open, curious, and respectful with the devoutly faithful, whether they’re neighbors or candidates running for office. 

“For that audience, my desire is to say, ‘Hey, you don’t have to believe in religion, but you can recognize the positive aspects of religion,’” Hamid told me.

That involves practical, daily activities and more high-minded appeals. In regular life, the authors recommend prayer, or prayer-like practices for nonbelievers, to help better understand and forgive opponents. They suggest there can be benefits for both nonreligious and religious people to meditate on scriptural and theological teachings about forgiveness, debate, disagreement, salvation, and why earthly politics shouldn’t be taken so seriously. 

And they urge liberals in particular to reengage with religious communities and congregations. Religious liberals should avoid isolation or solitary, individualized faith, the authors recommend, and instead return to congregations and specific churches or places of worship to become part of a community and find purpose. For nonreligious liberals, Kaemingk and Hamid suggest they reexamine their own ideological priorities and be open to the possibility of being wrong on some of them, and potentially engage with organized religion to better understand a religious worldview.

Kaemingk and Hamid offer a specific challenge for liberals and secular Americans that might seem a bit unsavory: They have to realize that they are not blameless for the polarization and radical religious fervor that exists right now through their dismissal of organized religion. Their earlier denigration of organized religion around the turn of this century (think of the New Atheist movement), combined with many leaving institutional churches or failing to participate in religious life, has all contributed to the capture of these institutions by unsavory political opponents, or helped in the decline of more moderate congregations. And any attempt to stop this continued slide away from pluralistic democracy hinges on a collective effort between religious and nonreligious Americans to reverse these trends.

This argument has its limitations

Here’s an obvious question: If religion is so good at moderating people, why hasn’t it been able to temper emotions among the religious already? The most loyal Republican voters over the past few cycles have tended to be evangelical and nondenominational Christians, followed by white Catholics — both of which tend to report above-average levels of religious participation. They’ve stuck with Trump and the GOP over the last decade, which has been defined by polarization, authoritarian policies, and even moments of political violence, that both Kaemingk and Hamid say religion can fix. 

Here’s an obvious question: If religion is so good at moderating people, why hasn’t it been able to temper emotions among the religious already?

More generally, while there is evidence to suggest that evangelicals who leave their churches become more cynical and individualistic — a point in Kaemingk and Hamid’s favor — there’s not much evidence to suggest that the converse is true: that religious participation has actually tempered emotions, passions, and politics. Instead, there’s a case to be made, as the writer Robert P. Jones laid out recently, that the opposite seems to be true: The most religious folks tend to still be the most likely to support harsher Trump-era policies.

Hamid acknowledged that this is a challenge, but argued this isn’t about the religion itself — rather a Trump-specific phenomenon: “Many evangelicals have let partisan loyalties take precedence over religious commitments,” he told me. “This is the distorting effect that Trump has had on the evangelical movement.”

He emphasized that evangelicalism has suffered because many of the most fervent MAGA supporters who identify with that religious movement are not actually very religious. “Evangelicals aren’t going to church as much as they used to on average,” he said. “There has been a kind of process of de-institutionalization in the kind of Protestant domain. And the people who tend to be more fervent MAGA supporters tend to go to church less.” He compared the level of evangelical support that Ted Cruz and Trump got in 2016: Trump had an upper hand among unchurched evangelicals.

Beyond this, the practical reality is that, as things stand today, religiosity does not seem likely to bounce back to the levels it was at two decades ago — at least, not without the help of secular Americans.

What the authors prescribe for politics and elections

Still, it’s an attractive idea, and it’s not hard to see why people might be open to it. Even Democrats themselves seem to understand that writing off religious voters for years was a bad idea. Some of the most promising Democratic candidates in red states in upcoming midterm elections are religious, including Texas Senate nominee James Talarico and Kansas Senate nominee the Rev. Adam Hamilton. A dozen other pastors or believers are running in down-ballot races across the country, while potential 2028 presidential candidates like Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro talk openly about their personal faiths, the role of organized, institutional religion, and seem comfortable doing so.

“It’s promising,” Hamid told me about this trend. “Part of what we argue in the book is that Americans should be able to bring their full convictions into the public arena. If they’re editing themselves or suppressing their religiosity out of fear of alienating constituencies, that’s not good for democracy.”

And Kaemingk and Hamid also have a very influential intellectual ally in this mission: Pope Leo XIV just made a similar case in France for secular liberals to reexamine their understanding of religious liberty and how to balance it against the rise of right-wing religious politics.

“A Christian engaged in public service and guided by the light of his or her conscience, illumined by faith, cannot be considered a proselytizer or a threat to the unity of the nation,” he said in Paris, appealing directly to France’s fiercely secularized civic leaders. “Indeed, authentic secularity does not exclude religion but is capable of valuing it as an educational resource.”

Aboard a plane back to Rome, Leo continued, arguing that religion must have a role in the public square and pointing to the decline of religion in Germany as something that may have facilitated the rise of a far-right movement that cloaks itself in religious language.

“It would be interesting to study, analyze if and how there may be a relationship, for example, between the growth of these groups on the far right,” Leo said mid-flight, “…with some expression of a combination of these far-right points of view with a certain kind of religion, which…is not an authentic expression of Christianity.”

This may be an unsavory ask for liberals and secularists most upset about creeping religious nationalism in the Trump administration and around the country. The recent creation of a new Office of Religious Affairs in the Pentagon, the invocation of God and Scripture to support military action and immigration enforcement, and the attacks on the wave of religious candidates running as Democrats this year all make it understandable why there may be hesitancy in accepting this challenge. But Kaemingk and Hamid are undeniably right about one thing: In a diverse and pluralistic nation, we have no choice but to live with each other.

PARIS — Edouard Philippe was once seen as the only man capable of defeating Marine Le Pen in next year’s French presidential election. But his lackluster campaign as the country’s voice of reason is putting his allies on edge — and some of them are starting to wonder if he has what it takes.

The former center-right prime minister promised a “massive” campaign platform that would fix France, put its finances back on track and restore the country’s standing in the world. And while Philippe has upped his campaign tempo in recent weeks, his proposals tend to fall flat.

POLITICO spoke to six members of Philippe’s political family, some of them campaign team members, who shared doubts about his strategy and chances of success. Some were granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal matters.

“It’s unbelievable how nothing is making an impact,” a campaign official told POLITICO ahead of Philippe’s decision to announce his plans for a flagship pensions reform. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Philippe is still the best-placed mainstream candidate to challenge far-right Le Pen, who commands a substantial lead in the polls. But his poll ratings have stalled over the past year, and he is now locked in a tight race with far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon to clinch a second place which would qualify him for the runoff. MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, who trails the duo in most surveys, could see a boost for his campaign after scoring a decisive victory in the recent center-left primary.

Philippe is facing a pileup of problems: He has yet to unite the center behind him, remains burdened by a decade of centrist rule and is struggling to gain traction among voters with his pitch as the plain-speaking pragmatist fighting populism.

“Philippe is the most honest guy I know,” said an ally, “but he needs to unite and find a project that rallies people around him.”

Meanwhile, Le Pen and Mélenchon are dominating headlines with political one-upmanship and at times inflammatory proposals. The two populists locked horns last week over school protests, with Le Pen accusing Mélenchon of fueling the violence, and the far left positioning themselves as the protectors of France’s youth against police violence.

“The risk is great” that Le Pen and Mélenchon will squeeze him out of the race, Philippe’s ally added.

Stale marriage

Philippe, who left his position as prime minister under President Emmanuel Macron in 2020, has been planning his bid to succeed him for years. But things haven’t quite gone to plan on the campaign trail, where he has faced upsets and distractions.

When Philippe recently announced his unpopular proposal to push back the retirement age to 65, it was supposed to be a make-or-break moment in his campaign. Instead, it went almost unnoticed.

First, he was forced to delay his flagship announcement because Macron decided to address the nation about Russian threats and spiraling fuel costs. When he finally got round to it, it was overshadowed by antisemitism allegations against National Rally leader Jordan Bardella.

Ultimately, his 20-minute speech detailing his pensions plans on YouTube garnered only 70,000 views.

A day later, Mélenchon livestreamed a two-hour Q&A session with students from HEC, one of France’s top business schools. It got 550,000 views.

But according to Philippe’s campaign spokesperson Arnaud Péricard, the battle will be won in the long run.

“We’re not firing an arrow and then running away … Voters shouldn’t be underestimated; they can understand why our pensions system needs fixing,” he said. “But we aren’t mere accountants … We want a return of a powerful France that can lead on energy, industry; that’s why we need to balance our books.”

But a mix of economic realism and European ambition sounds all too familiar after a decade of Macron’s presidency — and even insiders know there’s little appetite for it. “There’s no desire for the centrist bloc. It’s a bit like marriage after 10 years,” said the same ally quoted above.

But for Philippe, a pro-European who was one of Macron’s coalition partners, there’s not much else he can offer.

“It’s difficult for the moderates: They know what state the country is in. They understand interest rates, debt and deficits,” said OpinionWay pollster Bruno Jeanbart. “They have to campaign as if things will get better, but it’s going to be difficult. We’ll have to work longer, accept more social spending, less benefits. There is no good news.”

Cornered

The silver lining for Philippe is that while he’s not doing too well, his immediate rivals aren’t doing any better. Conservative leader Bruno Retailleau is stuck on single-digit polling figures, while centrist Gabriel Attal, leader of Macron’s Renaissance party, has relentlessly campaigned throughout the summer but is still lagging behind and looks increasingly isolated.

Party insiders are confident Philippe will prevail, but admit the drawn-out centrist battle is dragging their champion down.

“We are at a bit of a standstill, and letting ourselves get boxed into a duel with Attal,” complained a senior official from Philippe’s Horizons party.

When Philippe and Attal announced their education proposals simultaneously last month, “people didn’t notice our proposals, they just saw the squabbling with Gabriel Attal,” the official added.

A member of Philippe’s campaign team said there was “little bandwidth” to make an impact because there were “too many” centrist candidates. “Maybe we’ll have to wait before addressing some campaign topics,” the official said.

In the coming weeks, Philippe’s team hopes to drain Attal’s support among lawmakers and local representatives, according to two allies, and force him to throw in the towel.

But that’s unlikely to provide Philippe with a much-needed boost, said a centrist senator, as enthusiasm is flatlining at the local level too. “There’s no real movement anywhere,” the senator said. “And the French aren’t really listening.”

Pauline de Saint Remy and Elisa Bertholomey contributed reporting.

For generations, Japanese gangsters have styled themselves as heirs to the samurai—a mystique that helped them prosper in league with politicians, police, and big business.

“The Occidental Book of the Dead,” “Luna, Phoenix, Queen,” “The Minimalist,” and “The Decadent Movement.”

Visit our bookshop.org page to purchase this week’s new books and support your local bookstore. And us!

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Anderson, Kevin J.: Sleep With the Fishes (WordFire Press 978-1680578652, $15.99, 276pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, 10/06/2026)

Urban fantasy noir novel. When an immortal mafia Don is sentenced to eternal life in prison, the resulting power struggle means Dan Shamble has to deal with Sammy the Salmon along with his other supernatural cases and ex-wife.

 

Andrews, LJ: The Stolen Crown (Ace 978-0593955116, $30.00, 512pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Fantasy romance novel, fourth in The Ever Seas series. In a world of fae factions, Mira is shipwrecked with Tait Heartwalker, a frustratingly handsome royal, only to discover a secret that threatens the kingdom.

 

Anning, Benedict: Atomic Coffin (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press 978-0857508881, $30.15, 336pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Cosmic horror novel. Heidi, codename Thistle — a British spy in East Germany — discovers that a previously unkown Soviet submarine has been motionless and undetected in the ocean for three years. First US edition (Bantam UK 6/26).

 

Bailey, Tessa: Broken Rival (HarperCollins/Avon 978-0063381018, $30.00, 416pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

SF novel. Eighteen-year-old Magnolia lives an ordinary teenage life, with one secret — her brilliant and persecuted parents invented time travel 50 years in our future, and sent her back in time to protect her from hunters.

 

Cameron, Miles: Soulstealer (Orion UK/Gollancz 978-1399632645, £25.00, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/08/2026)

Fantasy novel, first in the Soulflake Conspiracies series. Arcanist Bekka Trevelyan, on a field trip over the Yule holidays, is pulled into the investigation of the kidnapping of an indigenous woman and her child by a demon. Author writes historical fiction as Christian Cameron.

 

Cogman, Genevieve: A Scholar’s Guide to Demonology and Other Dark Arts (Macmillan/Tor UK 978-1035073924, £20, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/08/2026)

Fantasy novel, first In the Grayne’s Academy series. Philomela drops out of her PhD to become a Latin teacher at a girls’ school, but discovers it’s a secret training facility for elite demonologists.

 

Cole, Kamilah: Wicked Endeavors (Little, Brown UK/Atom 978-0349125879, £9.99, 336pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Young-adult fantasy novel. Young-adult fantasy romance novel. In a deadly court of witches, infiltrator Caya must join forces with Bas, a frustratingly handsome co-conspirator. First UK edition (Little, Brown US 9/26).

 

Connor, Quinn: Your Beloved Remains (Macmillan/Flatiron/Pine & Cedar 978-1250461049, $28.99, 272pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Southern gothic horror novel. To save the moldering Basin College in the Ozarks, archivist Celia recruits postdoc Joan to forge the manuscript of a lost horror novel by the school’s 19th-century benefactress, with whom Celia has been infatuated.

 

Delemhach: The Dues and Don’ts of Magic (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press 978-1668234105, $30.00, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Fantasy romance novel, the first in the Magic Dues trilogy. Witch Spidena runs a magic shop at the edge of town, and is approached by fugitive Benthrop asking if she can make his nefarious pursuers forget him.

 

Emerald, A.T.: Under the Iron Sky (Penguin Random House UK/Del Rey UK 978-1529993493, £22.00, 560pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/08/2026)

Romantic fntasy novel, first the Under the Iron Sky series. In a world of deadly creatures ruled by the Dar’rak, rebel Soraya is captured by The Demon, a frustratingly handsome enemy soldier.

 

Erikson, Steven: Legacies of Betrayal (Tor 978-0765323613, $28.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Epic fantasy novel, third in the Tales of Witness series, sequel to the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. A new holy war erupts in the burned-out Seven Cities, and teh Fifth and Sixth squads embark on a hopeless mission. Simultaneous with the Penguin Random House UK/Bantam UK edition.

 

Froud, Brian: Brian Froud’s Green Women (Abrams 978-1419783746, $34.41, 168pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 10/06/2026)

Art book/anthology. 72 Froud are paired with original stories and contributions by women authors, including Lisa Tuttle, Sarah Beth Durst, Amal El-Mohtar, Jo Walton, T. Kingfisher, and more.

 

Gray, Jordan Stephanie: Devoured (Little, Brown 978-0316584579, $19.99, 464pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Young-adult fantasy romance novel, the second in the Bitten series. In a deadly court of werewolves, infiltrator Vanessa must join forces with Calix, a frustratingly handsome threat.

 

Guanzon, Thea: This Shattered Tempest (Harper Voyager US 978-0063277359, $34.00, 496pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Fantasy novel, third and final in the Hurricane Wars series. In a world of Shadowforged and Lightweaver factions, Talasyn plunges towards war with Alaric, her frustratingly handsome husband.

 

Hall, Julie: The Secrets of Everlight (Ace 979-8217191390, $20.00, 496pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Fantasy romance novel. In a deadly court of fae, infiltrator Rowan must join forces with Dryden, a frustratingly handsome prince.

 

Harris, Joanne: Sleepers in the Snow (Pegasus Crime 979-8897102020, £22.00, 272pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/08/2026)

Ghost story/thriller. A new occupant, looking for a fresh start after a bitter divorce, moves into a cozy house on the moor, but the animals around start acting strange. Simultaneous with the Orion UK/Gollancz edition.

 

Hazelwood, Ali: Bound | Unboud (Penguin Random House/Berkley Romance 979-8217192717, $30.00, 416pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Duology of paranormal romance novellas. In “Bound,” a con artist and professor bond over an arcane text, and in “Unbound,” ancient immortal Lilit of Nineveh starts a relationship with a mortal doctor.

 

Huddleston, Tom H.: The Cracks (Titan Books UK 978-1835413036, £9.99, 368pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 10/06/2026)

Horror novel. Widowed Sandra is invited by her wealthy friend and his wife to their dilapidated manor, Hautmond Hall, where visitors have mysterious accidents and there’s a secret room in the cellar. A first novel.

 

Jones, KC: House Haunters (Tor/Nightfire 978-1250440969, $18.99, 368pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 10/06/2026)

Horror novel. Despearate for a hit show to save her career, exec Grace latches onto handsome “ghost hunter” Frank, but production descends into nightmarish torments.

 

Karella, Bitter: Quaint Folk (Orbit US/Run For It 978-0316581943, $19.99, 352pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Horror novel. Picture-perfect wife Jessica moves with her husband to a “quaint” island whose residents live in isolation, but discovers something is deeply wrong with the cozy rustic community. Reprint (Run For It 2025). A first novel.

 

Khaw, Cassandra: Find Me Where It Ends (Tor/Nightfire 978-1250877895, $24.99, 144pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Horror novella. Antigone welcomes the black dog, the form Death takes to visit her family, and it becomes her companion. Simultaneous with the Titan Books UK edition. Simultaneous with the Titan UK edition.

 

King, John: Machine Elves Descending (PM Press 979-8887440972, $15.00, 128pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 10/06/2026)

Collection of stories, essays, and articles, with an interview conducted by Allan Kausch. Themes of dystopia, England, and rock n’ roll. Part of PM Press’ Outspoken Authors series.

 

King, Stephen & Straub, Peter: Other Worlds Than These (Simon & Schuster/Scribner 978-1668233092, $35.00, 704pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Fantasy novel, third and final in the Talisman trilogy that also function as a standalone. Part of The Dark Tower universe. Jack Sawyer faces challenges in infected teenages in America and the Gullet at the edge of Mid-World. Simultaneous with the Hodder & Stoughton UK edition.

 

Lawrence, Mark: The Bookshop Book (Harper Voyager UK 978-0008800406, £18.99, 224pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 10/08/2026)

Fantasy novel, set in the world of the Library trilogy. “Red” Archer wanders into a bookshop and, along with Rose Penrose, becomes a tool of The Great Smith.

 

Lockhart, E.: The Pools (Penguin Random House/Delacorte 978-0593904121, $20.99, 375pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

YA Fantasy novel. In a New England town with hot springs, a terrible event should have warned people away from the water — and new girl Lexie witnesses something strange when five people go swimming.

 

Lord, Karen: Angel at the Gates (Akashic 978-1636143156, $22.95, 180pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Fantasy novel. A man tries to return a family heirloom to its land of origin, and ends up at a priory whose residents, and resident Angel, want to keep him there as war builds outside.

 

Malone, Ailbhe: Banshee (Pegasus Books 979-8897102105, $28.95, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Anthology of Irish myths retold to center the female characers. Authors include Wendy Erskine, Nikita Gill, Jess Kidd, and Megan Nolan. First US edition (John Murray UK 2/26/2026).

 

Manickavel, Kuzhali: A Compendium of Supernatural Entities Found in the Government Girls Higher Secondary School (Angry Robot 978-1915998866, $19.99, 172pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Fantasy novel. A mysterious notebook is found by frustrated secondary-school student Thamarai, which describes paranormal phenomena and might even be a means of escape.

 

Moeller, Tara: Teeth (DreamPunk Press 978-1963928372, $19.66, 286pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 10/06/2026)

Horror anthology, with “jaw-clenching” stories centered on the theme of teeth — losing them, finding them, and their titular fairy.

 

Nelson, Madison Tyler: Portrait of a Haunting (Penguin Random House/Berkley 979-8217189342, $30.00, 352pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Horror novel. Tatum must rely on her hated, inherited ability to see spirits when her best friend is murdered in an eerily similar way to a murder committed by Tatum’s own mother. A first novel.

 

Newitz, Annalee: A Wall Is Also a Road (Tor 978-1250228031, $28.99, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

SF novel. Gardenpath, a slime-mold-like organism who lives between stars, visits a habitable world and forms a bond with Murtis, a bipedal courtesan who works in a seaside city called “Pompeii.”

 

Roth, Veronica: The Sixth Faction (HarperCollins 978-0063462595, $21.99, 528pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Young-adult SF novel, in an alternate timeline of the Divergent universe. Beatrice Prior’s choosing ceremony is disrupted by a tragedy, setting her on a different path.

 

Schwab, Victoria: Victorious (Tor 978-1250192233, $31.99, 592pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Fantasy novel, third in the Villains series. Eli and Victor, best friends and mortal enemies, face off in a final showdown. Simultaneous with the Titan UK edition.

 

Slatter, A.G.: Fitcher’s Bird (Titan Books UK 978-1835412589, £13.99, 160pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Horror novel. As children Dido and her sisters survived a fatal house fire — now, with her sisters missing, adult Dido must find out where they are and also what happened that fateful night.

 

Smoke, Lucy: Hallowed Bones (St. Martin’s Griffin 978-1250413741, $20.00, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Romantic fantasy novel, first in the Sons of Salem trilogy. Haven has been warned to stay away from the Sons of Salem, five men whose families are mired in rumors of witchcraft or worse.

 

Stirling, S.M. & Olthoff, Melissa: Rome to the Stars (Baen 978-1668073506, $28.00, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 10/06/2026)

SF novel, first in the Pax Astra series. Commander Aquila Amphion, in a spacefaring Roman empire bolstered by technology from time-travelers, must confront Gra’ak, an alliance of space barbarians.

 

Torres, Nicolina: Night of the Mallrats (Harper Perennial 978-0063472976, $19.99, 384pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Horror novel. Five friends, visiting a condemned mall where they hung out as teens, unexpectedly travel back in time to 1994, the day a schoolmate disappeared.

 

Van Draanen, Wendelin: Ghosted (Holiday House 978-0823460397, $19.99, 256pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Young-adult paranormal romance novel. Gemma and Jimmy are high school sweethearts, but Jimmy is a ghost, and Gemma will soon age past him.

 

Vo, Nghi: The Scarlet Ball (Tor 978-1250904966, $28.99, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Fantasy novel. Courtesan Judith Ban poses as the missing daughter of a white elite New York family, in a world of demonic marriages. Simultaneous with the Penguin Random House UK/Del Rey UK edition.

 

Wallace, Auralee: The Haunted Librarian (Ace 978-1420542912, $36.00, 368pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Cozy fantasy novel. On a rainy autumn day, Ameila discovers three quirky spirits causing paranormal havoc at her local library.

 

Williams, Tad: The Splintered Sun (Astra House/DAW 978-0756419059, $30.00, 528pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/06/2026)

Fantasy novel. Set in the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn universe. A fearless bandit and his band of misfit rebels navigate a kingdom menaced by dark sorcery and war, 300 years before The Dragonbone Chair.

 

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New Book Releases: Oct 6, 2026

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Workers at three major publishing houses tell WIRED that LLMs are being used for publicity, cover art, back cover copy, and emails, as some execs push junior staff to champion the tech.

On October 7, the New York City landmark Strand Bookstore hosted an extraordinary conversation between the iconic, enormously influential Alice Cooper and Grammy-winning writer Anthony DeCurtis to celebrate the former’s latest literary feat, Devil on My Shoulder: A Memoir. Digital, physical, and audiobook copies of this definitive autobiography of “The Godfather of Shock Rock,” co-authored by Daniel Richler, were unleashed the day prior by Da Capo (of Hachette Book Group), which recently published (Cooper’s godson) Dave Mustaine’s In My Darkest Hour: A Memoir, for which the Strand organized an amazing event last month at the Kaufman Music Center.

In New York, Cooper coincidentally ran into his friend, actor Michael Douglas, whose memoir was also released through Hachette that same day, and he stopped by Barnes & Noble to meet and pose with readers before heading to the Strand. Cooper will embark on what will surely be an unforgettable UK book tour, but the Strand always guarantees the best experiences.

Although the Strand has multiple locations, their evening with Mr. Cooper and Mr. DeCurtis took place on the charming sixth floor of their 828 Broadway shop, an East Village staple, which has served as the family business’ home base since 1957. The store has hosted talks with countless other heavyweights, including Nick Cave and Guns N’ Roses pioneer Duff McKagan. However, an extra-special energy preceded and accompanied Alice Cooper.

Two hours before the celebrity conversation, the line stretched down the block—Cooper would later point out some of his die-hard followers from his seat. Once inside, fans could pick up their thick, signed hardbacks. Looking around, one could spot more than one painted face, accessories like top hats, and other nods to Cooper’s aesthetics.

Remarkably, Cooper’s original bassist, Dennis Dunway, who launched his memoir at the Strand in 2015, was among those who turned up to show support.

Alice Cooper’s New Memoir Explores the Man Behind the Monster

The director of events, Walker, first stepped up to the microphone with a beautifully prepared speech, welcoming attendees and informing them of the venue’s history: “The Strand was founded in 1927 by Benjamin Bass on 4th Avenue’s Book Row. Book Row stretched from Union Square to Astor Place but gradually dwindled from 48 bookstores. And after 99 years, the Strand is the sole survivor, now run by third-generation owner Nancy Bass Wyden.”

Walker then introduced Mr. Cooper and Mr. DeCurtis. Professor DeCurtis is not only a current editor at Rolling Stone, but he is also revered for his contributions to other major outlets, including The New York Times and Relix, as well as his formidable achievements as an author. Thus, it was no surprise that DeCurtis masterfully conducted an incredibly informative interview (using pre-submitted audience questions) that covered the span of Cooper’s career. Cooper artfully worked in countless bits of trivia that delighted those present.

The two speakers touched upon topics as the origins of the Alice Cooper banner, Cooper’s revolutionary theatrics (which even earned the admiration of the late surrealist giant Salvador Dalí, who solicited his collaboration), faith, his reaction to surpassing idols in the charts for the first time, horror movies, the adorable eccentricities of the Who’s tragically late Keith Moon, and much more.

Of his newest book’s title, Cooper commented, “I think every one of us here has a little devil on our shoulder.” Sobriety famously brought Cooper back to Church, as he reminded us, before emphasizing, “I think a lot of my existence and being here today was because of prayer.” Cooper and his multi-talented wife, Sheryl, who is an integral part of the Alice Cooper stage shows, are both children of pastors. Sheryl, as expected, looked gorgeous as she later stood up for the applauding crowd.

Alice Cooper, who renewed his vows with Sheryl this March, provided the secret to a wonderfully inspiring marriage: “My wife cuts my head off every night. […] And, you know, we kill each other every night. That’s why we’ve been married for 50 years. And, you know, I stab her, kill her…” Cooper noted that the 40-pound guillotine blade that Sheryl sends crashing or watches drop during concerts still causes him to feel a bit tense, since it only barely misses his neck. The idea of a guillotine came from Cooper’s cross-country and journalism teacher, who used one as a cute punishment for tardiness.

Cooper and DeCurtis discussed the line between Alice Cooper and the man coexisting in the same body as the historic alter ego—the man born Vincent Damon Furnier. The legendary artist said his character hassled him a lot, trying to creep in and even correct him, while he was penning Devil on My Shoulder. He summarized, “One of the main themes of the book is this interaction with the Alice Cooper character.” The gentleman before us, admired for his kindness and humility, views Alice, the fabled entertainer, as his polar opposite.

The frontman encourages his bandmates to maintain a healthy separation between their stage personas and amiable, everyday selves as well: “I tell them all the time, I say, ‘Look, when you’re onstage, I want you to reek of ego, because the audience wants you to be bigger than life. They want you to be something they could never be. Like, you’re an Avenger, you know. And when you get offstage, I expect that to disappear. […]’ When I’m offstage, I have zero ego about anything.” The Good in this unlikely role model speaks louder than any devil perched on the shoulder.

Popularity hit Cooper in an unreal way, as he recalls, “There was this moment when I went out to dinner, and I’d go, ‘Do I have to put makeup on? Bring the snake again?!'” He continued, “At the time, honestly, I didn’t know where I began, and Alice ended. You know, it was very-very confusing for me. And when I got sober 43 years ago, I finally went, ‘Alice doesn’t want to live here. He doesn’t want to go shopping.

He doesn’t want to play golf. He doesn’t want to do any of this stuff. He just wants to be up there onstage. So, let’s leave him up onstage.'” The self-proclaimed “golf monster” joked that a golf club in Alice’s hand would naturally turn into a weapon.

Cooper has been a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee since 2011, and he joined the International Knife Throwers Hall of Fame the following year. At the Strand, he confessed to lacerating photos of The Golden Girls’ beloved Betty White (after her heartbreaking death) and Mother Teresa, playfully calling the spot on his board where he practiced an “honor.”

As for future generations of rock musicians, Cooper offered hope, pushing back against claims that the genre is dead and rotting. He stated, “You can’t stop a teenager from being angst-filled, and what’s a better way to get that out than having a loud guitar, and a bass, and drums, and a band?! […] Now, rock is where it should be. It’s ‘outlaw’ again. So, now, it’s all the kids that didn’t get invited to the party […]. There’s anger now in rock, and all these young bands are going to come up, and you’re going to see a resurgence of hard rock. I think that’s just inevitable.”

There was so much more worthy of relaying. However, if you want to hear everything the Strand’s guests have to say, you’ll have to keep a close eye on the store’s upcoming events. For more from Cooper, buy his autobiography, preferably from The Strand, the perfect customer-oriented local business to support.

Also, tune in to Cooper’s new weekly SiriusXM show, Alice in Underland, which premieres October 10. You can find it on Little Steven’s Underground Garage, the channel of Renaissance man Steven Van Zandt.

The post Alice Cooper Jokes That His Secret to a 50-Year Marriage Is a Guillotine: ‘My Wife Cuts My Head Off Every Night’ appeared first on VICE.

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MADRID — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has finally done something the far right approves of — calling a snap election on Nov. 29 that the anti-immigrant Vox party is hailing as “Spain’s last chance to be Spain again.”

Polling third in the race, Vox is Spain’s leading nationalist, euroskeptic force and it sees next month’s contest as its prime opportunity to remold the country after eight years of Sánchez’s socialist premiership by getting its people into top ministerial jobs.

Party leader Santiago Abascal greeted Monday’s election announcement as “excellent news.” His delight is hardly surprising given that polls suggest Vox is on track to make the biggest gains of any major party.

While the center-right People’s Party is expected to come first — with about 33% of the vote, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls — it will almost certainly have to team up with Vox, which commands support of about 18%, to build a stable coalition.

Abascal will then be able to demand the inclusion of key elements of Vox’s agenda as its price for that partnership. Its goals include deportations of undocumented migrants, a benefits preference for Spaniards over foreign nationals, slashing EU health and safety rules in the farming sector and rolling back support for gender equality and the LGBTQ+ community.

Vox secured 33 of the 350 seats in Congress in 2023, but is now set to double that. Under the PP’s coalition leadership, it should be able to form part of a comfortable majority.

“This time round, Vox is much stronger,” José Antonio Fúster, spokesperson for the party and a member of the Madrid regional parliament, said. “We are going into a very important election, not so much for us, as for Spaniards … This is the last hope for Spain to be Spain again.”

Fúster would not be drawn on which ministries his party has set its sights on, warning against “selling the bearskin before it has been hunted.”

Pointing to talks with the PP in recent months in four regions where the two parties now govern in coalition, he said the shaping of policy was being prioritized ahead of institutional power. “That is the last thing we negotiate because it is the least important,” he said.

Pet portfolios

In August, Vox MEP Jorge Buxadé told POLITICO that forming part of the government was not the only option open to his party, but that in a hypothetical coalition with the PP, his party would seek a number of ministries “in proportion to our vote share.”

That would amount to a significant percentage. If current polls translate into results in November, Vox would be in a position to claim about a third of ministerial posts.

Analysts expect Vox to press for portfolios that focus on its pet policies, such as agriculture, domestic policy, immigration and industry. The culture and education portfolios could also be of interest to the party, given their relevance in the hard right’s campaign against so-called wokeism.

The regions where the PP and Vox currently govern together — Andalusia, Aragón, Castile and León, and Extremadura — offer clues: The government departments that Vox controls are mainly linked to agriculture, welfare benefits and the family.

The party is heading into the election campaign espousing three main ideas: the concept of “national priority” — ensuring that Spaniards have access to public services and benefits ahead of foreign nationals — a clampdown on immigration and broad deregulation.

Although Vox’s rise to prominence was driven by its fierce stance against Catalan nationalism nearly a decade ago, that debate has faded from the political arena. Now, its focus is, like its European far-right counterparts, more firmly on immigration-related matters.

“Before, Vox talked about immigration, but it wasn’t the nuclear issue it has become,” said Guillermo Fernández Vázquez, a political scientist at Carlos III University and author of a book about the European far right. “Now, when Vox talks about social security payments, it talks about immigration; when it talks about the economy, it talks about immigration. Immigration is the issue that dictates everything.”

Vox also subscribes to the “remigration” policy being touted by many far-right parties, under which undocumented migrants and those who commit crimes would be deported. The PP has appeared to respond to Vox’s hard line by toughening its own stance, calling for the expulsion of foreign criminals and opposing a government migrant legalization program.

In each of the regions where the two parties are in coalition, Vox has ensured that its senior partner agreed to formally include the national priority principle in their governing agreement.

“But when it comes to national priority, the PP has added the caveat that it has to be implemented in line with the law,” said Miguel González, a journalist at the El País daily newspaper and author of a book about Vox. Legislation prevents discrimination against foreign nationals when it comes to accessing public benefits and services, meaning the policy is currently little more than symbolic in those regions. 

“In reality, in order to implement this properly, you’d have to change the immigration law,” González added.

Vox is eyeing an overhaul of that legislation to make it a workable policy.

“It’s very possible to change laws that are bad for Spaniards, so we have to roll them back and introduce new laws, making sure that Spaniards are not last in line,” Fúster said.

Deregulation nation

Deregulation also offers a platform from which to attack EU health-and-safety norms that are reviled by the farming sector, one of Vox’s main voter bases.

Fúster accepted that this could lead to clashes with the European Commission, but insisted that pressure from what he described as a rising tide of European parties sharing Vox’s values would “make sure that Brussels returns to the path of common sense.”

PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo has criticized phytosanitary restrictions on farmers but has shown little appetite for conflict with European institutions.

In social policy, González said Vox might use the broader notion of deregulation to dismantle funding for gender equality and LGBTQ+ departments and projects, as it has done on a local level. Fúster was reluctant to be drawn on this: “We believe in the equality of Spaniards,” he said. “We don’t believe that anyone should have privileges above others.”

Fernández Vázquez of Carlos III University said that the origins of Vox suggest a bumpy ride for the PP. Vox would be the first far-right party to enter government in half a century since the death of Francisco Franco in 1975 — and there would likely be clashes.

The far-right party formed in 2013 as a breakaway from the conservatives in frustration at what its founders saw as the pusillanimity of the PP in the face of Catalan separatism. 

“I think the relationship between Vox and PP [in government] will be a bad one,” the researcher said. “Abascal and his colleagues are going to enjoy showing up Feijóo whenever they can, portraying him as lukewarm and weak.”

Fúster accepted “it could be a difficult relationship,” adding that the PP “don’t see things the way we do and we don’t share their vision.”

“We’re not willing to make concessions, we’re willing to have a frank, open and reasonable negotiation.”

But for now, the priority is simply to remove the Socialists. In his traditionally combative style, Abascal insisted the election was a chance to hold on to “the peace, prosperity and freedom that a mafioso government wants to snatch from us forever.”

Max Griera contributed to this article.

Josh Lieb has been a comedy writer/producer for some of the best comedy on television: The Daily Show with John Stewart, The Simpsons, NewsRadio, etc. He's been writing funny and interesting children's books recently, and his latest is a Choose Your Own Adventure picture book that's that's more comedy than adventure. — Read the rest

The post A new picture book makes kids its boss appeared first on Boing Boing.

What can an economist teach us about misery? 

I had that question in mind while reading the new book The Opposite of Happiness: How Bad Feelings Make and Break Us, by eminent researcher George Loewenstein. The field is not exactly known for its facility with human emotions, but Loewenstein is a co-founder of behavioral economics, the subdiscipline that studies the many ways that people depart from the ideal of the perfectly rational actor. He’s spent a career investigating how psychology and emotion shape our judgments, and his latest book offers a sweeping account of how suffering structures human life. 

That might sound very bleak, like the opposite of a fun read. But the book itself isn’t distressing — it’s a bracing, useful, and even comforting lens on what it means to be alive. It emerged from a period of profound suffering in his own life, one where, he writes, he “thought about suicide constantly.” Writing it, he told me in a recent interview, was “kind of a silver lining for my own misery.” 

In Loewenstein’s own words, The Opposite of Happiness is not a self-help book. To him, understanding is its own reward. Though he adamantly refuses to dispense life advice, I still think the book offers much that can help us live more wisely, a little less at war with our emotions.   

“Misery is inescapable,” Loewenstein writes. “It’s not some malfunction or a bug in the system. It is the system.” Negative emotions are “more powerful, persistent, and pervasive than positive ones.” That is because, he argues, unpleasant feelings — hunger, pain, anger, loneliness — are how evolution motivated us to do the things we need to survive and pass on our genes. They still heavily shape our conscious experience, however mismatched they may feel to our modern circumstances. 

Some version of that insight, that dissatisfaction is woven into the human condition, has been known to humans for eons, of course, captured in philosophical teachings like Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths. The father of economics himself observed that people work hard to earn riches, only to discover the result offers no lasting contentment. “It is this deception which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind,” Adam Smith wrote in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. “It is this which first prompted them to cultivate the ground, to build houses, to found cities and commonwealths, and to invent and improve all the sciences and arts.” 

Loewenstein puts this understanding into the language of modern psychology, speaking to a current of anxiety and unhappiness running through American life today. It also points to enduring questions about what the purpose of human progress and prosperity is, anyway. 

Many of us could particularly benefit from the concept of negative “meta-emotions,” or the judgmental feelings we have about our negative feelings. “At the heart of so many of our miseries is not the fact that we feel bad, but the belief that we should feel otherwise,” he writes.  That line immediately rang true to me — merely acknowledging to myself that it’s not a big deal if I feel terrible from work stress, or my cat’s deteriorating health, or whatever else happens to be weighing on me, helps to lighten the load. What if we really tried to wryly embrace the reality that it’s extremely normal for life to suck sometimes? The reward might not be happiness, exactly (an elusive and poorly understood state anyway, Loewenstein points out), but a little less misery.  

I recently spoke with Loewenstein about his book — he had a gentle, faintly melancholic air, and took a surprisingly generous interest in some of the choices I was weighing in my own life. Part of our conversation, condensed and edited for clarity, is below. 

Americans seem pretty unhappy right now. There has been endless discourse about that. Do you think that your book adds something to that conversation?

I do — I was just an expert on the Meta case that recently settled. I was an expert on the side that was against Meta. I think one of the causes of declining mental health is, in fact, social media. It really exacerbates the types of social comparisons that lead to envy and loss of self-esteem. I would like to think that I provide some new insights into how these modern technologies help to exacerbate the mental health crisis. 

One analysis of that, based on what I’ve learned from your book, might be: We as humans are so guided by negative emotions, and often those emotions are relational in nature and have to do with how we compare to other people.  Social media is then quite naturally going to tap into and amplifying negative emotions that we’re easily manipulated by.

That’s right. I think of it in two ways. One is there’s kind of a mismatch between the circumstances in which we evolved and the modern environment. And the other is that in the capitalist economy, there are, especially in the internet age, all these entities that are trying to exploit our evolutionary programming for their own good and not for our good. 

The premise of the book, as you write, is that “misery is inescapable. It’s not some malfunction or a bug in the system. It is the system” — it’s like our default state. Can you unpack what that means? 

I agree with everything you said until “default.” Different people have different set points, and there are some happy people around. I happen to be a glass-half-empty person. My natural state is a little bit below zero. But there are very few people who don’t experience some form of misery frequently and intensely. 

The evolutionary function of most negative emotions is pretty obvious, whereas the evolutionary function of happiness is sort of murky. And misery is so dominant that all it takes is a little bit of misery, a little bit of negative emotion, to wipe out any positive emotion. You go out to a really nice dinner at a fancy restaurant with your significant other, and you say something thoughtless and they get offended or they say something thoughtless and you get offended. All of a sudden you can’t even taste the food or appreciate the beautiful surroundings. 

Paul Rozin at the University of Pennsylvania referred to this as the “roach effect”: If you drop a roach into a vat of fine French wine, you don’t want to drink the wine. But if you take a roach, you can add as much wine as you want to it and you’re not going to want to eat the roach.

One of the strongest positive emotions is relief — which is interesting and not a coincidence, because it’s relief from negative emotions. It’s telling that maybe the strongest positive emotion involves the elimination of negative emotions.

You can think of misery as a stick trying to get you to do things that evolution thought were good for you; the stick is very immediate, and you know exactly what it’s telling you. If you are hungry, it’s time to eat. If you’re in pain, you’re injured, you’ve got to do something about it. But the carrot is different. The carrot, which is positive emotions, you have to think ahead, Oh, if I did this, then I would experience this positive emotion. It requires a kind of second-order thinking, whereas misery is just immediate. Evolution figured out probably very rapidly, probably when we were single-cell protozoa or something, that sticks are a way better way to get an organism to do what it needs to do than carrots.

How confident are you that the evidence base we have about the psychology of negative emotions generalizes to humanity as a whole and that it’s not culturally biased?

“What I’d really like people to get out of the book is insight — into their own negative feelings, their own types of misery, and other people’s negative feelings.”

Emotion researchers have looked across cultures, and they tend to observe the same basic emotions in a very, very wide range of cultures. What does vary across cultures is what induces the emotions. For example, shame — something that we would be unashamed of, somebody in a different country might be very ashamed of, and vice versa. A lot of these emotions are self-conscious emotions. They have to do with how we interpret the world and whether we’re living up to some kind of standard. Often we get it from culture, from religion, things like that.

But I think the emotions themselves are not universal, but pretty close to universal. My guess is that all 12 negative emotions that I write about are manifested in pretty much all different cultures, from those that have very little connection to Western civilization to advanced economies. 

Another timely thread that your book is in conversation with is this idea that American culture has become intolerant of ordinary negative emotions in a way that’s maladaptive. Suzanne O’Sullivan’s recent book The Age of Diagnosis, for example, covered our obsession with medical labels and how they might make us prone to thinking that feeling bad means that there’s something medically wrong with us. What do you think about that? Have we gotten bad at feeling bad?

It is striking to me how it seems like all the young people I meet talk about their therapist, and a lot of them talk about the drugs that they take. Young people also talk about anxiety and depression almost like one word, “anxiety-and-depression.” In my generation, anxiety and depression were two entirely different things. 

I think it’s good that younger generations are more comfortable talking about these things and getting help. I do worry that it can be, to some degree, pathologizing. There’s an awful lot of self-focus there. And I kind of worry that if you are dealing with your mental health problems by taking drugs, that it reduces your motivation to figure out things like how to reorganize your life to feel better. But I don’t want to sound too much like a dinosaur.

There’s a contingent of people who might read your book and think, “Yes, isn’t it terrible that humans are built to be unhappy and our evolved instincts don’t serve us well anymore? And that’s why we should engineer humans in such a way that we don’t feel this way all the time.” Someone with a strong utilitarian philosophy might think that if your life sums up to more negative feelings than positive ones, then it’s not even worth living. But that’s not really the vibe that I get from you. 

No, yeah. And one of the things I talk about in the book are what psychologists call meta-emotions. These are emotions that one experiences about emotions. I think the single best example is envy. If you envy your friend — almost everyone has friends that they envy, but they’re still your friends. But you might feel that you’re not supposed to envy your friend, and you feel guilty — the guilt is a meta-emotion. Or you can also have meta-emotions about a lack of emotion. So something bad happens to someone, or even somebody dies, and you don’t feel all that bad, and you feel guilty because you’re not grieving. 

I think all the societal focus on happiness creates a kind of a meta-meta-emotion, which is that we think we’re supposed to be happy. And then we feel ashamed and guilty about the fact that we aren’t happy — we feel like we failed. That compounds and adds another level of depth to our misery. So I think it can be liberating at some level to understand that misery just is a constant in human existence. 

I also think that my book is militantly anti-self-help. There’s no self-help in it whatsoever. But I don’t think it’s a depressing book to read, and it wasn’t particularly depressing to write, though some of the stories that I wrote about were a bit wrenching. 

I like that — but what, then, ought people to do with the information that you’re presenting?

What I’d really like people to get out of the book is insight — into their own negative feelings, their own types of misery, and other people’s negative feelings. To me, insight is valuable in its own right. 

The reason I read sad novels is not because they make me happy, but because I feel like I gained some kind of insight into people and into the world. Tess of the d’Urbervilles is the saddest book you could ever imagine, but it’s very meaningful to read, and it definitely feels like you’re a different person after you read it. I love novels, but I have no skill as a fiction writer. So this book was almost like a surrogate for me. Instead of writing a novel, I wrote this book.

I think the lack of self-help drives some people crazy. I did a podcast where the podcaster kept asking me questions about how reading the book would improve somebody’s life. And I kept saying it’s not a self-help book.

I’m just very skeptical of self-help talks and books and things like that. And I know that there’s certain things you are supposed to do to feel good, like you’re supposed to wake up and think of three things that you should be thankful for. And maybe if I did that, maybe I would get happier, but I’ve never been able to actually get myself to do that.

But you do have some insights that people could apply in their lives, like the idea that striving intentionally for happiness or meaning doesn’t really work, and that meaning often comes to us in unforeseeable spontaneous moments. On one hand, that implies a kind of randomness, and maybe there’s not a lot we can do about it. On the other hand, I can predict that I’m more likely to feel a deep sense of meaning in some scenarios than others, and I can put myself into those situations more, like choosing to be social on a weeknight.

A lot of the time the good things in life are just surprising, and sometimes you have to get dragged kicking and screaming into things that ultimately end up being the most fulfilling things in your life. So much of parenting is trying to get your kids to do things that they don’t want to do that you are absolutely convinced that if they started to do them, they would end up loving.

You argue, drawing from economist and philosopher Adam Smith, that human beings are constantly striving to achieve the next thing because we imagine it’ll satisfy us, though it never does. That helpful delusion is what leads us to build cities and cure diseases and all the rest. 

Adam Smith is best known for the invisible hand, which is the idea that each person single-mindedly pursuing their own well-being inadvertently promotes the public good. But if you read Adam Smith’s other book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he didn’t believe at all that people pursue their own personal interest. He believed that people are driven by this illusion that the next raise, the next accomplishment, will bring happiness, and it never does. I love that contradiction between the conventional interpretation of the invisible hand and what Adam Smith really believed.

So civilization is powered by this dissatisfaction that never resolves itself. But I don’t think you would say the lesson we ought to take from the book is that we’ll always revert back to being miserable, so there’s no point in doing anything.

That’s absolutely not the point of the book. Misery evolved for good reasons, and the whole point of misery is that we’re supposed to take actions to lessen our miseries. That’s what we should be doing, because who wants to be miserable? 

Spotify will make 350,000 titles available in over 120 languages for this expansion.

New Patreon Supporters

Thanks to new Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters David, A.P. McC., Brunhard, Sal Glesser, Richard Airey, Dan Cifer, Matt Cheresh, and Mark Decherd. Your contributions mean more experiments on knife steel!

Video

There is a video version of the following information as well:

Properties

When it comes to knife steels there is a whole range of properties that we might want to achieve, such as:

• Hardness
• Toughness
• Wear Resistance
• Corrosion Resistance
• Cost
• Forgeability
• Grindability
• Polishability
• Sharpenability
• Availability
• Marketability

Some of these properties are desirable to the end user, but some are mostly for the manufacturer. For example, properties like hardness, toughness, wear resistance, corrosion resistance, and sharpenability are all things you want in your knife steel. Some properties are desired by both buyers and makers, such as low cost. However, the costs are different for the maker than the buyer. A large part of the cost for the manufacturer is grinding and polishing. A steel may be relatively inexpensive but difficult to grind and finish and thus end up relatively expensive to use.

A few properties are things we may not think about regularly, such as availability and marketability. It can sometimes be an advantage to use a steel no one has ever heard of, perhaps pushing the exclusivity of the steel. However, there are generally advantages to a steel that is already well known and well regarded. It takes work to have to educate customers about why their unusual or unique steel is a good choice.

Availability is another aspect of steel that knife buyers typically do not think about. There are many, many steels that have been made over the years and many of them are no longer made. Finding it in a catalog somewhere doesn’t mean that you can buy it. Even when a company is making a steel, often those steels are not available in the sizes necessary for knives. Hot rolling steel to the thin sizes needed for knives is relatively uncommon. And some steels are widely available in certain countries or to certain customers but not to others. For a long time people were requesting that I test the common Chinese knife steel 8Cr13MoV, but it is primarily sold to knife companies (not individual knifemakers) in China (where I do not live). So despite 8Cr13MoV being very common in cheap knives, it is not as easy to get a bar of it as an individual living in the USA. And there are costs to importing steel from another country, such as shipping and tariffs. If a knife company or maker wants to market their knives as “Made in USA” they will want to use USA-made steel or they will have to market it as “Made in USA with foreign materials” instead.

We would love to have a knife steel that is a 10 out of 10 for every property – the unicorn steel that has ultimate hardness, toughness, wear resistance, corrosion resistance, is easy to forge, grind, and polish, and is super cheap at the same time. Of course we know it isn’t possible. So when developing and engineering a new steel it is a question of tradeoffs and which ones we are willing to make.

The Matched Set Method

Sometimes knife buyers get caught in the budgeting and minutiae of all of the different steel choices out there. Worrying about whether to use Elmax or S30V is about two choices within the same “category.” Often it is the bigger jumps that are significant, such as whether you need a steel with high toughness to resist breaking and chipping or high wear resistance for slicing edge retention. The first time I am aware of where a steel company made this clear was Carpenter with their “Matched Set Method” which they introduced in 1935 [1], and is described in the 1937 book Tool Steel Simplified.

In the chart above I labeled each with their AISI designations (A2, D2, etc.) but otherwise it is unmodified from 1937. The categorized steels by high wear resistance (wear), high toughness (tough), and balanced properties (hard). To get high wear resistance you have to give up some toughness and vice versa. And they are also categorized by “hardenability,” which is a measure of how fast you need to quench a steel to achieve full hardness, either water, oil, and air for the quenching medium required. Water hardening steels were cheaper but required fast quench speed, were prone to distortion because of those fast quenches, and couldn’t be used for larger tools requiring through-hardness. In the knife world, water or oil hardening grades are favored by forging bladesmiths because of how easy it is to forge them.

Generational Breakthroughs

Of course I don’t mean to imply that there is never a reason to develop improved versions for different categories, or to create steels that sit in the middle between two different categories. There were generational improvements just to lead to the original Matched Set Method. For example, before the late 1800s all steels were “carbon steels” as carbon was the only element really added to them. “Water wear” F2 tool steel was developed by adding 3.5% tungsten to form hard tungsten carbides for wear resistance. Air hardening steels came by adding significant chromium additions, which also led to higher wear resistance from the formation of chromium carbides. The discovery of alloying was one of the most important transition points in steel history, which you can read more about in my book The Story of Knife Steel. The existence of high chromium steels also led to the development of stainless steels, very important to knives of course. The first stainless steel ever commercialized was intended for use as a knife steel. To understand what I mean by generational improvements and to get a feel for what is possible for future improvements I am going to discuss several prior improvements in this article.

Another important breakthrough occurred in the 1960s and 1970s with the introduction of powder metallurgy technology. With powder metallurgy they solved the issue of large carbides and inconsistent properties in steel by skipping the part where the liquid steel slowly cools down in a mold. Instead, the liquid steel comes out of a nozzle in a stream that is sprayed with gas so that it rapidly solidifies into fine grains, or “powder” steel. The powder is then placed in a steel can under high temperature and pressure, called hot isostatic pressing (HIP) to turn it into a solid ingot. Crucible Steel in New York and Pennsylvania developed this process and they found great improvements in toughness without any reduction in wear resistance by refining the microstructure with this process.

The technology wasn’t the only significant advancement, however. They also found that steels could be optimized for the PM process, as the best alloys for powder metallurgy were different than those optimized for conventional steelmaking. They first realized this when they found that M4 high speed steel went from being among the lowest toughness conventional high speed steels to the very toughest CPM high speed steel. They discovered that the high vanadium content went from being a liability to an asset. Vanadium carbides would form at high temperatures in solidification leading to large, brittle carbides. However, because powder metallurgy keeps the carbides small in solidification, it is the growth rate of the carbides that is important instead. Vanadium carbides are more stable than chromium (M₇C₃ and M₂₃C₆) and molybdenum/tungsten (M₆C) carbides and so would grow at a slower rate during high temperature processing like HIPing and hot rolling. Vanadium carbides are also among the very hardest and thus contribute more to wear resistance than chromium and molybdenum/tungsten carbides. So the combination of high hardness of vanadium carbides (wear resistance) and small size (toughness) led to high vanadium steels having excellent properties. This eventually led to the development of CPM-10V in 1978 which was a tool steel with ~10% vanadium for incredibly high wear resistance while still maintaining equal better toughness than the popular D2 tool steel.

Powder Metallurgy Stainless Steels

Crucible used their knowledge of vanadium alloying in the development of CPM-440V (now called CPM-S60V), a modification of 440C with 6% vanadium and extra carbon to go with it. This steel was released around 1983. However, this steel did not have especially excellent toughness because it still had a large amount of chromium carbide, softer and larger carbides which were detrimental to the toughness-wear resistance balance. In 1995 CPM-420V was released (now called CPM-S90V), patented by William Stasko, Kenneth Pinnow, and John Hauser. They reduced the chromium content from 17 to 14%, and increased the vanadium content from 6 to 9%. This led to an improvement in both toughness and wear resistance vs S60V. CPM-S30V, released in 2002, used the same concept as S90V but reduced the vanadium to 4% for higher toughness (and lower wear resistance). S30V also utilized increased Mo (2% rather than 1%) and partially replaced carbon with nitrogen (0.2%), both for better corrosion resistance, ideas explored in the S90V patent but not ultimately used in the commercialized version. CPM-S110V and CPM-S35VN were released around 2009-2010 and these steels used niobium to refine the microstructure. Niobium was also found to improve corrosion resistance in S110V because it does not increase the amount of chromium carbide like vanadium does. Micrographs of how much finer the microstructure is of S110V than S90V can be seen below:

CPM-S90V

CPM-S110V

MagnaCut

MagnaCut used all of the previous developments in its design as long as one more – a further reduction in chromium. The above steels had about 10-12% chromium “in solution” which is the chromium that is not tied up in carbides and thus can contribute to corrosion resistance. So these steels still had more chromium than was strictly necessary for corrosion resistance with 14% chromium. And I also knew that the properties had been greatly improved by reducing Cr from S60V to S90V. So for MagnaCut I intentionally designed the steel to have sufficient chromium for good corrosion resistance and then balanced the rest of the composition to avoid chromium carbide formation. It used a combination of niobium and vanadium for small, hard carbides for wear resistance. This gave significantly improved toughness because the carbides were much smaller than those found in high chromium stainless steels. And the corrosion resistance was also greatly improved because chromium carbides were eliminated. Those chromium carbides act as sites for corrosion to initiate, because they create locally reduced chromium content in solution around each carbide.

M390 – high chromium stainless powder metallurgy steel with relatively large carbides

MagnaCut – much smaller carbides

This improved toughness-wear resistance balance from the microstructure improvement of MagnaCut gives it properties similar to the best non-stainless PM steels:

The chart above shows orange dots for non-stainless steels and blue dots for stainless PM steels. You can see that the toughness for a given level of CATRA edge retention (edge wear) is significantly lower for the stainless steels, apart from MagnaCut which overcame this previous gulf in properties. This was the result of a series of generational improvements, a simplified version of which being 420 -> 440A -> 440C -> S60V -> S90V,S30V -> S110V,S35VN -> MagnaCut. Big improvements in steel come when we can move up and to the right at the same time, an improvement in both toughness and wear resistance. When you add another constraint such as corrosion resistance or hot hardness, that makes it more difficult to achieve the highest balance of toughness and wear resistance. I have images in The Story of Knife Steel that show the evolutionary tree of different steel types such as this one for stainless knife steels:

Not all of those grades (S60V, etc.) were an improvement in every category, but in general there was an improvement over time in terms of the balance of toughness, wear resistance, and corrosion resistance. It is difficult to improve all of these at the same time, or even two of the three at the same time, without affecting the others. But a true generational improvement comes when engineers figure out how to break through previous barriers, such as when MagnaCut managed to make it to the same toughness-wear resistance balance as the non-stainless PM steels.

MagnaMax

I chose to make MagnaCut a “balanced” steel in the realm of CPM-4V and CPM-CruWear. This meant it filled a niche that had not previously been filled. However, the alloy concept of avoiding chromium carbide and using only hard vanadium/niobium carbides could be used for other combinations of toughness and wear resistance. When I first proposed MagnaCut to Crucible and Niagara I also said that we could make a stainless version of CPM-10V with the same idea. That eventually led to MagnaMax which was recently released. MagnaMax has double the carbide of MagnaCut for significantly greater wear resistance.

Magna-Family Steels

MagnaMax was the first addition to the “Magna-Family” of grades. I call it a family despite only having two steels because there are many other options. To be clear, I am not currently announcing new additions and none are coming in the short term. But the same concept could be used for a higher toughness version of MagnaCut, for example. Essentially the opposite direction of MagnaMax. Another balancing act in steels I have not yet discussed, however, is the balance between hardness and corrosion resistance.

You can see that in general, higher hardness leads to lower corrosion resistance and vice versa. However, this is true when comparing steels, not for comparing hardness within a single steel. A steel can be heat treated to maximize hardness and corrosion resistance at the same time, as I have explained in the past. MagnaCut had improved hardness for its level of corrosion resistance because of its lack of chromium carbide. But modified versions could be made for higher hardness and reduced corrosion resistance or improved corrosion resistance at the cost of some hardness. Thus we would have a new “matched set” for the potential family of Magna-series steels:

Again, I must be clear that I don’t actually believe we will release all of these. In fact, perhaps only the center steels will ever be released, since we hit a very good balance between hardness and corrosion resistance for MagnaCut and MagnaMax. However, it could be interesting to make the other versions for specific applications, either for high hardness stainless steels or to make improved “saltwater” stainless grades.

How Small of a Niche Can We Fill?

As I said when it comes to all of the potential variations of MagnaCut, just because we can fill a niche doesn’t mean we can or should. Having too many available grades can make things confusing to customers and increase logistical complexity. Unfortunately I don’t have the power to eliminate old steels to replace with the new better ones to lead to a simpler market. With too many available grades there can also be a situation where it doesn’t make monetary sense to make certain niche products. It costs money to develop a new product and the return on investment may not be worth it if the resulting sales are not great enough. So unfortunately there are often real-world limitations to just how many steels it is possible to develop and release.

Copies and Small Modifications

When I see people complaining about “too many new knife steels” often this is partly out of confusion. They don’t realize that many of the “new” steels are several (or more) years old and were not well known for knives prior. Many “new” steels are older steels released under a new name by a different company or in a different country. And many consumers have a hard time keeping up with all of the compositions and names, and don’t know how to interpret a steel composition to know when something is the same. I have seen many knife enthusiasts on forums or social media where they misunderstood that a small difference in published silicon, or a minor element like manganese not being listed, does not mean that the steel is different. But even outside of straight copies, many new steels are only small modifications of prior products. Here is a list of new steels over the past decade (outside of steels I have developed):

• Nitro-V (2017) – minor modification of AEB-L
• S45VN (2019) – S35VN with added chromium and nitrogen
• M398 (2019) – M390 with more carbon and vanadium
• SPY27 (2020) – Spyderco-exclusive CPM stainless steel with 1.5% Co
• AR-RPM9 (2020) – China-produced sprayform version of 9Cr18MoV (440)
• XEOS (2022) – Takefu modified 440 grade with higher Mo
• H2 (2022) – replacement for Spyderco’s earlier H1 austenitic stainless
• STRIX (2023) – Takefu powder metallurgy stainless for 64-65 HRC
• K888 (2024) – CPM-1V with added cobalt
• Nitro-X7 (2024) – their earlier Nitro-B with higher carbon
• A-421 (2025) – Carpenter conventional stainless steel with small amount of TiC
• Aigami (2025) – Hitachi conventional stainless for higher hardness than GIN5 (AEB-L)

The degree of change for each of these varies, with some being very tiny to a few being relatively significant. The majority are small to medium modifications of prior grades. This list does not include any “new” grades which are simply copies. I don’t think I would characterize any of those grades as “generational improvements.” Those are difficult to achieve, of course. But when it comes to predicting the future of steel development, the majority of it is going to be products like those above, and many of the new grades will be copies and minor modifications.

Grades for Forging

The pace of change for low alloy grades for forging has been pretty slow, and the majority of grades were developed over 50 years ago. One exception was CruForgeV, released in 2009. However, that grade was released at the same time as a Crucible bankruptcy and none has been made since. Some of it is still out there but in some ways it serves as a cautionary tale. I have been able to develop two grades for forging, Pop’s ProCut and ApexUltra. I do believe that both of these grades were able to deliver “generational improvements.” Pop’s ProCut used nickel alloying plus tungsten/vanadium alloying to deliver a new combination of high toughness with wear resistance that wasn’t previously available. Past high toughness forging grades like 15N20, 8670, and 5160 have extremely low wear resistance. ProCut was able to break through this barrier. It also provided a uniquely easy to heat treat design, with an austenitizing window that is over 200°F wide. This gave it a great combination of properties while also being “beginner friendly.”

ApexUltra took a different track where the goal was to make a forging grade that maxes out cutting performance – achieving higher wear resistance and good toughness at high hardness than previous grades like Blue Super and 1.2562/F2. I had noticed that 52100 had a better toughness-edge retention balance than many other low alloy steels that are forgeable. The difference is in the 1.5% chromium content. The chromium has two major effects – 1) the iron carbides are enriched in chromium which increases their hardness and they contribute more to wear resistance. 2) the chromium decreases the amount of carbon in solution, making “plate martensite” less of an issue which makes steel brittle. So ApexUltra used the 1.5% Cr from 52100 in combination with the tungsten/vanadium additions of Blue Super to achieve edge retention greater than past low alloy steels.

More Grades for Forging?

There are different opportunities for forging grades but they might all suffer from the too-small-niche problem. Some possibilities include:

Powder metallurgy forging grade – A 2-4% vanadium PM low alloy steel would be interesting. It could offer even higher wear resistance than ApexUltra, likely with higher toughness as well. However, forging bladesmiths are historically very price conscious and they don’t like vanadium steels because of the extra difficulty in finishing. So ApexUltra is likely to be as good as it gets for now.

Hamon steels – To make a good hamon requires the steel to have very low hardenability with low Mn and no Cr or Ni additions. The standard choices are 1095, W1, and W2. Potentially hamon steels with different levels of toughness and edge retention could be made but again this application is likely too niche. Hamon steels are difficult to heat treat because of their low hardenability so outside of a hamon they are not really desirable.

Damascus – Pop’s ProCut works great in Damascus as a bright layer because of its high nickel – it can even be paired with ApexUltra for a high performance Damascus. A steel that matches the properties of ProCut generally but without nickel would be good for an easy to heat treat Damascus that offers relatively high toughness. However, the nickel-free version wouldn’t be better, it would just be good for a Damascus combo. So again the niche is likely too small.

A Modern Knife Steel Matched Set Recommendation

I first gave recommendations for knife steels in different categories in 2019. I updated these in Knife Engineering and again in the second edition. My current recommendations are as follows:

The grades in bold are those that I developed. This chart also gives us a place to discuss potential holes and areas that perhaps could be improved. Some holes that are still present:

The obvious one is the high wear resistance “extra stainless” category, which is the category I use for saltwater steels. Some knife companies have used MagnaCut in their knives designed for saltwater though I would prefer the corrosion resistance was even higher for those applications. Uddeholm used to make a Vanax 75 which had higher wear resistance than the current Vanax. A good solution for this category could potentially be a higher corrosion resistance version of MagnaMax.

Vanax and LC200N are pretty good steels. However, a higher corrosion resistance version of MagnaCut would have better toughness than Vanax.

I think it would be difficult to improve on Vanadis 8/K390/10V and CPM-CruWear. They have excellent toughness-wear resistance balances. Improving over that would require a generational improvement that we haven’t seen in the non-stainless PM space for several decades. It might require exploring unique solutions in terms of the matrix composition and carbide types.

The very high toughness non-stainless steels like Z-Tuff could use some improvements. All of those available have softer carbides such as chromium carbides or tungsten/molybdenum carbides. CPM-3V is very good and only has vanadium carbides but it could be argued it is more in the balanced properties than truly the maximum toughness category.

AEB-L/14C28N are excellent steels though we could have higher wear resistance in this category through a powder metallurgy steel with vanadium and/or niobium carbides. The high toughness Magna-family grade would fit this category.

Expanding the Envelope

My categories do not cover all possibilities. For example, there are higher wear resistance steels than those in my “high wear resistance” category. Examples would include steels like CPM-15V, Maxamet, CPM Rex 121, CPM S125V. We have been hearing that some of these may be going away like 15V and Rex 121. From what I know they never liked making S125V. The reason they may go away is that the temperatures required for making them are very high or carbides will form in the liquid, either leading to a large carbide size (not desirable with powder metallurgy of course) or even creating manufacturing issues like clogging the nozzle. The temperatures get high enough that the ceramic refractory is eroded by the liquid steel, requiring frequent relining. Not all steels are in danger of going away; I haven’t heard anything about Maxamet being in danger. But one thing that could be done would be to redesign steels around a certain temperature limit to try to make similar high wear resistance steels that do not have these manufacturing issues.

In terms of steels that have even higher toughness than my “high toughness” category I am not too interested in those. There have always been high toughness grades out there but at some point the wear resistance and/or hardness is low enough that it is not particularly useful for knives.

Steels Designed for Grinding and Finishing

Grinding and finishing are very important to knifemakers and manufacturers. High wear resistance steels and large carbide steels have low grindability. Finishing and polishing are especially sensitive to large carbides and high hardness carbides. Vanadium carbides are harder than typical abrasives like aluminum oxide. For highly finished and mirror polished knives, it is better to avoid significant vanadium and niobium additions. Since this limits us to softer carbide types the potential for generational improvements is limited. Here are my recommendations for steels that are easy to grind and polish:

There are many gaps in this table though that may not be a bad thing. Very high wear resistance steels with only soft carbides end up with very low toughness because they have so much carbide. I put ZDP-189 in the “high alloy” category rather than the “stainless” category because my corrosion testing showed very poor tests with this steel. A ZDP-189 that is actually stainless could work, especially in Japan. An “extra stainless” balanced steel – a more corrosion resistant CPM-154, may have some uses.

Cost and Conventionally Produced Steels

Many of the best steels in terms of properties are produced with powder metallurgy. However, this significantly increases the cost of producing these steels. Another factor for cost is that cost of abrasives and time in polishing can often exceed the cost of the steel. Here are my recommendations for low cost steels:

I struggled a bit with some of these categories. The high toughness S7 is somewhat limited in hardness, generally under 60 HRC. The biggest debate in my mind internally was what to put for “balanced” stainless and ended up with 8Cr13MoV. It gives up quite a bit of toughness to get a small wear resistance improvement over AEB-L and 14C28N. I think significant improvements could be possible in this category. For example, I worked on a grade called NioMax in lab-sized quantities even before working on MagnaCut. In small quantities it had similar toughness to AEB-L/14C28N but with enhanced wear resistance. As of yet it has not been released.

The limitations are much greater when not using powder metallurgy. The drop-off in toughness is a lot more rapid as wear resistance and carbon content is increased. There have been fewer generational improvements in the conventional steel space and I think there are opportunities there.

Summary and Conclusions

If you want to learn more about the past generational improvements and what led to different steels being used in knives, make sure you read my book The Story of Knife Steel: Innovators Behind Modern Damascus and Super Steels. Understanding the past gives us a better idea of what is possible in the future. As to what is possible in the future for knife steel, I laid out some possibilities above, and I can’t really be sure which will happen. I would like to make more Magna-family steels and to work  on improving conventionally produced steels, but some may be too niche to be commercially viable. But the thing I can be sure about is that more copies and minor modifications of prior steels will definitely come out.

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[1] Machinery vol 42. 1935, p. 64.

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