New Book Releases | March 10, 2026
Struggling to figure out what to read next? We have four suggestions for you, all available online and arriving on local bookshop shelves today.
Our picks of this week's new releases include a "deeply researched and lavishly illustrated" history of Apple on its 50th anniversary, a practical guide to optimism as a science, an exploration of the power of equanimity, and the story of a small independent bookshop thriving in Philadelphia and the woman behind it.
Interested in buying multiple copies for your team, book club, or employee resource group? Check out our services for bulk book buyers.
Unless otherwise noted, all book descriptions are from the publisher.
Apple: The First 50 Years by David Pogue, published by Simon & Schuster
In time for Apple’s 50th anniversary, CBS Sunday Morning correspondent David Pogue tells the iconic company’s entire life story: how it was born, nearly died, was born again under Steve Jobs, and became, under CEO Tim Cook, the most valuable company in the world.
On April 1, 1976, two scruffy twentysomethings, both named Steve, founded a startup. Their goal: To bring the revolutionary power of computers to everyone.
Over the next five decades, Apple reshaped the technology and cultural landscapes, introducing the public to breakthroughs like the mouse, laser printing, CD-ROM, WiFi, digital video, home networking, touchscreen phones, and tablets. Jobs’s obsessive eye for detail set the stage for products—Mac, iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, AirPods, Apple Watch—that married advanced technology with beauty, simplicity, and fine design.
Deeply researched and lavishly illustrated, Apple: The First 50 Years includes new interviews with 150 key people who made the journey, including Steve Wozniak, John Sculley, Jony Ive, and many current designers, engineers, and executives. The book busts long-held myths; goes backstage for both the titanic successes (450 million iPods, 700 million iPads, 2.2 billion iPhones) and the instructive failures (Lisa, Apple III, MobileMe); and assesses the forces that challenge Apple’s dominance as it enters its second half century.
Bursting with tales of frenetic all-nighters, engineering genius, and creative rebellion, this book is a true testament to Apple’s unique and innovative vision, and a must read for anyone whose life Apple has touched.
The Power of Real Optimism: A Practical, Science-Based Guide to Staying Resilient, Curious, and Open Even When Life Is Hard by Deepika Chopra, published by Simon Element
Optimism isn’t about pretending everything is fine. It’s about staying open and flexible—especially when it’s not. Dr. Deepika Chopra shows us how to build the kind of optimism that can actually withstand real life.
We’ve been sold the idea that optimism is a mood, a mindset, or worse—just an inherent trait. But what if real optimism is something else entirely?
In The Power of Real Optimism, Dr. Deepika Chopra—known as The Optimism Doctor®—offers a radically different definition: optimism as a science, a skill, and a psychological muscle we can strengthen. Drawing from over a decade immersed in the science of resilience, emotional well-being, and cognitive psychology—as well as her work with clients, innovative workshops, and hallmark practices (think: evidence-based visualization, narrative reframing, her signature “self-worth work,” and even color therapy)—Dr. Chopra offers a toolkit for navigating the chaos, uncertainty, and nuance of being human—without losing yourself to it.
Grounded, practical, and poetic in all the right ways, this book will challenge your relationship with hope, rewire how you recover from hard things, and invite you to stay soft without falling apart. With her blend of intimate storytelling, psychological insight, and tangible tools—including a 33-day Real Optimism Challenge—Dr. Chopra offers something far more enduring than a quick fix or fleeting affirmation. She invites us into a deeper, more resilient way of living—one where we can stay curious in the face of fear, open in the face of grief, and grounded even as the world wobbles beneath us.
Because real optimism doesn’t deny the dark—it teaches us how to see in it.
Quiet Strength: Find Peace, Feel Alive, and Love Boundlessly Through the Power of Equanimity by Margaret Cullen, published by HarperOne
Revered meditation teacher and licensed psychotherapist Margaret Cullen reveals scientific breakthroughs and spiritual intersections that demonstrate how the power of equanimity allows us to live more fully, with balance and wisdom.
We are facing complicated and untenable predicaments—climate change, political division, global conflict—that are beyond our control, which often results in feelings of powerlessness and resignation, or disconnection and bitterness.
Drawing on decades of mindfulness practice and teaching, Margaret Cullen offers contagious enthusiasm about the groundbreaking discoveries focused on a virtuous habit that has been hiding in plain sight for over two thousand years: equanimity. Equanimity is characterized by non-reactivity and clear seeing and has the power to help us navigate the biggest dramas in our lives—not by ignoring them (or reacting in more fiery ways) but by being present with, and open to, all the very real struggles of being human without being hijacked by them. Equanimity is a profound and powerful force that can transform our responses to the events of our lives and in the world at large—and effect change inside our hearts and in all our interactions.
Featuring guided meditations, cutting edge research and fascinating insights from experts across a range of fields, Quiet Strength sparks curiosity and engagement with the practice of equanimity.
Shut Up and Read: A Memoir from Harriett’s Bookshop by Jeannine A. Cook, published by Amistad
The author of It’s Me They Follow chronicles the improbable true story of how she left an abusive past to build a bookshop that survived the Covid pandemic and become an international sensation.
Jeannine Cook always thought she’d open a bookshop in her old age. Raised by a blind librarian, books were integral to her life, and she expected she would eventually write one as well. Instead, Jeannine found herself a burnt-out workaholic with three jobs and no time to read or write, feeling like she hadn't fulfilled her purpose.
In her journal, Jeannine began an imaginary dialogue with Harriet Tubman, “Q&As” she dubbed Conversations with Harriett. Jeannine wondered how Harriet became a “wade through waist-high water in the winter" type of woman—and how she could become one too.
On February 1, 2020, Jeannine fulfilled her dream and opened a bookstore in Philadelphia which she named after her hero and inspiration, Harriet Tubman. Harriett’s Bookshop would be a place to celebrate women authors, artists, and activists. While the name was ironic—Harriet could neither read nor write—it was also fitting. The City of Brotherly love was one of Harriet's first stops to freedom on the Underground Railroad. But in only six weeks, Jeannine would be forced to shut the shop’s doors when Covid turned the world upside down—not knowing whether her dream would survive.
Five years later, this small independent bookshop is thriving, with satellite stores in unconventional places, from movie theaters to horse trailers. Despite global death and destruction, book bans, the downward spiral in readership, the lack of physical customers, AI, and more, Jeannine's shops have survived. Shut Up & Read is her story—the story of the little bookseller who could, and of the woman who has been the driving force behind it all.
