Editor’s Note: The following passage is adapted from “On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports” by Christine Brennan, releasing on Tuesday, July 8. Copyright © 2025 by Christine Brennan. Adapted for excerpt with permission from Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

CNN —

Little more than 36 hours after the Indiana Fever’s season ended, at 1:41 p.m. Eastern on Friday, September 27, the Women’s National Basketball Players Association posted a lengthy statement on social media:

A MESSAGE ON BEHALF OF THE 144

This week was dedicated to celebrating and amplifying A’ja, Caitlin, DiJonai, and Napheesa for their hard work and truly exceptional performances all season long. We were not going to distract from their successes, nor would we dim the glow of the spotlight that centered them. They have earned that focus and celebration. But we will take this moment now to stand up for them and the rest of our members. Every single one of them.

Because we call B.S.

To unprofessional members of the media like Christine Brennan:

You are not fooling anyone.

That so-called interview in the name of journalism was a blatant attempt to bait a professional athlete into participating in a narrative that is false and designed to fuel racist, homophobic, and misogynistic vitriol on social media.

You cannot hide behind your tenure.

Instead of demonstrating the cornerstones of journalism ethics like integrity, objectivity, and a fundamental commitment to truth, you have chosen to be indecent and downright insincere. You have abused your privileges and do not deserve the cre- dentials issued to you. And you certainly are not entitled to any interviews with the members of this union or any other athlete in sport. Those credentials mean that you can ask anything, but they also mean that you know the difference between what you should and should not.

We see you.

Our relationship with the media is a delicate one that we will continue to strengthen because the media is essential to growing the game. No one knows that better than we do. But the players are entitled to better. They are entitled to professionalism.

We call on USA Today Network to review its Principles of Ethical Conduct for Newsrooms and address what we believe is a violation of several core principles, including seeking and reporting the truth. USA Today Sports should explain why a reporter with clear bias and ulterior motives was assigned to cover the league. We also urge the league to review its policies and take measures to prevent such issues, protecting the integrity of the game and its players.

Terri Carmichael Jackson

Executive Director

•

Two hours later, USA Today took its turn posting on social media.

Journalists ask questions and seek truth. At USA Today, our mission is to report in an unbiased manner. We reject the notion that the interview perpetuated any narrative other than to get the player’s perspective directly. Christine Brennan is well regarded as an advocate for women and athletes, but first and foremost, she’s a journalist.

Roxanna Scott

USA Today Sports Executive Editor

•

How did we get here? This is what happened:

Almost exactly three days earlier, just before 1:20 p.m. on Tuesday, September 24, between Games One and Two of the Fever–Sun playoff series, DiJonai Carrington walked across the court at the empty Mohegan Sun Arena to speak with a knot of reporters there to interview both teams after their respective practices. Social media was running wild with videos and photos of Carrington’s fingers hitting Clark in the eye, with unsubstantiated claims and insinuations that Carrington had tried to injure Clark.

Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark reacts after getting hit in the eye during Game 1 of the 2024 WNBA playoffs between Indiana Fever and Connecticut Sun. M. Anthony Nesmith/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images

There also were other videos making the rounds on the internet in which Carrington and teammate Marina Mabrey were seen laughing later in the game, including Mabrey motioning with her fingers. It appeared that they were mimicking former NBA star Carmelo ­Anthony’s gesture celebrating a three-point shot, but the internet was rife with questions, comments, rumors, and innuendo about all of it, and since social media had driven so much of the conversation around the WNBA this season, there was only one way to give the athlete in question a chance to clear the air, and that was to ask Carrington about it.

So I did.

“DiJonai, when you went and kind of swatted at Caitlin, did you intend to hit her in the eye, and if so—or if not, either way—could you talk about what happened on that play?”

“I don’t even know why I would intend to hit anybody in the eye,” she replied. “That doesn’t even make sense to me. But no, I didn’t. I didn’t know I hit her, actually. I was trying to make a play on the ball and I guess I followed through and I hit her, so obviously it’s never intentional, that’s not even, like, the type of player that I am.”

I followed up to give her a chance to address the issue of the other videos getting quite a bit of attention online. “Did you and Marina kind of laugh about it afterwards? It looked like later on in the game they caught you guys laughing about it?”

“No, I just told you I didn’t even know I hit her, so I can’t laugh about something I didn’t know happened.”

In my long career, I’ve asked hundreds of questions that were far more challenging and potentially controversial than those. This is what journalists do. We ask questions, specific questions, sometimes difficult questions. In all cases, the athlete has an opportunity to take the questions any way he or she prefers, to fight back, to tell their side of the story, whatever they want to do.

I would ask any male athlete what I asked Carrington, so why wouldn’t I ask a female athlete those questions? I posted the video of my questions and Carrington’s answers on social media; it received millions of views. By covering this story seriously, I was giving the WNBA the respect it deserved, just like the NFL or the Olympics. I was doing my job.

•

Fifteen minutes after I asked Carrington those questions, ClutchPoints’ Matthew Byrne asked Clark during her on-court media availability what she would say to “the crowd of people that think a hit like that was intentional.”

Clark laughed. “It wasn’t intentional by any means. You just watch the play. It wasn’t intentional.”

Byrne’s post on X received hundreds of thousands of views. Clark’s answer was now available in the public domain for one reason: Byrne asked the question.

•

Just a couple of minutes after Carrington’s interview session was over and she walked away, I was standing near the other reporters at the side of the court when her teammate DeWanna Bonner walked toward me.

“You disrespected my teammate,” she said.

I put out my hand and tried to introduce myself, but Bonner did not want to shake it.

“You attacked my teammate,” she said.

I motioned to my phone in my hand. “Can I tell you what I said?”

DiJonai Carrington #21 of the Connecticut Sun looks on during the game against the Indiana Fever in the 2024 WNBA Playoffs on September 22, 2024. Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE/Getty Images

I was happy to show her the video I had just taken of Carrington’s answers to my questions. I again tried to introduce myself since Bonner and I had never met, but Bonner wanted no part of that.

“You attacked my teammate,” she said again.

I tried to introduce myself once more. “I asked her a question to give her a chance to respond to a controversy.”

“You disrespected my teammate,” Bonner said again, walking away.

Bonner never raised her voice, nor did I. It was the kind of tense but predictable conversation I have had dozens of times over the length of my career with professional athletes, especially in the National Football League. When a journalist is doing her job properly, and an athlete is doing hers or his properly, they sometimes will not get along.

This happens relatively often in big-time sports.

•

No more than 10 minutes before the Carrington interview, I had chatted with Connecticut Sun head coach Stephanie White on the court. We had both been on an ABC News Live show a few months earlier, talking about the Caitlin Clark Effect, so it was nice to catch up for a few minutes and exchange cell numbers.

Knowing how fraught the playoffs can be, and now possessing White’s number, I decided to text her to let her know what happened in case she or her players wanted to discuss it with me.

“Your players are mad at my questions,” I wrote. “Happy to discuss anytime. My questions gave DiJonai a chance to clear the air on a controversial topic. It was Journalism 101. I tried to introduce myself to DeWanna three times and tell her what happened but she just wanted to criticize me which of course is her right. Just fyi. Thanks.”

Little more than an hour later, White replied. “Thanks for the heads up.”

Five hours later, a WNBA official called me in my hotel room in Uncasville, about a mile from the arena. The official had been informed by the Connecticut Sun public relations staff about my questions to Carrington and Bonner’s response. The league official told me that the Sun PR people had told Carrington that she should not have gone to a teammate to confront a credentialed reporter, but rather should have come to the PR people, who could have handled the situation.

Then the WNBA official brought up my questions to Carrington. “I have a simple test about whether questions are appropriate or not,” the official told me. “They should not be vulgar, rude, or inappropriate. Your questions were not vulgar, rude, or inappropriate. Your questions were fine.

“Unfortunately, most of our players have zero idea what real media exposure is,” the official continued. “They don’t know what real coverage is, they have been shielded at college and then they come to the WNBA not knowing what real questions are. Frankly, our players just don’t get it.”

The official requested their name not be used due to the sensitive nature of the issue.

•

At 11:30 the next morning, Wednesday, September 25, eight hours before Game Two, Carrington wasn’t on the court. She wasn’t in the locker room. She wasn’t looking at game film.

No, on the day she was named the WNBA’s Most Improved Player, Carrington was poking her head through a gap in the black curtains surrounding a catering area backstage at the arena, raising her voice at three journalists sitting at a table.

On Her Game Scribner

Indianapolis Fieldhouse Files Fever beat writer Scott Agness, Indianapolis Star Fever beat writer Chloe Peterson, and I were in the otherwise empty catering area, waiting for the Fever shootaround to end on the court nearby, when Carrington surprised us with her appearance between the curtains.

“Why are you talking shit about NaLyssa?” she blurted out loudly, referring to her partner, NaLyssa Smith, the Fever forward.

The question surprised the three of us because no one was saying anything personal or derogatory about Smith. Agness and Peterson had been discussing a bit of Fever strategy they had just noticed on the court but had been asked not to divulge publicly—that Smith was going to be replaced in the starting lineup for Game Two by veteran Temi Fagbenle.

“You’re saying she’s a bad teammate!” Carrington yelled.

Then she looked specifically at me. “I walked past and I heard you talking shit about NaLyssa! It was you, out of your mouth!”

Video Ad Feedback New book looks at Caitlin Clark’s profound impact on the WNBA 04:59 – Source: CNN New book looks at Caitlin Clark’s profound impact on the WNBA 04:59

Carrington, of course, had been outside the curtains while Agness and Peterson had been talking about the change in the Fever starting lineup. I invited Carrington to come inside the curtains to sit down and speak with us. She refused, but she was still talking quite loudly, so much so that her voice was carrying through a back hallway of the arena.

Connecticut Sun manager of communications Alexandra Maund later said that her colleague, public relations specialist Caroline O’Keefe, heard the commotion and told Maund to find out what was happening.

“Caroline comes running over to me, ‘DiJonai’s yelling at somebody,’ so I ran over and grabbed her away,” Maund said.

The Sun’s Marina Mabrey also heard Carrington, and she ended up rushing toward her teammate as well. They were on the outside of the curtains around the catering area, but visible to us through gaps in the curtains. We watched them convince Carrington to stop talking and walk away.

Obviously surprised by this development, Agness, Peterson, and I immediately replayed the conversation around the table that preceded Carrington’s arrival through the curtains and agreed that no one had said what Carrington said she heard.

•

That wasn’t the end of it. Thirty minutes later, with Agness, Peterson, and me now back on the court, waiting to interview the players, Smith walked by, then came back toward the court moments later with her cell phone pressed to her ear. Carrington had left a voicemail for Smith relating her version of the catering area story, according to a Fever official.

Smith strode toward me. “Do you have something to say to me?” she asked.

“I’m always happy to talk to you,” I replied.

She scoffed and walked away.

Within minutes, back under the stands in a dark hallway, WNBA communications director Sam Tager was standing with Agness and me. Smith walked by us, looking at me. “What did you say?” Smith asked. “What did you say?”

I told her that no one – Agness, Peterson, or I – said anything negative about her.

“You are lying,” Smith said to me and walked away.

Indiana Fever forward NaLyssa Smith looks on before Game 2 of the first round of the 2024 WNBA Playoffs between the Indiana Fever and the Connecticut Sun. Erica Denhoff/Icon Sportswire/Getty Imags

Tager shook her head: “This is like a bad game of ‘Telephone.’”

Minutes later, Maund said she wanted to hear the entire story, and I was happy to tell it, so she gathered Fever PR director Ryan Stevens, Tager, Agness, and me around a backstage table. Each of us taped the conversation. I retold the details, and Agness added his, which corroborated mine. Peterson was on deadline, so she wasn’t with us, but she later confirmed the same details.

At the end of our meeting, Maund said, “Jen (Rizzotti, the Sun president) is on her way in right now, and I’m going to talk to her about it. … I’ll see what she wants to do. … You may be hearing from us, but I appreciate your honesty.”

An hour later, a WNBA official who was not in Connecticut called me to say they had listened to the audio recording from our meeting about the incident and were going to follow up with the Sun about Carrington’s behavior.

•

The news of the players union wanting to banish me for asking a question and a follow-up exploded not only in sports social media but also in the mainstream media. Over the next few days, I was supported. I was lectured. I was cheered. I was excoriated.

A sampling:

Soccer legend Megan Rapinoe, whom I have known and covered for more than a decade, said this about my questions on her podcast: “That feels racist.”

Lindsay Gibbs, who runs a women’s sports newsletter, posted on X: “Wild to see reporters I grew up admiring, trailblazers of the industry, become hacks in real time.”

Carrington herself reposted the WNBA players association statement, adding “@cbrennansports, goofy.”

Those who were angry with me believed that the WNBA was not the same as other sports leagues and required different kinds of­ questions—ones that took into account possible racial backlash before they were asked. There was concern that the two questions I asked could lead to social media attacks on Carrington and other Black players.

Others thought the questions were appropriate, allowing Carrington to deal with a controversial topic on her terms, in her own words.

USA Today Sports columnist Christine Brennan during an IOC press conference to announce Salt Lake City as host of the 2034 Winter Olympics. Kirby Lee/USA Today Sports/Reuters

Tom Jones, senior media writer for The Poynter Report, a daily media newsletter: “Brennan was doing her job, a job she has done well and fairly for decades. In this case, she went directly to Carrington, as is the journalistically responsible thing to do.”

The Boston Globe’s Tara Sullivan: “Absurd on its face, and laughingly uninformed and hypocritical in each of its five pages posted to social media last Friday, the statement indicted the WNBPA far more than it could ever hurt Brennan, a trailblazing journalist who has been on the ground covering women’s sports for more than four decades. … The WNBA and its players keep fumbling their golden opportunity with a string of ill-advised decisions and PR gaffes exposing them as not being ready for prime time.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper and I discussed the players’ call to ban me on his show, The Lead, on September 30. Tapper ended the segment this way: “Whoever wrote that statement for the WNBA players union should probably read a little bit more about Christine Brennan before accusing her of buying into anything having to do with homophobia or racism or sexism, because those are horrible blights on our culture that you have been fighting against for decades.”

Annie Costabile, the Chicago Sun-Times’ WNBA reporter, said she understood how race and politics always have played a role in coverage of the league, but that threatening to take a journalist’s credential was never the answer: “Early on covering the beat, I experienced a sense of being protective of the players because I saw firsthand how disrespected the sport was collectively,” she said. “I thought respecting the sport and the players meant being protective over being fair. I was wrong. Respecting women’s sports doesn’t mean we should cover the league in a soft manner. These women are athletes, the ultimate competitors, and they deserve the same coverage, including critical coverage, that we give to all sports. That’s the mark of true equality. Sometimes when we have these conversations about coverage of the WNBA, you have to ask, are we treating it as a sport, or as a charity?”

Editor’s note: This story is a part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering leadership, personal development and success through the lens of sports. Follow Peak here.

To Lisa Bluder, even the best performers have room for improvement. It’s why, when she recruited Caitlin Clark, she didn’t highlight Clark’s strengths but instead pointed out her weaknesses.

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Bluder, the longtime basketball coach at the University of Iowa, helped mold Clark from an intense, young recruit into one of the most impactful athletes of her generation. Bluder retired in May 2024 as the winningest coach in Big Ten history, following four years in the spotlight as Clark’s head coach. Together, they grew. And so did Iowa’s team. Bluder believes all of it was special, but she doesn’t deny how much work it took to navigate the unique situation.

I wanted to talk to Bluder to understand more about that. How does a leader handle a truly elite performer and maintain a program-wide culture?

In sports, or in the workforce, sometimes leaders are given a very rare, talented person to work with. They are tasked with not only guiding them but with making them even better. You have experience with this, obviously, with Caitlin Clark. How do you approach that situation?

When you recruit a star into your organization or into your team, you have to communicate with them beforehand that they’re not at their peak. You want them to want to get better. And Caitlin always wanted to get better.

So what we did, first of all, was identify her weaknesses, not her strengths. She knew what her strengths were. We all knew what her strengths were. But you identify and find what the weaknesses are. And so we could kind of chip away at those and make those better. That’s how you make a person or an athlete better. Not just incorporating their strengths into your system, but also helping them develop their weaknesses.

What did that process actually look like?

During the recruiting process we talked about our player development. Because we had proved that we could develop players like Megan Gustafson. She came in and was ranked around 100th in the country and left as the Naismith National Player of the Year. So we had that. You know, proof is in the pudding, as they say.

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But what we did then when she came here was, we would show her film. We would meet with her and kind of show how her improvements in those areas could really help not only her success, but the team’s success.

I remember you’ve said before that Caitlin was the right person for you and you were the right person for her. And that’s why it worked. Can you explain that?

If a person doesn’t want to get better, if they think they know it all already, those are the people that I didn’t want to coach. I want people who are confident but also who are willing to learn and willing to hear constructive criticism.

We talked a lot with our team about how holding people accountable is the same thing as accepting criticism. I’m talking more about peer to peer now, athlete to athlete. So we talked a lot to our athletes about that. You have to learn how to accept somebody holding you accountable because that’s the only way you’re going to get better and our team is going to get better. If you don’t accept it, you’re going to quit getting that feedback and you’re not going to reach your full potential.

Caitlin wanted to be her best. She wanted to be coached, as well as any of the really good players that I’ve been around. Every one of them, they weren’t know-it-alls. They knew they could get better and continued to get better.

Are they willing to put in the work required to be great? Because there are a lot of people who want to be great without really working hard at it, especially in today’s society. Caitlin Clark didn’t start out by shooting logo threes. She started out by shooting layups. And people have to remember that. It’s a process. And so I want that work ethic, but I also want a positive attitude in my players. I think having that person in your huddle who’s always negative, it just wears on people. And so having a positive attitude was really important to me.

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I can see where it could become tricky, when there is someone in the spotlight as much as Caitlin was, but at the end of the day, you are a team. How would you advise someone on navigating that kind of situation? When there is someone who receives a ton of attention but you have a full team of great people and great players?

You can’t ignore it. If you ignore it, you’re in trouble. We would tell our team a lot: “Hey, when Caitlin’s light shines, it shines on all of us. We all reap the benefits from that. So instead of being jealous about it, let’s enjoy it.” It was getting the rest of the team to buy into that.

On any good team, you give up your own personal agenda for the betterment of the team, and they were able to do that because they understood that Caitlin was bringing us to new levels. And instead of hampering that, they encouraged it because they wanted to go to those new levels with her.

Did they always encourage it from the start? Or were there challenges to get there?

Oh, it was a challenge at first. Like her freshman year, Caitlin didn’t really understand how to work with other people as much because she was always the show. She could do it by herself. But when you get to a Power Four conference and you’re competing at the highest level, you realize, “Oh, I can’t do this all by myself.” So it was a realization that she needed her team as well as they needed her. Building that trust was really important early on.

But there were a couple of players who transferred after her freshman year because she was hard at first. She learned how to develop her leadership skills. She learned how to become more inclusive. And some people, she rubbed wrong and they left, and that’s OK. She got better, but I also wanted people who wanted to be challenged and wanted to be their best. Again, giving up your own personal stuff sometimes is really, really hard.

How did you help her develop those leadership skills after her freshman year?

Well, we started meeting weekly and having leadership meetings. I would have her read some leadership books and we would kind of go through the chapters and talk about them afterwards: “What did you learn from this?”

And then we would bring in sports psychologists to work with our team so that she understood. I would have them meet with her individually and then meet with the team. Some of those things helped with her leadership.

We would show her a video of herself. I mean, Caitlin is very passionate. She’s not the only person I’ve done this with. I’ve had other players whose bench decorum or their reaction affects the team in a negative way. You have to show it to them because they don’t understand. They don’t know it. They’re living it. They’re so into the moment that they don’t understand how they’re affecting other people. And showing real-life examples away from the court, and after the emotion is over, is a good thing.

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Can you explain how that progress she made then impacted everything else?

She then understood that she had to trust her teammates and build relationships with her teammates, and so that completely changed. Then I think her on-court body language got a lot better. It was give and take, too. She is expressive, and you can’t take it personally when she is expressive. She is very passionate. So I feel like that just evolved and it became something our team almost got protective of with her.

If the opposing team was trying to impose their will upon her, so to speak, or fans were yelling things, our team got really protective of her. I think that really is a culture builder, right? When you have people who are looking out for each other.

But I also think sometimes people think culture is … I don’t know, people think, “Oh, we got Caitlin, so we got a good culture.” No, we had a good culture, and that’s one of the reasons we got Caitlin. So it’s a work in progress all the time. Because you have to reestablish that culture every single year. You can’t just assume it’s going to happen again. Some people say, “How did you get such a good culture on your team?” Well, it’s not a slogan you slap on the wall. It’s a continual effort every single time you’re together. That’s how culture is built.

I remember you said that you read Phil Jackson’s book “Sacred Hoops.” Because you thought his experience with Michael Jordan had some similarities to your own. Did you end up applying anything to your own life from that?

Yeah, I read that book a long time ago and quite honestly my husband said when Caitlin was a freshman or sophomore, he said, “You need to reread that book. Because of Michael Jordan.” And I said, “You’re right.” So I read it and I highlighted parts and shared those with Caitlin. On road trips and stuff when you have a little more downtime, I would meet with her and maybe have her read a portion of that book and see what Michael Jordan was doing. All those little things that you do add up, I think.

Looking back at this whole experience and your career, what do you think is most important for someone to know when they’re leading a group of people?

As a leader, you have to decide what you want your product to look like. You have to decide what you want your team to look like or your company to look like. You have to have that vision of what it is you want it to be first. And then you’ve got to find the right people to fulfill that vision.

But you also have to be able to be an effective communicator. You can explain what that vision looks like to them and, through communicating, get them to buy in. To me, that’s what a really good leader needs to be able to do.

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Andy Lyons / Getty Images)

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Snag your copy of Becoming Caitlin Clark here

Howard Megdal, founder and editor of The IX Newsletter and The Next Women’s Basketball Newsroom, joins Sarah to talk about his book Becoming Caitlin Clark, putting Clark’s meteoric rise in context, his experience covering women’s sports, and his role guiding young writers in the evolving women’s sports media landscape.

Episode Transcript Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.

Caitlin Clark is electrifying crowds and breaking records—and igniting a complicated national conversation. Christine Brennan joins Katie to dissect the making of a sports icon, the WNBA’s missed opportunities, and the fraught media narratives surrounding Clark, Angel Reese, and race. It’s the subject of Brennan’s new book, On Her Game, and one of the most urgent stories in sports.

The Caitlin Clark Effect: Christine Brennan on the Athlete Changing Everything

Episode Transcript Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.

Let’s start with the bad news: For some of us in the U.S. right now, it’s HOT out there. And it’s possible that at some point, on a trip to your local library or bookstore, you may have to suffer though some time without air-conditioning.

Desperate as that sounds, the good news is that at least there will be some excellent new books (and cooler air!) awaiting you when you arrive. This week, the highlights of the publishing calendar include Gary Shteyngart’s new novel and a slew of nonfiction — from recent history and memoir, to a past so distant it takes some experimentation just to get a sense of it.

Whichever direction you go, just promise one thing: Hydrate please.

/ Little, Brown and Company / Little, Brown and Company

Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists Are Re-creating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations, by Sam Kean

In classrooms and academic journals, archaeologists have conjured — from recovered relics — vivid portraits of some of the remoter crannies of humankind’s past. “But you don’t get the sounds, you don’t get the smells, you don’t get the tastes the way you do in experimental archaeology,” Kean told NPR’s Weekend Edition. Basically, the idea behind the gonzo discipline is to test our theories about how people lived in ancient Egypt, say, or prehistoric Polynesia, by literally trying firsthand how, or even if, they would have worked in practice. A novice himself, Kean plays our intrepid surrogate in this globe-trotting introduction.

/ Penguin Press / Penguin Press

The Jailhouse Lawyer, by Calvin Duncan and Sophie Cull

As far as classrooms go, the Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana is not ideal. Still, that’s where Duncan, one law book at a time, learned what he needed to take up his own appeals case and support his fellow inmates in theirs. Written with Cull, this memoir is not only the story of his improbable, self-taught journey to exoneration of a murder — and a law degree of his own; it’s also an indictment of the process that reduced him and other prisoners to such a position in the first place. “Do we actually want a criminal justice system that looks like this?” he asked on NPR’s Weekend Edition.

/ Riverhead Books / Riverhead Books

A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck, by Sophie Elmhirst

Folks who have encountered Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild or its film adaptation may well recognize the restless desire that animates Maurice and Maralyn Bailey. The real-life couple at the heart of the British journalist’s debut also shuffled off this modern coil in search of an authentic life — only, instead of the Alaskan wilderness, they chose to set sail for the other side of the world. As you may imagine, things went a bit sideways from there. Previously published last year in the U.K. as Maurice and Maralyn, the bonkers true story has been dressed up with a new title and cover art for its American audience.

/ Scribner / Scribner

On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports, by Christine Brennan

The very definition of a household name, the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer and WNBA sensation needs no introduction at this point — but another victory lap probably won’t hurt. Brennan, a longtime sports columnist and former NPR contributor, offers an adoring account of the 12-month span that saw Clark conquer women’s basketball and help spur its unprecedented boom in popularity, as well as an undertow of controversy that occasionally included Brennan herself.

/ Penguin Press / Penguin Press

2024: How Trump Retook the White House and Democrats Lost America, by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf

The trio of political reporters, who hail from the blue bloods of legacy media, have pooled their extensive reporting from the trail for this blow-by-blow retrospective of last year’s presidential election. They embroider the account with vivid anecdotes, and glimpses of the private conversations that helped shape the whiplash paths of the dueling campaigns.

/ Random House / Random House

Vera, or Faith, by Gary Shteyngart

Say this for Vera, the very bright, very anxious 10-year-old whose name graces the title: It’s fair to feel anxious about the near-future U.S. that Shteyngart imagines here, in which nativist policies are giving way to outright fascism and privileges are being doled out to only a few “exceptional Americans.” Seen from Vera’s eyes, though, democracy’s crushing dissolution is just one of the worries on her plate — not quite as pressing as patching her father’s relationship with her stepmother or finding out about her Korean biological mom. It’s Shteyngart’s first novel since 2021’s COVID chronicle, Our Country Friends.

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