“Feel Free” by Zadie Smith

regardless of how vital their legends may be. Historian David Blight returns the heartbeat to the story of a man too often known from plaques and speeches.

With the snap of a great narrative and near-biblical grandeur, Blight recounts the myth-making that Douglass assembled for himself while shredding the easier image of high school history classes: Douglass, Blight writes, presented the 19th century with something it had not anticipated, a “frightening black man with brains, who has penetrated the racist psyches of powerful people with words and his physical presence.”

The definitive biography you assumed was already written. And yet, what is actually here, a decade of stories about crumbling traditions, breaks in trust and flickers of grace, is the most comprehensive single-book portrait of the United States (circa 20072016) in a long time. The accumulated power of these pieces — angry, corny, inspiring, mournful and insane — takes on the shape of a salute to durable, keenly observed newspaper writing.

(Penguin, 464 pages, $28)

There is a wise argument out there that Zadie Smith, better known for some of the finest novels of this young century, is masquerading, that she’s really been one of our finest essayists the whole time. This collection of autobiography, criticism and rangy impressions already feels like a classic, a phone book of thoughts on everything from joy to childhood bathrooms to Brexit to movies — her essay on “Get Out” is the smartest thing written about that very written-about film. Her piece on Facebook — “500 million sentient people entrapped in the recent careless thoughts of a Harvard sophomore” — is worth the price alone.

E. JASON WAMBSGANS/CHICAGO TRIBUNE