This week, the Booksletter highlights five books that offer new perspectives on history, morality, and the structures of society. These works range from the daily economic lives of ancient Rome to the moral complexities of modern markets, and from the perils of polar exploration to the profound impact of historical context on criminal behavior. Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent by Kim Bowes delves into the economic realities of ordinary people in ancient Rome, such as workers, artisans, peasants, and slaves. Using archaeological findings, graffiti, papyrus, coins, and other physical remnants, Bowes reconstructs a world where survival was not just about earning a living but also about managing debt, multiple jobs, and the constant struggle to save enough for land or a business. The book emphasizes that economic uncertainty was a daily challenge for most Romans. Another book, The Grip of the Ice: Scott, Shackleton and Survival in the Frozen Frontier by Ed Armston-Sheret, revisits the 1901 Discovery expedition to Antarctica. This journey was not only a scientific and geographical endeavor but also a reflection of British national identity and the fascination with polar exploration. The book details the extreme conditions faced by the explorers while also examining how the expedition helped shape a cultural narrative of heroism, competition, and risk in the pursuit of discovery. La muerte de Irene Márquez by Irene Márquez, published by Autsaider Cómics, is a comic book that confronts the inevitability of death. The album contains 48 diverse stories, ranging from short strips to more elaborate narratives, all centered around themes of death, including accidents, funerals, suicide, and the afterlife. The work uses both color and black-and-white art to explore the many facets of mortality through a variety of perspectives and formats. Moral Economics by Alvin Roth examines markets that many find morally unacceptable, such as organ sales, prostitution, surrogacy, drug use, and assisted suicide. Roth argues that moral objections should not be the sole basis for regulation, but rather that the consequences and trade-offs of such regulations should be carefully considered. Economist David Thesmar notes that some societal norms carry values that go beyond simple cost-benefit calculations. Marked by Time: How Social Change Has Transformed Crime and the Life Trajectories of Young Americans by Robert J. Sampson introduces the idea that the era in which someone is born significantly influences their life path, including their likelihood of involvement in crime. Drawing on data from over 1,000 young people in Chicago across different generations, Sampson finds that those born in the mid-1980s had about twice the chance of being arrested as adults compared to those born a decade later, even when their personal circumstances were similar. This suggests that broader social changes have had a profound impact on individual outcomes.