Making the List

Finding the right page required centuries of experiment

Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age by Dennis Duncan

From Cold War to Y2K

Looking back on a decade that was often dumb but never dull

The Nineties: A Book by Chuck Klosterman

Found in Translation

An Iranian emigrant finds solace in Western literature

Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times by Azar Nafisi

Wielders of the Knife

How doctors learned to keep patients alive on the operating table

Empire of the Scalpel: The History of Surgery by Ira Rutkow

Surviving the Ebb and Flow

The curious creatures that inhabit the ocean’s edge

Life Between the Tides by Adam Nicolson

Dollars Versus Degrees

Are business interests alone to blame for global warming?

Fire and Flood: A People’s History of Climate Change, from 1979 to the Present by Eugene Linden

Where I End and We Begin

A writer reimagines her life by blending it with others

Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson

Meeting of Romantic Minds

How a German university town helped usher in the modern age

Hoping for Recovery

The long struggle to explain and treat drug dependency

The Urge: Our History of Addiction by Carl Erik Fisher

The Burden of Guilt

A plea for grace and forgiveness after a terrible crime

The Uninnocent: Notes on Violence and Mercy by Katharine Blake

Words, Words, Words

How artists turned the canon against congressional inquisitors

A Treacherous Secret Agent: How Literature Spoke Truth to Power During the Red Scareby Marjorie Garber

Lede-ing Ladies

How female foreign correspondents transformed journalism

Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the WorldBy Julia Cooke

An American Prophet of the Natural World

Celebrating the magical mundane

The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinaryby Terry Tempest Williams

Who Is Thinking?

The quest to discover the answer to an age-old question

A World Appears: A Journey into ConsciousnessBy Michael Pollan

The Great Decipherment

Decoding the story of a lost civilization

The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient MayaBy David Stuart

Think, Again

Reckoning with the elegance of physical laws and the wonders of being alive

TraversalBy Maria Popova

Family Trees

Threats to our woods are threats to us all

When the Forest Breathes: Renewal and Resilience in the Natural WorldBy Suzanne Simard

Criminal Complexity

What inherited traits can—and can’t—tell us about violent behavior

Original Sin: On the Genetics of Vice, the Problem of Blame, and the Future of ForgivenessBy Kathryn Paige Harden

The Minotaur’s Muses

The romantic cruelty of a brilliant artist

Hidden Portraits: Six Women Who Shaped Picasso's Lifeby Sue Roe

Hold the Salt

Reconsidering an ancient city’s bad reputation

Carthage: A New Historyby Eve MacDonald

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