Laissez-Faire Run Amok

The extremist, and enduring, philosophy of Ayn Rand

Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right By Jennifer Burns

Riffs and Raptures

Zadie Smith’s essays offer crisp prose and hard-won insights

Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays By Zadie Smith

Wrestling the Moose

Jefferson debunked a French theory of natural history, launching American exceptionalism

Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose: Natural History in Early America By Lee Alan Dugatkin

The Tales Buildings Tell

Architects can overwhelm their creations; time can make a hash of great visions

The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Ruins of the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories By Edward Hollis

Through Fire and Flood

Faulkner’s best fiction emerged from his willingness to face crises

Becoming Faulkner: The Art and Life of William Faulkner By Philip Weinstein

A Day in the Life

Reading Joyce’s Ulysses as a guide to urban living

Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce’s Masterpiece By Declan Kiberd

Art in the Time of War

A prescient and courageous few safeguarded Italy’s patrimony

The Venus Fixers: The Remarkable Story of the Allied Soldiers Who Saved Italy's Art During World War II By Ilaria Dagnini Brey, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The Common Good

The case for a standardized curriculum for all American children

The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools By E.D. Hirsch Jr.

Film Release

A woman’s burdened life and transcendent photographs

Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits By Linda Gordon

Relativity and All That

Big Science bears down on Einstein’s equation

Why Does E=mc2? (And Why Should We Care?) By Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw

Heart of Semi-Darkness

A writer’s delectable quest for rare flavors

Masters of Horror and Magic

The German folklorists who helped build a nation

For Want of Touch

The astonishing breadth of our passions

Imperiled Planet

The ecological havoc we’ve wrought

The Burning Earth: A Historyby Sunil Amrith

Ground Truth

A story of dirt, dollars, and death

The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippiby Wright Thompson

Insisting on the Positive

A popular historian’s philosophical musings

On Freedomby Timothy Snyder

A Stranger in the Seven Hills

A refugee’s experience in the Eternal City

Roman Year: A Memoirby André Aciman

Mortal Coils

We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable

Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Deathby Susana Monsó

Silent Partner

The union that may have made possible a writer’s late flourishing

A Wilder Shore: The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevensonby Camille Peri

Schmaltz of Significance

How the first talkie treated the myth of the melting pot

Only in America: Al Jolson and The Jazz Singerby Richard Bernstein

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