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 History by Sunil Amrith

Ground Truth

A story of dirt, dollars, and death

The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson

Insisting on the Positive

A popular historian’s philosophical musings

On Freedom by Timothy Snyder

A Stranger in the Seven Hills

A refugee’s experience in the Eternal City

Roman Year: A Memoir by André Aciman

Mortal Coils

We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable

Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death by 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 Stevenson by Camille Peri

Schmaltz of Significance

How the first talkie treated the myth of the melting pot

Only in America: Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer by Richard Bernstein

Glamour and Violence

A group portrait of the brutal Belle Époque

The Man in the Red Coatby Julian Barnes

Ralph Ellison

Visible Man

An intimate view of a great American writer

The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellisonedited by John F. Callahan and Marc C. Conner

History, Alive and Well

A writer’s tour of the Soviet world, 30 years after its collapse

Pravda Ha Ha: True Travels to the End of Europeby Rory MacLean

A Biographer Looks Back

A noted practitioner reveals her tricks of the trade

Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Meby Deirdre Bair

University of Virginia

A Founding Class

Two new studies of the man from Monticello

Thomas Jefferson’s Education by Alan TaylorRevolutionary Brothers by Tom Chaffin

Elizabeth Bishop and Louise Crane

Questions of Inspiration

Should we try to see the poet in her poetry?

Love Unknown: The Life and Worlds of Elizabeth Bishopby Thomas Travisano

Lydia Davis

The Barber of Language

A new collection from a celebrated prose stylist

Essays Oneby Lydia Davis

Van Cliburn performing

Nationalist Anthems

Remembering a time when composers mattered more

Dangerous Melodiesby Jonathan Rosenberg

whale

Pursuing the White Whale

A briny exploration of Melville’s greatest work

Ahab’s Rolling Sea: A Natural History of Moby-Dickby Richard J. King

Cross

Too Long Ignored

An engaging look at the forces that shaped history south of the border

Silver, Sword & Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Storyby Marie Arana

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