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

Eyewitness

A spy’s exploits in the heart of the Confederacy

Our Man in Charleston: Britain’s Secret Agent in the Civil War South By Christopher Dickey

Big Shoulders

How curiosity and cognition have driven our species forward

The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos By Leonard Mlodinow

The Paper Chase

Years of tireless collecting led to one of the world’s great libraries

The Millionaire and the Bard: Henry Folger’s Obsessive Hunt for Shakespeare’s First Folio By Andrea Mays

Fantastic Four

The enduring influence of a quartet of Oxford dons

The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings By Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski

Hearts With One Purpose

A revealing group portrait of Ireland’s motley crew of rebels

Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890–1923 By R. F. Foster

A Taste for Higher Math

The numbers that count

How to Bake π: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics By Eugenia Cheng

Two Dutch Visionaries

How the optical revolution revealed worlds large and small

Eye of the Beholder: Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing By Laura J. Snyder

“You Cannot Refine It”

From victory to annihilation, the evolving nature of combat

Sherman’s Ghosts: Soldiers, Civilians, and the American Way of War By Matthew Carr

Proust Imperfect

The Englishman who interpreted France’s greatest novel

Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C. K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy, and Translator By Jean Findlay

Meeting the Test of Time

Why some wordsmiths stay and others fade away

Those Who Write for Immortality: Romantic Reputations and the Dream of Lasting Fame By H. J. Jackson

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