Losing the Thread

Can our culture survive without books?

Battle for the Ballot Box

How decades of legal attacks and court decisions have undermined the crown jewel of the civil rights movement

An American Problem: How the Country Built—and the Supreme Court Broke—the Voting Rights Act by Michael G. Miller and Kevin T. Morris

Shooting for the Camera

A portrait of the 20th century’s most infamous assassin

Chief Misunderstanding

A speculative, sputtering study of leadership

Our Energetic World

Life is not an accident but an inevitable result of physical laws

The Co-Creation: How Earth Made Life and Life Made Earth By Olivia Judson

Finding Marty

Zooming in on a storied director

Just a Shot Away: Martin Scorsese’s Life in Film By Mark Binelli

Dramatic Paws

On the trail of the elusive big cat of the Himalaya

The Ghost of the Mountains: Unraveling the Secrets of the Snow Leopard By Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi

Translating the Past

Modern wit meets age-old wisdom

Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature By Emily Wilson

Sound Barrier

How Marian Anderson made and managed history

Voice of a Century: The Life and Artistry of Marian Anderson By Anthony Tommasini

Unfriendly Exchange

The tale of a nuclear war that almost was

The Six Minute War: Reagan, Russia, and the Race to Automate Armageddon By Michael Dobbs

A Joyless Noise

Two pleas for making life a whole lot quieter

The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want: A Book About NoiseBy Garret Keizer /Zero Decibels: The Quest for Absolute Silence By George Michelsen

Truth and Consequences

In the Whitewater investigation, the biggest loser was the legal profession

The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr By Ken Gormley

The Imbalance of Power

How the Manhattan Project gave birth to the imperial presidency

Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State By Garry Wills

The Lovable Leviathan

Whales hold a special place in our imagination, but their situation is dire

The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea By Philip Hoare

A Long, Cold Road to Paris

The 2,000-mile, 40-day journey of future first lady Louisa Catherine Adams

Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon By Michael O’Brien

The Debacle Before the Disaster

At Dien Bien Phu, the French got a lesson the U.S. would take two decades to learn

Valley of Death: The Tragedy of Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War By Ted Morgan

In the Shadow of Genocide

Impressions of a Turkish town that was once in Armenia

Rebel Land: Unravelling the Riddle of History in a Turkish Town By Christopher de Bellaigue

Science Doubters

When healthy skepticism turns into unhealthy antagonism

Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms The Planet, and Threatens Our Lives By Michael Spector

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

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