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

The Early End of Consensus

Bitter partisanship began soon after George Washington left the scene

A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign By Edward J. Larson

Swept Away

When Géricault painted The Raft of the Medusa, he immersed himself in his subject’s horrors

The Wreck of the Medusa By Jonathan Miles

Nurtural Intelligence

The discoverer of the Flynn effect claims that genes control IQ less than you’d expect

What Is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect By James R. Flynn

Words and Music

Two ways of thinking about what our brains can do

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human NatureBy Steven Pinker /Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain By Oliver Sacks

The Whirling Princess

How a little rich girl known as Pussy Jones became Edith Wharton, writing her way into the aristocracy of American letters

Edith Wharton By Hermione Lee, Alfred A. Knopf

The Heroic and the Crass

Case studies in American presidential backbone

Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989 By Michael Beschloss, Simon & Schuster

Wide World

An essayist and activist who makes eloquent connections

Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics By Rebecca Solnit

The Meandering Naturalist

A Wanderer All My Days: John Muir in New England By J. Parker Huber

Magical Mind

Albert Einstein’s life

EINSTEIN: His Life and Universe By Walter Isaacson

Dismantling the Dream

The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America By Daniel Brook, Henry Holt

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