Arctic Fantasies

The region has long been an object of dreams, desire, and misunderstanding

Extreme North: A Cultural History by Bernd Brunne

Gene Therapy

A writer’s search for herself in the branches of her family tree

Making the List

Finding the right page required centuries of experiment

Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age by Dennis Duncan

From Cold War to Y2K

Looking back on a decade that was often dumb but never dull

The Nineties: A Book by Chuck Klosterman

Found in Translation

An Iranian emigrant finds solace in Western literature

Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times by Azar Nafisi

Wielders of the Knife

How doctors learned to keep patients alive on the operating table

Empire of the Scalpel: The History of Surgery by Ira Rutkow

Surviving the Ebb and Flow

The curious creatures that inhabit the ocean’s edge

Life Between the Tides by Adam Nicolson

Dollars Versus Degrees

Are business interests alone to blame for global warming?

Fire and Flood: A People’s History of Climate Change, from 1979 to the Present by Eugene Linden

Where I End and We Begin

A writer reimagines her life by blending it with others

Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson

Meeting of Romantic Minds

How a German university town helped usher in the modern age

Who Would I Be Off My Meds

Can weaning oneself off pharmaceuticals ease the cycle of perpetual suffering?

Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistanceby Laura Delano

Who’s to Say?
loading

A bewildering take from a noted scholar of Christianity

Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesusby Elaine Pagels

Chapters and Verse

Looking for the poet between the lines

Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetryby Adam Plunkett

Once More, Without Feeling

Can a memoir be effective when it lacks any warmth?

Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritanceby Joe Dunthorne

Electrons That Bind

The molecule at the center of everything

Carbon: The Book of Lifeby Paul Hawken

Food for Thought

A pragmatic approach to one of humanity’s gravest threats

How to Feed the World: The History and Future of Foodby Vaclav Smil

Splitting Our Sides

A new biography of a comedy pioneer

Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Liveby Susan Morrison

In the Lions’ Studio

A new dual biography turns the lens on the towering architects of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg: The Whole Equationby Kenneth Turan

All Talk

Ease of communication will not save us

Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apartby Nicholas Carr

Old Christ Church in Alexandria. Virginia, attended by General Robert E. Lee in his youth and pictured here in 1911 (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign/Wikimedia Commons)

Divided Providence

Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War

Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Unionby Richard Carwardine

● NEWSLETTER

Please enter a valid email address
That address is already in use
The security code entered was incorrect
Thanks for signing up