Admired and Abhorred

The German composer whose legacy continues to confound

Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music Alex Ross

Beneath the Powdered Wig

Reinterpreting the life of our trendiest Founding Father

Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons From a Misunderstood Founder by Christian Parenti

Varieties of Experience

Culture rewires our brains and shapes how we think

The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous by Joseph Henrich by Joseph Henrich

Bugging Out

The buzzing, crawling creatures we would be lost without

The Butterfly Effect: Insects and the Making of the Modern World by Edward Melillo

Creeping Illiberalism

A bleak account of the West’s slide toward tyranny

Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum

Beyond Classification

One writer’s journey into the labyrinth of political and bureaucratic obfuscation

Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act by Nicholson Baker

How We Came Together

America purchased its sense of itself at a high price

Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood by Colin Woodard

A Lifelong Habit of Being

Exploring a fundamentally ambiguous attribute

Character: The History of a Cultural Obsession by Marjorie Garber

Our Feathered Friends

They aren’t the intellectual lightweights we take them for

The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think by Jennifer Ackerman

The People’s Gallery

A collection that is the brightest light in a city full of them

The Louvre: The Many Lives of the World’s Most Famous Museum by James Gardner

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 Historyby Sunil Amrith

Ground Truth

A story of dirt, dollars, and death

The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippiby Wright Thompson

Insisting on the Positive

A popular historian’s philosophical musings

On Freedomby Timothy Snyder

A Stranger in the Seven Hills

A refugee’s experience in the Eternal City

Roman Year: A Memoirby André Aciman

Mortal Coils

We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable

Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Deathby 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 Stevensonby Camille Peri

Schmaltz of Significance

How the first talkie treated the myth of the melting pot

Only in America: Al Jolson and The Jazz Singerby Richard Bernstein

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