Outbreaks and Outcomes

Plagues thrive on more than just pathogens

Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History by Paul Farmer

Figuring Out Our Fourth Estate

Can democracy survive in the absence of agreed-upon facts?

An Aristocracy of Critics: Luce, Hutchins, Niebuhr, and the Committee That Redefined Freedom of the Press by Stephen Bates

Earning Our Daily Bread

Did early humans really have it easier than we do?

Work: A Deep History, From the Stone Age to the Age of Robots by James Suzman

Native Wisdom

A celebration of the rich spiritual imagination of tribal peoples

Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land by N. Scott Momaday

Power to the People

Looking back on a decade of revolutionary change

The Movement: The African American Struggle for Civil Rights by Thomas C. Holt

Redefining Women’s Work

The relief of suffering was one means to a great end

The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women—and Women to Medicine by Janice P. Nimura

Market Morality

The divine underpinnings of Western prosperity

Religion and the Rise of Capitalism by Benjamin M. Friedman

Thought Experiment

Exploring the evolutionary origins of our brains

Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind by Peter Godfrey-Smith

Satirist to the Galaxy

The war behind a writer’s words

Love, Kurt: The Vonnegut Love Letters, 1941–1945 edited by Edith Vonnegut

Indefensible Torture, Unfree Speech

What Censorship Kept America from Learning about the Futility of “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques”

The Black Banners Declassified: How Torture Derailed the War on Terror after 9/11  by Ali Soufan with Daniel Freedman

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?
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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

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