Lives of the Artists

The vistas and losses of two great English painters

Elegy Landscapes: Constable and Turner and the Intimate Sublime by Stanley Plumly

A Proximity to Greatness

How a reclusive writer’s work came to be published

After Emily: Two Remarkable Women, and the Legacy of America’s Greatest Poet by Julie Dobrow

Too Much Information

When flawed algorithms meet naïve expectations

The Efficiency Paradox by Edward Tenner

Robben Island Days

A South African leader’s jailhouse correspondence during apartheid

The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela edited by Sahm Venter

Monstrous Achievement

Two hundred years on, a writer’s cautionary tale still captivates

In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein by Fiona Sampson

A Life’s Work Gone to Seed

The lost cultivations of an often overlooked colonial scientist

American Eden by Victoria Johnson

Everything Was Radiant

A Soviet reactor’s meltdown and its far-reaching consequences

Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe by Serhii Plokhy

“I Figured What the Hell”

A pugnacious reporter looks back on his legendary career

Reporter: A Memoir by Seymour Hersh

Split Decisions

A renowned neuroscientist examines human experience

The Consciousness Instinct by Michael S. Gazzaniga

Idle Hands Are the Dreamer’s Tools

Why lolling about is a worthwhile pursuit

Aging Out

Many of us do not go gentle into that good night

Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Ageby James Chappel

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

Ideology as Anatomy

How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives

Immaculate Forms: A History of the Female Body in Four Partsby Helen King

Island Royalty

A new biography of a Caribbean revolutionary

The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christopheby Marlene L. Daut

The Creator’s Code

Are humans alone in their ability to make art?

The Uncanny Muse: Music, Art, and Machines From Automata to AIby David Hajdu

All Talk

Ease of communication will not save us

Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apartby Nicholas Carr

Barbarity at the Bataclan

A chilling account of darkness in the City of Light

V13: Chronicle of a Trial by Emmanuel Carrère, translated from the Frenchby John Lambert

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

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