Criminal Complexity

What inherited traits can—and can’t—tell us about violent behavior

Original Sin: On the Genetics of Vice, the Problem of Blame, and the Future of Forgiveness By Kathryn Paige Harden

The Minotaur’s Muses

The romantic cruelty of a brilliant artist

Hidden Portraits: Six Women Who Shaped Picasso's Life by Sue Roe

Hold the Salt

Reconsidering an ancient city’s bad reputation

Carthage: A New History by Eve MacDonald

Scientists in Dreamland

What might our nightly visions mean?

Nightmare Obscura: A Dream Engineer's Guide Through the Sleeping Mind by Michelle Carr

Conjurer of Worlds

The writer who made fantasy history

The Tower and the Ruin: J. R. R. Tolkien's Creation by Michael D. C. Drout

Compassionate Curmudgeon

Why we must root ourselves in the real world

Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy's Greatest Pessimist by David Bather Woods

Swept Away

A gusty tour of one of our planet’s primordial forces

The Breath of the Gods: The History and Future of the Wind by Simon Winchester

Jessica Mitford on the British late-night talk show After Dark; August 20, 1988 (Wikimedia Commons)

Making Trouble

A British aristocrat’s leftist noblesse oblige

Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford by Carla Kaplan

All His Biographers Merely Players

Retracing the Bard’s lost years

The Dream Factory: London’s First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare by Daniel Swift

Playwright, Poet, Outsider, Spy

The Wayward Scholar of the London Stage

Bending Toward Justice

Rejecting the “race riot” myth means facing the ugly truth

They Stole a City: Wilmington’s White Supremacist Coup and the Families Who Live With Its Legacyby Lauren Collins

Verse From the Abyss

How a Jewish poet rebuilt his mother tongue in the wake of the Holocaust

Paul Celan: A Lifeby Anna Arno, translated by Soren Gauger

Where Are We?

Finding our bearings has never been so risky

Little Blue Dot: How GPS Shaped the Modern WorldBy Katherine Dunn

Blood—and Beauty—at the Root

Fifty years ago, Alex Haley’s landmark novel changed the way many Americans thought about race

Remembering Roots: How an American Classic Transformed the Worldby Lucas L. Johnson II

In Defense of Difficult Reading

The tomes of the past cultivate the lost art of sustained attention

What’s So Great About the Great Books?: Why You Should Read Classic Literature (Even Though It Might Destroy You) Naomi Kanakia

Inside Man

A young reporter’s devastating exposé of the amoral elite

How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford UniversityBy Theo Baker

Things Fall Apart

A meditation on entropy, obsolescence, and death

How We Disappear: A Personal History of InformationBy Thomas S. Mullaney

Into the Wilds

The tangled terrain of untrammeled lands

The Savage Landscape: How We Made the WildernessBy Cal Flyn

The Painter Time Forgot

An overdue reckoning of an artist’s volcanic genius

Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the WorldBy Victoria Johnson

Canonical Contempt

Even in the 18th century, Edward Gibbon’s misogyny set him apart

The Conversions of Edward Gibbon: A Modern BiographyBy Martha Saxton

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