The Homesick Composer

Sergei Rachmaninoff may have taken American citizenship in 1943, but his heart and soul remained in his Russian past

The Creature Eating Its Tail

From progress to death wish

Heavy Mettle

A story of oppression and resilience

To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul by Tracy K. Smith

Bodies Grotesque and Beautiful

Searching for aesthetics and meaning in the monstrous

Art Monsters: Unruly Female Bodies in Feminist Art by Lauren Elkin

Air Show

What the rise of an NBA superstar tells us about ourselves

Jumpman: The Making and Meaning of Michael Jordan by Johnny Smith

All Dolled Up

How American Girl transformed the doll world—and why millennials love it so

Thought Experimenters

Making sense of a broken world

The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil, and the Power of Philosophy in Dark Times by Wolfram Eilenberger

The Late Bloomer

Reconstructing a private poet’s life

Nothing Stays Put: The Life and Poetry of Amy Clampitt by Willard Spiegelman

Naturalists Unknown

Lives marked by discovery and erasure

Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science by Catherine McNeur

Down and Out

A woman excised from her eminent husband’s story

Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell’s Invisible Life by Anna Funder

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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