Head of the State

How the FBI’s founding director ruled from the shadows

G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage

Structural Foundations

The buildings that defined the Western world

The Story of Architecture by Witold Rybczynski

Quark of Habit

Scientists keep pushing for larger particle colliders—but is this really wise?

The Matter of Everything: How Curiosity, Physics, and Improbable Experiments Changed the World by Suzie Sheehy

Beauty Born of Ashes

The story of a lyrical masterpiece that almost wasn’t

The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem by Matthew Hollis

To Hell and Back

An Italian master’s unlikely depictions of Dante’s dark vision

Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance by Joseph Luzzi

Of Dharma and Doom

A fresh translation revives the ending of an ancient Indian epic

After the War: The Last Books of the Mahabharata Wendy Doniger

Power of the Peoples

American history was shaped as much by Native Americans as by their colonizers

Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America by Pekka Hämäläinen

Building Up and Breaking Down

What happens when the structures we erect plunge us into despair?

Bold Ventures: Thirteen Tales of Architectural Tragedy by Charlotte Van den Broeck (trans. from the Dutch by David McKay)

Jena-Gadda-Da-Vida

The brief flowering of an intellectual mecca in 1790s Germany

Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self by Andrea Wulf

The Ephemeral Art

How a Russian impresario revolutionized dance

Diaghilev’s Empire: How the Ballets Russes Enthralled the World by Rupert Christiansen

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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