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 Legacy by Lauren Collins

Verse From the Abyss

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

Paul Celan: A Life by 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 World By 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 World by 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 University By Theo Baker

Things Fall Apart

A meditation on entropy, obsolescence, and death

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

Into the Wilds

The tangled terrain of untrammeled lands

The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness By 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 World By Victoria Johnson

Canonical Contempt

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

The Conversions of Edward Gibbon: A Modern Biography By Martha Saxton

University of Virginia

A Founding Class

Two new studies of the man from Monticello

Thomas Jefferson’s Education by Alan TaylorRevolutionary Brothers by Tom Chaffin

Elizabeth Bishop and Louise Crane

Questions of Inspiration

Should we try to see the poet in her poetry?

Love Unknown: The Life and Worlds of Elizabeth Bishopby Thomas Travisano

Lydia Davis

The Barber of Language

A new collection from a celebrated prose stylist

Essays Oneby Lydia Davis

Van Cliburn performing

Nationalist Anthems

Remembering a time when composers mattered more

Dangerous Melodiesby Jonathan Rosenberg

whale

Pursuing the White Whale

A briny exploration of Melville’s greatest work

Ahab’s Rolling Sea: A Natural History of Moby-Dickby Richard J. King

Cross

Too Long Ignored

An engaging look at the forces that shaped history south of the border

Silver, Sword & Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Storyby Marie Arana

Photo of Oliver Sacks

Head Cases

Field notes on a beautiful friendship

And How Are You, Dr. Sacks? A Biographical Memoir of Oliver Sacks by Lawrence Weschler

Etching of 1857 Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester

The Great Convergence

How continental art and literature went global

The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Cultureby Orlando Figes

Black and white photo of Susan Sontag

Image Is Not Everything

A definitive portrait of a celebrated American intellectual

Sontag: Her Life and Workby Benjamin Moser

Painting of Saint Augustine

Spirits in the Material World

Two new books consider the past and present of Christendom

A Pilgrimage to Eternity by Timothy EganDominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World by Tom Holland

● NEWSLETTER

Please enter a valid email address
That address is already in use
The security code entered was incorrect
Thanks for signing up