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 Equation by Kenneth Turan

All Talk

Ease of communication will not save us

Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart by 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 Union by Richard Carwardine

Island Royalty

A new biography of a Caribbean revolutionary

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

Aging Out

Many of us do not go gentle into that good night

Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age by James Chappel

Ideology as Anatomy

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

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

The Creator’s Code

Are humans alone in their ability to make art?

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

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 French by 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

The Early End of Consensus

Bitter partisanship began soon after George Washington left the scene

A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign By Edward J. Larson

Swept Away

When Géricault painted The Raft of the Medusa, he immersed himself in his subject’s horrors

The Wreck of the Medusa By Jonathan Miles

Nurtural Intelligence

The discoverer of the Flynn effect claims that genes control IQ less than you’d expect

What Is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect By James R. Flynn

Words and Music

Two ways of thinking about what our brains can do

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human NatureBy Steven Pinker /Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain By Oliver Sacks

The Whirling Princess

How a little rich girl known as Pussy Jones became Edith Wharton, writing her way into the aristocracy of American letters

Edith Wharton By Hermione Lee, Alfred A. Knopf

The Heroic and the Crass

Case studies in American presidential backbone

Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989 By Michael Beschloss, Simon & Schuster

Wide World

An essayist and activist who makes eloquent connections

Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics By Rebecca Solnit

The Meandering Naturalist

A Wanderer All My Days: John Muir in New England By J. Parker Huber

Magical Mind

Albert Einstein’s life

EINSTEIN: His Life and Universe By Walter Isaacson

Dismantling the Dream

The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America By Daniel Brook, Henry Holt

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