What We’re Reading

Each week, our editors and critics choose the most captivating, notable, brilliant, surprising, absorbing, weird, thought-provoking, and talked-about reads. Check back every Wednesday for new fiction and nonfiction recommendations.

From Our PagesThe Family Man by James Lasdun (Norton)Nonfiction“The Family Man” is an absorbing and vertiginous chronicle of the trial of Alex Murdaugh, a wealthy South Carolina man who was accused of murdering his wife and his son as part of a frantic attempt to cover up a financial scandal. The book, which emerged from a dispatch that Lasdun published in this magazine in 2023, expands on his merciless sociological exploration of the corrupt milieu in which the killings took place. Beneath its gentlemanly façade, the Murdaughs’ home town is a place of bribes, grift, money laundering, drunken mishaps, and sexual secrets—along with jury tampering so brazen that Alex’s conviction was recently overturned. Buy on AmazonBookshop

“The Family Man” is an absorbing and vertiginous chronicle of the trial of Alex Murdaugh, a wealthy South Carolina man who was accused of murdering his wife and his son as part of a frantic attempt to cover up a financial scandal. The book, which emerged from a dispatch that Lasdun published in this magazine in 2023, expands on his merciless sociological exploration of the corrupt milieu in which the killings took place. Beneath its gentlemanly façade, the Murdaughs’ home town is a place of bribes, grift, money laundering, drunken mishaps, and sexual secrets—along with jury tampering so brazen that Alex’s conviction was recently overturned.

When you make a purchase using a link on this page, we may receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The New Yorker.

Paradiso 17 by Hannah Lillith Assadi (Knopf)FictionThis novel of exile and memory chronicles the life of Sufien, a Palestinian man displaced as a child by the Nakba, whose story unfolds across continents and encompasses entanglements with a broad range of characters. Assadi traces the full arc of Sufien’s life as he moves from Palestine to a refugee camp in Syria, then to Italy and the U.S. He deepens and matures, reflecting often on his course, but this is not a fawning portrait of a hero’s journey so much as a study of a flawed individual. Though Assadi’s prose is occasionally heavy-handed, she summons a wonderfully sprawling, almost picaresque story, which gains power from her resistance to passing simple judgment on her protagonist. Buy on AmazonBookshop

This novel of exile and memory chronicles the life of Sufien, a Palestinian man displaced as a child by the Nakba, whose story unfolds across continents and encompasses entanglements with a broad range of characters. Assadi traces the full arc of Sufien’s life as he moves from Palestine to a refugee camp in Syria, then to Italy and the U.S. He deepens and matures, reflecting often on his course, but this is not a fawning portrait of a hero’s journey so much as a study of a flawed individual. Though Assadi’s prose is occasionally heavy-handed, she summons a wonderfully sprawling, almost picaresque story, which gains power from her resistance to passing simple judgment on her protagonist.

From Our PagesDangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young by Zayd Ayers Dohrn (Norton)NonfictionZayd Ayers Dohrn was born in hiding. Years before his birth, his parents, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, founded the Weather Underground, a radical resistance group that aimed to resist the war in Vietnam and what they saw as a racist police state back home. They orchestrated a bombing campaign—ultimately setting off explosives at the State Department headquarters and at the Pentagon—and then went into hiding. Assuming fake names, they travelled the country, taking jobs that paid cash and staying at flop houses and on sympathetic communes. Ayers Dohrn spent his early years on the run, knowing that the F.B.I. was hunting him. As a child, he learned to recognize plainclothes cops and to walk a “trajectory,” the complicated mix of turns and switchbacks the group used to lose a tail. In this memoir, Ayers Dohrn reckons with the history of his famous—and infamous—family, and their complicated legacy. Buy on AmazonBookshop

Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young

Zayd Ayers Dohrn was born in hiding. Years before his birth, his parents, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, founded the Weather Underground, a radical resistance group that aimed to resist the war in Vietnam and what they saw as a racist police state back home. They orchestrated a bombing campaign—ultimately setting off explosives at the State Department headquarters and at the Pentagon—and then went into hiding. Assuming fake names, they travelled the country, taking jobs that paid cash and staying at flop houses and on sympathetic communes. Ayers Dohrn spent his early years on the run, knowing that the F.B.I. was hunting him. As a child, he learned to recognize plainclothes cops and to walk a “trajectory,” the complicated mix of turns and switchbacks the group used to lose a tail. In this memoir, Ayers Dohrn reckons with the history of his famous—and infamous—family, and their complicated legacy.

Book recommendations, fiction, poetry, and dispatches from the world of literature, twice a week.

Transcendence for Beginners by Clare Carlisle (New York Review Books)NonfictionIn this gem of a book, Carlisle asks a question that may especially preoccupy professors of philosophy (which she is) and biographers (which she is also, of Søren Kierkegaard and George Eliot), but that equally concerns the rest of us: How to make sense of a human life? Lightly touching on her own path—we find her up a mountain in India, at a yoga class in Manchester, “converted” to philosophy at a lecture on Plato’s cave given by Jonathan Lear—Carlisle considers what she describes as “life’s relentlessly relational texture” and shows how thinkers and artists from Spinoza and Proust to Celia Paul led her to the conclusion that, in defiance of life’s losses, “love flows through us because it is an element of reality itself: like water, like air, like fire.” Buy on AmazonBookshop

In this gem of a book, Carlisle asks a question that may especially preoccupy professors of philosophy (which she is) and biographers (which she is also, of Søren Kierkegaard and George Eliot), but that equally concerns the rest of us: How to make sense of a human life? Lightly touching on her own path—we find her up a mountain in India, at a yoga class in Manchester, “converted” to philosophy at a lecture on Plato’s cave given by Jonathan Lear—Carlisle considers what she describes as “life’s relentlessly relational texture” and shows how thinkers and artists from Spinoza and Proust to Celia Paul led her to the conclusion that, in defiance of life’s losses, “love flows through us because it is an element of reality itself: like water, like air, like fire.”

The Monuments of Paris by Violaine Huisman (Penguin Press)FictionTwo men loom over this hybrid novel: the author’s father, Denis, a self-fashioned “academic-businessman,” and her grandfather, Georges, an influential cultural official who, being Jewish, lost his position and his influence during the Nazi occupation of France. A composite of memoir and fictionalized family history, Huisman’s book reckons with the influence of her male forebears—both possessed of grand self-conceptions, both flagrantly unfaithful to their wives—continuing a project that she began with an earlier book of a similar kind about her mother. As she sifts through the traces of the men’s lives, she reflects on her emotional inheritance. Of her mother and father, she writes, “Her story, your story—neither story was mine, and yet I couldn’t escape them.” Buy on AmazonBookshop

The Monuments of Paris

Two men loom over this hybrid novel: the author’s father, Denis, a self-fashioned “academic-businessman,” and her grandfather, Georges, an influential cultural official who, being Jewish, lost his position and his influence during the Nazi occupation of France. A composite of memoir and fictionalized family history, Huisman’s book reckons with the influence of her male forebears—both possessed of grand self-conceptions, both flagrantly unfaithful to their wives—continuing a project that she began with an earlier book of a similar kind about her mother. As she sifts through the traces of the men’s lives, she reflects on her emotional inheritance. Of her mother and father, she writes, “Her story, your story—neither story was mine, and yet I couldn’t escape them.”

Fast and Furious Franchisingby Dan Hassler-Forest (Minnesota)NonfictionWhile the Marvel Cinematic Universe is often held up as the exemplar of the I.P.-driven Hollywood mega-franchise, Hassler-Forest, a media scholar, argues that the “Fast” movies, which started seven years before the M.C.U., have been just as influential to the history of Hollywood. They emerged at a time when the “ideal form” of a franchise was still the trilogy—think about the original “Star Wars” or “Indiana Jones”—when even the most ambitious stories often felt exhausted by the third installment, with diminishing creative and financial returns. The almost accidental success of “The Fast and the Furious,” and its lack of preëxisting lore, Hassler-Forest argues, suggested an alternative model for franchising: a cinematic universe that could be mined for as long as was profitable. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “How “The Fast and the Furious” Tells the Story of Hollywood,” by Hua Hsu

Fast and Furious Franchising

While the Marvel Cinematic Universe is often held up as the exemplar of the I.P.-driven Hollywood mega-franchise, Hassler-Forest, a media scholar, argues that the “Fast” movies, which started seven years before the M.C.U., have been just as influential to the history of Hollywood. They emerged at a time when the “ideal form” of a franchise was still the trilogy—think about the original “Star Wars” or “Indiana Jones”—when even the most ambitious stories often felt exhausted by the third installment, with diminishing creative and financial returns. The almost accidental success of “The Fast and the Furious,” and its lack of preëxisting lore, Hassler-Forest argues, suggested an alternative model for franchising: a cinematic universe that could be mined for as long as was profitable.

Underlakeby Erin L. McCoy (Doubleday)FictionThis surreal début novel riffs on the idea of drowned cities: towns seized by the government and submerged, via dam construction, in order to create reservoirs. The narrative centers on two fictional towns: Paintsville, which was flooded in such a manner in 1979, and the nearby Steels, which is still above water. The protagonist, Otta, is a diver and an aspiring marine biologist. She is enlisted to search for a strange woman’s missing daughter, who the woman believes is living in Paintsville. Though McCoy’s plot is often murkier than the polluted lake around which its events unfold, her voice, highly attuned to sensory experience, shines through. Buy on AmazonBookshop

This surreal début novel riffs on the idea of drowned cities: towns seized by the government and submerged, via dam construction, in order to create reservoirs. The narrative centers on two fictional towns: Paintsville, which was flooded in such a manner in 1979, and the nearby Steels, which is still above water. The protagonist, Otta, is a diver and an aspiring marine biologist. She is enlisted to search for a strange woman’s missing daughter, who the woman believes is living in Paintsville. Though McCoy’s plot is often murkier than the polluted lake around which its events unfold, her voice, highly attuned to sensory experience, shines through.

Being Reasonableby Krista Lawlor (Harvard)NonfictionLawlor, a philosopher at Stanford, makes a case for a quality too often mistaken for timidity. Reasonableness, she maintains, is a distinctly social virtue: the willingness to treat others as fellow-evaluators whose claims have genuine weight, even as we exercise our own critical judgment. Drawing on examples from law, philosophy, and everyday life, she distinguishes reasonableness from mere rationality—and from the prejudices of the average person—and shows how it underwrites the coöperative mapping of value that makes common life possible. Her argument can be usefully read alongside arguments from David Lewis, and Thomas Nagel, who remind us that toleration amounts to a hard-won peace treaty. At a moment when compromise is dismissed as cowardice on both the left and the right, Lawlor’s compact, elegant book shows that reasonableness is not the absence of convictions but the condition of living with others who don’t share ours. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “In Defense of the Moderate,” by Nikhil Krishnan

Lawlor, a philosopher at Stanford, makes a case for a quality too often mistaken for timidity. Reasonableness, she maintains, is a distinctly social virtue: the willingness to treat others as fellow-evaluators whose claims have genuine weight, even as we exercise our own critical judgment. Drawing on examples from law, philosophy, and everyday life, she distinguishes reasonableness from mere rationality—and from the prejudices of the average person—and shows how it underwrites the coöperative mapping of value that makes common life possible. Her argument can be usefully read alongside arguments from David Lewis, and Thomas Nagel, who remind us that toleration amounts to a hard-won peace treaty. At a moment when compromise is dismissed as cowardice on both the left and the right, Lawlor’s compact, elegant book shows that reasonableness is not the absence of convictions but the condition of living with others who don’t share ours.

The Hillby Harriet Clark (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)FictionAlmost every Saturday, Suzanna, the girl who narrates this novel, makes a pilgrimage to visit her mother in a hilltop prison. Once a radical implicated in a deadly bank robbery, her mother is serving a life sentence, and these weekly visits are the fragile thread holding them together. Even as she urges Suzanna to break free and live her own life, and Suzanna’s eccentric, unforgiving grandmother won’t go near the prison, the girl keeps returning, bound by something deeper than duty. This spare, lyrical début novel transcends its autobiographical origins (Clark’s own mother was a Weather Underground activist imprisoned for nearly four decades), stripping away particulars to reveal a resonant allegory about coming of age in the shadow of an institution that drains human development of meaning. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “Harriet Clark’s Début Is a New Kind of Coming-of-Age Novel,” by James Wood

Almost every Saturday, Suzanna, the girl who narrates this novel, makes a pilgrimage to visit her mother in a hilltop prison. Once a radical implicated in a deadly bank robbery, her mother is serving a life sentence, and these weekly visits are the fragile thread holding them together. Even as she urges Suzanna to break free and live her own life, and Suzanna’s eccentric, unforgiving grandmother won’t go near the prison, the girl keeps returning, bound by something deeper than duty. This spare, lyrical début novel transcends its autobiographical origins (Clark’s own mother was a Weather Underground activist imprisoned for nearly four decades), stripping away particulars to reveal a resonant allegory about coming of age in the shadow of an institution that drains human development of meaning.

Korean Messiahby Jonathan Cheng (Knopf)NonfictionThis ambitious history, by the Wall Street Journal’s former Korea bureau chief, traces how Kim Il Sung’s cult of personality is indebted to the Presbyterian faith in which he was raised. In the late eighteen-hundreds, American missionaries in Korea converted thousands of people. Kim, who took power in 1946, reframed Christianity as a symptom of American imperialism and repurposed its rituals with himself at the center, instituting requirements for ideological activities and imposing harsh punishments on those who failed to show sufficient devotion. Cheng traces how, with the help of Kim’s son Jong Il and a distant uncle who was once a pastor, Kim borrowed the tactics of religion to solidify extraordinary psychological control over an entire population. Buy on AmazonBookshop

This ambitious history, by the Wall Street Journal’s former Korea bureau chief, traces how Kim Il Sung’s cult of personality is indebted to the Presbyterian faith in which he was raised. In the late eighteen-hundreds, American missionaries in Korea converted thousands of people. Kim, who took power in 1946, reframed Christianity as a symptom of American imperialism and repurposed its rituals with himself at the center, instituting requirements for ideological activities and imposing harsh punishments on those who failed to show sufficient devotion. Cheng traces how, with the help of Kim’s son Jong Il and a distant uncle who was once a pastor, Kim borrowed the tactics of religion to solidify extraordinary psychological control over an entire population.

Freedom Round the Globeby Sarah M. S. Pearsall (Doubleday)NonfictionAmericans tend to tout the story that they catalyzed worldwide revolutions for freedom: that their pursuit of happiness served as a blueprint for fellow-underdogs who dreamed of finding sovereignty. Pearsall argues that the Founding Fathers were not, in fact, the main characters of global history. Insurgencies were alive in nations across North America, Europe, West Africa, and Asia in the eighteenth century before, during, and after the thirteen colonies began their severance from Britain—which, Pearsall points out, was made possible largely by non-Americans who fought beside the patriots. “Freedom Round the Globe” spotlights those revolutionary wars and their protagonists, painting a clearer, more colorful picture of the world’s age of revolt than the one typically displayed. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “The American Revolution Wasn’t the Main Event,” by Daniel Immerwahr

Freedom Round the Globe

Americans tend to tout the story that they catalyzed worldwide revolutions for freedom: that their pursuit of happiness served as a blueprint for fellow-underdogs who dreamed of finding sovereignty. Pearsall argues that the Founding Fathers were not, in fact, the main characters of global history. Insurgencies were alive in nations across North America, Europe, West Africa, and Asia in the eighteenth century before, during, and after the thirteen colonies began their severance from Britain—which, Pearsall points out, was made possible largely by non-Americans who fought beside the patriots. “Freedom Round the Globe” spotlights those revolutionary wars and their protagonists, painting a clearer, more colorful picture of the world’s age of revolt than the one typically displayed.

Small Town Girlsby Jayne Anne Phillips (Knopf)NonfictionIn these quietly stunning essays, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, the daughter of an Army veteran and a schoolteacher, looks back on her upbringing in Buckhannon, West Virginia. Born in 1952, Phillips would come to intuit that, in the beauty shops of her youth, women were “initiated into womankind as it existed in our town”; she wanted a bigger life, with options that weren’t available to her restless mother. Many of these pieces find Phillips decades removed from her Appalachian childhood, living elsewhere and writing on other subjects but mindful that she’s not finished reflecting on her origins. For writers, she says, “our hope in holding a world still between the covers of a book is to make that world known, to save it from vanishing.” Buy on AmazonBookshop

In these quietly stunning essays, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, the daughter of an Army veteran and a schoolteacher, looks back on her upbringing in Buckhannon, West Virginia. Born in 1952, Phillips would come to intuit that, in the beauty shops of her youth, women were “initiated into womankind as it existed in our town”; she wanted a bigger life, with options that weren’t available to her restless mother. Many of these pieces find Phillips decades removed from her Appalachian childhood, living elsewhere and writing on other subjects but mindful that she’s not finished reflecting on her origins. For writers, she says, “our hope in holding a world still between the covers of a book is to make that world known, to save it from vanishing.”

August, September, Octoberby Craig Morgan Teicher (BOA Editions)PoetryLife may seem to proceed in only one direction, but this moving poetry collection posits that it is more like a poem: characterized by rhyme and repetition, sometimes looping back on itself, each new line reframing those that precede it. As Teicher considers aging, parenthood, marriage, and memory, he meditates on the relationship between time and the forms that capture it: the sonnet seeking to memorialize a moment, or the diary that is a record of its own incompleteness. These poems’ immediacy is heightened by their self-awareness as crafted objects; Teicher insists that a life is not a fixed thing but an ongoing act, a process of making and remaking. Buy on AmazonBookshop

Life may seem to proceed in only one direction, but this moving poetry collection posits that it is more like a poem: characterized by rhyme and repetition, sometimes looping back on itself, each new line reframing those that precede it. As Teicher considers aging, parenthood, marriage, and memory, he meditates on the relationship between time and the forms that capture it: the sonnet seeking to memorialize a moment, or the diary that is a record of its own incompleteness. These poems’ immediacy is heightened by their self-awareness as crafted objects; Teicher insists that a life is not a fixed thing but an ongoing act, a process of making and remaking.

Republic and Empireby Trevor BurnardAndrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy (Yale)NonfictionDisgruntled and hungry for autonomy, settlers in the thirteen American colonies spent nearly a decade breaking their ties with Britain. The kingdom’s thirteen other colonies, however, stayed loyal. Scattered throughout Canada, Ireland, Africa, India, Gibraltar, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, the other half of Britain’s eighteenth-century provinces bowed out of the American rebellion. Burnard and O’Shaughnessy don’t claim to have a neat explanation for their abstention, but diligently examine the complicated circumstances and liabilities that likely guided it. The Brits ultimately lost their war with the Americans, but with other nations still on their hands, the outcome may have actually been in their favor. “Republic and Empire” raises the evocative question: What did Britain really lose? Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “The American Revolution Wasn’t the Main Event,” by Daniel Immerwahr

Disgruntled and hungry for autonomy, settlers in the thirteen American colonies spent nearly a decade breaking their ties with Britain. The kingdom’s thirteen other colonies, however, stayed loyal. Scattered throughout Canada, Ireland, Africa, India, Gibraltar, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, the other half of Britain’s eighteenth-century provinces bowed out of the American rebellion. Burnard and O’Shaughnessy don’t claim to have a neat explanation for their abstention, but diligently examine the complicated circumstances and liabilities that likely guided it. The Brits ultimately lost their war with the Americans, but with other nations still on their hands, the outcome may have actually been in their favor. “Republic and Empire” raises the evocative question: What did Britain really lose?

Questions 27 & 28by Karen Tei Yamashita (Graywolf)FictionCould you swear loyalty to a country that has imprisoned you, fearful of the threat you supposedly pose to its safety? In 1943, tens of thousands of Japanese Americans who had been confined to internment camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor were asked to do so in the final questions of a paper survey. Answering “Yes” teased a promise of freedom, but you also had to affirm your willingness to serve in the U.S. military. Yamashita’s novel threads together the stories of the prisoners and their families—many of them real—and blends genres to create a compelling picture of Japanese American experiences before, during, and after the Second World War. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “The Novelist Reimagining the Japanese American Internment,” by Hua Hsu

Questions 27 & 28

Could you swear loyalty to a country that has imprisoned you, fearful of the threat you supposedly pose to its safety? In 1943, tens of thousands of Japanese Americans who had been confined to internment camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor were asked to do so in the final questions of a paper survey. Answering “Yes” teased a promise of freedom, but you also had to affirm your willingness to serve in the U.S. military. Yamashita’s novel threads together the stories of the prisoners and their families—many of them real—and blends genres to create a compelling picture of Japanese American experiences before, during, and after the Second World War.

Nothing Randomby Gayle Feldman (Random House)NonfictionBennett Cerf, the co-founder of the publishing giant Random House, may now be virtually unknown, but he was a major celebrity in postwar America. In this sweeping biography, Feldman reveals Cerf to be a paradoxical man: often described as superficial and unserious, renowned for writing joke books and for his tenure on the popular game show “What’s My Line?,” Cerf also published profound literary works by talents such as James Joyce, William Faulkner, and Eugene O’Neill—and, in doing so, transformed Random House into both a profitable business and a cultural force. Although Cerf chased fame and avoided plumbing “the depths” of his life, as Feldman writes, he could “appreciate, at times to the point of awe, depth in others.” Buy on AmazonBookshop

Bennett Cerf, the co-founder of the publishing giant Random House, may now be virtually unknown, but he was a major celebrity in postwar America. In this sweeping biography, Feldman reveals Cerf to be a paradoxical man: often described as superficial and unserious, renowned for writing joke books and for his tenure on the popular game show “What’s My Line?,” Cerf also published profound literary works by talents such as James Joyce, William Faulkner, and Eugene O’Neill—and, in doing so, transformed Random House into both a profitable business and a cultural force. Although Cerf chased fame and avoided plumbing “the depths” of his life, as Feldman writes, he could “appreciate, at times to the point of awe, depth in others.”

The Palm Houseby Gwendoline Riley (New York Review Books)FictionThis spiky, funny novel is narrated by a woman named Laura, a writer who’s left the town where she was raised and made a life for herself in London. Her friend Putnam has just quit his job at a magazine called Sequence. The two have been close for years, and are now allied less by shared hopes than by disappointments and frustrations. Their complicated friendship is at the center of the book, which asks what we owe to those who are close to us. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “Gwendoline Riley’s New Novel Surveys the Wreckage of Middle Age,” by Lynn Steger Strong

This spiky, funny novel is narrated by a woman named Laura, a writer who’s left the town where she was raised and made a life for herself in London. Her friend Putnam has just quit his job at a magazine called Sequence. The two have been close for years, and are now allied less by shared hopes than by disappointments and frustrations. Their complicated friendship is at the center of the book, which asks what we owe to those who are close to us.

Of Loss and Lavenderby Sinan Antoon, translated from the Arabic by the author (Other Press)FictionThe central characters of this contemplative novel are two Iraqi men—unknown to each other—who both immigrate to the U.S. in the wake of the Gulf War, and proceed down different paths. Sami, a retired doctor, moves to Brooklyn to live with his son’s family. After arriving, he’s diagnosed with dementia, and clings to memories of the home that he was reluctant to leave behind. Omar, an Army deserter, is eager to “amputate” Iraq “entirely from his memory”; as he settles into life on a farm in New Jersey, he tells people that he’s from Puerto Rico. The narrative, which roams freely among its characters’ perspectives, is a work of translation in every sense, as it seeks to convey, often through metaphor, the incomparable experience of exile. Buy on AmazonBookshop

Of Loss and Lavender

The central characters of this contemplative novel are two Iraqi men—unknown to each other—who both immigrate to the U.S. in the wake of the Gulf War, and proceed down different paths. Sami, a retired doctor, moves to Brooklyn to live with his son’s family. After arriving, he’s diagnosed with dementia, and clings to memories of the home that he was reluctant to leave behind. Omar, an Army deserter, is eager to “amputate” Iraq “entirely from his memory”; as he settles into life on a farm in New Jersey, he tells people that he’s from Puerto Rico. The narrative, which roams freely among its characters’ perspectives, is a work of translation in every sense, as it seeks to convey, often through metaphor, the incomparable experience of exile.

From Our PagesFamesickby Lena Dunham (Random House)NonfictionThe writer, actor, and director returns with a new memoir detailing her rise to fame (with the HBO series “Girls”) and the tolls of public life. In an excerpt that appeared in the magazine, Dunham described her post-college years as a fledgling filmmaker in New York, working alongside peers such as the Safdie brothers and making her feature film “Tiny Furniture” out of her parents’ loft. That was a “very innocent time,” she writes, before she experienced runaway fame and online backlash, addiction and chronic illness: “Your first experiences of creative acceptance are unparalleled, because you don’t know enough to worry about what might actually happen if you succeed.” Buy on AmazonBookshop

The writer, actor, and director returns with a new memoir detailing her rise to fame (with the HBO series “Girls”) and the tolls of public life. In an excerpt that appeared in the magazine, Dunham described her post-college years as a fledgling filmmaker in New York, working alongside peers such as the Safdie brothers and making her feature film “Tiny Furniture” out of her parents’ loft. That was a “very innocent time,” she writes, before she experienced runaway fame and online backlash, addiction and chronic illness: “Your first experiences of creative acceptance are unparalleled, because you don’t know enough to worry about what might actually happen if you succeed.”

Exemplary Humansby Juliana Leite, translated by Zoë Perry (Two Lines)FictionNatalia, a lonely Brazilian centenarian, anchors this searching novel. “The problem with living too much,” she reflects, “is that you witness a world that is being erased right in front of you, person by person.” Natalia, with nowhere to be and no one to see, recognizes that “the past is the only future,” and so she dwells on her life—on her roles as a daughter and a schoolteacher, as a wife and a mother, and, most important, as a political dissident who resisted Brazil’s military dictatorship. At the heart of Natalia’s account is the question of how one continues to exist. The book ventures an answer, one found in its very form: by transmitting memories, both our own and others’. Buy on AmazonBookshop

Natalia, a lonely Brazilian centenarian, anchors this searching novel. “The problem with living too much,” she reflects, “is that you witness a world that is being erased right in front of you, person by person.” Natalia, with nowhere to be and no one to see, recognizes that “the past is the only future,” and so she dwells on her life—on her roles as a daughter and a schoolteacher, as a wife and a mother, and, most important, as a political dissident who resisted Brazil’s military dictatorship. At the heart of Natalia’s account is the question of how one continues to exist. The book ventures an answer, one found in its very form: by transmitting memories, both our own and others’.

Project Mavenby Katrina Manson (Norton)NonfictionA veteran journalist who writes for Bloomberg, Manson has spent much of the past few years investigating how technology has transformed the operations of the U.S. military. “Project Maven,” the result of that effort, is an unflaggingly well-reported and well-sourced account. The book is structured as a biography of Drew Cukor, a Marine Corps intelligence officer who, having watched soldiers and civilians die because of a lack of organized, integrated information, dreamed of a “single digital grid” that gave a “highly accurate battlespace picture.” Eventually, this dream was realized in the form of a digital platform provided by Palantir known as the Maven Smart System. Manson’s story culminates with the war in Ukraine, in which Maven helped mitigate Russia’s advantages—and which became an inflection point for comprehensive national adoption. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “How Project Maven Put A.I. Into the Kill Chain,” by Gideon Lewis-Kraus

A veteran journalist who writes for Bloomberg, Manson has spent much of the past few years investigating how technology has transformed the operations of the U.S. military. “Project Maven,” the result of that effort, is an unflaggingly well-reported and well-sourced account. The book is structured as a biography of Drew Cukor, a Marine Corps intelligence officer who, having watched soldiers and civilians die because of a lack of organized, integrated information, dreamed of a “single digital grid” that gave a “highly accurate battlespace picture.” Eventually, this dream was realized in the form of a digital platform provided by Palantir known as the Maven Smart System. Manson’s story culminates with the war in Ukraine, in which Maven helped mitigate Russia’s advantages—and which became an inflection point for comprehensive national adoption.

How It Feels to Be Aliveby Megan O’Grady (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)NonfictionMoving between memoir and criticism, this essay collection documents O’Grady’s lifelong fascination with works of art that refuse easy interpretation, beginning with the painter Agnes Martin’s “Friendship.” O’Grady goes on to examine pieces by artists including Carrie Mae Weems, Barbara Kruger, and Pope.L, whose performances, O’Grady writes, obliterated “the distance between the spectacles we’re supposed to look at and those we’re supposed to look away from.” Threaded throughout are recollections of O’Grady’s youth in Kansas, where museum exhibitions that she encountered disrupted the visual monotony around which she grew up. Buy on AmazonBookshop

How It Feels to Be Alive

Moving between memoir and criticism, this essay collection documents O’Grady’s lifelong fascination with works of art that refuse easy interpretation, beginning with the painter Agnes Martin’s “Friendship.” O’Grady goes on to examine pieces by artists including Carrie Mae Weems, Barbara Kruger, and Pope.L, whose performances, O’Grady writes, obliterated “the distance between the spectacles we’re supposed to look at and those we’re supposed to look away from.” Threaded throughout are recollections of O’Grady’s youth in Kansas, where museum exhibitions that she encountered disrupted the visual monotony around which she grew up.

The Power of Lifeby Jessica Riskin (Riverhead)NonfictionThe subject of this engaging biography is the eighteenth-and-nineteenth-century naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who is often ridiculed as a faulty precursor to Darwin. Long associated with the idea that giraffes developed long necks because they stretched to reach trees (even though giraffes, Riskin points out, barely figure in his writings), Lamarck was in reality a complex thinker working in an age of upheaval, who introduced the radical concept that “living things are in a continual state of self-transformation,” and popularized the term “biology” itself. In a time when science’s boundaries were less stable, Lamarck’s poetic theories had significant influence, and its traces can even be detected in contemporary epigenetics. Buy on AmazonBookshop

The Power of Life

The subject of this engaging biography is the eighteenth-and-nineteenth-century naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who is often ridiculed as a faulty precursor to Darwin. Long associated with the idea that giraffes developed long necks because they stretched to reach trees (even though giraffes, Riskin points out, barely figure in his writings), Lamarck was in reality a complex thinker working in an age of upheaval, who introduced the radical concept that “living things are in a continual state of self-transformation,” and popularized the term “biology” itself. In a time when science’s boundaries were less stable, Lamarck’s poetic theories had significant influence, and its traces can even be detected in contemporary epigenetics.

Vermeerby Andrew Graham-Dixon (Norton)NonfictionThe painter Johannes Vermeer was born in Delft in 1632 and died there in 1675. In this biography, Graham-Dixon—the author of a vigorous account of the life of Caravaggio, from 2010—deals with the religious hostilities that formed Vermeer’s world and proposes a specific reading of his paintings grounded in Vermeer’s presence among observers of a radical Protestant movement. Vermeer’s “Woman Holding a Balance,” he says, “might have spoken clearly and directly to pious women”; the famous accessory in his “Girl with a Pearl Earring” is “no simple jewel but a reflection of the state of her soul, bursting with joy and irradiated with divine light.” You may disagree with Graham-Dixon’s conclusions, but they could not be more persuasively put, and they rescue Vermeer from being seen, as he has for so long, as a mere transcriber of the domestic. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “The Violence in Vermeer,” by Anthony Lane

The painter Johannes Vermeer was born in Delft in 1632 and died there in 1675. In this biography, Graham-Dixon—the author of a vigorous account of the life of Caravaggio, from 2010—deals with the religious hostilities that formed Vermeer’s world and proposes a specific reading of his paintings grounded in Vermeer’s presence among observers of a radical Protestant movement. Vermeer’s “Woman Holding a Balance,” he says, “might have spoken clearly and directly to pious women”; the famous accessory in his “Girl with a Pearl Earring” is “no simple jewel but a reflection of the state of her soul, bursting with joy and irradiated with divine light.” You may disagree with Graham-Dixon’s conclusions, but they could not be more persuasively put, and they rescue Vermeer from being seen, as he has for so long, as a mere transcriber of the domestic.

Safe Passageby Evelyn Iritani (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)NonfictionThis engaging history focusses on civilian exchanges between the U.S. and Japan during the Second World War, which were arranged in large part to rescue citizens from enemy territory. Iritani, a journalist, follows a handful of individuals who were traded. Among them are the New Yorker writer Emily Hahn, who was living in Hong Kong under Japanese occupation, and Donald Hasuike, a fourteen-year-old Japanese American who was interned at a camp in Colorado with family before being shipped to Japan against his will. Iritani highlights both unconstitutional aspects of the U.S. government’s actions and the heroism of some of its diplomats. Buy on AmazonBookshop

This engaging history focusses on civilian exchanges between the U.S. and Japan during the Second World War, which were arranged in large part to rescue citizens from enemy territory. Iritani, a journalist, follows a handful of individuals who were traded. Among them are the New Yorker writer Emily Hahn, who was living in Hong Kong under Japanese occupation, and Donald Hasuike, a fourteen-year-old Japanese American who was interned at a camp in Colorado with family before being shipped to Japan against his will. Iritani highlights both unconstitutional aspects of the U.S. government’s actions and the heroism of some of its diplomats.

Cinematic Immunityby Michael Lee Nirenberg (Feral House)NonfictionThis oral history of filmmaking is a workers’-eye view of Hollywood on the Hudson, looking behind the scenes of movies that were made on location in and around New York City (plus a few shot out of town with New York-based crews) by directors including Elia Kazan, Martin Scorsese, and Sidney Lumet. The book is manifestly a labor of love; the world it portrays is the one in which Nirenberg, a scenic artist, has made his career. Based on a hundred and fifty interviews, “Cinematic Immunity” gathers a cornucopia of anecdotes, sassy portraits, and revealing asides. The book is unputdownable—but the stakes involved, both artistic and social, make these recollections more than mere yarns. This is a story of the daily stress of filmmaking, of the class differences that define film sets, and of the kinds of relationships and processes of communication on which the very ability to function as an artist depends. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “In “Cinematic Immunity,” the Greatest Drama Is Offscreen,” by Richard Brody

This oral history of filmmaking is a workers’-eye view of Hollywood on the Hudson, looking behind the scenes of movies that were made on location in and around New York City (plus a few shot out of town with New York-based crews) by directors including Elia Kazan, Martin Scorsese, and Sidney Lumet. The book is manifestly a labor of love; the world it portrays is the one in which Nirenberg, a scenic artist, has made his career. Based on a hundred and fifty interviews, “Cinematic Immunity” gathers a cornucopia of anecdotes, sassy portraits, and revealing asides. The book is unputdownable—but the stakes involved, both artistic and social, make these recollections more than mere yarns. This is a story of the daily stress of filmmaking, of the class differences that define film sets, and of the kinds of relationships and processes of communication on which the very ability to function as an artist depends.

From Our PagesLondon Fallingby Patrick Radden Keefe (Doubleday)NonfictionThis gripping narrative by Patrick Radden Keefe, a long-time staff writer, probes the mysterious death of Zac Brettler, a teen-ager who pretended to be a Russian oligarch’s son. What started out as a mischievous impersonation became a tragic miscalculation as Brettler plunged into the netherworld of posh criminals who increasingly power Britain’s economy. London, Keefe writes, “is full of crooks with pretensions to legitimacy and businessmen who seem a little crooked.” His book is both a tender portrait of parental grief and a savage indictment of a city that, behind its pretense of decorum, encourages the pursuit of wealth at any cost. Buy on AmazonBookshop

This gripping narrative by Patrick Radden Keefe, a long-time staff writer, probes the mysterious death of Zac Brettler, a teen-ager who pretended to be a Russian oligarch’s son. What started out as a mischievous impersonation became a tragic miscalculation as Brettler plunged into the netherworld of posh criminals who increasingly power Britain’s economy. London, Keefe writes, “is full of crooks with pretensions to legitimacy and businessmen who seem a little crooked.” His book is both a tender portrait of parental grief and a savage indictment of a city that, behind its pretense of decorum, encourages the pursuit of wealth at any cost.

The Witchby Marie NDiaye, translated from the French by Jordan Stump (Vintage)Fiction“The Witch,” shortlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize, is narrated by a woman, Lucie, who has decided to initiate her twelve-year-old twin daughters into what she calls “the mysterious powers.” These powers, as she describes them, appear both burdensome and nearly useless: contextless glimpses of the past and the future, minor divinatory visions accompanied by copious tears of blood. The girls acquiesce to long sessions of secret study in the basement, “away from their father’s eye.” Eleven months later, the transfer of knowledge is complete, and the girls emerge, equipped with their new powers, just as their family falls apart. NDiaye’s deliciously corrupted scenes of home and hearth produce fear and wild laughter at once. There is no hint of condescension in her writing, which is part of its difficulty—and its power. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “In Marie NDiaye’s Spellbinding New Novel, Witchcraft Stays in the Family,” by Kristen Roupenian

“The Witch,” shortlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize, is narrated by a woman, Lucie, who has decided to initiate her twelve-year-old twin daughters into what she calls “the mysterious powers.” These powers, as she describes them, appear both burdensome and nearly useless: contextless glimpses of the past and the future, minor divinatory visions accompanied by copious tears of blood. The girls acquiesce to long sessions of secret study in the basement, “away from their father’s eye.” Eleven months later, the transfer of knowledge is complete, and the girls emerge, equipped with their new powers, just as their family falls apart. NDiaye’s deliciously corrupted scenes of home and hearth produce fear and wild laughter at once. There is no hint of condescension in her writing, which is part of its difficulty—and its power.

From Our PagesIn Treesby Robert Moor (Simon & Schuster)NonfictionFor his expansive survey of trees and what they exemplify, Moor climbed a giant sequoia, travelled to East Africa and the Indonesian province of Papua, and studied the art of bonsai. Material from two chapters appeared in the magazine: the one on bonsais began as an article, and the other, about participating in a tree-sitting protest, was excerpted. Buy on AmazonBookshop

For his expansive survey of trees and what they exemplify, Moor climbed a giant sequoia, travelled to East Africa and the Indonesian province of Papua, and studied the art of bonsai. Material from two chapters appeared in the magazine: the one on bonsais began as an article, and the other, about participating in a tree-sitting protest, was excerpted.

In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Manby Tom Junod (Doubleday)FictionIn this bracing blend of memoir and detective story, Junod unearths secrets about his father. Lou Junod was a charismatic war veteran with a Purple Heart, a travelling handbag salesman, and a husband who was married to the same woman for fifty-nine years. He was also a failed singer and an inveterate philanderer. Only at Lou’s funeral, after a woman with whom Lou had an affair shows up, does Tom realize that his father’s life contained unknown mysteries. As he investigates that past, he discovers various shocks, but, ultimately, Lou’s story is one of a man who inculcated in his son an old-fashioned definition of manhood that stemmed from deep insecurity. Buy on AmazonBookshop

In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man

In this bracing blend of memoir and detective story, Junod unearths secrets about his father. Lou Junod was a charismatic war veteran with a Purple Heart, a travelling handbag salesman, and a husband who was married to the same woman for fifty-nine years. He was also a failed singer and an inveterate philanderer. Only at Lou’s funeral, after a woman with whom Lou had an affair shows up, does Tom realize that his father’s life contained unknown mysteries. As he investigates that past, he discovers various shocks, but, ultimately, Lou’s story is one of a man who inculcated in his son an old-fashioned definition of manhood that stemmed from deep insecurity.

What We Are Seekingby Cameron Reed (Tor)FictionReed’s first novel, “The Fortunate Fall,” was a landmark in science fiction, a cyberpunk saga that keenly perceived how we outsource our inner life to technology. It took thirty years for Reed’s follow-up, “What We Are Seeking,” to appear, but it pulls the same trick, showing us a new, resolutely alien world that somehow reminds us of our own. The book takes place on Scythia, a planet teeming with strange, hybrid wildlife, and colonized by two groups of human settlers with radically divergent views on culture, sexuality, gender, and religion. To coexist, the groups must first learn how—or whether—to control who gets to love and reproduce, and how to ease their presence in a place where they were uninvited. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “The Sci-Fi Novelist Who Disappeared for Decades,” by Stephanie Burt

What We Are Seeking

Reed’s first novel, “The Fortunate Fall,” was a landmark in science fiction, a cyberpunk saga that keenly perceived how we outsource our inner life to technology. It took thirty years for Reed’s follow-up, “What We Are Seeking,” to appear, but it pulls the same trick, showing us a new, resolutely alien world that somehow reminds us of our own. The book takes place on Scythia, a planet teeming with strange, hybrid wildlife, and colonized by two groups of human settlers with radically divergent views on culture, sexuality, gender, and religion. To coexist, the groups must first learn how—or whether—to control who gets to love and reproduce, and how to ease their presence in a place where they were uninvited.

From Our PagesThe Dark Frontierby Jeffrey Marlow (Random House)NonfictionIn an ambitious work of narrative nonfiction, Marlow, an assistant professor of biology and a science writer, explores alien worlds that can be found on our own planet. He recounts a series of voyages that have advanced ocean research, starting with the nineteenth-century expedition of H.M.S. Challenger and progressing to journeys that he and his colleagues have undertaken. From research vessels and submersibles, Marlow sees life blossoming in unlikely places, such as deep-sea methane vents and the site of a sunken whale carcass. He also witnesses the threats that aquatic ecosystems face from resource extraction and climate change. Marlow portrays the ocean as “a portal to another realm—one that may well be the largest, most diverse, most consequential habitat on Earth.” Reporting from the book appeared on newyorker.com. Buy on AmazonBookshop

In an ambitious work of narrative nonfiction, Marlow, an assistant professor of biology and a science writer, explores alien worlds that can be found on our own planet. He recounts a series of voyages that have advanced ocean research, starting with the nineteenth-century expedition of H.M.S. Challenger and progressing to journeys that he and his colleagues have undertaken. From research vessels and submersibles, Marlow sees life blossoming in unlikely places, such as deep-sea methane vents and the site of a sunken whale carcass. He also witnesses the threats that aquatic ecosystems face from resource extraction and climate change. Marlow portrays the ocean as “a portal to another realm—one that may well be the largest, most diverse, most consequential habitat on Earth.” Reporting from the book appeared on newyorker.com.

From Our PagesJohn McPhee: Encounters in Wild Americaby John McPhee (Library of America)NonfictionIn this collection of four books—all of which were originally published as a series in this magazine—McPhee reflects on the unusual stretch of forest known as the New Jersey Pine Barrens; relays encounters between the conservationist David Brower and his ideological adversaries; recounts a hundred-and-fifty-mile journey through Maine in a bark canoe; and paints an expansive and intricate portrait of Alaska and its inhabitants. As always, McPhee is a master at structural innovation while paying a fastidious amount of attention to language and detail throughout. Buy on AmazonBookshop

John McPhee: Encounters in Wild America

In this collection of four books—all of which were originally published as a series in this magazine—McPhee reflects on the unusual stretch of forest known as the New Jersey Pine Barrens; relays encounters between the conservationist David Brower and his ideological adversaries; recounts a hundred-and-fifty-mile journey through Maine in a bark canoe; and paints an expansive and intricate portrait of Alaska and its inhabitants. As always, McPhee is a master at structural innovation while paying a fastidious amount of attention to language and detail throughout.

Transcriptionby Ben Lerner (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)Fiction“Transcription” is the story of a high-stakes interview and its unexpected fallout. The interviewer is an unnamed writer in early middle age who has travelled from New York to Providence, Rhode Island, to speak to an old mentor for a magazine. The interviewer’s recording equipment—an iPhone—fails, but he’s too embarrassed to admit it, so he ends up pretending to record the interview, ensnared in a fiction of his own making. As with all of Lerner’s novels, the book is formally unstable. Lerner rightly insists that “the correspondence between text and world” matters less than the “intensities” of the text itself. Yet those intensities arise, time and again, from our never quite knowing what, exactly, we are looking at. Nothing in this exquisite, shape-shifting novel is quite what it seems—words least of all. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “The Ample Rewards of Ben Lerner’s Slender New Novel,” by Giles Harvey

“Transcription” is the story of a high-stakes interview and its unexpected fallout. The interviewer is an unnamed writer in early middle age who has travelled from New York to Providence, Rhode Island, to speak to an old mentor for a magazine. The interviewer’s recording equipment—an iPhone—fails, but he’s too embarrassed to admit it, so he ends up pretending to record the interview, ensnared in a fiction of his own making. As with all of Lerner’s novels, the book is formally unstable. Lerner rightly insists that “the correspondence between text and world” matters less than the “intensities” of the text itself. Yet those intensities arise, time and again, from our never quite knowing what, exactly, we are looking at. Nothing in this exquisite, shape-shifting novel is quite what it seems—words least of all.

Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!by Liza Minnelli (Grand Central)NonfictionEarly in this unvarnished memoir, Minnelli—the daughter of the director Vincente Minnelli and the tormented entertainer Judy Garland—muses, “Was life perfect with my parents? With Papa, yes. With Mama? Stay tuned.” Here, Minnelli, whose cultural footprint extends from television to pop music, chronicles her efforts to establish a career on her own terms, avoid the drug dependencies that afflicted her mother, and reckon with the “intense highs and anxious lows” that have defined her life as a performer. Even dark memories are recounted with an upbeat touch: “I was a Chrysler, honey! Just order up some new parts for me, and you’ll get me back on the road.” Buy on AmazonBookshop

Kids, Wait Till You Hear This!

Early in this unvarnished memoir, Minnelli—the daughter of the director Vincente Minnelli and the tormented entertainer Judy Garland—muses, “Was life perfect with my parents? With Papa, yes. With Mama? Stay tuned.” Here, Minnelli, whose cultural footprint extends from television to pop music, chronicles her efforts to establish a career on her own terms, avoid the drug dependencies that afflicted her mother, and reckon with the “intense highs and anxious lows” that have defined her life as a performer. Even dark memories are recounted with an upbeat touch: “I was a Chrysler, honey! Just order up some new parts for me, and you’ll get me back on the road.”

From Our PagesThe News from Dublinby Colm Tóibín (Scribner)FictionThe narratives in Tóibín’s third collection of short fiction, written over the past dozen or so years, are shot through with grief and regret. The bereaved or soon to be bereaved grapple with their relationships with mothers, brothers, children, or former lovers, trying to come to terms with the mistakes made, the chances not taken, the important words not spoken. Tóibín captures the gravity of these moments in life and in memory, and also the acceptance that allows us to move beyond them. Three of the stories, including “Five Bridges,” appeared first in the magazine. Buy on AmazonBookshop

The News from Dublin

The narratives in Tóibín’s third collection of short fiction, written over the past dozen or so years, are shot through with grief and regret. The bereaved or soon to be bereaved grapple with their relationships with mothers, brothers, children, or former lovers, trying to come to terms with the mistakes made, the chances not taken, the important words not spoken. Tóibín captures the gravity of these moments in life and in memory, and also the acceptance that allows us to move beyond them. Three of the stories, including “Five Bridges,” appeared first in the magazine.

A Beautiful Loanby Mary Costello (Norton)Fiction“I have been trying to account for certain events in my life,” Anna, this novel’s forty-five-year-old narrator, tells us by way of introduction. The events in question revolve around her relationships with two men: Peter, an older, aloof Irishman whom she met at nineteen and soon married; and Karim, a warm, devout Muslim from Algeria whom she dates after her marriage falls apart. The two couldn’t be more different, but Anna sees both as a means to freedom from “all the outer chaos.” Peter’s penchant for solitude and Karim’s commitment to Islamic rules each seem to offer Anna the buffer and order she desires, but not without a price. This psychologically raw record of one woman’s life explores the consequences of orienting oneself in relation to another. Buy on AmazonBookshop

“I have been trying to account for certain events in my life,” Anna, this novel’s forty-five-year-old narrator, tells us by way of introduction. The events in question revolve around her relationships with two men: Peter, an older, aloof Irishman whom she met at nineteen and soon married; and Karim, a warm, devout Muslim from Algeria whom she dates after her marriage falls apart. The two couldn’t be more different, but Anna sees both as a means to freedom from “all the outer chaos.” Peter’s penchant for solitude and Karim’s commitment to Islamic rules each seem to offer Anna the buffer and order she desires, but not without a price. This psychologically raw record of one woman’s life explores the consequences of orienting oneself in relation to another.

Judy Blumeby Mark Oppenheimer (Putnam)Nonfiction“Why her?” Oppenheimer, a journalist and religious-studies scholar, writes toward the end of a new biography of the celebrated children’s author. “What is it about Judy and her work that won her so many millions of fans?” In his view, Blume pioneered and popularized a new genre: “realism for young people.” With the gentle authority of someone in the know, she normalized what seemed harrowing, promised excitement and adventure, and wrote honestly about disappointment. The biography, Oppenheimer’s first, is conscientious and thorough; particularly compelling are his lucid, sensitive evocations of Blume’s upbringing, in a sexually progressive, middle-class family in suburban New Jersey. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: ““Judy Blume: A Life” and the Problem of Biography,” by Katy Waldman

“Why her?” Oppenheimer, a journalist and religious-studies scholar, writes toward the end of a new biography of the celebrated children’s author. “What is it about Judy and her work that won her so many millions of fans?” In his view, Blume pioneered and popularized a new genre: “realism for young people.” With the gentle authority of someone in the know, she normalized what seemed harrowing, promised excitement and adventure, and wrote honestly about disappointment. The biography, Oppenheimer’s first, is conscientious and thorough; particularly compelling are his lucid, sensitive evocations of Blume’s upbringing, in a sexually progressive, middle-class family in suburban New Jersey.

Kinby Tayari Jones (Knopf)FictionThis magisterial, moving novel centers on two closely connected young women, Annie and Vernice, motherless “cradle friends” raised by relatives in small-town Louisiana during the Jim Crow era. “When you don’t have your mother, you don’t really know who you are,” Annie remarks, and, as the women attempt to forge their identities, they take divergent paths. Annie runs off to Memphis with a boyfriend, in search of the mother who abandoned her; Vernice, whose mother died, goes to Spelman in pursuit of upward mobility. Much later, the two come together again, though in desperate circumstances. Jones’s book is a profound examination of the evolving intricacies of love, family, and belonging. As one character observes, “Blood alone can’t give you kinship.” Buy on AmazonBookshop

This magisterial, moving novel centers on two closely connected young women, Annie and Vernice, motherless “cradle friends” raised by relatives in small-town Louisiana during the Jim Crow era. “When you don’t have your mother, you don’t really know who you are,” Annie remarks, and, as the women attempt to forge their identities, they take divergent paths. Annie runs off to Memphis with a boyfriend, in search of the mother who abandoned her; Vernice, whose mother died, goes to Spelman in pursuit of upward mobility. Much later, the two come together again, though in desperate circumstances. Jones’s book is a profound examination of the evolving intricacies of love, family, and belonging. As one character observes, “Blood alone can’t give you kinship.”

From Our PagesReturningby Nicholas Lemann (Liveright)NonfictionIn this memoir, Lemann recounts five generations of his family’s history in New Orleans, where his relatives ascended into the Southern élite while retaining a fraught relationship to their Jewish identity. Lemann recalls attending religious services, but only on Thanksgiving, and having “the most unkosher dish imaginable,” roast pig, at Christmas. His family members rarely discussed the Holocaust and largely opposed the creation of a Jewish state, which “required believing,” he writes, “that an all-encompassing Jewish solidarity had become necessary.” Lemann describes how he gradually rejected these elements of his upbringing to embrace a life of openly professed faith. The book was excerpted at newyorker.com. Buy on AmazonBookshop

In this memoir, Lemann recounts five generations of his family’s history in New Orleans, where his relatives ascended into the Southern élite while retaining a fraught relationship to their Jewish identity. Lemann recalls attending religious services, but only on Thanksgiving, and having “the most unkosher dish imaginable,” roast pig, at Christmas. His family members rarely discussed the Holocaust and largely opposed the creation of a Jewish state, which “required believing,” he writes, “that an all-encompassing Jewish solidarity had become necessary.” Lemann describes how he gradually rejected these elements of his upbringing to embrace a life of openly professed faith. The book was excerpted at newyorker.com.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton by Ellen Carol DuBois (Basic)NonfictionDuBois, a distinguished research scholar at U.C.L.A., has written a usefully ambivalent book about one of feminism’s most polarizing figures. Stanton, an activist who began her political life in the abolitionist movement, is famous for organizing the Seneca Falls convention and for championing the cause of women’s suffrage—a legacy that was complicated by the vile bigotry she adopted later in life. The author, one of the foremost authorities on the early suffragists, approaches her subject with the weariness of a long-suffering old friend. What emerges is a portrait of Stanton not as a paragon of feminism but as a deeply peculiar person—one whose combination of vision and hubris happened to change history. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “The Feminist Visionary Who Lost the Plot,” by Moira Donegan

DuBois, a distinguished research scholar at U.C.L.A., has written a usefully ambivalent book about one of feminism’s most polarizing figures. Stanton, an activist who began her political life in the abolitionist movement, is famous for organizing the Seneca Falls convention and for championing the cause of women’s suffrage—a legacy that was complicated by the vile bigotry she adopted later in life. The author, one of the foremost authorities on the early suffragists, approaches her subject with the weariness of a long-suffering old friend. What emerges is a portrait of Stanton not as a paragon of feminism but as a deeply peculiar person—one whose combination of vision and hubris happened to change history.

From Our PagesPython’s Kissby Louise Erdrich (Harper)FictionThis collection of thirteen stories, written over the past two decades, explores a wide range of experience, from the spiritual or supernatural to the very concrete. Poignant, funny, and always surprising, the stories twist, then twist again, leaving you somewhere you’d never guessed you were going. The book’s most heartbreaking musing on loss, for instance, is expressed in the mind of a horse: “When half of you is gone, the half left behind begins its long descent into a cold strange barn. No matter how warm you get you are never warm and no matter how much you eat you are never full. You are out of harness but somehow pulling the entire weight.” Five of these stories, including “Love of My Days,” appeared first in the magazine. Buy on AmazonBookshop

This collection of thirteen stories, written over the past two decades, explores a wide range of experience, from the spiritual or supernatural to the very concrete. Poignant, funny, and always surprising, the stories twist, then twist again, leaving you somewhere you’d never guessed you were going. The book’s most heartbreaking musing on loss, for instance, is expressed in the mind of a horse: “When half of you is gone, the half left behind begins its long descent into a cold strange barn. No matter how warm you get you are never warm and no matter how much you eat you are never full. You are out of harness but somehow pulling the entire weight.” Five of these stories, including “Love of My Days,” appeared first in the magazine.

Arsenioby Arsenio Hall (AtriaBlack Privilege)Nonfiction“The Arsenio Hall Show,” which premièred on January 3, 1989, and ran for six seasons, became the unofficial late-night home of hip-hop. “Arsenio,” a memoir written by the eponymous Black comedian with Alan Eisenstock, chronicles early-nineties cultural politics and Hall’s place within it. At a time when mainstream media was warning its audience about “the inner city,” his show proved that “the street” and its culture—from Reebok high-tops to gangster rap—were objects of white fascination and longing. Growing up in Cleveland, he had dreamed of being Johnny Carson. Six decades later, the job of telling corny jokes to a studio audience still belongs largely to white men—one of many reasons that the book feels well timed. There’s an odd dearth of autobiographies by late-night hosts, but perhaps Hall sensed that the culture needed a reminder of what “it’s a night thing”—one of his slogans—means. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “How Arsenio Hall Shook Up Late Night,” by Jennifer Wilson

“The Arsenio Hall Show,” which premièred on January 3, 1989, and ran for six seasons, became the unofficial late-night home of hip-hop. “Arsenio,” a memoir written by the eponymous Black comedian with Alan Eisenstock, chronicles early-nineties cultural politics and Hall’s place within it. At a time when mainstream media was warning its audience about “the inner city,” his show proved that “the street” and its culture—from Reebok high-tops to gangster rap—were objects of white fascination and longing. Growing up in Cleveland, he had dreamed of being Johnny Carson. Six decades later, the job of telling corny jokes to a studio audience still belongs largely to white men—one of many reasons that the book feels well timed. There’s an odd dearth of autobiographies by late-night hosts, but perhaps Hall sensed that the culture needed a reminder of what “it’s a night thing”—one of his slogans—means.

On Morrisonby Namwali Serpell (Hogarth)NonfictionThis collection of essays, by a novelist and literary scholar, considers the writer Toni Morrison’s varied body of work. Serpell homes in on its challenging qualities—including its unique orchestration of voice, unconventional chronologies, and layered metaphors—unearthing fresh insights about Morrison’s themes and craft. In a close reading of Morrison’s famed story “Recitatif,” for example, Serpell examines the ways that “race, often relegated to a visual regime, fundamentally works through language.” Enriching her research with letters, draft manuscripts, and other sources, Serpell captures Morrison’s “masterful difficulty” without sanding down its edges. Buy on AmazonBookshop

This collection of essays, by a novelist and literary scholar, considers the writer Toni Morrison’s varied body of work. Serpell homes in on its challenging qualities—including its unique orchestration of voice, unconventional chronologies, and layered metaphors—unearthing fresh insights about Morrison’s themes and craft. In a close reading of Morrison’s famed story “Recitatif,” for example, Serpell examines the ways that “race, often relegated to a visual regime, fundamentally works through language.” Enriching her research with letters, draft manuscripts, and other sources, Serpell captures Morrison’s “masterful difficulty” without sanding down its edges.

White River Crossingby Ian McGuire (Crown)FictionSet in 1766, this harrowing novel centers on an expedition organized by the head of a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post, in Canada, who dispatches a group to secretly search for a gold deposit on remote lands inhabited by Indigenous tribes. Led by Inuit guides, the three white men in the party form an uneasy mix of personalities. There is the trading-post head’s “scrawny” young nephew; his deputy, “an oaf and a scoundrel”; and a former aspiring minister who has lost his faith. Briskly paced, immersive, and often violent, McGuire’s novel depicts the destructive and corrupting effects of the colonists’ gold lust on themselves and the Native people in their path. As one of the guides, Keasik, observes, this greed “leaves behind, like a falling tide, a tangled wrack of wariness and fear.” Buy on BookshopAmazon

Set in 1766, this harrowing novel centers on an expedition organized by the head of a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post, in Canada, who dispatches a group to secretly search for a gold deposit on remote lands inhabited by Indigenous tribes. Led by Inuit guides, the three white men in the party form an uneasy mix of personalities. There is the trading-post head’s “scrawny” young nephew; his deputy, “an oaf and a scoundrel”; and a former aspiring minister who has lost his faith. Briskly paced, immersive, and often violent, McGuire’s novel depicts the destructive and corrupting effects of the colonists’ gold lust on themselves and the Native people in their path. As one of the guides, Keasik, observes, this greed “leaves behind, like a falling tide, a tangled wrack of wariness and fear.”

Scale Boyby Patrice Nganang (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)NonfictionIn this unhurried, lyrical memoir, a novelist remembers his youth in Cameroon in the nineteen-seventies and eighties. Anchored by Nganang’s years as a “scale boy”—weighing people and products for a small fee—the narrative wends through anecdotes that depict a young man discovering his artistic and intellectual powers along with his nation’s colonial history. Reflecting on the meaning of the scale as an object, Nganang draws an ominous historical line from the present to the past, noting that “the scale was the very last instrument Black people stepped onto before boarding the slave ships, before entering the soul-wrenching and dreaded institution of their despair.” Buy on AmazonBookshop

In this unhurried, lyrical memoir, a novelist remembers his youth in Cameroon in the nineteen-seventies and eighties. Anchored by Nganang’s years as a “scale boy”—weighing people and products for a small fee—the narrative wends through anecdotes that depict a young man discovering his artistic and intellectual powers along with his nation’s colonial history. Reflecting on the meaning of the scale as an object, Nganang draws an ominous historical line from the present to the past, noting that “the scale was the very last instrument Black people stepped onto before boarding the slave ships, before entering the soul-wrenching and dreaded institution of their despair.”

The Life You Wantby Adam Phillips (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)NonfictionWhat do we want from the lives that we secretly imagine for ourselves? “A difficult mixture of the all too familiar and the experimental, the mostly reassuring and the partly disinhibited,” Phillips, a psychoanalyst and prolific writer, contends. In essays on irreverence, resistance, Sigmund Freud, and Richard Rorty, Phillips invites us to consider that we can desire many things and advocates a correspondingly flexible, pragmatic approach to psychoanalytic treatment. He’s particularly troubled by his field’s prescriptiveness, the risk that a patient gets up from the couch having discovered not what she wants but what her therapist thinks she should want. “Describing the life we want,” he cautions, “can sometimes be the most compliant—i.e., defensive—thing we ever do.” Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “Can Psychoanalysis Help You Get the Life You Want?,” by Katy Waldman

The Life You Want

What do we want from the lives that we secretly imagine for ourselves? “A difficult mixture of the all too familiar and the experimental, the mostly reassuring and the partly disinhibited,” Phillips, a psychoanalyst and prolific writer, contends. In essays on irreverence, resistance, Sigmund Freud, and Richard Rorty, Phillips invites us to consider that we can desire many things and advocates a correspondingly flexible, pragmatic approach to psychoanalytic treatment. He’s particularly troubled by his field’s prescriptiveness, the risk that a patient gets up from the couch having discovered not what she wants but what her therapist thinks she should want. “Describing the life we want,” he cautions, “can sometimes be the most compliant—i.e., defensive—thing we ever do.”

Sisters in Yellowby Mieko Kawakami, translated from the Japanese by Laurel TaylorHitomi Yoshio (Knopf)FictionThis engrossing novel follows a teen-age girl coming of age in working-class Tokyo as she desperately tries to achieve financial stability. At the novel’s outset, Hana lives in a cramped apartment with her mother, a sweet but hapless bar waitress, and longs to escape from a home life that her bullies condemn as “not normal.” Then she meets a charismatic friend of her mother’s, and the two begin running a bar; together with two other girls who become Hana’s friends, they soon form a kind of makeshift happy family. But, when a series of events threatens their ability to earn, Hana discovers how difficult class ascension really is. “I’m trying so hard,” she says at one point. “But I always wind up back here.” Buy on AmazonBookshop

This engrossing novel follows a teen-age girl coming of age in working-class Tokyo as she desperately tries to achieve financial stability. At the novel’s outset, Hana lives in a cramped apartment with her mother, a sweet but hapless bar waitress, and longs to escape from a home life that her bullies condemn as “not normal.” Then she meets a charismatic friend of her mother’s, and the two begin running a bar; together with two other girls who become Hana’s friends, they soon form a kind of makeshift happy family. But, when a series of events threatens their ability to earn, Hana discovers how difficult class ascension really is. “I’m trying so hard,” she says at one point. “But I always wind up back here.”

Stay Aliveby Ian Buruma (Penguin Press)NonfictionIn the opening pages of “Stay Alive,” Buruma recounts the story of his father, Leo, who was attending law school in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands when he and his own father were surrounded by police at a train station. Leo had to make an agonizing call: either he could coöperate with the Nazis or both he and his father would be arrested. He opted for the former and was sent to a labor camp in Lichtenberg, a neighborhood in east Berlin. Leo’s time in Berlin, Buruma reports, “haunted him” until his death, in 2020. This torment spurred Buruma’s own project. “I wanted to know more about life in the city that marked my father’s life,” he writes. The book is organized like a diary, with a section devoted to each year of the war, allowing Buruma to incorporate a wide variety of viewpoints; in addition to diaries, memoirs, and letters, he draws on advertisements, fashion magazines, propaganda leaflets, and interviews with aged Berliners. Here, students, musicians, Nazi maidens, and members of the resistance are all allowed to speak for themselves—to judge their own behavior, or not to. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “Life in Hitler’s Capital,” by Elizabeth Kolbert

In the opening pages of “Stay Alive,” Buruma recounts the story of his father, Leo, who was attending law school in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands when he and his own father were surrounded by police at a train station. Leo had to make an agonizing call: either he could coöperate with the Nazis or both he and his father would be arrested. He opted for the former and was sent to a labor camp in Lichtenberg, a neighborhood in east Berlin. Leo’s time in Berlin, Buruma reports, “haunted him” until his death, in 2020. This torment spurred Buruma’s own project. “I wanted to know more about life in the city that marked my father’s life,” he writes. The book is organized like a diary, with a section devoted to each year of the war, allowing Buruma to incorporate a wide variety of viewpoints; in addition to diaries, memoirs, and letters, he draws on advertisements, fashion magazines, propaganda leaflets, and interviews with aged Berliners. Here, students, musicians, Nazi maidens, and members of the resistance are all allowed to speak for themselves—to judge their own behavior, or not to.

End of Daysby Chris Jennings (Little, Brown)NonfictionIn 1992, a standoff in rural Idaho between federal law-enforcement agents and the fundamentalist Christian Randy Weaver, who believed Armageddon was nigh, captured the public imagination. Ruby Ridge, as the incident came to be known, resulted in the deaths of Weaver’s wife and son. As Jennings shows in his powerful account, it also became a flash point in the long-running struggle between the government and the tens of millions of Americans who believe the Second Coming to be imminent. While tracing the lineage of apocalyptic faith from the end of the Civil War on, Jennings argues that such belief is a “potent and habitually overlooked ingredient” in “the ongoing crackup of American civic life.” Buy on AmazonBookshop

In 1992, a standoff in rural Idaho between federal law-enforcement agents and the fundamentalist Christian Randy Weaver, who believed Armageddon was nigh, captured the public imagination. Ruby Ridge, as the incident came to be known, resulted in the deaths of Weaver’s wife and son. As Jennings shows in his powerful account, it also became a flash point in the long-running struggle between the government and the tens of millions of Americans who believe the Second Coming to be imminent. While tracing the lineage of apocalyptic faith from the end of the Civil War on, Jennings argues that such belief is a “potent and habitually overlooked ingredient” in “the ongoing crackup of American civic life.”

From Our PagesThe Complexby Karan Mahajan (Viking)FictionThe National Book Award finalist’s third novel is a sweeping story about the rise and fall of the descendants of one of the political architects of India. The setting is two buildings in Delhi—the complex of the title—where members of the family grapple with their shifting fortunes. The novel was excerpted in the magazine. Buy on AmazonBookshop

The National Book Award finalist’s third novel is a sweeping story about the rise and fall of the descendants of one of the political architects of India. The setting is two buildings in Delhi—the complex of the title—where members of the family grapple with their shifting fortunes. The novel was excerpted in the magazine.

From Our PagesAn Arrow in Flightby Mary Lavin (Scribner)FictionMary Lavin published more than a dozen stories in The New Yorker between 1959 and 1976, seven of which are included in this collection, selected and introduced by Colm Tóibín. As Tóibín writes, her fiction is set in Dublin and rural Ireland, but she does not “deal in predictable local color”; her stories are “more interested in the drama around the solitary figure than large questions of identity.” Sharp, meticulous, painful, and sometimes funny, the stories both rise above their time and place and transport us there. You can hear Tóibín read and discuss Lavin’s story “In the Middle of the Fields,” included in this volume, on an episode of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast. Buy on AmazonBookshop

An Arrow in Flight

Mary Lavin published more than a dozen stories in The New Yorker between 1959 and 1976, seven of which are included in this collection, selected and introduced by Colm Tóibín. As Tóibín writes, her fiction is set in Dublin and rural Ireland, but she does not “deal in predictable local color”; her stories are “more interested in the drama around the solitary figure than large questions of identity.” Sharp, meticulous, painful, and sometimes funny, the stories both rise above their time and place and transport us there. You can hear Tóibín read and discuss Lavin’s story “In the Middle of the Fields,” included in this volume, on an episode of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast.

Tiny Gardens Everywhereby Kate Brown (Norton)NonfictionThis manifesto of urban gardening explores how planted parcels of land can not only provide nutrition but also support social revolution. Brown, an environmental historian, draws on a wealth of examples: In nineteenth-century Europe, many English workers relied on allotment gardens to help them withstand the loss of wages during labor strikes. Community gardens in Paris, fertilized with horse manure, generated produce that fed the city through periods of famine. During the Great Depression, Black Americans used gardening techniques passed down by earlier generations to turn degraded lawns into thriving plots. Throughout, Brown proves that gardening is not just a way to produce food but also a tool of self-empowerment. Buy on AmazonBookshop

This manifesto of urban gardening explores how planted parcels of land can not only provide nutrition but also support social revolution. Brown, an environmental historian, draws on a wealth of examples: In nineteenth-century Europe, many English workers relied on allotment gardens to help them withstand the loss of wages during labor strikes. Community gardens in Paris, fertilized with horse manure, generated produce that fed the city through periods of famine. During the Great Depression, Black Americans used gardening techniques passed down by earlier generations to turn degraded lawns into thriving plots. Throughout, Brown proves that gardening is not just a way to produce food but also a tool of self-empowerment.

From Our PagesDown Timeby Andrew Martin (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)FictionMartin’s second novel, an episodic portrait of five friends, grapples with the challenges of art and addiction, desire and disappointment, as the pandemic transforms their social world. The novel was excerpted in the magazine. Buy on AmazonBookshop

Martin’s second novel, an episodic portrait of five friends, grapples with the challenges of art and addiction, desire and disappointment, as the pandemic transforms their social world. The novel was excerpted in the magazine.

Floodlinesby Saleem Haddad (Europa)FictionIn this sprawling family saga, three Iraqi British sisters strain against one another while contending with political turmoil. In 2014, the three women are living distant lives in the U.K. and Dubai when they are forced to reconnect after paintings made by their late father, a prominent artist, are suddenly rediscovered. At the same time, the Islamic State entrenches itself further into the siblings’ homeland, prompting them to reflect on the meaning of their newfound status as cultural stewards. Haddad, who was born in Kuwait and has been an aid worker throughout the Middle East, writes in a prose that is erudite and engaging. His intimate knowledge of the region’s politics enriches this layered drama of sisterhood. Buy on AmazonBookshop

In this sprawling family saga, three Iraqi British sisters strain against one another while contending with political turmoil. In 2014, the three women are living distant lives in the U.K. and Dubai when they are forced to reconnect after paintings made by their late father, a prominent artist, are suddenly rediscovered. At the same time, the Islamic State entrenches itself further into the siblings’ homeland, prompting them to reflect on the meaning of their newfound status as cultural stewards. Haddad, who was born in Kuwait and has been an aid worker throughout the Middle East, writes in a prose that is erudite and engaging. His intimate knowledge of the region’s politics enriches this layered drama of sisterhood.

Simple Heartby Cho Haejin, translated by Jamie Chang (Other Press)FictionIn this novel of remembrance and personal discovery, a Korean woman adopted and raised by French parents returns to Seoul with a documentarian in order to excavate her buried past. Complicating the woman’s journey through her homeland is her newly discovered pregnancy. As she and the documentarian revisit the locales of her fractured childhood, she meditates on the future of her baby and on her own upbringing. Haejin’s prose is soft and mysterious, with a drifting, almost Sebaldian quality. Often, she delves into the history of Korean place-names and terms—tangents that provide some of the novel’s most touching passages. Buy on AmazonBookshop

In this novel of remembrance and personal discovery, a Korean woman adopted and raised by French parents returns to Seoul with a documentarian in order to excavate her buried past. Complicating the woman’s journey through her homeland is her newly discovered pregnancy. As she and the documentarian revisit the locales of her fractured childhood, she meditates on the future of her baby and on her own upbringing. Haejin’s prose is soft and mysterious, with a drifting, almost Sebaldian quality. Often, she delves into the history of Korean place-names and terms—tangents that provide some of the novel’s most touching passages.

From Our PagesDays of Love and Rageby Anand Gopal (Simon & Schuster)NonfictionThis immersive narrative chronicles the lives of six ordinary Syrians in the city of Manbij, which threw off the tyranny of the Assad regime and then initiated an almost unprecedented experiment—inventing a democracy from scratch. The results were tumultuous: friends became enemies, love affairs capsized, and ISIS exploited the chaos. Gopal’s intimate book, which was excerpted on newyorker.com, captures the thrill, and heartbreak, of trying to make the world anew. Buy on AmazonBookshop

Days of Love and Rage

This immersive narrative chronicles the lives of six ordinary Syrians in the city of Manbij, which threw off the tyranny of the Assad regime and then initiated an almost unprecedented experiment—inventing a democracy from scratch. The results were tumultuous: friends became enemies, love affairs capsized, and ISIS exploited the chaos. Gopal’s intimate book, which was excerpted on newyorker.com, captures the thrill, and heartbreak, of trying to make the world anew.

The Last Kings of Hollywoodby Paul Fischer (Celadon)NonfictionBefore they were legends, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg were, respectively, a young visionary from Queens, an aloof kid from Modesto, and a bullied wunderkind from Arizona. This underdog story chronicles their early days and the breakout movies that secured their legacies when each was still in his thirties. Fischer tracks the artistic cross-pollination among his subjects and their filmmaking peers. The book carries a strain of melancholy, as it reflects on how industry executives preferred the men’s sequel-generating blockbusters over their more personal films, to the directors’ chagrin. As Coppola told his biographer in 1987, “I liked it better when everyone wasn’t so interested in movies.” Buy on AmazonBookshop

The Last Kings of Hollywood

Before they were legends, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg were, respectively, a young visionary from Queens, an aloof kid from Modesto, and a bullied wunderkind from Arizona. This underdog story chronicles their early days and the breakout movies that secured their legacies when each was still in his thirties. Fischer tracks the artistic cross-pollination among his subjects and their filmmaking peers. The book carries a strain of melancholy, as it reflects on how industry executives preferred the men’s sequel-generating blockbusters over their more personal films, to the directors’ chagrin. As Coppola told his biographer in 1987, “I liked it better when everyone wasn’t so interested in movies.”

The Renovationby Kenan Orhan (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)FictionDilara, the protagonist of this début novel, is consumed by the absence of a stable home in her life. She and her family flee Turkey, where she is from, after a failed coup in 2016. When they end up in Italy, something inexplicable happens: Dilara’s bathroom transforms into a cell in an infamous prison on the outskirts of Istanbul. But Dilara is accustomed to the surreal, having escaped conditions where working for the wrong newspaper or studying at the wrong school could result in arrest. Indeed, she finds herself increasingly drawn to the cell, where time and space collapse. Orhan produces a haunting meditation on memory and displacement that reconsiders the meaning of liberation. Buy on AmazonBookshop

Dilara, the protagonist of this début novel, is consumed by the absence of a stable home in her life. She and her family flee Turkey, where she is from, after a failed coup in 2016. When they end up in Italy, something inexplicable happens: Dilara’s bathroom transforms into a cell in an infamous prison on the outskirts of Istanbul. But Dilara is accustomed to the surreal, having escaped conditions where working for the wrong newspaper or studying at the wrong school could result in arrest. Indeed, she finds herself increasingly drawn to the cell, where time and space collapse. Orhan produces a haunting meditation on memory and displacement that reconsiders the meaning of liberation.

The War Within a Warby Wil Haygood (Knopf)NonfictionIn Vietnam in the nineteen-sixties, Black Americans participating in the country’s “first fully integrated war” encountered the same racism they fought at home. Their experiences are the subject of this engaging history. White soldiers may have gone to Indochina with their prejudices intact, but Black soldiers brought their culture—soon, a small area in Saigon bustling with Motown bars became known as “Soul Alley.” Meanwhile, in the U.S., Black families were furious that their sons were recruited and dying in greater proportions than white soldiers did. The only place where racial identities dissolved, Haygood writes, was on the battlefield, where soldiers danced “together in the horrifying ritual of war.” Buy on AmazonBookshop

The War Within a War

In Vietnam in the nineteen-sixties, Black Americans participating in the country’s “first fully integrated war” encountered the same racism they fought at home. Their experiences are the subject of this engaging history. White soldiers may have gone to Indochina with their prejudices intact, but Black soldiers brought their culture—soon, a small area in Saigon bustling with Motown bars became known as “Soul Alley.” Meanwhile, in the U.S., Black families were furious that their sons were recruited and dying in greater proportions than white soldiers did. The only place where racial identities dissolved, Haygood writes, was on the battlefield, where soldiers danced “together in the horrifying ritual of war.”

World Cup Feverby Simon Kuper (Pegasus)NonfictionKuper, a journalist for the Financial Times, was born in Uganda to South African Jewish parents, raised and educated in the Netherlands and in Britain, and is now both a French citizen; as a “rootless cosmopolitan,” he’s well positioned to observe the chauvinisms and zealotries of soccer’s most ardent fans. He has attended nine World Cup tournaments—held every four years in different parts of the globe—and his book is based on the notes he took while rushing from match to match. The result is a chronicle that encompasses history, national cultures, and politics. Kuper’s account captures the raw nationalism, corruption, and ritual vengeance surrounding the matches, but it’s also a tale of love and devotion, told by someone who knows the feelings well. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “Why the World Cup Can Feel Like War,” by Ian Buruma

Kuper, a journalist for the Financial Times, was born in Uganda to South African Jewish parents, raised and educated in the Netherlands and in Britain, and is now both a French citizen; as a “rootless cosmopolitan,” he’s well positioned to observe the chauvinisms and zealotries of soccer’s most ardent fans. He has attended nine World Cup tournaments—held every four years in different parts of the globe—and his book is based on the notes he took while rushing from match to match. The result is a chronicle that encompasses history, national cultures, and politics. Kuper’s account captures the raw nationalism, corruption, and ritual vengeance surrounding the matches, but it’s also a tale of love and devotion, told by someone who knows the feelings well.

From Our PagesWhy I Am Not an Atheistby Christopher Beha (Penguin Press)NonfictionBeha, who grew up a devout Catholic, began to lose his faith after his brother almost died in an accident. His book is an account of the years that followed—years during which he read widely in science and philosophy, searching for a tenable secular world view, before returning, finally, to the church he had left. The book was excerpted on newyorker.com. Buy on AmazonBookshop

Why I Am Not an Atheist

Beha, who grew up a devout Catholic, began to lose his faith after his brother almost died in an accident. His book is an account of the years that followed—years during which he read widely in science and philosophy, searching for a tenable secular world view, before returning, finally, to the church he had left. The book was excerpted on newyorker.com.

Good Peopleby Patmeena Sabit (Crown)FictionThis devastating début novel takes the form of an oral history about a tragedy that shatters a family. At its heart is a couple who arrived in the U.S. in the late nineteen-nineties as refugees from Afghanistan. They prospered, and brought up four children in an affluent suburb in Virginia. Rotating testimonies from people they know—family friends, a cousin, lawyers—offer theories about what led to the novel’s central catastrophe. Once the nature of the tragedy has been revealed, the book transforms into an intimate study of an Afghan immigrant community forced to reëvaluate what it means to raise children in America. One friend says, “The money wasn’t the issue. . . . It was about one thing and one thing only: They forgot who they were.” Buy on AmazonBookshop

This devastating début novel takes the form of an oral history about a tragedy that shatters a family. At its heart is a couple who arrived in the U.S. in the late nineteen-nineties as refugees from Afghanistan. They prospered, and brought up four children in an affluent suburb in Virginia. Rotating testimonies from people they know—family friends, a cousin, lawyers—offer theories about what led to the novel’s central catastrophe. Once the nature of the tragedy has been revealed, the book transforms into an intimate study of an Afghan immigrant community forced to reëvaluate what it means to raise children in America. One friend says, “The money wasn’t the issue. . . . It was about one thing and one thing only: They forgot who they were.”

To Catch a Fascistby Christopher Mathias (Atria)NonfictionThis absorbing book documents attempts by activists who are part of the Antifa movement to expose and sabotage far-right-wing groups. Mathias, a seasoned journalist who has long covered the far right, shows how activists variously confront and infiltrate such groups and reveal their members to the public. These campaigns rely on the notion that being found to be part of a white-supremacist group has social costs, like the loss of a job. But, as a former member of Patriot Front, a fascist organization, tells Mathias, the rise of figures such as Donald Trump could be taken to indicate that, in the U.S., “there’s almost already no stigma” around white nationalism. Buy on AmazonBookshop

To Catch a Fascist

This absorbing book documents attempts by activists who are part of the Antifa movement to expose and sabotage far-right-wing groups. Mathias, a seasoned journalist who has long covered the far right, shows how activists variously confront and infiltrate such groups and reveal their members to the public. These campaigns rely on the notion that being found to be part of a white-supremacist group has social costs, like the loss of a job. But, as a former member of Patriot Front, a fascist organization, tells Mathias, the rise of figures such as Donald Trump could be taken to indicate that, in the U.S., “there’s almost already no stigma” around white nationalism.

The Pain Brokers by Elizabeth Chamblee Burch (Atria)NonfictionA little more than a decade ago, hundreds of women were persuaded to travel to surgery centers and strip malls several states away from where they lived to have pelvic mesh removed from their bodies. They did so at the urging of marketing firms that were working with lawyers and finance companies in pursuit of big payouts in a product-liability lawsuit. The women weren’t necessarily better off without the mesh, and they were often charged exorbitant fees; what’s more, the law firm that enlisted them as clients never expected to represent any of them in court. It instead planned to bundle them like mortgages and sell them to the highest bidder. Burch, a law professor at the University of Georgia, unspools the story of this galling scam, and lucidly explains how our legal system, and its approach to mass torts, has made such swindling possible. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “A Terrifying Scam and the System That Made It Possible,” by Casey Cep

A little more than a decade ago, hundreds of women were persuaded to travel to surgery centers and strip malls several states away from where they lived to have pelvic mesh removed from their bodies. They did so at the urging of marketing firms that were working with lawyers and finance companies in pursuit of big payouts in a product-liability lawsuit. The women weren’t necessarily better off without the mesh, and they were often charged exorbitant fees; what’s more, the law firm that enlisted them as clients never expected to represent any of them in court. It instead planned to bundle them like mortgages and sell them to the highest bidder. Burch, a law professor at the University of Georgia, unspools the story of this galling scam, and lucidly explains how our legal system, and its approach to mass torts, has made such swindling possible.

Every One Still Hereby Liadan Ní Chuinn (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)FictionThe stories in this début collection grapple with the Troubles, in part through an accretion of charged moments: cars are hijacked; people protest a museum’s display of human remains. The names of Northern Irish civilians killed by British armed forces are listed, accompanied by frank descriptions of their deaths, for ten pages. Ní Chuinn maps tense ideas onto a strikingly varied cast of characters. As sharp details accrue stealthily in the author’s subdued prose, the effect is one of chilling recognition. The Troubles, which ended in 1998, the year Ní Chuinn was born, sing the same plain and painful tune as our present. Buy on AmazonBookshop

Every One Still Here

The stories in this début collection grapple with the Troubles, in part through an accretion of charged moments: cars are hijacked; people protest a museum’s display of human remains. The names of Northern Irish civilians killed by British armed forces are listed, accompanied by frank descriptions of their deaths, for ten pages. Ní Chuinn maps tense ideas onto a strikingly varied cast of characters. As sharp details accrue stealthily in the author’s subdued prose, the effect is one of chilling recognition. The Troubles, which ended in 1998, the year Ní Chuinn was born, sing the same plain and painful tune as our present.

Injustice Townby Rick Tulsky (Pegasus)NonfictionSince the founding of the Innocence Project, in 1992, which uses DNA evidence to overturn convictions, exoneration stories have become somewhat familiar. But Tulsky’s comprehensive and sobering new book provides a twist on the wrongful-conviction genre, showing how deep the rot can be when sexual violence is involved. For years, Detective Roger Golubski of Kansas City, Kansas, was known by the community he policed to be a sexual predator. While investigating a murder, Golubski zeroed in on a man named Lamonte McIntyre, who was eventually given two life sentences. Golubski had previously sexually assaulted McIntyre’s mother, and had also been involved with an eyewitness. Compared with the extensive coverage of police violence in recent years, there’s been relatively little discussion of sexual exploitation by law enforcement, and Tulsky’s book makes for a worthy entry in the canon of American injustice. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “When Sexual Exploitation Is Fundamental to Police Corruption,” by Rachel Monroe

Since the founding of the Innocence Project, in 1992, which uses DNA evidence to overturn convictions, exoneration stories have become somewhat familiar. But Tulsky’s comprehensive and sobering new book provides a twist on the wrongful-conviction genre, showing how deep the rot can be when sexual violence is involved. For years, Detective Roger Golubski of Kansas City, Kansas, was known by the community he policed to be a sexual predator. While investigating a murder, Golubski zeroed in on a man named Lamonte McIntyre, who was eventually given two life sentences. Golubski had previously sexually assaulted McIntyre’s mother, and had also been involved with an eyewitness. Compared with the extensive coverage of police violence in recent years, there’s been relatively little discussion of sexual exploitation by law enforcement, and Tulsky’s book makes for a worthy entry in the canon of American injustice.

Southern Imaginingby Elleke Boehmer (Princeton)NonfictionA lyrical study of global literature, this book, by a professor at Oxford, seeks to explore “what it is to inhabit the far south of our planet in the mind.” A section on pre-modern Polynesian knowledge traditions reveals a world view dominated by a profound awareness of water and stars; other portions, on twenty-first-century fiction from Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, highlight a shared concern with environmental fragility and the ways in which land, ocean, and living beings continually intersect. The theme of exploitation runs through many of the works under consideration, such as the Aboriginal Australian writer Alexis Wright’s novel “Carpentaria,” in which a mining corporation descends on a largely Indigenous town. Buy on AmazonBookshop

A lyrical study of global literature, this book, by a professor at Oxford, seeks to explore “what it is to inhabit the far south of our planet in the mind.” A section on pre-modern Polynesian knowledge traditions reveals a world view dominated by a profound awareness of water and stars; other portions, on twenty-first-century fiction from Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, highlight a shared concern with environmental fragility and the ways in which land, ocean, and living beings continually intersect. The theme of exploitation runs through many of the works under consideration, such as the Aboriginal Australian writer Alexis Wright’s novel “Carpentaria,” in which a mining corporation descends on a largely Indigenous town.

A Hymn to Lifeby Gisèle Pelicot, translated from the French by Natasha LehrerRuth Diver (Penguin Press)NonfictionIn the fall of 2020, police showed Gisèle Pelicot evidence that over the past decade her husband, Dominique, had repeatedly mixed sleeping pills into her drinks so that strange men could rape her. Soon he confessed. Four years later, the trial of Pelicot’s rapists seemed like a referendum on the relations between men and women in France. In the end, fifty-one men, including Dominique, were convicted. In her new memoir, “A Hymn to Life,” an elegant and remarkably affecting account of her ordeal and its aftermath, Pelicot writes that only recently did she “grasp what this conflict between men and women was all about.” The subtitle of the book is “Shame has to change sides”—a phrase Pelicot used at the trial. One of the defendants told her, in response, “I take your shame upon myself, Madame!” Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “The Trial of Gisèle Pelicot’s Rapists United France and Fractured Her Family,” by Rachel Aviv

A Hymn to Life

In the fall of 2020, police showed Gisèle Pelicot evidence that over the past decade her husband, Dominique, had repeatedly mixed sleeping pills into her drinks so that strange men could rape her. Soon he confessed. Four years later, the trial of Pelicot’s rapists seemed like a referendum on the relations between men and women in France. In the end, fifty-one men, including Dominique, were convicted. In her new memoir, “A Hymn to Life,” an elegant and remarkably affecting account of her ordeal and its aftermath, Pelicot writes that only recently did she “grasp what this conflict between men and women was all about.” The subtitle of the book is “Shame has to change sides”—a phrase Pelicot used at the trial. One of the defendants told her, in response, “I take your shame upon myself, Madame!”

The Boundless Deepby Richard Holmes (Pantheon)NonfictionThis treatment of Alfred Tennyson by a master biographer focusses on the poet’s fascination with unknowable immensities. Holmes’s central claim is that the crucial factor in the poet’s formative years was the scientific advances of the nineteenth century and the challenge they posed to conventional Christian faith. By the time Tennyson entered adulthood, the British intellectual class—and, for that matter, much of the rest of the world—had been turned on its head by scientific breakthroughs, above all in geology and astronomy. These radical insights, Holmes argues, were fundamental to Tennyson’s maturation. Holmes does not set out to dwell on Tennyson the Laureate or Tennyson the lord. His fascination lies with the plain, untitled youth, and with how this newly disorienting, newly dazzling world helped to shape his greatness. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “In an Age of Science, Tennyson Grappled with an Unsettling New World,” by Kathryn Schulz

This treatment of Alfred Tennyson by a master biographer focusses on the poet’s fascination with unknowable immensities. Holmes’s central claim is that the crucial factor in the poet’s formative years was the scientific advances of the nineteenth century and the challenge they posed to conventional Christian faith. By the time Tennyson entered adulthood, the British intellectual class—and, for that matter, much of the rest of the world—had been turned on its head by scientific breakthroughs, above all in geology and astronomy. These radical insights, Holmes argues, were fundamental to Tennyson’s maturation. Holmes does not set out to dwell on Tennyson the Laureate or Tennyson the lord. His fascination lies with the plain, untitled youth, and with how this newly disorienting, newly dazzling world helped to shape his greatness.

From Our PagesOne Sun Onlyby Camille Bordas (Random House)FictionThe first collection by Bordas, the author of several novels in French and English, ranges in location from Chicago to Paris and in premise from arranging the return of a dead body to winning the lottery. The stories, several of which first appeared in the magazine, nest questions of existence and death in narratives of dailiness and relationships. Buy on AmazonBookshop

The first collection by Bordas, the author of several novels in French and English, ranges in location from Chicago to Paris and in premise from arranging the return of a dead body to winning the lottery. The stories, several of which first appeared in the magazine, nest questions of existence and death in narratives of dailiness and relationships.

Leaving Guantanamoby Eric L. Lewis (Cambridge)NonfictionWith procedural exactitude and mounting anger, this book recounts how Kuwait extracted twelve of its citizens from the “forever prison.” Lewis, a lawyer who helped shepherd those cases through the State Department, the Pentagon, interagency task forces, and federal habeas litigation, makes clear that Guantánamo is part of an offshore detention regime built to evade ordinary adjudication, nourished by unverified intelligence, and maintained as a result of politics. As he shows how a small Middle Eastern state learned to negotiate with America’s security bureaucracy, the limits of litigation become painfully apparent; releases arrive only through diplomacy and assurances that the detainees will be subject to travel bans and surveillance. The book’s bleak contemporary lesson is that stranding people in a quasi-legal black site is easier than releasing them. Buy on AmazonBookshop

With procedural exactitude and mounting anger, this book recounts how Kuwait extracted twelve of its citizens from the “forever prison.” Lewis, a lawyer who helped shepherd those cases through the State Department, the Pentagon, interagency task forces, and federal habeas litigation, makes clear that Guantánamo is part of an offshore detention regime built to evade ordinary adjudication, nourished by unverified intelligence, and maintained as a result of politics. As he shows how a small Middle Eastern state learned to negotiate with America’s security bureaucracy, the limits of litigation become painfully apparent; releases arrive only through diplomacy and assurances that the detainees will be subject to travel bans and surveillance. The book’s bleak contemporary lesson is that stranding people in a quasi-legal black site is easier than releasing them.

Eating Ashesby Brenda Navarro, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell (Liveright)FictionIn this grief-ridden novel, a nameless narrator mourns the loss of her younger brother Diego. When they are children, their mother leaves the two of them in Mexico City, where they live in poverty, to go to Madrid, in hopes of improving their circumstances. Nine years later, the siblings finally go to join their mother, but find themselves marginalized and still poor. Avoiding melodrama, Navarro writes in a matter-of-fact tone, using short, clipped sentences suited to the wretchedness of her subject. This is a book that treats its characters and incidents seriously and—at its best—ruthlessly. Buy on AmazonBookshop

In this grief-ridden novel, a nameless narrator mourns the loss of her younger brother Diego. When they are children, their mother leaves the two of them in Mexico City, where they live in poverty, to go to Madrid, in hopes of improving their circumstances. Nine years later, the siblings finally go to join their mother, but find themselves marginalized and still poor. Avoiding melodrama, Navarro writes in a matter-of-fact tone, using short, clipped sentences suited to the wretchedness of her subject. This is a book that treats its characters and incidents seriously and—at its best—ruthlessly.

The Wall Dancersby Yi-Ling Liu (Knopf)NonfictionChina’s first private internet provider launched in 1995. Today, more than one billion people in the country use the web. This sensitive début depicts the Chinese internet as a kind of “walled garden,” closed off from the outside world, pruned by government censors, yet filled with life. Liu, a Hong Kong-born journalist, profiles people on the fringes of Chinese society—a feminist activist, a gay entrepreneur, a sci-fi writer, a rapper—who find purpose and community online even as the space for free expression narrows. Foreign observers, Liu argues, tend to portray Chinese people as either the enablers or the victims of their government’s excesses. But reality, her book suggests, is messier, as the state and its citizens participate in a “dynamic push and pull.” Buy on AmazonBookshop

China’s first private internet provider launched in 1995. Today, more than one billion people in the country use the web. This sensitive début depicts the Chinese internet as a kind of “walled garden,” closed off from the outside world, pruned by government censors, yet filled with life. Liu, a Hong Kong-born journalist, profiles people on the fringes of Chinese society—a feminist activist, a gay entrepreneur, a sci-fi writer, a rapper—who find purpose and community online even as the space for free expression narrows. Foreign observers, Liu argues, tend to portray Chinese people as either the enablers or the victims of their government’s excesses. But reality, her book suggests, is messier, as the state and its citizens participate in a “dynamic push and pull.”

Bonfire of the Murdochsby Gabriel Sherman (Simon & Schuster)NonfictionThe Murdoch empire represents a story of profit and power unlike any other—a tale of chaos and scheming, of dynastic crimes and intergenerational power plays. Sherman, a correspondent for Vanity Fair, proves a reliable chronicler of the Murdoch family’s Oedipal dynamics as well as their shaping of the media world. For years, Rupert Murdoch’s children scrambled for control of their father’s empire; Sherman chronicles their machinations with élan, illustrating how Murdoch’s sons, in particular, picked up their habit of burning through various decencies from their old man himself. In the end, Rupert got his revenge on his recalcitrant children in two ways: first, by shaping their understanding of reality, and, second, by selling the guts of the company from underneath them in 2019. “Over seventy years, Rupert said he was building a family business,” Sherman writes. “But what he built was a business that destroyed his family.” Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “How the Murdoch Family Built an Empire—and Remade the News,” by Andrew O’Hagan

Bonfire of the Murdochs

The Murdoch empire represents a story of profit and power unlike any other—a tale of chaos and scheming, of dynastic crimes and intergenerational power plays. Sherman, a correspondent for Vanity Fair, proves a reliable chronicler of the Murdoch family’s Oedipal dynamics as well as their shaping of the media world. For years, Rupert Murdoch’s children scrambled for control of their father’s empire; Sherman chronicles their machinations with élan, illustrating how Murdoch’s sons, in particular, picked up their habit of burning through various decencies from their old man himself. In the end, Rupert got his revenge on his recalcitrant children in two ways: first, by shaping their understanding of reality, and, second, by selling the guts of the company from underneath them in 2019. “Over seventy years, Rupert said he was building a family business,” Sherman writes. “But what he built was a business that destroyed his family.”

Strangersby Belle Burden (The Dial Press)NonfictionThis engrossing memoir of divorce, by a former corporate lawyer who hails from two of America’s wealthiest families, begins in March, 2020, at the start of Covid lockdown, on the day Burden learns that her husband of two decades has been having an affair. The following morning, he tells her, “I thought I wanted our life, but I don’t,” and leaves. As the divorce unfolds, Burden discovers that their prenuptial agreement favors her husband, who worked as a hedge-fund executive while she left her career to raise their children, and who has quietly amassed “a fortune” held “in his name alone.” Though this story of betrayal hits familiar beats—shock, grief, self-recrimination, resignation—it is enlivened by its particulars. Buy on AmazonBookshop

This engrossing memoir of divorce, by a former corporate lawyer who hails from two of America’s wealthiest families, begins in March, 2020, at the start of Covid lockdown, on the day Burden learns that her husband of two decades has been having an affair. The following morning, he tells her, “I thought I wanted our life, but I don’t,” and leaves. As the divorce unfolds, Burden discovers that their prenuptial agreement favors her husband, who worked as a hedge-fund executive while she left her career to raise their children, and who has quietly amassed “a fortune” held “in his name alone.” Though this story of betrayal hits familiar beats—shock, grief, self-recrimination, resignation—it is enlivened by its particulars.

A Very Cold Winterby Fausta Cialente, translated from the Italian by Julia Nelsen (Transit)FictionThis novel, the first of the undersung writer’s books to appear in English, opens in 1946, just as winter is descending on Milan. An extended family of nine is preparing to hunker down in an attic apartment, a dilapidated space “divided up with curtains and partitions.” Though they share tight quarters, the family members—siblings, cousins, in-laws—are all preoccupied by disparate fixations. An omniscient narrator roves through the characters’ perspectives, illuminating their individual desires—to become an actor and a writer, to marry and to move out. Trapped “in the middle of a barren, frozen plain, without horizons,” a reality for which winter is not solely to blame, the family contends with what it means to move on in the aftermath of war. Buy on AmazonBookshop

A Very Cold Winter

This novel, the first of the undersung writer’s books to appear in English, opens in 1946, just as winter is descending on Milan. An extended family of nine is preparing to hunker down in an attic apartment, a dilapidated space “divided up with curtains and partitions.” Though they share tight quarters, the family members—siblings, cousins, in-laws—are all preoccupied by disparate fixations. An omniscient narrator roves through the characters’ perspectives, illuminating their individual desires—to become an actor and a writer, to marry and to move out. Trapped “in the middle of a barren, frozen plain, without horizons,” a reality for which winter is not solely to blame, the family contends with what it means to move on in the aftermath of war.

The Copywriterby Daniel Poppick (Scribner)FictionThis novel, the first by Poppick, a poet who has published two collections, orbits the perennial tension between art and commerce. Its narrator, referred to only as D__, is a poet with a day job writing advertising copy. In spare moments, he jots down questions, observations, stylized scenes that he labels parables, and glancing mentions of historical events. The notebooks that result, spanning two years, from 2017 to 2019, are an inquiry into the nature of time and how it is shaped by labor—creative and otherwise. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “The Perennial Predicament of the Artist with an Office Job,” by Katy Waldman

This novel, the first by Poppick, a poet who has published two collections, orbits the perennial tension between art and commerce. Its narrator, referred to only as D__, is a poet with a day job writing advertising copy. In spare moments, he jots down questions, observations, stylized scenes that he labels parables, and glancing mentions of historical events. The notebooks that result, spanning two years, from 2017 to 2019, are an inquiry into the nature of time and how it is shaped by labor—creative and otherwise.

The Revolutionistsby Jason Burke (Knopf)NonfictionFor a brief season in the nineteen-seventies, West German radicals and Palestinian liberationists shared the same Marxist-Leninist vocabulary, and the same faith that they could transform their societies via political violence. In this timely history, Burke, a longtime foreign correspondent for the Guardian, returns to the era of this unlikely coupling, examining the world view that motivated these actors—in particular, West Germany’s Red Army Faction and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—and also the reasons that their shared revolutionary dreams never came to pass. He shows how their attacks, often planned with an eye to the spectacular, helped produce the modern concept of “terrorism,” a term that spread in foreign-policy circles as governments learned to respond to a new kind of threat. Ultimately, the sense of common cause subsided as the liturgies of the left on which it depended gave way to the radical Islamism of the Ayatollah Khomeini and Osama bin Laden. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “Marx, Palestine, and the Birth of Modern Terrorism,” by Thomas Meaney

For a brief season in the nineteen-seventies, West German radicals and Palestinian liberationists shared the same Marxist-Leninist vocabulary, and the same faith that they could transform their societies via political violence. In this timely history, Burke, a longtime foreign correspondent for the Guardian, returns to the era of this unlikely coupling, examining the world view that motivated these actors—in particular, West Germany’s Red Army Faction and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—and also the reasons that their shared revolutionary dreams never came to pass. He shows how their attacks, often planned with an eye to the spectacular, helped produce the modern concept of “terrorism,” a term that spread in foreign-policy circles as governments learned to respond to a new kind of threat. Ultimately, the sense of common cause subsided as the liturgies of the left on which it depended gave way to the radical Islamism of the Ayatollah Khomeini and Osama bin Laden.

The Death and Life of Gentrificationby Japonica Brown-Saracino (Princeton)NonfictionThis wide-ranging study explores how the term “gentrification” has slipped the bonds of its original, “brick-and-mortar” usage, becoming a way to signal loss while addressing “structural inequalities and concomitant social changes.” As a metaphor, its meaning has become fluid; it is now commonplace to read of the “gentrification” of subjects as varied as music, the internet, sandwiches, and queer culture. Brown-Saracino also zeroes in on a crucial aspect of the term’s appeal: in an era of ideological land mines, “gentrification,” she writes, “is politically charged without evoking a specific, narrow political stance.” Buy on AmazonBookshop

The Death and Life of Gentrification

This wide-ranging study explores how the term “gentrification” has slipped the bonds of its original, “brick-and-mortar” usage, becoming a way to signal loss while addressing “structural inequalities and concomitant social changes.” As a metaphor, its meaning has become fluid; it is now commonplace to read of the “gentrification” of subjects as varied as music, the internet, sandwiches, and queer culture. Brown-Saracino also zeroes in on a crucial aspect of the term’s appeal: in an era of ideological land mines, “gentrification,” she writes, “is politically charged without evoking a specific, narrow political stance.”

Lost Lambsby Madeline Cash (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)FictionThis comic novel centers on a fracturing family in an unnamed American suburb. Bud Flynn, the patriarch, is sleeping in a minivan, and his insecure wife, Catherine, has embarked on an affair with their pompous neighbor. Meanwhile, their three daughters, aged twelve, fifteen, and seventeen, have been exhibiting increasingly unruly behavior, including punching another kid in the face and preparing to commit an act of domestic terrorism. Playing backup to the Flynn family breakdown are the antics of an evil tech billionaire. The novel’s more sophisticated critiques, though, aren’t of unbridled corporate greed or the über-wealthy, but of ordinary people who have lost the ability to reimagine their lives, stuck as they are in bad marriages, pointless jobs, and crippling regret. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “A Début Novel About the Quest for Eternal Youth,” by Hannah Gold

This comic novel centers on a fracturing family in an unnamed American suburb. Bud Flynn, the patriarch, is sleeping in a minivan, and his insecure wife, Catherine, has embarked on an affair with their pompous neighbor. Meanwhile, their three daughters, aged twelve, fifteen, and seventeen, have been exhibiting increasingly unruly behavior, including punching another kid in the face and preparing to commit an act of domestic terrorism. Playing backup to the Flynn family breakdown are the antics of an evil tech billionaire. The novel’s more sophisticated critiques, though, aren’t of unbridled corporate greed or the über-wealthy, but of ordinary people who have lost the ability to reimagine their lives, stuck as they are in bad marriages, pointless jobs, and crippling regret.

Departure(s)by Julian Barnes (Knopf)FictionThough subtitled “A Novel,” Barnes’s twenty-seventh book defies categorization, incorporating memoir, fiction, and philosophy. The narrator—also a writer named Julian—opens with a meditation on memory, before clambering through the recesses of his mind to retrieve the story of friends he unsuccessfully set up in the sixties and again decades later. In recounting their romance(s), Julian realizes that he had been confusing fiction and life, believing that he “could gently direct them towards the ends” he desired. He makes peace, too, with the end of his own story. More than anything, this book, published the day after Barnes’s eightieth birthday, is a letter to his readers—a thank-you, and a goodbye. Buy on AmazonBookshop

Though subtitled “A Novel,” Barnes’s twenty-seventh book defies categorization, incorporating memoir, fiction, and philosophy. The narrator—also a writer named Julian—opens with a meditation on memory, before clambering through the recesses of his mind to retrieve the story of friends he unsuccessfully set up in the sixties and again decades later. In recounting their romance(s), Julian realizes that he had been confusing fiction and life, believing that he “could gently direct them towards the ends” he desired. He makes peace, too, with the end of his own story. More than anything, this book, published the day after Barnes’s eightieth birthday, is a letter to his readers—a thank-you, and a goodbye.

Volga Bluesby Marzio G. Mian, translated by Elettra Pauletto (Norton)NonfictionIn this travelogue of the Volga River—“Russia’s epicenter of culture, faith, and identity”—an undercover journalist grapples with contemporary Russia. Between the river’s source, entrusted to an order of Orthodox nuns, and its southern delta, where caviar bound for the Kremlin is harvested, the author journeys through a defiant country transformed by war, sanctions, and reinvigorated patriotism. Braiding snapshots of the present with history, Mian depicts a country haunted by threats to its national integrity, where people have come to believe that “questioning their leaders . . . creates social conflict and exposes the country to foreign occupation”—a tension that, he argues, has arisen in Western democracies as well. Buy on AmazonBookshop

In this travelogue of the Volga River—“Russia’s epicenter of culture, faith, and identity”—an undercover journalist grapples with contemporary Russia. Between the river’s source, entrusted to an order of Orthodox nuns, and its southern delta, where caviar bound for the Kremlin is harvested, the author journeys through a defiant country transformed by war, sanctions, and reinvigorated patriotism. Braiding snapshots of the present with history, Mian depicts a country haunted by threats to its national integrity, where people have come to believe that “questioning their leaders . . . creates social conflict and exposes the country to foreign occupation”—a tension that, he argues, has arisen in Western democracies as well.

From Our PagesThe Snakes That Ate Floridaby Ian Frazier (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)NonfictionIn this collection of essays, reported pieces, and criticism dating back to the nineteen-seventies, Frazier’s sharp eye for finding the complex in the quotidian is on full display. From tales about monster trucks and the Maraschino-cherry empire to musings about lantern flies and Lolita, the collection—much of which was published in this magazine—spotlights the vibrancy of topics often under-noticed. In the playful and diligent hands of the seasoned staff writer, these ordinary things feel extraordinary. Buy on AmazonBookshop

The Snakes That Ate Florida

In this collection of essays, reported pieces, and criticism dating back to the nineteen-seventies, Frazier’s sharp eye for finding the complex in the quotidian is on full display. From tales about monster trucks and the Maraschino-cherry empire to musings about lantern flies and Lolita, the collection—much of which was published in this magazine—spotlights the vibrancy of topics often under-noticed. In the playful and diligent hands of the seasoned staff writer, these ordinary things feel extraordinary.

Island at the Edge of the Worldby Mike Pitts (Mariner)NonfictionThe belief that Indigenous monuments, like those on Easter Island, must have been made by outsiders has long shaped Western accounts of such cultural achievements. In this crisp, confident, and convincing new account of the island—known to its inhabitants as Rapa Nui—and of its chroniclers, Pitts, a British archeologist, calls theories of lost European civilizations and alien drop-ins “demonstrable claptrap.” Yet, he argues, a much more reputable but equally insulting theory about Easter Island has remained influential, even dominant: the idea that the island is a cautionary tale of a people who destroyed themselves and their paradise. The story he tells—drawing on new archeological findings, a fresh reading of eighteenth-century visitors’ accounts, and a reconsideration of the archaeologist Katherine Routledge’s neglected work—is quite different, and reflects a broader shift in the consensus around Rapa Nui studies. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “Easter Island and the Allure of “Lost Civilizations”,” by Margaret Talbot

Island at the Edge of the World

The belief that Indigenous monuments, like those on Easter Island, must have been made by outsiders has long shaped Western accounts of such cultural achievements. In this crisp, confident, and convincing new account of the island—known to its inhabitants as Rapa Nui—and of its chroniclers, Pitts, a British archeologist, calls theories of lost European civilizations and alien drop-ins “demonstrable claptrap.” Yet, he argues, a much more reputable but equally insulting theory about Easter Island has remained influential, even dominant: the idea that the island is a cautionary tale of a people who destroyed themselves and their paradise. The story he tells—drawing on new archeological findings, a fresh reading of eighteenth-century visitors’ accounts, and a reconsideration of the archaeologist Katherine Routledge’s neglected work—is quite different, and reflects a broader shift in the consensus around Rapa Nui studies.

Jeanby Madeleine Dunnigan (Norton)FictionAn English boarding school for troubled boys is the backdrop of this quiet yet accomplished début novel, set in 1976. Jean, one of the school’s teen-age charges, is the child of a single mother—a Jewish woman who was sent away from Berlin as a child, during the Second World War. Though something of an outcast, Jean finds snatches of intense companionship with another boy, with whom he has secret lakeside trysts at night, and whose fondness for Jean waxes and wanes, often depending on whether they are alone. While the novel stages Jean’s experience of being “driven uncontrollably” by desire, it also examines the weight of his and his family’s history—and the imperfect self-awareness of a young person carrying great pain. Buy on AmazonBookshop

An English boarding school for troubled boys is the backdrop of this quiet yet accomplished début novel, set in 1976. Jean, one of the school’s teen-age charges, is the child of a single mother—a Jewish woman who was sent away from Berlin as a child, during the Second World War. Though something of an outcast, Jean finds snatches of intense companionship with another boy, with whom he has secret lakeside trysts at night, and whose fondness for Jean waxes and wanes, often depending on whether they are alone. While the novel stages Jean’s experience of being “driven uncontrollably” by desire, it also examines the weight of his and his family’s history—and the imperfect self-awareness of a young person carrying great pain.

From Our PagesHated by All the Right Peopleby Jason Zengerle (Crooked Media Reads)NonfictionZengerle, a staff writer at The New Yorker, first met Tucker Carlson in 1997, when Zengerle was an intern at The New Republic and Carlson was a star reporter at The Weekly Standard. Carlson, who was not yet thirty, “seemed so much older, wiser, and worldlier,” Zengerle writes in his new biography. “He had a wicked sense of humor and a strong contrarian streak.” Zengerle set out to investigate—in a thoroughly reported, often hilariously told portrait—how Carlson went from a gifted young political writer to the leader of a right-wing media ecosystem that has become increasingly beholden to the viewpoints of Donald Trump. An excerpt appeared in the magazine. Buy on AmazonBookshop

Hated by All the Right People

Zengerle, a staff writer at The New Yorker, first met Tucker Carlson in 1997, when Zengerle was an intern at The New Republic and Carlson was a star reporter at The Weekly Standard. Carlson, who was not yet thirty, “seemed so much older, wiser, and worldlier,” Zengerle writes in his new biography. “He had a wicked sense of humor and a strong contrarian streak.” Zengerle set out to investigate—in a thoroughly reported, often hilariously told portrait—how Carlson went from a gifted young political writer to the leader of a right-wing media ecosystem that has become increasingly beholden to the viewpoints of Donald Trump. An excerpt appeared in the magazine.

One Bad Motherby Ej Dickson (Simon & Schuster)NonfictionWhen being a good mother represents a structurally unattainable standard, it’s no wonder there has been a countervailing embrace of the opposite identity, that of the self-declared “bad mother.” Dickson counts herself among such mothers, listing the credentials that earn her the badge of dishonor. “I text my friends Patti LuPone TikToks while Marco is on the floor playing with his toys,” she writes. “I don’t enjoy pretend play or cooking or cleaning or birthday parties.” Dickson, who is a senior writer at The Cut, satirizes the good mom she fails to be and offers a brisk tour of the bad-mother trope as it now circulates in popular culture, from the question of how mothers are meant to combine parenthood with paid work to considerations of the stage mom and the MILF. Dickson writes with a refreshing absence of self-pity, and with empathy even for mothers whose practices and preferences differ vastly from her own. Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “What Makes a Good Mother?,” by Rebecca Mead

When being a good mother represents a structurally unattainable standard, it’s no wonder there has been a countervailing embrace of the opposite identity, that of the self-declared “bad mother.” Dickson counts herself among such mothers, listing the credentials that earn her the badge of dishonor. “I text my friends Patti LuPone TikToks while Marco is on the floor playing with his toys,” she writes. “I don’t enjoy pretend play or cooking or cleaning or birthday parties.” Dickson, who is a senior writer at The Cut, satirizes the good mom she fails to be and offers a brisk tour of the bad-mother trope as it now circulates in popular culture, from the question of how mothers are meant to combine parenthood with paid work to considerations of the stage mom and the MILF. Dickson writes with a refreshing absence of self-pity, and with empathy even for mothers whose practices and preferences differ vastly from her own.

Bernie for Burlingtonby Dan Chiasson (Knopf)NonfictionIn 1971, Bernie Sanders moved to Burlington and made his first run for the U.S. Senate, winning 2.2 per cent of the vote. That same year, blocks away from Sanders’s apartment, Dan Chiasson was born. Chiasson, a poet, a longtime contributor to this magazine, and the chair of the English department at Wellesley, had a front-row seat to Sanders’s rise, and his revelatory new book is nearly as much a memoir of its author as it is a biography of its subject and, not least, a history of the Green Mountain State. Sanders’s attraction to Vermont can be traced back to a moment when he, as a young man, came across a brochure from a Vermont travel bureau. “It is no small irony,” Chiasson writes, “that hill farms marketed to well-heeled city people piqued the interest of a thirteen-year-old Brooklyn Jew and future socialist who would arguably do more to impact Vermont’s traditional culture than anyone in the state’s history.” Buy on AmazonBookshopRead more: “When Bernie Sanders Headed for the Hills,” by Jill Lepore

In 1971, Bernie Sanders moved to Burlington and made his first run for the U.S. Senate, winning 2.2 per cent of the vote. That same year, blocks away from Sanders’s apartment, Dan Chiasson was born. Chiasson, a poet, a longtime contributor to this magazine, and the chair of the English department at Wellesley, had a front-row seat to Sanders’s rise, and his revelatory new book is nearly as much a memoir of its author as it is a biography of its subject and, not least, a history of the Green Mountain State. Sanders’s attraction to Vermont can be traced back to a moment when he, as a young man, came across a brochure from a Vermont travel bureau. “It is no small irony,” Chiasson writes, “that hill farms marketed to well-heeled city people piqued the interest of a thirteen-year-old Brooklyn Jew and future socialist who would arguably do more to impact Vermont’s traditional culture than anyone in the state’s history.”

Everything Is Photographby Patricia Albers (Other Press)NonfictionThis biography tracks the triumphs and the travails of the twentieth-century Hungarian photographer André Kertész. Kertész’s compositions are notably strange—often off center and taken from high angles, they appear like nervous half glances at scenes of pedestrian shuffle—and many are reproduced here, enriched by thorough commentary by Albers. Her exploration of Kertész’s time as an infantryman in the First World War is especially illuminating, as she documents the curiously “flirtatious tender touch” with which he photographed his surroundings. This kind of artistic contradiction becomes a theme, as Albers unfurls details about Kertész’s romantic life, his move to America, and his later fame. Buy on AmazonBookshop

This biography tracks the triumphs and the travails of the twentieth-century Hungarian photographer André Kertész. Kertész’s compositions are notably strange—often off center and taken from high angles, they appear like nervous half glances at scenes of pedestrian shuffle—and many are reproduced here, enriched by thorough commentary by Albers. Her exploration of Kertész’s time as an infantryman in the First World War is especially illuminating, as she documents the curiously “flirtatious tender touch” with which he photographed his surroundings. This kind of artistic contradiction becomes a theme, as Albers unfurls details about Kertész’s romantic life, his move to America, and his later fame.

From Our PagesThis Is Where the Serpent Livesby Daniyal Mueenuddin (Knopf)FictionMueenuddin’s powerfully absorbing novel charts the intricate interplay between landowners and their servants in a feudal Pakistan. Among other narratives, he traces the trajectory of one man, Bayazid—orphaned, or abandoned, as a young child in the years after Partition—who comes to accept that, though he may have left his lowly job at a tandoori stall behind, he will never rise beyond his role as a chauffeur to a wealthy family. Years later, Saqib, a similarly ambitious young man, whom Bayazid has championed, dreams of acquiring some of the riches of his employers but instead discovers that his deviously brilliant scheming could destroy him. Parts of the novel first appeared in The New Yorker. Buy on AmazonBookshop

This Is Where the Serpent Lives

Mueenuddin’s powerfully absorbing novel charts the intricate interplay between landowners and their servants in a feudal Pakistan. Among other narratives, he traces the trajectory of one man, Bayazid—orphaned, or abandoned, as a young child in the years after Partition—who comes to accept that, though he may have left his lowly job at a tandoori stall behind, he will never rise beyond his role as a chauffeur to a wealthy family. Years later, Saqib, a similarly ambitious young man, whom Bayazid has championed, dreams of acquiring some of the riches of his employers but instead discovers that his deviously brilliant scheming could destroy him. Parts of the novel first appeared in The New Yorker.