Books
A daughter explores the dark secrets of a family legacy.
The Books Briefing: Money, Money, Money
Your weekly guide to the best in books
The Indelible Awfulness of E. L. James’s The Mister
The author’s follow-up to her Fifty Shades series is hopelessly retrograde and dismally unentertaining.
Writing the Pulitzer-Winning The Overstory Changed Richard Powers’s Life
The author’s 12th novel was inspired by what he’s described as a kind of “religious conversion.”
The Pulitzer finalist Laila Lalami’s latest novel traces the story of one immigrant family and the seemingly inexplicable tragedy that ruptures it.
The Problem With High-Minded Politics
John Adams and John Quincy Adams’s virtuous disdain for partisanship was at the root of their failures.
The Small Rebellions of Sally Rooney’s Normal People
The author’s second novel continues a rich area of preoccupation: the strictures, and possibilities, of love under capitalism.
Illustrating the Messy Reality of Life as an Interracial Family
In her new graphic memoir, the author Mira Jacob documents conversations about love and race with multiple generations of her family.
The Books Briefing: An Ode to Elegies
Your weekly guide to the best in books: Celebrating National Poetry Month
Deciphering the Mystery of Joy Division
A new book explores how the group turned itself into a portal for some of the most alien and beautiful information ever to be broadcast through the medium of a rock-and-roll band.
A remarkable novel, Lost Children Archive, and a work of history, The End of the Myth, reckon with a walled border.
The Books Briefing: Upending the Marriage Plot
Your weekly guide to the best in books
Where Reasons End and the Trickiness of Stories About Suicide
Unlike many other works on the subject, Yiyun Li’s latest novel steadfastly refuses to dwell on questions of why.
How Domestic Workers Enable Well-Off Women to Prosper
In her new book, Women’s Work, the journalist Megan Stack grapples with how she’s been able to advance in her career at the expense of other women’s labor.
The Meaning of Slaughterhouse-Five, 50 Years Later
In the time since the publication of Kurt Vonnegut’s seminal novel, the work has never gotten old and it’s never waned in energy.
The Books Briefing: As the Good Book Says
Your weekly guide to the best in books
The Careful Craft of Writing Female Subjectivity
Territory of Light, Yuko Tsushima’s story of a single mother navigating ’70s Japan, exploded notions of autofiction by women as simply memoiristic.
How to Write Poetry About Conflict
In the late ’70s, Carolyn Forché traveled to El Salvador on the eve of its civil war, knowing little about the country. Crucially, she understood how little she knew.
The Books Briefing: The Literary Transformation of Climate Change
Your weekly guide to the best in books
The Art of Navigating a Family Political Discussion, Peacefully
It works best when both sides really try.