Book Review
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Anthony Gerace Misunderstanding Susan Sontag
Her beauty and celebrity eclipse the real source of her allure—her commitment to aesthetic self-discipline.
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duncan1890 / Getty Rewriting the ‘Boy Genius’
Caitlin Horrocks’s debut novel builds on a rich tradition of women writers who complicate the myth of male virtuosity until it crumbles.
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Alexandra Bowman Edna O’Brien’s Lonely Girls
The setting of her new novel is terror-ridden Nigeria, a world away from her native Ireland, but the psychic territory is familiar.
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Oliver Munday; Museo Nacional de Arte And Then Job Said Unto the Lord: You Can’t Be Serious
In a new translation of the Book of Job, the famously repentant hero gives God a piece of his mind.
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Illustration by Paul Spella; Diana Walker / The ... Deconstructing Clarence Thomas
The justice’s reactionary legal philosophy rests on faith in the power of adversity to fuel black progress.
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Graywolf Girl, Haunted
A drowning haunts Susan Steinberg’s dark first novel about teenagers’ summer adventures.
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Illustration: Emily Haasch; Library of Congress The Students of Sex and Culture
Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Zora Neale Hurston—spurred on by Franz Boas—revolutionized the way we think about humanity.
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Oliver Munday The Unbearable Smugness of Walking
Glorified for its creative benefits, the pastime has become yet another goal-driven pursuit.
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Reuters / Courtesy E. Jean Carroll You Should Really Read E. Jean Carroll’s Memoir
What Do We Need Men For? is overwhelming. It is exhausting. That is the point.
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Naomi Elliott What We’re Reading This Summer
Atlantic staffers pick 14 books to spend time with this season, including Freshwater, Republic of Spin, Killing and Dying, and more.
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Lucy Jones Tracing the Internal Queer Revolution
Riots and parades have made LGBTQ people visible. But a new anthology of writings from before, during, and after Stonewall shows the inward changes as more essential.
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Katie Martin ‘A Work of Art Designed by the Devil’
Dispatched by Life magazine to cover the Apollo 11 mission, Norman Mailer saw the lunar landing not as a triumph for mankind but as evidence of our hubris.
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Golden Cosmos The New Science of Building Baseball Superstars
“Sabermetrics” changed the national pastime. Now another technological revolution is transforming the game, for good or ill.
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Hokyoung Kim What Lies Beneath
Burrow far below the planet’s surface, and even there, humanity has left its imprint.
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Mariner Books Inside the Head of an Aging Serial Killer
A new story collection from Kim Young-ha complicates the trope of the relatable murderer and, in the process, puts the reader in a quandary.
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Lynne Sladky / AP Stories That Ask Whether Humans and Nature Were Always Incompatible
Karen Russell’s latest collection meditates on anxieties about mankind’s place in the world.
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Frances F. Denny / The New York Times ... A Novel That Weighs the Costs of Love and Motherhood
In Patsy, Nicole Dennis-Benn wrestles with the conflicting demands of family and autonomy for an undocumented woman in New York City.
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Owen Freeman Female Spies and Their Secrets
An old-boy operation was transformed by women during World War II, and at last the unsung upstarts are getting their due.
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Daan Brand / Bransch Eat Food. All the Time. Mostly Junk.
How the “food revolution” turned us into snackers, guaranteeing the demise of healthy home cooking
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Henry Holt and Co. / art_of_sun / shutterstock ... Trust Exercise Is an Elaborate Trick of a Novel
Susan Choi’s taut, drama-school narrative asks: Where does art end and reality begin?
