The First Draft of Cultural History
Lena Dunham’s new memoir is a fascinating primary source of Hollywood in the 2010s.
What To Read
If You Want a Better World, Act Like You Live in It
We’ve had Henry David Thoreau the environmentalist, the libertarian, the life coach. To understand his influence, think of him first as a dissident.
The Publishing Mystery That No One Wants to Talk About
A minimally speaking autistic man just wrote a best-selling book. Or did he?
The Paradox of Modern Medicine
Testing has become so advanced that doctors now miss important elements of diagnosis.
Fortunes
A short story
The Honor of the Layward Brothers
A short story
We Are Not One
A short story
Diseducators
A short story
Six Books That Show No One Can Hurt You Like a Sibling
The unique feeling of sharing parents, or of growing up together, makes this relationship unlike any other.
You Can Read Any of These Short Novels in a Weekend
These books may be brief, but they use their limited word count to demonstrate the power of concision.
Five Authors We Thought Might Win the Nobel—Including One Who Did
A reading list of works by perennial favorites, including this year's awardee, Annie Ernaux
The Books We Read Too Late—And That You Should Read Now
One of the great, bittersweet pleasures of life is finishing a title and thinking about how it might have affected you—if only you’d found it sooner.
Six Books That Music Lovers Should Read
Because music is uniquely tied up with memory, the best writing about it inevitably gets personal.
The Best Books for a Broken Heart
These titles are genuinely insightful about the pain of heartbreak, but affirm that love remains worth pursuing.
Six Introductions That Will Change How You Read These Classics
Front matter by well-known contemporary authors offers new insights into notable works from the past—and heralds the foreword’s rise as its own exciting literary form.
The Books That Help Me Raise Children in a Broken World
How can we manage to pass along anything other than rage and despair in turbulent times?
Seven Books Where the Setting Exposes the Characters
Unchanging environments are a useful narrative tool to show readers just how much a protagonist has grown.
Eight Books That Will Lead You Down a Rabbit Hole
Making any kind of art can be an obsessive pursuit, but literature is uniquely suited to depicting monomania.