Six Books That Feel Like Puzzles
These titles represent an eclectic mix of various styles and moods, but any one of them will be exactly right if you want a brainteaser.
The Novelist Who Truly Understood the South
A new collection of Charles Portis’s work makes the case for his place in the American canon.
How Parking Ruined Everything
America has paid a steep price for devoting too much space to storing cars.
A Nobel Laureate Walks Into a Supermarket
Annie Ernaux on the malaise of the grocery store
The Key to America’s Victory in the Second World War
Ernie Pyle understood that the war would be won, or lost, in the realm of steel, dirt, and blood.
Seven Tips From Susan Sontag for Independent Thinking
What would the intellectual powerhouse think about our culture of groupthink and self-righteousness?
Near Darwin
A poem for Wednesday
The Indignity of Grocery Shopping
In her latest work to be translated into English, Annie Ernaux examines the malaise of the modern supermarket.
The Trees Don’t Care About Us
Two new books scrutinize the natural world, and not for what it might offer us.
Cynthia Ozick on the Link Between Beauty and Purity
“Feeling, pure feeling, is a willing collaboration between the godlet and the believer who is carried away.”
Late-Night-Radio Talk-Show Host Tells All
A short story
Tidal
A poem for Sunday
Should We Psychoanalyze Our Presidents?
Sigmund Freud once applied his Oedipal theory to the leader of the free world.
What You Should Be Reading This Summer
20 books to match some warm-weather moods
Other Writers Seem Asleep by Comparison
After Martin Amis’s death, Jennifer Egan reflects on his influence and his humor.
The 400-Year-Old Tragedy That Captures Our Chaos
Pop culture is finding new currency in the tale of a king beset by madness.
American Guns, American Deaths
What photographs of the sites of mass shootings show—and what they omit
Chain-Gang All-Stars Is Gladiator Meets the American Prison System
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s new novel is set in a world where extreme brutality has become corporate entertainment.
What Kind of Nazi Was He?
In a new memoir, the grandson of a Nazi official wonders whether “passive resistance” to Hitler’s regime ought to be categorized as a moral victory or failure.
The 1880s Political Novel That Could Have Been Written Today
The Princess Casamassima, published more than 100 years ago, carries a warning for America today.