The Fraught Friendships of Eight Great Artists
Sebastian Smee’s group biography details four incentivizing rivalries between famous painters as they strove for excellence.
Book Review
Haunted Womanhood
A biography by Ruth Franklin captures Shirley Jackson’s punishing upbringing and marriage, which perhaps informed the destruction of heroines in her work.
Why (Some) People Hate Poetry
It’s the site and source of disappointed hope.
Invented Disaster and the American Jewish Experience
With his new novel, Here I Am, Jonathan Safran Foer adds to the emerging literature of the Gen X male’s midlife crisis.
When Parks Were Radical
More than 150 years ago, Frederick Law Olmsted changed how Americans think about public space.
The Original Underclass
Poor white Americans’ current crisis shouldn’t have caught the rest of the country as off guard as it has.
The Humanity of The Wicked Boy
The former journalist Kate Summerscale tells the true story of a child who murdered his mother in Victorian London.
The Assault on Antidepressants
Twenty-three years after Listening to Prozac, Peter Kramer comes to the drug’s defense.
Why Extreme Gymnastics Will Dominate the Rio Olympics
Has athleticism eclipsed aesthetic spirit? Dvora Meyers’s book traces the evolution of the sport.
Women Are Writing the Best Crime Novels
They don’t seem to believe in heroes as much as their male counterparts, which in some ways makes their storytelling a better fit for the times.