A diverting but unsurprising new history of the Astor clan
There is a fine, perceptive book to be written about the Astors and their influence, but Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune is not it
Books
Wednesday
Friday
The roots of J.K. Rowling’s contrarianism
How did the woman who taught a generation to stand up to the Ministry of Magic betray liberal orthodoxy?
Zadie Smith’s latest novel is glittering, grand and powerful
The Fraud is a consciously (but not self-consciously) literary novel
How missing persons cases work in the wild
The real science of searching in nature is the most interesting — and disturbing — part of Lankford’s account
Maureen Ryan exposes the Hollywood horror show
At the end of Burn it Down , it’s hard not to wish that the industry could simply be shut down and rebooted all over again
Drew Gilpin Faust, a rebel with a cause
In Necessary Trouble the historian and former president of Harvard has given us a clear-eyed account of a vexed era
Monday
Taking a trip to Russoville
Richard Russo doesn’t do fireworks. Dazzling metaphorical flights are not his thing
Blood Meridian is Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece
It may be the Great American Novel critics have searched for
William Boyd’s latest novel is immense fun
In The Romantic , it’s as if Boyd has distilled the essence of centuries of novel-writing
Visiting a forgotten chapter in American history
We May Dominate the World is a work of prodigious scholarship, featuring an extraordinary breadth and depth of sources
Elliot Page’s memoir is a tale of tragic self-destruction
For the author, transgenderism was an escape hatch
Wednesday
Milan Kundera’s ‘transcendental buffoonery’
A look at the late Czech novelist’s legacy and philosophy
Sunday
The great late Yeats
A century ago, W.B. Yeats won the Nobel Prize. It was the start of a remarkable late era for the Irish poet
Why is George Orwell so difficult to pin down?
The writer is an easy man to admire and sympathize with, but a hard one to like
Lady Caroline Lamb and the frantic bed-hopping between the great houses of England
Antonia Fraser paints a convincing, shocking picture of upper-class mores in the late eighteenth century
Lorrie Moore explores the thin veil between life and death
It’s hard to find writers ancient or modern who have used language with a music, wit and tenderness comparable to Moore’s
The troubled relationship between Mussolini and his son-in-law
Count Galeazzo Ciano’s career is uniquely revealing as an insight into the perils of joining the family business
Men at War examines homosexuality among World War Two soldiers
Luke Turner’s essential thesis is that the war opened up a brief time of sexual liberation for men
Sunday
The afterlife of Christopher Hitchens
Faced with a growing pile of Hitchenalia, the obvious question is ‘why?’
The dauntless spirit of Richard Halliburton
The writer’s forgotten imagination and commitment to exploration merit revival