A collection of 223 posts
William J. Mann’s new book about the notorious Black Dahlia case is a valuable corrective to the cottage industry of speculative theories that proliferated after her murder in 1947.
Aaron Magid has written a timely biography of a consequential monarch.
It’s hard to believe in God when even very bright, thoughtful people can’t come up with good reasons why you should.
A reply to Bruce Gilley.
A new book details the conspiratorial thinking and dark histories of two Capitol rioters.
Mary Clare Jalonick’s oral history of the 6 January riot is an important corrective to the second Trump administration’s vandalism of the historical record.
Two new books about America’s justice system paint a bleak picture of a deeply divided country.
Love means never having to say you’re sorry.
David Mamet’s new polemic is filled with muddled prose and muddled thought.
The author of ‘Eat Pray Love’ has returned with a new memoir, which features all the usual problems with her writing writ large.
An unorthodox new book by one of America’s finest nonfiction authors tries to make sense of Bob Dylan.
How the 6 Gallery reading in San Francisco on 7 October 1955 changed the counterculture.
Danny Rensch never became the world’s greatest chess player. But his improbable rise from traumatised cult child to dot-com wunderkind represents an even more impressive achievement.
Jordan Castro’s new novel ‘Muscle Man’ offers a wry and meme-literate vision of blokey intellectualism.
Matthew Gasda’s new novel unfolds in a haze of empty dialogue and overwrought introspection.