David Quammen has written a sprawling history of evolutionary genetics, “The Tangled Tree,” that complicates familiar notions of how species evolved.
Charles S. Cockell’s “The Equations of Life” argues that physics constrains evolution so that life is not endlessly variable, but actually quite predictable.
In “Playing Changes,” Nate Chinen argues that we’re living in a brilliant new phase of jazz, and offers an annotated guide to his favorite performers.
She helped shape new ways of thinking about Jewish identity, including challenging the Zionist notion that Israel must be honored as the homeland.
“A Bite-Sized History of France” covers wines, cheeses and the invention of canned food preservation.
As playful as he is provocative, Darren Bader interrogates the meaning of art itself. Plus, four works he created exclusively for T.
The recording, played on “Meet the Press,” revealed the White House chief of staff suggesting that Ms. Manigault Newman could face damage to her reputation if she did not leave quietly.
Sales are falling and critics say the company lacks a direction, sometimes seeming to give priority to sales of gifts and tchotchkes over books.
My relationship with him was full of its joys and hurts. It was never going to be otherwise.
In “I Can’t Date Jesus,” Michael Arceneaux writes with humor about his Catholic childhood in Houston and his struggles coming to terms with his sexuality.
Naipaul, who died at 85 on Saturday, was a self-styled heir to Joseph Conrad, and a legitimate one.
Mr. Naipaul, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001, wrote about the liberation movements that swept across Africa and the Caribbean, where he was born.
There are many paths to discipline and confidence. I typed my way there.
Some journalists see adherence to a prearranged timetable for breaking certain news as a “gentleman’s agreement.” Others see it as a “devil’s bargain.”
Plus, another that looks at the state of the economy and a satire that offers a wacky solution.
Omarosa Manigault Newman writes in a new memoir that she never heard President Trump use the slur, but says there are tapes to prove it.
“My joy exists with pain,” Ms. Silver wrote. Her poems moved in a new direction after she received a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2004.
Our map of crime novels and detective fiction offers far-flung suggestions for your summer reading.
“Everything’s so outrageous now in the public sphere,” Ms. Millet says. “You can’t really be more absurd or more fictional than real life is right now.”
In August, the best-seller lists here don’t change much. So we decided to look elsewhere — Germany, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands.
The well-regarded science writer took up poker while researching a book. Now she’s on the professional circuit.
In which we consult the Book Review’s past to shed light on the books of the present. This week: Fareed Zakaria’s first book, “From Wealth to Power.”
In “My Family Divided,” the “Orange Is the New Black” star tells the story of coming home at age 14 to find her parents gone, taken by immigration authorities.
Adam Tooze’s “Crashed” examines “how a decade of financial crises changed the world.”
A room of one’s own? The cartoonist Grant Snider thinks a writer needs a lot more than that.
England and Russia figure in two recent novels, while in the New World, historical fiction revisits the 19th-century Caribbean and the American West.
Nico Walker’s Autobiographical novel “Cherry” traces his descent into addiction and crime. It’s being called the first great novel of the opioid crisis.
Elizabeth Partridge’s “Boots on the Ground” includes some disturbing images and facts. But today’s activist teenagers can handle a fuller account of American conduct during the war.
The daughter of Persian immigrants, Nur Jahan became the favorite wife and the co-ruler of Emperor Jahangir. Ruby Lal’s “Empress” tells her story.
Roger Scruton’s “Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition” is intended not only for the author’s political allies but for liberals too.
Glynnis MacNicol’s smart, pithy memoir, “No One Tells You This,” celebrates women who buck cultural norms.
In “Playthings,” Alex Pheby tells the story of Daniel Paul Schreber, a German judge who described his own struggles with mental illness.
Six new paperbacks to check out this week.
As Jane O’Connor, the author of the Fancy Nancy books, ends her series, she reflects on the intimate connections she’s fostered with young readers.
The young Russian-American protagonist of Keith Gessen’s new novel returns to the country of his birth and discovers both misery and magic.
Readers respond to recent issues of the Sunday Book Review.
Maybe more of us would have children if it weren’t seen as such an exercise in sacrifice. If we weren’t told that we were going to lose every bit of the self we had finally grown to love.
He had intimate knowledge of every shelf at the Strand, was a partner in another bookstore and, when not reading, collected celebrities’ self portraits.
Surging newsprint costs are adding to the woes of struggling local newspapers, forcing them to reduce staff and publication days.
An author and publisher with an eclectic bent, she was a founder of Academy Chicago, which sold feminist, mystery, literary and children’s books.
It is not her only novel to be translated into English, but it is the first one to establish her reputation beyond her native Poland.
The characters in Lydia Millet’s new linked collection, “Fight No More,” yearn to understand the fractures in their lives.
New books featuring prominent sites, proposed walks and maps cover subjects like rock ‘n’ roll, architecture, the history of Harlem and pop culture.
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
The biographer and journalist, whose latest book is “The Husband Hunters,” avoids thrillers: “I get all the mayhem I want in the newspapers.”
In “Famous Father Girl,” Jamie Bernstein is a warm, wry observer, peeking from the wings as her father glories, sifting through the jumbo pill box when he falls apart.
Back in 1911, The Times discovered a trove of literary criticism inside one of the state’s most notorious prisons — but couldn’t figure out who the author was. 107 years later, we’ve solved the mystery.
Adam Tooze shows how the financial crisis radiated outward, shaping not only the new economic order but the ensuing political free-for-all.
Casey Legler, a former Olympic swimmer, recounts her unlikely rise and fall in a new memoir, “Godspeed.” And that’s only half the story.
In Darnell L. Moore’s memoir, “No Ashes in the Fire,” he describes a brutal childhood in Camden, N.J., and the struggle to fully accept his identity.
Our president is obsessed with celebrity; our last president lamented it.
In “Hits & Misses,” Simon Rich dissects his generation’s culture with humor and empathy. A review by Nate Dern.
In “The Tangled Tree,” Quammen tells the story of a groundbreaking idea in biology, and of the scientists who discovered and explained it.
Television dramas and comedies thrive on complexity. But journalism’s reductive picture of society makes America more polarized and feeds the extremes.
After apprenticing in a Gascon village, Camas Davis returned home with an appreciation of “life, death and dinner.” “Killing It” tells her story.
The artist Geoffrey Chadsey envisions new releases by Gary Shteyngart, Olivia Laing and more.
In Olen Steinhauer’s “The Middleman,” a revolutionary anticapitalist movement seeks to unite the disaffected of America’s red and blue states.
Mead, the fermented honey alcoholic beverage, is making a comeback.
A selection of books published this week; plus, a peek at what our colleagues around the newsroom are reading.
David D. Kirkpatrick’s “Into the Hands of the Soldiers” describes the heady days when democracy seemed a possibility in Egypt.
I was the magazine’s poetry editor for 35 years. Never once did we apologize for publishing a poem.
Claire Tomalin, the acclaimed biographer of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and others, recounts her own rich story in “A Life of My Own.”
Randi Hutter Epstein’s “Aroused” looks at the history of hormone research and the many missteps along the way.
A look at one of the entries that stumped solvers in last week’s crossword puzzles.
In his two-volume “Carbon Ideologies,” the writer examines from many angles what we are doing to the earth.
James Freeman and Vern McKinley’s “Borrowed Time” takes a close look at the government bailout of Citigroup.
Jeffrey Lewis’s first novel, a speculative work of fiction, has a harrowingly plain title: “The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States”
Books helped me gain independence. So it saddens me just a bit to see my son reading on his own.
No fairy tales, thank you: Her many books dealt with death, war, slavery and other harsh realities and looked at history from contrasting viewpoints.
How mental illness stopped being “a terrible dark secret.”
Predictions and solutions in these books drawing on scientific research and social policy.
Alan Gratz’s middle-grade novels — like the best-selling ‘Refugee’ — often deal with war, asylum seekers and Jewish history.
“We're all connected, we’re all at risk of this,” Macy says about what she has learned reporting on the opioid crisis. “It’s everywhere.”
Readers respond to recent issues of the Sunday Book Review.
In which we consult the Book Review’s past to shed light on the books of the present. This week: Anne Tyler’s “The Accidental Tourist.”
Six new paperbacks to check out this week.
Edward Sorel illustrates the great turn-of-the-century author’s fumbling foray into the theater.
In fantasies by K. Sello Duiker and Jaleigh Johnson, children use magic to navigate the streets of a South African township and a hostile world called Tallhaven.
Three books relate the individual accounts of people caught up in events larger than themselves.
Paul French’s “City of Devils” is a narrative fiction of the “tawdry city” Shanghai before World War II.
Matthew Kneale’s “Rome: A History in Seven Sackings” narrates the city’s past through the marauders who have devastated it.
Instructions to help you find and subscribe to the series.
Astrid Holleeder secretly recorded her brother and wrote a book about it. Now he’s on trial for murder, and she’s in hiding.
In his new novel, “Metamorphica” — the title is a nod to Ovid’s epic poem — Zachary Mason reworks and respins ancient Greco-Roman myths.
For the 200th anniversary of “Frankenstein,” the poet Fiona Sampson has written a new biography of its author: “In Search of Mary Shelley.”
In “The Mere Wife,” by Maria Dahvana Headley, the epic poem is reimagined as an imaginative tale of class conflict.
This week’s mysteries move from a New Hampshire boarding school to a London rowhouse, with stops in New York City and a ramshackle shed in Oakland.
In her brilliant new novel, “Spinning Silver,” Naomi Novik riffs on a number of fairy tales, including the straw-into-gold classic.
As a woman of the 1950s, she said, she felt “presumptuous” about wanting a writing career, but overcame her qualms to carve out a successful one.
In 1956, Ernest Hemingway wrote five short stories about World War II, including “A Room on the Garden Side,” saying they could be published after he died. Three remain.
Chibundu Onuzo’s novel “Welcome to Lagos” sets its runaway characters adrift in the swirl of metropolitan life, where it may be impossible to hide.
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
“Kissinger the Negotiator,” by James K. Sebenius, R. Nicholas Burns and Robert H. Mnookin, presents diplomacy as the art of influencing friends and adversaries.
Sophie Hannah, whose Hercule Poirot novel “The Mystery of Three Quarters” will be published this month, is addicted to self-help: “Write a book and call it something like ‘The Five Secrets of Badass Kickassery’ and I will buy it immediately.”
His satires were not well received by the Soviet authorities, and in 1980 he thought it best to live in the West until things thawed out.
After a white poet’s use of African-American vernacular was criticized for being offensive, the magazine’s poetry editors apologized.
Lesley Nneka Arimah’s debut short story collection is our August pick for the PBS NewsHour-New York Times book club, “Now Read This.”
“A Girl Stands at the Door,” by the Rutgers historian Rachel Devlin, shows how the work of desegregation was done disproportionately by a young population that felt called to action.
A play based on a confessional, self-obsessed woman’s memoir — from the 15th century — is back, at the Duke.
Things are worse than ever, Roy Scranton insists in “We’re Doomed. Now What?” They always have been, Eugene Thacker says in “Infinite Resignation.”
In her new novel, “Clock Dance,” a staid retiree plunges into the off-kilter lives of a single mother and her daughter.
Jeff Smith, the creator of Bone, the graphic novel series, is going after younger readers.
Authors including Kate Atkinson, Lauren Groff and Jonathan Lethem will also give talks and read from their new works this fall.
Scott W. Stern’s “The Trials of Nina McCall” is the first book-length history of the “American Plan,” under which women suspected of having venereal disease were forcibly examined and imprisoned.
In Donal Ryan’s new novel, recently longlisted for the Booker Prize, a Syrian doctor settles in Ireland, where his life intersects with two other shattered men.
Reading and writing are solitary activities; BookTube is changing that.
Eliza Griswold’s new book, “Amity and Prosperity,” is an impassioned account of the devastating effects of fracking on a community in southwestern Pennsylvania.
Mona Hanna-Attisha’s “What the Eyes Don’t See” traces her role in proving Flint had a crisis. Anna Clark’s “The Poisoned City” takes a broader, historical view. Both books are damning.
A selection of books published this week; plus, a peek at what our colleagues around the newsroom are reading.
Beth Macy’s “Dopesick” describes the opioid epidemic that is killing thousands every year.
Simon & Schuster plans to publish “Fear: Trump in the White House,” on Sept 11. The book is Mr. Woodward’s 19th.
To understand why white supremacists back the president, we have to understand the books that define their worldview.
In “Light of the Stars,” Adam Frank uses evidence of extraterrestrial life to illuminate the problem of climate change on Earth.
Donald Hall died last month at 89, and his recently published memoir, “A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety,” is “up there with the best things he did.”
A series of talks, workshops, classes and more will accompany an exhibition, “Harry Potter: A History of Magic.”
Two new memoirs — Elizabeth Katkin’s “Conceivability” and Emma Brockes’s “An Excellent Choice” — trace very different paths to motherhood.
A long career in the publishing world was highlighted by her influential and enduring book “How to Get Happily Published.”
To write “Northland,” Porter Fox spent three years traveling about 4,000 miles from Maine to Washington, meeting people, studying history and observing nature.
Would history have been different if Khrushchev had used a better interpreter?
Are you sure you want to get rid of Donald Trump?
Sooner or later, everyone has to face the consequences of their bad choices.
Hillary Chute talks about new graphic books that address serious issues, and Nicole Lamy discusses her Match Book column, in which she helps readers find books they’ll love.
Joe Mungo Reed’s “We Begin Our Ascent” is a novel about cycling, doping and the personal failings of a middling racer on the Tour.
In Paula Saunders’s debut novel, “The Distance Home,” a stuttering, ballet-loving boy and his younger sister struggle to find their place in the world.
Lexi Freiman’s “Inappropriation” sets perennial teenage angst against the backdrop of today’s digital culture.
The books give accounts of Lance Armstrong’s doping, the first race ever and one amateur cyclist’s attempts to complete the course.
Six new paperbacks to check out this week.
Members of the Trump family get behind Jeanine Pirro’s new book, “Liars, Leakers and Liberals.”
Glittering worlds, lip-smacking clothes: Fashion-centric new releases explore the importance of Loulou de La Falaise, the British couturier Charles James and theatrical street wardrobes.
Ben Passmore’s “Your Black Friend and Other Strangers” is one of three books reviewed that struggle with difference, dysphoria and the struggle to survive.
Jordy Rosenberg’s debut novel, “Confessions of the Fox,” is a heady romp through an 18th-century England awash in sex, crime and revolutionary ideas.
A typhoon roaring ashore in Bangladesh in 1970 is the linchpin of “The Storm,” Arif Anwar’s bighearted debut novel.
In which we consult the Book Review’s past to shed light on the books of the present. This week: Amy Tan’s debut, “The Joy Luck Club.”
Readers respond to recent issues of the Sunday Book Review.
Rumored lost portions of his autobiography were bought by the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center, along with the manuscript of the book.
In his late-night HBO series, “Random Acts of Flyness,” the writer-director accentuates the experience of being young and black in America right now.
“Of all the books I have reread to comfort myself, I have turned most often to ‘Sleepless Nights,’ not without a little bitter tang of irony because of its title.”
Two debut novels, “Number One Chinese Restaurant,” by Lillian Li, and “The Emperor of Shoes,” by Spencer Wise, feature characters whose lives are deeply entangled with two cultures.
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
“The Fifth Risk” comes out this October.
The humor writer Simon Rich, whose latest collection is “Hits and Misses,” would love to see his life as a Ken Burns documentary: “Just a lot of slow pans of me typing on my computer, while sitting in different positions. And the whole time, inexp...
He regrets the inauguration crowd briefing. He regrets his Holocaust remarks. But did he corrupt world discourse? Was he an amazing child?
Beth Macy’s new book provides an on-the-ground look at how addiction to OxyContin and other painkillers became a national state of emergency.
Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s “Fruit of the Drunken Tree” describes life in war-torn Colombia, based on the author’s personal experience.
In Andrew Martin’s “Early Work,” the already shiftless life of a struggling writer is derailed by romantic infatuation.
All writers have their favorite sentence structures — the signatures they return to again and again.
Married to Woolf’s nephew, she was a last link to the famed Bloomsbury Group, and also part of the wartime art-preservation unit known as the Monuments Men.
An author who avoided sentimentality and took on contemporary issues of social justice in books that were translated into 30 languages.
In “Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret,” Craig Brown ignores all the starchy obligations of biography and adopts a form of his own to ensnare the reader.
In R.O. Kwon’s debut novel, “The Incendiaries,” the central characters fall hard, both for each other and into the trap of a fundamentalist cult.