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There has been explosive interest in the life of Pauli Murray, as reflected in a recent profile in The New Yorker, the publication of a definitive biography, and a new Yale University college in her n

Celebrated as an “exhilarating account” of a revolutionary new medium (Booklist), Francis Ford Coppola's indispensable guide to live cinema is a boon for moviegoers, film students, and teachers alike. As digital movie-making, like live sports, can now be performed by one director—or by a collaborative team online— it is only a matter of time before cinema auteurs will create “live” movies to be broadcast instantly in faraway theaters. “Peppered with brilliant personal observations” (Wendy Doniger), Live Cinema and Its Techniques offers a behind-the-scenes look at a consummate career: from Coppola's formative boyhood obsession with live 1950s television shows and later attempts to imitate the spontaneity of live performance on set, the book usefully includes a guide to presenting state-of-the-art techniques on everything from rehearsals to equipment. A testament to Coppola's prodigious enthusiasm for reinvigorating the form, Live Cinema is an indispensable guide that “reenergizes . . .

In Jesus and John Wayne, a seventy-five-year history of American evangelicalism, Kristin Kobes Du Mez demolishes the myth that white evangelicals "held their noses" in voting for Donald Trump. Reveali

Published to great acclaim and fierce controversy in 1866, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment has left an indelible mark on global literature and on our modern world. Declared a PBS “Great Ameri

Lauded for “bringing a bracing and much-needed dose of reality about the Founders’ views of sexuality” (New York Review of Books), Geoffrey R. Stone’s Sex and the Constitution traces the evolution of

So shattering were the aftereffects of Kishinev, the rampagethat broke out in late-Tsarist Russia in April 1903,that one historian remarked that it was “nothing lessthan a prototype for the Holocaust

At the close of the Victorian era, as now, privacy was power. The extraordinarily wealthy 5th Duke of Portland had a mania for it, hiding in his carriage and building tunnels between buildings to avoi

Paul Freedman’s gorgeously illustrated history is “an epic quest to locate the roots of American foodways and follow changing tastes through the decades, a search that takes [Freedman] straight to the

The remarkable untold story of a miracle drug, the forgotten pioneer who discovered it, and the fight to bring lithium to the masses.The DNA double helix, penicillin, the X-ray, insulin—these are rout

No one can evince the drama of what actually happened at Dunkirk in the year 1940 with as “great narrative skill and superb delineation” (David McCullough) as Michael Korda, the historian and legendar

First appearing in The New Yorker, Danielle Allen’s Cuz announced the arrival of one of our most gifted literary memoirists. In this “compassionate retelling of an abjectly tragic story” (New York Tim

Hailed as "the definitive biography of Wendell Willkie" (Irwin F. Gellman), The Improbable Wendell Willkie offers an "engrossing and enlightening appraisal" (Ira Katznelson) of a prominent businessman

Widely hailed as a “powerfully written” history about America’s beginnings (Annette Gordon-Reed), New England Bound fundamentally changes the story of America’s seventeenth-century origins. Building o

Does any family better fit the Anna Karenina principle— that happy families are alike but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way—better than the patriarchs of the Book of Genesis? Is there any

A Parisian civil servant turned protégé of Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant is considered not only one of the greatest short story writers in all of French literature but also a pioneer of psychological re

New York Times Book Review • Notable Book of the YearWashington Post • 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2019NPR.org • NPR 2019 ConciergeSlate • 10 Best Books of the YearChicago Tribune • Best Books o

The arsons started on a cold November midnight and didn’t stop for months. Night after night, the people of Accomack County waited to see which building would burn down next, regarding each other at f

Resonating as profoundly today as when it was first published to widespread critical acclaim a decade ago, God’s Crucible is a bold portrait of Islamic Spain and the birth of modern Europe from one of

Born at the dawn of the twentieth century, Leni Riefenstahl and Marlene Dietrich both came of age in Weimar Berlin, a time of great political ferment. Glamour and decadence thrived beside abject pover

Beginning his career on a lark as a freelance contributor to SCRABBLE News, John D. Williams fell down a rabbit hole inhabited by gamers, geeks, and the grammar police. For twenty-five years, as the e

Caliph Washington didn’t pull the trigger but, as Officer James "Cowboy" Clark lay dying, he had no choice but to turn on his heel and run. The year was 1957; Cowboy Clark was white, Caliph Washington

In this “excellent” portrait of America’s famed nineteenth-century Siamese twins, celebrated biographer Yunte Huang discovers in the conjoined lives of Chang and Eng Bunker (1811–1874) a trenchant “co