Summarizer 
WHO KNEW, by Barry Diller The yachterati’s worst-kept secret is now billowing in the wind. Barry Diller is gay, and yet also married — like, really married — to Diane von Furstenberg, a woman. After the carefully meted-out release of this news, is there still value in paying $30 for Diller’s memoir, “Who Knew”? I … Read more
APPLE IN CHINA: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company, by Patrick McGee A little more than a decade ago, foreign journalists living in Beijing, including myself, met for a long chat with a top Chinese diplomat. Those were different days, when high-ranking Chinese officials were still meeting with members of the Western press corps. … Read more
Our recommended books this week tilt heavily toward investigations and exposés — they include a study of the wellness industry, an account of Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, a skeptical history of capitalism and a look at Russia’s private armies. But we also make room for an amiable road trip novel (Kevin Wilson’s “Run for the … Read more
No two days are the same for Benoît Gallot, whose title since 2018 has been “curator” at the storied Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, the resting place of choice for the great and good of France and those who love them. He might manage a team meeting, negotiate the sale of a family plot, supervise a … Read more
CAPITALISM AND ITS CRITICS: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI, by John Cassidy Given how reliably Americans tend to favor promises of plenty, it has been curious to see a president inherit a humming economy and then proceed to gut the federal work force, start a chaotic trade war and celebrate the scarcity … Read more
By most measures, Jeanine Cummins’s 2020 novel “American Dirt” was a colossal success. A propulsive story about a Mexican mother and son who flee to the United States to escape a drug cartel, the novel sold for seven figures. It was an Oprah book club pick, won endorsements from best-selling authors like Stephen King and … Read more
Susan Hagen, 48, was practically vibrating with excitement. She would soon be in the same room with three women who had helped her through some of the shakiest, most vulnerable moments in her life, even though they didn’t know it. Hagen, a New Jersey resident, had braved the pouring rain and Times Square crowds to … Read more
Elizabeth Pochoda, a journalist who widely traversed the media landscape of New York during her 50-year career, editing and writing for publications as diverse as The Nation, Vogue and The Daily News in New York, died on May 8 at her home in Brooklyn. She was 83. Her death, from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, … Read more
ORIGINAL SIN: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson In Christian theology, original sin begins with Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. But Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s “Original Sin” chronicles a different fall from grace. The cover … Read more
Twain had a striking look from the time he was young. In early photographs, he can resemble Billy the Kid, then Joe Walsh, then early Jimmy Buffett, then Kurt Vonnegut before emerging as the crinkly, shambolic, mustachioed, bushy-browed, white-linen-suit-wearing sage of his later years. There was something about his eyes — an intensity, a shrewdness. … Read more
