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
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
Take the Murguia family: Amalia and Alfredo immigrated from a small region in central Mexico to Kansas City, and had seven children, five of whom shared three beds in one of the house’s two bedrooms. Alfred, one of the older children, excelled academically and was the first in his family to enroll in college — … Read more
STATE CHAMP, by Hilary Plum Though the decision to seek an abortion is an inherently private one, walking into an abortion clinic in the United States can be an uncannily public act. A patient may have to dodge protesters trying to block her path to the building, or hide her face as they brandish photos … Read more
FEVER BEACH, by Carl Hiaasen The greater Miami area runs roughly 120 overdeveloped miles from Jupiter down to Homestead, but spans less than 30 at its widest point. This peninsula within a peninsula can claim its share of contemporary novelists, including Karen Russell, Tananarive Due, Jennine Capó Crucet and, for whatever it’s worth, yours truly, … Read more
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. For more than 20 years, A.O. Scott, who was until recently a co-chief film critic for The New York Times, had a routine. Look at the movies he’d been assigned to review for the week. … Read more
THE EMPEROR OF GLADNESS, by Ocean Vuong We first meet the hero of Ocean Vuong’s second novel, “The Emperor of Gladness,” as we did George Bailey in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”: on the edge of a bridge, contemplating suicide. Rain pelts him rather than snow. Hai is 19 in September of 2009, “in … Read more
